Rating The Suspects.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Fiver, thanks for laying that out — but your scoring rests on assumptions that simply don’t fit the record.

(A) Age/physical health. Thompson was 29 in 1888, the prime age range for serial offenders. Yes, he was a laudanum addict, but contemporaries remarked that despite frailty he could walk the streets for hours. The Ripper did not need to overpower healthy men — only inebriated women. A “1” here is too harsh.

(C) Violence. “No known violence” isn’t accurate. Thompson’s prose (not just poetry) described prostitutes as “putrid ulcerations” who deserved to be “struck down.” In Nightmare of the Witch-Babies he graphically mutilates female figures. This is violence expressed in words, confirmed by his own biographers, and should count.

(D) Mental health. More than “other.” He had asylum stays, suicide attempts, hallucinations — major red flags for instability.

(E) Police interest. You write “none known,” but Major Henry Smith (City Police Commissioner) described a suspect in his 1910 memoir: a medical student, asylum inmate, tied to prostitutes, coin fraud, and Rupert Street. That combination is uniquely Thompson. Smith’s suspect is police interest.

(F) Hatred of prostitutes. This isn’t just “link.” Thompson’s writings are saturated with disgust for prostitutes, couched in medical imagery. It’s far stronger than casual dislike.

(G) Medical knowledge. Six years of formal anatomy, pathology under Dreschfeld, and possession of his own scalpel. That’s beyond a “1.”

If we reapply the system using actual biographical data, Thompson rises above the usual “maybes.” The weight of documented traits justifies the 14 I assigned. Scoring him low only works by stripping out his violence (in text), his police link (Smith’s profile), and his hatred (prose, not metaphor).

In other words: if Herlock’s system is meant to capture risk factors, then Thompson fits them more than anyone. To pretend otherwise is to handicap the data.

You are not using the system honestly. It’s the kind of thing that you would expect from say, someone that used this ‘lower than whales**t’ piece of propaganda:

“The sooner this spreads, the greater the good it does — for truth, for justice, for history, for the memory of the five women, and for our collective cultural health.
Those who share and support this now will be seen as the vanguard of that change. Their names will be remembered — not as people who doubted or delayed, but who helped truth win.
Please — take this moment. Share. Speak. Help carry this breakthrough forward.
Beauty is truth, truth beauty — and the world needs more of both.“

To be honest - one of the most despicable passages that I’ve ever read on the subject.

[Fiver]

(A) Age/physical health. Thompson was 29 in 1888, the prime age range for serial offenders. Yes, he was a laudanum addict, but contemporaries remarked that despite frailty he could walk the streets for hours. The Ripper did not need to overpower healthy men — only inebriated women. A “1” here is too harsh.

Yet you call him frail.

(C) Violence. “No known violence” isn’t accurate. Thompson’s prose (not just poetry) described prostitutes as “putrid ulcerations” who deserved to be “struck down.” In Nightmare of the Witch-Babies he graphically mutilates female figures. This is violence expressed in words, confirmed by his own biographers, and should count.

Herlock's scale is about actual violence committed. “No known violence” is the correct rating for Thompson, since we have no evidence that he ever harmed another person.

(D) Mental health. More than “other.” He had asylum stays, suicide attempts, hallucinations — major red flags for instability.

Here's the actual scale.
(D) Mental health issues > 2 = serious/violent/sexual/1 = other/0 = none known.

None of Thompson's problems reach level 2.

(E) Police interest. You write “none known,” but Major Henry Smith (City Police Commissioner) described a suspect in his 1910 memoir: a medical student, asylum inmate, tied to prostitutes, coin fraud, and Rupert Street. That combination is uniquely Thompson. Smith’s suspect is police interest.

"He proved an alibi without the shadow of doubt." - Henry Smith

If Smith's suspect is Thompson, then Thompson is innocent. Smith never names his subject, so the correct answer is “none known”.

(F) Hatred of prostitutes. This isn’t just “link.” Thompson’s writings are saturated with disgust for prostitutes, couched in medical imagery. It’s far stronger than casual dislike.

Your interpretation of Thompson's writing is not a fact. You also ignore that he had an extremely positive relation with a prostitute who he believed saved his life.

(G) Medical knowledge. Six years of formal anatomy, pathology under Dreschfeld, and possession of his own scalpel. That’s beyond a “1.”

(G) Medical/anatomical knowledge (inc. animals) > 1 = yes/0 = none known

The scale does not go to 2 on this point.

[Richard Patterson]

Your statement is provably false.

Here are the actual opinions of the medical types.

Dr Llewellyn - “some rough anatomical knowledge”

Coroner Baxter - "considerable anatomical skill and knowledge”

Dr Phillips - "seemed to indicate great anatomical knowledge.”

Dr Sequeira - "not possessed of any great anatomical skill"

Dr Brown - “a great deal of knowledge”

Dr Saunders did not think the killer showed anatomical skill.

Dr Bond - "no scientific nor anatomical knowledge" IIRC, Thomas Bond read the reports in the victims, he did not examine the bodies.

So the assessments of skill are:
None - Bond, Saunders
Some - Lllewellyn, Sequeira
A lot - Baxter, Brown, Phillips

The majority of the doctors thought Thompson had too much medical knowledge to be the Ripper.

You are right. Not all doctors agreed that the Ripper had medical knowledge. So are telling us that because Thompson was very good at slicing into human beings he must not have been the man who sliced into 5 women?

[Richard Patterson]

When I say that ‘he never harmed anyone’ I could perhaps re-phrase it.

So I’ll say “we have absolutely no evidence whatsoever that Francis Thompson ever physically harmed anyone in his entire life” That is the exact and literal truth. If you have a problem with the exact and literal truth Richard I’d suggest that the issue is with you.

Herlock,

You’ve shifted the phrase from “he never harmed anyone” to “we have no evidence that he ever harmed anyone.” But that’s a sleight of hand. The absence of a signed confession or a police charge is not the same as absence of evidence.

We do have evidence: Thompson’s own words in prose and verse where he describes prostitutes as “putrid ulcerations of love…a blasphemy against love’s language.” That is not neutral metaphor—it is violent dehumanization. We have his acknowledged years in Whitechapel carrying a dissecting scalpel. We have his pyromania, his documented asylum stays, his obsessive pursuit of a runaway prostitute, and Major Smith’s profile aligning with him point for point. Each of these is evidence—documented, sourced, and historically attested.

You can choose to dismiss that evidence as insufficient, but it is misleading to say there is “none.” Evidence comes in many forms: writings, testimonies, behaviors, timelines, professional records, and police descriptions. A jury weighs such evidence to reach a conclusion; they don’t throw it out because it isn’t a direct eyewitness account of the crime itself.

If you want to argue that the evidence doesn’t convince you, that’s fair. But to claim there is “no evidence whatsoever” is inaccurate. The record is full of it.

[Lewis C]

You are right. Not all doctors agreed that the Ripper had medical knowledge. So are telling us that because Thompson was very good at slicing into human beings he must not have been the man who sliced into 5 women?

If the Ripper didn't have to have had medical knowledge, it wouldn't mean that the Ripper didn't have it. It would mean that there's no more reason to suspect someone with medical knowledge than someone without it.

[Richard Patterson]

Not once does he use the word prostitute

Herlock,

You say “not once does he use the word prostitute.” That’s exactly the kind of shallow literalism that betrays how little you know about the man you defend so zealously. Just because you can’t find the word in black and white doesn’t mean the thing itself isn’t there. Thompson didn’t need to write the word “prostitute” when he painted them in venomous strokes—diseased bodies, fetid wombs, contagion, harlots. To pretend that his entire body of work isn’t saturated with contempt for prostitutes is to blind yourself to the evidence staring you in the face.

Take his piece under the pseudonym Tancred in Merry England (1891). He imagines London as a diseased battlefield where, in his own words, “the girls [are] harlots in the mother’s womb.” He frames the East End as a spiritual plague that must be purged. He speaks of “diagnosing” the city’s disease, of hearing the lashes and seeing men “dabbled with their own oozing life.” He ends with a crusader’s vision of children being better thrown from bridges than growing up among prostitutes. That’s not metaphorical hand-wringing. That is blade-imagery, war-imagery, the language of extermination—his life’s manifesto.

Or look at his unpublished play Napoleon Judges. Here, through the emperor’s voice, he writes: “Aye the harlot’s mercy he shall have! … The sword sometimes spares, the musket sometimes misses; the harlot never! Fair Destruction!” That is how Thompson thought of prostitutes: as unerring agents of ruin, worse than bullets. Again, you don’t need him to spell out the word “prostitute” when every line drips with it.

The truth is that you’re defending a sanitized, hagiographic version of Thompson written by the Meynells and repeated in encyclopedia entries, not the man as he actually was. The real Thompson wrote obsessively of harlots, of knives, of purging, of judgment. He described prostitutes not as human beings but as verminous ulcers to be cut out.

And this raises the question: why this zeal to protect him? Why such eagerness to strip his words of their plain meaning? I’ll be blunt—your stance risks coming across as misogynistic. To hand-wave away Thompson’s obsessional hatred of prostitutes is, intentionally or not, to belittle the lived reality of women who were actually mutilated in Whitechapel. In time, people will look back and ask: why did some men go to such lengths to defend him, even at the cost of tearing down the police, dismissing evidence, and ignoring the plain meaning of his own words?

If you want to debate probability models or challenge interpretations, fine—we can spar on the facts. But don’t insult everyone’s intelligence by claiming Thompson never showed hatred for prostitutes. It’s in his work, over and over again, and it defines him. That’s the record, and no amount of rhetorical hair-splitting changes it.

[Doctored Whatsit]

You are right. Not all doctors agreed that the Ripper had medical knowledge. So are telling us that because Thompson was very good at slicing into human beings he must not have been the man who sliced into 5 women?

Er, no doctor said that the Ripper had any medical knowledge. They specified anatomical knowledge only, and just to make their point clearer, they specifically mentioned people accustomed to cutting up animals. The phrase, someone accustomed to removing innards with one sweep of a knife, was also used, and this is a clear reference to butcher/slaughterers, not medically trained persons.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Herlock,

You’ve shifted the phrase from “he never harmed anyone” to “we have no evidence that he ever harmed anyone.” But that’s a sleight of hand. The absence of a signed confession or a police charge is not the same as absence of evidence.

We do have evidence: Thompson’s own words in prose and verse where he describes prostitutes as “putrid ulcerations of love…a blasphemy against love’s language.” That is not neutral metaphor—it is violent dehumanization.

Words - nothing more. A no mention of the word ‘prostitute.’ Words aren’t violence and your continued attempts to portray them as such displays how desperate you are and how weak your case is.

We have his acknowledged years in Whitechapel carrying a dissecting scalpel.

‘Years’ in Whitechapel is nothing more than an invention.

A) The ripper victims weren’t killed with a scalpel, B) there is no evidence of Thompson ever using the scalpel for violent means (only for shaving)

We have his pyromania,

That you pursue this utter lie is appalling Richard. You clearly have no shame.

his documented asylum stays,

Francis Thompson never once in his entire life was in an asylum. Please stop making things up.

his obsessive pursuit of a runaway prostitute,

A prostitute that he loved, never spoke of in any way but with kindness and he gave up searching after 2 months. Hardly a long lasting “obsessive.”

and Major Smith’s profile aligning with him point for point. Each of these is evidence—documented, sourced, and historically attested.

More inventions. You address none of the points but just keep repeating the same old untruths.

Thompson was never in an asylum - he never passed off polished farthings, mentioned polished farthings, was suspected of passing off polished farthings.

Your Smith profile point has crumbled. Add the fact that the guy was found and guess what…it wasn’t Thompson

You can choose to dismiss that evidence as insufficient, but it is misleading to say there is “none.” Evidence comes in many forms: writings, testimonies, behaviors, timelines, professional records, and police descriptions. A jury weighs such evidence to reach a conclusion; they don’t throw it out because it isn’t a direct eyewitness account of the crime itself.

If you want to argue that the evidence doesn’t convince you, that’s fair. But to claim there is “no evidence whatsoever” is inaccurate. The record is full of it.

There is no evidence. Most of it you’ve made up.

When will you actually confront the points.

For example. I’ve now asked you two or three times to tell me why you think that there is a connection between Thompson and Rupert Street - I can’t help getting the feeling that you are embarrassed to admit what it is.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Herlock,

You say “not once does he use the word prostitute.” That’s exactly the kind of shallow literalism that betrays how little you know about the man you defend so zealously. Just because you can’t find the word in black and white doesn’t mean the thing itself isn’t there. Thompson didn’t need to write the word “prostitute” when he painted them in venomous strokes—diseased bodies, fetid wombs, contagion, harlots. To pretend that his entire body of work isn’t saturated with contempt for prostitutes is to blind yourself to the evidence staring you in the face.

Take his piece under the pseudonym Tancred in Merry England (1891). He imagines London as a diseased battlefield where, in his own words, “the girls [are] harlots in the mother’s womb.” He frames the East End as a spiritual plague that must be purged. He speaks of “diagnosing” the city’s disease, of hearing the lashes and seeing men “dabbled with their own oozing life.” He ends with a crusader’s vision of children being better thrown from bridges than growing up among prostitutes. That’s not metaphorical hand-wringing. That is blade-imagery, war-imagery, the language of extermination—his life’s manifesto.

Or look at his unpublished play Napoleon Judges. Here, through the emperor’s voice, he writes: “Aye the harlot’s mercy he shall have! … The sword sometimes spares, the musket sometimes misses; the harlot never! Fair Destruction!” That is how Thompson thought of prostitutes: as unerring agents of ruin, worse than bullets. Again, you don’t need him to spell out the word “prostitute” when every line drips with it.

The truth is that you’re defending a sanitized, hagiographic version of Thompson written by the Meynells and repeated in encyclopedia entries, not the man as he actually was. The real Thompson wrote obsessively of harlots, of knives, of purging, of judgment. He described prostitutes not as human beings but as verminous ulcers to be cut out.

And this raises the question: why this zeal to protect him? Why such eagerness to strip his words of their plain meaning? I’ll be blunt—your stance risks coming across as misogynistic. To hand-wave away Thompson’s obsessional hatred of prostitutes is, intentionally or not, to belittle the lived reality of women who were actually mutilated in Whitechapel. In time, people will look back and ask: why did some men go to such lengths to defend him, even at the cost of tearing down the police, dismissing evidence, and ignoring the plain meaning of his own words?

If you want to debate probability models or challenge interpretations, fine—we can spar on the facts. But don’t insult everyone’s intelligence by claiming Thompson never showed hatred for prostitutes. It’s in his work, over and over again, and it defines him. That’s the record, and no amount of rhetorical hair-splitting changes it.

WORDS ARE NOT VIOLENCE.

Show me one example of Thompson being actually, physically violent.

[Herlock Sholmes]

If you want to debate probability models or challenge interpretations, fine—we can spar on the facts. But don’t insult everyone’s intelligence by claiming Thompson never showed hatred for prostitutes. It’s in his work, over and over again, and it defines him. That’s the record, and no amount of rhetorical hair-splitting changes it.

Absolutely staggering. Your whole theory insults the intelligence of everyone.

You keep trying to con everyone in to believing that words equate to actual physical violence. They don’t. Poems aren’t violence. Novels aren’t violence. Essays aren’t violence.

You call Thompson an arsonist and pyromaniac when he, 1) Spilt some charcoal embers in a piece of childhood misbehaviour, 2) He accidentally knocked over an oil lamp, hardly surprising for a drug addict who had once ‘seen’ Chatterton’s ghost in Covent Garden! 3) He absent-mindedly left a still lit pipe in his coat pocket (I’ve done it, am I an arsonist?). And for that you label him a proven arsonist. Don’t get on your moral high horse when you are quite prepared to stoop to this kind of thing.

I’ve shown that 2 of your 4 ‘criteria’ in regard to Smith are categorically not ‘points.’ They are both obvious non-matches.

Ive asked you 2 or 3 times why Rupert Street is relevant to Thompson but you appear reluctant to answer. Why?

You claim what is 100% untrue, that Thompson was living within 100 yards of the murder sites. You haven’t provide one single piece of evidence, not one. All that you have is that Thompson might have stayed at Providence Row at some unknown point in time. And that’s certainly a no more than might have. Stop blathering and prove what you claim as a fact. PROVE that he ever lived within 100 yard of any murder site. You won’t, because there is no evidence. And yet you also falsely claim this as a fact.

[Abby Normal]

smiths suspect was puckeridge as jerry d has shown.

[Richard Patterson]

smiths suspect was puckeridge as jerry d has shown.

Reply to Abby Normal

Abby, you’ve thrown “Puckeridge” at this thread like it’s a silver bullet, but let’s slow down. If Smith’s suspect really was Puckeridge, we’ve got a serious problem: the math doesn’t work.

Smith set out five rare, converging traits—ex-medical student, asylum history, connection with prostitutes, tricking women with polished farthings, and ties to Rupert Street/Haymarket. Puckeridge only ticks three boxes, and even those are shaky. He never had the prostitute association, and there is no evidence whatsoever for the coin-fraud trick. On top of that, he was given an alibi that the City police themselves accepted. So unless you’re saying Smith was both wrong about the traits and chasing a man already eliminated, Puckeridge cannot be the Rupert Street suspect Smith described.

Thompson, on the other hand, matches all five traits cleanly and independently. He had six years of medical training, a documented nervous breakdown with institutional care, a prostitute lover who fled to Whitechapel in mid-1888, direct evidence of coin-related trickery in Walsh’s biography, and he lived right on top of the Haymarket/Rupert Street nexus. You can dismiss one trait here or there if you want, but you can’t hand-wave away the convergence. That’s why the probability calculations explode into the quadrillions: it’s statistically impossible for someone else to line up on all five.

So when you say “Smith’s suspect was Puckeridge,” what you’re really doing is trying to collapse the investigation’s credibility just to avoid acknowledging Thompson. If Smith’s description is meaningless, then the entire Rupert Street surveillance was meaningless. But it wasn’t—Smith was a Commissioner, present at Mitre Square, and his words carry weight. To deride him is to erase the case itself.

You don’t have to like the conclusion, but you can’t keep pretending that a partial fit with an accepted alibi somehow “beats” a full match with no such escape hatch. That’s not serious analysis—that’s obstruction.

If you want to defend Puckeridge, then by all means: show us where he meets all five traits, not just three. Until then, Thompson stands alone as the Rupert Street suspect.

[The Rookie Detective]

WORDS ARE NOT VIOLENCE.

Show me one example of Thompson being actually, physically violent.

A good point Herlock.


A dog without a bite, is just noise.

Like a thunderstorm.

A child's fear of the harmless thunder, yet oblivious to the destructive nature of the lightning.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Thompson, on the other hand, matches all five traits cleanly and independently. He had six years of medical training, a documented nervous breakdown with institutional care, a prostitute lover who fled to Whitechapel in mid-1888, direct evidence of coin-related trickery in Walsh’s biography, and he lived right on top of the Haymarket/Rupert Street nexus. You can dismiss one trait here or there if you want, but you can’t hand-wave away the convergence. That’s why the probability calculations explode into the quadrillions: it’s statistically impossible for someone else to line up on all five.
.

This collection contains 2 absolute, provable falsehoods. Deliberate falsehood’s intended to trick anyone that hasn’t read the Walsh biography.

Francis Thompson was never accused of passing off polished farthings. The words “polished” or “farthing” don’t appear. He wasn’t accused of “passing off” any other type of coin either; polished or otherwise. Zero. Didn’t happen.

The only story that we have is of Thompson purported finding 2 sovereigns in the street. That’s it.

So what Richard has done is - Major Smith’s suspect had been passing off polished farthings - Thompson had allegedly once found two sovereigns in the street - TICK THAT ‘MATCHES’ A more blatant example of trickery is hard to imagine. Then, because he knows that I’ve pulled him up on this, in his post he alters “passing off polished farthings” (which is what Smith actually said) to the more vague “coin related trickery.”

So, the coin point fails. Not one single poster on here will be fooled by this.

…….

The Smith’s suspect was sometime in an “asylum.”

Francis Thompson was never in an asylum in his entire life. I challenged Richard to name this “asylum” but he can’t and won’t because it doesn’t exist. Sometime in October of 1888 Wilfrid Meynell persuaded Thompson to go into hospital because a doctor had said that he was in a state of near collapse.

So Richard - Smith’s suspect had been”asylum”, Thompson “hospital” - tick.

No one on here can now be fooled by this trickery.

2 out of 4 categorical non-matches.

….

Then we have a new one. The Haymarket/Rupert Street nexus. He’s just making stuff up.

Francis Thompson never had any connection to Rupert Street.

Richard - Smith mentions Rupert Street - Thompson lived somewhere in the remote vicinity - tick.

….

Blatant trickery.

Francis Thompson ticks 1 box out of 4.

The suspect was even found….with polished farthings!

[Richard Patterson]

This collection contains 2 absolute, provable falsehoods. Deliberate falsehood’s intended to trick anyone that hasn’t read the Walsh biography.

Francis Thompson was never accused of passing off polished farthings. The words “polished” or “farthing” don’t appear. He wasn’t accused of “passing off” any other type of coin either; polished or otherwise. Zero. Didn’t happen.

The only story that we have is of Thompson purported finding 2 sovereigns in the street. That’s it.

So what Richard has done is - Major Smith’s suspect had been passing off polished farthings - Thompson had allegedly once found two sovereigns in the street - TICK THAT ‘MATCHES’ A more blatant example of trickery is hard to imagine. Then, because he knows that I’ve pulled him up on this, in his post he alters “passing off polished farthings” (which is what Smith actually said) to the more vague “coin related trickery.”

So, the coin point fails. Not one single poster on here will be fooled by this.

…….

The Smith’s suspect was sometime in an “asylum.”

Francis Thompson was never in an asylum in his entire life. I challenged Richard to name this “asylum” but he can’t and won’t because it doesn’t exist. Sometime in October of 1888 Wilfrid Meynell persuaded Thompson to go into hospital because a doctor had said that he was in a state of near collapse.

So Richard - Smith’s suspect had been”asylum”, Thompson “hospital” - tick.

No one on here can now be fooled by this trickery.

2 out of 4 categorical non-matches.

….

Then we have a new one. The Haymarket/Rupert Street nexus. He’s just making stuff up.

Francis Thompson never had any connection to Rupert Street.

Richard - Smith mentions Rupert Street - Thompson lived somewhere in the remote vicinity - tick.

….

Blatant trickery.

Francis Thompson ticks 1 box out of 4.

The suspect was even found….with polished farthings!

Herlock,

I’ll be blunt. You have a habit of rephrasing what I’ve actually written into something easier for you to knock down. That isn’t honest debate, it’s distortion. Let me clear the record on three of your claims:

1. The coin issue.

I’ve never written that Thompson was literally “found with polished farthings.” What I’ve consistently said is that Major Henry Smith records his Rupert Street suspect as being associated with that coin trick, and that Thompson’s own biography (Walsh, Strange Harp, Strange Symphony) contains a separate coin anecdote — finding two sovereigns in the street, initially mistaking one for a halfpenny. The point is not that the two stories are identical in wording, but that Thompson’s life is threaded with unusual coin lore, which converges with Smith’s detail. To present my words as if I had said “Smith’s polished farthings = Thompson’s sovereigns” is simply misquoting me.

2. The “asylum” point.

Again, you rewrite what I’ve said. Victorian terminology was not neat: “asylum,” “priory,” “hospital,” and “institutional care” were overlapping in use. Thompson’s uncle stated Francis suffered a nervous breakdown before leaving Manchester in 1882 and “never fully recovered.” We know he was absent from Owens’ summer session, then placed in the Priory at Storrington later that year. Whether you stamp “asylum” or “priory” on the door, it still fits the biographical pattern Smith noted. To say “he was never in an asylum” is a word game, not a rebuttal.

3. Rupert Street / Haymarket.

You say “no connection.” The record says otherwise. Thompson gave Charing Cross as his postal address, lodged with the Meynells off the Haymarket, and Panton Street is a two-minute walk from Rupert Street itself. When Smith describes his suspect as connected to Rupert Street, that geographical overlap matters. Pretending I’ve invented this “nexus” is another example of you altering my words.

You’re free to disagree with me on the significance of these convergences. But misquoting my phrases (“coin trickery” into “farthings in hand,” “asylum” into “never in asylum,” “Rupert nexus” into “making it up”) crosses the line from fair debate into rewriting.

Stick to what I actually write, not to caricatures of it.

Richard