Tweet
Commisioner Fisherman. For 17 years I have suspected Francis Thompson for the Jack the Ripper murders and for most of that time I have written about him expressly to have him seen as a serious contender for that name. Until now, pretty much nothing has swayed me from this conviction. I don’t know about you but such a thing changes one’s life. I admit that your knowledge of certain sides of this case is overwhelming. Regards my suspect. I think it will be seen as either ironic or obvious that in the very year that I publish a full account of my theory through my horror novel, You give us Lechmere. You say that pulling apart my embarrassing argument is easier than doing so to a Lego toy. (You have honestly never tried to pull apart a kids Lego toy. I would say that playing with your argument is akin to trying to pull apart my small son’s Lego toy for him when he has practically welded to thin sheets together. I almost chipped a tooth I did!) In this little game of chess I must confess after all these years it would be curious for me seeing the world completely free of my suspect. Part of me wants to lose. Though to accept your conclusion would be immature. I’m sorry but I’m going to put away the chessboard. Put away childish things. I’m offering you a draw. Game theorists would describe this as a zero sum game in which neither win. (Well actually you would because many hundreds if not thousands more people now prefer your suspect over mine.) As I see it, the foundation of your augment contains two main premises leading to your conclusion.
{Argument A}
Premise A: A Lechmere was found with the body of a Ripper Victim.
Premise B: Lechmere was dishonest.
Conclusion C: Lachmere is Jack the Ripper.
(If I may? I’d like to rearrange this piece of logic.
Premise A: Lachmere was a dishonest man.
Premise B: Jack the Ripper was Lachmere.
Conclusion C: Jack the Ripper was dishonest.)
If your argument wins then we must then conclude that a witness was shown to have lied to police in the Whitechapel murder investigation.
{Argument B}
Premise A: Lechmere was a witness in the case.
Premise B: Lechmere was a dishonest man.
Conclusion: C: A witnesses was dishonest.
The slippery slope of this Premise B, in this argument, is that witnesses in the Whitechapel investigation were dishonest. No fit person would rely upon dishonest witnesses. By rendering the testimonies of witnesses in the case unreliable. You are left with absolutely nothing to support your own conclusion. With everything you have laid out around your suspect’s quality of honesty, you question the legitimacy of all Ripper witness. One cannot be certain of all the events surrounding the murder of Mary Nichols. Things such as whether your suspect did or did not see a police officer, the brightness of the street, and the amount of blood before it was washed away by a stable hand at 4.30 that morning, are like most things about the case, probably forever lost in the past. I accept that you have got some good professional authority backing your claim of a suspect being a semi literate carman. (You know I don’t have Sherlock homes on my side, just the man who created him. Between 1892 and 1905 Conan Doyle investigated the Ripper murders. In 1905 he was in the East End investigating the case. In 1892 visited the Scotland Yard's Black Museum, Which displayed a photo of the mutilated Mary Kelly and the original Dear Boss letter. In 1894, Doyle told an American journalist, his views of the Ripper as,
'a man accustomed to the use of a pen. Having determined that much, we can not avoid the inference that there must be somewhere letters which this man has written over his own name, or documents or accounts that could readily be traced to him. Oddly enough, the police did not, as far as I know, think of that and so they failed to accomplish anything.'
This is of course not surprising for a murder case named after the Dear Boss letters. A case made most famous by a murderer who is supposed to have written letters to the press and to people involved in seeking his capture. Letters which have caused phrases like my ‘knife is so nice and sharp’, ‘I ate the other half’ and ‘funny little games’ inexorably part of Ripper folklore.)
I have little backing on the doings of my suspect on August 31st 1888 and confess things happened that night that I may never know. In comparison what you have done from your premises is remarkable. At first glance your solution is so mundane so obvious. Perhaps commendably, you speak of your suspect and these murders in a very strict sense. Focusing on, a quarter square mile only. Then there is me with my theory which, at first glance, depicts a suspect that seems so alien so unbelievable, that most people are surprised I think he should taken seriously. (Stranger too that you a commissioner of the Casebook realm, would condescend to respectfully respond to lowly Cadet, particularly one who comes forward armed chiefly with a premise illustrated by a horror novel that the Ripper was anything but a lowly carman, and more than diabolical evil, but the devil himself.)
The thread, ‘Lets get Lechmere off the hook!’ might have only had 1 reply. So far it has had 670! You have fielded every ball thrown at you superbly, but with respect, here’s some easy reasoning. Premise A, of your first argument is really important to your theory and everything; including Cross’s route to work and addresses of his near relatives revolves around it. It's the opportunity in my 4 Pillars of Truth (the others being ability, motive and weapon) No wonder you refute my suspect’s opportunity. (Even though I have told you that my homeless suspect probably walked nightly through Whitechapel and was not expected to furnish an alibi or be missed when he was out walking the streets at all hours of the night.)
My argument, unlike yours, looks for the good in people instead. It does not defy the laws of common sense by causing us to doubt the very witness to the case we are researching. My argument allows for people to make mistakes. People like Cross, Mizen, Paul or my suspect. My Premise argues that my suspect, who was a writer and man of letters told the truth.
{Argument C}
Premise A: Thompson was an honest man.
Premise B: Thompson wrote that he was Jack the Ripper.
Conclusion: C: Thompson was Jack the Ripper.
Premise A of this argument is backed up by my suspect. There is no evidence to say he, a devoutly practicing Catholic, lied when he wrote to his Publisher whom I believe was his sole co-conspirator, that much of what he wrote was not fiction. A great deal of my suspects poetry and prose contain thinly disguised references to murders. Both his published and unpublished works illustrate, especially when the facts of the Jack the Ripper murders are considered, not only the details of these very crimes, but his motive. Some critics will say that we cannot place any credence on my suspect’s verse as indication of any actual happening or admittance of guilt and that it is all merely fiction and art. My suspect would not agree. In January 1890, writing from a priory, my suspect explained his verse to his publisher. My suspect told of his fears that his writings would display more than mere artistic license,
'I am painfully conscious that they display me, in every respect, at my morally weakest...often verse written as I write it is nothing less than a confessional, a confessional far more intimate than the sacerdotal one. That touches only your sins….if I wrote further in poetry, I should write down my own fame.’
What concerned my suspect so much was talk with his publisher of the eventual release of his only recently completed piece of fiction. The story, whose writer admits to murdering a woman with a knife, is about a killer whose crimes rocks a metropolis and propels the criminal into immortal fame. It was a story so surreal it could be only by matched by the Ripper crimes which were in itself a story of a murders in such a small area made world famous, or a life as fantastic as my suspect. One who in the ending days of 1888, by a strange twist of fate, was transformed from a failed doctor, living homeless, into a famed horror writer. (They say I’m a doctor now ha ha) This was a far different lifestyle from the one he lived during the Ripper murders while he was still homeless wrapped from the cold night air in a Limehouse homeless shelter. (Not ironically, as the Ripper wrote in his letter, 'That joke about Leather Apron gave me real fits,' my suspect’s publisher had his son write in a biography upon my suspect’s sleeping habits and society while homeless, and in particular my suspect’s association with that item of clothing and the types of people he chose to associate with,
‘The murderer to whom he makes several allusions...In a common lodging-house he met and had talk with the man who was supposed by the group about the fire to be a murderer uncaught. And when it was not in a common lodging-house. It was a Shelter or Refuge that he would lie in one of the oblong boxes without lids, containing a mattress and a leather apron or coverlet, that are the fashion, he says, in all Refuges.’)
Premise B is supported by what he wrote. (This right now, by a ridiculous possibility, might, for the world to see, be some of the actual murder confession of yours truly, Jack the Ripper.) My suspect’s story, “The End Crowning Work”, was written during the autumn of 1889, which was on the first anniversary of the Ripper murders. (I believe it was the only way my suspect knew how to confess to the murders.) My suspect wrote it from the top floor of a secluded isolated country monastery. A building surrounded by high walls and guarded by watchdogs patrolling the grounds. Dogs that attacked my suspect when he tried step outside. In my suspect’s story he hints that his tale of the murder of women with lust of fame is true. My suspect wrote,
‘If confession indeed give ease, I who am deprived of all other confession, may yet find some appeasement in confessing to this paper. With the scourge of inexorable recollection, I will tear open my scars. With the cuts of pitiless analysis, I make the post-mortem examine of my crime.’
My suspect then wrote in his story how he killed her, (I you need me to I can detail the resemblance between the murder of the woman in my suspect’s story and that of Mary Kelly)
‘At that moment, with a deadly voice the accomplice-hour gave forth its sinister command. I swear I struck not the first blow. Some violence seized my hand and drove the poniard down. Whereat she cried; and I, frenzied, dreading detection, dreading above all her awakening, - I struck again and again.’
My suspect writes in his story that is also not a story, how he feels afterwards,
‘I know you and myself. I have what I have. I work for the present. Now, relief unspeakable! that vindictive sleuth-hound of my sin has at last lagged from the trail; I have had a year of respite,’.. What crime can be interred so cunningly, but it will toss in its grave, and tumble the sleeked earth above it?... Guilt, indeed, makes babies of the wisest. Nothing happened; absolutely nothing.... I do not repent, it is a thing for inconsequent weaklings...’
Let’s think about all the available evidence we are ever likely to get while comparing your argument with mine argument.
Yours:
Premise A: Lechmere was found with the body of a Ripper Victim.
Premise B: Lechmere was dishonest.
Conclusion C: Lechmere is Jack the Ripper.
Mine:
Premise A: Thompson was honest.
Premise B: Thompson hinted that he was Jack the Ripper.
Conclusion: C: Thompson was Jack the Ripper.
Yours Respectfully,
Cadet Patterson.
{Argument A}
Premise A: A Lechmere was found with the body of a Ripper Victim.
Premise B: Lechmere was dishonest.
Conclusion C: Lachmere is Jack the Ripper.
(If I may? I’d like to rearrange this piece of logic.
Premise A: Lachmere was a dishonest man.
Premise B: Jack the Ripper was Lachmere.
Conclusion C: Jack the Ripper was dishonest.)
If your argument wins then we must then conclude that a witness was shown to have lied to police in the Whitechapel murder investigation.
{Argument B}
Premise A: Lechmere was a witness in the case.
Premise B: Lechmere was a dishonest man.
Conclusion: C: A witnesses was dishonest.
The slippery slope of this Premise B, in this argument, is that witnesses in the Whitechapel investigation were dishonest. No fit person would rely upon dishonest witnesses. By rendering the testimonies of witnesses in the case unreliable. You are left with absolutely nothing to support your own conclusion. With everything you have laid out around your suspect’s quality of honesty, you question the legitimacy of all Ripper witness. One cannot be certain of all the events surrounding the murder of Mary Nichols. Things such as whether your suspect did or did not see a police officer, the brightness of the street, and the amount of blood before it was washed away by a stable hand at 4.30 that morning, are like most things about the case, probably forever lost in the past. I accept that you have got some good professional authority backing your claim of a suspect being a semi literate carman. (You know I don’t have Sherlock homes on my side, just the man who created him. Between 1892 and 1905 Conan Doyle investigated the Ripper murders. In 1905 he was in the East End investigating the case. In 1892 visited the Scotland Yard's Black Museum, Which displayed a photo of the mutilated Mary Kelly and the original Dear Boss letter. In 1894, Doyle told an American journalist, his views of the Ripper as,
'a man accustomed to the use of a pen. Having determined that much, we can not avoid the inference that there must be somewhere letters which this man has written over his own name, or documents or accounts that could readily be traced to him. Oddly enough, the police did not, as far as I know, think of that and so they failed to accomplish anything.'
This is of course not surprising for a murder case named after the Dear Boss letters. A case made most famous by a murderer who is supposed to have written letters to the press and to people involved in seeking his capture. Letters which have caused phrases like my ‘knife is so nice and sharp’, ‘I ate the other half’ and ‘funny little games’ inexorably part of Ripper folklore.)
I have little backing on the doings of my suspect on August 31st 1888 and confess things happened that night that I may never know. In comparison what you have done from your premises is remarkable. At first glance your solution is so mundane so obvious. Perhaps commendably, you speak of your suspect and these murders in a very strict sense. Focusing on, a quarter square mile only. Then there is me with my theory which, at first glance, depicts a suspect that seems so alien so unbelievable, that most people are surprised I think he should taken seriously. (Stranger too that you a commissioner of the Casebook realm, would condescend to respectfully respond to lowly Cadet, particularly one who comes forward armed chiefly with a premise illustrated by a horror novel that the Ripper was anything but a lowly carman, and more than diabolical evil, but the devil himself.)
The thread, ‘Lets get Lechmere off the hook!’ might have only had 1 reply. So far it has had 670! You have fielded every ball thrown at you superbly, but with respect, here’s some easy reasoning. Premise A, of your first argument is really important to your theory and everything; including Cross’s route to work and addresses of his near relatives revolves around it. It's the opportunity in my 4 Pillars of Truth (the others being ability, motive and weapon) No wonder you refute my suspect’s opportunity. (Even though I have told you that my homeless suspect probably walked nightly through Whitechapel and was not expected to furnish an alibi or be missed when he was out walking the streets at all hours of the night.)
My argument, unlike yours, looks for the good in people instead. It does not defy the laws of common sense by causing us to doubt the very witness to the case we are researching. My argument allows for people to make mistakes. People like Cross, Mizen, Paul or my suspect. My Premise argues that my suspect, who was a writer and man of letters told the truth.
{Argument C}
Premise A: Thompson was an honest man.
Premise B: Thompson wrote that he was Jack the Ripper.
Conclusion: C: Thompson was Jack the Ripper.
Premise A of this argument is backed up by my suspect. There is no evidence to say he, a devoutly practicing Catholic, lied when he wrote to his Publisher whom I believe was his sole co-conspirator, that much of what he wrote was not fiction. A great deal of my suspects poetry and prose contain thinly disguised references to murders. Both his published and unpublished works illustrate, especially when the facts of the Jack the Ripper murders are considered, not only the details of these very crimes, but his motive. Some critics will say that we cannot place any credence on my suspect’s verse as indication of any actual happening or admittance of guilt and that it is all merely fiction and art. My suspect would not agree. In January 1890, writing from a priory, my suspect explained his verse to his publisher. My suspect told of his fears that his writings would display more than mere artistic license,
'I am painfully conscious that they display me, in every respect, at my morally weakest...often verse written as I write it is nothing less than a confessional, a confessional far more intimate than the sacerdotal one. That touches only your sins….if I wrote further in poetry, I should write down my own fame.’
What concerned my suspect so much was talk with his publisher of the eventual release of his only recently completed piece of fiction. The story, whose writer admits to murdering a woman with a knife, is about a killer whose crimes rocks a metropolis and propels the criminal into immortal fame. It was a story so surreal it could be only by matched by the Ripper crimes which were in itself a story of a murders in such a small area made world famous, or a life as fantastic as my suspect. One who in the ending days of 1888, by a strange twist of fate, was transformed from a failed doctor, living homeless, into a famed horror writer. (They say I’m a doctor now ha ha) This was a far different lifestyle from the one he lived during the Ripper murders while he was still homeless wrapped from the cold night air in a Limehouse homeless shelter. (Not ironically, as the Ripper wrote in his letter, 'That joke about Leather Apron gave me real fits,' my suspect’s publisher had his son write in a biography upon my suspect’s sleeping habits and society while homeless, and in particular my suspect’s association with that item of clothing and the types of people he chose to associate with,
‘The murderer to whom he makes several allusions...In a common lodging-house he met and had talk with the man who was supposed by the group about the fire to be a murderer uncaught. And when it was not in a common lodging-house. It was a Shelter or Refuge that he would lie in one of the oblong boxes without lids, containing a mattress and a leather apron or coverlet, that are the fashion, he says, in all Refuges.’)
Premise B is supported by what he wrote. (This right now, by a ridiculous possibility, might, for the world to see, be some of the actual murder confession of yours truly, Jack the Ripper.) My suspect’s story, “The End Crowning Work”, was written during the autumn of 1889, which was on the first anniversary of the Ripper murders. (I believe it was the only way my suspect knew how to confess to the murders.) My suspect wrote it from the top floor of a secluded isolated country monastery. A building surrounded by high walls and guarded by watchdogs patrolling the grounds. Dogs that attacked my suspect when he tried step outside. In my suspect’s story he hints that his tale of the murder of women with lust of fame is true. My suspect wrote,
‘If confession indeed give ease, I who am deprived of all other confession, may yet find some appeasement in confessing to this paper. With the scourge of inexorable recollection, I will tear open my scars. With the cuts of pitiless analysis, I make the post-mortem examine of my crime.’
My suspect then wrote in his story how he killed her, (I you need me to I can detail the resemblance between the murder of the woman in my suspect’s story and that of Mary Kelly)
‘At that moment, with a deadly voice the accomplice-hour gave forth its sinister command. I swear I struck not the first blow. Some violence seized my hand and drove the poniard down. Whereat she cried; and I, frenzied, dreading detection, dreading above all her awakening, - I struck again and again.’
My suspect writes in his story that is also not a story, how he feels afterwards,
‘I know you and myself. I have what I have. I work for the present. Now, relief unspeakable! that vindictive sleuth-hound of my sin has at last lagged from the trail; I have had a year of respite,’.. What crime can be interred so cunningly, but it will toss in its grave, and tumble the sleeked earth above it?... Guilt, indeed, makes babies of the wisest. Nothing happened; absolutely nothing.... I do not repent, it is a thing for inconsequent weaklings...’
Let’s think about all the available evidence we are ever likely to get while comparing your argument with mine argument.
Yours:
Premise A: Lechmere was found with the body of a Ripper Victim.
Premise B: Lechmere was dishonest.
Conclusion C: Lechmere is Jack the Ripper.
Mine:
Premise A: Thompson was honest.
Premise B: Thompson hinted that he was Jack the Ripper.
Conclusion: C: Thompson was Jack the Ripper.
Yours Respectfully,
Cadet Patterson.
Comment