Originally posted by Abby Normal
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No, I have found nothing in any newspaper or case file that mention him in connection to the case. Although there are suggestions that he may have been questioned and was a suspect, these are made by biographers after his death in 1907. My book does detail these. It also details that his editor, the one who rescued him from the streets on about November 15th 1888, and placed in hospital and then the monastery, held an intense fascination of the Whitchapel murder investigation. The editor, Wilfrid Meynell, followed the press reports and updated his colleagues on the latest news and constructed his own theories to who might be the murderer.
Francis Thompson wrote about killing prostitutes before the murders. Here is an extract from my book that discusses this.
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In his 1988 book, Francis Thompson, Strange Harp Strange Symphony, Chapter 3, The Gutters of Humanity, John Walsh wrote:
‘The most painful of these poems was The Nightmare of the Witch Babies, never revived in a fair copy. But in the last of the notebook drafts, he added a reminder, rare for him, of the date of its completion: “Finished before October 1886” – that is within a year of his departure from home.'
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You can also read a detailed overview of the theory in the following article which appeared in the Ripperologist. It discusses his poem.
http://www.francisjthompson.com/arti...t-october.html
This is another extract from my book about his poem. The fact that it was written before the murders is very interesting indeed.
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There is probably no poem that came out of the 19th century to contend with its unbound revelry for carnage and bloodshed. It provides an awful glimpse into Thompson’s mind and shows that finally the years of solitude, the riot faced by his family, the seeming wickedness of his stepmother, the cruel loss of his mother, all had unhinged him. With the ‘Witch Babies’ his full depravity and abandonment of morality is revealed. It shows his rage against women who abandon and betray him. The poem begins with the protagonist; a ‘lusty knight’ on a hunt, but he hunts in London, after dark and his game is women.
A lusty knight,
Ha! Ha!
On a swart [black] steed,
Ho! Ho!
Rode upon the land
Where the silence feels alone,
Rode upon the Land
Rode upon the Strand
Of the Dead Men's Groan,
Where the Evil goes to and fro
Two witch babies, Ho! Ho! Ho!
A rotten mist,
Ha! Ha!
Like a dead man's flesh,
Ho! Ho!
Was abhorrent in the air,
Ha! Ha!
On a swart [black] steed,
Ho! Ho!
Rode upon the land
Where the silence feels alone,
Rode upon the Land
Rode upon the Strand
Of the Dead Men's Groan,
Where the Evil goes to and fro
Two witch babies, Ho! Ho! Ho!
A rotten mist,
Ha! Ha!
Like a dead man's flesh,
Ho! Ho!
Was abhorrent in the air,
As he rides through a desolate landscape of the metropolis, the knight catches sight of a suitable prey.
‘What is it sees he?
Ha! Ha!
There in the frightfulness?
Ho! Ho!
There he saw a maiden
Fairest fair:
Sad were her dusk eyes,
Long was her hair;
Sad were her dreaming eyes,
Misty her hair,
And strange was her garments’
Ha! Ha!
There in the frightfulness?
Ho! Ho!
There he saw a maiden
Fairest fair:
Sad were her dusk eyes,
Long was her hair;
Sad were her dreaming eyes,
Misty her hair,
And strange was her garments’
Soon he begins to stalk her.
‘Swiftly he followed her
Ha! Ha!
Eagerly he followed her.
Ho! Ho!;’
Ha! Ha!
Eagerly he followed her.
Ho! Ho!;’
But then she disappoints him. He discovers she is unclean.
‘Lo, she corrupted!
Ho! Ho!
Ho! Ho!
The knight captures her and decides to kill her. He slices her open and drags out the contents of her stomach. He guts her like an animal in order to find and kill any unborn offspring she may have. The poem ends with a macabre twist and his rapture at not finding not just a single foetus but two.
‘And its paunch was rent
Like a brasten [bursting] drum;
And the blubbered fat
From its belly doth come
It was a stream ran bloodily under the wall.
O Stream, you cannot run too red!
Under the wall.
With a sickening ooze –
Hell made it so!
Two witch-babies,
ho! ho! ho!’
Like a brasten [bursting] drum;
And the blubbered fat
From its belly doth come
It was a stream ran bloodily under the wall.
O Stream, you cannot run too red!
Under the wall.
With a sickening ooze –
Hell made it so!
Two witch-babies,
ho! ho! ho!’
The entire poem, contains phrases like ‘the bloody-rusted stone’, ‘blood, blood, blood’, ‘No one life there, Ha! Ha!’ and ‘Red bubbles oozed and stood, wet like blood’, has a plot which reads like the description of a slaughterhouse. Anyone who know poets always ever rely solely on imagination does not know Thompson. To him, his poetry were records of real events in his life, clothed in rhyme and symbolism. In a letter, years later, to his editor, this is how Thompson explained that his poetry was always more fact than fiction, ‘The poems were, in fact, a kind of poetic diary; or rather a poetic substitute for letters.’{Poems.p436]
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Thank you for your interest,
Richard.
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