The Jack the Ripper Mystery is Finally Solved — Scientifically

[Richard Patterson]

Gotta sell those books, innit.

"Author of

"Jack the Ripper, The Works of Francis Thompson"

http://www.francisjthompson.com/"

It's not too dissimilar to Christer and the Lechmere saga. Get a suspect, make up your mind that he's the one, proceed to hammer the square peg into the round hole and argue the point until you're blue in the face. Defend your position as though you're defending your last Rolo. Accept no alternative theories or explanations and spend your day fighting your corner in all fifty squillion threads pertaining to your suspect. Call it science. Rinse and repeat.

It couldn't possibly have been anyone else. It was definitely Francis Thompson, all investigators, professional and amateur, are all wrong, and have been wrong since 1888. If only they'd have read the man's poetry.

Mike,

That’s a clever quip, but it sidesteps the real issue. If the only objection is “you wrote a book,” then every author who has ever advanced a suspect — whether it’s Lechmere, Druitt, Bury, Kosminski, or anyone else — could be dismissed on the same grounds. That isn’t argument, it’s avoidance.

What matters is not whether I have a book, but whether the evidence stacks up. In Thompson’s case it does, and in ways that cannot be brushed off:

• Major Henry Smith’s five-point description of his Rupert Street suspect aligns with Thompson uniquely (ex-medical student, asylum history, prostitute connection, coin motif, Haymarket residence).
• Mathematical probability shows that the odds of another random Londoner fitting all those traits are vanishingly small — effectively nil.
• Documented biography places Thompson in Whitechapel at the time, with a runaway prostitute lover, carrying a surgeon’s scalpel, steeped in violent writings that he himself called his “poetic diary.”
• Timeline: the murders cease when Thompson is hospitalized.

That is not “hammering a square peg.” That is rare traits converging to a statistical certainty.

You can accuse me of zeal, but the truth is, when all the rhetoric is stripped away, no one else has yet produced another individual who matches Smith’s description with Thompson’s precision. If there is one, name him. If not, then the case deserves more than sarcasm.

[Mike J. G.]

A wee bit harsh i should think Mike , I think Richard has presented his case for Thompson as JTR extremely well . Ive read all his detailed post ,and his research into Thompson in all the keys areas that one needs to show ''Evidence'' for is compelling . Much more than say your average Druitt , Maybrick , Lechmere fan ,who have shown little or nothing that compares to Thompson . Does it prove he was the ripper ,No, but a hell of a lot better suspect than those mentioned ,who should by now have been eliminated many moons ago .

Richard doesn't seem to mind talking down to others on here, Fishy, especially when talking about "science" and questioning whether others are capable of understanding such things.

As interesting as Thompson is as a suspect, calling any of this science and questioning whether people who don't agree can understand science is rightfully subject to honest criticism. Harsh would be me simply attacking Richard, but I'm merely attacking his arguments and outlining a reason for why he may be pushing said argument rather forcefully.

Thompson is a far better suspect, IMO, than the names you listed, but far from being scientifically proven to be the Whitechapel murderer, contrary to what we're being lectured here. Then again, maybe I'm just not nearly intelligent enough to fully grasp Richard's proof.

[FISHY1118]

Gotta sell those books, innit.

"Author of

"Jack the Ripper, The Works of Francis Thompson"

http://www.francisjthompson.com/"

It's not too dissimilar to Christer and the Lechmere saga. Get a suspect, make up your mind that he's the one, proceed to hammer the square peg into the round hole and argue the point until you're blue in the face. Defend your position as though you're defending your last Rolo. Accept no alternative theories or explanations and spend your day fighting your corner in all fifty squillion threads pertaining to your suspect. Call it science. Rinse and repeat.

It couldn't possibly have been anyone else. It was definitely Francis Thompson, all investigators, professional and amateur, are all wrong, and have been wrong since 1888. If only they'd have read the man's poetry.

A wee bit harsh i should think Mike , I think Richard has presented his case for Thompson as JTR extremely well . Ive read all his detailed post ,and his research into Thompson in all the keys areas that one needs to show ''Evidence'' for is compelling . Much more than say your average Druitt , Maybrick , Lechmere fan ,who have shown little or nothing that compares to Thompson . Does it prove he was the ripper ,No, but a hell of a lot better suspect than those mentioned ,who should by now have been eliminated many moons ago .

[Mike J. G.]

Gotta sell those books, innit.

"Author of

"Jack the Ripper, The Works of Francis Thompson"

http://www.francisjthompson.com/"

It's not too dissimilar to Christer and the Lechmere saga. Get a suspect, make up your mind that he's the one, proceed to hammer the square peg into the round hole and argue the point until you're blue in the face. Defend your position as though you're defending your last Rolo. Accept no alternative theories or explanations and spend your day fighting your corner in all fifty squillion threads pertaining to your suspect. Call it science. Rinse and repeat.

It couldn't possibly have been anyone else. It was definitely Francis Thompson, all investigators, professional and amateur, are all wrong, and have been wrong since 1888. If only they'd have read the man's poetry.

[FISHY1118]

Fiver, you’ve revealed more about yourself than about the case.

You’ve been a Casebook member since 2019, you wear the badge of “Assistant Commissioner,” and your posts show the same pattern: you don’t want the mystery solved. You need the case to stay unsolved, because that preserves your role as a gatekeeper. The thrill for you isn’t in evidence, it’s in endless debate — in being seen as the man patrolling the boundaries of possibility. If the case is solved, the kudos you earn by dismissing others evaporates.

That’s why you consistently degrade the work of investigators like Major Henry Smith rather than grapple with the convergence of evidence. That’s why you “pathologize” anyone who dares name Thompson. And that’s why your replies are filled not with meaningful contributions but with evasions.

Now to the factual record you brush aside:

1. “Smith never claimed those traits were of JTR.”
   False. Smith describes his prime suspect in From Constable to Commissioner (1910): an ex-medical student, asylum patient, constant with prostitutes, bilking them with polished farthings, and in Rupert Street. He explicitly writes: “I have no doubt we had him, but he produced an alibi.” He is not listing random trivia; he is explaining why this man was considered the Ripper.
2. “This does not match Thompson.”
   False again. Thompson studied medicine for six years at Owens College, dissected hundreds of cadavers (his sister Mary testified to the repeated fees for cadavers). He suffered a breakdown in 1882, his uncle testified to it, and he was sent to Storrington Priory. That is asylum history. He lived with a prostitute for over a year and scoured Whitechapel for her when she fled in June 1888. He literally carried a dissecting scalpel as he wandered the streets.
3. “No example of Thompson giving polished farthings.”
   You know full well this is Smith’s phrase for the kind of trick played on prostitutes by certain men. In Thompson’s case, John Walsh records the coin story in his biography (Strange Harp, Strange Symphony), and Everard Meynell repeats the anecdote in Poems. To pretend this is wholly absent is to deliberately ignore sources.
4. “Rupert Street was just Smith’s guess.”
   No. Smith’s force trailed his suspect in that very district — the Haymarket. Thompson lived yards away, in Panton Street, during this exact period. That is not a “guess,” it is geographic convergence.
5. “Smith said the suspect proved an alibi.”
   Yes, he wrote that. But “proved” in Victorian police memoirs often meant a patron vouched for him — not a courtroom-tested fact. If that alibi had been beyond doubt, Smith would never have bothered to immortalize the man in his memoirs. The persistence of the description shows how strongly the suspect fit.

And here’s what you continually ignore:

• Thompson’s poetry (Nightmare of the Witch-Babies, Finis Coronat Opus) contains imagery of knife, womb, disembowelling, and confessions that parallel the murders with disturbing precision.
• His timing: the murders begin after his prostitute leaves him, and they cease the very month he is hospitalized for exhaustion.
• His psychology: laudanum addict, pyromaniac, suicidal, with violent contempt for prostitutes (“putrid ulcerations of love, venting foul and purulent discharge”).
• His geography: documented at Providence Row refuge, yards from Whitechapel, on the very night Nichols was murdered.
• His training: six years in anatomy and pathology under Dr. Julius Dreschfeld, pupil of Virchow, giving him the exact technique later mistaken by Bond as “unskilled.”

You ignore all of this because admitting it would collapse the myth you’re invested in.

Fiver, the truth is simple: the statistical probability of any other man in London 1888 matching all five of Smith’s Rupert Street traits is about 1 in 20 quadrillion. Thompson matches them all. Others match one or two. None match the full set.

So the real question is this: do you love evidence, or do you love the mystery? Because if you loved the evidence, you’d see it converges in only one direction.

WOW ..... Brings back memories of the 'JFK' Thead. An astute observation i might add.



''Fiver, you’ve revealed more about yourself than about the case.

''You’ve been a Casebook member since 2019, you wear the badge of “Assistant Commissioner,” and your posts show the same pattern: you don’t want the mystery solved. You need the case to stay unsolved, because that preserves your role as a gatekeeper. The thrill for you isn’t in evidence, it’s in endless debate — in being seen as the man patrolling the boundaries of possibility. If the case is solved, the kudos you earn by dismissing others evaporates.''

[The Rookie Detective]

At just over 5ft 11" and with a slight frame, it is perhaps interesting to see how Thompson fits into any of the alleged Ripper descriptions given by so called "witnesses."

He may have been Pipeman.

But he would have also been around 4 inches taller than the fence in the garden of Hanbury Street that stood at around 5ft 7"

He may have fantasised about the obliteration of prostitutes through his verse; albeit through subjective interpretation, but did he have the physical strength and build to have the confidence to overpower the likes of Chapman?

His poor physical health would be of concern for his candidacy for the Ripper.

Interestingly, the likes of Sickert also had a fantastical mind and expressed his dark side through his macabre paintings.

In that respect, there's a comparison to be drawn between Thompson and Sickert.

They both enjoyed the fantasy of it all.


But fantasising about carving up a prostitute and channelling that inner rage through words and paint, compared with having the guile and mindset to actually carry out said fantasy, would be an entirely different kettle of fish.


The question is; what kind of man was the Ripper?

[Filby]

Filby, I appreciate you pressing the “sexual component” question, because it lets us look straight at what Thompson himself put on paper.

In Nightmare of the Witch-Babies we meet the “lusty knight” — a figure who doesn’t woo but rends, who rides not toward love but toward desecration. He is conjured in the poem as the scourge of a degenerate world, a knight whose passion is cutting, whose lust is mutilation. It isn’t romantic fantasy. It’s sexualised violence reframed as cleansing — the same twisted impulse we see in the Ripper murders, where the body of a prostitute becomes the text upon which rage and obsession are carved.

Now place that alongside what Thompson published under the pseudonym “Francis Tancred” in Catholics in Darkest England. Here he writes as a crusader, explicitly borrowing the name of a medieval knight of Jerusalem, and describes London’s streets as a kind of fallen Holy Land, black even in daylight, filled with “girls harlots in the mother’s womb.” He casts himself as one who “unveils secret meanings,” who “diagnoses the disease” of the city, and then — chillingly — declares that “the Assassin has left us a weapon which but needs a little practice to adapt it to the necessity of the day.”

This is not the language of a gentle poet. This is Thompson self-fashioning as the very “lusty knight” of his verse — a crusader-assassin, licensed in his own mind to cleanse London of corruption. The sexual motive is there, but refracted through a religious and moral lens: prostitutes are not women to him, they are “ulcers,” “blasphemies,” “harlots in the womb.” Cutting them open was, in his warped psyche, both a lust and a purification ritual.

And remember, when the West India Docks went up in flames on the very night of Nichols’ murder, Thompson was sleeping rough at a Salvation Army shelter nearby. Contemporary voices worried that the Army’s militant revivalism might inspire a deranged imitator to see killing as crusade. Thompson all but confesses to see killing as crusade. Thompson all but confesses to that role in his Tancred essay. When he tells readers that “the Assassin has left us a weapon which but needs a little practice to adapt it to the necessity of the day,” he is not writing as a detached social critic. He is writing as a man who already carries a surgeon’s scalpel in his pocket, who has lived among the very “harlots in the womb” he describes, and who has framed himself as both poet and knight, lusting not for love but for mutilation and purification.

So the “lusty knight” is not an ambiguous metaphor. It is Thompson’s alter ego. The poems, the essays, the biographical facts — they align. He saw himself as a crusader in London’s “darkest England,” wielding the blade of the Assassin in a moral war against prostitutes. When we recognise that, the supposed gap between literature and life collapses. His verse is his confession; his “lusty knight” was not imagined, but embodied in Whitechapel’s streets.

Richard,

I do appreciate further explanations supporting supporting the work. And respect the work you put into it - obviously more than I have done. I'm easily persuaded as long as it makes reasonable sense and if facts don't contradict.

Filby.

[Lewis C]

Yes, I do recall a peculiar gait being mentioned. I just don't recall where. Wasn't it suggested that Henry Wentworth BellSmith had a peculiar gait? I seem to recall that a peculiar gait and strange eyes were on Wickerman's list of Ripper attributes. Perhaps it may have been the Bethnal Green Botherer.

IIRC, in the recent book about Hyam Hyams, the author refers to a witness or witnesses that said a suspect had a peculiar gait and said that Hyams had or may have had one.

[The Rookie Detective]

There are currently no fewer than 8 threads....

8 threads....

Yes...8 threads discussing Francis Thompson.


You wait ages for a Thompson thread, and 8 turn up altogether.


The Bus analogy of Ripperology right there.

[Lewis C]

Lewis,

Here is the link to the thread in question. My post is based on the research from Chris and I in no way, imply my research in this.

"Puckeridge" - Casebook: Jack the Ripper Forums (Post #13 and #14 by Chris)

Thanks Jerry, I'll check that out.

[Richard Patterson]

Smith never claimed that those were the traits of JTR. He said they were the traits of a man he suspected was JTR.

Lets look at Smith's actual statements.

1. "He had been a medical student". Again, this is an attribute of Smith's suspect, but Smith also said "I visited every butcher's shop in the city." Clearly, Smith did not believe the Ripper must have had medical training.

2. "He had been in a lunatic asylum". This was not Smith saying the Ripper must have been in an asylum, merely that his suspect had been in one. This does not match what is known of Thompson.

3. "He spent all his time with women of loose character". This does not match what is known of Thompson.

4. "Whom he bilked by giving them polished farthings instead of sovereigns". There is no example of Thompson doing this.

5. "I thought he was likely to be in Rupert Street, Haymarket." This is Smith's guess as to where his suspect was. Smith also said "Did he live close to the scene of the action? or did he, after committing a murder, make his way to lighting speed to some retreat in the suburbs?" Smith's words show he did not believe that the Ripper must have lived on Rupert Street, that was just the location of a specific suspect.

If Smith's suspect was Thompson, then Smith's reasons for suspecting him were mainly based on false information. In the end, Smith said "He proved an alibi without the shadow of doubt."

Fiver, you’ve revealed more about yourself than about the case.

You’ve been a Casebook member since 2019, you wear the badge of “Assistant Commissioner,” and your posts show the same pattern: you don’t want the mystery solved. You need the case to stay unsolved, because that preserves your role as a gatekeeper. The thrill for you isn’t in evidence, it’s in endless debate — in being seen as the man patrolling the boundaries of possibility. If the case is solved, the kudos you earn by dismissing others evaporates.

That’s why you consistently degrade the work of investigators like Major Henry Smith rather than grapple with the convergence of evidence. That’s why you “pathologize” anyone who dares name Thompson. And that’s why your replies are filled not with meaningful contributions but with evasions.

Now to the factual record you brush aside:

1. “Smith never claimed those traits were of JTR.”
   False. Smith describes his prime suspect in From Constable to Commissioner (1910): an ex-medical student, asylum patient, constant with prostitutes, bilking them with polished farthings, and in Rupert Street. He explicitly writes: “I have no doubt we had him, but he produced an alibi.” He is not listing random trivia; he is explaining why this man was considered the Ripper.
2. “This does not match Thompson.”
   False again. Thompson studied medicine for six years at Owens College, dissected hundreds of cadavers (his sister Mary testified to the repeated fees for cadavers). He suffered a breakdown in 1882, his uncle testified to it, and he was sent to Storrington Priory. That is asylum history. He lived with a prostitute for over a year and scoured Whitechapel for her when she fled in June 1888. He literally carried a dissecting scalpel as he wandered the streets.
3. “No example of Thompson giving polished farthings.”
   You know full well this is Smith’s phrase for the kind of trick played on prostitutes by certain men. In Thompson’s case, John Walsh records the coin story in his biography (Strange Harp, Strange Symphony), and Everard Meynell repeats the anecdote in Poems. To pretend this is wholly absent is to deliberately ignore sources.
4. “Rupert Street was just Smith’s guess.”
   No. Smith’s force trailed his suspect in that very district — the Haymarket. Thompson lived yards away, in Panton Street, during this exact period. That is not a “guess,” it is geographic convergence.
5. “Smith said the suspect proved an alibi.”
   Yes, he wrote that. But “proved” in Victorian police memoirs often meant a patron vouched for him — not a courtroom-tested fact. If that alibi had been beyond doubt, Smith would never have bothered to immortalize the man in his memoirs. The persistence of the description shows how strongly the suspect fit.

And here’s what you continually ignore:

• Thompson’s poetry (Nightmare of the Witch-Babies, Finis Coronat Opus) contains imagery of knife, womb, disembowelling, and confessions that parallel the murders with disturbing precision.
• His timing: the murders begin after his prostitute leaves him, and they cease the very month he is hospitalized for exhaustion.
• His psychology: laudanum addict, pyromaniac, suicidal, with violent contempt for prostitutes (“putrid ulcerations of love, venting foul and purulent discharge”).
• His geography: documented at Providence Row refuge, yards from Whitechapel, on the very night Nichols was murdered.
• His training: six years in anatomy and pathology under Dr. Julius Dreschfeld, pupil of Virchow, giving him the exact technique later mistaken by Bond as “unskilled.”

You ignore all of this because admitting it would collapse the myth you’re invested in.

Fiver, the truth is simple: the statistical probability of any other man in London 1888 matching all five of Smith’s Rupert Street traits is about 1 in 20 quadrillion. Thompson matches them all. Others match one or two. None match the full set.

So the real question is this: do you love evidence, or do you love the mystery? Because if you loved the evidence, you’d see it converges in only one direction.

[Fiver]

According to this article, Thompson was indeed in Storrington in 1889.

Nice find. Smith's suspect, however, had been in an asylum some time before the Ripper killings.

[Fiver]

What is the historical factual known evidence that JtR was an ex-medical student with asylum history, who associated with prostitutes, operated coin fraud and lived in Rupert St? Creating and putting these five traits together is just Smith's opinion, and only his.

Yes, the traits are central to your case that Thompson was JtR, but please give us the factual evidence that Smith was correct to claim these traits were those of JtR.

Smith never claimed that those were the traits of JTR. He said they were the traits of a man he suspected was JTR.

Lets look at Smith's actual statements.

1. "He had been a medical student". Again, this is an attribute of Smith's suspect, but Smith also said "I visited every butcher's shop in the city." Clearly, Smith did not believe the Ripper must have had medical training.

2. "He had been in a lunatic asylum". This was not Smith saying the Ripper must have been in an asylum, merely that his suspect had been in one. This does not match what is known of Thompson.

3. "He spent all his time with women of loose character". This does not match what is known of Thompson.

4. "Whom he bilked by giving them polished farthings instead of sovereigns". There is no example of Thompson doing this.

5. "I thought he was likely to be in Rupert Street, Haymarket." This is Smith's guess as to where his suspect was. Smith also said "Did he live close to the scene of the action? or did he, after committing a murder, make his way to lighting speed to some retreat in the suburbs?" Smith's words show he did not believe that the Ripper must have lived on Rupert Street, that was just the location of a specific suspect.

If Smith's suspect was Thompson, then Smith's reasons for suspecting him were mainly based on false information. In the end, Smith said "He proved an alibi without the shadow of doubt."

[Doctored Whatsit]

Hello Doctored Whatsit,

Just my two cents, but I don't know why students of the Whitechapel Murders are always so eager to give Sir Henry the bum's rush. It has become the standard, expected opinion, often voiced. But Smith strikes me as a likeable and lively fellow--far more down-to-earth than Sir Robert Anderson and more candid.

The above comment makes it sound as if Smith falsely put himself in Mitre Square within minutes when he was elsewhere, but what does he actually write in his memoirs?

He admits he was sleeping at a station near Southwark Bridge and was alerted to the murder by telegraph and speaking tube:

"The night of Saturday, September 29, found me tossing about in my bed at Cloak Lane Station, close to the river and adjoining Southwark Bridge. There was a railway goods depot in front, and a furrier's premises behind my rooms ; the lane was causewayed, heavy vans were going constantly in and out, and the sickening smell from the furrier's skins was always present. You could not open the windows, and to sleep was an impossibility. Suddenly the bell at my head rang violently.

What is it?" I asked, putting my ear to the tube.

" Another murder, sir, this time in the City." Jumping up, I was dressed and in the street in a couple of minutes. A hansom-to me a detestable vehicle-was at the door, and into it I jumped, as time was of the utmost consequence. This invention of the devil claims to be safe. It is neither safe nor pleasant. In winter you are frozen ; in summer you are broiled. When the glass is let down your hat is generally smashed, your fingers caught between the doors, or half your front teeth loosened. Licensed to carry two, it did not take me long to discover that a 15-stone Superintendent inside with me, and three detectives hanging on behind, added neither to its comfort nor to its safety.

Although we rolled like a "seventy-four" in a gale, we got to our destination - Mitre Square - without an upset, where I found a small group of my men standing round the mutilated remains of a woman."

There is nothing in the contemporary record to show that Smith's account is inaccurate. Indeed, it was reported that he was quickly alerted to the murder in Mitre Square and soon arrived at the scene with McWilliam and others (Echo, 1 October):




Smith then claims he roamed the district or districts for what must have been upwards of four hours, not returning to the station until 6 a.m. I know of nothing that disproves this.

And I'm not convinced that Smith's reference to the sink in Dorset Street is a garbled memory. It may be or it may not be. It's not really clear what he means--whether it was something discovered on the night of the double event but unrelated to the Miller's Court murder---or whether Smith would later be among the unnamed officers who were in Miller's Court along with Anderson, Arnold, etc. in November. I would be somewhat surprised if he hadn't made an appearance.

I admit that his writing is oddly unclear on this point, but there is not enough surviving documentation to for me to be confident one way or t'other.

Anyway, I try to avoid the reductionist attitude: 'if we don't know about it, then it didn't happen.'

Regards.

Hi RJ,

I was musing about Smith's claim to have been within 5 minutes of JtR being inaccurate. The murder was said to have been discivered at 1. 44 am, by which time JtR had already vanished. The news got back to the station at 1.55 am, when people started to get notified. Smith would have done well to get to Mitre Square by say 2.15 am, then, I think he went to the mortuary, and then after briefing, presumably wandered off scouring the streets. Even if he did find a sink with blood in it, and even if that was relevant to JtR, he wasn't likely to have been within an hour of him. But it really isn't important.

[Herlock Sholmes]

It’s never been doubted RD.