The Jack the Ripper Mystery is Finally Solved — Scientifically

[Richard Patterson]

Thank you for your response, Richard, but your five traits are at best interesting possibilities but not probabilities, and they relate to Smith's suspect, and not to JtR. You keep telling us that Thompson matches some traits of a suspect, but there is no evidence of JtR possessing these specific traits. You are creating a person of interest by detailing certain traits, but that is all.

You have made a detailed case to suggest that Thompson is a very interesting character, but claiming to have proved the case based on some selected traits of a suspect named by an officer who wasn't directly involved in the investigation until canonical murder number four is stretching credibility to breaking point.

Applying maths to possibilities does not prove anything.

Doctored,

Thanks for engaging. A few clarifications on method and scope:

1) What the “five traits” are doing.

I’m not claiming those traits are known properties of the killer. I’m using them exactly as Major Henry Smith used them: as the descriptive fingerprint of the man he regarded as a serious suspect in the Haymarket/Rupert St orbit. That makes the case testable. We can ask: among London men of the time, how many would coincidentally match all five? If the answer is effectively “none,” then anyone who does match them deserves close scrutiny.

2) “Possibilities” vs probability.

This isn’t maths sprinkled on vibes. It’s a standard conditional question: given a population base, and conservative frequencies for each trait, what is the chance that some other man matches the full set? Run the multiplication with hostile inputs if you like; the expected number of five-for-five matches stays ≪1. If you think my trait frequencies are off, name the numbers you’ll accept and I’ll rerun them. That’s how we keep this empirical.

3) “But those are Smith’s traits, not JtR’s.”

Correct—and that’s precisely my point. We don’t get the killer’s CV; we get what senior officers recorded about the suspect(s) they took seriously. If Smith’s five-point profile is garbage, then show why. If it isn’t garbage, then a man who uniquely fits it—while also bringing dissection training, instruments, macabre verse, and time/place proximity—can’t be dismissed as merely “interesting.”

4) “Smith came in late (Eddowes/C4).”

True, he was City, and his direct involvement peaks from the Mitre Square murder onward. That doesn’t nullify his suspect description; it contextualises it. We can weight it accordingly—but we shouldn’t pretend it carries no probative value because it wasn’t penned by Abberline.

5) Claim scope.

I don’t say “case closed.” I say the coincidence argument collapses: the joint occurrence of those independent traits is vanishingly unlikely in another random man. From there, we add independent strands (training, kit, writings, geography) and ask whether the posterior gets stronger or weaker.

[Mike J. G.]

Mike, you’ve repeated the mantra of “burden of proof” without actually looking at what has been laid on the table. Let’s be exact:

1. Major Smith’s Rupert Street suspect is described with five unusual traits: ex-medical student, prior asylum committal, prostitute connections, coin trick, and Haymarket residence. Francis Thompson matches all five, exactly. That’s not “opinion” — that’s verifiable biography against published police testimony.
2. The probability spine: when you multiply the documented rarity of each trait, the odds of any other man in London coincidentally matching the full set is astronomically low (1 in tens of trillions to quadrillions, depending on conservative estimates). That isn’t “scientific fact” shouted in a pub — it’s mathematics anyone can re-run.
3. Archival additions: Thompson’s dissection training under Dreschfeld, his possession of surgical instruments, and his violent misogynistic verse add further weight. These are primary-sourced, not fantasies.

So when you say “nothing credible,” what you really mean is you’ve chosen not to engage with the credible. You are, of course, free to reject the interpretation. But dismissing documented records and probability analysis as “lunatic rambling” is not argument — it’s avoidance.

Richard, it seems to me that what you should have called this thread is "Francis Thompson Possibly Scientifically Proven to be Smith's Suspect", but even that would be a pretty monumental stretch of the imagination, considering you've done no such thing.

You're basically telling the world that you've scientifically proven that Francis Thompson was Jack the Ripper solely because you personally reckon he fits Smith's suspect despite the troublesome fact that other posters have demonstrated to you that this belief appears to be questionable.

What you have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt is:

A) Prove that Smith actually knew who the killer was, and that his suspect was indeed the actual killer.

B) Prove that Francis Thompson was the suspect in question and was in fact the killer of at least the canonical five.

But you've not done any such thing. You're not even remotely close to having done any of that.

No amount of desperate word and number salad can even begin to demonstrate that you've accomplished points A and B.

As has been pointed out, you won't even attempt to address these problems, because you're so blinded by your own opinions. To actually have the gall to go on the internet and tell the world that you've scientifically proven that Francis Thompson was the Ripper based on the waffle that you've presented as evidence on here is quite a stunt.

[Doctored Whatsit]

Doctored,

Thanks for engaging. A few clarifications on method and scope:

1) What the “five traits” are doing.

I’m not claiming those traits are known properties of the killer. I’m using them exactly as Major Henry Smith used them: as the descriptive fingerprint of the man he regarded as a serious suspect in the Haymarket/Rupert St orbit. That makes the case testable. We can ask: among London men of the time, how many would coincidentally match all five? If the answer is effectively “none,” then anyone who does match them deserves close scrutiny.

2) “Possibilities” vs probability.

This isn’t maths sprinkled on vibes. It’s a standard conditional question: given a population base, and conservative frequencies for each trait, what is the chance that some other man matches the full set? Run the multiplication with hostile inputs if you like; the expected number of five-for-five matches stays ≪1. If you think my trait frequencies are off, name the numbers you’ll accept and I’ll rerun them. That’s how we keep this empirical.

3) “But those are Smith’s traits, not JtR’s.”

Correct—and that’s precisely my point. We don’t get the killer’s CV; we get what senior officers recorded about the suspect(s) they took seriously. If Smith’s five-point profile is garbage, then show why. If it isn’t garbage, then a man who uniquely fits it—while also bringing dissection training, instruments, macabre verse, and time/place proximity—can’t be dismissed as merely “interesting.”

4) “Smith came in late (Eddowes/C4).”

True, he was City, and his direct involvement peaks from the Mitre Square murder onward. That doesn’t nullify his suspect description; it contextualises it. We can weight it accordingly—but we shouldn’t pretend it carries no probative value because it wasn’t penned by Abberline.

5) Claim scope.

I don’t say “case closed.” I say the coincidence argument collapses: the joint occurrence of those independent traits is vanishingly unlikely in another random man. From there, we add independent strands (training, kit, writings, geography) and ask whether the posterior gets stronger or weaker.

I remain confused by your logic and mathematics.

1. Smith listed five traits that made him suspect one individual, but did not offer any evidence that these traits were specifically those which were shown to be possessed by JtR. Therefore you cannot argue that someone with these traits is probably JtR, only that he possessed certain traits which Smith found suspicious.

2. Because of 1, above, matching suspected traits is merely steering us towards the sort of person that Smith suspected, and no more than that.

3. Smith's five point profile has no relevance whatever to identifying JtR -

a) As I have said many times, ex-medical student being a trait, is just a possibility, as JtR could have been a fully qualified doctor or surgeon or slaughterer, for example. Indeed, killing coldly, efficiently and quickly, slitting the throat from behind to avoid getting blood on hands or clothes, would be routine for a slaughterer, but is not taught in medical school. So JtR being an ex-medical student is just one possibility out of several.

b) There is no evidence that JtR ever attended an asylum, so someone who attended an asylum at some time would just be a possible suspect, but no more so than someone who hadn't attended an asylum. It has therefore no grounds for suspicion and is of no mathematical value.

c) There is no evidence that JtR associated with prostitutes, other than to kill them. Therefore association with prostitutes is not a usable clue.

d) There is no evidence that JtR indulged in coin trickery, so therefore this is not a usable trait that steers us in any useful direction.

e) There is no evidence that JtR lived in Haymarket or thereabouts. So this is not a helpful concept.

4. I am not suggesting that Smith's views have no value just because he was not from the Met and was not involved in the earlier cases, although that has some relevance, I am saying that he talked about certain traits of a suspect, but did not establish any link between these traits and the Ripper.

5. When you are evaluating possibilities, you cannot make a watertight case no matter how many possibilities you collect. You can continue telling us about the remarkable similarity between Smith's observed traits and Thompson, but there is almost no evidence that the five traits are relevant to JtR - four have no evidence, and one is a mere possibility only, There is no valid argument that Thompson was JtR based on Smith's writing.

And as for Smiths's written record, I do not wish to denigrate his reliability totally, but we must recognise that he was not always accurate in his memoirs. I view his comments with caution. There is a handwritten note in the copy of his memoirs at Scotland Yard to the effect that "his veracity was not always to be trusted". This is the man who was never directly involved in the Ripper investigation until canonical murder number four, but announced in his memoirs that "There is no man living who knows as much of these murders as I do". A significant and surely inaccurate boast. He claimed to have been within five minutes of the Ripper, because of an alleged finding of blood in a street sink, but his own account of his movements never put him anywhere near the Ripper. Of course, we wonder how even a brilliant detective like Smith could have been sure that the blood was from JtR washing his hands and nobody else, and that he somehow knew that JtR was there just five minutes before. If there was a witness, he doesn't appear in the official records.

So, I have some reservations about Smith, and view him with caution, whilst not ignoring him, but his five stated traits cannot be claimed to lead us to JtR.

[Richard Patterson]

Richard, it seems to me that what you should have called this thread is "Francis Thompson Possibly Scientifically Proven to be Smith's Suspect", but even that would be a pretty monumental stretch of the imagination, considering you've done no such thing.

You're basically telling the world that you've scientifically proven that Francis Thompson was Jack the Ripper solely because you personally reckon he fits Smith's suspect despite the troublesome fact that other posters have demonstrated to you that this belief appears to be questionable.

What you have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt is:

A) Prove that Smith actually knew who the killer was, and that his suspect was indeed the actual killer.

B) Prove that Francis Thompson was the suspect in question and was in fact the killer of at least the canonical five.

But you've not done any such thing. You're not even remotely close to having done any of that.

No amount of desperate word and number salad can even begin to demonstrate that you've accomplished points A and B.

As has been pointed out, you won't even attempt to address these problems, because you're so blinded by your own opinions. To actually have the gall to go on the internet and tell the world that you've scientifically proven that Francis Thompson was the Ripper based on the waffle that you've presented as evidence on here is quite a stunt.

Mike,

You’re confusing two very different levels of claim and then holding me accountable for the wrong one. Let me explain carefully.

1. Smith’s suspect profile.

I have never claimed that Major Henry Smith had supernatural knowledge of the Ripper’s identity. What Smith left us is a description of a man he and others found suspicious: ex-medical student, prior asylum committal, consorting with prostitutes, involved in coin fraud, living around Rupert Street/Haymarket. That is what historians call a profile, a fingerprint in words. The correct historical move isn’t to demand Smith prove omniscient, but to ask: “Does anyone on record fit this unusual profile, and if so, how likely is that to be coincidence?”

2. Probability and why it matters.

The maths I use aren’t “number salad.” They are the simplest way to answer the question above. If each trait is rare in the London population, then the probability of another random man having all five together is astronomically low — trillions-to-quadrillions to one. That’s not courtroom proof, it’s probability collapsing coincidence. If you believe my frequency estimates are wrong, you can propose better ones and we can rerun the calculation. But you haven’t done that. Instead, you’ve just waved the whole structure away because it doesn’t fit your comfort zone.

3. Burden of proof.

You demand that I prove A) Smith’s suspect was the killer, and B) Thompson was that killer. But those are impossible standards for a 19th-century cold case. No historian can conjure “beyond reasonable doubt” evidence the way a modern court might. What we can do — and what I have done — is demonstrate a convergence of independent strands: Thompson uniquely fits the rare five-trait profile, he had advanced anatomical training, he carried surgical instruments, he wrote verse rehearsing the exact violence committed in Whitechapel, and his breakdown aligns with the timeline. That is cumulative case-building.

4. Why you find this difficult.

You keep branding it “waffle” or “stunt” because you are trying to process a high-order probability argument with a low-order demand for black-and-white proof. You want a smoking gun, a confession, a piece of physical evidence. That is courtroom thinking. Historical reasoning often operates in higher-order logic: weighing independent data points, testing them against probability, and drawing inferences from convergence. That requires the ability to hold conditional reasoning in mind — to see that the absence of a perfect chain of “proofs” doesn’t mean the evidence is meaningless.

So yes, in one sense you are right: I have not “proven beyond reasonable doubt” that Thompson was the Ripper. But in the real sense that matters — testing coincidences, measuring convergence, eliminating alternative candidates — the case stands. The problem isn’t that the knowledge isn’t there; the problem is that your framework for processing it isn’t built to handle higher-order probabilistic reasoning.

That’s why you dismiss it as “number salad.” Not because the numbers are wrong, but because you are not used to moving beyond binary thinking into cumulative probability. I don’t say that as an insult. I say it to clarify why we keep talking past each other.

[Richard Patterson]

I remain confused by your logic and mathematics.

1. Smith listed five traits that made him suspect one individual, but did not offer any evidence that these traits were specifically those which were shown to be possessed by JtR. Therefore you cannot argue that someone with these traits is probably JtR, only that he possessed certain traits which Smith found suspicious.

2. Because of 1, above, matching suspected traits is merely steering us towards the sort of person that Smith suspected, and no more than that.

3. Smith's five point profile has no relevance whatever to identifying JtR -

a) As I have said many times, ex-medical student being a trait, is just a possibility, as JtR could have been a fully qualified doctor or surgeon or slaughterer, for example. Indeed, killing coldly, efficiently and quickly, slitting the throat from behind to avoid getting blood on hands or clothes, would be routine for a slaughterer, but is not taught in medical school. So JtR being an ex-medical student is just one possibility out of several.

b) There is no evidence that JtR ever attended an asylum, so someone who attended an asylum at some time would just be a possible suspect, but no more so than someone who hadn't attended an asylum. It has therefore no grounds for suspicion and is of no mathematical value.

c) There is no evidence that JtR associated with prostitutes, other than to kill them. Therefore association with prostitutes is not a usable clue.

d) There is no evidence that JtR indulged in coin trickery, so therefore this is not a usable trait that steers us in any useful direction.

e) There is no evidence that JtR lived in Haymarket or thereabouts. So this is not a helpful concept.

4. I am not suggesting that Smith's views have no value just because he was not from the Met and was not involved in the earlier cases, although that has some relevance, I am saying that he talked about certain traits of a suspect, but did not establish any link between these traits and the Ripper.

5. When you are evaluating possibilities, you cannot make a watertight case no matter how many possibilities you collect. You can continue telling us about the remarkable similarity between Smith's observed traits and Thompson, but there is almost no evidence that the five traits are relevant to JtR - four have no evidence, and one is a mere possibility only, There is no valid argument that Thompson was JtR based on Smith's writing.

And as for Smiths's written record, I do not wish to denigrate his reliability totally, but we must recognise that he was not always accurate in his memoirs. I view his comments with caution. There is a handwritten note in the copy of his memoirs at Scotland Yard to the effect that "his veracity was not always to be trusted". This is the man who was never directly involved in the Ripper investigation until canonical murder number four, but announced in his memoirs that "There is no man living who knows as much of these murders as I do". A significant and surely inaccurate boast. He claimed to have been within five minutes of the Ripper, because of an alleged finding of blood in a street sink, but his own account of his movements never put him anywhere near the Ripper. Of course, we wonder how even a brilliant detective like Smith could have been sure that the blood was from JtR washing his hands and nobody else, and that he somehow knew that JtR was there just five minutes before. If there was a witness, he doesn't appear in the official records.

So, I have some reservations about Smith, and view him with caution, whilst not ignoring him, but his five stated traits cannot be claimed to lead us to JtR.

Doctored,

The heart of your confusion lies in treating Smith’s five traits as if they were supposed to be proven facts about the Ripper himself. They aren’t. They are descriptive features of a named suspect profile recorded by a senior officer. That distinction matters.

1. What Smith gave us

Smith never said “these five traits are universally true of the killer.” He said “the man I suspected had these traits.” That is testimony. Like any police record, its value is that it narrows the field. It creates a filter. The historical question then becomes: how many men alive in London matched this precise five-trait filter?

2. Why probability belongs here

You argue that because we cannot prove the Ripper was an ex-medical student, or coin trickster, or asylum inmate, these categories have “no mathematical value.” But that misunderstands the logic. The mathematics is not about proving the killer was those things. It is about testing the chance of anyone else coincidentally matching the entire suspect description. That is what makes it probabilistic rather than anecdotal.

Think of it this way: if a witness says “the man I saw was tall, red-haired, and missing two fingers,” we don’t discard those traits because not all killers are red-haired or maimed. We test whether any known person fits that cluster. Smith’s description works the same way.

3. Independence from “possibility talk”

Yes, the Ripper could have been a slaughterman. He could have been a doctor. But Smith didn’t describe him that way. He described him as an ex-medical student, asylum inmate, etc. The point isn’t to argue slaughtermen are impossible — it’s to show that Thompson uniquely matches the profile actually given by an officer. That is what raises him above the level of “just another possibility.”

4. On Smith’s reliability

You’re right that Smith’s memoirs should be read with caution. All memoirs should. But even if you halve their reliability, the key fact remains: Thompson matches all five identifiers, in the exact geographical nexus named. The odds of that happening by chance are vanishingly small. To dismiss that convergence because Smith occasionally boasted is to throw out the fingerprint with the ink.

5. Why the case doesn’t collapse

You say collecting “possibilities” can’t make a watertight case. True — but collecting independent, unlikely convergences does build a cumulative argument. Thompson’s medical training, instruments, violent verse, breakdown, prostitute connections, and residence converge on the same man who also matches Smith’s five traits. That isn’t mere possibility stacking — it’s probability compounding.

So your confusion dissolves when you stop asking: “Did Smith prove the Ripper had these traits?” and instead ask: “Who on record fits the suspect description Smith actually gave?” Once you frame it that way, the logic is straightforward: Thompson fits it uniquely, and the chance of another man doing so by coincidence is effectively nil.

That doesn’t mean we raise a gavel and say “case closed.” It means Thompson cannot be dismissed as “interesting but irrelevant.” He sits exactly where the filter places him.

[Mike J. G.]

Mike,

You’re confusing two very different levels of claim and then holding me accountable for the wrong one. Let me explain carefully.

1. Smith’s suspect profile.

I have never claimed that Major Henry Smith had supernatural knowledge of the Ripper’s identity. What Smith left us is a description of a man he and others found suspicious: ex-medical student, prior asylum committal, consorting with prostitutes, involved in coin fraud, living around Rupert Street/Haymarket. That is what historians call a profile, a fingerprint in words. The correct historical move isn’t to demand Smith prove omniscient, but to ask: “Does anyone on record fit this unusual profile, and if so, how likely is that to be coincidence?”

2. Probability and why it matters.

The maths I use aren’t “number salad.” They are the simplest way to answer the question above. If each trait is rare in the London population, then the probability of another random man having all five together is astronomically low — trillions-to-quadrillions to one. That’s not courtroom proof, it’s probability collapsing coincidence. If you believe my frequency estimates are wrong, you can propose better ones and we can rerun the calculation. But you haven’t done that. Instead, you’ve just waved the whole structure away because it doesn’t fit your comfort zone.

3. Burden of proof.

You demand that I prove A) Smith’s suspect was the killer, and B) Thompson was that killer. But those are impossible standards for a 19th-century cold case. No historian can conjure “beyond reasonable doubt” evidence the way a modern court might. What we can do — and what I have done — is demonstrate a convergence of independent strands: Thompson uniquely fits the rare five-trait profile, he had advanced anatomical training, he carried surgical instruments, he wrote verse rehearsing the exact violence committed in Whitechapel, and his breakdown aligns with the timeline. That is cumulative case-building.

4. Why you find this difficult.

You keep branding it “waffle” or “stunt” because you are trying to process a high-order probability argument with a low-order demand for black-and-white proof. You want a smoking gun, a confession, a piece of physical evidence. That is courtroom thinking. Historical reasoning often operates in higher-order logic: weighing independent data points, testing them against probability, and drawing inferences from convergence. That requires the ability to hold conditional reasoning in mind — to see that the absence of a perfect chain of “proofs” doesn’t mean the evidence is meaningless.

So yes, in one sense you are right: I have not “proven beyond reasonable doubt” that Thompson was the Ripper. But in the real sense that matters — testing coincidences, measuring convergence, eliminating alternative candidates — the case stands. The problem isn’t that the knowledge isn’t there; the problem is that your framework for processing it isn’t built to handle higher-order probabilistic reasoning.

That’s why you dismiss it as “number salad.” Not because the numbers are wrong, but because you are not used to moving beyond binary thinking into cumulative probability. I don’t say that as an insult. I say it to clarify why we keep talking past each other.

Richard, I'd like to take a moment, once again, to remind you of the title of your own thread.

If you now agree that you have not proven, scientifically or otherwise, that Francis Thompson was Jack the Ripper, then I'm good with that.

As I've mentioned before, I've no issues with your own personal beliefs, but once you start shouting from the rooftops that you've solved the case and everyone is ignorant to your science... That's a different story, because this obviously isn't science, and nor is it the solution to the mystery that it was presented as.

[Doctored Whatsit]

Richard, I'd like to take a moment, once again, to remind you of the title of your own thread.

If you now agree that you have not proven, scientifically or otherwise, that Francis Thompson was Jack the Ripper, then I'm good with that.

As I've mentioned before, I've no issues with your own personal beliefs, but once you start shouting from the rooftops that you've solved the case and everyone is ignorant to your science... That's a different story, because this obviously isn't science, and nor is it the solution to the mystery that it was presented as.

Hi MJG,

You and I are, I think, making the same basic argument, and getting very similar responses. There is no basis in logic or maths to examine and test any persons to match Smith's five traits, as they are not traits that can be shown to be linked to JtR. In fact, if I were to award marks out of twenty for each of the five traits as a potential guide to JtR, as there is no evidence whatever that four apply, and only a possibility that one might be correct, I would be awarding a score of say 5 out of a hundred, which isn't quite case closed!

[Doctored Whatsit]

Doctored,


So your confusion dissolves when you stop asking: “Did Smith prove the Ripper had these traits?” and instead ask: “Who on record fits the suspect description Smith actually gave?” Once you frame it that way, the logic is straightforward: Thompson fits it uniquely, and the chance of another man doing so by coincidence is effectively nil.

That doesn’t mean we raise a gavel and say “case closed.” It means Thompson cannot be dismissed as “interesting but irrelevant.” He sits exactly where the filter places him.

My confusion exists because you don't ask whether the Ripper had these traits. Pursuing Smith's declared five traits possessed by a suspect will lead us where? Only to someone that Smith might have suspected. So you are endeavouring to prove scientifically that Smith might have considered Thompson a valid suspect. Where does that take us in a search for the Ripper? You talk of cumulative evidence piling up, but it is only evidence that you say leads to a Smith suspect based on five traits.

If you are going to pursue Smith's five traits as relevant to identifying JtR, then you are going to have to prove that these were also five traits possessed by the Ripper. It has been shown that one trait might be relevant, although there are other strong possibilities, and there is no evidence whatever to support a link with any of the other four traits.

[Herlock Sholmes]

A Simple Challenge for Richard Patterson


As we all can see, Richard continues to avoid answering direct questions in favour of the repeat posting of the same, almost verbatim, points. Is it possible that we could stop the repetition for once and the time wasting and the attempts at misdirection and start actually confronting the evidence? After all, Richard has made some very definite points and claims (as opposed to suggesting possibles) and positive claims/points require evidence/proof and we can all agree that the onus for providing these lie with Richard. Remember Sagan: “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,” in the case of Richard’s theories all that we ask for is proper evidence and not just Richard’s opinions stated as if they are facts. I’ve responded in detail to every single point that Richard has made and I’ve done it using the existing evidence so it shouldn’t be too much to ask to expect the same curtesy from a published author promoting a theory? So, will Richard answer questions, a) by supplying actual evidence/proof/sources, b) will he resist the temptation to widen out criteria so far that by doing so absolutely anything can be made to mean anything, c) without just repeating points that he’s already made as if he’s reciting a manifesto, and d) without stating his own opinion as fact? Ok…


As the evidence only tells us that Francis Thompson saw the men queueing for the Providence Row Refuge and that he never mentions staying there and also that we have no mention ever of anywhere in the East End being mentioned in connection with him and that his view of the Refuge was mentioned in an article published in 1891 so that he could have seen the Refuge in 1885, 1886, 1887, 1888, 1889, 1890 or indeed (but less likely) 1891. We also know that his prostitute friend was a West End prostitute who lived in Chelsea giving Thompson no obvious reason for searching the Easy End…

1. Could you please provide actual proof that Francis Thompson stayed in the Providence Row Refuge and that he did so in 1888? (And before you try to use it as a ‘get out’ clause, no I’m not asking for the Reguge registers because I know that it no longer exists.)


As we know that we cannot equate works of fictional writing with actual events and we know that no one ever accused Thompson of physical violence and that there isn’t even any anecdotal evidence of him being violent…

2. Could you please provide us with any actual evidence that Francis Thompson was ever physically violent? (I would accept a one word answer on this)


As we know that many people would have owned and carried a knife at that time; and that we know that not a single person at the time or since have suggested a scalpel as the murder weapon; and we know from Thompson himself that he tended to use it for shaving when he was living rough..

3. Could you give us a cogent reason why the possession of a scalpel makes Thompson any more likely to have been the killer?


We only have three documented examples relating vaguely to ‘fire.’ Thompson swung a Thucible too vigorously as a child in church which caused smouldering charcoal to go on the floor which a housekeeper swatted out with a shovel. As a drug-addicted adult he knocked over a lamp in his room and not one person at the time spoke of any suggestion of it being in any way deliberately. And again, as a drug-addicted adult Thompson absent-mindedly put his pipe in his coat pocket when it hadn’t fully gone out. These three examples took place over an estimated 15 or 20 years..

4. Can you please explain to us why you feel it right to call Thompson an arsonist on the basis of these three insignificant incidents?


5. Could you provide us with a documented example of someone calling a normal hospital a lunatic asylum?


As we only have documented evidence of Thompson being in a hospital in mid-October of 1888 - and we know that Major Smith told Sir Charles Warren, on or around September 8th 1888, that his suspect had been in a lunatic asylum..

6. Could you provide us with actual evidence, not assumptions or maybes or “it’s not impossible that…etc, that Francis Thompson was ever confined in a ‘lunatic asylum’ or even a hospital before October of 1888?


7. Could you give and everyone else on here any logical, sensible reason why anyone should connect, a) a man who bilked prostitutes with polished farthings, and b) a man who found two sovereigns in the street. And please don’t use tricks like lumping in ‘finding sovereigns’ as a ‘coin trick.’ Can you give a specific, factual reason why any adult might connect the two?

We know that Major Henry Smith sent his two men to Rupert Street, Haymarket to find his suspect. We also know that you have tried to alter this to ‘the Rupert Street - Haymarket’ area to try and create a larger area. But Rupert Street was in the Haymarket area and Smith was clearly sending his men specifically to Rupert Street expecting them to find his man..

8. Could you give us a reason why Major Henry Smith would have wasted time sending two men to Rupert Street on the millions to one off-chance that Francis Thompson might have walked down that street?


9. When you talk about things being ‘a match’ could you explain to everyone why you feel that Francis Thompson, who never lived in Rupert Street or, as far as we know, never had any connection whatsoever to that street is a good ‘match, for Smith’s suspect, whilst a man who actually lived in Rupert Street at the time and had 4 weeks earlier been released from an actual lunatic asylum isn’t considered a better match?



So…we have nine very straight forward, easy to understand questions all requiring specific answers. Please don’t try obfuscating by disputing the validity of the questions themselves, please don’t try widening the criteria so that you can make anything mean anything and please don’t just repeat what you have said before like a script. Proper answers are required with supporting evidence….so no opinions dressed up as facts. (Remember…I have Meynell’s and Walsh’s biographies too)

[Richard Patterson]

My confusion exists because you don't ask whether the Ripper had these traits. Pursuing Smith's declared five traits possessed by a suspect will lead us where? Only to someone that Smith might have suspected. So you are endeavouring to prove scientifically that Smith might have considered Thompson a valid suspect. Where does that take us in a search for the Ripper? You talk of cumulative evidence piling up, but it is only evidence that you say leads to a Smith suspect based on five traits.

If you are going to pursue Smith's five traits as relevant to identifying JtR, then you are going to have to prove that these were also five traits possessed by the Ripper. It has been shown that one trait might be relevant, although there are other strong possibilities, and there is no evidence whatever to support a link with any of the other four traits.

Doctored,

I see where you’re getting tangled. You keep asking me to prove the Ripper himself had these five traits. That isn’t what I’m claiming — and it isn’t how historical suspect profiles work. Let me lay it out more clearly.

1. What Smith’s five traits are.

They’re not the “DNA markers of the killer.” They’re the written description of a man who, at the time, was taken seriously enough to be noted in memoirs and testimony. That makes them a suspect profile not a universal law.

2. Why the profile matters.

If nobody in the record matched all five, then the description would fade into irrelevance. But Thompson does match them, uniquely. That moves him out of the mass of “possible oddballs” and into a very narrow corridor defined by a contemporary police source.

3. Where this takes us.

You say this only proves “Smith might have suspected Thompson.” But that’s not trivial. In a case where hundreds of suspects have been thrown about, showing that one man aligns precisely with a senior officer’s recorded description is significant. And when that same man also brings independent evidence — advanced anatomical training, surgical instruments, violent verse, timeline collapse — the cumulative picture strengthens.

4. The confusion cleared.

You don’t need to accept that the Ripper must have had all five traits. You only need to accept that an officer recorded a profile, and Thompson alone fits it to the letter. That’s not proof beyond doubt, but it is a collapse of coincidence. From there, the rest of Thompson’s biography is not just “Smith’s suspect” — it’s the most consistent suspect narrative we have.

So the five traits aren’t meant to be the final key to the Ripper’s character. They’re the filter that lets us see why Thompson can’t be dismissed. The cumulative evidence doesn’t stop at Smith’s profile; it starts there.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Medical student - Thompson YES - Puckridge YES
Spent nearly all of his time with prostitutes - Thompson NO - Puckridge UNKNOWN BY US
Bilked prostitutes with polished farthings Thompson NO - Puckridge UNKNOWN BY US
Time in a lunatic asylum - Thompson NO - Puckridge YES
Connection to Rupert Street in the Haymarket - Thompson NO - Puckridge YES

Hands up anyone who considers this a match for Thompson.

Hands up anyone who considers this an absolute slam dunk for Oswald Puckridge.

Three of the 5 ‘traits’ match Puckridge exactly, perfectly…to the letter. The other two we don’t know about. So we can’t even call those two traits absolutely a ‘no.’ But we can give Thompson 4 ‘no’s.’

[Herlock Sholmes]

. What Smith left us is a description of a man he and others found suspicious

Note the insidious slipping in of a couple of words to change reality. In this case “..and others.” Who are these “..and others?” Smith mentions no “and others.”

[Herlock Sholmes]

Medical student - Thompson YES - Puckridge YES
Spent nearly all of his time with prostitutes - Thompson NO - Puckridge UNKNOWN BY US
Bilked prostitutes with polished farthings Thompson NO - Puckridge UNKNOWN BY US
Time in a lunatic asylum - Thompson NO - Puckridge YES
Connection to Rupert Street in the Haymarket - Thompson NO - Puckridge YES

Hands up anyone who considers this a match for Thompson.

Hands up anyone who considers this an absolute slam dunk for Oswald Puckridge.

Three of the 5 ‘traits’ match Puckridge exactly, perfectly…to the letter. The other two we don’t know about. So we can’t even call those two traits absolutely a ‘no.’ But we can give Thompson 4 ‘no’s.’

In my post I list the ‘traits’ with absolute factual accuracy. No alterations, no widening of the criteria just a absolutely unbiased assessment that no reasonable person could dispute.

Richard looks at these two and what is his conclusion?

and Thompson alone fits it to the letter

[Fiver]

[*]Major Smith’s Rupert Street suspect is described with five unusual traits: ex-medical student, prior asylum committal, prostitute connections, coin trick, and Haymarket residence. Francis Thompson matches all five, exactly. That’s not “opinion” — that’s verifiable biography against published police testimony.

You aren't using the facts. You are ignoring them.

Here are Smiths' actual words.

"After the second crime I sent word to Sir Charles Warren that I had discovered a man very likely to be the man wanted. He certainly had all the qualifications requisite. He had been a medical student ; he had been in a lunatic asylum ; he spent all his time with women of loose character, whom he bilked by giving them polished farthings instead of sovereigns, two of these farthings having been found in the pocket of the murdered woman. Sir Charles failed to find him. I thought he was likely to be in Rupert Street, Haymarket. I sent up two men, and there he was; but, polished farthings and all, he proved an alibi without the shadow of doubt."

* "He had been a medical student"
Matches Francis Thompson.
Matches what the police believed about Oswald Puckridge.

* "he had been in a lunatic asylum"
Does not match Francis Thompson.
Matches Oswald Puckridge.

* "he spent all his time with women of loose character", which you falsify as "prostitute connections".
Does not match Francis Thompson.
Might match Oswald Puckridge.

* "whom he bilked by giving them polished farthings instead of sovereigns", which you falsify as "coin trick".
Does not match Francis Thompson.
Might match Oswald Puckridge.

* "I thought he was likely to be in Rupert Street, Haymarket", which you falsify as "Haymarket residence".
Does not match Francis Thompson.
Matches Oswald Puckridge.

You are ignoring Thompson's verifiable biography and claiming Smith said things that Smith never said.

And you keep ignoring the sixth and most important trait of Smith's suspect "he proved an alibi without the shadow of doubt".

If you believe that Francis Thompson is the Ripper, then you should be doing everything in your power to prove that Smith's innocent suspect was not Francis Thompson. Instead, you are arguing for a match that proves Thompson is innocent.

[Fiver]

He retained scalpels and surgical kits while living rough.

So now you're imagining surgical kits?

There is no evidence that Thompson carried a scalpel while living rough.