The Jack the Ripper Mystery is Finally Solved — Scientifically

[Herlock Sholmes]

Fiver, you’ve built your objection on two moves that won’t hold: (i) treating neutral paraphrase as “falsification,” and (ii) using a memoir-line “alibi” as a conversation stopper while demanding hyper-literalism everywhere else. Let’s clean this up.

1) Paraphrase ≠ falsification (and why historians normalize language)

You call these “deliberate falsifications”:

• “confined for breakdown” vs. Smith’s “in a lunatic asylum.”
  Late-Victorian usage blurred asylum/hospital/priory for psychiatric confinement; police and memoirists used the terms loosely. “Confined for breakdown” is a neutral normalization of the same underlying fact pattern: psychiatric institutionalization. It preserves the evidential function of Smith’s trait (a man known to have been committed). That’s good practice, not deceit.
• “living rough among prostitutes” vs. “spent all his time with women of loose character.”
  “Loose character” is period euphemism for sex-trade milieu. Rendering it as “prostitute connections / living among prostitutes” is plain-English equivalence, not a switch. Again: we keep the probative meaning while avoiding Victorian rhetoric.
• “linked to coin trickery anecdotes” vs. “bilked…with polished farthings.”
  The polished-farthings line is a press-inflected anecdote that Smith repeats. Flagging it as “linked to coin trickery anecdotes” is the cautious, scholarly way to carry it forward. And importantly: the model works even if you drop this trait entirely. See §4.
• “resident in the Rupert Street/Haymarket nexus” vs. “likely to be in Rupert Street… there he was.”
  Smith reports presence located there. Thompson’s documented lodging in Panton Street puts him in the immediate orbit (a few minutes’ walk). “Nexus” is a fair term for geographic presence/proximity; no one claimed a signed lease on Rupert Street.

When we test profiles, we normalize and group equivalent forms (institutionalization, prostitute milieu, coin-bilking, Haymarket orbit). That’s how you avoid lexical hair-splitting from gutting signal.

2) The “alibi without the shadow of doubt” line isn’t the trump card you think

If you elevate that single memoir sentence to dispositive status, you must answer four basic questions that Smith never does:

• Which date/time does the alibi cover? One murder? Several? All?
• What’s the documentary basis (who, where, when), beyond a boastful aside?
• Why keep the suspect’s full five-point profile if he was truly cleared beyond doubt?
• Why repeat press lore (polished farthings) alongside an ironclad exoneration if you’re being strictly evidential?

You cannot demand laser-literalism for every descriptor, then treat an unspecified, undated, uncorroborated memoir flourish as sacrosanct. Method 101: either we weigh Smith holistically (profile + limits + bombast), or we don’t cherry-pick the one sentence that suits us. At minimum, that “alibi” downgrades one episode; it does not negate the broader convergence.

3) Profiles are filters, not gospels — and Thompson clears the filter uniquely

Smith didn’t claim universal truths about “the Ripper.” He recorded a suspect with five unusual identifiers:

1. ex-medical student
2. psychiatric confinement
3. immersed in the sex-trade milieu
4. polished-farthings bilking
5. found in the Rupert/Haymarket orbit

The use of a profile is to filter a population, not to pre-prove the killer’s CV. The question is: who in the record matches all five? With Thompson, the answer is: he does, and that’s before we add independent strands (documented dissection training, possession of scalpels, violent unpublished verse, collapse/commitment tracking the cessation of murders). That’s cumulative reasoning — the standard you’d expect in any serious historical analysis.

If you think Puckridge (or anyone else) matches the full five and brings those independent strands, lay out the documentation (addresses, dates, medical record, contemporaneous writings, timeline). Hand-waving toward a name isn’t parity.

4) Sensitivity: even granting your strictest takes, the coincidence still collapses

Let’s accept your narrowest readings for the sake of argument:

• Treat “asylum” only as a formal asylum (and still count Thompson’s psychiatric confinement with a clear note).
• Treat the coin story as too weak to include (drop it entirely).
• Treat “Rupert Street” as geographic orbit/proximity (as Smith himself used it).

Even then, you have ex-medical + documented psychiatric confinement + sex-trade milieu + Haymarket orbit — a four-trait cluster that is still vanishingly rare in the London male population of the time. The probability spine isn’t there to impress; it’s there to stop the conversation devolving into vibes. Remove the weakest trait and rerun: the expected number of men who fit even the four-trait filter is ≪ 1. Add back Thompson’s extra-profile anchors (cadaver dissection under Dreschfeld; carrying scalpels while vagrant; manuscripts rehearsing uterine mutilation; hospitalization coincident with the murders’ end) and the posterior tightens further. That’s how cumulative evidence works.

5) Ethical scholarship: pick one standard and apply it consistently

Right now, your standard changes case-by-case:

• Literalist on asylum/loose-women/coin/“Rupert Street,” but credulous on an undefined “alibi.”
• Skeptical of press-inflected farthings, but uncritical when the same source is used to sweep a suspect off the board.
• Demanding of residence paperwork for “Rupert Street,” but satisfied with the vaguest possible alibi claim.

That isn’t rigorous; it’s adversarial selection. The ethical route is stability: either you discount memoir color across the board, or you weigh it — both the five identifiers and the alibi line — with the same caution. Once you do, the identifiers retain probative value (they narrow the field), while the alibi becomes what it is: a non-specific caveat, not a silver bullet.

6) The Puckridge detour (briefly)

You imply Puckridge fits better. Then demonstrate it. Show:

• A documented Haymarket-orbit presence aligned to Smith’s pursuit.
• Independent evidence of anatomical training, instruments, or violent manuscripts paralleling the injuries.
• A timeline that rises and falls with the murders rather than drifting past them.

Without those, invoking Puckridge is a way to avoid the Thompson convergence, not answer it.

7) Bottom line, with standards intact

• Calling plain-English normalizations “falsifications” is a category error.
• Using an undefined memoir “alibi” as dispositive while nitpicking every other line is methodologically incoherent.
• Profiles filter; Thompson uniquely passes the filter.
• Even after you remove the weakest trait(s), the coincidence still collapses, and Thompson’s extra-profile evidence pushes the case from “interesting” to plausibly guilty.

We can disagree on weight. We cannot pretend that terminological hairsplitting plus a memoir aside equals a refutation. If you want to stay in the evidential lane, hold one standard, apply it to every line, and then tell us who — if not Thompson — clears the same filter and brings the same independent anchors. Until then, your objection isn’t toppling anything; it’s just rearranging the furniture.

Repetition but no confronting of the points made.

[Herlock Sholmes]

The Thompson fallacy has been debunked for what it is. A work of fiction.

[rjpalmer]

Here's a post that won't please anyone.

Often--but not always--when two parties vehemently argue (such as we see currently see with Richard and his critics) it is because they both own a percentage of the truth. No side is entirely right--though they both think they are, so they are willing to fight to the death to hold their ground.

That Major Smith was primarily referencing Oswald Puckridge in his 1910 memoirs is beyond any reasonable doubt. There's enough surviving documentation to show this.

However, it is also true that Richard is not wrong in pointing out that Major Smith adds a couple of details that are problematic to this identification. Referring to Puckridge as a former medical student is a little odd in reference to murders that involved what might be called dissection because Puckridge was merely a dispensing chemist, and even this was in his distant past; in more recent years he had been a publican. Nor has anyone produced any evidence that Puckridge spent "all of his time" with prostitutes and pawned off polished farthings on them.

So here is my humble contribution.

It was exceedingly common, particularly in a case with so many crime scenes and so many suspects, for police officials writing in the 20th Century to combine two suspects into one. This is one of the theoretical underpinnings of Martin Fido's theory and the supposed confusion over Kozminski/Cohen. Elsewhere we hear of a Russian medical student who committed suicide---an obvious portmanteau of (at least) two suspects: Ostrog and Druitt.

I think it is possible that Smith is doing the same thing. He is primarily remembering, more or less accurately, Oswald Puckridge, but after so many years he's a bit fuzzy on certain elements and has added details that refer to another suspect---the medical student that consorted with prostitutes.

This is nothing I can prove, nor am I suggesting that this student was Francis Thompson, but I think it is possible that Smith has allowed elements of a different investigation to pollute his memory.

But what shouldn't be lost is that the whole point of Smith's anecdote is that police opinions can be wrong.

He is responding to Sir Robert Anderson's insistence that the murderer was a Polish Jew living in a certain district. Smith is admitting that he, too, once had a prime suspect in a certain street but a thorough investigation ultimately proved that the suspect was innocent. Smith had been wrong. That is the moral of his story. He wants the reader (or Anderson himself) to remember this when weighing Anderson's own "solution."

That is Smith's message. Police opinions even when they are certain can be wrong. So, too, can be the opinions of "Ripperologists."

[Herlock Sholmes]

Here's a post that won't please anyone.

Often--but not always--when two parties vehemently argue (such as we see currently see with Richard and his critics) it is because they both own a percentage of the truth. No side is entirely right--though they both think they are, so they are willing to fight to the death to hold their ground.

That Major Smith was primarily referencing Oswald Puckridge in his 1910 memoirs is beyond any reasonable doubt. There's enough surviving documentation to show this.

However, it is also true that Richard is not wrong in pointing out that Major Smith adds a couple of details that are problematic to this identification. Referring to Puckridge as a former medical student is a little odd in reference to murders that involved what might be called dissection because Puckridge was merely a dispensing chemist, and even this was in his distant past; in more recent years he had been a publican. Nor has anyone produced any evidence that Puckridge spent "all of his time" with prostitutes and pawned off polished farthings on them.

So here is my humble contribution.

It was exceedingly common, particularly in a case with so many crime scenes and so many suspects, for police officials writing in the 20th Century to combine two suspects into one. This is one of the theoretical underpinnings of Martin Fido's theory and the supposed confusion over Kozminski/Cohen. Elsewhere we hear of a Russian medical student who committed suicide---an obvious portmanteau of (at least) two suspects: Ostrog and Druitt.

I think it is possible that Smith is doing the same thing. He is primarily remembering, more or less accurately, Oswald Puckridge, but after so many years he's a bit fuzzy on certain elements and has added details that refer to another suspect---the medical student that consorted with prostitutes.

This is nothing I can prove, nor am I suggesting that this student was Francis Thompson, but I think it is possible that Smith has allowed elements of a different investigation to pollute his memory.

But what shouldn't be lost is that the whole point of Smith's anecdote is that police opinions can be wrong.

He is responding to Sir Robert Anderson's insistence that the murderer was a Polish Jew living in a certain district. Smith is admitting that he, too, once had a prime suspect in a certain street but a thorough investigation ultimately proved that the suspect was innocent. Smith had been wrong. That is the moral of his story. He wants the reader (or Anderson himself) to remember this when weighing Anderson's own "solution."

That is Smith's message. Police opinions even when they are certain can be wrong. So, too, can be the opinions of "Ripperologists."

Hello Roger,

You make a very valid point (as usual) It’s certainly possible that, with Puckridge in mind, Smith could have ‘grafted’ on what Richard calls ‘traits’ from another person and it’s not difficult to imagine that someone like a a former medical student might have come under suspicion at some point (maybe one that used to con people by using polished farthings?) With Puckridge being a Chemist this might have provided a false link between the two in Smith’s memory.

We know that it couldn’t have been Thompson of course because he fails entirely on 3 of the 5 traits and and largely fails on one of the remaining two.

I’m not going to push the next point with any confidence because it’s pure speculation and nothing more - the Illustrated Police News, 6th July 1889 reports Puckridge violently assaulting coffee shop owner Henry Frederick Orange. Puckridge claimed that the man tried to rob him. Might Puckridge have tried passing off a polished farthings but Orange spotted it, with Puckridge claiming that he’d given him a genuine coin?