Francis Thompson. The Perfect Suspect.

[MrBarnett]

Does anyone have physical description of thompson ? Actually height

Why not just make it up, a la Richard?

[thewoo1]

Could thompson the arsonist set the dock fire as a diversion to make one of his killings if he was jtr ?

[Abby Normal]

When we look at the Goulston Street Graffito, if the murderer wrote it, the biggest clue is the message, essentially saying blame the Jews. (For the Killings) This fanatical anti-Semitic message has religion as its motive. As an aside, with little more to go on, we can assume that the killer, since he felt compelled to write, was a writer.

Knowing this when we read the message, we might assume the killer had very specific reasons for his writing it. If the graffito was by a writer who had studied in religion. It considerably narrows the range of suspects to a religious fanatic with experience as a writer. The Juwes are the men that will not be blamed for nothing, makes use of a double negative. In poetry, this is called litotes, from the Greek word for simple. A litotes is a figure of speech that makes a positive statement by negating its opposite expressions.
Litotes, also called double negatives, are often used in the Bible and mostly in Revelations. Biblical scholars cite that the strongest possible use is within Revelations 18:7. Considering, the Ripper killed prostitutes (whores) we find a very remarkable coincidence between the graffito and the bible.
Revelations 18:7 concerns the words spoken by the Whore of Babylon before she is slain. In this verse the whore boasts how she rides the Beast and rules over the kings of men. She says, I sit as queen; I am not a widow, and I will never not mourn.' Here, the double negative never not is clear, but there are many more.
In modern translations of this verse, I, the first- person singular pronoun, is used. However, in the original Greek instead of the pronoun I the double negative οὐ μὴ which translates as our me or I We was used. 18:7 reads more correctly as, I We sit as queen; I We am not a widow, and I We will never not mourn.'
This coincidence grows most compelling when we discover that, in fact, this one verse holds more double negatives than any of all the other 31,102, verses within in the bible. In the Dear Boss letter the Ripper is believed to have written, I am down on whores.

Regarding coincidences, the English poet Francis Thompson, is a Ripper suspect who, before the murders, studied for several years to become ordained as a Catholic priest. When he wrote the word Jews he used to spell it Juwes the same as in the Goulston Street graffito. Thompson copied the writing style of poets from the 17th century when that was how it was spelt.


A Goulston Street Coincidence to Religion:

A singular fact presides over the Ripper killings. The murderer always first subdued his victims before cutting into them. Experts have concluded that the Ripper first strangled his victims to bring about partial asphyxiation and loss of consciousness. The doctors who did their autopsies were not clear about how the strangling took place. The strangulation could have been from a soft cord-like material, as a scarf or necktie. This partial suffocation rendered his victims unable to struggle and prevented them from being able to cry for help. The killer then let his unconscious victims slump to the ground. This provided him with a prone subject and a stable surface to begin cutting.

It would be very difficult to strangle someone, without them crying out, until they lost consciousness, without the risk of killing them. Jack the Ripper was able to perform this task very well, without exception, repeatedly. There was only one job where someone was trained to do this. A surgeon.
In the 1870s and 80s anaesthetics, although used in some hospitals, was rare. The usual procedure, in Hospital Emergency Departments, to restrain patients to prepare them for surgery, was by partial asphyxiation. This was achieved by strangulation with a ligature around the neck.
The English poet Francis Thompson (1859-1907) trained for 7 years as a surgeon in one of the best medical schools in the country. In those years, 1878-1885, Thompson also worked as a surgeon assistant in Manchester Hospitals Emergency Department. As a medical student, Thompson practiced surgery on cadavers, cutting into flesh and removing bodily organ. As a surgeons assistant, Thompson was required to sedate those people who presented injuries needing surgical intervention, such as having a limb amputated. Thompson effectively practiced strangling people into unconscious, every day, year after year.
Right before the Ripper murders began, Thompson had just been told that an editor had received his poem about killing female prostitutes. He was already making notes for his short story about a man who kills his lover with a knife. He was carrying a razor sharp knife of his own in his coat pocket. He was in the East End, during the murders, solely to find the prostitute who had dumped and fled him. It's too easy to guess what he might have been up to, on the night of November the 8th, when he left his lodgings recently secured at the end of Dorset Street Spitalfields, less than 100 yards from where the Ripper would, a few hours later, kill Mary Kelly. A trait in the way Thompson dressed back then, as this picture of him shows, earned him a nickname. The Necktie Poet.

hi richard
can you provide the examples/ sources of thompson spelling Jews as juwes?

[MrBarnett]

hi richard
can you provide the examples/ sources of thompson spelling Jews as juwes?

I very much doubt it, Abby.

Richard is a supreme embroiderer of facts.

[MrBarnett]

Could thompson the arsonist set the dock fire as a diversion to make one of his killings if he was jtr ?

Thompson wasn’t an arsonist. That’s just Richards spin on a couple of incidents in Thompson’s life.

Don’t waste your time on this theory.

[Trevor Marriott]

When we look at the Goulston Street Graffito, if the murderer wrote it, the biggest clue is the message, essentially saying blame the Jews. (For the Killings) This fanatical anti-Semitic message has religion as its motive. As an aside, with little more to go on, we can assume that the killer, since he felt compelled to write, was a writer.

Knowing this when we read the message, we might assume the killer had very specific reasons for his writing it. If the graffito was by a writer who had studied in religion. It considerably narrows the range of suspects to a religious fanatic with experience as a writer. The Juwes are the men that will not be blamed for nothing, makes use of a double negative. In poetry, this is called litotes, from the Greek word for simple. A litotes is a figure of speech that makes a positive statement by negating its opposite expressions.
Litotes, also called double negatives, are often used in the Bible and mostly in Revelations. Biblical scholars cite that the strongest possible use is within Revelations 18:7. Considering, the Ripper killed prostitutes (whores) we find a very remarkable coincidence between the graffito and the bible.
Revelations 18:7 concerns the words spoken by the Whore of Babylon before she is slain. In this verse the whore boasts how she rides the Beast and rules over the kings of men. She says, I sit as queen; I am not a widow, and I will never not mourn.' Here, the double negative never not is clear, but there are many more.
In modern translations of this verse, I, the first- person singular pronoun, is used. However, in the original Greek instead of the pronoun I the double negative οὐ μὴ which translates as our me or I We was used. 18:7 reads more correctly as, I We sit as queen; I We am not a widow, and I We will never not mourn.'
This coincidence grows most compelling when we discover that, in fact, this one verse holds more double negatives than any of all the other 31,102, verses within in the bible. In the Dear Boss letter the Ripper is believed to have written, I am down on whores.

Regarding coincidences, the English poet Francis Thompson, is a Ripper suspect who, before the murders, studied for several years to become ordained as a Catholic priest. When he wrote the word Jews he used to spell it Juwes the same as in the Goulston Street graffito. Thompson copied the writing style of poets from the 17th century when that was how it was spelt.


A Goulston Street Coincidence to Religion:

A singular fact presides over the Ripper killings. The murderer always first subdued his victims before cutting into them. Experts have concluded that the Ripper first strangled his victims to bring about partial asphyxiation and loss of consciousness. The doctors who did their autopsies were not clear about how the strangling took place. The strangulation could have been from a soft cord-like material, as a scarf or necktie. This partial suffocation rendered his victims unable to struggle and prevented them from being able to cry for help. The killer then let his unconscious victims slump to the ground. This provided him with a prone subject and a stable surface to begin cutting.

It would be very difficult to strangle someone, without them crying out, until they lost consciousness, without the risk of killing them. Jack the Ripper was able to perform this task very well, without exception, repeatedly. There was only one job where someone was trained to do this. A surgeon.
In the 1870s and 80s anaesthetics, although used in some hospitals, was rare. The usual procedure, in Hospital Emergency Departments, to restrain patients to prepare them for surgery, was by partial asphyxiation. This was achieved by strangulation with a ligature around the neck.
The English poet Francis Thompson (1859-1907) trained for 7 years as a surgeon in one of the best medical schools in the country. In those years, 1878-1885, Thompson also worked as a surgeon assistant in Manchester Hospitals Emergency Department. As a medical student, Thompson practiced surgery on cadavers, cutting into flesh and removing bodily organ. As a surgeons assistant, Thompson was required to sedate those people who presented injuries needing surgical intervention, such as having a limb amputated. Thompson effectively practiced strangling people into unconscious, every day, year after year.
Right before the Ripper murders began, Thompson had just been told that an editor had received his poem about killing female prostitutes. He was already making notes for his short story about a man who kills his lover with a knife. He was carrying a razor sharp knife of his own in his coat pocket. He was in the East End, during the murders, solely to find the prostitute who had dumped and fled him. It's too easy to guess what he might have been up to, on the night of November the 8th, when he left his lodgings recently secured at the end of Dorset Street Spitalfields, less than 100 yards from where the Ripper would, a few hours later, kill Mary Kelly. A trait in the way Thompson dressed back then, as this picture of him shows, earned him a nickname. The Necktie Poet.

If the graffiti was written by and educated man such as Thompson, surley he would have at least got the spelling of the word Jews correct. After all the word Jews and how it is spelt would have been one of the most familair names to be able to spell for an educated man living in London at the time of the murders.

https://www.trevormarriott.co.uk

[Dupin]

Sorry to be a pedant, but it's my Greek class today so I can't let slip the suggestion that οὐ μὴ implies plurality.
(Not that I understand why it matters.)
It's an emphatic 'not'.
The revelation text (from Textus Receptus) is
κάθημαι βασίλισσα καὶ χήρα οὐκ εἰμί καὶ πένθος οὐ μὴ ἴδω
and the word κάθημαι means 'I sit' βασίλισσα means 'a queen (singular)' εἰμί means 'I am', and ἴδω 'I shall see'.
No 'we' there not never not nohow.
HTH
Dupin

[MrBarnett]

So, apparently Thompson broke into the heavily policed Docks surrounded by high walls, started a fire, and then made his escape from the docks in order to distract the police from Bucks Row?

[MrBarnett]

Thompson mentioned to a friend that he had ‘shaved with a dissecting-scalpel before now’. This apparently translates to his carrying a sharp knife on him at all times.

[FISHY1118]

Very interesting suspect .

[FISHY1118]

During the reign of the Ripper, London's East End held 900,000 people. Francis Thompson was just one East Ender. You might well ask how come, out them all, I think Thompson is the likely suspect for Jack the Ripper. It is because he is the only one who has combined all four main traits that people look for in the Ripper - ability, opportunity, motive, and a weapon.

Ability:
Thompson trained as a surgeon for 6 years, at Owens Medical College Manchester, where he cut up hundreds of cadavers. There he was taught the very new and rare technique of heart removal called the Virchow method. This entails the removal of the heart via the pericardium. Doctor Thomas Bond, who performed Mary Kellys Autopsy, told the killer had used this method to remove her heart.

Opportunity:
Thompson was able to walk the streets at all hours. Being homeless for 3 years in the East End, he was part of the landscape and could come and go without rousing suspicion.

Motive:
Thompson had a resentment of prostitutes. At the start of June 1888 his year long relationship with an unnamed Chelsea prostitute ended angrily and suddenly. After he told her his first poems were to be published, she said she did not want the attention and she threatened to leave him. She since disappeared without a trace.

Weapon:
Thompson not only possessed a knife, it was a dissecting scalpel, which was the perfect weapon for the Ripper crimes.

Out of the thousands of existing suspects out there, from of all the books that have been written, surely somebody can present one that can match these 4 necessary traits. If only I can then I've just shot Thompson, the perfect suspect, to the top of the list.

More information can be found on Facebook at: Francis Thompson and the Ripper Paradox Book Group

https://www.facebook.com/groups/502480266521400/

Ability 9.95

Oportunity 9.95

Motive 9.00

Weapon 9.75
.
Based on these 4 must haves [i believe they can be listed as such. ] for the Ripper crimes , My scorecard for Francis Thompson is a 38.65 out of 40 .

Id be interested to see any scores from any other posters preferred Suspect ,P.O.I Based on this system, [i.e according to ''you'' what does your man score ]

Wether he was or wasnt JtR, F.T certainly makes a very good case .

[Ms Diddles]

Ability 9.95

Oportunity 9.95

Motive 9.00

Weapon 9.75
.
Based on these 4 must haves [i believe they can be listed as such. ] for the Ripper crimes , My scorecard for Francis Thompson is a 38.65 out of 40 .

Id be interested to see any scores from any other posters preferred Suspect ,P.O.I Based on this system, [i.e according to ''you'' what does your man score ]

Wether he was or wasnt JtR, F.T certainly makes a very good case .

It's funny, Fishy!

At the risk of sounding contrary, I recently read Patterson's Thompson book and was pretty unimpressed with the case he made.

I wouldn't relegate Thompson to the "Ridiculous Suspect" category, but he would certainly be in my "I'll eat my hat if it was him" tier!

Off the top of my head, I would personally go something like:

Ability 2.50 (He was young enough, but I just don't see a fey, sickly poet having the oomph)

Opportunity 8.50 (yeah, he was in the right place at the right time which scores high)

Motive 1.50 (I think Patterson totally overegged his "obsession" with tracking down the prostitute lover who abandoned him and his misogyny).

Weapon 5.00 (He had previously had access to surgical knives. The shaving with a scalpel even if true doesn't really ring any alarm bells for me. All men had knives and razors).

My (completely unscientific and barely thought through total ) 17.5 out of 40.

I actually find it quite interesting how we all digest the same material, and then interpret it completely differently!

[Abby Normal]

Very interesting suspect .

i fishy. agree. i think pattenson over eggs the pudding a but, but ive always found him an intriguing suspect, especially if he was actually living a stones throw away from kelly.

[GUT]

i fishy. agree. i think pattenson over eggs the pudding a but, but ive always found him an intriguing suspect, especially if he was actually living a stones throw away from kelly.

Best way to turn me off a suspect is to over egg him, if you need exageration and speculation you aren’t too convinced yourself.

[Abby Normal]

Best way to turn me off a suspect is to over egg him, if you need exageration and speculation you aren’t too convinced yourself.

agree. but you cant throw out the baby with the bathwater. its the same reason why i begrudgingly have to acknowledge koz as a valid suspect eventhough i cant stand andersons bluster.