Why Thompson might be Jack the Ripper. In 1,200 words.

[GUT]

Yup. But when, exactly?

Your suspect could be 50-yo married man who owns his home and has an IQ of 85 and there'd be a list pf "predominant traits" that'd cover him too. Because there's plenty of precedent for that.

Why point the finger at me.

[Ausgirl]

Why point the finger at me.

You fit the profile!

[GUT]

You fit the profile!

Hang on I'm a bit older than 50 and IQ a bit less than 85, phew I must be in the clear.

[MrBarnett]

I've been reading Strange Harp, Strange Symphony trying to get a handle on the chronology of Thompson's time in the East End. Here are a few excerpts from the book:

'By the summer of 1887 he was just another haggard face in the city's drifting horde of derelicts.'

'Early in 1888, all hope gone, and with guilt and regret testing at his spirit, he reached the nadir of his street existence.'

'How long a period of doss-house misery and actual street suffering Thompson endured remains uncertain - it was at least six months, perhaps as much as eight or nine - but the worst of it came to an end when he was rescued from some particularly dire situation by one of the army of harlots that infested London's West End'.

'It was Everard Meynell who first glimpsed the connection between The Hound of Heaven and Thompson's search for his friend during August-September 1888'

'Perhaps by mid-October (1888) Thompson accepted the fact that the girl had vanished for good...'

'Alone, Thompson became more amenable to Meynall's offers of help...Thompson was near physical collapse...and...was sent to a private hospital. The stay in hospital covered perhaps six weeks.'

What I extract from this is the following timeline:

Mid 1887 to early 1888 living rough and in doss-houses. Rescued from this life by a West End prostitute.

Early-mid 1888 living with his prostitute 'friend' in Chelsea.

Aug - September, 1888 searching for his 'friend' who had abandoned him after he had made contact with the Meynells.

(Mid?)October,1888 enters hospital and remains there for six weeks.

Unless the East End was the focus of his search for his 'friend', which seems unlikely as her patch was the West End and Chelsea, I don't get the impression that Thompson was frequenting the East End during the Autumn of terror. And if he was in hospital for six weeks from mid October, that would rule him out for at least the Kelly murder.

The 'evidence' in the poems and essays would seem to point to Millers Court above all the other murders. (Murder by flickering light in a chamber/the 'Oh, my god' exclamation/the open eyes of the corpse/the removal of the heart.) If that is ruled out by his stay in hospital, the apparent references to it in his work can only be imaginative in nature.

[Richard Patterson]

Having read every biography I can on Thompson, and delving into the archives at Boston College and reading his letters. I believe he entered the hospital, if one existed, in the middle of November 1888. This is because he is thought to have entered the Storrington Priory at the start of 1889. He is said to have been in hospital for six weeks before that, according to a jotting by Wilfrid Meynell, on the manuscript of his son's biography on Thompson. So six weeks before the beginning of January 1889 would be around the 15th of November 1888. I have emailed Storrington priory to at least see when he arrived there, but they have not replied. Your research coincides with discussions on my Facebook group on the same topic. Those who can not see that Thompson being the Ripper say that proof of his hospitalization in November would be considered an alibi and weaken Thompson as a suspect for the murder of Kelly. I agree with them. My post #37 on this thread showed how I doubted his candidature back in 1997-98 when I first read that he had been hospitalized, until I found out this information only comes only from the Meynells who gave no details. As I have said my hunch is that this 'hospitlisation' may have been merely Thompson taking a room in the Meynell's house with perhaps the family doctor making house-calls. In this case Thompson could have come and gone as he pleased.

[Richard Patterson]

By predominant traits I mean higher than average. For example the average age that a serial killer makes his first kill is at 27.5 years. Thompson happened to be that age when the Buck's Row Murder happened. That Thompson fits in the most likely age range of serial killers can be found by using keywords on Google. I used - demographics serial killer age range - The 1st results gives an age range of 26 to 31 years. I don't want to sound trite in regards to research to find facts, but I wish to highlight that I'm not picking and choosing. Thompson fits the ideal suspect in correspondence to the most likely regarding age, background, lifestyle. I welcome any research that shows a different age range and not just a selection of cases, which would just show exceptions to the rule. In regard to Providence Row. I don't know when exactly Thompson stayed there. All I know is that he preferred it. As to fire starting, there were also two more fires that he 'accidentally' lit as an adult. Four fires that we know of lit by a single person if not showing a history of arson does show a history of fire starting. It seems as if we are now just arguing semantics.