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Why Thompson might be Jack the Ripper. In 1,200 words.
Francis Thompson is my suspect for the London, 1888, Jack the Ripper murders. He is the only one who had combined all four main traits that people look for in the Ripper - ability, opportunity, motive, and a weapon. Thompson carried a knife, had trained as a surgeon, hated prostitutes, and lived right where the murders occurred. Right after the murders ended, he was confined in the country where he under constant surveillance and guarded by attack dogs
Until the murders, Thompson was living as a drug addicted homeless vagrant. As to ability, this man trained as a surgeon for 6 years, at Owens Medical College in Manchester. Here he cut up hundreds of cadavers and was taught the very new and rare technique of heart removal called the Virchow method. This used the removal of the heart via its lining. The doctor, who performed Mary Kelly’s Autopsy, told the killer had used this method to remove her heart. In regard to opportunity, Thompson lived at the Providence Row Night Refuge on 50 Crispin Street, Whitechapel. This was opposite Dorset Street, less than 100 meters from where, Mary Kelly was killed. 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. Of his motive, Thompson had a resentment of prostitutes. At the start of June 1888, his year-long relationship with a 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. His weapon was a dissecting scalpel that always carried, concealed under his coat.
He fits the profile for serial murderers used by FBI and CID. They tell us these killers harmless looking and charming, drifters. They are intelligent, in their late twenties and feel intense isolation. They kill strangers; near to where they live. They show a history of arson and acts of mutilation.. Unlike any other suspect Thompson fits this profile perfectly. During the murders he was a homeless drifter living in Whitechapel. He was 27-years-old and had attracted a prostitute into a relationship. He had run away from home, and cut off all ties with his past and was living an isolated existence. When he was a child he twice set fire to churches and would steal his sisters dolls and return them mutilated. Thompson’s match to the profile is extraordinary.
Immediately after the murders, Thompson was confined in a single room on the top floor of a building in an isolated country monastery. High walls with one gate surrounded it. Attack dogs patrolled the grounds and attacked him when he tried to go outside. From here in the autumn of 1889, he wrote a story –It was the only one he would ever write. Called the “The End Crowning Work” his ‘story’ was about a man who stabs a woman to death for fame. Part of it goes like this,
Rumors and hints that Thompson was the Ripper, began soon after his death in 1907. Everard Meynell, the son of his publisher described, the final meeting between Thompson and his unnamed prostitute, in his 1913 biography on Thompson, using words we associate with the Ripper murders,
In 1945, Terence Connolly, another Thompson biographer, hinted more of the same, when wrote of meeting one of Thompson’s seminary schoolteachers,
In 1987 John Evangelist Walsh, in his book spoke Thompson’s correlation to the crimes,
It was not until 1988, the centenary of the Ripper murders, that Thompson was directly proposed by the forensic pathologist Joseph C. Rupp, in his article “Was Francis Thompson Jack the Ripper?” in “The Criminologist,”
In 1997, I independently came to the same conclusion. My novel, “Francis Thompson & the Ripper Paradox”, mixes biography and historical narrative to describe why and how Thompson was Jack the Ripper. It is a result of decades long investigations in Australia, the United States and England, involving examinations of the murder locations, access to sealed files, and searches through archival documents. Made into an accessible ‘story’, my book contains never before seen facts and information on Francis Thompson and the Whitechapel Murder Investigation.
Francis Thompson is my suspect for the London, 1888, Jack the Ripper murders. He is the only one who had combined all four main traits that people look for in the Ripper - ability, opportunity, motive, and a weapon. Thompson carried a knife, had trained as a surgeon, hated prostitutes, and lived right where the murders occurred. Right after the murders ended, he was confined in the country where he under constant surveillance and guarded by attack dogs
Until the murders, Thompson was living as a drug addicted homeless vagrant. As to ability, this man trained as a surgeon for 6 years, at Owens Medical College in Manchester. Here he cut up hundreds of cadavers and was taught the very new and rare technique of heart removal called the Virchow method. This used the removal of the heart via its lining. The doctor, who performed Mary Kelly’s Autopsy, told the killer had used this method to remove her heart. In regard to opportunity, Thompson lived at the Providence Row Night Refuge on 50 Crispin Street, Whitechapel. This was opposite Dorset Street, less than 100 meters from where, Mary Kelly was killed. 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. Of his motive, Thompson had a resentment of prostitutes. At the start of June 1888, his year-long relationship with a 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. His weapon was a dissecting scalpel that always carried, concealed under his coat.
He fits the profile for serial murderers used by FBI and CID. They tell us these killers harmless looking and charming, drifters. They are intelligent, in their late twenties and feel intense isolation. They kill strangers; near to where they live. They show a history of arson and acts of mutilation.. Unlike any other suspect Thompson fits this profile perfectly. During the murders he was a homeless drifter living in Whitechapel. He was 27-years-old and had attracted a prostitute into a relationship. He had run away from home, and cut off all ties with his past and was living an isolated existence. When he was a child he twice set fire to churches and would steal his sisters dolls and return them mutilated. Thompson’s match to the profile is extraordinary.
Immediately after the murders, Thompson was confined in a single room on the top floor of a building in an isolated country monastery. High walls with one gate surrounded it. Attack dogs patrolled the grounds and attacked him when he tried to go outside. From here in the autumn of 1889, he wrote a story –It was the only one he would ever write. Called the “The End Crowning Work” his ‘story’ was about a man who stabs a woman to death for fame. Part of it goes like this,
‘If confession indeed give ease, I who am deprived of all other confession, may yet find some appeasement in confessing to this paper. With the scourge of inexorable recollection, I will tear open my scars. With the cuts of pitiless analysis, I make the post-mortem examine of my crime.’ [He wrote how he killed her] At that moment, with a deadly voice the accomplice-hour gave forth its sinister command. I swear I struck not the first blow. Some violence seized my hand and drove the poniard down. Whereat she cried; and I, frenzied, dreading detection, dreading above all her awakening, - I struck again and again…I know you and myself. I have what I have. I work for the present. Now, relief unspeakable! that vindictive sleuth-hound of my sin has at last lagged from the trail; I have had a year of respite,’.. What crime can be interred so cunningly, but it will toss in its grave, and tumble the sleeked earth above it.... I do not repent, it is a thing for inconsequent weaklings...’
Rumors and hints that Thompson was the Ripper, began soon after his death in 1907. Everard Meynell, the son of his publisher described, the final meeting between Thompson and his unnamed prostitute, in his 1913 biography on Thompson, using words we associate with the Ripper murders,
'After his first interview with my father he had taken her his news "They will not understand our friendship." She said, and then, "I always knew you were a genius." And so she strangled the opportunity; she killed again the child, the sister; the mother had come to life within her.'
In 1945, Terence Connolly, another Thompson biographer, hinted more of the same, when wrote of meeting one of Thompson’s seminary schoolteachers,
‘We found the aged priest, sitting before a blazing hearth fire, reading a detective story in Braille. He was then eighty years old.... "Just a minute, Fathers, please. I must not lose my place. Oh, my! They’re hot on the trail of the murderer." As he spoke, he marked the place in some mysterious way, placed the book on the mantel over the fire, and then extended his hand in welcome.’
In 1987 John Evangelist Walsh, in his book spoke Thompson’s correlation to the crimes,
‘During the very weeks he was searching for his prostitute friend, London was in an uproar over the ghastly deaths of five such women at the hands of Jack the Ripper...it is not beyond possibility that Thompson himself may have been questioned. He was, after all, a drug addict, acquainted with prostitutes, and, most alarming, a former medical student!'
It was not until 1988, the centenary of the Ripper murders, that Thompson was directly proposed by the forensic pathologist Joseph C. Rupp, in his article “Was Francis Thompson Jack the Ripper?” in “The Criminologist,”
‘Francis Thompson spent six years in medical school: in effect, he went through medical school three times…The Ripper was able to elude the police so many times in spite of the complete mobilization of many volunteer groups and the law enforcement agencies in London. If we look at Thompson’s background, having lived on the streets for three years prior to this series of crimes, there is no doubt that he knew the back streets of London intimately and that his attire and condition as a derelict and drug addict would not arouse suspicion as he moved by day and night through the East End of London ... Francis Thompson was at least as good and perhaps a far better candidate for the role of Jack the Ripper than was the Duke of Clarence or any number of suspects that have been put forward over the past one hundred years.’
In 1997, I independently came to the same conclusion. My novel, “Francis Thompson & the Ripper Paradox”, mixes biography and historical narrative to describe why and how Thompson was Jack the Ripper. It is a result of decades long investigations in Australia, the United States and England, involving examinations of the murder locations, access to sealed files, and searches through archival documents. Made into an accessible ‘story’, my book contains never before seen facts and information on Francis Thompson and the Whitechapel Murder Investigation.
Sink the Bismark
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