The True Face of Francis Thompson.

[Richard Patterson]

I was not trying to read anything into this poem other than what it says. Neither did I analyse it in relation to the crimes or Thompson. Your very first response to my initial post on this thread, which was on his his personal, private letters was,

'I don't think, though, that it's helpful to offer up dissections of his creative works as proof of him being a murderer.'

When I was not offering his creative works or offering up dissections of them.

[SuperShodan]

This is some of Francis Thompson’s Finis Coronat Opus. He talks of confession, of tearing open his own psychological scars for analysis and the act of murder itself. I find this fascinating from a guy who lived so close to Mary Kelly and is a very close match for the Hutchinson witness description.


If confession indeed give ease, I, who am deprived of all other confession, may yet find some appeasement in confessing to this paper. I am not penitent; yet I will do fiercest penance. With the scourge of inexorable recollection I will tear open my scars. With the cuts of a pitiless analysis I make the post-mortem examen of my crime.

It was close on midnight and I felt her only ... I reared my arm; I shook; I faltered. 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 she cried; and yet again and yet gain she cried...


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, of release from all torments ….What crime can be interred so cunningly, but it will toss in its grave, and tumble the sleeked earth above it? Or some hidden witness may have beheld me, or the prudently-kept imprudence of this writing may have encountered some unsuspected eyes … I shall perish on the scaffold or at the stake unaided by my occult powers; … the fanged hour fastens on my throat, they will break into the room, my guilt will burst its grave and point at me; I shall be seized, I shall be condemned, I shall be executed; ... I am at watch, wide-eyed, vigilant, alert. ... I am all a waiting and a fear. .... I do not repent, it is a thing for inconsequent weaklings...To shake a tree and then not gather fruit- a fools act ...What a slave of fancy was I! Excellent fool.''

[Richard Patterson]

A few corrections and clarifications about Francis Thompson, since some points above either rely on hagiography or mix up timelines.


1) We’re not “reading poems like tea leaves.”

Most of the disturbing quotes I posted are from Thompson’s private letters, not his published verse. That matters: private correspondence (the London diatribes, the razor/scalpel remark, the child letters, the arson quip) shows mindset without the mask of “poetic persona.”




2) “Nice man helped by kind friends” ≠ exoneration.

The Catholic Encyclopedia piece is a laudatory sketch that gets basic facts wrong (e.g., calling him a “boy” when his mother died; he was 21). It’s a devotional bio written to build a saintly literary image—not a forensic source.




3) Whitechapel presence is not conjecture.

Thompson lived rough in the East End through 1888, including Providence Row (Crispin St.), which places him within yards of Mary Jane Kelly’s murder site. He habitually carried a dissecting scalpel and sharpened it. That’s means + opportunity, not a vibe.




4) The “he got help in April 1888, so he’s out” line is false security.

He had brief assistance in spring ‘88 but was still on the streets in the autumn. The decisive removal from circulation comes after Kelly (Nov 9): he’s hospitalized for exhaustion, then shipped off to monastic seclusion—exactly when the murders stop. That cessation pattern (incarceration/institution) is consistent with serial-killer casework.




5) Frailty doesn’t exclude capability.

He survived years of street living, walked the city for nights on end, and used blades daily in dissection. The murders did not require overpowering healthy, resisting victims in daylight—they involved intoxicated, exhausted women, grabbed in darkness in tight spaces. “Effete poet” is a stereotype; the logistics don’t demand a weightlifter.




6) “Why didn’t police look at him?” They probably did—under another name.

Major Henry Smith (City Police) describes a Rupert Street/Haymarket suspect: ex-medical student, asylum history, consorts with prostitutes, passes polished farthings. Thompson uniquely ticks all five. He had a Panton St. address (one block from Rupert St.) and collected mail at Charing Cross. The odds of some other man matching all five traits in 1888 London are vanishingly small (approx. 1 in 20 quadrillion). That’s not hand-wavy numerology; it’s basic rarity compounding.




7) Creative work is relevant only because it aligns with biography and timing.

No one is claiming “poems = confession.” The point is convergence: surgical training (Owens College; obsessive dissections), a carried/scarpened scalpel, hatred of prostitutes in prose, stalking a vanished prostitute, sustained East End vagrancy, and then a 1889 story (“Finis Coronat Opus”) with a midnight sacrificial murder and a first-person “post-mortem examen of my crime” voice switch—written the year after Kelly. On its own, art proves nothing; alongside the rest, it’s probative texture.




8) “Too famous” objection fails on dates.

In 1888 he was not famous. The polishing of his image (and suppression of awkward material) came via the Meynells in the years after.




9) Bond’s 1888 profile doesn’t clear him.

“Quiet, inoffensive looking,” solitary, eccentrically housed, irregular employment, possible small income—this fits Thompson, not excludes him. Debates about “middle-aged” vs. ~30 are semantic; Thompson was 29–30 in 1888, which sits inside modern serial-offender onset ranges.




10) On “conjecture vs. evidence.”

No single Victorian suspect has modern forensic closure. The standard, then, is cumulative weight: rare biographical traits aligning with place and time, supported by behavioral and textual markers, and a clean stopping mechanism (institutionalization). By that evidentiary yardstick, Thompson outperforms Druitt, Kosminski, and the gallery of weakly evidenced suspects.


If anyone wants to falsify the identification, there are two clean outs:

• Produce a different Haymarket/Rupert St. man in 1888 who also matches Smith’s five rare traits; or
• Produce a verified, contemporaneous alibi that puts Thompson away from Whitechapel on the murder nights.

Until then, the unique Rupert Street profile match + East End residency + surgical means + hostile motive + disappearance post-Kelly = the most coherent, evidence-led case we have.