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.''