The last days of Francis Tumblety

[ChrisGeorge]

Tumblety would have arrived at Union Station, St Louis, pictured here in 1904

At first I thought the photograph showed Lovely Lane Methodist Church in Baltimore. As you see below, a building with similarly rather clunky and overbearing Germanic looking architecture. As it turns out, Union Station, St. Louis was designed by Theodore C. Link, while the architect for Lovely Lane was Stanford White -- whose murder by Harry Thaw was famously referenced obliquely by former Chief Inspector John George Littlechild in 1903 in his letter to G. R. Sims in likening Thaw to Oscar Wilde and Tumblety as being men who had perverted tastes.

[Aldebaran]

What a wonderful photo!

[Roy Corduroy]

St Louis Republic
29 May 1903

For some time he had been suffering from valvular disease of the heart, and after a stay at Hot Springs, Ark., he decided to come to St Louis and prepare for the end.

Tumblety would have arrived at Union Station, St Louis, pictured here in 1904

[curious4]

Tumblety

Many thanks mkl! Yes it is strange - unless there was a bit of identity stealing going on!

Best wishes,
C4

[mklhawley]

Here it is Curious4:

http://forum.casebook.org/showthread.php?t=3572&page=4

It talks about the Philadelphia gynacologist. Curious, though, how the coroner could mistaked a "young medical student" with an experienced gynacologist.

Mike

[curious4]

Tumblety

Thanks Chris! Is there any more information about him anywhere? A name, for instance? Or connected to any particular town or hospital?

Best wishes,
C4

[ChrisGeorge]

Hello all,

Has it been established beyond all doubt that Tumbelty WAS the american doctor who tried to buy pickled uteri?


C4

No. Not by any means. It also seemed that coroner Wynne Baxter might have jumped the gun in terms of putting out the story that there was an American enquiring about organs and that the episode might have encouraged the Whitechapel murderer. It later transpired that said American was on a legitimate mission and that the enquiries he was making were not quite for the purpose that Baxter thought.

All the best

Chris

[curious4]

American doctor

Hello all,

Has it been established beyond all doubt that Tumbelty WAS the american doctor who tried to buy pickled uteri?


C4

[YankeeSergeant]

Neighbors

Hi Neil,

We're neighbors!

Mike

Cool! Where from Mike? Neil

[mklhawley]

Excellent phots! Tublety is buried about 70 miles from here in Holy Sepulcher cemetery in Rochester, New York. Early in life he worked canal boats and sold pornography to the canalers.A very unusual man and one who was implicated briefly in the Lincoln assassination. Neil

Hi Neil,

We're neighbors!

Mike

[YankeeSergeant]

burial

Excellent phots! Tublety is buried about 70 miles from here in Holy Sepulcher cemetery in Rochester, New York. Early in life he worked canal boats and sold pornography to the canalers.A very unusual man and one who was implicated briefly in the Lincoln assassination. Neil

[mklhawley]

Excellent Dr. Watson. I wonder where those diamonds went that he use to carry in his pockets everywhere he went.

[Dr. John Watson]

The "Old" St. Johns Hospital

View of St. Johns Hospital, 23rd and Locust, St. Louis. As I recall, shortly before his death, Tumblety took a tumble down the hospital steps after returning from a short stroll.

John

[Roy Corduroy]

The Motherhouse



St Joseph's Convent of the Sisters of Mercy. The building complex housed, at various times, a Night Refuge for Women, St Catherines Orphanage, a Home for Young Working Girls, and St Johns Hospital, later infirmary. Chapel with two spires to the left.

From page 21 of Milestones of Mercy, Story of the Sisters of Mercy in St. Louis, 1856-1956, Sister Mary Isidore Lennon, R.S.M., Bruce Press, Milwaukee 1957

[Roy Corduroy]

Next best thing

You're welcome, Simon.

Absent a photo or sketch, the 1897 Whipple Fire Insurance Map.



In 1890 the Sisters of Mercy sold forty acres of Clayton farmland, a dowry from a nun who had entered the religious order many years earlier, to purchase a building lot at Twenty-third and Locust Streets, in a more prosperous neighborhood a few blocks south of the old building. They bore all construction costs except some rooms furnished by staff doctors and friends. Most patients paid hospital fees that ranged from seven to fourteen dollars a week according to accomodations.

From In her place: a guide to St. Louis women's history By Katharine T. Corbett 1999, p 143-44 (google books)

Roy