Two reasons AGAINST Tumblety being the Ripper

[Hunter]

Yep, the American slouch hat thing took on a life of its own, like the black bag. Even the Daily Telegraph published an illustration of the murderer with such a hat, prompting the police to publish a rebuttal and the actual witness descriptions of Schwartz and Lawrence on October 19.

[mklhawley]

No, he wasn't.

However, I would agree with the points raised regarding Tumblety's incompatibility with eyewitness descriptions.

Hi Ben,

Great to see your reply. Just a quick reminder, Tumblety did fit a late October, early November eyewitness description. Just as Sir George Arthur experienced, they were on the lookout for a lone male in an American slouch hat...

The San Francisco Chronicle, 18 November, 1888, GOSSIP OF LONDON.
A Heavy Swell Arrested in Whitechapel. A Score of Prisoners, but No Clew.
[THE NEW YORK WORLD CABLE SERVICE; COPYRIGHTED, 1888 - SPECIAL TO THE CHRONICLE]
LONDON, November 17.
...That was the case with Sir George Arthur of the Price of Wales set. He put on an old shooting coat and a slouch hat and went to Whitechapel for a little fun. He got it. It occurred to two policemen that Sir George answered very much to the popular description of Jack the Ripper.


The Evening World, October 2, 1888.
Horror-Stricken.
[Special Cable to the Evening World]
London, Oct. 2 – The London police are still working at random in the Whitechapel cases. No arrests have yet been made this morning, tough it is not at all unlikely that a half a dozen suspicious characters maybe taken into custody before night, as was done yesterday… With this indefinite and aimless policy on the part of the police, it is hard to tell whether any real detective work is being done. The detention of Fitzgerald, the hauling up of the poor German who quarreled with a woman he had met by chance and the late seizure of the mysterious gentleman with the “American hat” are proceedings which have only gone to strengthen the discredit with which the populace regards the police efficiency in this emergency.
The curious disposition to connect the crimes with an American has been carried to an absurd extreme. “An American hat,” “an American medical student,” an American…


The Sun, January 13, 1889.
LATEST NEWS FROM EUROPE.
London, Jan. 12 – It is sad to have to say so, but murder in its most unattractive shape is becoming positively fashionable in this island… The Whitechapel murderer’s exploits were promptly and universally credited to some foreigner –an American preferred- on the ground that the slaughter of defenceless (sic) women was incompatible with the noble instincts of Englishmen; but this characteristically British theory has been damaged by the readiness which the Englishman has shown to imitate Whitechapel methods, and the American-with-the-low-hat theory is being gradually abandoned…



The Saturday Budget, October 6, 1888.
MORE WHITECHAPEL MURDERS.
A man was arrested at midnight last night on suspicion of having committed the horrible murder in Whitechapel. He is a tall man with dark beard and wore an American slouch hat, by which he was traced from the locality of the latest murder...


Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 10 November 1888
London's Reign of Terror.
The assassin of Whitechapel has claimed his ninth victim, having planned and executed his latest crime with all the deliberation and cunning that characterized his former exploits…It has been said among other things that the assassin is an American, because he wears a slouch hat…

Georg Hutchinson watched Mary Jane Kelly with a suspicious man in Commercial St late Friday night, November 9, 1888. His description:
"dress long, dark coat, collar and cuffs trimmed astracan [sic] and a dark jacket under, light waistcoat, dark trousers, dark felt hat turned down in the middle…

"Matthew Packer keeps a shop in Berner St. has a few grapes in window, black & white.

On Sat night about 11pm a young man from 25-30 - about 5.7 with long black coat buttoned up -soft felt hat, kind of yankee hat …


The Echo, October 29, 1888
The various districts are being patrolled by extra constables, and their zeal has lead them into several excesses, notably, an arrest of three young men made on Thursday night in Berner-street. The police, according to a morning contemporary, have so much in mind the vague stories of an American perpetrator of the dastardly crimes that any person in a wide-a-wake or soft felt hat becomes an object of suspicion. A comic singer was unfortunate enough during a professional visit on Thursday to Whitechapel to wear one of these hats; and when during the interval he …


The Sun, October 2, 1888, LONDON’S GREAT SCARE
LONDON, Oct. 1. – There is no real news about the Whitechapel women-killing mystery,… This original theory appears to be based principally upon the fact that some poor wretch dragged from his lodging house on suspicion in the middle of last night and released at once was described by his fellow lodgers as an uneasy gentleman with an American hat. What may be the Whitechapel lodgers’ precise conception of our national headgear it would be difficult to say –probably a modified form of the sombrero made popular by Buffalo Bill.

[mklhawley]

A slight correction here Mike, I know you like to be accurate.

Neil Storey didn't actually discover the Tumblety letters to Hall Caine...nor did I, although they are mentioned and quoted from in my 1995 book. The letters were discovered and accessed by researcher and biographer Vivien Allen over twenty years ago when researching her excellent book Hall Caine Portrait of a Victorian Romancer, Sheffield, Sheffield Academic Press, 1997. They were housed in the Manx Museum in their Hall Caine collection and were subject to a seventy-year embargo expiring in September 2001.

With the permission of Hall Caine's granddaughter, Mrs Elin Gill, of Greeba Castle, Isle of Man, Vivien was granted permission to access and quote from the letters. Vivien spent 'well over a year' going through the museum's then uncatalogued archive.

Hi Stewart,

Thanks for the corrections. I certainly appreciate it.

Sincerely,
Mike

[Ben]

I don't agree that if all the suspects offered forward were lined up in 1888, then Tumblety would stand out above all others, because Fleming was taller for a start.

No, he wasn't.

However, I would agree with the points raised regarding Tumblety's incompatibility with eyewitness descriptions.

[curious]

Hi Curious,

So far, there's no evidence -at least that I know of- connecting Tumblety to Druitt. His later relationships with young men was to hire them as a personal secretary or traveling companion for a few years and dominate their life. He even did it with young Hall Caine. Driutt's life seemed never to have changed, so it doesn't fit the pattern, but certain connections do resonate. Maybe it's an area of future research.

Sincerely,
Mike

Hi, Mike,
thanks for the replies and bearing with me.

Actually, when "the solution" popped into my head, it was just a fun moment.

Perhaps Tumblety simply saw Druitt in a cricket match and became intensely infatuated. Why wouldn't the aging Tumblety be drawn to a sport with fit young men.

Therefore, Druitt's life did not have to change . . . would Tumblety as a stalker work?

My mind will have to play with this idea, because on some levels it does resonate. It would also explain how the "doctor" got mixed into Melville Macnaghten's discussion. Druitt could have been nearly incoherent as he discussed the situation with his trusted cleric. Perhaps knowing that people claim "a friend" is responsible for something they have done themselves, the cleric never believed the "doctor" existed, but that Druitt was himself guilty.

BUT, it was mainly just a fun ah ha moment and I wanted to be able to say "case closed"

So, Mike, thanks for the comments.

curious

[Stewart P Evans]

A slight correction...

...
When evaluating Tumblety based upon the evidence, such as Tumblety's letters to Hall Caine that Neil Storey discovered,...
Mike

A slight correction here Mike, I know you like to be accurate.

Neil Storey didn't actually discover the Tumblety letters to Hall Caine...nor did I, although they are mentioned and quoted from in my 1995 book. The letters were discovered and accessed by researcher and biographer Vivien Allen over twenty years ago when researching her excellent book Hall Caine Portrait of a Victorian Romancer, Sheffield, Sheffield Academic Press, 1997. They were housed in the Manx Museum in their Hall Caine collection and were subject to a seventy-year embargo expiring in September 2001.

With the permission of Hall Caine's granddaughter, Mrs Elin Gill, of Greeba Castle, Isle of Man, Vivien was granted permission to access and quote from the letters. Vivien spent 'well over a year' going through the museum's then uncatalogued archive.

[mklhawley]

Hi Curious,

So far, there's no evidence -at least that I know of- connecting Tumblety to Druitt. His later relationships with young men was to hire them as a personal secretary or traveling companion for a few years and dominate their life. He even did it with young Hall Caine. Driutt's life seemed never to have changed, so it doesn't fit the pattern, but certain connections do resonate. Maybe it's an area of future research.

Sincerely,
Mike

[curious]

Curious,

Are you sure you're not in film? This would make for an interesting script!

Mike

Thanks, more a writer, but film needs writers too, doesn't it?

I've just emailed it to my son, maybe he'll jump on it.

So, what do you think? some real possibilities there, at least on the surface.

[mklhawley]

Curious,

Are you sure you're not in film? This would make for an interesting script!

Mike

[curious]

Case Solved

Hi Hunter,

When evaluating Tumblety based upon the evidence, such as Tumblety's letters to Hall Caine that Neil Storey discovered, if he was JTR, his motive would not have been sado-sexual. In view of this, having a constant sexual impulse for the rest of your life (continuing a murder spree throughout the decades) and the case of a homosexual serial killer attacking males (Jeffrey D.) are irrelevant. In my 'Tumblety the Woman Hater' article, I discuss how the FBI breaks down serial motives, and Tumblety fits a couple of others quite nicely. One is his unusual hatred of women and another was his anger of women being impostors. He believed young men were for older men and women led them astray. Both hatred and anger were two separate serial motives. There is a third, which I touch upon in my very first article, and that is 'personal gain'. I believe the evidence demonstrates Tumblety was a narcissist, and would have absolutely no guilt about women being murdered for a private/pesonal agenda.

Sincerely,
Mike

Hello, Mike,
Very interesting post, but it caused my mind to wander down some strange byways.

Perhaps you have just allowed me to solve this case and explain another of the mysteries at the same time.

Bear with me.

You see, Tumblety met Monty Druitt and fell deeply in love with him, but MJD was bi-sexual and normally preferred both men and women older than himself -- not always, but most times.

Tumblety was so obsessed with Druitt, that he followed him around, and Tumblety's jealous fury at the women who misled his younger love resulted in the good sham-doctor murdering and mutilating the women we know as victims of JtR. Tumblety was skulking around in the shadows and thus never seen with any of the victims whom he caught by "ambushcade."

Druitt came to the sick realization of what was being done because of his connection with the women and just as terrifying was the thought that he himself might be in danger from Tumblety because of the obsession. Druitt confessed to his minister cousin that he was to blame for all those women's deaths, which led the minister to believe Druitt was the killer.

Druitt could not get over what had been done to Kelly, and had been assured by Tumblety that he would never be allowed to be free of him. The nightmares of the murders combined with the horror of Tumblety's love caused Druitt to drown himself in an attempt to put an end to the murders and Tumblety's "love" for him.

With his "love" forever out of his reach, Tumblety had no reason to remain in London, and with the charges hanging over him being a great reason to leave forever, he absconded.

see, tied up in a neat bow . . .

curious

[mklhawley]

The sources for this were the Brooklyn Citizen and the San Francisco Daily Examiner. So how could Anderson be 'gilding the lily' in this instance when he isn't even the source?

In Ripperology, never let facts get in the way of bias.

Mike Hawley,

I don't see how it can be argued that Francis Tumblety was not a suspect to some degree and at least for a short time in late 1888. He would have ticked several boxes for the Victorian police and their perceptions at the time. But since this thread is more about whether he was actually the Ripper instead of a suspect... do you believe Francis Tumblety was really a serial murderer? And if so, why just this short spree in London and not other times in his long and well publicized life?

Hi Hunter,

When evaluating Tumblety based upon the evidence, such as Tumblety's letters to Hall Caine that Neil Storey discovered, if he was JTR, his motive would not have been sado-sexual. In view of this, having a constant sexual impulse for the rest of your life (continuing a murder spree throughout the decades) and the case of a homosexual serial killer attacking males (Jeffrey D.) are irrelevant. In my 'Tumblety the Woman Hater' article, I discuss how the FBI breaks down serial motives, and Tumblety fits a couple of others quite nicely. One is his unusual hatred of women and another was his anger of women being impostors. He believed young men were for older men and women led them astray. Both hatred and anger were two separate serial motives. There is a third, which I touch upon in my very first article, and that is 'personal gain'. I believe the evidence demonstrates Tumblety was a narcissist, and would have absolutely no guilt about women being murdered for a private/pesonal agenda.

Sincerely,
Mike

[Hunter]

As to why Anderson asked for handwriting we can only speculate but many things Anderson has said and written must be treated with suspicion he seems to have been a man trying to be a legend in his own lifetime, and would appear to have gilded the lily on more than one occasion

The sources for this were the Brooklyn Citizen and the San Francisco Daily Examiner. So how could Anderson be 'gilding the lily' in this instance when he isn't even the source?

In Ripperology, never let facts get in the way of bias.

Mike Hawley,

I don't see how it can be argued that Francis Tumblety was not a suspect to some degree and at least for a short time in late 1888. He would have ticked several boxes for the Victorian police and their perceptions at the time. But since this thread is more about whether he was actually the Ripper instead of a suspect... do you believe Francis Tumblety was really a serial murderer? And if so, why just this short spree in London and not other times in his long and well publicized life?

[Mayerling]

Firstly if they had suspected of him being the ripper they would not have bailed him on the gross indecency charges.They would have kept him in and tried to build a case for murder whilst they had him in custody for the gross indecency offences

Secondly as to handwriting they had the chance to keep him in custody for up to 24 hours following his arrest. So if they had him under suspicion they had ample opportunity to have him give a handwriting sample and besides his handwriting would have been on the court documents he signed when being granted bail.

As to why Anderson asked for handwriting we can only speculate but many things Anderson has said and written must be treated with suspicion he seems to have been a man trying to be a legend in his own lifetime, and would appear to have gilded the lily on more than one occasion

Hi Mike, Letchmere, and Trevor,

[and thank you Mike for the complement about my knowledge.]

Fact is I always try to fit these different patterns together to see if they make sense - and sometimes they don't.

But I can believe (considering how frequently the Yard goofed in this case - like the use of bloodhounds for example) that pieces of information were not properly passed to all the detectives and the police as they should have been. What occurred to me was how closely the business with Doc almost jars (chronologically) with the story of the disappearance and then discovered suicide of Montie. Somehow the rumors about Druitt would have had an affect on how the heads of the Yard might reconsider trying to build up a case against Doc. After all, Tumblety (as far as we know) had no body of intimates like the Druitt family to talk about what they suspected to the Yard. Once that is settled, meaning that the Yard looks into the matter of what Montie was up to - as far as they possibly can - they could decide he was a more likely candidate.

I did not realize that the morals charge would be insufficient to try to extradite Doc back. However, it might also have been insufficient by itself to keep Doc in gaol for a while longer to try to find grounds to charge for a more serious crime. And the fact that they were interested in his handwriting seems to point to some of the "Ripper correspondence" they had in mind. But a few years later, in 1892, despite the fact that they knew Neill Cream had written some threatening/"extortion" letters (one to Dr. Sir William Broadbent mentioning a point only the murderer would have known) Dr. Cream was allowed for nearly four or five weeks to be at liberty before he was arrested. Apparently the police could behave in such a lacksadaisical manner even after 1888.

Jeff

[Errata]

As to why Anderson asked for handwriting we can only speculate but many things Anderson has said and written must be treated with suspicion he seems to have been a man trying to be a legend in his own lifetime, and would appear to have gilded the lily on more than one occasion

Frankly, the chief occupation of homosexual petty criminals was blackmail. Up until the 50s it was just considered the price you paid for homosexual companionship. No one ever extorted an unreasonable amount, it was very civilized. You know, for blackmail. People generally just paid it. Cole Porter paid millions of dollars in blackmail, and at no point did he make any attempt to further screen his lovers.

Tumblety was assuredly a petty criminal, and likely a homosexual given his arrest. It's entirely possible he had blackmailed someone who didn't know the game and went to the police. Or someone important enough to not be able to risk either blackmail or payment. A handwriting comparison might have been a response to a very real note in the possession of the police. And if the handwriting matched, they could simply throw the book at him for the charges he was brought in on.

Since he got bail, if it were true I would imagine he just had the poor fortune to sleep with someone who was later blackmailed by someone else. He had the bad luck to be on someone's list. Or it did match, but for some reason they felt there was no way to get rid of him without him talking. I wouldn't even be that surprised if he was given that ticket to France to ensure he didn't talk.

In fact until about 3 years ago there was a bar in the Virgin Islands called the Mountbatten pub. According to the owners, so named because Lord Mountbatten gave their uncle the money to start the pub after he had an affair with George VI during his service in WWI. Which is a story you only get when you correctly reference the origin of the "Mountbatten" family. It may reopen. It's the economy. I don't know if it's true, but it's a great story and has the advantage to containing many truths (including the use of Mountbatten to clean up after the royal family). So who knows?

[mklhawley]

Firstly if they had suspected of him being the ripper they would not have bailed him on the gross indecency charges.They would have kept him in and tried to build a case for murder whilst they had him in custody for the gross indecency offences

Sooo, you're saying Scotland Yard controlled the courts? Hannay bailed him, not Scotland Yard.

Secondly as to handwriting they had the chance to keep him in custody for up to 24 hours following his arrest. So if they had him under suspicion they had ample opportunity to have him give a handwriting sample and besides his handwriting would have been on the court documents he signed when being granted bail.

As I eluded to earlier, Anderson wanted everything on Tumblety. It may even have been Crowley who initiated the idea of handwriting samples, but Anderson initiated the communication.

Hi Abby Normal, I have info for you, but I can't do it until tomorrow.

Sincerely,
Mike