The book about Jack the Ripper starts with… Lincoln’s assassination. Yep.

Now you may be asking yourself what this presidential murder has to do with Jack the Ripper.

Jack the Ripper did not murder Lincoln.

In the aftermath of the apprehension of the Lincoln’s assassins, the net spread wide and far, and a guy named Francis Tumblety was swept up in the raids, questioned, and eventually released.

Then the book races off to Jolly Old England and recites the litany of Jack’s crimes, documented and alleged, the victims, the hoaxes, the detectives, and the suspects. If the fact that there was a serial killer operating in White Chapel in the 1880s that was never apprehended, you could read these chapters. Otherwise, fast forward to chapter 15¹, where the authors start following The Littlechild Suspect.

But first they have to tell the story of The Littlefield Letter. In the 1980s, a Ripper collector was approached by a vendor with some memorabilia for sale, including three letters, one of which is signed J. G. Littlechild – whom the collector recognizes as “Chief Inspector John Littlechild, head of the secret department at the time of the Whitechapel murders.” The authors claim that the letter has impeccable provenance.² This letter references one of the known suspects “and to my mind, a very likely one, […] Dr. T. […] He was an American quack called Tumblety.” Tumblety, according to the letter, was known to the British police as a misogynist, a “‘Sycopahtia [sic] Sexualis’ subject”. The letter goes on to say that Tumblety had been arrested and charged before jumping bail, escaping to Boulogne and then disappearing, presumed dead.

The collector – and a JtR researcher friend – puts two and two together with a newspaper article from the 1888, claiming that an American suspect had returned to America and was being pursued by American police from coast to coast – in theory, proving that Tumblety is this American suspect.

And then, in Chapter 17, they finally tell you more about Tumblety. There is supposedly a lot known about him because reporters were tracking down people and asking about him. He was born in Canada, worked on a canal boat, disappeared for about 10 years, then returned to Rochester, New York as a “great physician”. Not a very imposing height or build, he goes about wearing “a light fur overcoat that reached to his feet and had a dark collar and cuffs, and he was always followed by a big greyhound.” He had “become very aristocratic during his absence… and he created quite a sensation by giving barrels of flour and other provisions to poor people.” And yet a friend who had known him his whole life claimed he was illiterate and that his claims of being a doctor were based on having worked in the back room of a drugstore quack.

Later Tumblety moved to Washington DC and, during the war, “wore a military fatigue costume” and claimed to be on McClellan’s staff. But really he was there selling quack medicines and living in “the most extravagant elegance.”

In 1858, Tumblety was in Toronto and then in 1860, St. John, New Brunswick where he was “‘given to extremes in dress’ and would ride through the streets ‘arrayed in the most gorgeous style’ mounted on a superb white horse, and followed by ‘a troop’ of thoroughbred hounds.” But there his actions caught up with him: he’s put on trial for malpractice, and absconds to Boston, where continues his lavish and attention-attracting lifestyle. A true snake-oil salesman, Tumblety keeps moving from place to place, never staying too long in one place. One man, who had known Tumblety in DC, says that he visited Tumblety’s rooms and was shown a secret closet containing a collection of excised wombs, preserved in jars. Later the same man says that, when a friend praised the charms of a woman he admired, Tumblety went off, denouncing women in general, claiming he had been betrayed by his wife and had given up on women after that.

And then Tumblety started getting arrested, he claims for no reason other than being noticeable (could it have been for false valor?). After being released, he would move on and get arrested again, finally resulting in his arrest on suspicion of being a member of the confederates who conspired to kill Lincoln and members of his cabinet. In researching his movements, people claimed to have seen him in England – traveling with even more flair than he did in the states.

And Tumblety arrived in London in early summer 1888 – the notorious year of JtR – and so the authors finally get around to explaining why they are so certain that Tumblety is, indeed, Jack the Ripper.

I won’t say that they persuaded me. I found their “evidence” fun to read – they weave a good story – but is it more convincing than any other explanation? Given, Tumblety was a con artist with the kind of confidence and flair that would put Bundy to shame – but would someone committing such crimes, someone having been arrested repeatedly, really take the chance of committing such visible murders?

There was, according to the authors, a lot of publicity about Tumblety everywhere Tumblety went in the US – and yet, for all the bad things people said about him, there don’t seem to be rumors or stories of Tumblety attacking women.

So, if you’re into this kind of thing, read away – just keep your feet on the ground and don’t get swept up in their story.

1. There’s nothing new in the way that the authors tell the well-trod story in the intervening chapters. ↩︎
2. Proving the letter to be what it purports to be. ↩︎