A Tumblety Timeline [Archive] - JTRForums.com - THE place to be for All Things Ripper

Joe Chetcuti

05-08-2007, 10:26 PM

January - May 1830

Tumblety was born in Ireland, possibly in either Roscommon or Westmeath County. There were three times when his family provided the doctor's age, and all three times his birthdate would have appeared somewhere in the January - May 1830 time frame. The doctor constantly fluctuated his age, such as on the passenger list documents of his transatlantic voyages. But this deception was not practiced by his family who was consistent about giving the doctor's age when required.

1844

Tumblety's older brother Lawrence had established himself in Rochester, New York by this year.

1847

During Christmas time 2005, Alan Sharp and I did some Ireland research together. Alan discovered that a Francis Tumblety was listed in the Griffiths Valuation Records as having rented a house and office in the Towns Park of Swords County, Ireland. This listing appeared in 1847 & 1848. Alan believes the name Francis Tumblety was uncommon, so we may have gotten lucky here in finding our young man.

It should be mentioned though that Tim Riordan has proof that Tumblety (along with his mother, sister, and cousin) traveled on the Ashburton from Great Britain to New York. They arrived on June 21, 1847 and we feel this was Francis Tumblety's initial arrival in America.

Alan says the name Tumblety is a derivation of Tumulty, a name which uniquely hails from the counties of Roscommon and Westmeath, Ireland. But just in case Tumblety was born in Swords County, I checked into the Baptismal Records of the old St. Colmcilles Church in Swords. It turned out that the Baptismal Records for Swords have not survived for the years prior to 1835.

I'd like to thank both Alan and Tim for allowing me to share this.

Joe Chetcuti

05-10-2007, 06:14 PM

I just heard from Alan and he clarified that Swords is a town in County Dublin. (Swords is not a county itself.) It's located in the northern part of County Dublin near the airport.

In June, I'll post Part Two of the Timeline (1848-1854) but these were the mysterious years. I doubt if I'll be adding anything new to what is already known. Anybody can feel free to jump in and submit tidbits to the Timeline whenever you like.

Joe Chetcuti

06-06-2007, 02:56 PM

Captain Streeter's first recollection of Tumblety was around 1848. The teenager would peddle porn books and board Streeter's boat on the canal in Rochester, New York.

The 1850 Federal Census listed Francis as a laborer, his brother Lawrence as a gardener, and his mother Margaret as a 62 year old Irish woman. Captain Streeter remembered the doctor's father, James, as an Irishman who headed his family on Sophia Street. James died on May 7, 1851 and the Rochester City Directory of 1851/52 listed Margaret as a widow. It also listed Francis as a peddler.

Mr. Edward Haywards of the U.S. State Department knew Tumblety during this time period and referred to Francis as a dirty, awkward, ignorant, uncared for, good-for-nothing boy who would run about the canal in Rochester. Haywards implied that Tumblety did not receive any schooling in Rochester and that he lived with his brother Lawrence the gardener. This probably was on Sophia Street.

1851-54

Tumblety was hired to do menial jobs at Lispenard's Clinic in Rochester, and he became a student of Doctor Reynolds, the clinic's proprietor. When the time came for him to branch out on his own, Tumblety called himself Philip Steinburg and he opened up his own Rochester office in Smith's Block. It has been debated exactly when Tumblety was tutored under H.J. Lyons "The Indian Herb Doctor" but the May 11, 1865 Evening Star seemed to imply that it occurred around this time. It was reported that Lyons and Tumblety were together in Rochester in a room above the post office.

Tumblety gathered signatures from more than a dozen Rochester citizens and compiled it into a certificate of character. A few years later the quack opened up an office in Canada and he used this certificate for his self-promotion. This annoyed those dozen or so Rochester citizens because they didn't know Tumblety was going to falsely use their signatures as a tribute to his medical prowess.

Natalie Severn

06-06-2007, 04:21 PM

Thanks Joe,
I wonder what this" Captain Streeter " thought he was doing, encouraging a young boy to get on his boat like that.Was it Captain Streeter who had introduced him to porn?
Sounds like Tumblety was a neglected child and might have been vulnerable to abusive behaviour from such a men with a boat.

How Brown

06-06-2007, 07:07 PM

Nice work,Joe ! Its much appreciated...

Joe Chetcuti

06-06-2007, 07:47 PM

Howdy Natalie,

Captain Streeter had a wife and two kids. He seemed to talk sensibly and was once quoted, "I thought that (Tumblety's) mind had been affected by those books he sold, and I am not surprised to hear his name mentioned in connection with the Whitechapel murders."

The Captain's boat was a commercial vessel used for transporting the public on the Rochester Canal. He provided this service as late as 1888. He'd sail his passengers from Rochester to Buffalo, New York.

I don't see any indication that Streeter supported Tumblety's peddling of porn. Instead it sounded like he thought those books ruined Tumblety. Streeter claimed he knew Tumblety "quite well as a boy" and the Captain cordially approached the doctor in the late 1850's, but Tumblety shunned him.

Thank you for your comments, Nats & Howard. I'll post Part Three (1855-1860) next week.

Joe Chetcuti

06-11-2007, 05:36 PM

1855

Edward Haywood claimed that Tumblety turned up in Detroit during this year as a doctor. I found an article in the Chicago Tribune claiming that Tumblety rented an office in Boston's Horticultural Building on Tremont Street around 1855. (Tumblety was said to have purchased a large amount of ground gentian in Boston.)

1856

Tumblety traveled throughout southern Ontario during this time. He flooded many Canadian newspapers with his ads. These ads were of an identical style to that of the ads from Dr. Rudolph J. Lyons - The Great American Indian Herb Doctor. In March, Tumblety was doctoring in Hamilton, Ontario. In early May, he was fined for insulting a female patient of his in London, Canada West. (The doctor requested her to brush off the dust from his coat!) Then in November, he put out his shingles in Toronto. He announced in December that after "traversing the United States and Canada" he has concluded to make "Toronto his home for the future."

1857

While in Toronto from January-May, The Globe commented on how remarkably successful his practice was. Chris Scott recently reported about a Tumblety apprentice named Charles Jones who was with the doctor in Toronto. Kelly, Roger, and I privately discussed this apprentice about a year ago. Jones did not spend "4 years" with the doctor as was reported, but Jones most likely was with Tumblety during this 1856-57 time period.

Tumblety went to Montreal in September. He was arrested for attempting to procure an abortion for a prostitute on Sept 23rd. A Grand Jury threw the case out on Oct 24th. A payment dispute arose between Tumblety and his radical Irish attorney Bernard Devlin. McGee's Parliamentary campaign was supported by Devlin so McGee mocked away at Tumblety in the political journal the New Era during the autumn of 1857.

1858

The doctor supposedly hired two thugs to assault a burlesque comic named James Prior after the actor performed a theatrical spoof. The doctor returned to Toronto and his ads were seen in The Globe. He went home to Rochester on March 11th and was very snobbish. The Montreal Superior Court rendered a verdict in the "Devlin vs Tumblety" case on March 27th. Also in March, the doctor was brought before a Police Magistrate in Toronto on charges that he extorted a gold watch from his patient Adolphus Binkert.

He doctored in Quebec in the spring, but he was mainly situated in Toronto. He paraded around Toronto in late July with his greyhound and was "frozen out" of a hotel there. In September, he distributed flour in Buffalo.

1859

He worked out of the Concert Hall Building in Buffalo. A Police Magistrate said that in June Tumblety purposely untied his horse on King Street in Toronto and let it run wild. He was fined for practicing medicine without a license in Toronto and as a result he flung "great rolls of bills" from his pocket at the court's clerk and told him to take his change out of that.

1860

The San Francisco Examiner reported that Tumblety had an office on Broadway, New York in 1860 near the St. Nicholas Hotel. They said he charged enormous fees there. On June 28th he arrived in St. Johns, New Brunswick. A St. Johns Police Magistrate fined him on Aug 11th for using the title "M.D." Judge Robert Parker over-turned the decision on Sept 10th. Tumblety's patient, James Portmore, died on Sept 26th. The doctor soon fled to Calais, Maine as manslaughter charges were being assessed to him.

Natalie Severn

06-11-2007, 05:58 PM

Thanks Joe,
I am beginning to get a picture of Tumblety.He seems like a standard con man -a plausible rogue.
He seems to have been someone who would do anything for money---and I mean,anything.
Natalie

Joe Chetcuti

06-20-2007, 05:11 PM

In February, the doctor resided in New York's 5th Avenue Hotel with his secretary Charles Whelpley. The doctor had his secretary arrested by Police Officer Holland. Whelpley said he had been ordered to cash out a check on the doctor's behalf at the Chemical Bank of New York. Tumblety declared that his secretary "forged" this check and cashed it for himself. He even had his secretary sent up before a judge. Tumblety then filed a lawsuit against the Chemical Bank for inappropriately cashing out the check to Whelpley.

Tim once located a document in the British National Archives that was written in the penmanship of Dr. Tumblety's attorney. The document was a petition presented to the British Joint Claims Commission, and it declared that Tumblety's official residency in Washington DC commenced on April 13, 1861.

My impression is that Tumblety chiefly hung around Washington DC from mid-April to mid-July. The Rochester Daily Union and Advertiser reported that Tumblety visited the soldiers of New York's 13th Infantry Regiment at Fort Corcoran. The Regiment was stationed there from June 3 to July 16, 1861. I think this is when Tumblety's visit to Fort Corcoran took place. Fort Corcoran was built for the defense of Washington DC and was under the command of Colonel Michael Corcoran. That Colonel was one of the founding fathers of the Fenian Brotherhood in the late 1840's. Ultimately, Corcoran would be captured by the Confederates at Bull Run on July 21, 1861.

A New York periodical called Knickerbocker made fun of Tumblety in May and July. Tim figured that since Knickerbocker ridiculed the doctor during those months, then Tumblety probably was in New York at this time and not in Washington. So Tim sees this differently than I do. The way I look at it, the doctor crusaded around so quickly and unexpectedly that train rides between NY-Washington could have easily transpired for Tumblety. I think he could have been simultaneously associated with both cities.

Tim also pointed out that the 13th Regiment was stationed at Fort Corcoran in 1862, so the doctor's visit could have happened then, too. But I think Tumblety's visit to the fort would have more likely occurred in the early summer of 1861 when the Fenian Colonel was in command of the place.

Tim found out that Tumblety opened an office in Baltimore for a three week period beginning in mid-September. Other than that, we both think that Tumblety was mainly in New York from August through October. Tim said the doctor's last ad in the New York periodical Harper's appeared on Oct 19th. He also said the initial report of Tumblety "being in General McClellan's staff" appeared in the Buffalo Express in November. "Tumblety Undone" was performed in the Canterbury Music Hall on Dec 4, 1861. The doctor would remain in Washington from this time until May 1863.

Well, 1861 sure was a busy year for the timeline!

And no, I'm not going to get into a discussion about whether or not Conover met Tumblety in Washington DC a few days after the Battle of Bull Run in July 1861. Nor will I dwell on Conover's claim about the contents inside Tumblety's Washington DC closet. I sense the main reason why Conover was hired by the NY World to write his uteri jars account was because it enhanced the NY World's interview that was conducted a few months earlier with Colonel Hughes-Hallett. During that interview HH introduced the clue about how the Ripper would preserve the anatomical specimens which he took from his victims. I felt Conover's uteri jars story was written to support this premise.

A.P. Wolf

06-20-2007, 07:26 PM

Just a quick one, Joe.
Wasn't Tumblety's sudden appearance on the music hall stage first reported in the New York press rather than Washington's?

Joe Chetcuti

06-20-2007, 08:29 PM

Tumblety wrote of his Canterbury Music Hall problems in his 1866 autobiography. In his book, the doctor gave an account of the situation by quoting a Washington DC newspaper article which spoke of the case. Tumblety also had the contents of this Washington DC article printed up in the NY World on Feb 3, 1889.

The March 20, 1862 St. Thomas Weekly Dispatch also reported of the matter. So the story got around. I don't know who was the first to report it though. The performance of Friday night March 7, 1862 apparently sparked the whole thing.

On a separate note....I'm lost when it comes to finding the passenger lists of vessels coming to Castle Gardens, New York via England. If somebody knows how to click on a computer to get things done in this respect can you please check to see if the passenger list of this vessel's voyage below is available to be viewed?

City of Chester (The Inman Line)
Arrived in New York from England on Saturday December 7, 1889

I believe the Inman Line was Norwegian. I'd love to see the passengers list! There was one passenger on board the City of Chester during this voyage who intrigues me.

Joe Chetcuti

06-21-2007, 01:15 PM

Mr. Riordan was able to dig up the City of Chester's passenger list for this December 1889 voyage. Tim just happened to have a spare copy of the list in his back pocket, heh heh. It's 7 pages long so I've got some work to do!

A.P. Wolf

07-05-2007, 05:47 PM

Joe, I don't like to hurry your timeline on, but I thought I'd get to 1888 and the claims that Tumblety was resident in Whitechapel in that year... Batty Street wasn't it?

On December 1st 1888, William Smith, a Deputy Minister of Ottawa, wrote the following in a private letter:

'"My dear Barber.... Do you recollect Dr. Tumblety who came to St. John about 1860 and who used to ride on a beautiful white horse with a long tail, and a couple of grey hounds following after him? Do you recollect how he used to canter along like a circus man? And do you recollect that it was asserted that he killed old Portmore, the Carpenter who built the extension to my house and fleeced me to a large extent? Do you recollect how he suddenly left St. John, circus horse, hounds and all, and afterwards turned up at different places in the States and Canada? He was considered by Dr. Bayard and others an adventurer and Quack Doctor. He is the man who was arrested in London three weeks ago as the Whitechapel murderer. He had been living in Birmingham and used to come up to London on Saturday nights. The police have always had their eyes on him every place he went and finally the Birmingham Police telegraphed to the London Police that he had left for London, and on his arrival he was nabbed accordingly. He must now be 58 or 60 years of age as he left St. John about 1860. He was a tall handsome man and a beautiful rider. When I was in Eastport in 1860 detained by a storm, I met him there and spent part of the day with him. He was very agreeable and intelligent. I do not think he could be the Whitechapel fiend. He now spells his name Twomblety. I believe his original name was Mike Sullivan."

Birmingham is a considerable distance from Batty Street, but mind you any murders done on a Saturday night then he is your man.

Joe Chetcuti

07-07-2007, 02:19 PM

Time speeds up for no man, A. P.!! You're the type who comes home and tries to quickly cook Beef Wellington in a microwave oven! :rolleyes: I'll get to 1888 so just hold your horses, Tex. But in the meantime, I don't know who the Batty Street lodger was. I found it interesting though to compare William Smith's letter with the Euston train station arrest of a Birmingham doctor on Nov 17th.

1862

The doctor was open for business in the Washington Buildings at the corner of 7th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue. I once thought his office was located where the National Archives and Records Administration complex now stands in Washington DC. But Kelly looked deeper into it, and she told me that Tumblety's office probably was located just across the street from where the NARA Building is today.

Detective Mahoney of Brooklyn claimed he saw Tumblety in Virginia during the Civil War. Some of the doctor's visits to White Sulphur Springs, Virginia could have occurred during this year. The Evening Star reported that Tumblety paraded around White Sulphur Springs with all of his vulgarity of attire and this caused great horror to the staid old Virginia aristocracy.

William Pinkerton said that during the war General McClellan issued an order which banned Tumblety's book from being sold to his soldiers because of its immorality.

1863

On Feb 28th, a Union Army soldier named Private Thomas Tift deserted from Convalescent Camp, Virginia. He headed right for Tumblety's office in Washington DC and purchased a fraudulent certificate of disability along with phony military discharge papers. (All for $8) Private Richard Render of the New York Artillery's 2nd Regiment finked on Tift. Render's testimony is filed in General LaFayette Baker's paperwork inside the NARA. Render also spoke of a soldier in his same artillery regiment who agreed to pay Tumblety $10 for discharge papers. Render said the soldier's name was Private George Torry, but I couldn't find anything about this man.

Tim Riordan found out that Torry eventually deserted from Satterlee Hospital in Philadelphia on Oct 8, 1864.

According to Render, after Private Tift paid Tumblety $8, the deserter fled to Alexandria, Virginia. This was in early March 1863. Render's testimony may have been the cause for Tumblety leaving Washington DC on May 15, 1863. Render was stationed at Fort Haggerty. This fort was built by Colonel Michael Corcoran's men. It was located very close to Fort Corcoran, which was Tumblety's old stomping ground.

After fleeing Washington DC in May, the doctor was open for business in Philadelphia. Tim Riordan discovered that the mayor of Philadelphia issued an order for Tumblety's arrest on July 1st, but Tumblety had skipped town. Later in July, he dressed as an Irish Patriot and addressed crowds during the huge New York City riots. He was in Albany in September, and in November he advertised his services out of Fulton Street in Brooklyn.

1864

In early May he kicked his asthmatic patient, Fenton Scully, down his office's stairwell on Fulton Street. He advertised in Brooklyn through July 9th. It was reported that Tumblety went to Nova Scotia during this year under the alias Dr. Mike Sullivan. Supposedly he nearly killed a patient there. This story probably was a false.

On December 3rd, he boarded the steamer George Cromwell and headed for St. Louis by way of New Orleans.

Joe Chetcuti

07-09-2007, 11:06 PM

1865

Tumblety was said to have settled in St. Louis, Missouri on January 2nd. He was arrested in Carondelet, Missouri on March 9th for wearing military attire. He attended Lincoln's burial ceremonies in Springfield, Illinois on May 4th, then he was arrested the following day.

Anthony Pitch placed the following information in an article that Ripperologist printed in January 2005: The National Archives files on the Old Capitol Prison state that Tumblety was sent there on May 10, suspected of complicity in the assassination, and that he was ordered released on May 26th.

Within a couple of weeks after his release, the doctor mailed letters to the New York newspapers from Washington DC's Kirkwood House that proclaimed his innocence. He was in New York during the summer, then he returned to St. Louis to re-open shop. He didn't remain there long. Tim Riordan discovered that he was advertising in Cincinnati by December.

1866-67

While in Cincinnati, he published his first book during the spring. He was admonished for his misbehavior in the city's Cathedral during a mass.

He went on to Pittsburgh and was successful there through 1867. It was reported that he had to flee the city to "escape the consequences of trouble from two of his female patients."

1868

He was based in the NY City area during the spring time. Tumblety was run out of his office on Grand Street in NY and he popped up soon afterwards across the river in New Jersey. The June 16, 1868 Brooklyn Daily Eagle advertised that the doctor was selling his Pimple Banisher out of his office near Taylor's Hotel in Jersey City.

1869

The doctor's transatlantic voyages began during this year. In July he boarded the steamer Nebraska and sailed to Liverpool. The Nevada brought Tumblety back home to NY on Sept 13th.

William Pinkerton claimed that Tumblety was forced to flee Chicago during this year because of his immoral vice. Well, that takes care of the first four decades of the man's life!

Joe Chetcuti

07-10-2007, 07:53 PM

1870

Tumblety arrived in San Francisco on February 24, 1870. He advertised his services on Montgomery Street on March Ist. He was said to have left the city on Sept 7th. He attended the Jerome Park horse races in Fordham, New York during the autumn.

1871

Through the month of May he was herb-doctoring in Brooklyn. June 3rd & 5th letters confirmed he was staying at the Northern Hotel on Cortland Street in NY. He wrote his second autobiography.

1872

Two of Tumblety's lawsuits against the U.S. Government were withdrawn on March 26th. While in NY, he wrote another autobiography. Sometime this year he was reported to have fought an editor named Ralston in the 5th Avenue Hotel's bar because the editor exposed Tumblety's 1864 Nova Scotian trouble.

1873

The doctor's last government lawsuit was denied on January 23rd. His mother died on May 27th and was buried in Rochester. He was in England during December.

1874

According to Pinkerton, Tumblety was in Paris sometime during the first three months of this year while a London arrest warrant was issued for him. (A teenager named Henry Carr was supposedly sexually victimized by Tumblety.) He is doctoring in Liverpool when Caine arrives as a patient.

1875

Edward Hanratty dies on January 19th shortly after digesting Tumblety's medication.

Tumblety's affair with Caine was fading by the time the doctor boarded the ship Greece in England. The ship arrived in NY on Sept 17th. He was in Montreal on Oct 12th, then he traveled to California. He moved in with his sister and nephew in Vallejo, California.

1876-79

Very little is known about him during these years. He was in St. Louis in late March 1876 when his affair with Caine apparently ended.

On April 28, 1878 he headed for Europe on the steamer Montana. He did some time in NY's Ludlow Street jail for not paying a bill. His 'slumming' appeared to increase. Here is a quote from the San Francisco Chronicle:

"The last time I saw (Tumblety) was about 1879. He was looking shabby, careworn, lame, appeared to be living a dissolute and dissipated life, and was begging for a night's lodging."

SirRobertAnderson

07-10-2007, 11:19 PM

If folks will detail all the places in NYC the good Doctor stayed, I'll take pictures of them . Be interesting to see if anything is untouched.....

Through the month of May he was herb-doctoring in Brooklyn. June 3rd & 5th letters confirmed he was staying at the Northern Hotel on Cortland Street in New York.

Joe Chetcuti

07-11-2007, 03:11 PM

Sir Robert, I can probably draw up a hotel list for you when the timeline is all done.

1880

On April 13th, he arrived in NY from England on the ship Arizona. In July, he filed a lawsuit against Mrs. Lyons charging her with the larceny of his railroad bonds. While on the stand, Tumblety almost physically attacked Mrs. Lyons' attorney. Tumblety lost the case. In turn, Mrs. Lyons' son brought charges against the doctor for sexual assault.

Tumblety then filed a lawsuit against the broker (William O'Connor) for improperly conducting the sale of the bonds. That lawsuit fizzled out due in part to Brooklyn Detectives Frost & Chambers who presented evidence against the 'doctor.'

He was arrested for assault in Toronto on October 14th. His eviction from the 5th Avenue Hotel by Detective Pryor most likely came during the months of August - November.

1881

In late March, he was arrested for an alleged pick-pocketing incident involving Henry Govan.

1882-84

He was run out of St. Louis for parading around as an army surgeon. He hired Martin McGarry in July 1882. McGarry spoke of how the doctor would travel around impulsively.

1885

On April 13, 1885 the Appellate Court re-affirmed the not guilty verdict in the Tumblety vs O'Connor case.

1886-87

The London Times reported of a "Tumblety" who was involved in a civil lawsuit in a London court on July 17, 1886. The doctor was in Washington DC in May 1887, but by mid-June he had met the abolitionist Frederick Douglas on the streets of Liverpool. The steamer Rome takes him from Liverpool to NY, arriving on Oct 7th.

jmenges

07-12-2007, 11:45 AM

Thanks for this Joe!

Especially useful is the Civil War timeline.

Sending you an email.

JM

aspallek

07-12-2007, 01:17 PM

If folks will detail all the places in NYC the good Doctor stayed, I'll take pictures of them . Be interesting to see if anything is untouched.....

I might volunteer to do the same for St. Louis. I do know that the hospital in which he died is still operating (sorry for the unintended bad humor) but has long since relocated to the suburbs. I make calls there frequently. The original building in the city has I presume been torn down. At any rate the site of his death is in a very dangerous neighborhood today.

Where else did Tumblety stay while in St. Louis?

Joe Chetcuti

07-12-2007, 04:40 PM

Hello Andy,

He stayed at the Lindell Hotel while in St. Louis. It was a high-class establishment. I'll take a few weeks off, then I'll complete the timeline at the end of the month. After I finish that, I'll comprise a list of hotels that Tumblety was known to stay at in NY and in other cities as well.

Right now I'm packing up for a long weekend in the Sacramento, California area. I'm going to enjoy meeting Scott Nelson and his wife on Sunday morning. Scott, if my horse runs well in today's 6th race, then I'll be able to upgrade our Sunday lunch from grilled cheese sandwiches to corndogs!

Chris G.

07-12-2007, 04:47 PM

I might volunteer to do the same for St. Louis. I do know that the hospital in which he died is still operating (sorry for the unintended bad humor) but has long since relocated to the suburbs. I make calls there frequently. The original building in the city has I presume been torn down. At any rate the site of his death is in a very dangerous neighborhood today.

Where else did Tumblety stay while in St. Louis?

Hi Andy and Joe

I have photographs of the lodging house on Liberty Street in Baltimore where Peter Birchwood found him in the 1900 Census but need to scan them to post. The Home for Fallen Women on North Exeter Street, to which he left money under his Baltimore will, set aside in favor of the St. Louis will, is gone (it is just south of the city's main post office), but the Cardinal's residence where lived Cardinal James Gibbons, left money under both wills, is still there. See below for a view of the later.

Chris

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1150/790062415_307d2a5588_o.jpg

A.P. Wolf

07-13-2007, 02:07 PM

Smoking Joe, yes I agree, this is wonderful stuff.
Just a quick one though, you give Tumblety's date of birth as around the 1830 mark, but is it not to true to say that the only official contemporary record available to us gives Tumblety's date of birth as 1920?
If this is correct, then it would have made Tumblety 68 at the time of the Whitechapel Murders, which would by large degree completely rule him out as a viable suspect in the Whitechapel Murders.

Natalie Severn

07-13-2007, 05:47 PM

This is great Joe.Thanks a million!
Have a great weekend!
Natalie

A.P. Wolf

07-13-2007, 05:50 PM

Of course I meant 1820.

aspallek

07-13-2007, 11:36 PM

Hi Joe,

The Lindell Hotel burned in 1867, so I won't be able to take of photo of that! If you can, perhaps you will be able to say where he stayed on later visits. Although, there was a "New Lindell Hotel" opened in 1874 in what is now downtown St. Louis. It burned in 1885 but I'm not sure whether it was destroyed in that fire.

jmenges

07-15-2007, 02:58 PM

I moved my post and added another under a new thread "Tumblety and the Lincoln Conspiracy"

JM

Joe Chetcuti

07-21-2007, 11:02 AM

Natalie, I'm glad you bestowed your best wishes upon my 'getaway weekend'. Your blessing worked! I had a very nice time in the Sacramento area, and I capped it off by sharing in the good company of Mr. & Mrs. Nelson last Sunday.

Hmmm....let's see what evils are lurking in the mind of A.P. these days. :evil: I think somebody has read the May 30, 1903 Newark Daily Advocate. That issue placed an erroneous quip about Tumblety's age. If the doctor truly had been born in 1820, many things become distorted.

Poor Mrs. Tumblety. The old gal didn't realize that when she filled out the info concerning her traveling party on the Ashburton in June 1847, the lad who she listed as her 17 year old son was in reality a 27 year old man! Fittingly, the Tumblety family messed up Francis' age by 10 years once again when the 1850 federal census taker knocked on their door. Unknown to them, their teen-aged kid who was known for running along the canal selling his porn was shockingly a fully grown man pushing 30 years of age. And we'll have to change the inscription the Tumblety family placed on the doctor's grave which said he died at the age of 73 in 1903.

The Tumblety family was always consistent about giving the doctor's age. Even Captain Streeter stated that he first remembered Tumblety in 1848 and guessed him to have been a teen-aged boy. If Tumblety truly was 28 years old at this time, then Captain Streeter really butchered that one.

Tumblety wasn't born in 1820. Any reports that state this are off-base by a decade. I'll rev up the good old timeline once again today.

Joe Chetcuti

07-21-2007, 11:43 AM

The NY World reported on Nov 19th that Tumblety was last seen in NY during the month of June. He would walk on Broadway wearing a button-hole bouquet. July 27th, Aug 31st, Oct 14th, and Nov 2nd were the dates of his 'gross indecency' crimes in England. He was arrested for this on Nov 7th and released within 24 hours. A warrant was re-issued for him on Nov 14th. Two men came forward on Nov 16th to deposit the $1,500 bail money for his release.

Vivien Allen's book reported that this $1,500 was wired from America to England and that it arrived within a few days. I contacted Western Union who in turn got me in touch with their archivist. This director told me that they do not keep the records of individual transactions made in the 19th century. I was hoping that this Nov 1888 transaction had survived. If so, we may have learned the name of the person in London who was authorized to pick up the $1,500 on behalf of the jailed Tumblety. That person probably was one of the two men who bailed the doctor out on Nov 16th, or at least he would have gotten the money to the two men who eventually came forth.

The Henry Clews and Co. financial firm may have this transatlantic transaction listed somewhere in their old records. (I think the $1,500 would have come from Tumblety's Clews account in NY.) Those who know how to get into the old Henry Clews banking records will now have a little extra something to look into.

A Nov 20th hearing for Tumblety took place at the Old Bailey and a Dec 10th trial date was set. The doctor boated to France via Dover shortly after the hearing. He sailed out of Le Havre aboard the La Bretagne on Nov 24th. He spent 8 nights crossing the Atlantic before he arrived in NY.

I could understand it if folks want to look into the possibility that Tumblety was briefly held in police custody because of the Nov 17th Euston station arrest. The Nov 19th news articles in the Ottawa Free Press and the Manchester Guardian seemed to correlate with the info that was revealed in the Dec 1st letter written by Ottawa's Deputy Minister. (A.P. displayed that letter on post #15 of this thread.) Those two Nov 19th newspapers didn't provide the name of the Birmingham doctor who was arrested at Euston though.

Witnesses saw Tumblety walking into McNamara's E. 10th Street property at 2:20pm on Sunday Dec 2nd. On Wednesday Dec 5th it was confirmed that he was gone from there.

Chris G.

07-21-2007, 01:31 PM

The Henry Clews and Co. financial firm may have this transatlantic transaction listed somewhere in their old records. (I think the $1,500 would have come from Tumblety's Clews account in NY.) Those who know how to get into the old Henry Clews banking records will now have a little extra something to look into.

Hi Joe

Your research and that of others has convinced me that there was little that Dr. Tumblety did in his colorful, shady, controversial career without there being some ulterior motive.

Have you ever thought that Tumblety's choice of Henry Clews and Co. as the firm to be the repository for his wealth might be a private joke on those trying to trace his activities -- clew being an old spelling of "clue." (http://www.casebook.org/press_reports/search.html?cx=000723952817035431763%3Aucomtzxdr00&q=clews&sa=Search&cof=FORID%3A11#1023)

It seems a truism that Dr. T always had to have the last laugh. :nono:

R. J. Palmer though paints a quite different portrait of Tumblety based on the same facts we are all looking at as he stated over on the "Tumblety and the American Press" board

. . . There is no biological explanation for crimes of this sort. It's a false god. Any anthropologist or socio-biologist worth his or her salt would dismantle this tripe in a few well-crafted paragraphs. . . . I am convinced that serial murder, in particular, is very much a crime of social identity. . . . I dont' suspect you'll be believing me anytime soon, but I warn you that you are analyzing a facade. Behind [Tumblety's] facade is a poorly educated Irish immigrant who used the techniques of other quack doctors as his own; who was not particularly compentent, nor original, and who abused and manipulated young men in order to run his business. He's a poor man's version of Neill Cream. They guy is, in fact, a very ordinary and in some ways grotesquely incompetent bloke who made most of his money in the 1850s and had a good banker (Henry Clews) who kept him wealthy on Wall Street. AP posts a few advertisements from S.F. from 1870, but he misses the point. San Fran had twelve or fifteen newspapers and advertising was exceedingly cheap. Tumblety flooded the press with his ads to give himself a facade of success. In fact, his herb shop was not particuarly successful and he left town within a few months under a cloud of failure and suspicion. And how in the heck is this event releveant to the fact that the most imporant and arguably best officer in 1880s Scotland Yard (John Littlechild) calling him a 'very likely' suspect 18 years later? No one has a credible explanation for that. No one. Norder, Vanderlinden, Begg, and now A.P. Wolf, bless 'em, aren't really thinking very clearly. They're still looking for that non-descript local chap suffering from lustmord, and all they're seeing is a bombastic and fantastical quack. No one wonder they dont' take Littlechild seriously.

I'd like to ask RJ how he thinks Tumblety accumulated the $138,000 in cash with Clew and Co. that was reported (http://www.casebook.org/press_reports/new_york_times/nyt19030626.html) after his death if he really was a "a very ordinary and in some ways grotesquely incompetent bloke"?

We may not get to the bottom of the mystery of either the Whitechapel murders or of Francis Tumblety but it's useful, I believe, to keep gathering data to get a truer picture of both. We may never know the truth, but perhaps we might gain a sliver of the truth, just like that sliver of light shining through the crack in Mary Jane Kelly's door seen in the MJK2 photograph.

All the best

Chris

Joe Chetcuti

07-21-2007, 02:19 PM

Two men were arrested on January 3rd by the Chief of Police in Erie County, NY. The two men gave the names Frank Townsend and Michael Sullivan. These of course were alias names of Dr. Tumblety.

The doctor was reported to have been living under the alias name "Smith" from January 19-28 at 204 Washington Street in Brooklyn. Simon Wood found a news article that reported he began living there around December 3, 1888. Tumblety's interview with the NY World was printed on January 29th. The doctor published the first edition to his 1889 autobiography approximately in April.

He was arrested for assaulting a man named George Davis on June 4th. His banker, Henry Clews, posted $300 bail for Tumblety. Roger said that the attorney who represented Tumblety in this case was a Congressman named John R. Fellows. He was a well-known figure who held the position of Assistant District Attorney in the 1888-1890 period. Fellows had been a Colonel in the Confederate Army.

In August, the doctor was riding on the Brooklyn Bridge and handing out an ad for the book he published. Another edition of this book came out during the autumn. This edition included Tumblety's "wall of chalk" reference as well as his Bright's Disease talk.

Joe Chetcuti

07-21-2007, 02:50 PM

I understand your comments, Chris. It's true that RJ and I take different paths in our research, but we both know that our paths are heading in the same direction. Nobody respects RJ and his words more than I do, and we respect each other's different view points as well.

JM, you've compiled a good assortment of material in your Tumblety/Civil War study. I thought this was a good time to bring up John R. Fellows. I thought of this Confederate Colonel the moment you posted your research this week. Good job, and we look forward to hearing more about your research.

Joe Chetcuti

07-31-2007, 05:45 PM

1890

I have him in Hot Springs, Arkansas on February 26th. He was arrested for suspicious acts in Washington DC on Nov 17th while hanging out near the corner of 9th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue. (This was just two blocks away from his old office.) A judge dismissed the charges against him the next day.

1891

He is victimized by thieves at the Plateau Hotel in Hot Springs on April 17th. $2,000 in cash plus diamonds valued over $5,000 were said to have been taken from him. The April 19th Arkansas Gazette reported that "valuable papers" were stolen from him as well during this crime. Billy Pinkerton was called in from Chicago to investigate the Plateau Hotel burglary which victimized other hotel guests, too.

He toured Richfield Springs, NY and Long Branch, NJ in the summer. In July, Tumblety was involved in the Samuel Sickerman matter. Robert and A.P. posted information about this on another Jtrforums thread. Sickerman was a 19 year old jailed stowaway who Tumblety tried to make friends with. The NY Herald reported on July 21st that Tumblety was living at 109 East Ninth Street.

An article was found by A.P. that placed the doctor in Bar Harbor, Maine in late Aug 1891. Tim Riordan reported that Tumblety made a donation to the St. Joseph's Infirmary while he stayed in Hot Springs late in the year.

1892-93

In January 1892, he mailed a letter to the NY Herald from Baltimore, Maryland. On May 29, 1892 the NY Herald announced that it intended to create a charity called the Ice Fund. Tumblety donated to this fund in 1892 and 1893. He had another edition of his autobiography printed up during 1893. He ended his book by poetically cheering the victory of the Irish Brigade over the English forces in the Battle of Fontenoy.

1894-97

The cupboard is bare during these years as well. It has been written that during his elder years, he spent time with his niece in Rochester. He would spend his winters in the south.

1898-1900

On Feb 14, 1898 his older brother Lawrence died. He was buried in the Tumblety family grave in Rochester. On Dec 27, 1899 the doctor was staying at 412 Central Avenue in Hot Springs. From there he mailed a letter to Viscount Galway in London. Tumblety included a NY Herald article with his letter that expressed the support of the American people to England during the Boer War. Robert dug this info up.

Tim reported that from Sept 1898 to Sept 2000 an attorney named Robert Simpson helped Tumblety write his final book while in Baltimore. (Reminiscences of a Famous Physician) The United States Engraving Company did a lousy job of printing the book and Tumblety won a judgment against the company around late 1900.

1901-02

He became an official resident of Baltimore in 1901. Tim did a good job of tracing him during these years. On December 20, 1901 he left Baltimore and headed for New Orleans, and he remained there through March 1902.

He was back in Washington in April and by the end of May he was at his lawyer's office in Baltimore. In July he headed for Saratoga Springs. He returned to Baltimore and stayed there from Sept until at least Oct 18, 1902.

Natalie Severn

07-31-2007, 06:44 PM

Terrific info Joe.Must catch up with it all at the weekend!
Natalie

Joe Chetcuti

08-13-2007, 04:14 PM

1903

On April 26th, Tumblety registered into St. Johns Hospital in St. Louis as Frank Townsend. His final will and testament shows a date of May 16, 1903. He left the following:

* $10,000 to his sister Mrs. Jane Hayes of Vallejo, California.

* $10,000 to his niece Mrs. Thomas Brady of Liverpool, England.

* $10,000 to Mrs. Mary Fitzsimmons of Plymouth Avenue, Rochester.

* $10,000 to Cardinal Gibbons of Baltimore.

* $10,000 to John Ireland, Archbishop of St. Paul, Minnesota.

* $5,000 to his niece Mrs. Barrett of Gibbs Street, Rochester.

* $5,000 to his niece Mrs. Jane Moore of Gibbs Street, Rochester.

* $5,000 to his former coachman Mark A. Blackburn.

On May 24th Tumblety forbade the hospital staff to follow him on a long walk in St. Louis. He collapsed on the steps of the hospital upon his return.

After the doctor died on May 28th, the Sisters of Mercy applied a charge of $432 against Tumblety's estate to compensate for their care. The possessions that Tumblety brought with him to St. Johns Hospital included a $1,000 railroad bond, a diamond cluster ring valued $75, a five-diamond ring valued $60, a gold pocket watch, and two imitation rings valued $3.

The May 29th Decatur Herald claimed that Tumblety died friendless. On the next day, the Newark Advocate reported that no relative nor friend was with him when he died. Tumblety refused to speak of his life and he apparently died of some heart condition.

The body was transported and buried in Rochester's Holy Sepulcher Cemetery in a family grave. Tumblety was buried along side his parents and his brother Lawrence.

Though he bequeathed away $55,000 of his estate in his May 16th will, there was still a ton of money left in his account with the Henry Clews & Co banking house.

1905

The St. Louis Probate Court was in charge of the matter. In March, Mr. Joseph R. Kemp was in possession of a will that Tumblety was said to have written in Baltimore on Oct 3, 1901. In it, he left all of his jewelry and $1,000 to the Home for Fallen Women. This will was later disregarded by the Probate Court.

On June 23rd, attorney George B. Draper requested the Probate Court to set aside Tumblety's will because the doctor's Rochester heirs thought the distribution of the estate was insufficient. They sought to attain over $100,000 more that the Henry Clews firm was holding. The request was sustained.

1908

The St. Louis Probate finally ended.

Joe Chetcuti

08-14-2007, 09:01 PM

Joe Chetcuti

08-14-2007, 09:13 PM

St. Louis

Lindell Hotel

Philadelphia

Girard Hotel

Hot Springs, Arkansas

Plateau Hotel

St. Johns, New Brunswick

Estey's American House

San Francisco

The Occidental Hotel

Boston

The Parker House (on Tremont Street.)

New Orleans

City Hotel

Birmingham, England

Midland Hotel

London, England

Langham Hotel

Washington DC

The Kirkwood House
Brown's Hotel
Willard's Hotel
Myer's Hotel

New York City

Fifth Avenue Hotel
Possibly the Cornish Arms on West Street
Northern Hotel on Courtland Street

A.P. Wolf

12-09-2007, 05:38 PM

Joe, this might expand the Viscount Galway connection:

'Assorted papers including telegrams concerning America's interest in the war 1899 (Ga C 11/1 and 3); note written by Lord Galway in support of Field Marshal Lord Robert (Ga C 11/2); letter from Francis Tumblety in relation to the interest of the American people in the South African war, includes a newspaper clipping from the New York Herald (23 December 1899) entitled Noted Peers of England who want to go to War (Ga C 11/4); family tree type diagram from the Illustrated Mail, 30 December 1899 entitled The Greatest Army the Empire has ever put in the Field (Ga C 11/5); '

Joe Chetcuti

12-11-2007, 04:34 PM

Hello A.P.

Robert Linford once posted some good info about this on the Casebook. You'd have to go back to Nov 19, 2005 in the archives. This is what Tumblety wrote to the Viscount:

412 Central Ave,
Hot Springs,
Arkansas,
Dec. 27th 1899.

Viscount Galway,
London. England.

I have taken the liberty of enclosing a portion of the New York Herald of Dec. 23rd, which I think indicates the intense interest the people of the United States take in the South African war.

In expressing the hope that the British may soon triumph, and in assuring your Grace of cordial good will in your new career, I voice the sentiment of the vast majority of people in this country, who are heart & soul with their kith and kin across the sea, in this war.

Respectfully
Francis Tumblety M.D.

Before folks proclaim Tumblety to have been "pro-English" it's best to read page 13 of Tumblety's 1872 autobiography. It was here where he spoke of the American Civil War:

"...my feeling and sympathy has ever been with the Union and the Constitution..."

The doctor's "pro-North" statement is placed into perspective when one reviews the NARA document that accused him of selling phony military discharge papers to Union soldiers during that war. Research into this matter showed that those accusations were highly likely to have been truthful. Tumblety's actions and his written words usually don't mingle well.

A.P. Wolf

12-11-2007, 05:14 PM

And that is Joe where we will always disagree, for I have yet to see one single charge levelled against Tumblety to have any basis in truth or fact.
He sold horse shit, and a lot of folks still buy it.

Joe Chetcuti

12-11-2007, 06:31 PM

And a Merry Christmas to you too, A.P.

Now run along over to the Casebook. After all, I shouldn't be the only one who deserves to be honored with your pearls of wisdom.

R.J.Palmer

12-11-2007, 08:36 PM

He sold horse shit...

I wouldn’t care to get into an argument with you about horse shit, A.P., as you surely must be considered a high-ranking financier in that commodity.

The trouble with selling 'horse shit,' as an alibi for an alleged murderer is that Neville Heath, Henri Landru, Dr. Petiot, Peter Kurten, etc. etc. ad infinitum all sold horse shit. I’d almost go as far as to say that it was a prerequisite.

Alas, ever since Krafft-Ebing, Alfred Hitchcock, Robert Ressler, 'Jack the Myth,' 'Psycho,' 'Silence of the Lambs,' etc. etc. the so-called “serial killer” has been portrayed over and over again as a twenty-something white male in the suburbs (usually suffering from lustmord) until it has become a sort of cultural icon. I’ve never really seen any insight in this portrayal; it’s a cliché.

Look what Hitchcock did to Ed Gein, for instance. Gein was a withered up old man, but Hitchcock portrays him as a young, brooding Tony Perkins. Almost a figure out of Wuthering Heights. Now, indeed, that image has become self-fulfilling, and we have disenfranchised twenty-somethings all over America and Northern Europe emulating it: Dahmer, Berkowitz, Ramirez, etc. On the other hand, the idea of a homosexual dandy in his late 50s who was actually discussed and interviewed in the press, flies so much in the face of the Jack the Ripper ‘myth,’ that few can even begin to imagine it---even when a Chief Inspector states that he was ‘very likely.’ It is extraordinary. Surely it says something very profound about the power of psycho-babble to effect the public’ consciousness.

Tumblety couldn’t be the Ripper? I’m of the opinion that that is an exceedingly naive conclusion, and I’d tend to put more weight in Littlechild’s opinion than in a whole seminar of modern ‘profilers’ and ‘Ripperologists.’ I’ve never particularly had any aversion to the Ripper being a ‘ridiculous’ suspect. There is some aspect of serial-murder, it seems to me, that is trite, melodramatic, incompetent, and ‘ridiculous.’ Neil Cream, Petiot, Neville Heath--they were all over-the-top cartoon characters. Then, sometime in the 1970s the whole “serial killer” cult kicked into full-gear. Now we’re plagued by Dahmers and Bundys. But clearly this is something else happening; they’re merely assuming a culturally created ‘image.’ If you’re a failure and can’t do anything else, the ‘serial killer’ is something to ‘be.’ It’s as if Dr. Frankenstein helped create a monster and now he doesn’t recognize it as his own creation, and even promotes it in scientific journals as a “natural born killer. “ Humbug.

A.P. Wolf

12-12-2007, 12:13 PM

Ah, RJP, what a wonderful tale you weave to put a few simple truths in the cupboard.
I remember when I first contributed to the boards on Tumblety, and at that time the claims flying out from your camp were as wild and wobbly as a shot turkey; and it was a wonder that such marvelous bird had ever left the ground.
According to that dropped bird, Tumblety was a:
Convicted murderer.
Established abortionist.
Hater of women.
Collector of uteri.
Implicated in the Lincoln assassination.
Peddlar of pornography.

But when the facts were examined, he was in fact none of those things.
As the fat bird dropped from the sky the claims were that he had been arrested for the Whitechapel Murders; and that a Scotland Yard detective had pursued him across the ocean to New York.
There is not a single scrap of evidence to support either of those wild claims.

Claims are also made that Tumblety lodged in Whitechapel, very close to some of the murder sites.
Not a bit of it, that is unless they moved Cavendish Square there for a while in 1888.

Your efforts to equate this sad litany of badly researched and often rehashed 'facts' concerning Tumblety to a fair and reasonable portrait of a serial killer at work in the LVP is hysterically amusing.
Just like your much trumpeted world exclusive interview with Tumblety, which I posted some time before you.
The squib is damp, I fear, RJP, and will not take flame.

jmenges

12-12-2007, 04:15 PM

According to that dropped bird, Tumblety was a:
Convicted murderer.
Established abortionist.
Hater of women.
Collector of uteri.
Implicated in the Lincoln assassination.
Peddlar of pornography.

But when the facts were examined, he was in fact none of those things.

He was implicated in the Yellow Fever plot, not the Lincoln assassination. Is this what you mean by "none of these things" ? Or do you dispute this too?

JM

R.J.Palmer

12-12-2007, 04:25 PM

My Dear Moderators- It would be interesting to know how many lies one man is allowed in a single post before he is cautioned (?)

Or do we make special concessions for A.P., sort of like a Court Jester in Elizabethan times, whose wild talk is allowed to go unfettered?

I count nine falsehoods in the above post by A.P. Wolf, including 5 that he must be committing knowingly.

I don’t intend to reply further, and I admonish myself for being so stupid as to respond to a man who is increasingly irrational, (my fault) but if I recall the conversations A.P. Wolf is referrring to ---and I believe I do--- my recollection is that over a span of several weeks he placed on the internet such remarkable insights as:

1) The Littlechild Letter was a forgery.
2) Scotland Yard accompanied Tumblety to the docks at Liverpool and set him on a steamer
3) Inspector Andrews spent 3 weeks in America working the Roland Barnett case for the Canadian governement.
4) That a man could be easily extradited for gross indecency from the U.S. in 1888;
5)That a man couldn’t be extradited from Canada to England for gross indecency in 1888;
6) That gross indecency meant a life sentence in 1888;
7) That Tumblety was not aboard Le Bretagne when it left Le Havre in November, 1888;
8) That Tumblety was in police custody between 7 November and 16 November, 1888 and that police bail was a fantasy.
9) That Tumblety was born in 1820;
10) that the ‘Ripper Authors of the 90s” (meaning Stewart Evans and Paul Gainey) knowingly committed fraud and deception.
11) That ‘female pills’ was not a code word for abortion medication in the 19th Century
12) That Harry Thaw was a nice young man wrongfully accused by his contemporaries
13) That he (AP Wolf) had specific information that Tumblety theorists (a secret cabal, I am told) have a copy of Tumblety’s birth certificate but are “keeping it” from the public!!

I could go on, but why bother?? [**Note to the uninitiated: every one of the above statements is false]

In regards to the last point alone, I believe it was Alan Sharpe that pointed out that the Irish didn’t even begin a civil registry until many years after 1820, and even the most cursory examination of census reports shows that Tumblety was born 1830/1831. This alone demonstrates that A.P. Wolf’s bizarre insinuation was a deliberate fabrication, with unclear, but clearly dishonest motivations. .

In fact, nearly nothing A.P. Wolf has written in his many diatribes even remotely resembles reality, and is curiously noteworthy for its lack of basic insight. I find this particularly disappointing for APW is undeniably capable of insight and creative thought. Alas, the air is thin when one is standing on a soap-box, and breathing becomes a little more shallow when one is whipping around a cardboard dagger.

Insight and proper interpretation is everything.

My friend AP now informs the public that Tumblety was not held in connection with the Lincoln assassination. That would make several documents in the United States National Archives forgeries. But of course, in AP’s strange world, suspicious documents are real; documents that have never existed are being withheld from the public; and real documents don’t exist.

Roll over, Stephen Knight, and tell Don McCormick the news.

Finally, I have never released my opinions about Tumblety to the public, and I belong to no ‘cabal.’ I merely tend to hold more faith in the opinions of a Chief Inspector who was actually there than I do in a brandy drinker or a few armchair "profilers" who have watched a little too much CSI: Miami or the latest shockumentary featuring John Douglas.

Adieu.

A.P. Wolf

12-12-2007, 05:13 PM

Nicely summed up, RJP, my congratulations to you.
If you are going away, be sure to take an umbrella, to save you being knocked out by a cat or dog.

Joe Chetcuti

12-12-2007, 07:46 PM

Roger,

I don't go to movie shows, nor do I rent videos from the store. (I doubt if I'd have much in common with anything that comes out of Hollywood anyway.) But this month I may rent "Silence of the Lambs" and watch it for the first time.

I'd only be doing this to find out the reason why you've always hated that flick!!

I get the feeling though that you don't hate the movie's contents, but rather you hate how certain parts of the Ripper World have duped itself into thinking that films like this provide us with the proper format to unlock the Whitechapel Mysteries. I'll just have to watch the movie and see for myself.

But maybe you can give me a hint...will watching this film make me mindful of the old Steve Martin joke?

"People take just enough psychology courses in college to screw themselves up for the rest of their lives."

How Brown

12-13-2007, 06:27 AM

Dear Joltin' Joe:

" But this month I may rent "Silence of the Lambs" and watch it for the first time...."

Since we are buddies,I suppose you won't mind me revealing the end of the movie to you...being a buddy that is...and saving you a kupla-three fifty on the rental from Ballbuster Video

Jodie Foster runs off with Ted Levine,the perpetrator in the ending and they raise butterflys in Malta...constantly on the dodge from da Man. I gave it a one and tree-quarters thumbs up.

Lets fight nice comrades. Muchisimas gracias...

R.J.Palmer

12-13-2007, 01:15 PM

Howard -- I’d gladly fight nice, or, preferably, not at all. Unfortunately, though I rather like APW, or at least some aspects of him, I had him pegged a long time ago, and, rather childishly, I like to rattle his cage about it.

My friend AP's achilles heel is that he loves playing the naughty school-boy far too much. It’s what prevents him from going any further than he ever goes, and prevents me from taking him entirely seriously. He’d rather give the wrong answer and shock his classmates, than sit quietly, thoughtfully, and actually solve the puzzle at hand.

AP’s noticed something important: Tumblety is a sham. Unfortunately, once AP’s made that discovery, he stopped thinking and instead ran over and pulled the fire alarm. Rush to the streets! We’re being bilked!

Tumblety is a sham. Yup. I absolutely agree. And so was Neville Heath, and precisely for the same reason.

Personally, I think ‘Ripperologists’ have done a poor job with this fellow; but its understandable, I suppose-- he’s a bewildering image.

At the risk of sounding arrogant I think I am well informed about Littlechild, and I think I can make a solid, scholarly argument that he was the best detective and perhaps the most important figure in Scotland Yard during the 1870s and 1880s, with perhaps the lone exception of Williamson. I also think it’s a bad argument that Littlechild wasn’t ‘involved’ in the investigation, because there are several credible, independent sources that suggest he was; regardless, his office is just up the hall from Swanson’s and they were working together in November, 1888.

But you see, AP's already picking up his spoon, ready to fling peas....

If Littlechild suspected him, he had good reason. Further, it’s erroneous to think, as some do, that Abberline somehow ‘debunks’ the Tumblety theory. Nothing could be further from the truth. Abberline in 1903, caught in the moment of the Klosowski trial, is momentarily wowed by Severin K. Who wouldn’t be? Here’s a murdering barber who lived in the East End. But it is significant that Abberline doesn’t have Klosowski stand naked and alone. He wraps him in the cloak of the American doctor theory. Abberline, mind you. There hangs a tale...

You see, regardless of my opinons about the case, I think I have a good talent for putting myself in the other guy’s shoes, and for fathoming different scenerios. Ripperologists, as a group, are too confident and too narrow-minded.

I think I can “see” how the Druitt theory might “work.” It doesn’t work for me, but I can ‘see’ it, and understand why others do. Ditto for Cutbush. Ditto for Kosminski. Ditto even for D’Onston Stephenson, and yes, even though Cremers is a dotty woman, and it mainly looks like claptrap. Why this generosity on my part? Because reality is complex, and I don't trust appearances and easy answers.

The trouble with AP’s take on Tumblety is that he can’t “see” how it might “work.” That's all it really boils down to. He has crossed his arms, stopped thinking, and refuses to even nibble at the peas.

Fundamentally, what’s holding him back is a lack of imagination, coupled with not having done the necessary background & empircal research.

I’d say Tumblety is a rather good suspect, but he flies too much in the face of the popular image of the 20-something sexual maniac that has been reified in the media for the past 20 years.

How Brown

12-13-2007, 02:42 PM

Nicely put,Rajah...and much appreciated.

Back to the thread,comrades !:nod:

A.P. Wolf

12-13-2007, 02:46 PM

JM
you obviously mean that other case where he was acquitted?

'
San Francisco Examiner
California, U.S.A.
27 November 1888
MORE ABOUT TUMBLETY.
A Man Who Says He Was a Clever, Harmless Quack.
Some additional facts about "Dr." Tumblety, the Whitechapel suspect, are given by a man who knew him in Canada and the East. Tumblety, he says, had an office in Toronto in 1858. In the autumn of that year he went to Buffalo, N.Y., and attracted the notice of the public by giving 1,000 pounds of flour to the poor. His eccentricities were so pronounced that he was once "frozen out" of a hotel in Toronto in which he had engaged rooms.
Tumblety dressed peculiarly and did eccentric things in order to advertise himself cheaply. In 1860 he had an office on Broadway, New York, near the St. Nicholas Hotel, where he treated patients and made his Indian herb medicine. He charged enormous fees and made a large fortune. Tumblety gained a great reputation by his trick of telling what ailed a patient, and how he felt without asking a question. Still Tumblety knew nothing of medicine or surgery, but was a clever quack. He used to ride a little piebald horse up and down Broadway, and a servant in livery, leading a couple of greyhounds, always followed him.
During the civil war Tumblety was arrested as an accomplice of Dr. Robinson for taking clothes infected with yellow fever germs into New York city, but was acquitted.
Tumblety, or rather Sullivan, for that is his real name, always wore large diamonds and dressed in the hight (sic) of fashion. The person giving this information says that Tumblety never used surgical instruments. The "doctor" was generous and far from cruel in the old days. For these reasons he does not think it possible that Tumblety is in any way connected with the murders in Whitechapel. '

Like many here, I believe you suffer from the illusion that a man acquitted of a crime is then guilty of that crime.

RJP, I like your conchos here, and will adjust my attitude accordingly, however I should like to point out to you that the entire body of 'evidence' in regard to Tumblety - whether you propose him as a genuine suspect in the Whitechapel Murders, or whether I attempt to depose him as such - is entirely based on secondary source material in the form of contemporary news reports... and that has been true now for twenty years or more.
There remains not a shred of original material, from a primary source, to show that Tumblety was in any manner or form connected to the Whitechapel Murders.
This is what disturbs me, not his age, not his profile, not his manner... but the simple fact that there is no evidence whatsoever, apart from the scanty recollection of a retired police officer who had no connection to the case any way.
You call it a 'beef'.
I'd call it a turkey.
Neither will fly.

R.J.Palmer

12-13-2007, 03:18 PM

AP -- Yes, it's quite troubling; the suspect files have gone missing and we have to recreate the case against any number of suspects (Druitt, Cutbush, Kosminski, Tumblety, etc.) out of utterly unreliable secondary source materials, inept and deceptive press reports, and the memories and ravings of retired cops. But then, that's why we love it so much, no?

Chris G.

12-13-2007, 03:34 PM

A.P. Wolf

12-13-2007, 07:07 PM

Come, RJP, we have clear documentary evidence from the period we discuss where suspects like Cutbush have police, court, asylum and other primary source material, connecting them to the investigation into the Whitechapel Murders, whereas Tumblety has a partridge in a pear tree.

Joe Chetcuti

12-13-2007, 10:44 PM

Come on JM, you should have known that when Pinkerton said Tumblety was driven out of Chicago in 1869 due to his immoral lifestyle, why that was just mere speculation. And the same goes for those phony indecent assault charges that the mean English authorities levied against the virgin doctor in Nov 1888.

And when Tumblety was fined in Toronto for practising medicine without a license, we all can see that the Police Magistrate had "no basis" to do such a thing. After all, the doctor had a fully legitimate medical diploma from Philadelphia in his possession. (He also had a medical diploma from Paris, but unfortunately he left that behind in his Montreal office.) And we all know that the doctor's integrity cannot be questioned, especially since the French bestowed upon him the Brittany Cross for his services in the Franco-Prussian War. Tumblety probably kept the Cross right next to the bonafide letters that he claimed were written by Abraham Lincoln and Robert E. Lee.

And of course the St. John's Coroner's Jury was just wasting its time bringing manslaughter charges against Tumblety for the death of James Portmore. The innocent doctor would have bravely faced those ludicrous charges if he wasn't so busy hopping across the border.

And certainly every single civil lawsuit in which Tumblety lost can only be characterized as a flagrant miscarriage of justice. And any child can tell you that the NARA in Washington DC is only interested in preserving documents which speak of "false" accusations such as the contents of the Tumblety File in the Lafayette C. Baker papers.

So you see JM, our buddy A.P. Wolf as finally made me see the light with this Ripper suspect. Well done A.P., yes well done. You have totally converted me. Your job has been fully completed over here. So once again, will you now please head on over to the Casebook message boards and spread your holiday cheer in the Tumblety threads over there?

Why I bet you can make new friends on those threads faster than William Stead can turn the handle of a 13 year old girl's bedroom door.

A.P. Wolf

12-14-2007, 03:21 AM

Wassup, Joe?
Too many ale pies, and then misplaced your slouch hat?
Go to jail then, do not pass 'Go' and do not collect £200.

It must have slipped your memory that the Grand Jury cleared Tumblety of all and any charges he faced whilst in Canada.
As regards Tumblety's poetry the volume he published in 1889 appears to have been held in high regard by the American press.
Dress this turkey up however you will, Joe, but it ain't ever going to fly.
The general consensus of the American press - and American people for that matter - at the time was that Tumblety had implicated himself in the Whitechapel Murders for the publicity value.

The facts of the matter are that Tumblety was discharged through a lack of evidence in the Whitechapel Murder case, but then rearrested for another unrelated offence.

Joe Chetcuti

12-15-2007, 05:20 PM

The Grand Jury Cleared Tumblety??

Morning Freeman
New Brunswick, Canada
September 29, 1860

The coroner addressed the Jury at some length. The Jury, after deliberating for thirty or forty minutes, found a verdict of manslaughter against Dr. Tumblety.

Morning Freeman
October 16, 1860

It is said that (Tumblety) will return as soon as the Criminal Court opens, in order to stand his trial, and (if) he does not come sooner, he understands that the offence of which he stands charged is not bailable.

Alright, after reading those two news bites above, it's pretty clear that charges were brought against Tumblety for Portmore's death. As for A.P. Wolf's statement that a Grand Jury cleared Tumblety of all and any charges he faced whilst in Canada, we now can briefly go over the publicly known paperwork on this matter:

(1) Evening Star
November 27, 1888

"...by the time the jury had thoroughly sifted all the evidence and proved that the "doctor" was guilty of manslaughter, (Tumblety) had fled to Boston. For some unknown reason he was never pursued."

(2) A letter from the Deputy Minister of Ottawa, H.M. Smith, was written on Dec 1, 1888. I've read it a hundred times. I still haven't come across the part that said Tumblety was cleared of all the charges in the Portmore case by a Grand Jury.

(3) In 1990, Daniel F. Johnson published a report on the Portmore matter. If you were to search through Johnson's report in the hopes of finding a reference to how a Grand Jury cleared Tumblety of these manslaughter charges, you'd come up empty.

On the "Tumblety in the American Press" thread on the Jtrforums, A.P. correctly typed that the verdict of manslaughter was never finally prosecuted to Tumblety. I agree with this. The case wasn't prosecuted because the defendant skipped across the border and never returned to St. Johns. But as for a Grand Jury clearing Tumblety of these manslaughter charges, that is a new one on me. So really this isn't a matter of "forgetfulness" on my part as suggested by A.P. It's just that I haven't read anything that substantiates this claim of his that Tumblety was cleared by a Grand Jury.

A.P. Wolf

12-15-2007, 06:57 PM

I'll take it that you agree then, Joe, that Tumblety was buried without a single criminal conviction against his name.
For that is a very simple little truth that many seem to struggle with.

Joe Chetcuti

12-15-2007, 07:39 PM

It was alleged that Tumblety served a jail sentence in the Tombs prison for distributing obscene poetry and he did time in the Ludlow Street jail for refusing to a pay a debt. So I can't agree with you A.P.

I'd say he was buried with criminal convictions to his name.

We could have added two more convictions to his record: The indecent assault charge in London in Nov 1888 and the manslaughter charge in St. Johns in 1860. But Tumblety avoided a conviction each time by fleeing the country and traveling to the United States.

The time has now come for me to start enjoying the Christmas season. I'll catch up with all of you guys after Dec 25th.

How Brown

12-15-2007, 09:41 PM

Best wishes to you Joe...Maribel...and Mom Chetcuti.

Have a great holiday !!!

The Forums:drum:

R.J.Palmer

12-16-2007, 09:49 PM

"we have clear documentary evidence from the period we discuss where suspects like Cutbush have police, court, asylum and other primary source material, connecting them to the investigation into the Whitechapel Murders...

Hmmm.....

AP, I read Jack the Myth two or three times. I found it entertaining, and kudos to you for reprinting it.

Unfortunately, there were no court records included in your book connecting Cutbush to the Whitechapel murders. Not one. There were no asylum records either. As for 'other primary source material,' there was only one single, solitary document: Macnaghten's memo, and this clearly implied that Cutbush wasn't investigated until 1891, and it further states (in no uncertain terms) that the police found nothing to connect him to the events of 1888. One document, and a negative result. Thus, I find your comment to be wishful and boastful.

In fact, I think it is fair to say, especially considering your attitude, that 99% of your case was based soley on a series of newspaper articles written 5 years and 3 months after the murder of Mary Kelly, and evidently not repeated or supported by any other investigative journalist. The police discounted it, and very little of the material can be confirmed by other source material.

I reprinted The Times court reports for Cutbush on Stephen Ryder's site some years ago. They did not mention the Ripper murders. They mentioned Cutbush inflicting rather superficial wounds on two ladies in 1891. Not one peep about 1888, so unless you have other court records at your disposal that you haven't published, I don't see where your claim stands up to scrutiny; it's based on The Sun's unconfirmed newspaper reports of 1894. And if the prosecution really believed he was the Ripper, what a remarkable fact it is that they never said so in those court reports in The Times in 1891.

I repeat that there is much about you I like, AP, but you do seem to get your jollies by making incoherent arguments. Above you state that Tumblety was, for a short time, living in Cavendish Square in 1875, and thus you imply that he couldn't have been in Whitechapel in 1888? Huh? Lay off the egg-nog, old boy. Druitt was in Winchester the same year, does that mean he wasn't in East London in 1888?

You also seem to enjoy, at various times, claiming people are withholding evidence or engaging in bad research. I notice that Martin Fido published the asylum records for David Cohen on the Casebook. Paul Begg published Aaron Kosminski's complete asylum records in his latest book. I haven't seen you do this for Cutbush, even though above you imply that these connect him 'to the investigation into the Whitechapel murders.' Oh really? Is that your claim? I would just as soon as get along with you, AP, and I suspect I will as soon as you start holding yourself to the standards you hold others.

I'm also afraid I have a more complex view of reality than you do, AP. I realize that newspaper reports can be highly misleading and inaccurate. That said, I also realize that that unfortunate fact doesn't often really tell us much, if anything, about what was going on behind the scenes. I also tend to place considerable weight in the private thoughts of police officials (Littlechild, Macnaghten, Swanson) rather than merely dismiss them because it is convenient for my own theory to do so. Why the hell wouldn't I? These are among the only peeks we get inside the key-hole. With Tumblety we have a Chief Inspector confirming that he was among the suspects in 1888, and a likely one; with Cutbush we have a Chief Constable stating he wasn't investigated until 18981, and the results were negative. I am not so foolish to think that that, in itself, tells me whether or not Cutbush was the Ripper, and you shouldn't be so foolish to think that inadequate source material about Tumblety, Druitt, Kosminski, or anyone else tells us all that much about was going on behind the scenes in 1888, especially when we have only a tiny fraction of the MEPO files. We are, afterall, talking about a series of murders that led to no convictions and where the perpetrator(s) was/were attempting to elude justice. Further, the police were very tight-lipped about their day-to-day investigations.

Good luck to you and yours.

RP

P.S. If the above looks like I'm knocking the Cutbush theory---I'm not. The whole point is that, in theory, a solid case can STILL be made against Cutbush, regardless of the inadequacy of the current source materials. The mistake AP Wolf makes is insisting that an incomplete and shoddy historical record translates into innocence. This, of course, is bollocks when one is talking about an unsolved crime, and when the vast majority of the MEPO files no longer exist.

How Brown

12-17-2007, 06:04 AM

Just a quick comment...

I see what R.J. means and I'm sure most others do too....in that we can attempt to present a case against a suspect based on certain points that may not be as effective as others yet unfound or unpursued. A "better" reason for a person's suspectworthiness than one currently held up to view.

Back to the thread.

Caroline Morris

12-17-2007, 12:08 PM

Hi RJ,

You wrote:

Then, sometime in the 1970s the whole “serial killer” cult kicked into full-gear. Now we’re plagued by Dahmers and Bundys. But clearly this is something else happening; they’re merely assuming a culturally created ‘image.’ If you’re a failure and can’t do anything else, the ‘serial killer’ is something to ‘be.’ It’s as if Dr. Frankenstein helped create a monster and now he doesn’t recognize it as his own creation, and even promotes it in scientific journals as a “natural born killer. “ Humbug.

I'm buggered if I know what makes someone wake up one morning and decide to start killing strangers. But you make it sound like it's a lifestyle choice for modern times, which could strike just about anybody as a not unattractive option. Just as teenagers today are not choosing to be gay, to follow some trend, but gay teenagers are finding it a tad easier to 'be' who they are, because society is gradually understanding more and being more receptive, I can't really see people choosing to be violent, just so they can 'be' something in today's world. I do see how a natural tendency to violence and cruelty would have more avenues to explore than in the LVP, but that's not what you appear to be saying. There are also plenty more ways to be good to your fellow man in the modern world, as we can communicate with so many more of them across the globe.

I agree that there is no physical or mental reason that we know of that would have prevented Tumblety from committing the Whitechapel murders if he felt that way inclined. But equally, we can't say that Littlechild would have known of any physical or mental reason that made him a 'very likely' suspect compared with all the others.

Assuming Littlechild had no direct evidence to link this man physically with one or more of the crime scenes, wasn't he doing little more than an 1888 profiling job on the quack doc, and singling him out because he believed he had the opportunity (ie that he was in roughly the right place at the right time) and he considered him to have been (sexually) 'abnormal' in precisely the way he presumed the ripper must have been?

Colin Stagg is currently paying rather a high price for being someone's 'most likely' suspect.

Love,

Caz
X

R.J.Palmer

12-17-2007, 12:43 PM

I see what R.J. means and I'm sure most others do too....in that we can attempt to present a case against a suspect based on certain points that may not be as effective as others yet unfound or unpursued....

And Robert Linford is doing just that with Cutbush.

The piece he found in LLoyd's Weekly News --dating nearly three years before the sensational 'Sun' exposure---is nothing short of remarkable, and gives a much more detailed description of the suspicions against Cutbush. In fact, it's pretty obvious that the Sun 'exposure' that raised so much heck in 1894 was based largely on this earlier piece.

It also gives, for the first time that I am aware, an actual claim outside the Macnaghten memo, that the 1891 police investigated THC for the 1888 murders.

“For it is idle to deny that, in certain police circles, and among those who have had to inquire into the Brixton mystery, there is a growing feeling that it may in th end prove to be in some way connected with the darker and more tragic mysteries of the East-end.”

R.J.Palmer

12-17-2007, 12:59 PM

Caz - Homicide is a largely a cultural event, and anyone who says otherwise is on thin ice. That's why the homicide rates are enormously different from society to society.

If you want to believe that mass murder or 'serial murder' is a natural 'biological state,' than I'm going to have to disagree with you. Show me the mass murderers among the aborgines in Australia.

The very fact that 'serial murder' was very rare and even non-existant in some societies, but an epidemic in modern America, demonstrates that it's largely a culturally created event.

Anyone who has lived in the U.S.A. in the past few years and has watched the rash of school and mall shootings must certainly realize that the disturbed young men who are committing these acts are copying one another and are operating with the full knowledge that they will be shown on CNN and NBC news before the day is out. Their 'manifestos' even refer to one another, and state openly that they were 'inspired' by the Columbine shootings.

I'm not saying that there are not genetic factors in abberant behavior; but how that abberant behavior manifests itself depends on the society. For an increasingly significant number of young men in America, being a mass murderer has become 'something to be' and 'something to emulate' because what is really driving them is their sense of social identity or lack thereof---not some mythical brain disease known as 'serial murder' or 'mass murder.'

As for Tumblety, you are assuming Littlechild is basing his opinion on a 'profile.' Could be, but there is no evidence of this. As a practical cop, I'd rather assume he was basing it on some circumstantial evidence.

R.J.Palmer

12-17-2007, 01:21 PM

Caz - I can see why you might wish to conclude that Littlechild is basing his opinion about Tumblety on a 'profile' or a psychological theory--it is the undeniable context of the Littlechild Letter; ie., he does bring up his suspect's name during what is obviously an on-going discussion with Sims about sexual insanity. Hence the mention of 'Dr. D' (Druitt) and the Harry Thaw case. So I can understand your concern. I can't accept that this is the only evidence, however, for it wouldn't explain why, in 1888, Tumblety became a suspect in the first place, unless you also want to argue that Swanson, Abberline, and associates were profiling homosexuals in the Autumn of 1888. There's the rub. It also seems doubtful to me, based on what I've read, that a Scotland Yard man would base a theory on nothing more than psychology. Their whole essence was trying to compile circumstantial/physical evidence against suspects.

Chris G.

12-22-2007, 09:27 AM

1913

Tumblety was named a likely suspect for the Whitechapel murders in the Sept 23rd Littlechild Letter.

Nov 1919 - Apr 1920

Sometime in this period "Canadian Magazine" printed an article called Recollections of a Police Magistrate. It spoke of Tumblety's troubles with the law in Toronto & Montreal in the late 1850's.

1959

The doctor was discussed in the book Web of Conspiracy. A news article was re-printed in that book from the May 9, 1865 Rochester Advertiser. It stated:

(Tumblety) was a tall dandified individual, sported a heavy cane, and was followed by a hound which bore in appearance the same relation to the canine race that his master did to the human.

1990

In March, Daniel Johnson wrote an article about Tumblety's involvement in James Portmore's death.

1995

The Littlechild Letter is publicly presented for the first time.

Hey Joe

I think you left something important out of your timeline, Matey.

What about the publication of the first major book on Francis Tumblety as a suspect in the Whitechapel murders, by Century Publishing in London (hardback), entitled The Lodger; The Arrest and Escape of Jack the Ripper by Stewart P. Evans and Paul Gainey, later republished in 1998 as Jack the Ripper: First American Serial Killer by Kodansha International in New York, Tokyo, and London (paperback).

Merry Christmas to you and yours, Joe.

Chris

Joe Chetcuti

12-22-2007, 04:44 PM

I promised my family "no more posts until after Christmas" but I need to straighten this out right now!

Hello Chris,

When I typed my 1995 message about the Littlechild Letter having been publicly presented, I was making reference to the 1995 publishing of The Lodger; The Arrest and Escape of Jack the Ripper. I probably should have clarified that, but I thought everyone knew what I was talking about.

But if there are folks out there who really didn't know what I was referring to, then I thank you Chris for calling it to my attention. Consider it fully explained now!

Actually this Timeline was written just to give us a general idea of the yearly whereabouts of Dr. Tumblety as best we know it. There was plenty of info that I did not include in it. The Timeline will drive you nuts if you try to read it all at once. It serves a more useful purpose as a reference guide in case you find new information about the Littlechild Suspect. For example, if you were to come across a report that Dr. Tumblety swindled a man in Missouri in 1882, then you can look into the Timeline and see that Tumblety was indeed in St.Louis during that year and this may lend more credibility to the report that you've just found.

Natalie Severn

01-02-2008, 05:31 AM

Hi Joe,
I would like to accept your kind invite to "hop on board" at this juncture!
Tumblety to my mind comes across mostly as a "dog who has been given a bad name"-by the police in particular, who mistrusted his panache, his sexual orientation and his success.
The first I heard of him was about him being a suspect in the assassination of Lincoln which was proven to be a whole load of BS, but since that time he was "on their books".....a marked man who was up before the beak at the drop of a hat-it may have started before that, but the fact they could really not make much stick seems to prove my point sufficiently----and AP"s.
I am curious though about his possible fenian sympathies and love of cash,because if they could have used him as some kind of gunrunner I am sure they would and Joe has unearthed some circumstantial evidence of that possibility.
The fact he was such a "show off" seems to diminish the likelihood of him being used by fenians or a branch of the secret service---say the illegal spy ring ,opposed by Monro and Anderson and which was run by Sir Edward Jenkinson.But I said "diminish" intentionally because that is, in my book, a possibility ie that Tumblety could have been answering to Jenkinson at some point in his career and supplying him with information on his Philadelphia comrades.This would,if discovered have gone into creating the massive mistrust Anderson, Monro and by default, Littlechild had of the extra curricular activities emanating from Dublin Castle...and which we KNOW they had.
And RJ! regarding your assertions about AP not being given to the same processes of knowledge acquisition as the school swat----well maybe AP got there without the pedantry! Maybe knowledge and the acquisition of it arrives via a variety of routes of which "intuition" and "freedom of exploration" may be key.
But Cheers RJ -I love your posts-as I do AP"s!
Natalie

A.P. Wolf

01-02-2008, 02:42 PM

I had lamb for dinner tonight, very nice too... I just hope RJP enjoyed eating his words for his own dinner, after Robert's find changed everything.

R.J.Palmer

01-02-2008, 02:59 PM

AP--Howdy, old friend. Hope Christmas found your stockings stuffed.

No, It didn't change everything, but it did make the case against Tommy Cutbush a tad more interesting. What it didn't change is the fact that you were guilty of doing what you blame others of doing...ie., making quite a lot of claims that don't seem to have any historical source. It's just that I think a bloke --if he's going to be combative-- really ought to start cleaning his own kitchen before pointing out his neighbor's...

And for starters, Robert's article clearly shows that Cutbush's lawyer didn't believe in his client's guilt. So, --just for the record-- how do you make that uncomfortable fact jive with your statement in Myth, where you claim that both the defense and the prosecution 'earnestly' believed that Cutbush was Jack the Ripper? There is no historical source whatsoever for that boast, not even the 1894 Sun articles...

Surely you wish to retract it?

Nats - I don't mind what AP's intuition tells him. I don't care if he thinks Tumblety isn't the Rippper--few people do. I'm only interested when he makes false statements. For instance, it's false to say that Tumblety was never convicted of any crime. He had a substantial criminal record, though, admittedly, his usual gambit was to flee the area. The 'no conviction' statement actually applies better to THC. Exactly what crimes did Cutbush commit before 1888? 1889? 1890? Even in 1891 he wasn't technically convicted of anything. The weakness of the Cutbush case has always been that there is nothing to connect him to the events of 1888.

Finally, I'm afraid I also find your take on Tumblety rather dangerous. You put considerable stock in the alleged 'Fenian' connection to the WM (as do I) but you dismiss the actual suspect of the man who surely must have known more about the Irish Nationalist than anyone (Littlechild). Can't seem to quite understand that one...

Cheers. And Happy New Years to you both

A.P. Wolf

01-02-2008, 03:24 PM

RJ, the only thing I ever retract is my telescope.

And your single point of dubious historical accuracy to Tumblety's involvement to the Whitechapel Murders is a letter, typed many years after the events of which we speak, by a private detective with absolutely no connection to the Whitechapel Murders of 1888.

Robert has discovered history here, and I do believe that is something quite rare in this strange game.
His remarkable discovery confirmation of my concerns expressed more than 15 years ago.

I have yet to comment on the content of Robert's find on Cutbush, but when I do I would suggest you find yourself an empty missile silo, get ear plugs and a lot of loud music.

Natalie Severn

01-02-2008, 05:50 PM

Hi RJ,
I dont dismiss Tumblety but neither do I rate him particularly as a possible JtR.This is perhaps because I see JtR as being more like a Thomas Cutbush, a knife wielding paranoid schizophrenic,who was to end his days in Broadmoor.
The fact that Tumblety died in his bed, at a good age ,with no record of homicidal violence as such, suggests to me that Tumblety was not JtR.
You compare his exhibitionism with that of Neville Heath but I see no similarity whatsoever.
Its perfectly true that Neville Heath enjoyed taking huge risks flying planes upside down etc during the 2nd World War ,but he also enjoyed visiting an Egyptian Brothel where,for a small sum of money, he could choose a young person,male or female, to beat to a pulp-which by all accounts he did,on several occasions.
His murders were the consequence of murderously sadistic sexual impulses,which went out of control, and when they caused death to the young women recipients,it didnt cause him to stop but seemed to have fed fed his sadistic urges.
This is not the sort of pattern of behaviour or criminally perverse sadism we hear from Tumblety"s liaisons with young men----or women. Yes he was on occasion allegedly abusive to several young men who speedily accepted hush money when it was offered.But thats rather a far cry from being the murderous mutilator who was the Whitechapel Murderer.
My fear is thatsome of these Victorian policemen like Macnaghten and Littlechild, appear to have been much fascinated and repelled by gay dandys such as Wilde and Tumblety -possibly Druitt,and not knowing quite what to make of them decided they needed to be locked up as dangerous and abnormal subversives,capable of a number of unexpected felonies in the sphere of sexual mania and "deviation".For Anderson the suspicious signals happened to be anything to do with the lower classes, Jews or masturbation and if all three happened to occur within the same individual at the same time,then his alarm bells were on highest alert until he hit on Kosminski and the Ripper case then became, for him at any rate, a " case closed" .
But despite all this I am intrigued by Tumblety.I believe he may have been involved in some way-----but I dont know how!
Best
Nats

NB---- additional point of information-which may be of interest:Patrick Sheridan-conspirator in Invincibles-Phoenix Park murders etc---was looking like turning informer in 1888 which would have helped Anderson/The Times etc over the Parnell libel case.Offered £20,000 so to do by The Times.
Interstingly the name Tumblety,which is or was very uncommon, has been traced to the area of "Roscommon" or possibly "Westmeath"
and the reason Sheridan was wanting the dough was because when he had fled from "British Justice" after the murders he had left his land in "Roscommon" and it had then been stolen from him.He needed the cash to go back "liberty guaranteed" and reclaim his land!
Now if Tumblety is linked to Roscommon we may have got a link
to the Fenians!

Joe Chetcuti

01-02-2008, 08:59 PM

Hello Natalie,

I just read your remark on post #71 about whether there is some circumstantial evidence that connects Tumblety with the Fenians.

It's funny, but a couple of months ago, Spiro and I were privately discussing this topic. I still have my old e-mail I sent to Spiro. Here it is...

Be it Fenians, Confederates, the Irish National Party or whoever, if you're going to conduct business with Tumblety, then the job would probably have been of an underhanded nature. I doubt if there would have been much of a paper trail left behind that would link a major entity with this scoundrel. The Fenians were really a clandestine bunch to begin with.

But if you look at Tumblety's movements, there is a Fenian military theme that shadows him. The doctor was witnessed to have ridden into Fort Corcoran in 1861 and to have mingled with the Irish regiment there. The commander of the fort, Michael Corcoran, was one of the founding fathers of the Fenian Brotherhood. Future Fenian President, John Savage, was Corcoran's honored guest at the fort. In May-June 1870, President Savage was in San Francisco collecting funds from the city's Irish population for the Fenian invasion of Canada. Tumblety & Savage were practically on each other's laps on Montgomery Street as evident by the big Fenian meeting that was held just across the street from Tumblety's office. And of course the doctor's fat Hibernia Bank account was just a few yards away from it all.

But is there some Fenian document that directly names Tumblety to a Fenian associate? I doubt if a paper trail like that would have been allowed to exist. This holds true for the Confederates as well. I don't think we'll find a surviving document that authorizes a Confederate kickback to Tumblety for every Union soldier who paid the quack to forge some military discharge paper. Was Tumblety getting a Confederate kickback for this or for monitoring the movements of General McClellabd's staff? Probably. But I doubt there would be anything left in writing to designate this.

I hope that helps, Natalie. Have a fun 2008!

Joe

Natalie Severn

01-03-2008, 01:33 PM

Thanks Joe,that was what I was thinking of.There is that other link too when he was defended in Montreal[?] over the abortion case by two pro Republican solicitors----I found that interesting too.Catholic province- maybe the only people willing to defend him over an abortion case there were those a little beyond the pale themselves!
I agree with you about the unliklihood of much surfacing connected to the fenians- but with British Intelligence infiltrating so much of their and Clan-na Gael"s activities we may yet get a lead from somewhere.
Dp you know whether Tumblety had any links with Roscommon?----any relatives there? Was that where his father or mother came from originally?
Best
Natalie

Joe Chetcuti

01-03-2008, 02:41 PM

Hi Nats,

So far, I can't add anything more to a possible connection between Tumblety and Roscommon other than what Alan Sharp once pointed out to me. (Post #3 on this thread speaks of that.) This is just my opinion, but during the first 40 years of the 1800's, it seemed like Ireland wasn't too keen about creating a birth registration process for their people. When I tried to find out about Tumblety's childhood in Ireland, it didn't take me long to figure out that Baptismal Records from Catholic Church parishes would be my only chance.

As for your other point about Tumblety's pro-Irish attorneys in 1857 Montreal, yes Bernard Devlin was said to have been associated with the more radical elements of the Irish cause. Devlin was once the President of the St. Patrick's Society and that group was known to recruit Fenians.

Keep up the good work, Nats. I always enjoy reading your posts.

Joe

Caroline Morris

01-07-2008, 11:29 AM

Caz - Homicide is a largely a cultural event, and anyone who says otherwise is on thin ice. That's why the homicide rates are enormously different from society to society.

I hear you, RJ. But I suspect the conditions for (usually) males tipping over into actual and repeated acts of violence, either at random or targeting a specific group such as prostitutes or peers, are a tad more complex than you sometimes make them sound.

If the Whitechapel murder series was largely a cultural event, would that make Tumblety, as an American visitor to London, a more or less likely bet for its organiser? The title given to him: First American Serial Killer, would imply that he was dipping his toes into a culture that was alien to his fellow countrymen at the time and doing a good impression of one already steeped in it up to his neck. Trend-setter or trend-follower then?

As for Tumblety, you are assuming Littlechild is basing his opinion on a 'profile.' Could be, but there is no evidence of this. As a practical cop, I'd rather assume he was basing it on some circumstantial evidence.

Unfortunately, the only evidence Littlechild gives us for the basis of his opinion is in the wording of the letter and what he failed to say. He chose to ‘inflict’ this final unsolicited opinion about the ‘Ripper’ subject on Sims, and was giving his personal reasons for singling out a suspect by name. But apart from the notorious foreign pervert angle, and the significance given to the certainty that the murders ceased with Tumblety’s departure from the scene (and total disappearance from Littlechild’s radar, apparently), he gave Sims little to compare with the latter’s Dr D.

What manner of circumstantial evidence do you have in mind, for Littlechild to have had in mind when writing to Sims? What reasons would he have had for not fleshing out the bones of his sexually ‘abnormal’ absentee if he could have done so? He saved his potential solution to the ripper mystery for his final word to Sims on the subject, and presumably only then because Sims had introduced a Dr D, of whom Littlechild had no awareness and therefore no opinion. Why not tell all or nothing? Why give Sims too little too late for a case against Dr T, unless it was not really his intention, or not within his means to make one? It’s like supplying a thin layer of icing but no cake to put it on.

Every contemporary police suspect should have had some degree of circumstantial or physical evidence against them and may well have done. But assuming only one of them could have been the ripper (who was never seen in the act of murder), all the others were victims of mistaken identity/suspicion on one level or another, and some could easily have been in Colin Stagg territory. He became someone’s most likely suspect for the Wimbledon Common murder in the 1990s, with not much more than an opinion that he was the type the police should be looking for and he frequented the common (as does any able-bodied male who lives within easy reach, no doubt).

I’d really like to know what would have remained to elevate one ripper suspect above the rest in the 1890s - short of being picked out by a witness - if questions of character, sexuality and sanity had been left out of it.

Love,

Caz
X

Natalie Severn

01-10-2008, 05:46 PM

Hi Joe,apologies for not responding sooner---I have been travelling back from Wales and had got a bit behind!
Thanks for the information.Very interesting.Irritating we cant find out exactly where he was born though Joe!
Natalie

A.P. Wolf

02-22-2008, 02:12 PM

Following on from a suggestion made by RJP on another thread that I should be concerning myself with Tumblety's London address in the 1880's, I shall start the ball rolling by saying that I have good reason to believe that Tumblety may well have used the exclusive and expensive Langham Hotel, Portland Place, like so many other wealthy Americans.
In the 1873 court case Henry Carr's father did make the statement that Tumblety was staying at the Langham Hotel whilst in London, so I think he would not have changed this comfortable option for a common lodging house in Whitechapel.
The Langham opened its doors in 1865 as the first Grand Hotel of Europe, and is still going now, so one of our London members might like to swan down there and check the registration books for 1888 when we know Tumblety was in London.

http://i908.photobucket.com/albums/ac287/HowieNina/Photo%20Thanksgiving/langham.jpg

A.P. Wolf

02-23-2008, 02:15 PM

Tumblety of course mentions the Langham in his pamphlet, dating his visit at that time as the 23rd August 1869... which is interesting for it seems to indicate that the Langham was his permanent address whenever in London.
Which should come as no suprise for in the 1870's the Langham was a hot bed for former Confederate officers, such as Captain James Sanderson of the Confederate Army who became the general manager of the hotel in 1870, who felt obliged to write a letter to The Times informing their readership that men did not dress up as women in his hotel, which The Times had evidently reported.
In October of 1871 a fund raising evening was held at the Langham for the victims of the Great Chicago Fire where it was reported that 'several Confederates donated, but requested they shouldn't be named'.
Was Tumblety one of 'em. Yes, I think he was.

But of even more interest in placing Tumblety in a time line of sorts is his own comment in the pamphlet where he says that he left Liverpool bound for New York in the company of one Rev. Milburn, a man he obviously much admired.
This is excellent, for Dr. WH Milburn was a very well known man indeed; and there is only one record I am able to find of a voyage he made from Liverpool to New York... thus:

'WH Milburn - Clergyman/Reverend - 60 - 19th July 1878 - USA - Liverpool & Queenstown - Baltic'.

This means we should be able to find Tumblety on the same voyage, but obviously we cannot, so he must have been travelling under an alias. I have been able to find a 'Dr Francis Townsend' arriving in New York around this date, but not on it; and I do suspect that when Tumblety used the name Townsend in 1888 I don't believe it was the first time.
I'm unable to access the passenger list for the arrival of the 'Baltic' in New York, 19th July 1878, but I'm sure someone around here can, and I would dearly love to see this list as Tumblety should be there with an alias, and that would help us pin down his transatlantic meanderings for once and all.
Please.

Joe Chetcuti

02-23-2008, 02:58 PM

Because this info came from other researchers, I'm not at liberty to reveal it, but I can say that I agree with the idea that Tumblety's attraction to the name Townsend would have come long before 1888.

I think it's worth a try to take a look at the Langham's pictorial archives. I'd like to see who stuck his face in front of a camera during some of those lavish 19th century hotel banquets. Dang, these are the times when I wished I lived in England. I'd be banging on the Langham Hotel's door right now if I were across the pond.

At the Liverpool Coroner's Inquest, Tumblety's attorney reported that Tumblety had said "he could not expect any appreciation at the hands of an English jury."

In January 1889, Tumblety said "My guilt (for the Whitechapel murders) was very plain to the English mind."

The doctor would recite a story about how he chased away a pack of English dragoons who were pursuing him. Tumblety claimed he sent them retreating because he employed a personal ambuscade maneuver of his.

For a man who obviously had some issues against this nationality of people, Tumblety sure couldn't resist from traveling to England and accommodating himself in a luxurious English hotel.

A.P. Wolf

02-23-2008, 03:21 PM

Thanks Smoking Joe, I think I've caught Tumblety using the name 'Frank Townsend' when he crossed the Pond from about June of 1871, so far, but I do need to firm that up somewhat.

Tim Riordan

02-23-2008, 06:46 PM

Hi All

Tumblety, listed as Francis Tumbleton, and the Rev. Milburn returned to New York on Sept. 13, 1869 on the ship Nevada.

Best

Tim

Joe Chetcuti

02-23-2008, 08:01 PM

Thanks Tim.

A.P. may be on to something with this Dr. Francis Townsend arriving in NY around the same date that the Baltic arrived. We've got Tumblety steaming to Europe on the Montana on April 28, 1878 but we were never able to spot him coming back home during that year. So it's possible that he came back under an alias name. And since A.P. said that a Dr. Francis Townsend arrived in NY around July 19, 1878 then of course, that man certainly had a chance of having been Tumblety.

A.P. Wolf

02-24-2008, 10:52 AM

Thanks Joe & Tim,
very helpful but I'd still like to get my hands on the passenger list for the arrival of the 'Baltic' in New York on the 19th July 1878, just to be sure.

Tim Riordan

02-24-2008, 12:29 PM

Hi AP,

The Rev. Milburn did arrive on the Baltic on that date but there was no Townsend listed on the manifest. The only Townsend that arrived on the Baltic in 1878 was a steerage passenger named Percy Townsend, who was a 20 years old Irish laborer. He arrived in Novemeber.

Best,

Tim

A.P. Wolf

02-24-2008, 02:08 PM

Thanks for that, Tim, as you can guess I was hoping to be able to pin down the date that Tumblety left England for New York in the 1870's after his little spin with Liverpool and Birmingham; and it appears we can't push it much further than 1875 at the moment.
There are so many Townsend's in the ship's manifestos that almost fit Tumblety that I'm afraid I get bewildered by it all.
One that caught my eye was a 'John Townsend - merchant/gentleman' of about the right age for Tumblety who appears to have made frequent Atlantic crossings between 1877 and 1881, one of them arriving New York on the 7th September 1878, and he was a US citizen.
The other was a 'Captain Townsend - gentleman' who arrived in New York on 22nd April 1878.
Sad to say the 'Francis Townsend - cotton merchant' who arrived New York on 25th September 1878 appears to be too young for Tumblety at 33... but who knows the measure of the good doctor's vanity?
This Francis Townsend must have come from Liverpool, he was a British subject, and I wonder whether Tumblety actually knew this man, and assumed his name when travelling incognito?
Now, who was the other famous cotton merchant I know from Liverpool who was also fond of crossing the Atlantic in this time period, and had a penchant for a cure?

Tim Riordan

02-24-2008, 08:01 PM

Sorry, I misunderstood what you were looking for. After his affair with Hall Caine broke up, Tumblety returned to New YorK on the ship Greece arriving on Sept. 17, 1875. In this case, they even got his name right and listed him as a physician.

Tim

A.P. Wolf

02-25-2008, 09:05 AM

Thanks again, Tim,
but I'm still having a problem with the idea of Tumblety sailing from New York on the Nebraska in July of 1869 for England, and then returning to New York on the Nevada in September of 1869. Taking the departure date as the 13th July gives him an arrival date in England of about the 24th July; and then his re-arrival in New York on the 13th September from England would have meant he sailed on about the 2nd September... giving him about 39 days to make his grand European tour.
Looking at his own pamphlet this just doesn't seem to fit in with his massive schedule?
Are we sure that this was Tumblety on the Nevada?

On another point, which I hope you and Joe might be able to help me with, is the question of Tumblety's relatives in Liverpool. How good is our knowledge of this?
Given that Tumblety was using the name 'Tumilty' whilst in Liverpool, is it a safe assumption to make that his relatives in the city also used the same spelling/
What makes me ask is the curious little entry that I found in the 'Births, Deaths & Marriages' column of the Liverpool Mercury, dated November 2nd 1878:
'Tumilty - birth of a daughter to J Tumilty of Rochester, New York, USA.'

And you see there was another Francis Tumilty living in Liverpool at the same time that Francis Tumilty, the Great American Doctor, was there.

Tim Riordan

02-25-2008, 12:00 PM

Hi AP,

Tumblety’s presence on the Nebraska is listed in his 1872 pamphlet in a letter from the ship company Williams & Guion as well as being listed in the New York Times. It is on his return trip that he reports meeting Rev. Milburn, who was on the Nevada. The ship manifest lists Francis Tumbleton, gentleman. Tumblety would have had to return around this time anyway to show up in San Francisco the next March. As for Tumblety’s Great European Adventure, most if it seems like a pipe dream. Based on other items in the 1872 pamphlet, and his return date, he would have had, at most, eight days on the continent. If we believe the idea that he stayed in England for a week, at the request of Charles Dickens, that reduces his time to three days.

Best,

Tim

Joe Chetcuti

02-25-2008, 01:13 PM

I stored up some info over the years concerning A.P. Wolf's Liverpool man who may have been confused with Dr. Tumblety. Later this week I'll go into my basement and look through the files on this.

As for Tumblety's sister or any other Liverpool relative, you can learn a little more about them by reviewing Tumblety's final will and testament. In addition, Vivien Allen wrote about how Tumblety's brother-in-law came down from his home in the Liverpool area to search for the doctor in London. He even contacted Caine while he was searching.

A.P. Wolf

02-26-2008, 02:33 PM

Thanks Tim & Smoking Joe
another area of concern to me in the time line is the fact that an 'Indian Herb Doctor' was advertising his dubious wares in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle as early as 1847, and the adverts are very 'Tumblety' indeed.
At exactly this time there was also an 'Old Dr Townsend' involved in this herbal remedy business who comes across as very 'Tumblety' as well.
Any connection there?

Joe Chetcuti

02-26-2008, 04:58 PM

Roger and I have known about this Dr. Townsend for a long time. I think it's likely that Tumblety was influenced by his advertisments.

And now we return to the streets of Rochester, New York...

(Tumblety's) father was an Irishman (who) lived on the common south of (Rochester) on what was then known as Sophia Street, but is now Plymouth Avenue. - A quote from Captain Streeter in Dec 1888.

I give and bequeth to Mrs. Mary Fitzsimmons Plymouth Avenue Rochester N.Y. the sum of ten thousand dollars. - Taken from Francis Tumblety's final will and testament in 1903.

I'm going to post up a 1908 news article within the next hour concerning Plymouth Avenue. It's a sad Chappaquiddick sort of story.

Joe Chetcuti

02-26-2008, 05:24 PM

DROWNED IN ERIE CANAL

Edward S. Bartlett and Miss Geraldine Tumilty, Both of Rochester, the Victims.

THOUGHT ALLEY A STREET

Machine Plunged Into Canal and
Turned Over on Occupants,
Holding Them Under.

Rochester, N.Y., July 25. - Edward S. Bartlett, President of the Trebert Gas Engine Company of this city, accompanied by Miss Geraldine Tumilty, daughter of a wealthy Plymouth Avenue family, while driving a new automobile early this morning, mistook an alley for a main thoroughfare, and drove at full speed into the Erie Canal, where they both were drowned.

The body of Miss Tumilty was recovered at 10:30 o'clock. The body of Mr. Bartlett was found an hour later.

Bartlett was 38 years old. For four years he had been President of the gas engine company. It is said that he was engaged to Miss Tumilty.

The Dec 27, 1887 New York Times revealed that an assemblyman named James P. Tumilty resided at 459 Plymouth Avenue in Rochester. I don't know if Geraldine Tumilty was his daughter. Like I said before, genealogy ain't my bag! But if anybody knows if Geraldine or James Tumilty of Plymouth Avenue in Rochester was related to Dr. Tumblety, then this thread would be a nice place to share that info!

Joe Chetcuti

02-27-2008, 09:39 PM

I went to my basement and dug up the material I had on "Francis Tumilty of Liverpool." A.P. spoke about him at the end of post #91. My paperwork on this matter originated solely from a Dec 28, 2005 e-mail that was sent to me by a generous man. (Lesson #1 to all you young Ripper cadets out there: Always save every private e-mail you receive from Mr. Palmer!!)

I'm happy to say that I obtained a special blessing from Pope Roger this afternoon. He has given me permission to share his Francis Tumilty info amongst the laity, heh heh.

I'll be placing Roger's info on "The Great American Doctor, Tumilty" thread later tonight.

A.P. Wolf

02-28-2008, 03:54 AM

' accompanied by Miss Geraldine Tumilty, daughter of a wealthy Plymouth Avenue family'

Joe, could that quote have something to do with the rumour I posted recently of Tumblety winning the heart and hand of the daughter of one of the wealthiest families on the Heights?

I'll enjoy taking a peep at what RJP lines his petticoats with.

R.J.Palmer

02-29-2008, 07:59 PM

But if anybody knows if Geraldine or James Tumilty of Plymouth Avenue in Rochester was related to Dr. Tumblety, then this thread would be a nice place to share that info!

Yes, they were.

A.P. Wolf

03-15-2008, 02:55 PM

I was interested to see that in several American press reports - like the one in the 'San Francisco Chronicle' of the 18th November 1888 - that Tumblety's arrest in regard to the Whitechapel Murders appears to be linked to the arrest of Sir George Arthur in a similar regard, and at a similar time, when he was caught 'slumming' it in Whitechapel wearing a 'slouch' hat.
The source for both Tumblety's & Sir George Arthur's arrests appears to be a cable dispatch from London of the 17th November 1888.
Unfortunately the arrest of Sir George was supressed in the English press so I am unable to locate a date for this arrest, so if anyone else has this essential detail I would be most grateful.
It is quite remarkable that both arrests appear to be linked to the wearing of a 'slouch' hat.
In other words Tumblety might well have been telling the truth in his interview.

A.P. Wolf

03-16-2008, 01:16 PM

Chris G.

03-16-2008, 01:51 PM

And of course I'd forgotten all about this report which I posted in the summer:

'
'It has been said among other things that the assassin is an American, because he wears a slouch hat. If so ghastly a series of tragedies may be said to possess an element of humour, it is in imputating the crimes to an American for the reason specified.'

And so said the Brooklyn Daily Eagle on November 10th 1888, and over 100 years later I still think them to be right.
It all came down to a slouch hat.'

Hi AP

Well as we know, Tumblety himself acted as if it all came down to the slouch hat: the idea that Scotland Yard had picked him up because he seemed "foreign" and therefore arrest-worthy. Once more, Tumblety's grandstanding took advantage of the situation of his arrest in London and obscured what was really going on.

All the best

Chris

A.P. Wolf

03-16-2008, 03:22 PM

Thanks Chris
You know I do believe that there might be a bit more to this 'slouch hat' business than we have previously thought, in that it is somehow almost uncanny that an American newspaper (BDE) should make reference to said slouch hat prior to the murder of Mary Jane Kelly. Yes, I know the information was published on the 10th November 1888, but the original date of their source would have been the day before, the 9th November 1888... and then blow me down, after the report in the BDE we quickly see two gentlemen arrested in connection with the Whitechapel Murders because they are both wearing slouch hats, Tumblety and Sir George Arthur... or do we?
As the report in the BDE - linking an American to the crimes - is dated the 10th November 1888 then I'm suggesting that Tumblety's arrest for wearing a slouch hat was probably a long time before that, perhaps even as early as October, resulting in American and English press reports that a tall man with a heavy beard had been arrested around October 2nd 1888 for acting suspiciously and wearing a 'slouch hat', before being released again.
I've spent a few hours reading all the dissertations about Tumblety on Casebook, and despite the hype, I see no evidence or any good reason to suppose that Tumblety was arrested in connection with the murders in November.
Rather I would suggest that he was arrested in October, then released but followed by detectives who then discovered the true nature of the man in the slouch hat, and rearrested him on the 7th November for indecency offences.
Having been bailed he fled - with four massive suitcases you'll note, so perhaps 'fled' is not the best choice of word - and at that time it was mentioned by the police that Tumblety had been briefly detained as a suspect in the murders; and with the arrest of Sir George Arthur for wearing a slouch hat the American press had a field day on their hands.
Do you not think it strange that the British press was entirely silent on the subject of the arrest of Tumblety for wearing a slouch hat, and the arrest of Sir George for wearing a slouch hat, but both stories were widely and immediately circulated in the American press?
I would suggest that these events had taken place at least a month before Tumblety's arrest for indecency on the 7th November 1888.
And the rest is fairy dust.

Shelley

03-16-2008, 07:26 PM

Bill Amos

12-07-2008, 12:32 AM

My great-great grandmother was Margaret Tumblety born 1826 or 27 in Dublin Ireleand. Does anyone have any information on Francis' older sister Margaret? My thing is genealogy and I think I can be of some help in sorting out Francis' family. Forinstance -- Geraldine was the daughter of James P. who was the son of Patrick J. who was Francis' older brother.This is my first post so forgive me of any posting sins -- I am the new guy.

I went to the basement this afternoon and I dug up the material I had on "Francis Tumilty of Liverpool." A.P. spoke about him at the end of post #91. My paperwork on this matter originated solely from a Dec 28, 2005 e-mail that was sent to me by a generous man. (Lesson #1 to all of you young Ripper cadets out there: Always save every private e-mail you receive from Mr. Palmer!!)

I'm happy to say that I obtained a special blessing from Pope Roger this afternoon. He has given me permission to share his Francis Tumilty info amongst the laity, heh heh. This cost me only a modest stipend. I'm to deliver a full platter of Maltese Timpana to Roger's doorstep. Google Maltese Timpana some time. Basically, it's baked dough that's been filled with fattening cheese, 6 eggs, and liver.

In case you're wondering, the triglycerides cholesterol level for your average Maltese citizen hovers around 750.

I'll be placing Roger's info on "The Great American Doctor, Tumilty" thread later tonight.

Joe Chetcuti

12-07-2008, 06:00 PM

Bill,

Please contact Howard, and he could give you my private e-mail address.

If you happen to know which Catholic Parish in Dublin that your great great grandmother had been baptized in, that would be huge.

I'm looking forward to hear from you.

Joe

How Brown

12-07-2008, 09:43 PM

Joltin' Joe:

Thats a done deal...I sent Bill the email address.

Good to see you again.:kiss:

Joe Chetcuti

12-09-2008, 11:04 PM

I think everyone will be pleased that Bill has arrived on the scene. He is a pleasant gentleman who really has stored up a nice collection of genealogical material from his family. It has been a pleasure sharing information with him these past few days. Right now Bill has been sent to the Palmer Processing Center in Oregon. Roger's Boot Camp can be tough on new recruits, but Bill will survive it!!

Seriously, I'm glad he has joined with us here, and I'm sure we will enjoy reading his posts throughout 2009.

Wanna hear something? I've been looking into one particular man who worked in London during the Autumn of Terror. The guy died in 1923, but he had a granddaughter who was born in 1914. She would have remembered her grandfather. I've been searching, and everything seems to point to the fact that this lady was still alive through the year 2007.

I kept thinking about what an extraordinary opportunity this would be if I could find her and speak with her. Here we are in 2008, I'm studying into a man who played a role in the Whitechapel mysteries, and I could be talking with a woman who may actually remember this man!! What a Christmas surprise that would be.

But alas, the Christmas Grinch, also known as Robert Linford, came along and recently informed me that the lady passed away in February 2008 at the age of 93. http://mail.yimg.com/a/i/mesg/tsmileys2/02.gif

You're a mean one, Mr. Linford.
You're a bad banana
With a greasy black peel.

And you have termites in your smile.

Chris G.

12-10-2008, 12:07 PM

But alas, the Christmas Grinch, also known as Robert Linford, came along and recently informed me that the lady passed away in February 2008 at the age of 93. http://mail.yimg.com/a/i/mesg/tsmileys2/02.gif

Hi Joe

I know of a medium. . . Knock twice for yes and once for no. . . :becky:

Chris

Bill Amos

12-17-2008, 04:12 PM

I just finished reviewing this thread. There is a sister in Liverpool who is hinted at.Her husband came looking for Francis in London. Does anyone know her name? Any help would be appreciated. Bill

Joe Chetcuti

12-17-2008, 06:39 PM

Hello Bill,

According to Francis Tumblety's last will and testament, he bequeathed $10,000 to Mrs. Brady of 20 Frederick Street Liverpool, England. She was either his sister or niece.

He also bequeathed $10,000 to his sister Jane Hayes who lived in Vallejo, California.

I'll have to look through my paperwork to recall the first name of his Liverpool relative, Mrs. Brady. I used to know that stuff off the top of my head when I was younger!

Tim Riordan

12-18-2008, 09:46 AM

Hi All,

The Liverpool connection was through Tumblety's sister Bridget, who married a man named Brodigan. They had a daughter named Margaret who married Thomas Brady. Margaret Brady was Tumblety's niece.

Happy Holidays

Tim

Joe Chetcuti

12-18-2008, 02:56 PM

Merry Christmas Tim,

Thanks for clearing that up.

Francis Tumblety hereby makes publishes and declares this to be his last will and testament. I give and bequeath to Mrs. Thos Brady No#20 Frederick St. __ Liverpool, England the sum of Ten Thousand Dollars. I give and bequeath to Mrs. Jane Hayes Vallejo, California the sum of Ten Thousand Dollars. I give and bequeath to Mrs. Barrett (my niece) of Gibbs Street, Rochester N.Y. the sum of Five Thousand Dollars. I give and bequeath to Mrs. Jane Moore (my niece) Gibbs Street, Rochester N.Y. the sum of Five Thousand Dollars...

For whatever reason, Tumblety identified Mrs. Barrett and Mrs. Moore as his nieces, but he didn't do so with Mrs. Brady. I'm going to jot a little footnote into my copy of this will and say that Mrs. Brady was Tumblety's niece, the daughter of his sister Bridget, and I'll imprint the official Tim Riordan stamp of approval on it. http://mail.yimg.com/a/i/mesg/tsmileys2/03.gif

Thanks for helping out, sir. You saved me a lot of time. I was ready to go down into my basement and search for my Tumblety-genealogy folder and then dig through the pages to confirm all of this! That would have taken me all afternoon.

Bill Amos

12-18-2008, 07:21 PM

Joe and Tim -- this is too great! I am compiling the family in ancestry.com . As soon as I get my act a bit more together I will start putting out profiles on each family member. Bridgit and Jane were supposedly twins. Interesting that they were the two sisters he mentions in his will. I am seeing some weird patterns in this family especially with the Fitzsimons.Will go into detail later. Again you guys and Bridgit have made my day! Bill

Joe Chetcuti

01-31-2009, 02:56 PM

Andy Spallek recently shared the Nov 30, 1888 Albany Journal with us. The newspaper reported that Tumblety lived in the Brown's Hotel at Pennsylvania Avenue and Seventh Street during the Civil War.

A Washington DC newspaper (The Evening Star) ran a column on Feb 1, 1925 entitled "Rambler Recalls Social Life of District in Days Preceding the Civil War." The article reported that "Under the Brown's Hotel, as under many hotels then and now, was a row of shops."

So far, it sounds plausible that at some point Tumblety lived in the Brown's Hotel and worked out of his office somewhere on the street below. And it's a fact that he advertised his office as being at the corner of 7th & Pennsylvania Ave.

The Brown's Hotel was built in 1855, and it had been called Indian Queen Hotel. The hotel still stands today and is known as the Metropolitan Hotel.

http://www.cardcow.com/images/metropolitan-hotel-washington-us-state-town-views-district-of-columbia-14997.jpg (http://www.cardcow.com/images/metropolitan-hotel-washington-us-state-town-views-district-of-columbia-14997.jpg)

Tumblety often wore a military uniform during his stay in Washington DC during the Civil War. That attire would have been in accord with his lodgings. The July 12, 1858 New York Times spoke of orders that had been issued out of "military headquarters" in the Brown's Hotel.

Wolf Vanderlinden

02-05-2009, 05:46 PM

Actually Joe this is incorrect.

The original Inn on the spot (the Indian Queen Tavern) was built circa 1804 and expanded over the years until it was 4 storeys tall and known as the Indian Queen Hotel. It was bought by a man named Jesse Brown who had the building raised to 5 storeys and faced in white marble. The hotel then reopened in 1851 as Brown’s Marble Hotel. In 1865 the hotel was renamed The Metropolitan Hotel until 1935 when almost all of the building was torn down (only a small two storey corner is left of the original structure and is incorporated into a new building on the site.)

More importantly, the hotel was situated at the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and 6th Street (actually 621 Pennsylvania Ave.) and not at Pennsylvania and 7th Street, where Tumblety had his office the entire time he was in Washington, in the Washington Buildings at 344 & 346 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Wolf.

A.P. Wolf

02-05-2009, 06:39 PM

Hey Wolf, what happened to your big bad nose?

Joe Chetcuti

02-05-2009, 07:58 PM

Hi Wolf V,

http://www.cardcow.com/14997/metropolitan-hotel-washington-us-state-town-views-district-of-columbia/ (http://www.cardcow.com/14997/metropolitan-hotel-washington-us-state-town-views-district-of-columbia/)

That web site seems to be saying that this hotel structure was built in 1855, but its foundation had already been established beforehand. And as you informed us, this foundation was built in 1804. It's a bit tricky, but with your help I think we've gotten to the bottom of it.

Thanks for pinpointing the exact location of the Brown's Hotel. The Albany Journal reported of Tumblety's office having been below the hotel. You've shown that this needs to be geographically adjusted by about a half block.

As for whether or not Tumblety ever occupied a room inside the Brown's Hotel during the Civil War, I don't see any reason to dispute the Albany Journal's article on this particular point.

Joe Chetcuti

02-23-2010, 04:33 PM

Awhile back my Mom and I were at the San Francisco Library looking at the old city directories from the 1930's. She was checking out the names of her neighbors and friends who grew up with her during that decade. She remembered that one particular neighbor had died in July 1936. But his name was still listed in the 1937 city directory. Then in 1938, his name was removed from the directory.

That was not uncommon in those days because things were done door-to-door and there were no computers back then to instantly update records. If that is how it was in SF in the 1930's, then you could imagine how slow it would have been to update records in Ireland during the poverty-stricken years of the 1840's.

Back on Post 3, it was reported that a man named Francis Tumblety appeared in the 1847 & 1848 Griffiths Valuation Records having rented an office in Swords, Ireland. It was also mentioned that the future Ripper suspect, Francis Tumblety, was aboard a ship named Ashburton that arrived in New York in June 1847.

The conclusion that I drew years ago was that Tim Riordan has found what is very likely to have been the initial arrival of Dr. Tumblety in North America. I also hinted that there is a possibility that Alan Sharp had come across the same Francis Tumblety in the Griffiths Valuation Records of 1847 & 1848. I have not changed my opinion on that.

A researcher in our field has found this assessment of mine to be in conflict with itself. The man said he "was confused that Francis Tumblety was listed in the Griffiths Valuation Records for 1848 and at the same time Tim R. had proof 'Tumblety' was on the Ashburton one year prior. How can they both be correct?"

If the "Francis Tumblety" listed in the 1848 Griffiths Valuation Records truly was the future Ripper suspect, it could have simply been a case where the data for Swords, Ireland had been collected during the first five months of 1847. That information was printed in the 1848 edition, and then the material was removed in the 1849 edition. If this could happen in San Francisco during the 1930's, then it surely could happen in Ireland in the 1840's.

These 1848-1864 records that Sir Richard Griffiths accumulated were not census records. The task was undertaken for the purpose of assessing taxes on the property owners of Ireland.