Thomas Fogarty

[Gary Barnett]

My guess is that the blind assailant's temper was often governed otherwise one must presume that the lady in question would not have been his guide. Who can judge what provoked his ill use of the woman? But the Tabram attack is of a wholly different order. It can hardly be be ascribed to ungovernable temper.
But in any event, was it Foggy at Spitalfields anyway. There is so much speculation.

With Tabram, who knows exactly how the scalp wound was inflicted? Did she hit her head while falling perhaps? Did he kick her in the head while she lay fatally wounded? It is difficult to know.

The way the press report is worded - The blind man is said to have an ungovernable temper... suggests he was well known for it. Perhaps his guide was a newbie and had no idea what a vicious chap he was. Or maybe we’ve discovered the single instance in history where a woman maintained a relationship with a violent man.

[Anna Morris]

Concerning Martha Tabram having a head wound, I have always believed the head wound was a necessary preliminary to the rest of the attack. The postmortem listed many stabs that were not fatal and indicated the last, deep stab to the chest was the fatal blow.

Over the years I have read all sorts of ideas, like Martha had "fits" and she may have injured herself in falling, she may have injured herself otherwise and the killer found her unconscious, she was sleeping or passed out on the stairs and the killer found her. Or Martha already had a head injury from earlier in the evening or even earlier than that.

However that is, she had to be insensible to have been non-fatally stabbed so many times and not cried out, I think? Alcohol is not a particularly great anaesthetic.

[Edward Stow]

She had neck stab wounds that may have inhibited crying out.

[Tom_Wescott]

Good afternoon Gary,



That is an interesting scenario you have.

Strange but I seem to remember Tom Wescott forwarding a very similar theory about Pearly Poll being a shill to lie for the real killer of Tabram, coming forward with the soldiers story which was a red herring. Tom wrote this in his book The Bank Holiday Murders. It was a new original idea he had.

And on the message boards when I tried to discuss Tom's theory you said something about Tom's work being all wrong and not to discuss Tom's theory ever. So I shut up about that. It was almost like being a newbie again in 2008 when everything I brought up people said "oh we already covered that."

So I'm taking a wild guess that after Tom's book came out, that somewhere in the midst of hundreds if not thousands of posts interspersed with the usual asides, YouTube videos, Scrapple jokes, and what have you, someone had found some kind of mistake in Tom's stuff. His details. The research, the nomenclature. Something was found to cause an Aha moment, which made Tom persona non grata. Mr. Nobody. That's the impression I got from you. So I was left to ponder such.

Now here you are proposing a carbon copy of Tom's theory with your suspect, the blind man, Fogarty, cohort of Mary Ann Connelly, (Pearlie) being the protagonist.

HUH? Have i entered the Twilight Zone? Do not attempt to adjust your internet dial.

Roy

This is a great post. Pretty much spot on. It's true Gary Barnett remains the #1 critic of Bank Holiday Murders. It's also true he's read it more times than I have at this point.

Essentially, the crux of that book was first establishing that Pearly Poll lied, Reid knew this, and that she wasn't lying for fame (she refused all press interviews) or money, but to protect someone. She was not with Tabram on her final night and a Times article gave her the basic story of the soldiers. Little could she have known the story was mistaken and was describing another woman who was in the company of soldiers.

I spent the rest of the book trying to answer the questions - who was Poll trying to protect and who would have had the sway over this sick woman to get her to put herself in the clearly stressful position of lying to the police.

I followed the landlord lead, but if Gary or anyone else is following a separate line of inquiry along the same lines, then they have my full support.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

P.S. Further research by Debs, Gary and perhaps others, did turn up some errors in Bank Holiday Murders that will be corrected in a future edition. But none of the stuff salient to Poll going to view the body, leaving (apparently providing no identification) and then returning the next day with her soldier story has been proved wrong, because it's not.

[Tom_Wescott]

Roy,

Tom’s book has much to commend it, not least that he was the first to concentrate on the early murders. It’s a proper Ripper book.

I wasn’t convinced at the time that Poll was put up to derail the Tabram investigation because it seemed far more likely that her soldier story was basically true, subject to the vagaries of her alcoholic memory and a possible reluctance to reveal the extent of her and Martha’s ‘trade’ that night. Perhaps they did half a dozen soldiers that night, plus an assortment of sailors, dockers, costers etc...

Given the binary choice of embarrassed amnesiac alcoholic or agent of a vast shadowy conspiracy, I plumped for forgetful, ashamed drunk.

But when Fogarty heaved into view, I had a rethink. And not to take anything away from Tom in first questioning Poll’s motives, I think the possibility of Poll covering for the violent man who would later become her husband might have occurred to me or others even if Tom hadn’t got there first.

BTW, I’m only considering Foggy for the Tabram killing.

The holy grails of Fogarty research are:

Identifying the blind seller of laces who attacked his guide near Spitalfields Market.

Finding evidence that Poll snd Foggy were an item at the time Tabram was killed.

Proving whether Foggy was soldier 40869, and if he was, discovering the crime for which he was sentenced to 5 years imprisonment, served largely in civil prisons.

All contributions will be greatly appreciated.����

Gary

That's a big maybe. I don't recall Pearly Poll being a big target for research before I published my book. I do recall much research taking place AFTER I published. In some cases, I suspect the motivation was to prove me wrong. The facts had been there all along and were simply overlooked. That part of my book was not speculation. Pearly Poll was lying to protect somebody. The earlier attacks/murders suggested to me that the men on whom she depended (landlords) were the men in question. Did Foggarty read the Times? Somebody did. I still suggest whoever killed Tabram attacked some or all of the earlier victims of 18 and 19 George Street. The Tabram murder and Nichols murder are so similar as to suggest they were also committed by the same hand.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Tom_Wescott]

I'm so far behind in the research that I did not realize until today that Fogarty was seriously being proposed as a suspect. This thread is a daunting 58 or so pages. Recently, Gary posted the following as being the salient points:

'BTW, I’m only considering Foggy for the Tabram killing.

The holy grails of Fogarty research are:

Identifying the blind seller of laces who attacked his guide near Spitalfields Market.

Finding evidence that Poll snd Foggy were an item at the time Tabram was killed.

Proving whether Foggy was soldier 40869, and if he was, discovering the crime for which he was sentenced to 5 years imprisonment, served largely in civil prisons.'

Are there any other significant finds that should be considered? The biggest question to my mind is WHY is Gary only considering the Tabram murder? Is this because he believes this is the only one committed by Fogarty, or is it more of a 'one thing at a time' scenario where he plans to branch out his research after exhausting this line of inquiry? Because Tabram strikes me neither as a first or last kill for whoever dunnit.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Tom_Wescott]

GARYBARNETT: Who knows why/how he and Martha wound up on the 1st floor landing of GYB, a mere 12 feet away from the caretaker’s front door. Or what might have transpired between them to trigger the killer’s ungovernable temper.

Tabram was murdered right outside the toilets. I don't think that was coincidence. If Fogarty was the killer and he knew Tabram then it might be as simple as asking her to escort him to the loo.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Gary Barnett]

That's a big maybe. I don't recall Pearly Poll being a big target for research before I published my book. I do recall much research taking place AFTER I published. In some cases, I suspect the motivation was to prove me wrong. The facts had been there all along and were simply overlooked. That part of my book was not speculation. Pearly Poll was lying to protect somebody. The earlier attacks/murders suggested to me that the men on whom she depended (landlords) were the men in question. Did Foggarty read the Times? Somebody did. I still suggest whoever killed Tabram attacked some or all of the earlier victims of 18 and 19 George Street. The Tabram murder and Nichols murder are so similar as to suggest they were also committed by the same hand.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

Tom,

I’m not trying to take anything away from your having been the first to consider Poll as a ‘shill’ as Roy puts it. But look at the way I have approached other characters I have taken a shine to - Billy Maher, the Tomkins brothers, Stephen Maywood etc. I had heard of Pearly Poll long before you wrote your book, she was always one of my favourite characters in the case, and finding her shacked up with a blind beggar in an alley off the Ratcliff Highway would have grabbed my attention whether I’d read TBHM or not. And as a sort of Ripperologist, I’m sure the possibility that this violent, mentally unstable character who moved in the same circles as the Ripper’s victims might have had a hand in some of the attacks would have occurred to me. Throw in the possibility that he committed the Spitalfields Market attack and that he went on to marry PP and the possibility that he might have committed the Tabram murder certainly would have.

Gary

[Gary Barnett]

GARYBARNETT: Who knows why/how he and Martha wound up on the 1st floor landing of GYB, a mere 12 feet away from the caretaker’s front door. Or what might have transpired between them to trigger the killer’s ungovernable temper.

Tabram was murdered right outside the toilets. I don't think that was coincidence. If Fogarty was the killer and he knew Tabram then it might be as simple as asking her to escort him to the loo.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

I wasn’t aware of that, Tom. Can you recall the source?

But why wouldn’t he have just gone to the loo in street or just inside the buildings on the ground floor if he felt the need for a little privacy? One of the Jewish residents of the Rothschilds Buildings described to Jerry White how the residents of the gentile end of the Flowery Dean would use the Buildings as a toilet.

[Tom_Wescott]

Tom,

I’m not trying to take anything away from your having been the first to consider Poll as a ‘shill’ as Roy puts it. But look at the way I have approached other characters I have taken a shine to - Billy Maher, the Tomkins brothers, Stephen Maywood etc. I had heard of Pearly Poll long before you wrote your book, she was always one of my favourite characters in the case, and finding her shacked up with a blind beggar in an alley off the Ratcliff Highway would have grabbed my attention whether I’d read TBHM or not. And as a sort of Ripperologist, I’m sure the possibility that this violent, mentally unstable character who moved in the same circles as the Ripper’s victims might have had a hand in some of the attacks would have occurred to me. Throw in the possibility that he committed the Spitalfields Market attack and that he went on to marry PP and the possibility that he might have committed the Tabram murder certainly would have.

Gary

I guess we'll never know now. I was pretty generous in giving Ripperology 125 years to figure it out before I published my book, but they were looking elsewhere.

The Thomas Fogarty theory, however, is all yours. When I wrote BHM I did not know she had a boyfriend, let alone an eventual husband. That whole blind thing, though.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Tom_Wescott]

I wasn’t aware of that, Tom. Can you recall the source?

But why wouldn’t he have just gone to the loo in street or just inside the buildings on the ground floor if he felt the need for a little privacy? One of the Jewish residents of the Rothschilds Buildings described to Jerry White how the residents of the gentile end of the Flowery Dean would use the Buildings as a toilet.

I recall two sources, though there may have been others. One was a blue print either of the building itself, or a sister building that was identical and it showed the loos right there. The other was a contemporary drawing of the landing where her body was found. There was a single step up to get the loos and it was on this ledge that her head was leaning, suggesting the wound to her head may have been causes by hitting this.

Why wouldn't he have peed in the street? He might have. But you're the one suggesting he killed Tabram in the GYB so I'm giving you a reason why the two of them might have been there at that time. She might also have been taking clients to the privacy of the stalls there. He would have known that and could easily have laid in wait.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Roy Corduroy]

Click for John Bennett's photo of George Yard Buildings rear. Along with plan of St George's House next door. Ensuing discussion of the topic of George Yard Buildings "landing" and was the murder site indoor or outdoor. You decide. Demolished 1973

Hi Tom,

Roy

[Edward Stow]

The plan is from the next door building.

[Tom_Wescott]

Click for John Bennett's photo of George Yard Buildings rear. Along with plan of St George's House next door. Ensuing discussion of the topic of George Yard Buildings "landing" and was the murder site indoor or outdoor. You decide. Demolished 1973

Hi Tom,

Roy

Look at post #82 on the thread for good illustrations.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Gary Barnett]

Thanks, Roy & Tom.

There is another IPN (I think) image of Tabram lying with her head on a step and what appears to be the WC doors immediately behind her. In that one, the stab wounds are depicted as having gone through her clothing. And in the full image that Jake L cropped top left in his montage is an image labelled ‘victim’s corset stabbed through’.

I doubt the IPN artist saw the body in situ, but perhaps it’s position was described to him by the residents.