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Jack the Ripper, The Works of Francis Thompson.
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THE OFFICIAL VERSION
"Francis Thompson (1859–1907) was an English poet... After attending college, he moved to London to become a writer, but could only find menial work and became addicted to opium, and was a street vagrant for years. A married couple read his poetry and rescued him, publishing his first book Poems in 1893. Thompson lived as an unbalanced invalid in Wales and at Storrington, but wrote three books of poetry, with other works and essays."
Wikipedia.
"Francis Thompson (1859–1907) was an English poet... After attending college, he moved to London to become a writer, but could only find menial work and became addicted to opium, and was a street vagrant for years. A married couple read his poetry and rescued him, publishing his first book Poems in 1893. Thompson lived as an unbalanced invalid in Wales and at Storrington, but wrote three books of poetry, with other works and essays."
Wikipedia.
What Research Revealed?
Out of the more than 100 Ripper suspects ever named, only one can be shown to have had a knife at the time of the murders, where they occurred - Francis Thompson. In 1888, he was a mentally ill, drug addicted man who carried a razor- sharp dissecting knife, kept from his years of studying medicine. He had already been in trouble with the police and had a history of arson, theft, and mutilating. His sole purpose for living in the Providence Row refuge, less than 100 yards from where Jack the Ripper victim, Mary Kelly, was killed was to find a prostitute who had humiliated him. He had already written about ripping their stomachs open.
Out of the more than 100 Ripper suspects ever named, only one can be shown to have had a knife at the time of the murders, where they occurred - Francis Thompson. In 1888, he was a mentally ill, drug addicted man who carried a razor- sharp dissecting knife, kept from his years of studying medicine. He had already been in trouble with the police and had a history of arson, theft, and mutilating. His sole purpose for living in the Providence Row refuge, less than 100 yards from where Jack the Ripper victim, Mary Kelly, was killed was to find a prostitute who had humiliated him. He had already written about ripping their stomachs open.
Jack the Ripper killed Prostitutes. This is how Francis Thompson described them.
‘These girls whose Practice is a putrid ulceration of love, venting foul and purulent discharge - for their very utterance is a hideous blasphemy against the sacrosanctity of lover’s language!’
purelent = Full of puss.
blasphemy = Against God's will.
sacrosanctity = God's Holy purity.
purelent = Full of puss.
blasphemy = Against God's will.
sacrosanctity = God's Holy purity.
Thompson's poem 'Nightmare of the Witch Babies' was written before October 1886, It is about a man who slices open the stomachs of 'corrupt' women in the pretence of finding foetuses .
'Swiftly he followed her
Ha! Ha!
Eagerly he followed her.
Ho! Ho!
...
Lo, she corrupted!
Ho! Ho!
...
And its paunch [stomach] was rent [ripped]
Like a brasten [bursting] drum;
And the blubbered fat
From its belly doth come
It was a stream ran bloodily under the wall.
O Stream, you cannot run too red!
Under the wall.
With a sickening ooze - Hell made it so!
Two witch-babies, ho! ho! ho!'
Ha! Ha!
Eagerly he followed her.
Ho! Ho!
...
Lo, she corrupted!
Ho! Ho!
...
And its paunch [stomach] was rent [ripped]
Like a brasten [bursting] drum;
And the blubbered fat
From its belly doth come
It was a stream ran bloodily under the wall.
O Stream, you cannot run too red!
Under the wall.
With a sickening ooze - Hell made it so!
Two witch-babies, ho! ho! ho!'
In the autumn of 1889, Thompson completed, his only ever story, titled 'The End Crowns the Work' It was about a poet who kills a women with a knife, as an end resort to fame.
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If confession indeed give ease, I, who am deprived of all other confession, may yet find some appeasement in confessing to this paper. I am not penitent; yet I will do fiercest penance. With the scourge of inexorable recollection I will tear open my scars. With the cuts of a pitiless analysis I make the post-mortem examen of my crime.
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It was close on midnight and I felt her only ... I reared my arm; I shook; I faltered. At that moment, with a deadly voice the accomplice-hour gave forth its sinister command. I swear I struck not the first blow.
Some violence seized my hand and drove the poniard down. Whereat she cried; and I, frenzied, dreading detection, dreading above all her awakening, - I struck again and again she cried; and yet again and yet gain she cried...
I know you and myself. I have what I have. I work for the present. Now, relief unspeakable! that vindictive sleuth-hound of my sin has at last lagged from the trail; I have had a year of respite, of release from all torments ….What crime can be interred so cunningly, but it will toss in its grave, and tumble the sleeked earth above it? Or some hidden witness may have beheld me, or the prudently-kept imprudence of this writing may have encountered some unsuspected eyes … I shall perish on the scaffold or at the stake unaided by my occult powers; … the fanged hour fastens on my throat, they will break into the room, my guilt will burst its grave and point at me; I shall be seized, I shall be condemned, I shall be executed; ... I am at watch, wide-eyed, vigilant, alert. ... I am all a waiting and a fear. .... I do not repent, it is a thing for inconsequent weaklings...To shake a tree and then not gather fruit- a fools act ...What a slave of fancy was I! Excellent fool.''
Some violence seized my hand and drove the poniard down. Whereat she cried; and I, frenzied, dreading detection, dreading above all her awakening, - I struck again and again she cried; and yet again and yet gain she cried...
I know you and myself. I have what I have. I work for the present. Now, relief unspeakable! that vindictive sleuth-hound of my sin has at last lagged from the trail; I have had a year of respite, of release from all torments ….What crime can be interred so cunningly, but it will toss in its grave, and tumble the sleeked earth above it? Or some hidden witness may have beheld me, or the prudently-kept imprudence of this writing may have encountered some unsuspected eyes … I shall perish on the scaffold or at the stake unaided by my occult powers; … the fanged hour fastens on my throat, they will break into the room, my guilt will burst its grave and point at me; I shall be seized, I shall be condemned, I shall be executed; ... I am at watch, wide-eyed, vigilant, alert. ... I am all a waiting and a fear. .... I do not repent, it is a thing for inconsequent weaklings...To shake a tree and then not gather fruit- a fools act ...What a slave of fancy was I! Excellent fool.''
Original Title: Latin - Finis Coronat Opus.
Francis Thompson's Influence.
Author, J. R. R. Tolkien, used phrases and words coined by Thompson for his Middle Earth Books. He lectured on Thompson's work describing how influential he was to his writing.
Indian civil rights activist, Mahatma Gandhi, kept a copy of Thompson's poetry beside his bed while under house arrest and praised & recommended Thompson's poetry as a remedy for anxiety.
American civil rights activist, Martin Luther King Jr, quoted Francis Thompson's poetry in his sermons.
The United States Supreme Court, quoted Thompson's poetry in its historic 1955 Brown v. Board of Education, judgement on desegregation.
Thompson's poetry has been published in 70 languages. He is often described as the greatest mystical poet of modern times. Other writers influenced by Francis Thompson include:
- Oscar Wild.
- C.S Lewis.
- G.K Chesterton.
- Ezra Pound.
- T.S. Eliot.
- W.B. Yeats.
- Eugene O'Neill.
- Robert Frost.