Wednesday 22 April 2015

ripper victim never mentioned

I think there is a good case to be made that Martha Tabram aka Martha Turner was a Ripper victim, although the nature of her wounds, 39 stabs rather than the "ripping" and throat cut seen in the other canonical Whitechapel murders make it seem materially different.
 The attending doctor, Dr. T. R. Killeen also thought that the wounds were caused by "some kind of dagger" rather than the long surgical knife apparently used in the other murders. See"Inquest: Martha Tabram" on Stephen Ryder's excellent Casebook: Jack the Ripper site.
 There is also the thought that she could have been stabbed with a bayonet, and she was last seen alive with a soldier. It could be though that the Tabram murder was a tryout for the murderer who later went on to murder Nichols, Chapman, Stride, Eddowes, and Kelly.

 Dr. Francis Tumblety might have been  involved in the Tabram murder. A member of Parliament, Col. Sir Francis Charles Hughes-Hallett, is quoted in the Reno Evening Gazette of 8 October 1888, in a story filed from New York City, as saying he trailed a man who could have been the American quack doctor Tumblety soon after the 7 August murder: 

"New York, October 6th. Colonel Hughes-Hallett of London, formerly of the Royal Artillery and a Member of Parliament, is in this city. He investigated the Whitechapel case just after the Martha Turner [ie, Martha Tabram] murder.
 He said today: ‘I have made up my mind, and I have seen no reason to change it, that the perpetrator of the atrocities is a West End man, a gentleman, a person of wealth and culture perhaps, but certainly of intellectual qualities, finesse, and keen discrimination. I was convinced that my man left his club as I was then doing, and disguised himself for his nocturnal revel. My theory is that the Whitechapel murderer is an Army Doctor, or a medical student, or a gentleman, and a man of leisure. Or perhaps a retired Army Surgeon.’ "

We do know that Tumblety, though not qualified as an army doctor, posed as a Union Army surgeon at the time of the Civil War, and researcher Chetcuti believes the quack may have finagled his way into membership in a London military club on the basis of his phony qualifications and have been the very man whom Hughes-Hallett was trailing.According to the 1850 United States census,

 Tumblety was born in Ireland. His parents, James and Margaret Tumuelty (so spelled on their tombstone),along with his 10 brothers and sisters, emigrated to Rochester, New York, a few years after his birth.By the age of 17 he was selling books, which were possibly pornographic, along the Erie CanalLockport bartlett color crop.jpg between Rochester and Buffalo. He then found brief employment as a cleaner at the Lispenard Hospital, in Rochester, which had a dubious medical reputation for performing gynaecological operations and "cures" for sexual temptation. He left home around 17, and did not return for 10 years


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