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1:01

I came here to

1:03

make something of myself. You

1:05

want your name up in big flashy

1:07

lights. Before Rosemary's

1:09

baby. I chose you. Evil

1:11

was born. They did something

1:14

to me. Storing Julia Garner.

1:16

I don't know what's happening. And Diane Wiest.

1:18

This is a role that you were

1:20

born to play. Baby's here

1:22

to stay. Apartment

1:26

7A. Now streaming on Paramount Plus or buy

1:29

it on digital. We did our. We

1:35

begin with a poem. This

1:38

poem was written by Dr.

1:40

Francis Tumblety. And if you've listened to

1:42

the three episodes that came before, it

1:45

will come as no surprise that he is the suspect of

1:47

our fourth and final deep dive into

1:50

the men who would be Jack the Ripper.

1:54

Tumblety wrote

1:56

this poem as part of a larger self aggrandizing. tracked,

2:00

which was humbly entitled, A Sketch

2:03

of the Life of the

2:05

Gifted, Acentric, and World-Famed Physician

2:07

Francis Tumblety, was

2:10

published in New York in 1889, the year after the White Chapel

2:14

murders. Tumblety wrote

2:16

the track because, you see, his

2:19

reputation needed rehabilitation, following a slew

2:21

of serious allegations that had followed

2:23

him across from Europe, most

2:26

noxious of all being that he had been

2:29

arrested in connection with the White Chapel murders.

2:32

In the text, he detailed

2:34

his life with a strange,

2:36

arrogant nonchalance, then

2:39

provided personal endorsements from people

2:41

who reportedly knew him well.

2:44

Edward P. Doherty, for example,

2:46

the man famous throughout America

2:48

for capturing and killing President

2:50

Lincoln's assassin, claimed that

2:53

Francis was an honest and

2:55

worthy fellow. In

2:57

his poem, Tumblety didn't address

2:59

any of the rumours that had attached

3:01

themselves to him directly, but

3:04

the piece offers an insight into

3:06

his thinking on the subject. It

3:09

goes like this. Among

3:13

the loathsome vices of the age,

3:15

the most revolting to the saint

3:17

and sage is that of slandering

3:19

an honest name and robbing virtue

3:22

of her spotless fame. The

3:24

slanderers and scandalmongers are more to

3:27

be dreaded than the scourge of

3:29

war. Their poisoned tongues,

3:31

like to the serpent's fangs, fill

3:33

many a heart with sad and

3:35

bitter pangs. And yet

3:37

these vile colluminators try their guilt

3:39

to hide their deeds to justify.

3:42

They feign a grief would rather

3:44

not reveal their awful secrets which

3:46

they can't conceal. The

3:48

flying rumours fathered as they

3:50

rolled, scarce any tale was

3:53

sooner heard than told. And

3:55

all who told it added something new,

3:58

and all who heard it made in

4:00

life. enlargements too, in every ear it

4:02

spread, on every tongue it grew. So

4:06

without trying to add anything new to

4:08

the rumours that already dominate his history,

4:11

we present to you the final episode

4:13

in our four-part special, exploring the men

4:16

who would be Jack the Ripper. Our

4:19

final suspect, Dr. Francis

4:21

Tumbulty. Hello

4:31

and welcome to After Dark,

4:33

I'm Maddy. And

4:53

I'm Anthony. And this is

4:55

the final episode in our mini-series

4:57

on who wasn't Jack the Ripper.

4:59

In episode one we looked

5:01

at Prince Albert Victor, in episode two

5:04

we looked at the Jewish barber Aaron

5:06

Kosminski, and in episode three we looked

5:08

at the artist Walter Sickert. If

5:11

you haven't heard those, I suggest you go

5:13

back and listen to them all immediately

5:16

and catch up and then join us back for

5:18

this episode. So Anthony, we're

5:20

diving into this final case, this

5:23

final suspect, and we have this

5:25

time a doctor. Can you

5:27

tell us a little bit more about

5:29

this individual? Yes, now Tumbulty's history is

5:32

potted with blind spots. We know an awful

5:35

lot about him, but we're also missing some

5:37

crucial details. And I think that's one of

5:39

the reasons why he becomes such a focus

5:42

for us in our own time particularly. But

5:44

what we do know, well, we think we

5:46

know, is that he was born in around

5:48

1833, which would

5:50

make him 55 at the time of the

5:52

White Chappa murders. Now, already

5:55

we have a question about his origins. There

5:57

is a story that he's an Irish person

5:59

born. in America, but he also could

6:01

be Canadian. It's difficult to pin

6:04

it down. We do know that he's moving around quite

6:06

a lot as a child with his family. By

6:08

the time he gets to New York,

6:11

we know that he's certainly living in

6:13

an immigrant community there. So once we

6:15

get to America, he's definitely has immigrant

6:17

status. Has he come from Canada or

6:19

was he Irish and born in

6:21

America? It's unclear, but those are two of the

6:23

options that might be in the background. He

6:26

gained employment working at a drug

6:28

store and he was apprenticed to a doctor. He

6:31

became a physician as he entered

6:33

adulthood, but he had no real qualifications

6:36

to do so as far as we

6:38

can see, despite his apprenticeship. That's not

6:40

unusual for the 19th century, right, in

6:43

terms of medical practice. Yeah. So

6:45

at this time, quack doctors, as

6:47

they became known, outnumbered legitimate ones,

6:49

three to one. So legitimate doctors

6:52

were outnumbered. And this all

6:54

comes about, I think, because there's this

6:56

growing interest in science and it's trying

6:58

to capitalize on

7:00

that interest. There's a health market growing

7:03

up. I mean, we're really familiar with

7:05

some of that, the same concepts in

7:07

our own time in terms of wellness

7:09

and what's happening at the shady edges

7:11

of that marketing campaign that is the

7:13

wellness industry. It also happened to

7:15

coincide with the professionalization of medicine in

7:17

the United States. So for example, the

7:19

American Medical Association is set up in

7:21

1847. So there's a formalization happening on

7:23

one side and it makes perfect sense

7:26

then that this kind

7:28

of quackery is going on around

7:31

the sides. And Tumblety is feeding

7:33

into that. He's selling things like

7:35

he's coming up with these concoctions

7:38

that are Tumblety's pimple destroyer, for

7:40

instance, or Dr. Morse's Indian root

7:42

pills. What I will say is

7:44

take note of that Dr. Morse's. Throughout

7:47

this, we will find that Tumblety doesn't

7:49

always use his own name. So Dr.

7:51

Morse is one of the aliases

7:54

that he goes by, but it's just one of them.

7:56

That's so interesting. Also, the pimple

7:59

destroyer makes me think of, you know,

8:01

this is sort of ongoing conversation people

8:03

have about the marketing of men's

8:05

products versus women's products. You have like,

8:07

you know, women's products, they smell beautifully

8:10

like flowers and they make your skin

8:12

soft and gentle. And then men's things

8:14

are like, English bulldog, destroyer

8:17

of pimples. And like, this clearly nothing

8:19

changes. This was the same in the

8:21

19th century. I love it. Yeah. And

8:23

he's a showman in his own right,

8:26

to a certain extent. He's described as

8:28

eccentric. He wears ostentatious clothing, often in

8:30

the military style. And he has no

8:32

military background as far as we're aware.

8:34

So he really stood out. He

8:37

was moving around America a lot because that's

8:39

what a lot of these quack doctors did

8:41

at this time. But people were

8:43

aware of him because he was so eccentric.

8:45

Now, why is he moving about? Well, as

8:48

this is after dark, there is a trail

8:50

of crime in his wake. We

8:53

think, well, some experts think others disagree with

8:55

this and you'll find this a lot in

8:57

Tumblety's tale, but that he had potentially been

8:59

carrying out illegal abortions in Canada. And he

9:01

had to move from there because the authorities

9:03

started to grasp on to what he was

9:05

doing. So he fled. Then

9:07

we next see him

9:09

in Boston and he's

9:11

connected with to the death of a man

9:13

there, a patient he was treating. So he

9:15

fled again. We next encounter

9:18

him in St. Louis in May

9:20

1865. And he's arrested on the 5th of

9:22

May and taken to Washington, D.C. This

9:26

is slightly unbelievable. But the reason he is

9:28

taken there to Washington, D.C. is because he

9:30

is arrested in connection to

9:32

the assassination of President Abraham

9:34

Lincoln. When

9:37

I read that myself, I was like, hold on

9:40

a second. This guy is becoming quite notorious. But

9:42

the reason he was arrested is because he was

9:44

going under the name of Dr. Blackburn at the

9:46

time. And there was a Dr. Blackburn associated with

9:49

some of the suspects or one of the suspects

9:51

that was involved in the assassination attempt. So actually,

9:53

by using an alias, he had just implicated

9:55

himself. But he had no, as far as we

9:57

can tell, he had no actual connection. So we

10:00

know he wasn't connected, but even so, I mean,

10:02

he's making quite a reputation for himself. And I

10:04

suppose that reputation is following him. As you say,

10:06

this is stream of crimes. He's possibly carrying out

10:09

illegal abortions, not unusual at the time. You

10:11

mentioned that he's connected to the death of a patient. I

10:14

mean, I'm not surprised if he's selling quack

10:16

products and not actually administering

10:19

any medical care, but that seems like a huge leap

10:21

to be arrested in connection with the assassination of the

10:23

president. That's a bit

10:25

big. Yeah, I think

10:27

it all comes down to that alias.

10:29

And we see more aliases as we

10:31

go through this story that he's just

10:33

happened upon, or maybe he was trying

10:35

to replicate the reputation of this particular

10:37

Dr Blackburn, who was suspected, although not

10:39

convicted of helping in the assassination of

10:41

Abram Lincoln. And we see that so

10:43

many times in the episodes that we

10:45

do set in 19th century America, right,

10:48

where it's so hard to

10:50

prove someone's identity, and it's so easy

10:52

to change identities and to shed them

10:54

as you go. And we

10:56

see it with serial killers in this

10:58

period, we see it with all kinds

11:00

of petty criminals moving through those transient

11:02

communities. You mentioned that he's an immigrant,

11:05

and you think about, especially on the

11:08

East Coast of America, all those cities

11:10

with huge communities of immigrants coming and

11:12

going and changing constantly in its whole

11:14

country and flux. And it

11:16

always, always amazes me the

11:19

ease with which people could slip in

11:21

and out of those places unseen, reinvent

11:23

themselves in a new place. And he

11:25

seems to me that he's fitting that

11:27

pattern wonderfully. Oh, yeah, he's excelling at

11:29

it kind of until he gets himself arrested with it.

11:31

Do you know what I mean? He's like, oh, sorry,

11:33

no, that's not who I am. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And

11:36

he gets arrested. So let's fast forward into the 1880s,

11:39

then, because we're heading towards Whitechapel in 1888,

11:42

as you can probably imagine, he's arrested

11:44

again in 1881 in New Orleans for

11:46

pickpocketing. So it's very, you

11:48

know, it's a real mixture of crimes,

11:50

like some very, very serious crimes and

11:52

then pickpocketing seems a little bit basic

11:55

every day, right? I'm going

11:57

to introduce something here. And I

12:01

think people have maybe, look, I'll tell

12:03

you what it is and then we

12:05

can discuss it. Tumblety is thought to

12:08

have hated women. And in

12:10

all of the Ripper suspects that we

12:12

have looked at over the

12:14

course of this miniseries, that comes

12:16

up again and again, doesn't it? In whatever way, like

12:18

that there was some kind of hatred for women. The

12:21

reason people say that Tumblety had

12:23

a hatred for women is because

12:25

in Washington, DC, he was involved

12:27

in displaying a collection of uteruses

12:29

that had been preserved in a

12:31

jar, which he had kept in

12:34

a study. And he had displayed

12:36

this to his guests at apparently

12:38

an all-male dinner party. Now, there

12:41

is a lot of local

12:43

rumour involved in

12:45

that particular story. And so much of

12:47

it comes out after the Ripper case

12:49

comes to light in 1888. So

12:53

I can't fully, the

12:55

primary source material that I've seen about this is all

12:57

after 1888. So I

12:59

think let's just bear that in mind. It might be

13:01

some filling in the blanks afterwards, but there may be

13:04

something to it. But the

13:06

sources I've seen, and if listeners are aware of any earlier

13:08

sources prior to 1888, do let us know.

13:10

But the two that I've seen that detail

13:12

this are all post 1888. So

13:16

to me, that suggests there might be some backfilling

13:18

there, making sense of a story that doesn't make

13:20

sense. It's really interesting, isn't it?

13:22

I think if we take

13:24

it at face value and say that, yes, he

13:26

had these uteruses

13:30

in glass jars, and

13:32

that's not unusual for medical

13:35

practitioners to have body

13:37

parts preserved, all kinds of body parts.

13:39

And we know as well that medicine

13:42

was primarily a male practice at

13:44

this time. Women weren't allowed to

13:46

practice medicine, even to operate

13:49

as quack doctors, presumably a little

13:51

bit of a challenge. And so

13:54

there's a real fascination in the 18th

13:56

and in the 19th century with the

13:58

female reproductive system, with childbirth, I'm

14:00

thinking we've talked, I think before on this

14:02

podcast, about those really

14:05

quite horrendous anatomical models of

14:07

women in various stages of pregnancy or giving birth

14:09

are made of like cloth that's

14:11

padded and you can pull the baby out

14:13

and then pop it back in and there's

14:15

like an umbilical cord and stuff in it,

14:17

you know, and these were used to teach

14:19

and for sort of curiosity in,

14:21

as I say, the 18th and 19th centuries. And

14:24

so I don't see that as being

14:27

particularly unusual. It seems to

14:29

us today to be gruesome and voyeuristic.

14:31

And I wonder if actually

14:33

the element that's been added in later on

14:36

is this idea of the voyeurism and the all-male dinner

14:38

party and that these things would have been presented

14:41

in this sort of social setting rather

14:43

than a medical setting. But even though

14:45

I wouldn't be surprised if he did

14:48

have those items as

14:50

part of a collection, I don't think that

14:52

would be unusual. And I don't, I mean,

14:54

it points to, I suppose, like a

14:56

general 19th century treatment of women as

14:58

body parts and the complete lack of

15:00

medical care. I don't know if it

15:02

speaks to specifically

15:05

his misogyny. I'm

15:23

Professor Cizana Lipscomb and on Not Just

15:25

the Tudors from History Hit, we do

15:27

admittedly cover quite a lot of Tudors

15:30

from the rise of Henry VII to

15:32

the death of Henry VIII, from

15:34

Anne Boleyn to her daughter Elizabeth I.

15:37

But we also do lots

15:39

that's not Tudors, murderers, mistresses,

15:41

pirates and witches. Clues

15:44

in the title, really. So

15:46

follow Not Just the Tudors from

15:48

History Hit wherever you get your

15:50

podcasts. Ryan

15:53

Reynolds here, from Mint Mobile. With the price

15:55

of just about everything going up during inflation,

15:57

we thought we'd bring our prices down. So

16:00

to help us, we brought in a reverse

16:02

auctioneer, which is apparently a thing. Mint Mobile,

16:04

unlimited premium wireless. How did it get 30,

16:06

30? 30, how did it get 30? How did

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it get 30? 20, 20. 20, how did it get 20? 20, 20, how did

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16:12

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16:17

dollars upfront for 3 months plus taxism fees. Promote rate for

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new customers for limited time unlimited, more than 40 GB per

16:21

month slows. Full terms at mintmobile.com. Anthony,

16:32

there's an obvious elephant in the room here,

16:34

which is that all this is taking place

16:36

in America. The Whitechapel

16:38

murders take place in Whitechapel in London,

16:40

England. What's the

16:42

connection? Presumably at some point, he's got to

16:45

cross the Atlantic. Yeah, and we think he

16:47

didn't just make one crossing. We know that

16:49

he was in Liverpool in 1874, operating as

16:51

a herbal doctor. But

16:54

if you think back to a supposed arrest that

16:56

happened in 1881, he's in New Orleans. So

17:00

he has, the archive would show, the

17:02

ability to move between both countries relatively

17:04

easily for this time. It feeds

17:07

back into this idea we'll encounter later that Tumblety

17:09

was actually quite well off. We're not entirely sure

17:11

how he was as well off as he was,

17:14

but he certainly had money at his disposal. But

17:17

he is in Liverpool in 1874, operating as a herbal doctor.

17:21

He is claiming to have recipes

17:23

that used to belong to Indigenous

17:26

American people, and they have

17:28

healing powers. And so he, you know,

17:30

he's selling himself on this. But then come

17:33

January 1875, a dock

17:35

worker called Edward Hanratty died as

17:37

a result of taking Tumblety's medicine.

17:39

So here we are again with

17:42

another suspicious death based on his

17:44

administering. As he was

17:46

doing in America, he then flees from Liverpool to

17:48

London. I will point out that fleeing from Liverpool

17:50

to London is maybe not as much of a

17:53

safe bet as it is fleeing

17:55

from, you know, New York or

17:57

Canada to New Orleans. You know what I mean? Right,

17:59

yes. We're going worlds apart there,

18:01

but Liverpool to London is ours apart.

18:04

But Fleas, he does, nonetheless.

18:06

Okay, what his back and forth

18:08

movements are between London and America, we

18:13

then don't know. But what

18:15

we do know is that on the 7th of November 1888, so now

18:17

we're right bang

18:20

in the middle of the White Chappa murders,

18:22

right? So on the 7th of November

18:24

1888, Tumbotty is

18:27

arrested in London for gross indecency.

18:29

What? It is possibly related,

18:33

this is not clear from the archive, but

18:35

it's possibly related to same

18:37

sex activity. Oh,

18:40

but that's been inferred afterwards

18:42

again. But it is people on

18:44

the ground at the time telling us that this might have

18:46

been one of the facets to his

18:48

arrest on the 7th of November 1888. And

18:52

gross indecency, as a term, could

18:54

cover same sex activity, right? Absolutely.

18:56

That's how it was policed at the time.

18:59

Now, for some people who look at this case,

19:02

they say, right, well, that rules him

19:04

out. Because Mary Jane Kelly was killed

19:06

on the 9th of November, Tumbotty is

19:08

arrested on the 7th of November. So

19:10

he can't have killed Mary Jane Kelly.

19:13

However, his bail was set at 300

19:15

pounds, which today is equivalent to about

19:17

42,000 pounds. And Tumbotty was

19:21

able to pay it and was

19:23

out on bail on the

19:25

9th of November. You mentioned that he's,

19:27

yeah, potentially wealthy. This is so

19:29

interesting to me that he's so

19:33

hard to pin down. I have no idea who

19:35

this man is. He's arrested at one point in

19:37

America for pickpocketing. And now he's paying a bail

19:40

bill that's the equivalent of 42 grand

19:42

today. What? I

19:45

will say, I had to

19:47

say this to myself as I was going

19:49

through this, bear in mind that idea of

19:51

filling in the blanks afterwards. So these, you

19:53

know, we get newspaper articles and we're just

19:55

about to come to one of them now.

19:57

We get newspaper articles that come to us.

20:00

after the fact in 1888, but after the

20:02

fact that he's been linked to the white

20:04

chopper murders. And what happens,

20:06

as we know so well in so

20:08

many cases we've covered, is the newspapers

20:10

are filling in some of the blanks.

20:12

And I wonder if they have not

20:15

slightly mythologized him somehow

20:17

in the aftermath of him

20:20

being linked to the white chopper murders. I

20:23

can't say for sure, but we are missing elements

20:25

of his archive. For instance, we don't have a

20:27

lot of the documentation relating to his arrests. This

20:30

is why the gross indecency charge is so muddled

20:32

where people say, well, it could have been same-sex

20:34

related, or it could have been whatever. So

20:39

he's a murky individual, and I wonder sometimes

20:41

if blanks have not been filled in after

20:43

the fact. Okay, so we have him being

20:45

arrested for gross indecency. He

20:48

pays his own bail, so he's out

20:50

back on the street. We know that

20:52

Mary Jane Kelly is killed by the

20:54

so-called Ripper on the 9th of November.

20:57

I'm still not seeing this

20:59

connection. Is this a connection between

21:02

the Doctor and between Tumble Tea

21:04

and the Ripper? Is this being

21:06

made in this moment,

21:08

or is this all conjecture that

21:11

happens later on? I

21:13

think the answer is both, you know. I was

21:15

asking myself that very question. I was

21:18

like, wait, when is this happening? But

21:20

let's turn our attention to one

21:22

of the newspaper articles that appears

21:24

in November 1888, but

21:27

in America that relates to

21:30

Tumble Tea. Numerous

21:32

articles appeared in quick succession across

21:34

the states. They all read

21:37

something like this. Something

21:41

about Dr. Tumble Tea, San

21:44

Francisco, November 22nd. Chief

21:47

of Police Crowley has lately been

21:49

in correspondence with officials of Scotland

21:51

Yard, London regarding Dr. Tumble Tea,

21:54

who is at present under arrest

21:56

on suspicion of being implicated in

21:58

the White Chapel murders. So

24:01

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24:03

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24:05

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24:07

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24:10

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24:12

device. So

24:24

we're getting a much clearer picture

24:26

of this man's life now, of TumbleTee's life,

24:29

but also interesting is that according to

24:31

the American papers that you've

24:34

quoted here, TumbleTee

24:36

is coming under

24:38

the interest of the Whitechapel

24:41

police force. And actually as

24:44

this paper in San Francisco claims, has

24:46

been arrested not for

24:48

gross indecency, but under suspicion. I'm

24:51

just looking at the actual primary source here.

24:53

It says under suspicion of being implicated in

24:55

the Whitechapel murders. What is

24:57

going on? How has this connection been

24:59

made? It's super confusing,

25:01

isn't it? It's right. Let's look at

25:04

the timeline a little again, because

25:06

it is very strange. The

25:09

ways in which America is so sure

25:11

that this is the ripper or the

25:13

man that becomes known as the ripper,

25:15

whereas in England, that surety doesn't exist.

25:18

So unfortunately, TumbleTee's file regarding

25:20

his arrest has been lost, as

25:22

I say. And it's a

25:24

problem because the nature of the facts are unclear.

25:27

There is a rumour that, yes, there was an arrest

25:29

on November the 7th, but apparently

25:31

that TumbleTee was subsequently rearrested on

25:33

November the 12th and held specifically

25:35

on the suspicion of murdering Mary

25:37

Jane Kelly, the final canonical victim

25:39

of the man who became known

25:41

as Jack the Ripper. And she

25:43

had died three days before that

25:45

arrest. She had. And he

25:48

was out on bail at that time. But

25:50

apparent... and this is what... this doesn't

25:53

add up for me, right? So he was arrested

25:55

for... he was arrested, potentially, they say on the

25:57

12th again, for the murder of

25:59

Mary Jane Kelly.