Dr. Thomas Neill Cream (1850-1892)

Suggested in: "Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution" (Criminologist article) by Donald Bell

Born in Scotland in May 1850, Cream was 38 at the time of the murders. His family had emigrated to Canada when he was four years old. He graduated as a doctor in 1876 in Montreal. Soon after, he got Flora Elizabeth Brooks pregnant, and he almost killed her performing an abortion. Her outraged father forced them to marry. He carried on performing abortions though and in 1878 young servant girl named Kate Gardener died in his operating theatre. Cream narrowly escaped being charged with murder. The same situation arose in 1880, when a girl called Julia Faulkner died in his care. He was arrested but escaped conviction. The following year, he started having an affair with another woman and poisoned her husband to death. He almost got away with it, but insisted that the body was properly examined. This showed the poison and he was convicted or murder.

Although it was a life sentence, Cream was released on good behavior after 10 years on July 31, 1891. He took a quick trip to Canada to collect an inheritance of $16,000 and left for England, eventually to end up in the South London slums. Only two days after his arrival, he met a prositute named Matilda Clover, who died shortly afterwards of poisoning. The same fate befell an Ellen Donworth. But as in his first two murders, Cream was uncharged.

Cream then poisoned two more women: Alice Marsh and Emma Shrivell. He would easily have escaped detection, but bragged about his knowledge of the murders to all who would listen and he was eventually arrested.

He was charged and found guilty of murder and was hanged on November 15, 1892. It was there that he would perform his last (and perhaps strangest) action - he is said to have uttered "I am Jack..." as the noose fell taut and squeezed the life out of his body.

This makes Cream the only major suspect who confessed to being Jack the Ripper. Of course, he was in prison when the Ripper murders took place. But some people think that Cream actually had a double. The two would help each other by the one being in prison while the other was free committing crimes, using his double's prison sentence as an alibi. Cream's own lawyer at his final trial, Marshall Hall, believed that Neill Cream had a double in the underworld and they went by the same name and used each other's terms of imprisonment as alibis for each other. Cream's handwriting is also similar to that in the Ripper Letters. On the other hand, he always used poison, not stabbing, to kill his victims.