Francis Tumblety (1833-1903)Francis Tumblety (1833-1903)Francis Tumblety was born either in Ireland or Canada to poor working-class parents. His family moved to Rochester, New York, when he was a child. Neighbors and acquaintances who knew him as a teenager thought him 'a dirty, awkward, ignorant, uncared-for, good-for-nothing boy... utterly devoid of education.' He made money at this time by selling pornographic stories and working in a local drugstore.
As a young man, he started his own practice as a doctor (despite having no formal qualifications) and in 1857 arrived in Montreal as a man of considerable wealth. He made a big impact: within a year he had been asked to stand as a candidate in the local elections. However, he was then charged (but never convicted) of performing an illegal abortion on a local prostitute. He then moved to the city of Saint John where, in 1860, was accused of murdering a man with poisoned medicine. After a dramatic speech at the coroner's inquest trying to defend himself, he fled to Washington DC, where he claimed to be an army surgeon and a personal friend of President Lincoln.
It was at this time that Tumblety’s hatred for women became clear, as seen in
the testimony of a Colonel Dunham, who was one night invited to dinner by
Tumblety:
"Someone asked why he had not invited some women to his dinner. His face
instantly became as black as a thunder-cloud. He said, savagely, 'No, Colonel, I
don’t know any such cattle.' He then fiercely denounced all women and especially
prostitutes. He then invited us into his office. One side of this room was
entirely occupied with wardrobes. When the doors were opened quite a museum was
revealed - shelves with glass jars filled with internal body parts of every
class of women". Tumblety then explained to his guests that as a young man he
had married a woman who later turned out to be a practising prostitute.
As his reputation as a madman developed, he wrote and published The Kidnapping
of Dr. Tumblety, a short pamphlet to restore his reputation. It did the
opposite: the book was little more than a series of paranoid ramblings.
Tumblety spent increasing amounts of time in London from the late 1860s onwards,
where he began a homosexual love affair with Sir Henry Hall Caine (21 when the
affair started). The romance ended in 1876 and after that Tumblety got into the
habit of using male prostitutes.
In 1888, Tumblety was arrested on eight occasions on charges of "gross
indecency" with other men in public places in the East End. On 12th November he
was then charged on suspicion of the Whitechapel murders after the death of Mary
Jane Kelly. Chief Inspector Littlechild, a top name in Scotland Yard, believed
him a ‘very likely suspect,’ and a trial was scheduled for December 10th at the
Old Bailey (the main English criminal court). Tumblety was released on bail and
promptly fled to New York City, where he moved in with his sister. Attempts to
bring him back to England to face trial failed and he died in 1903.