22 Facts About Francis Tumblety

Francis Tumblety was an eccentric self-promoter and was often in trouble with the law.

Francis Tumblety has been put forward as a suspect for the notorious and unsolved Jack the Ripper murder spree in Whitechapel, London, in 1888.

Francis Tumblety was briefly employed as a cleaner at "Lispenard's Hospital" in Rochester.

Francis Tumblety left home around 17, and did not return for 10 years.

Francis Tumblety claimed to be a "great physician", but was commonly perceived as a quack.

Francis Tumblety sold patent medicines such as "Tumblety's Pimple Destroyer" and "Dr Morse's Indian Root Pills", and gained a reputation for his eccentric, ostentatious clothes, which were frequently of a military nature.

Francis Tumblety was connected to the death of one of his patients in Boston, but escaped prosecution.

In 1858, Francis Tumblety returned to Rochester apparently a rich man, making an ostentatious display of his wealth and new social standing, and claiming that it had been achieved through patenting of his medicinal cures.

On May 5,1865, Francis Tumblety was arrested in St Louis and taken to Washington, DC, on orders of the Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, for alleged complicity in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, because the police believed that he was an associate of David Herold, who was captured with John Wilkes Booth.

In 1881, Francis Tumblety was arrested in New Orleans for pickpocketing, his alleged victim being an employee of the US District Attorney.

However, the "private detective" who arrested Francis Tumblety was later accused of attempting to blackmail him.

Charles Dunham claimed that Francis Tumblety appeared to revel in denouncing all women, but reserved a special hatred for prostitutes; according to Dunham he blamed his misogyny on a failed marriage to a prostitute.

At an all-male dinner party in Washington, DC, Francis Tumblety allegedly displayed a collection of uteruses preserved in jars in his study, and proudly boasted that they came from "every class of woman".

Francis Tumblety visited Europe several times, including Ireland, Scotland, England, Germany, and France.

Francis Tumblety claimed to have been introduced to Charles Dickens and King William of Germany, and to have provided treatment to Louis Napoleon, for which he was awarded the Legion of Honour.

Many newspapers reported the stories and in the wake of this adverse publicity, Francis Tumblety recruited Caine to edit his biography.

Professional police officers and amateur historical researchers Stewart Evans and Paul Gainey detailed evidence in their 1996 book Jack the Ripper: First American Serial Killer that Francis Tumblety was temporarily resident in a boarding house in the Whitechapel district during the brief period of the murder rampage of Jack the Ripper, and pieced together a case that he may be the culprit.

However, a contemporary interview describes Francis Tumblety as having a much smaller moustache at the time of the Whitechapel murders than is seen in the well-known photograph of him.

Francis Tumblety returned to Rochester and moved in with an elderly female relative, whose house served as his office.

Francis Tumblety was living in Baltimore, Maryland, during the 1900 census, but returned to St Louis, where he died on May 28,1903, of heart disease.

Francis Tumblety again used the alias "Townsend" when registering at a hospital before his death.

Francis Tumblety's body was buried in the family plot in Rochester's Holy Sepulchre Cemetery.