I Am Jack

In the last decade of the nineteenth century Doctor Thomas Neill Cream was hanged at Newgate for poisoning prostitutes. A letter appeared in the press written by a W. Jack Heaney of Lincolnshire, stating that his grandfather had a friend, the hangman Billington, who insisted that Cream had gasped with his last breath: "I am Jack ---" before being despatched abruptly below. That Billington was apparently the only one to hear the confession in no way detracts from the veracity of his claim, since he was obviously positioned closest to the hooded and therefore slightly muffled wretch. Intrigued and, like the Victorian police, having not a clue as to the identity of "Jack the Ripper", I decided to inquire into the history of the sinister Doctor Cream - finding that he had during the Whitechapel atrocities in 1888, to all intents, been confined in an American prison for the crime of murder by means of strychnine poisoning. Yet an odd contradiction in Cream's character caught my attention. Raised from early childhood in Canada, he was already displaying criminal tendencies as a high-flying medical student at McGill University while also indulging in frequent bouts of religious fervour, often preaching piously at Sunday school. I felt it questionable whether such a man, doubtless convinced in that awful moment of reckoning that Divine Judgment was at hand, would with his last breath utter a false confession. Unless of course he was not merely depraved but insane - a plea which was found totally unacceptable at his final trial in 1892. The venue of Cream's first conviction having been Chicago of the eighteen eighties, which, as a result of widespread corruption was soon to become a gangland citadel for the likes of Al Capone, I began seriously to consider whether, after all, the good doctor might not have managed to bribe his way out of jail earlier than was recorded. Particularly since one year previous to the Ripper crimes he had come into what was for those days a sizeable inheritance. Given that under such circumstances he had been able to buy his freedom and escape to England some time before 1888, and that he certainly specialised in the sadistic murder of prostitutes, Thomas Neill Cream would undoubtedly, have been a prime Ripper suspect; but it is generally assumed that his term of imprisonment in America constituted a perfect alibi. A hardened cynic however might be disposed to question. such an assumption, readily accepting that large sums of available cash could (and can) open any doors ---even the barred variety. Mr. A.C. Trude, a prominent American attorney who had defended Cream in the notorious Chicago murder trial went on record as suggesting that the subsequent shortening of Cream's life sentence, ostensibly to ten years, "was effected by political influence obtained by a free use of money"; and furthermore that on commencement of his sentence in 1881 the prisoner's father had furnished a well known politician with the sum of five thousand dollars, to procure, so it was implied, his unconditional release. Turning up Donald Bell's inspirational article published in `The Criminologist' (Volume 9, No. 33, 1974) entitled `Jack the Ripper - the Final Solution', I was encouraged to find his hypothesis outlining Cream as the Whitechapel slayer agreed in almost all essentials, with my own, particularly on the pivotal issue of Cream having been bought out or escaped from jail before 1888. Far from being an impossibility, as Bell revealed, between 1924 and 1936 when prison security was far tighter than it had been back in the eighteen eighties, it was recorded that as many as 204 convicts escaped from Illinois jails. But had Cream done so? Donald Rumbelow, in his excellent book (`The Complete Jack the Ripper' M. H. Allen, London 1987) thought not, by reason of three affidavits, none of which, however, in my opinion, establishes entirely beyond doubt that Cream was still in prison until 1891. It is surely a good deal more credible that a cunning and moneyed criminal with all the hallmarks of a psychotic killer, bribed his way out of an Illinois jail earlier than the authorities dared admit, absconded to England where he committed the Ripper atrocities, and returned to America to hide out until his supposed release in 1891. Of established sociopaths, George Chapman was in the right place at the right time and possessed rudimentary medical know-how, but no particular predilection for murdering prostitutes; the same applying to Frederic Bailey Deeming who specialised rather in despatching wives than whores. That Deeming had claimed to be the Ripper was never substantiated, and besides he did not have the professional expertise demonstrated by the Ripper -- any more than did the other butchers, bakers and candlestick makers who used knives to perform their work. Despite a certain amount of contradictory medical opinion, the majority of doctors who had examined the victims were convinced that the Ripper possessed considerable surgical skill. At the inquest on Annie Chapman , Dr. George Bagster Phillips, who was a Division Police Surgeon with twenty years of practical experience said: "Obviously the work was that of an expert - or one, at least, who had such knowledge of anatomical or pathological examinations as to be enabled to secure the pelvic organs with one sweep of the knife." Cream was a practised and qualified surgeon who had trained both in Montreal and St.Thomas's Hospital, London. For this reason I have, in part, used the technique of psychological profilers, in an attempt to fathom the criminal mentality of this Victorian sociopath. However, the study as a whole is not based on dramatic representation, but solidly researched documentary records, which are clearly set out in the text and can be corroborated. Licence has only been employed to illustrate, for instance, how Cream's elaborate scam might have been contrived. Whether or not it was so contrived must be judged from the information provided, and which I believe, taken as a whole, will convince the reader that Thomas Neill Cream, as he himself confessed, was indeed Jack the Ripper.