Atlantis Online
March 28, 2024, 03:55:18 am
Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
News: Secrets of ocean birth laid bare 
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/5191384.stm#graphic
 
  Home Help Arcade Gallery Links Staff List Calendar Login Register  

Jack The Ripper In America. Did Jack The Ripper Visit The United States?

Pages: 1 2 3 4 [5] 6 7 8   Go Down
  Print  
Author Topic: Jack The Ripper In America. Did Jack The Ripper Visit The United States?  (Read 4076 times)
0 Members and 5 Guests are viewing this topic.
Keira Kensington
Superhero Member
******
Posts: 4705



« Reply #60 on: April 06, 2015, 05:31:41 pm »


Doctor death
BY Mara Bovsun
special To The News
Tuesday, March 25, 2008, 6:25 PM


As homicidal Victorian ghouls go, Jack the Ripper had nothing on Dr. Thomas Neill Cream.

In fact, to this day there are those who will swear that the mysterious sex-slayer and the Canadian-trained physician were one and the same. Perhaps it had something to do with the principal target - London's streetwalkers.

Or perhaps it had something to do with Cream's last words, which, legend has it, were uttered as the gallows trapdoor opened and sent him plunging into the hereafter.

"I am Jack ...."

The noose choked off the end of the sentence and sparked more than a century of speculation.

Born in Scotland in 1850, Cream was a young boy when his family moved to Canada.

After studying medicine at McGill University, he married, and then set up a practice in London, Ontario. The marriage did not last long. Within a year, his young wife succumbed to a mysterious illness.

Cream ended up in Chicago, where he established an unsavory specialty - ending unwanted pregnancies for prostitutes. In 1880 he had his first serious brush with the law when one of his patients died.

Fingered but freed

Cream was tried for murder, and the principal witness against him was a black midwife who sometimes assisted him. The jury gave little weight to the midwife, and Cream went free.

A year later he was in trouble again. This time the victim was an elderly epileptic, Daniel Stott, who had become a regular patient after medicine Cream prescribed eased his fits.

Sometimes Stott's beautiful wife, Julia, would come to pick up the medicine. Romance soon erupted between Julia, who was three decades younger than her husband, and the doctor.

In June 1881, Julia came to Cream's office, as usual, for her husband's medicines. Cream wrote two prescriptions. One was for calomel, a mercury-based compound, used in the mid-19th century as a laxative. The other was for capsules filled with herbs and a smidge of strychnine, which was often used in those days as a stimulant.

Cream insisted that Julia go out of her way to Buck & Rayners, clear across town. Then, instead of heading home to her invalid husband, she returned to Cream's office, where he enhanced the formulas.

A few days later, Daniel Stott took his medicine and was dead within a half hour.

Stott was buried, and the matter forgotten, until a telegram arrived at the coroner's office.

"I want you to have a postmortem examination made of the body of Dan Stott .... Have stomach examined. Suspect foul play."

A day later, another telegram arrived. After a third, the coroner contacted the writer. It was Dr. Cream.

The doctor said a fortune-teller had told him that Stott had been poisoned, and that the druggist was at fault. He suggested giving some of Stott's leftover medicine to a dog.

When the dog died, Stott's body was exhumed. His stomach contained enough strychnine to kill six grown men.

Cream tried to pin Stott's death on the pharmacy, but was soon on trial for murder and was convicted and given life.

After a decade in jail, Cream's father died and left him a sizable inheritance - enough to convince a prison official the convict had been redeemed.
Report Spam   Logged
Pages: 1 2 3 4 [5] 6 7 8   Go Up
  Print  
 
Jump to:  

Powered by EzPortal
Bookmark this site! | Upgrade This Forum
SMF For Free - Create your own Forum
Powered by SMF | SMF © 2016, Simple Machines
Privacy Policy