Did Jack the Ripper help assassinate Abraham Lincoln?

Is this blogger using a provocative title to draw in readers?

It's not completely off-base. Bear with me.

When John Wilkes Booth assassinated Abraham Lincoln on April 14, 1865, police arrested a circle of his fellow conspirators. They didn't stop there, of course, and went on to arrest or question hundreds of people who knew the conspirators. When a president is killed, the police throw their net pretty wide.

One person caught in that net was Francis Tumblety of St. Louis, a quack doctor who may or may not have known conspirator David Herold. Tumblety was soon released after police found no evidence that he was involved in the assassination.

This wasn't Tumblety's first or last run-in with the law. The eccentric "doctor" made a good living selling bogus medicines such as "Tumblety's Pimple Destroyer" and "Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills", and dressed flamoyantly in military-style clothing. This got him into trouble during the Civil War because it was illegal for civilians to wear anything that looked like a uniform. He was also charged with manslaughter in Canada over the death of one of his patients.

Tumblety spent a fair amount of time in London, living in Whitechapel. He gained a reputation for his hatred of women, claiming he had fallen in love with and been jilted by a prostitute. He kept a collection of uteri in his home that he showed male guests in order to "prove" the inferiority of the female sex.

Tumblety was arrested in London for four counts of having homosexual encounters, something that was illegal until quite recently. He was also suspected in 1888 of being Jack the Ripper. He had an all-consuming hatred of women, some medical knowledge as the murderer was supposed to have had, and was in the neighborhood during the murders. When he fled the country under an assumed name, the murders stopped.

Of course he might have fled the country because of the crimes for which he was charged, but the London police were suspicious enough to have him followed once he got back to the United States. Modern Ripperologists consider him a top suspect, and while it seems unlikely that he had any part in Lincoln's killing, it's intriguing that the most famous assassination and the most famous serial killer of the nineteenth century could have been linked.

Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Civil War Photo Friday: Hanging out at the cooks galley

Napoleon said an army travels on its stomach, and the Union army was no exception. Here we see Company F, Third Division of the New Hampshire Volunteers at their galley at Hilton Head, South Carolina.

The cooks are on the sides of the photograph, and in the center we can see a black teenager who was probably a runaway slave who joined up. Many runaways attached themselves to Union regiments as laborers and officers' servants. If he wanted to fight, he would have to join one of the segregated black regiments.

So what's for lunch? Probably salt pork and dried vegetables. That was what was for lunch pretty much every day!

Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Caving in Spain

I've recently gotten back into caving. I did a bit of caving a couple of decades ago in New Mexico and Missouri and now that I'm living in Cantabria, one of the best regions in the world for caves, I've joined the local federation and am getting back underground. Here's me squeezing through a little hole that slopes down to a ledge over a cliff, hence the rope. Below is a shot from the same cave of some of the great formations you can see.

Being a travel blogger for Gadling, anytime I do anything even remotely interesting it gets turned into an article. You can read about my adventures in Cañuela Cave and Coventosa Cave at these links.

Civil War Photo Friday: All Quiet on the Potomac

OK, so it's an engraving and not a photo. Sue me. I like the image, though. It's an illustration from a book of war lyrics, this one illustrating 'All Quiet along the Potomac'. Here we have a sleepy Union soldier nodding off in the moonlight. There hasn't been a peep from the Rebs for days.

But wait, what's that behind him? They say war is long stretches of boredom interrupted by moments of extreme terror. I think this guy is about to experience a sudden shift from one to the other.

Skirmishes probably killed more troops in the Civil War than the big battles. They were a constant fact of life for an army on campaign, and even when in winter quarters an army could expect probes and patrols at the edges of their protected territory that would lead to casualties. As this guy is about to learn, there's no such thing as an insignificant skirmish.

Check the original page of this old book for a grim little poem.

Book Review: Time is the Oven

Time Is the Oven by Richard G. Sharp
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a tale of a young Missourian coming into his own in the years following the Civil War. The book spans a couple of decades from his first wanderings as a callow youth, through various romantic relationships, his friendship with Frank James, and his ultimate success while working on the Panama Canal. Vast in scope, this is an ambitious novel told with wit and historical detail.

"Told," unfortunately, is the key word. Most of the book is narration, with little actual scene. While the narration is insightful and often funny--I even laughed out loud a couple of times, a rare thing for me to do with a book--it lends a certain distance between the reader and the plot.

This was frustrating because I could see the great book trying to break out of the constraints of the good one. The author overly explains everything, when in fact he has the skills to show us far more effectively. I hope in future volumes the author gains confidence to put us right in the scene instead of simply narrating everything.

View all my reviews

Moroccan battles in miniature

Here's one for my wargamer readers. I've just done two guest blogs for Black Gate about a pair of fascinating dioramas I discovered in the American Legation museum in Tangier. Built by master modeller Edward Suren of London, these battle scenes are incredibly detailed. They include the Battle of the Three Kings (1578) and the Battle of Tondibi (1591). I've included lots of pictures and background about both battles.

Wild West Photo Friday: Four Forgotten Cowboys

Many of the historic photos that have come down to us lack information. Looking at these two images, I have to wonder--who were they? Where were they? And are they really cowboys?

The reason for this last question is that by the turn of the century, the West was already becoming a tourist attaction. People went to see the sights and as a memento would have their picture taken in Western gear. In some posed images they didn't even leave the big city, they just went to a photographic studio and picked out a costume!

The top photo looks real to me, but the bottom image rings a bit false. Maybe it's the contrast between the ties and the heavy weaponry. Maybe they don't look as hard-bitten as the guy in the top photo. Or maybe I'm reading too much into it. What do you think?