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Casebook Message Boards: Police Officials: Police Officials: PC 240H Ernest Thompson (Frances Coles case)
Author: James Jeffrey Paul Sunday, 19 January 2003 - 11:21 pm | |
One of the sad bit players in the Whitechapel Case was PC Ernest Thompson, who discovered the body of Frances Coles. According to Frederick P. Wensley, eventual Chief Constable of CID, "I fancy that the lost opportunity [of catching Coles's killer, whom he suspected was Jack the Ripper himself] preyed on Thompson's mind, for I heard him refer to it in despondent terms more than once, and he seemed to regard the incident as presaging some evil fate for himself." And according to Philip Sugden, "The forebodings proved true. In 1900 Thompson was stabbed to death when he intervened to prevent a disturbance at a coffee stall in Commercial Road." Does anyone know of any news clippings or primary source materials about this sad, tragic figure? I need to know for a novel I'm writing about the Ripper case.
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Author: Joe Gibson Monday, 20 January 2003 - 02:04 pm | |
There are numerous newspaper references on this site for Ernest Thompson: http://www.lightage.demon.co.uk/POLNOTES.htm Incidentally, the site was bookmarked here some time ago by Chris T George, I believe. If you're on a slow connection the associated PDFs take some time to load. EDIT -- There's at least one report on Casebook: http://www.casebook.org/press_reports/times_[london]/lt001203.html -- but maybe you've seen this already.
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Author: James Jeffrey Paul Monday, 20 January 2003 - 04:25 pm | |
Joe, Thanks!
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