|
Welcome
Taphophilia (dot) Com...
A repository of morbid curiosities:
Thanatology and Taphophile Issues, Cemetery,
Funeral Industry and Death Related News.
A Taphophilia Thank You...
Taphophilia (dot) Com would not be possible without the knowledge, experience and talent of DarkestWeb. From its conception and early development, DarkestWeb was faced with many challenges; from inspiring and motivating, to providing guidance and direction. The continued dedication and support has produced results greater than ever expected, and for this, I owe a huge debt of gratitude.
Announcements
Graveyards of Chicago:
The People, History, Art, and Lore of Cook County Cemeteries
By Matt Hucke And Ursula Bielski. Discover a Chicago That Exists Just Beneath the Surface - About Six Feet Under! Take a tour of Chicago's permanent residents! Please visit the Lake Claremont Press website to purchase your copy of Graveyards of Chicago today!
Green-Wood Cemetery Arcadia Publishing announces the release of Alexandra Mosca's historic account of one of New York's most famous cemeteries. Aracdia Publishing's Images of America series has an extensive catalog of many cemetery publications! Please visit Arcadia Publishing to purchase your copy of Green-Wood Cemetery and to browse other available titles!
Men of Mortuaries Calendar
To purchase your 2008 calendar, learn more about the KAMMCARES Foundation, or to be featured in the 2009 calendar, please visit Men of Mortuaries.
Epitaphs: The Magazine for Cemetery Lovers By Cemetery Lovers
For information regarding subscriptions, single issues, submission guidelines, deadlines, classifieds or advertising for future issues, please visit The Cemetery Club.
Guardians of the Soul: Angels and Innocents, Mourners and Saints, Indiana's remarkable cemetery sculpture
with photography by John Bower and foreword by Claude Cookman is now
available. Please visit
Studio Indiana for more information.
West Springfield Massachusetts: Stories Carved in Stone by Rusty Clark features information on early New England gravestone carvers with more than two hundred photos and illustrations. Please visit the Dog Pond Press website.
|
|
Here lies the likeliest Ripper |
|
|
|
|
Written by DeadGirl
|
|
Monday, 26 July 2004 |
Across the lake, in Holy Sepulchre Cemetery, the man suspected of killing five prostitutes is buried The shrewd doctor turned wo
BILL TAYLOR
FEATURE WRITER
ROCHESTER, N.Y.—Whoever they were and however they spelled their name, the Tumuelty, Tumblety, Tumility or Twomblety family had the money for a fair-sized plot and an imposing brown marble monument in Holy Sepulchre Cemetery.
If you've taken the ferry from Toronto, you pass the graveyard, handsome enough to be Rochester's equivalent to Mount Pleasant Cemetery, on your way downtown. It straddles Lake Ave. and you'll sometimes see deer grazing there. The Tumueltys (as it is on the headstone, though a lot of "experts" say that's wrong) are in plot 73, section 13, in an older part of the cemetery. There are Civil War dead buried nearby.
A Holy Sepulchre employee stops in a van as you're searching for the grave. "Not having any luck? That's it right there."
He hasn't bothered asking who you're looking for.
"Trust me. That's the one."
Listed on it are James Tumuelty, died May 7, 1857, aged 74; his wife Margaret, died May 27, 1873, aged 87: "May they rest in peace." And their sons Lawrence, died Feb. 14, 1898, aged 79; and Dr. Francis Tumuelty, died May 28, 1903, aged 73: "Requiescat in Pace." It's Francis that people come to visit and to trace the letters etched into the stone. But they know him by a different name ...
Jack the Ripper.
We'll never know for sure, but Tumuelty — a quack doctor, thought to have practised his dubious medicine in Toronto in the late 1850s — is very high on the list of suspects in the most famous unsolved mass-murder case of all time: the butchery of five women in London's Whitechapel slums between Aug. 31 and Nov. 9, 1888.
The killings and the likelihood of Tumuelty's guilt are documented in Jack The Ripper: First American Serial Killer by Stewart Evans and Paul Gainey. Do a Google search of "Tumuelty" or "Tumblety" (said to be the probable correct spelling, but let's stay with what's on the gravestone) and there's a mass of additional information on-line.
Though his age is given as 73, Tumuelty's place and date of birth are sketchy. Some sources say Canada, some Ireland, and as late as 1833. The family name first appears in Rochester city directories in 1844. Francis, with little or no formal education, is said to have sold porno books and then worked in a "disreputable" drugstore, where he apparently picked up the rudiments of concocting the "snake oil" that would make him quite a wealthy man.
In 1857, he moved to Montreal not only presenting himself as a physician but impressing local society enough that he was quickly invited to run in a provincial election. No sooner had he refused than he was arrested as a suspected abortionist. The case never came to trial.
From there, Tumuelty is said to have moved to Toronto and then Saint John, N.B., where he was forced to skip town after apparently prescribing medicine that killed a patient. (These patent miracle-cures were often little more than a cocktail of opium and raw alcohol.) After that, he seems to have roamed the United States, from New York to San Francisco, posing sometimes as a military doctor and claiming friendship with Abraham Lincoln. He would sometimes wear a uniform and medals, none of which he was entitled to.
Tumuelty evidently made a lot of money peddling his home-brewed nostrums from town to town. He built a reputation as a woman-hater, especially prostitutes, reportedly telling one acquaintance, "I don't know any such cattle, and if I did I would, as your friend, sooner give you a dose of quick poison than take you into such danger."
His first visit to England was in 1874. He returned in the summer of 1888 and was arrested Nov. 7, charged with homosexual activities.
Tumuelty was also held on suspicion of being Jack the Ripper, following the last, and goriest, of the five murders. Bail was set at 300 pounds — very high for that time, about the equivalent of $1,500 (U.S.) — and he fled the country, sailing back to New York. The "Ripper" killings ceased.
New York police kept him under surveillance but had no legal grounds for holding him. One of them was Chief Inspector Thomas Byrnes, notorious for using violence to elicit confessions. Byrnes coined the term "third degree" for his no-holds-barred interrogations. But even he couldn't come up with an excuse to arrest Tumuelty.
In December, 1888, he slipped out of the city and was next heard of five years later back in Rochester. He died in St. Louis in 1903, having built up a considerable fortune.
There's another unsolved mystery connected with the Tumuelty family plot in Holy Sepulchre. There are four names on the tombstone but six graves.
"We know there are people buried in them," says cemetery employee Kathy Taran.
"But we don't know who they are."
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_PrintFriendly&c=Article&cid=1090707008569&call_pageid=968332188774 |
|
