The suspect list for the Whitechapel Murders is long. The only thing that anyone can agree on, is that they all cannot have been Jack the Ripper. Perhaps even, none of them were Jack the Ripper. It’s possible that the notorious Victorian serial killer went under the radar and avoided the history books altogether. However, even though the Jack the Ripper suspect list is long, there are suspects in there which are more interesting and thought-provoking than others. Thomas Neill Cream is one of those on the Jack the Ripper suspect list which stands out.
Could he, have been the notorious Whitechapel killer that we have been searching for all of this time? Possibly. Without anyone being convicted of being Jack the Ripper it is impossible to rule anyone out. But if we are to assume that he was Jack the Ripper, then, we need evidence that Thomas Neill Cream was the Whitechapel killer during the late Victorian era. Was Thomas Neill Cream Jack the Ripper? For us to say that Thomas Neill Cream was Jack the Ripper, we need good evidence to believe that he was the killer. To do that, we first have to put him at the scene of the crime. There is good reason to believe that he was nowhere in or near Whitechapel during the Whitechapel Murders; as Cream was in prison in Chicago in the United States. He was serving time in prison there for murder throughout the 1880s. He was only released from prison on the 31st of July 1891, which was long after the Autumn of Terror. The Autumn of Terror is when Jack the Ripper murdered five women during the Autumn of 1888. The last Whitechapel Murder happened on the 13th of February 1891. Cream only arrived in England on the 1st of October 1891, long after the Whitechapel Murders had stopped. Therefore, due to Cream being in prison at the other side of the Atlantic, we have good reason to believe that he was nowhere in or near Whitechapel during the time of the Whitechapel Murders. Due to Cream not even being in the United Kingdom when the murders took place, we have very good reason to rule him out completely as a Jack the Ripper suspect. It seems highly unlikely that Thomas Neill Cream was Jack the Ripper, just based on the fact alone that he was in prison in a different country at the same time that the Whitechapel Murders were happening. So, why is Neill Cream even a suspect?
‘’I am Jack…’’ the Ripper
The reason why Neill Cream is still a Ripper suspect to this day is because of the words he apparently said before his death. The words he said before his death was ‘’I am Jack…’’. He was potentially meaning that he was Jack the Ripper. He said the words ‘’I am Jack…’’ just before he was hanged and the noose fell on him, making him unable to complete what he was saying. Cream was hanged for the murder of a woman named Miranda Clover, who he was found guilty of murdering. Miranda Clover, like Jack the Ripper’s victims, was a prostitute. However, the modus operandi that Cream used on Clover was different from Jack the Ripper’s modus operandi. Where Jack the Ripper used a knife to kill his victims, Thomas Neill Cream used poison to kill his victims. Cream is thought to have killed several women by poisoning them. Therefore, unlike many Jack the Ripper suspects, who we have no evidence to presume that they where murderers, Neill Cream is one of the Jack the Ripper suspects known to have murdered.
What is different from Jack the Ripper’s murders and Thomas Neill Cream’s murders is their modus operandi - both of their methods of killing their victims were different, this is another reason, or piece of evidence to suggest that Neill Cream was not Jack the Ripper.
The Other Jack The Ripper Suspects Who Claimed To Have Been The Ripper Cream was not the only suspect who claimed to have been Jack the Ripper. There is another suspect who claimed or might have claimed the same thing. For example, not long after the murder of Mary Jane Kelly (Jack the Ripper’s last thought of victim), there was writing found in the home of another Jack the Ripper suspect (William Bury), the writing was found on a door in William Bury’s house, that writing read: ‘’Jack the Ripper is in this sellar’’. The writing on the door in William Bury’s house was probably written by William Bury’s wife who lived with him. Not long after the writing was discovered, William Bury murdered his wife, and the murder was in a similar fashion to the way that Jack the Ripper had murdered. William Bury was living in Whitechapel during the times of the Whitechapel Murders, unlike Neill Cream. Therefore, if we should take a confession seriously, it shouldn’t be that of Cream’s, giving that he wasn’t in Whitechapel at the time, instead, we should take the confession (?) within William Bury’s house seriously, as he was within Whitechapel at the time and he did commit murder in a similar way to Jack the Ripper. However, William Bury was investigated by the police for the Whitechapel Murders and was cleared of those murders, the police at the time must have had a good reason to rule William Bury out as being Jack the Ripper. Whether William Bury was the Whitechapel murderer or not, both he and Cream couldn’t have been the killer, as most experts believe that the Canonical Five victims (and possibly Martha Tabram) were killed by the same hand. In other words, there was no more than one killer that committed the Canonical Five murders. Therefore, even if we were to presume that either Thomas Neill Cream or William Bury was Jack the Ripper, then one of the confessions has to be a lie. Either Cream’s ‘’I am Jack…’’ was a lie or the Bury house ‘’Jack the Ripper is in this sellar’’ is a lie, they cannot both be true, as the two men can’t have been Jack the Ripper. Perhaps both are lies. It is most likely certain that Thomas Neill Cream’s ‘confession’ was a lie. He couldn’t have committed the Whitechapel Murders as he wasn’t even in the United Kingdom at the time. So, why would he lie? Only Cream knows the reason why he lied. But, we can make a guess why he would have lied about being Jack the Ripper. Perhaps he wanted attention and notoriety. If that’s the case, then he certainly found that attention and notoriety, as it’s unlikely that he would have even had been remembered in history if he wasn’t linked to the Jack the Ripper case. Those who favour Neill Cream as having had been Jack the Ripper have come up with fanciful, if not rather comical explanation for how Neil Cream could have committed the Whitechapel Murders. They claim that he had a body double that was in prison and that it helped Cream to escape prison in America, for him to go over to England to commit Jack the Ripper’s murders, and then flee back to go to prison in America. It really doesn’t make sense. Why would Neill Cream return to prison when he successfully broke out of it and got a body double to take his place? It seems like a weak theory which isn’t based on any evidence. We may not know who Jack the Ripper was, but we can rule out suspects based on lack of evidence, weak reasoning and evidence which points to the contrary (like Cream being out of the country during every single Jack the Ripper murder). If we can rule any Jack the Ripper suspect out as being the Whitechapel Murderer, then it is Thomas Neill Cream, for he wasn’t in the country and when he did murder, he had a different modus operandi. A final reason why we can rule him out is due to the actual confession itself. Neill Cream didn’t say that he was Jack the Ripper, he just said he was Jack. It’s possible that he was going to say that he was Jack the Ripper, and yet, it’s also as possible that he was going to say that his real name was Jack something else. Perhaps his real name was Jack? Whatever the case, Thomas Neill Cream most likely wasn’t Jack the Ripper, as all of the evidence points against him being Jack the Ripper. So, if it wasn’t him, then who was Jack the Ripper? Sources: https://www.casebook.org/suspects/bury.html https://www.casebook.org/suspects/cream.html
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