The gripping and compelling story of how a member of the gang that assassinated President Abraham Lincoln went on to be a leading suspect in the Jack the Ripper killings of 1888

A fraudulent doctor, Francis Tumblety, is implicated in both the 1865 assassination of President Abraham Lincoln in Washington DC and the 1888 Jack the Ripper killings in the East End of London. It seems incredible but the compelling evidence is revealed in this book. 

We delve into the murderous trail left by Tumblety – one that stretches from America’s Gilded Age to the poverty-ridden slums of London’s Whitechapel district – and explore the murky underworld which enabled his horrific crimes.

Tumblety was a flamboyant huckster, well known in the newspaper gossip columns though his celebrity masked his homicidal tendencies. He was arrested due to his clear links to the Lincoln assassination then released while others were hanged on the scaffold. Later, he was locked up by Scotland Yard as a prime Jack the Ripper suspect, but made a daring escape. The proof is overwhelming that Tumblety, a man who possessed a grisly collection of uteruses in a cabinet of curiosities, was undoubtedly Jack the Ripper.  

About the author

Tony McMahon is an on-screen contributor and panellist for TV documentaries on history, science, and social/political issues. He is a former journalist and BBC producer who brings an investigative approach to topics as varied as UFOs/UAPs, Nazis and the occult, ancient empires and looking afresh at biblical mysteries. As an LGBT historian, he has written about sexual identity, exploring how people we now term LGBT would have survived in more challenging social environments. The idea to investigate Francis Tumblety arose after being invited to talk about Jack the Ripper on Sky History’s 2022 documentary series: William Shatner’s The Unexplained.