The Policeman Who Saw Jack the Ripper — Then Was Murdered in Whitechapel
News of the Times | Episode 531 |1900
Was Frances Coles the Ripper’s final victim?
In 1892, PC Ernest Thompson discovered her body still warm and bleeding in a dark Whitechapel archway. Some say he glimpsed Jack the Ripper himself that night. Others dismissed the killing as unrelated.

But contemporary newspapers strongly linked Coles to the Ripper murders, and Thompson’s testimony stood at the heart of the investigation.

Eight years later, Thompson would be brutally stabbed to death—in the same part of Whitechapel where he’d once stood over Frances Coles.

Coincidence? Or the final echo of a killer who vanished into myth?

This episode traces the forgotten arc of a man who may have seen the Ripper… and who met a fate hauntingly similar to one of the Ripper’s own victims.

📜 Based entirely on original newspaper reports, inquest testimony, and Victorian police records.

🗞️ Further Particulars:
Also in this episode — a most unusual legal hiccup: a Victorian juror who refused to sign the verdict because he didn’t understand what he was agreeing to. The judge was not amused… and neither was the foreman.

⏳ Step back into Victorian London and beyond — where the crimes are grim, the characters real, and the truth is often stranger than fiction.
👤 Narrated by Robin Coles 

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📚 Related cases from the archive: 
1905 & 1906: The Mysterious Manchester Murders  |  EP462
https://youtu.be/iLrChy8s5SE
1902: The Case of the Clonbrok Murder |  EP477
https://youtu.be/M908ewkwXy4

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