Jack the Ripper? Out Here in Northern Illinois? An Earlier Murder here.

From Wikipedia.

The last entry about cemeteries mentioned a Boone County man being poisoned by a Dr. Cream, suspected of being the notorious Jack the Ripper. This is something I knew nothing at all about. I always figured it was strictly an English/London thing.

But, there are those who thinks Jack the Ripper ended up in London by way of Canada and Illinois and went by the real name of Thomas Neil Cream.

You can look it up for an interesting story.

However, I'm interested in the death of the Boone County man whose gravestone accused Dr. Cream and his wife for his murder.

On 14 July 1881, Daniel Stott died of strychaine poisoning at his home in Boone County, Illinois, after Dr. Cream supplied him with an alleged remedy for epilepsy. Cream was arrested along with Mrs. Julia A. Stott who had become Cream's mistress and procured the poison from Cream to kill her husband.

She turned state's evidence to avoid jail. Cream was sentenced to life imprisonment at Joliet Prison, but was released in July 1891 and went to London where Jack the Ripper soon began his dirty work.

At some point after Mr. Stott's death, unknown persons erected a gravestone oin his plot reading: "Daniel Stott Died June 12, 1881 Aged 61 Years, poisoned by his wife and Dr. Cream."

Wonder what happened to Mrs. Stott?

Now, That Is An Interesting Story. --Cooter

Lots of History in Those Cemeteries: Jack the Ripper in Illinois?

From the Dec. 10, 2008, Chicago Tribune "Cemeteries yield family history" by Jeff Long.

Genealogist Craig Pfannkuche likes exploring cemeteries "and digging up arcane facts about the dead."

He feels nostalgic, he said, for the time when cemeteries were like parks, with people bringing a picnic lunch and having family get-togethers-- even if some of the relatives were 6 feet under. Those days lasted from the late 1800s until about 1950."

Victorians loved mourning but that all changed with all the death during World War II.

A favorite of his to visit is McHenry County's Ridgefield Cemetery which opened in 1836, the second-oldest one in the county. There is one gravestone reading "David Hartman, Company B, 36th Regiment of Illinois Volunteers. Killed at Franklin, Tenn. Nov. 30, 1864. Aged 25 years." That provides the groundwork for a lot of interesting further research.

Then there is a real interesting one in the Garden Prairie, Illinois, cemetery reading, "Killed by his wife and Dr. Cream." There are some who believe that Neil Cream, born in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1850 and who lived for awhile in Chicago, was Jack the Ripper.

All Sorts of Interesting Stuff in Those Cemeteries. --DaCoot