Researching John Scripps

Martin was arrested in Singapore (where he had killed Lowe) when he returned there after murdering the Damudes. Photographs of decomposed body parts were shown as evidence during his trial, making it "one of the most grisly" ever heard in Singapore. He defended himself by saying that Lowe's death was an accident and that a friend of his killed the Damudes. The judge did not believe Martin's account of events and sentenced him to death by hanging, making him the first Briton since Singapore's independence from Britain and Malaysia to be given the death penalty. He is also one of the first Westerners to be executed in Singapore since independence, the first one being Johannes Van Damme of the Netherlands in 1994.

John Locke Scripps was born in Cape Girardeau, Missouri to George Henry Scripps, a merchant who was licensed as a Methodist preacher, but never followed the trade.

John was educated at McKendree College (now McKendree University), in Lebanon, IL. He settled in Chicago in 1847 to practice law, but soon turned to journalism. He was the founder of the Chicago Democratic Press, which was bought by the Chicago Tribune in 1858. The paper was known as The Chicago Press and Tribune until 1860, when the name was changed to the Chicago Daily Tribune. Scripps was for some years the chief editor of the Tribune.

Scripps was later named Postmaster General of Chicago (28 March 1861 - 9 March 1865) by President Lincoln. As Postmaster, Scripps was an innovator, conceiving and implementing the use of the streetcar system to help move the mail.

During the presidential campaign of 1860 he wrote a biography of Lincoln which appeared in the Chicago tribune on 19 May 1860, the day after the convention. Lincoln then approached Scripps to expand upon the biography for a campaign publication. Lincoln himself gave assistance in the writing of the biography. It is widely considered to be the first published biography of Lincoln. While it was published by the Lincoln campaign and Lincoln himself contributed, it was not an authorized biography. When Scripps finished writing, he had too little time before publication to submit the book to Lincoln himself for fact checking. In fact, in a list of books that Lincoln read as a child, Scripps added Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans. In a letter to Lincoln, Scripps asked Lincoln to read it at once if he had not, so as to make Scripps' statement true.

The biography was republished in 1900 by the Cranbrook Press of Detroit, in a version edited by Scripps' daughter Grace.

On 24 October 1848, he married Mary Elizabeth Blanchard (b. 2 January 1825), daughter of Seth Blanchard of Greenville, IL. She was educated at Monticello Seminary, Godfrey IL. They had three children together, George Blanchard Scripps (b. 20 September 1849), Mary Virginia Scripps (b. 13 February 1851), and Grace Locke Scripps (b. 11 September 1863).

Mary died suddenly on January 1, 1866. John died later that year on September 21.