Jack the Ripper royal conspiracy theories

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Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence & Avondale
Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence & Avondale

In 1888, a series of grisly murders in the East End of London were blamed on an unidentified assailant, known as "Jack the Ripper". Since then, many people have been considered as suspects in the case. One of the most notable is Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale (1864–1892). He was a grandson of Queen Victoria and eldest son of the Prince of Wales. He was then known as Prince Albert Victor of Wales, or, informally, as Prince Eddy. There are various Jack the Ripper royal conspiracy theories that suppose either that Prince Albert Victor was the Ripper, or that his actions prompted others to perform the murders to cover up his alleged misdeeds.

The first theory posited that Albert Victor, driven mad with syphilis, murdered the prostitutes and was incarcerated by his own family. In fact, Albert Victor has strong alibis for all of the murders, and it is unlikely that he suffered from syphilis. Subsequently, more convoluted conspiracy theories have evolved around the idea that Albert Victor secretly married a Catholic shop assistant, and had a daughter. Once the government discovered Albert Victor's secret, the British Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, his freemason friends, the London Metropolitan Police, and Queen Victoria herself, conspired to murder anyone aware of the child. In fact, there is no direct evidence that Albert Victor was ever married or had any children and Lord Salisbury was not a freemason. The originator of the theory, Joseph Sickert (previously known as Joseph Gorman), later recanted his testimony, and admitted to the press that it was a hoax. The theories have been fictionalised in novels and films.

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[edit] Prince Albert Victor as a suspect

The first published reference naming Prince Albert Victor as a Ripper suspect appears to be in 1962, when Philippe Jullian author of Edouard VII, a biography of Prince Albert Victor's father, made a passing reference to rumours that Albert Victor was responsible for the murders. However, Jullian did not detail his sources for those rumours nor the date when the rumour first started.[1][2]

In 1970, Dr. Thomas Eldon Alexander Stowell, CBE published an article called A Solution in The Criminologist. Though Albert Victor was not named in the article itself, Stowell clearly presented him as being Jack the Ripper. Stowell claimed that Albert Victor actually died of syphilis, which he had picked up after a visit to the West Indies, and that the official report of his death by pneumonia should be dismissed. Stowell further claimed that syphilis had driven Albert Victor insane. In this state of mind he had perpetrated the five "canonical" Jack the Ripper murders. Following the murders of 30 September 1888, Albert Victor was restrained by his own family in an institution near Sandringham but later escaped to commit the final murder on 9 November. Stowell claimed that his source for the article was an account written in private by Sir William Withey Gull.[3]

Stowell's article attracted enough attention to place Albert Victor among the most notable Ripper suspects. Stowell could have served indirectly as Jullian's source as Stowell is recorded as sharing his theory as early as 1960 with writer Colin Wilson, who in turn told Harold Nicolson, who is loosely credited as a source of "hitherto unpublished anecdotes" in Jullian's book.[4][1] However, Stowell's claims are untrue. Gull died on 29 January 1890, two years before Albert Victor, and so could not have been Stowell's source concerning Albert Victor's death.[5] At the time Albert Victor was supposedly in a mental institution he was actually serving in the British army, making regular public appearances, and visiting country houses on private visits.[6] The first symptoms of madness arising from syphilitic infection tend to occur about fifteen years from first exposure, meaning that Albert Victor would have to have been infected in about 1873, aged 9, six years before he visited the West Indies. While the timescale of disease progression is never absolute, it nevertheless remains improbable that Albert Victor suffered from syphilis of the brain in 1888.[7] Records of Albert Victor's activities and whereabouts show that he has a solid alibi for each murder. Independent evidence from the Court Circular, which lists the location of members of the Royal Family often on a daily or even hourly basis, newspapers, Queen Victoria's diary, family letters, and other sources, prove that he was attending functions in public, or meeting foreign royalty, or hundreds of miles from London at the time of each of the five canonical murders:[8]

On 5 November 1970 Stowell wrote to The Times newspaper denying that he had ever implied Prince Albert Victor was Jack the Ripper, and the letter was published on 9 November,[13] the day after Stowell's own death. The same week, Stowell's son reported that he had burned his father's papers, saying "I read just sufficient to make certain that there was nothing of importance."[14]

In a biography of Albert Victor, published in 1972, Michael Harrison dismissed the idea that Albert Victor was the Ripper, but suggested one of Albert Victor's tutors from Trinity College, Cambridge, James Kenneth Stephen, as a likely suspect instead. His suggestion was based on Stephen's misogynistic writings, and similarities between his handwriting and that in the "From Hell" letter supposedly written by the Ripper.[15] Harrison's analysis was rebutted by professional document examiners.[16] Harrison supposed that Stephen had homosexual feelings for Albert Victor, and that Stephen's hatred of women arose from jealousy as Albert Victor did not reciprocate Stephen's romantic feelings toward him and instead preferred the company of a woman.[17] There is no proof that Stephen was ever in love with Albert Victor,[18] but he did starve himself to death very shortly after hearing of Albert Victor's own death.[19]

In 1978, Frank Spiering published his book Prince Jack further elaborating the theory, depicting Albert Victor as the murderer with Stephen as his lover. Spiering claimed to have found a copy of Gull's private notes in the library of the New York Academy of Medicine. Supposedly the notes included a confession by Prince Albert Victor himself under a state of hypnosis. Spiering also suggested that Prince Albert Victor died due to an overdose of morphine administered to him under directions of the British Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, and possibly his own father, the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII. The New York Academy of Medicine denies possessing the records Spiering mentioned.[20] Buckingham Palace offered to open their archives to Spiering, but he retorted: "I don't want to see any files".[21] Consequently the book is widely dismissed as a sensational fiction based on Stowell's previous theory rather than genuine historical research.[22]

[edit] Prince Albert Victor's indiscretions as a motive

Meanwhile other stories had surfaced implicating in the Jack the Ripper murders not only Prince Albert Victor but the Royal family and a number of other notable figures. This idea first came to public attention when it was investigated by fictional detectives Barlow and Watt, played by Stratford Johns and Frank Windsor respectively, in the BBC television series Jack the Ripper.[23] The series contained five episodes, aired weekly between 20 July and 17 August 1973, and ended with a statement that the evidence was inconclusive.

The final programme of the series contained testimonies by Joseph Gorman (22 October 1925 – 9 January 2003), a London artist who took the name Joseph Sickert, claiming to be the illegitimate son of noted painter Walter Sickert. Joseph Sickert was the main source used by author Stephen Knight in his work Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution, first published in 1976. After Knight had implicated Walter Sickert in the crimes, Joseph Sickert withdrew his testimony, admitting to the Sunday Times newspaper that "it was a hoax…a whopping fib",[24] though he later affirmed the story in Melvyn Fairclough's 1991 book The Ripper and the Royals.

In the conspiracy, the Marquess of Salisbury (above) orders the murders.
In the conspiracy, the Marquess of Salisbury (above) orders the murders.

This story has become well known, especially through fictional adaptations such as the graphic novel From Hell and the movie Murder by Decree. In it, Princess Alexandra, Albert Victor's mother who, like Walter, is from Denmark, introduces the two men in the hope that Walter will teach Albert Victor about London social life. Walter Sickert introduces Albert Victor to Annie Elizabeth Crook, a shop girl, at his studio, No. 15 Cleveland Street. Albert Victor and Annie have an affair that results in pregnancy. Albert Victor marries Annie in a secret ceremony despite the fact she is Catholic. The sole witnesses to the ceremony are Walter Sickert and Mary Jane Kelly, as friends of Albert Victor and Annie respectively. Albert Victor and Annie's daughter, Alice Margaret Crook, is born on 18 April 1885. Albert Victor settles his wife and daughter in an apartment in Cleveland Street and contacts them as often as he can. In April 1888, the existence of an illegitimate great-grandchild comes to Queen Victoria's attention, and she informs the British Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury. The Queen and the Prime Minister are both afraid that knowledge of the existence of Alice as a Catholic heir to the throne would result in a revolution. Lord Salisbury proceeds to order a raid on the apartment. Albert Victor is placed in the custody of his family while Annie is placed in the custody of Sir William Withey Gull. The latter operates on her to drive her insane, and she spends the next thirty years drifting in and out of institutions before dying in 1920.

Meanwhile, the daughter, Alice, is placed in the care of Mary Jane Kelly during and after the raid. At first, Kelly is content to hide the child, but then she, along with her friends Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman and Elizabeth Stride, decide to blackmail the government. Lord Salisbury conspires with Queen Victoria and his fellow freemasons, including senior policemen in the London Metropolitan Police, to stage a series of murders to kill the women who know about the relationship in order to stop a political scandal that will bring down the monarchy. Lord Salisbury assigns Gull to deal with the threat they pose. The victims are lured inside a carriage where the murders are performed by Gull with the assistance of coachman John Netley and, depending on the version, either Sir Robert Anderson, Assistant Commissioner of the Criminal Investigation Division of Scotland Yard, or Walter Sickert. Catherine Eddowes is killed accidentally in a case of mistaken identity: she uses the alias Mary Ann Kelly and is confused with Mary Jane Kelly. The young Alice survives two attempts by Netley to kill her. After the second unsuccessful attempt, several witnesses chase Netley, who throws himself into the river Thames and drowns. Alice lives well into old age, later becoming Walter Sickert's mistress and therefore Joseph Sickert's mother.[25]

In the original television series, the story is depicted as the belief of Joseph Sickert but not of the detectives. Later works have depicted it as a reality. However, scholars have pointed out many facts which contradict the version of events presented in the conspiracy theory:

  • Walter Sickert did not have a studio in Cleveland Street.[26]
  • Walter Sickert did not know the Princess of Wales.[27]
  • There is no recorded marriage between Albert Victor and anyone.[28]
  • Any marriage between Albert Victor and Annie would have been invalid under British law due to the Royal Marriages Act, and thus any child of such a marriage would not have been in line for the throne. Also, according to the Act of Settlement 1701, only Protestant descendants of the Royal family, who have not, furthermore, married a Catholic, can succeed to the English Crown. Members of the Royal family who convert to Catholicism or marry Catholics lose their rights of succession.[29]
  • Although Annie Crook was a real person, she was not Catholic.[30]
  • Alice Crook was born on 18 April 1885 at 6 Cleveland Street but the name of the father on her birth certificate is blank.[31] On her marriage certificate of 14 July 1918, she gives her father as William Crook, who was also her grandmother's husband but perhaps not her genetic grandfather. It has been suggested that the name of her father was omitted from her birth certificate either because she was illegitimate or to conceal an incestuous relationship between her mother and grandfather.[32]
  • Working back from her birthday, Alice Crook was conceived between 18 July and 11 August 1884. Albert Victor was in Heidelberg from June to August 1884, and hence was not in London at the time of her conception.[33]
  • In January 1889, Annie and Alice, far from having their apartment at No. 6 Cleveland Street raided, are actually placed in the Endell Street Workhouse, after leaving their last known address: 9 Pitt Street (later renamed Scala Street), Tottenham Court Road.[32]
  • By the time of the supposed raids, Nos. 4–14 Cleveland Street had been demolished, and the house in which Annie and Alice had lived no longer existed.[34]
  • Annie and Alice were paupers, moving in and out of the workhouse,[35] and so were not supported by a wealthy patron, such as Albert Victor.[36]
  • Lord Salisbury was not a freemason.[37]
  • Gull retired from practice in 1887 after suffering a stroke, which left him temporarily partially paralysed and unable to speak.[38] He did recover, but he later suffered further attacks before his death in 1890.[39]
  • There is no documentary evidence linking John Netley to the other characters.
  • John Netley did not drown in the Thames, but was killed in 1903 after falling under the wheels of his own van.[40]
  • The forensic evidence indicates that the bodies of the victims were not moved, and hence were not dissected in a carriage and then moved to where they were discovered.[8]
  • Some of the streets where the victims were found were too narrow for a carriage.[8]
  • Anderson was in Switzerland at the time of the double murder.[41]
  • Walter Sickert was in France with his mother and brother in the late summer of 1888, and is unlikely even to have been in London at the time of at least four of the murders.[42]
  • Annie was often institutionalised, but this was because, as noted in workhouse and infirmary records, of recurrent epilepsy. The rest of the time she lived with her family. Only in her final four days of her life, which ended on 23 February 1920, is it noted that she went insane.[43]
  • Prostitutes from the East End of London telling such a tale would never have been believed, so any attempt at blackmail or to sell their story would merely have been dismissed.[44]
  • The Ripper victims were not known to be acquainted with each other and reports of their activities and whereabouts during the year of their death do not suggest a connection.
  • Alice Crook married William Gorman in 1918.[45] Joseph Gorman was one of their five children.[46]

Other authors have made further modifications to the conspiracy theory. For example, Jean Overton-Fuller promoted Sickert from a knowing accomplice to being Jack the Ripper himself in the 1990 book Sickert and the Ripper Crimes, a theme later followed by crime novelist Patricia Cornwell in her book Portrait of a Killer in 2002. Cornwell attempted to analyse DNA from the Ripper letters and letters written by the Sickerts.[47] The letters are too contaminated to provide any meaningful results.[48] There are no known family members alive, and Sickert himself was cremated, rendering reliable DNA analysis impossible.[49] Andy Parlour, Sue Parlour and Kevin O'Donnell, authors of The Jack the Ripper Whitechapel Murders, have used a similar royal conspiracy theory but with Prince Albert Victor getting Ripper victim Mary Jane Kelly pregnant instead of Annie Crook.

[edit] Portrayals in popular culture

The conspiracy theories surrounding Prince Albert Victor are fictionalised in the play Force and Hypocrisy by Doug Lucie, and four films: Murder by Decree, a Sherlock Holmes mystery; David Wickes' Jack the Ripper, first released on 21 October 1988; Janet Meyers' The Ripper, first released on 6 December 1997; and the Hughes Brothers' From Hell, first released on 8 September 2001 and based on a graphic novel of the same name by Alan Moore and artist Eddie Campbell.[50]

The films were savaged by critics. Murder by Decree "bore all the hallmarks of a film of some distinction…[but]…erases them completely".[51] Jack the Ripper "is as histrionically overblown and distorted as the fake…latex face-mask".[52] The Ripper "is a dog's breakfast of hackneyed plot themes, with disparate scraps of associated detail tossed into the mix to no particular purpose…as devoid of moral, factual or logical considerations as was the book from which it was precipitously drawn".[53] While From Hell is "acquisitive in dubious detail",[54] the graphic novel itself is considered to contain "much brilliance" and "visual inventiveness" despite its source being "palpably flawed",[55] however, the film "is scripted and dramatised in the formulaic manner of the typical Hollywood serial-killer thriller".[56]

The theories, including a repentant Gull, also figure in the final book of Philip José Farmer's Riverworld series, Gods of Riverworld.

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes and sources

  1. ^ a b Evans, Stewart P. (October 2002). "On the Origins of the Royal Conspiracy Theory". Ripper Notes. Published online by Casebook: Jack the Ripper. Accessed 6 May 2008.
  2. ^ Cook, p.8
  3. ^ Stowell, quoted in Rumbelow, pp.209–212
  4. ^ Cook, p. 9
  5. ^ Rumbelow, p.211
  6. ^ Rumbelow, pp.211–212
  7. ^ Rumbelow, pp.212–213
  8. ^ a b c Marriott, p.268
  9. ^ (8 September 1888) Daily News
  10. ^ (2 October 1888) "Court Circular". The Times p. 9; Issue 32506; col. G
  11. ^ (1 October 1888) "Court Circular". The Times p. 9; Issue 32505; col. G
  12. ^ (10 November 1888) "The Prince of Wales's Birthday". Daily News
  13. ^ Stowell, T. E. A. (9 November 1970). "Jack the Ripper". The Times p. 9; Issue 58018; col. F
  14. ^ PHS (14 November 1970). "The Times Diary: Ripper file destroyed". The Times p. 12; Issue 58023; col. E
  15. ^ Harrison, quoted in Rumbelow, pp.213–219
  16. ^ Mann, Thomas J. (1975). World Association of Document Examiners Journal vol.2 no.1, quoted in Rumbelow, p.219
  17. ^ Harrison, quoted in Aronson, p.104
  18. ^ Aronson, p.117
  19. ^ Aronson, p.105 and Cook, p.281
  20. ^ Letter from the New York Academy of Medicine, 13 January 1986, quoted in Rumbelow, p.244
  21. ^ Spiering quoted in Rumbelow, p.244
  22. ^ Rumbelow, p.244 and Meikle, p.177
  23. ^ Rumbelow, p.223
  24. ^ The Sunday Times, 18 June 1978, quoted in Rumbelow, p.237
  25. ^ Knight, pp.22–39 for the version with Anderson; pp.246–262 for the version replacing Anderson with Sickert
  26. ^ Rumbelow, p.231
  27. ^ Cook, p.292
  28. ^ Aronson, p.88
  29. ^ Rumbelow, p.233
  30. ^ Rumbelow, pp.232–233
  31. ^ General Register Office, England and Wales (Apr–Jun 1885). Civil Registration Indexes: Births. Marylebone vol.1a, p.537
  32. ^ a b Rumbelow, pp.227–228
  33. ^ Aronson, p.88 and Marriott, p.267
  34. ^ Rumbelow, p.232
  35. ^ Rumbelow, pp.241–242
  36. ^ Aronson, p.89
  37. ^ Freemason, 29 August 1903, quoted in Rumbelow, p.234
  38. ^ Rumbelow, p.223
  39. ^ Knight, pp.180–182, 201
  40. ^ Knight, p.213
  41. ^ Knight, p.247 and Cawthorne, Nigel (2000) "Afterword" in: Knight, p.270
  42. ^ Sturgis, Matthew (3 November 2002). "Making a killing from the Ripper". The Sunday Times
  43. ^ Rumbelow, pp.226 and 229–231
  44. ^ Aronson, p.109
  45. ^ Rumbelow, pp.228 and 231
  46. ^ Scott, Christopher (2004). "Jack the Ripper: A Cast of Thousands". Casebook: Jack the Ripper. Accessed 31 March 2008.
  47. ^ Cornwell, pp.206–213
  48. ^ Meikle, p.197 and Rumbelow, p.246
  49. ^ Rumbelow, p.246
  50. ^ Meikle, pp.224–234
  51. ^ Meikle, pp.152–153
  52. ^ Meikle, p.164
  53. ^ Meikle, p.178
  54. ^ Meikle, p.169
  55. ^ Meikle, p.188
  56. ^ Meikle, p.191

[edit] References

[edit] External links