Abberline: The Man Who Hunted Jack the Ripper (27 page)

To accept that a group of highly placed, intelligent men sought to suppress knowledge of a secret royal marriage by means of a series of sensational and highly publicised murders is to accept the unbelievable.

Although the East End of London was a large sprawling place, it was also reminiscent of a village, in the fact that most of the inhabitants were in the same boat, so to speak: nearly all were poor, many were out of work, and all of the victims were heavy drinkers or alcoholics who spent most of their free time in public houses. In such an environment, it would have been impossible for tongues not to wag. Also, bearing in mind that the victims and their friends were all prostitutes and shared a common bond, gossip such as Prince Eddy’s supposed secret marriage to a low-class girl from the East End would have raced through the pubs of Whitechapel like wildfire, and no power on earth, least of all the Masons, could have prevented it.

Upon initiation, a Freemason takes an oath, stating that the secrets of another Master Mason ‘Shall remain as secure and inviolable in my breast as in his own, when communicated to me, murder and treason excepted; and they left to my own election’.

When the well-known actor and manager of London’s Lyceum Theatre, Henry Irving, was elected as a Master Mason, he took the oath, which would last for the rest of his life, to keep any secrets he may have learned, ‘Secure within his breast’.

During the early autumn of 1888, the Lyceum Theatre was running a very successful version of the German drama
Faust
, which strangely enough, when used as the adjective, is often described as an arrangement in which an ambitious person surrenders moral integrity in order to achieve power and success: the proverbial ‘deal with the devil’.

The Lyceum, under Henry Irving’s management, was doing good in the box office, and
Faust
was playing to packed houses. Irving, however, suddenly announced that he intended to discontinue its run and replace it with the Scottish play
Macbeth
, which was to open on 29 December with Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth and Irving repeating the lead role in which he had hitherto been only partially successful.

So why had Irving suddenly taken
Faust
off, when it was so obviously a commercial success? He was a friend of the great and the good, many of whom waited eagerly for an invitation to supper in his private room at the Lyceum, known as the Beefsteak Room. A year earlier, Irving had helped found another Mason’s lodge called the Savage Club Lodge, which was composed almost exclusively of literary and theatrical artistes. Members of this new lodge were also honoured on some occasions to meet the Prince of Wales, who had been Chief Mason, the Most Worshipful Grand Master of England, for the past fifteen years, in addition to being a patron of the Lyceum Theatre.

Taking into account the turmoil over the alleged association of the Freemasons and the Whitechapel murders, it is easy to see Irving’s reasoning behind his decision to drop the still-popular
Faust
from the Lyceum programme, and replace it with
Macbeth
.

The public waited with baited breath for
Macbeth
to start. On the opening night, the leading Shakespearean actress Ellen Terry, commented on Irving’s gaunt look, with his straggling moustache, saying he was, ‘Like a great famished wolf’ as he padded across the shadowy hall in Dunsinane, thrust aloft the glittering bloodstained daggers and hissed triumphantly to his fellow conspirator, and to the enthralled audience, ‘I have done the deed!’

Sir Charles Warren, who was head of the London Metropolitan Police at the time of the Ripper murders, was also the first Worshipful Master of Quatuor Coronati Lodge, the premier research lodge in the world. On 9 November 1888, the Quatuor Coronati Lodge held its quarterly meeting, while on this same night Mary Jane Kelly, the final victim of Jack the Ripper, was found murdered. Sir Charles Warren resigned as London Metropolitan Police chief immediately following this event.

In summing up these events, we have a period of political unrest in the country as a whole: the previous autumn 100,000 unemployed had clashed with the army and police in Trafalgar Square. Rumours were starting to circulate of the imminent collapse of the established order, and London’s Masonic lodges were far from immune to such talk. So worried had they become that they had sent to their own Worshipful Grand Master a series of letters, imploring him to behave, as he might become a future monarch worthy of the title.

Whether there is any real truth in the conspiracy theories surrounding the Masons’ involvement in the Ripper killings is still very much debatable, but we still need to look further into Prince Eddy and his alleged involvement.

Eddy was born in 1864 to Prince Albert Edward, who was the son of Queen Victoria. Albert Edward, who was known as Bertie, would later become King Edward VII. He was not particularly well liked by the general public as he had a reputation of a ladies’ man, and was alleged to have been involved in a number of scandals. His wife, Princess Alexandra, on the other hand, was a sort of equivalent to the late Princess Diana. The public loved her and had great sympathy for her, for having to put up with the antics of her husband.

It seemed that while Bertie was gallivanting and womanising, his son Eddy was sadly missing out on the parental love and control which most children take for granted. He had no formal education, and consequently became known as a ‘slow’ child. Being ‘slow’ did not mean he was deficient in any way, for he was, in every other aspect, a dear and loving child, but he lacked drive and tenacity. When he went to Cambridge, he had to have a private tutor, but this might have been due to his partial deafness.

In 1891, Eddy was given the title of Duke of Clarence and Avondale, and was in line to follow his father to the throne. In that same year he became engaged to Princess May of Teck, but in 1892, just six weeks after the announcement of the engagement, a large-scale influenza epidemic broke out, which Eddy fell victim to and subsequently died. The following year, Princess May became engaged to Albert Victor’s next surviving brother, George, who subsequently became King George V.

The Ripper murders happened in 1888, four years prior to these events, when many names were being bandied about as possible suspects; but Prince Albert was never named as a suspect by anyone.

It wasn’t until the 1960s, long after the principal characters in the theories were dead, that Eddy’s name as an alleged suspect came to the fore. The first allegation came in a book entitled
Edouard VII
by Phillippe Jullien, in which the author states that Prince Albert and the Duke of Bedford were rumoured to be responsible for the Ripper murders, although there does not seem to be any evidence, prior or current, to support this theory.

A few years later, in 1970, British surgeon Dr Thomas E. A. Stowell published an article in the November issue of
The Criminologist
, entitled ‘Jack the Ripper, A Solution?’ Stowell’s article states that the Ripper was an aristocrat who had contracted syphilis during a visit to the West Indies, and that it had driven him insane. His brain became addled by the disease and in this state of mind had perpetrated the five Jack the Ripper murders. Throughout his article, the killer is referred to as ‘S’, but there is enough internal evidence to identify Eddy as his chief suspect. Stowell even described in detail the suspect’s family and his physical appearance, leaving little doubt, if any, that the person he was referring to was none other than Queen Victoria’s grandson, Prince Albert Victor.

Stowell’s article stated that following the Double Event murders on 30 September 1888, the suspect’s family had him committed to a private mental hospital in the south of England. Assuming that Eddy was the suspect Stowell was referring to in his article, he then, according to Stowell, escaped from the institution and on 9 November, committed yet another murder, before ultimately dying of syphilis.

Stowell claimed that the information to back his theory had come from the private notes of Sir William Gull, a reputable physician who had treated members of the royal family. Stowell also claimed that his suspect drew his knowledge of anatomy and surgery, which most people accepted the Ripper must have had, from the disembowelment of deer that he had shot on the royal estates.

Stowell’s claims seem ludicrous to say the least. It is a fact that Sir William Gull had died before Eddy had, and so could not have possibly known about Eddy’s death. It is also a fact that three doctors attended Eddy at his death in 1892, and they all agreed that he had died of pneumonia. If Eddy had died of syphilis, he would have had to have contracted the disease at least fifteen years earlier for it to have progressed to his brain, as syphilitic insanity. This would have meant that Eddy was infected at the age of 9, in about 1873, six years before he visited the West Indies.

Phillippe Jullien and Thomas Stowell’s theories regarding Eddy being the Ripper are blown completely out of the water when one looks at the dates the murders were committed. They both seem to have overlooked the obvious and most important thing surrounding their theory, which was that on every single date on which a murder was committed, Eddy was not in London, and therefore could not have possibly committed them.

Examination of court and royal records reveal exactly where Eddy was on the important murder dates:

29 August to 7 September 1888
: The Prince was staying with Viscount Downe at Danby Lodge, Grosmont, Yorkshire. (Polly Nichols was murdered on 31 August.)

7 to 10 September 1888
: The Prince was at the Cavalry Barracks in York. (Annie Chapman was murdered on 8 September.)

27 to 30 September
: The Prince was at Abergeldie, Scotland, where Queen Victoria recorded in her journal that he lunched with her on 30 September. (Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes were murdered between 1 a.m. and 2 a.m. on 30 September.)

1 November
: Arrived in London from York.

2 to 12 November
: The Prince was at Sandringham. (Mary Kelly was murdered on 9 November.)

The above dates show without a doubt that Eddy could not have possibly been the Whitechapel murderer, but the theorists still seemed to like the idea of a royal connection, which would obviously sell books, and later, films and television programmes.

In 1973 the theory of Prince Albert Victor’s involvement in the Ripper case was taken even further, when the BBC programme
Jack the Ripper
was aired. It was in this adaptation that the Royal Conspiracy Theory first appeared. In the programme, two fictional modern-day detectives finally solve the Ripper mystery through a series of conspiracies and cover-ups. It was alleged that whilst researching the story for the programme, the producers were contacted by a man named Joseph Sickert who said he knew about a secret marriage between Eddy and a poor Catholic girl named Annie Crook. Sickert’s story involved Eddy, Lord Salisbury, Sir Robert Anderson, Sir William Gull and even Queen Victoria!

Joseph Sickert was the son of the famous artist Walter Sickert, from whom he allegedly got the story. Walter Sickert had lived in the East End during the time of the Ripper murders and was supposedly a close friend of Princess Alexandra, who was a fellow compatriot from Denmark. The Princess asked Sickert to take Eddy under his wing and teach him about art and introduce him to the artistic set; in other words, she wanted Eddy to come out more as a man about town.

Sickert introduced Eddy to a lot of things, but the one thing that allegedly got him involved in the Ripper case was his introduction to a poor girl named Annie Crook, who worked in a shop in Cleveland Street, London. Eddy and Annie Crook began an affair, and she became pregnant with his baby. Eddy set up a flat for her and her baby, Alice, and paid all the bills. News of this tryst soon got back to the Queen, however, and she demanded that her grandson’s indiscretions should be terminated immediately. Annie was both a commoner, and a Catholic, which the Queen believed could spark a revolution if the people ever got to hear of it.

With this in mind, the Queen turned the matter over to her Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury. Salisbury then enlisted the aid of Sir William Gull, who was the Queen’s personal physician. Then, according to Walter Sickert, Salisbury and Gull hatched a plot in which they organised a raid on Eddy and Annie’s love nest. Eddy was taken away to a secret destination, to be kept there until things had calmed down, while Gull had Annie taken away and locked up in a mental institution, where he then performed experiments on her which made her lose her memory, become epileptic and slowly go insane.

Eddy and Annie’s child, however, escaped the raid unharmed with her nanny, Mary Kelly, who had been found by Walter Sickert in one of the poor houses in the East End. Sickert had taken pity on Kelly and took her to the tobacconist’s shop in Cleveland Street, to help Annie. Kelly loved children and soon became Alice’s nanny. Kelly was there with the child when the raid took place and, as all of the attention was focused on Eddy and Annie, she managed to slip out of the house with the child, without being noticed. Kelly was scared, and in desperation placed the child with nuns and fled into the back streets of the East End, falling into a life of drink and prostitution.

Kelly, like so many others in her profession, drank very heavily, and as is often found, the more she drank, the more loose her tongue became. She knew the entire story of Eddy’s indiscretion and began spreading it around for the price of another drink. It wasn’t long before several of her cronies started pressurising her into blackmailing the government for hush money. These cronies were Polly Nichols, Liz Stride and Annie Chapman.

When Lord Salisbury heard of the threat, he called a meeting with Sir William Gull once again. At that meeting, they decided a fool-proof plan was needed to rid the government and the monarchy of this threat once and for all. Sir William Gull then enlisted the help of John Netley, a coachman who had often ferried Eddy on his forays into the East End. Together they created Jack the Ripper and a Freemason connection. They also enlisted the aid of the Assistant Commissioner to Scotland Yard, Sir Robert Anderson, who was to cover up the crimes and make sure no police officers were about during the murders.