Eleven decades of fascination with the sadistic serial killer
the police never caught has given rise to endless ideas, stories
and beliefs about his crimes and his identity. As my latest heroine
Lacey Flint says, 'Jack was a real man, but he's become a myth.' In
the weeks leading up to publication of Now You See Me, I'd
like to share some of my favorite daft Jack theories.
RIPPER MYTH 1: Jack was a prince of the realm.
Any mention of Jack the Ripper will invariably be met with:
'Wasn't he a member of the royal family?' The royal in question was
Prince Albert Victor, grandson to Queen Victoria and in direct line
to the throne. As Lacey in Now You See Me tells her police
colleagues, there are actually two Ripper theories concerning
Prince Albert.
The first was that he contracted syphilis after an assignation
with a prostitute. His subsequent murderous rage was hushed up by
the authorities to protect the Queen from scandal. The second was
rather more convoluted.
This theory first emerged in the early 1970s when a BBC
documentary announced that the mystery was finally solved. The
programme makers claimed to have been approached by Joseph Sickert,
son of Walter the artist, who claimed that Prince Albert had
secretly married a poor Catholic girl called Annie Crook.
A child of the union, a daughter called Alice, was born. The
Queen found out and ordered her prime minister, Lord Salisbury and
her surgeon, Sir William Gull, to resolve the matter. Annie was
taken to one of Gull's hospitals where experiments on her brain
turned her insane. The child, though, escaped with her nanny, Mary
Kelly. Do you see where this is going yet?
Kelly hid baby Alice and, back in the east end, told her friends
and fellow prostitutes all about it. Polly Nichols, Liz Stride and
Annie Chapman, together with Mary, hatched a plot to blackmail the
government.
An elaborate scheme, involving senior police officer, Sir Robert
Anderson, was hatched and the character of Jack the Ripper was
born. Three of the women were tracked down, lured into the royal
carriage, slaughtered inside it and their bodies dumped. Katherine
Eddowes, according to this theory, was killed by mistake, having
been mistaken for Mary Kelly. Later, Kelly herself was tracked down
and killed.
This, incidentally, is the theory behind the Johnny Depp film,
From Hell, in which Depp plays Inspector Abbeline and Mary
Kelly is a lovely young girl who eventually escapes to Ireland with
the baby princess.
NOT GUILTY (probably): PRINCE ALBERT VICTOR
Prince Albert could not, himself, have been the Ripper. His
movements at the time were well documented and emphatically rule
him out. On 31 August, the morning that Polly Nichols was killed,
the prince was staying with Viscount Downe in Yorkshire. On 8
September, when Annie Chapman died, he was at the Cavalry Barracks
in York. Queen Victoria made a journal entry that she had lunched
with him at Abergaldie in Scotland on 30 September, the day of the
Double Event. On the day of Mary Kelly's murder, 9 November, he was
at Sandringham in Norfolk.
As far as the conspiracy theory is concerned, in the first place
it hardly seems likely and, in the second, evidence doesn't really
back it up. Wouldn't Annie Crook and the other women just have been
paid off? Any marriage between Annie and the prince would have been
illegal as he was under age and the child would not have been a
legitimate heir to the throne in any case. He would hardly have
been the first royal to keep a mistress. Frankly, where was the big
deal?
As far as evidence is concerned, the murders took place where
the bodies were found. The amount of blood at the scene makes this
clear and it would have been impossible to drive a carriage to some
of the sites. At the time of the murders, William Gull, the surgeon
was 71 and had suffered a stroke. He was physically incapable of
murdering and mutilating women.
We may never know who Jack the Ripper was, but the British royal
family, their staff and advisors and Prince Albert Victor in
particular, can probably be absolved.