Lisa Grigone
Essay #5
4-15-2008
The Revealing of the Ripper
It all began in the fall of 1888 in the Whitechapel district of London. The east end was known for being terribly destitute and poor. It was over run with out of work men and women willing to have sex just to make a little bit of money to buy themselves dinner that night. The brutal killings of the now infamous Jack the Ripper started on the night of August 31st. Mary Ann “Polly” Nichols was the first innocent prostitute murdered by Jack the Ripper. Soon to follow were Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, and Mary Kelly. The gruesome spree ended on November 9th with the detestable murder of Mary Kelly. To this day, the identity of Jack the Ripper is still a mystery and it most likely always will be. A century has gone by and there have been many theories, suggestions, and speculations about who the killer could be, but the sad truth is that no one will ever really know who killed those unfortunate women so long ago because the truth died the night they all did. Many people think they know who the real Ripper is, but there are still some theories that people have not heard yet. This mysterious serial killing spree is very complicated and many different people can be blamed for taking part in this horrendous act. This theory comes from the Royal Conspiracy Theory which was made by Stephen Knight in his 1978 book, Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution, but it takes a few different twists and turns along the way.
Prince Albert Victor Christian “Eddy” Edward “is one of the most famous suspects in the Jack the Ripper case, figuring in no less than three major theories” (Casebook, 2). He was born January 8, 1864 to Prince Albert Edward and Princess Alexandra of Denmark. His grandmother, Queen Victoria, was the reigning monarch at the time. By most reports, Eddy was considered a rather slow child and he grew up to be a rather slow adult. His intelligence was lower than expected for a future monarch and it was a little worrisome for his parents and grandparents to think about. In 1871, the Queen appointed a tutor to Eddy and his brother. The tutor complained that Eddy’s mind was particularly “dormant” (Knight, 25) and the boys continued to be educated together because Eddy needed his brother to keep him stimulated. In 1877, the boys were sent to a Royal Navy training ship and began their studies about two months behind the other students because Eddy became ill and Dr. William Withey Gull treated him. In 1879, the boys continued their studies abroad for three years by the Queen’s request. In 1885, Eddy became a cadet in the 2nd Cambridge University Battalion and two years later he was promoted to captain in London. Around this same time there was woman living in the East End of London, more commonly known as Whitechapel, who worked in a shop and would soon come to meet her prince charming, Prince Eddy.
Annie Crook was a poor, Catholic, lower-class citizen who supposedly worked in a tobacco shop with Mary Jane Kelly. There is not much information surrounding Annie Crook and it is hard to piece together when she and Eddy actually met, but it is a common assumption that it was around 1887. Annie Crook met Eddy through a friend of Annie’s, Walter Sickert, and they had a relationship that had to be kept secret from his family. If his father and grandmother were to find out that he was sleeping with, some theorists even suggested they were married, such a lower-class individual and a Catholic at that, they would have ended it right away. It made matters worse when Annie became pregnant and soon gave birth to daughter, Alice Margaret. Of course, Queen Victoria soon found out about this horrid scandal and sent her physician, Dr. William Gull, to resolve the problem. Mary Kelly was watching little Alice Margaret when Annie and Eddy’s house was raided and they were each separately taken away. Dr. Gull took Annie to a hospital and performed experiments on her that erased her memory and left her almost brain dead. She was kept institutionalized until her death not long after. Prince Eddy was taken back to his parents and grandparents and was made to stay with them for awhile. The Queen and the rest of the royal family thought they had gotten away with the scandal that the Prince had gotten himself into, but little did they know that several of Annie’s friends knew of the secret they were trying so hard to keep quiet.
Mary Kelly was said to have been a friend of Annie Crook’s who worked together for some time. Mary Kelly lived in the Whitechapel district of London and also worked as a prostitute around the same time. Mary Kelly was born around 1863 and claims to be from a small town in Ireland. In 1887, she was living with her boyfriend, Joseph Barnett, until they got in a fight because she was rooming with another prostitute. Barnett left Kelly about a week before her death. Kelly was the youngest of the Ripper victims and was considered to be the prettiest. According to Knight, Kelly was brought to the tobacconist shop to help Annie through Walter Sickert. She later became the baby’s nanny and that is why she had the baby when Eddy and Annie’s house was raided. There is not much factual evidence surrounding the relationships between Sickert, Kelly, and Crook, but according to some sources, Sickert did have an affair with a woman named Annie Crook and she fathered his illegitimate child. The same child who would later tell Stephen Knight a twisted love between Prince Eddy and a commoner and that would eventually become the beginning of the Royal Conspiracy Theory.
Walter Sickert was born in Germany in 1860 and he worked as a painter living in London around the time of the Ripper murders. Some theorists suggest that Sickert had an affair with Crook’s daughter, Alice, and she was one who had his child, but there is no hard evidence supporting any of these claims. Evidence only proves that he did have an illegitimate son and it is more likely to have been with Annie than her daughter. Somewhere between 1885 and 1887, it is believed by some that Sickert met Crook and Kelly. Unfortunately, there are no facts stating that they actually met, but Knight claims that they were introduced to each other by Sickert. Of course, no one will ever really know for sure. With or without knowing those girls, Sickert became very interested in the case and even created a group of paintings about the murders. Partially because of these paintings, Sickert is even suspected of being Jack the Ripper but many ripperologists have disregarded this suspicion because of lack of evidence.
Continuing with the story, Queen Victoria had Annie and Eddy broken up by her physician, Dr. William Gull. William Gull was born in 1816 in England. In 1837, he began working at a hospital and became very interested in medicine. In 1851 he became a physician’s assistant and in 1856 he began a full physician. In 1872, Gull became the Physician Extraordinary and subsequently Physician-in-Ordinary to Queen Victoria. He has been tied to the Ripper case because of his closeness with the Queen and the fact that he was one who was made to end the relationship between the Prince and Annie Crook. The Queen wanted this love affair to be kept secret from the public, but unfortunately for her, Mary Kelly, Annie Chapman, Liz Stride, and Polly Nichols knew the truth about Annie Crook and they were not going to keep quiet about it. According to Knight, Mary Kelly decided to blackmail the Queen, saying that she knew about the affair and would let others know what she did to Annie Crook. Obviously, the Queen does not want to be told what to do and she knew that these young prostitutes who were just commoners and that no one even cared about, needed to be silenced. Again, she called upon the help of her physician to see what could be done about these young women.
This story does get a little fuzzy because of the lack of hard facts, but Stephen Knight claims that his story is true to the core and that all of his claims are factual. So far, we have learned that Prince Eddy had a love affair with commoner, Annie Crook and they had an illegitimate child together. Their house was raided and they were each taken away by Dr. William Gull, the Queen’s physician. Mary Kelly had Crook’s baby at the time of the raid and so she began blackmailing the Queen about the whereabouts of her friend. The Queen knew that this girl needed to be silenced so she asked Gull for his assistance yet again. Knight suggests that Gull called upon the assistance of John Netley, a coachman to Prince Eddy, to help him in his quest to put a stop to all the speculations about the whereabouts of Annie Crook. Obviously, I believe that Dr. William Gull was Jack the Ripper because he was called upon by the Queen to silence the prostitutes living in the East End of London. I do not think that Gull was intent upon actually killing the girls. He just wanted to scare them a little bit to make sure they got the point that they needed to be quiet. The Queen needed this scandal to be taken care of and if that meant ending these innocent girl’s lives then she was fine with that.
Mary Ann “Polly” Nichols was murdered on August 31, 1888. She was last seen alive around 2:30 AM after leaving a pub. Two men pass down Buck’s Row, the street her body would soon be found on, around 3:15 AM and they see nothing out of the ordinary. Her body is discovered around 3:45 AM with her throat cut and many other lacerations and cuts on it as well. Unfortunately, no one saw Polly with anyone before she was killed and the Ripper got away with his first murder.
The second victim, Annie Chapman, was murdered on September 8, 1888. Chapman was last seen around 5:30 AM with a man standing against a house on Hanbury Street. The witness described the man as having a dark complexion, wearing a brown hat and a dark coat over it all. She was found about an hour later with her throat cut and her intestines lying above her head. It was obvious that these killings were not just accidental. Someone was seriously out to get them.
September 30th, 1888 the Ripper strikes again. Liz Stride was last seen around 12:30 AM on Berner Street with a man wearing a dark coat and hat. He was also carrying a large parcel wrapped in newspaper. At 12:40 AM, Isreal Schwartz claims that he saw a man trying to drag a woman into the street and push her down. He was eventually seen by the men and they yelled at him and he ran away. At 1 AM, Louis Diemschutz entered the street with his cart and pony and came upon the body of Liz Stride. Her throat was cut, but her body was still warm and it is believed that the Ripper was unable to finish his work because he was interrupted. Because the ripper was unable to finish his work that night, I believe that is the reason he went after another girl. According to Stephen Knight, Catherine Eddowes apparently looked similar to Mary Kelly and she even sometimes went by that name. The Ripper wanted to kill Kelly and he thought that was what he was doing when he brutally murdered Eddowes, but unfortunately for him, it was not Mary Kelly after all. It is suggested by some sources that Eddowes was an accident because the Ripper thought he was killing Mary Kelly.
It was a little over a month before the Ripper struck again and I believe that was completely intentional because he was looking for Mary Kelly. Mary Kelly was found brutally murdered in her room on November 9th, 1888. She was last seen crossing the street with a man around 3 AM outside of her lodging house. It was not until 10:45 the next morning that her body was found in her bed completely mutilated. They would have had a hard time figuring out who it was had it not been that the people who owned the lodging house were going to get the rent from her that was overdue. Apart from having her throat cut, her body was more or less ripped to shreds. Her skin was cut off in certain parts, her breasts were cut off, and her intestines and organs were lying on a table next to the bed. It was obvious and unfortunate that the killer knew exactly what he was doing and who he was doing it to.
Overall, I believe that Dr. William Gull was Jack the Ripper and that the Royal Conspiracy Theory is the most accurate. Although Stephen Knight does not always have the hardest evidence and factual claims, his theory is interesting and makes sense. It also makes sense because Gull was a physician and would have been able to know exactly how to cut open each victim and take out the organs and intestines of each unfortunate victim. Not just any average person would have been able to do that. I believe that Gull probably did not really want to kill those girls, but because he was under order of the Queen he had to do what she wanted him to do. She needed to cover up the mistakes of her grandson and she was willing to do anything to make that happen. She did not care about the lives of innocent women; she just wanted her secret to be safe. There are many critiques about Gull being the Ripper because of his age and sickness. He would have been over seventy-years-old and that would have probably made it a little difficult for him to try and attack these women, but I also believe that he had some help from the coachman of Prince Eddy. It is also stated that he had apparent strokes a couple of years before the murders took place, but Knight claims that he only had one minor stroke and it would not have left him completely unable to perform the murders. Unfortunately, we will most likely never find out who Jack the Ripper really is because it has been so long and there is just very little evidence surrounding the case. This mystery will and has already gone down in history as one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of all time. Even though there is not that much evidence linking Gull to the murders, there really is not that much evidence linking anyone to the murders. Everyone has there one suspicions, speculations, and beliefs, and no one will ever really know who committed those brutal murders so long ago in the Whitechapel district of London in the fall of 1888.
Works Citied
Knight, Stephen. Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution. 1st. David McKay, 1976.
“Casebook: Jack the Ripper.” Casebook: The Royal Conspiracy Theory. 18 Apr 2008
<www.casebook.com>.
