Joseph Gorman

In 1888, a series of murders in the East End of London were blamed on an unidentified assailant known as "Jack the Ripper". The victims were all women, possibly prostitutes, who were killed in vicious knife attacks. 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 (1864–92), 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".

The theory that Albert Victor was the Ripper first came to public attention in 1970 when elderly British physician Dr. T. E. A. Stowell argued that Albert Victor was driven mad with syphilis, and was incarcerated by his own family after committing the murders. In fact, Albert Victor had strong alibis for all of the murders, and it is unlikely that he suffered from syphilis. Stowell later denied implying that Albert Victor was the Ripper, but efforts to investigate his proposal further were hampered by Stowell's own sudden and coincidental death.

Subsequently, more convoluted theories have been built around the unproven and widely dismissed claim that Albert Victor secretly married and had a daughter with a Catholic shop assistant. Conspiracy theorists contend that Queen Victoria, the British Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, his freemason friends, and the London Metropolitan Police conspired to murder anyone aware of Albert Victor's supposed child. Many facts contradict this theory and its originator, Joseph Gorman (also known as Joseph Sickert), later recanted his testimony and admitted to the press that it was a hoax.

Background

Between August and November 1888, a series of horrific murders were committed in the Whitechapel district of London. Although Whitechapel was then an impoverished area and violence there was common, a distinctive modus operandi links at least five murders to the same killer. All the murders took place within the distance of a few streets, late at night or in the early morning. The victims were all women, whose throats were apparently cut with a knife from left to right, after which their bodies were mutilated, or even eviscerated.^[1] The removal of internal organs from three of the victims led some officials at the time of the murders to propose that "considerable anatomical knowledge was displayed by the murderer, which would seem to indicate that his occupation was that of a butcher or a surgeon."^[2]

Both the Police and media organisations received many letters and postcards purportedly written by the killer. The extraordinary brutality of the murders and media treatment of the events led the public to believe in a single serial killer, known as "Jack the Ripper" after one of the signatories. One letter, which was unsigned, came to be known as the "From Hell" letter after a phrase used by the writer. It gained particular notoriety, as it was sent with a small box containing half of a preserved human kidney. Nevertheless, it is not clear whether the kidney truly came from one of the victims or was a medical specimen sent as a joke.^[3]

Despite an extensive police investigation, at times led by Detective Inspective Frederick Abberline, the killer was never conclusively identified. Both at the time and subsequently, many amateur and professional investigators have proposed solutions to the mystery. Suggested culprits range from men mentioned in contemporary police records, such as Aaron Kozminski,^[4] to those only accused over a hundred years later, including children's author Lewis Carroll in 1996^[5] and obstetrician Sir John Williams in 2005.^[6] None of the various theories are entirely persuasive and many can be eliminated from serious investigation. For example, the case against Sir John Williams is flawed and documents used to implicate him were altered to suit his accusers' theory.^[7] Williams was a physician used by the royal family,^[8] but a royal connection to the Jack the Ripper crimes was first suggested about forty years earlier.

In his 1962 biography of King Edward VII, Edouard VII, author Philippe Jullian made a passing reference to rumours that Edward's son, Prince Albert Victor, might have been responsible for the murders. Jullian's book appears to be the first published reference naming Albert Victor as a Ripper suspect. However, Jullian did not detail his sources for those rumours nor the date when the rumour first started.^[9]^[10]

Prince Albert Victor as a suspect

In 1970, Dr. T.E.A. Stowell published an article called A Solution in The Criminologist magazine. Though Albert Victor was not named in the article, Stowell's description of the suspect and his family left little room for doubt of the suspect's identity. Stowell claimed that Albert Victor had contracted syphilis after a visit to the West Indies, that it had driven him insane, and that in this state of mind he had perpetrated the five "canonical" Jack the Ripper murders. Stowell wrote that following the murders of 30 September 1888, Albert Victor was restrained by his own family in an institution in the south of England, but later escaped to commit the final murder on 9 November. Stowell further claimed that Albert Victor died of syphilis, and gave as his source an account written in private by Sir William Gull, 1st Baronet, a reputable physician who had treated members of the royal family.^[11] 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.^[9]^[12]

Stowell's article attracted enough attention to place Albert Victor among the most notable Ripper suspects but his claims were soon disproven. 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.^[13] All three doctors who were attending Albert Victor in 1892 concurred that he had died of pneumonia. The first symptoms of madness arising from syphilitic infection tend to occur about fifteen years from first exposure. Consequently, Albert Victor would have to have been infected in about 1873, aged nine, 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.^[14] Stowell claimed that Albert Victor had been incarcerated in a mental institution, when he was actually serving in the British army, making regular public appearances, and visiting friends at country houses.^[15]

By examining newspaper reports, Queen Victoria's diary, family letters, and official documents it is possible to prove that Albert Victor 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.^[16] On 31 August 1888, when Mary Ann Nichols was killed in Bucks Row in London, Albert Victor was at Danby Lodge, the home of Viscount Downe in Grosmont, North Yorkshire.^[17] Albert Victor travelled from Danby Lodge to the Cavalry Barracks in York on 7 September, and was still in Yorkshire on 8 September when Annie Chapman was killed in Hanbury Street in London. On 30 September 1888, Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes were killed at 1:00 and 1:45 a.m., respectively. Albert Victor arrived at Abergeldie, Scotland on 27 September. On 29 September, he went shooting in Glen Muick with Prince Henry of Battenberg among others, and in the afternoon there was a recital given by Emma Albani.^[18] The next day, he, his grandmother Queen Victoria, other family members, visiting German royalty and the estate staff attended the morning service at Balmoral, the royal retreat in Scotland. Afterwards, Albert Victor had lunch with the Queen.^[19] On 9 November 1888, Mary Jane Kelly was killed in Miller's Court in London. Albert Victor arrived at Sandringham House, the Norfolk country home of his parents, the Prince and Princess of Wales, on 3 November and remained there until 12 November. On the morning of the 9th, Albert Victor went shooting with his father and the house guests, including Baron Rothschild, Lord Lansdowne and other members of the British and foreign nobility. In the afternoon there was a party to celebrate the Prince of Wales's forty-seventh birthday.^[20]

On 5 November 1970 Stowell wrote to The Times newspaper denying that he had ever implied Prince Albert Victor was Jack the Ripper. The letter was published on 9 November,^[21] 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."^[22]

Developments on the theory

In a 1972 biography of Albert Victor, Michael Harrison dismissed the idea that Albert Victor was the Ripper. Instead he suggested James Kenneth Stephen, one of Albert Victor's tutors from Trinity College, Cambridge, was a more likely suspect. Harrison's suggestion was based on Stephen's misogynistic writings and on similarities between his handwriting and that of the "From Hell" letter.^[23] Harrison supposed that Stephen may have had sexual feelings for Albert Victor, and that Stephen's hatred of women arose from jealousy because Albert Victor did not reciprocate Stephen's feelings toward him, and preferred the company of a woman.^[24] However, Harrison's analysis was rebutted by professional document examiners,^[25] and there is no proof that Stephen was ever in love with Albert Victor,^[26] although he did starve himself to death very shortly after hearing of Albert Victor's death.^[27]

In 1978, Frank Spiering further elaborated the theory in his book Prince Jack, which depicted Albert Victor as the murderer and Stephen as his lover. Spiering claimed to have discovered a copy of Gull's private notes in the library of the New York Academy of Medicine and that the notes included a confession by Albert Victor under a state of hypnosis. Spiering further suggested that Albert Victor died due to an overdose of morphine, administered to him on the order of the British Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury and possibly his own father, the Prince of Wales. The New York Academy of Medicine denies possessing the records Spiering mentioned.^[28] Buckingham Palace offered to open their archives to Spiering, but he retorted: "I don't want to see any files".^[29] Consequently, the book is widely dismissed as a sensational fiction based on Stowell's previous theory rather than genuine historical research.^[30]

Claims of Joseph Gorman

In 1973, the BBC television series Jack the Ripper investigated the murders by using a mixture of documentary and drama, and featured fictional detectives Barlow and Watt, played by Stratford Johns and Frank Windsor respectively.^[31] The fifth and final programme included a testimony by Joseph Gorman^[32] (22 October 1925 – 9 January 2003), a London artist who claimed to be the illegitimate son of noted painter Walter Sickert. Gorman claimed that Sickert had told him a story which implicated not only Prince Albert Victor but the Royal family and a number of other notable figures in the murders. In the original television series, the story is depicted as the belief of Gorman but not of the detectives. In 1976, writer Stephen Knight published his book Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution, which was heavily based on Gorman's claims and assumed that they were true.

Gorman's story

Gorman's story as told by Knight has become well known, especially through fictional adaptations such as the graphic novel From Hell and the movie Murder by Decree. In Knight's book the conspiracy is laid out as follows:

Gorman rebutted

Scholars have highlighted many facts which contradict the version of events presented by Knight and Gorman. There is no recorded marriage of Albert Victor.^[34] Even if he and Annie had married, their marriage would have been invalid under British law due to the Royal Marriages Act. The act was passed in 1772 and is still in force today. It effectively voids any marriage contracted by a member of the royal family without the consent of the Sovereign. Any child of an invalid marriage is deemed illegitimate and excluded from the line of succession.^[35] Even if such discrepancies are ignored, there are further weaknesses in the theory. According to the Act of Settlement 1701, only Protestant descendants of the Royal family who have not married a Catholic can inherit the English Crown. Members of the Royal family who convert to Catholicism or marry Catholics lose their rights of succession. Consequently, if Albert Victor had legally married a Catholic and had a Catholic daughter, both he and the child would be excluded from inheriting the throne.^[36] Confusing the issue further, Gorman claimed that Annie was Catholic although records prove this to be untrue.^[35]

Annie Crook was a real person and did have a daughter, Alice, born on 18 April 1885 at 6 Cleveland Street. However, on Alice's birth certificate the name of her father was left blank.^[37] According to Trevor Marriott, an expert on the Jack the Ripper case, Alice "must have been conceived between 18 July and 11 August 1884".^[38] Albert Victor was in Heidelberg from June to August 1884, and hence was not in London at the time of her conception.^[39] When Alice married William Gorman on 14 July 1918,^[40] she listed William Crook as her father. William Crook was also the name of Annie's mother's husband, but he may not have been Annie's genetic father. Ripper expert Don Rumbelow has suggested that the name of Alice's father was omitted from her birth certificate either because she was illegitimate or to conceal an incestuous relationship between Annie and William Crook.^[41]

Alice and William Gorman had five children, including Joseph Gorman.^[42] There is no firm evidence that Walter Sickert had children, despite Joseph Gorman's claim to be his illegitimate son.^[43] Gorman claimed that Annie and Alice's apartment at No. 6 Cleveland Street was raided in April 1888, but in January 1889 Annie and Alice were living in the Endell Street Workhouse, after leaving their last known address: 9 Pitt Street (later renamed Scala Street), Tottenham Court Road.^[41] 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.^[44] They were not supported by a wealthy patron, such as Albert Victor,^[45] but were paupers who occasionally lived in workhouses.^[46] Annie was often institutionalised, but workhouse and infirmary records show that this was because of recurrent epilepsy rather than insanity as claimed by Gorman. The rest of the time she lived with her family. Only in the final four days of her life, which ended on 23 February 1920, is it noted that she went insane.^[47]

There are further multiple problems with Gorman's version of events. The Ripper victims were not known to be acquainted with each other and reports of their activities and whereabouts during the year of their deaths do not suggest a connection or that they would have known Annie, who lived on the other side of Central London. Even if they had known her or her child, it is unlikely that prostitutes from the East End telling a tale of royal illegitimacy would be believed, so any attempt at blackmail or to sell their story would merely have been dismissed.^[48] Furthermore, Lord Salisbury was not a freemason,^[49] and Gull retired from practice in 1887 after suffering a stroke, which left him temporarily partially paralysed and unable to speak.^[50] Gull did recover, but he suffered further attacks before his death in 1890.^[51] There is no documentary evidence linking John Netley to the other characters. Netley did not drown in the Thames, but was killed in 1903 after falling under the wheels of his own van.^[52] 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.^[16] Indeed, some of the streets where the victims were found were too narrow for a carriage.^[16] Anderson was in Switzerland at the time of the double murder.^[53] Sickert did not have a studio in Cleveland Street,^[54] and did not know the Princess of Wales.^[55]

Knight appreciated that there were problems with Gorman's claims, and realised that Anderson could not have been an accomplice. Consequently, he replaced Anderson with Walter Sickert, considering him a much more likely suspect.^[56] However, 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.^[57]

After Knight implicated Sickert, Joseph Gorman withdrew his testimony, admitting to The Sunday Times newspaper that "it was a hoax … a whopping fib",^[58] although he later affirmed the story in Melvyn Fairclough's 1991 book The Ripper and the Royals. Other authors have made further modifications to the theory. For example, 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 Mary Jane Kelly pregnant with Albert Victor's child instead of Annie Crook. Books which promote Sickert from a knowing accomplice to being Jack the Ripper himself, such as Jean Overton-Fuller's Sickert and the Ripper Crimes and Patricia Cornwell's Portrait of a Killer are considered to be fantasies.^[43]^[57]^[59]

Portrayals in popular culture

The films were savaged by critics. Murder by Decree "bore all the hallmarks of a film of some distinction ...[but]... erases them completely".^[61] Sympathetic reviewers, such as Jay Scott, praised its script "constructed by John Hopkins with the solicitude of a craftsman at work on a Gothic cathedral" but noted shortcomings, "the editing is lethargic".^[62] In the words of Tom Shales, Jack the Ripper "occasionally seasons its tediousness with offensiveness".^[63] Denis Meikle wrote that it "is as histrionically overblown and distorted as the fake ... latex face-mask".^[64] 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".^[65] While From Hell is "acquisitive in dubious detail",^[66] the graphic novel itself is considered to contain "much brilliance" and "visual inventiveness" despite its source being "palpably flawed".^[67] However, the film "is scripted and dramatised in the formulaic manner of the typical Hollywood serial-killer thriller".^[68] Peter Bradshaw called it "so lame it should be called From Heck".^[69]

Contents

Background

Prince Albert Victor as a suspect

Developments on the theory

Claims of Joseph Gorman

Gorman's story

Gorman rebutted

Portrayals in popular culture

See also

Notes and sources

References

External links