Prince Albert Victor
Prince Albert Victor Christian Edward (known as "Eddy" to his
friends) is one of the most famous suspects in the Jack the Ripper case,
figuring in no less than three major theories. Over the years, different
versions of his personality, mental stability, and manner of death have
appeared.
Eddy was born in 1864 to Prince Albert Edward (known as "Bertie"and
son to Queen Victoria --Bertie would later become King Edward VII) and
Princess Alexandra. Bertie was well known by the English public and not
highly respected by many of the lower, and some of the upper, classes.
He had a reputation for being a 'ladies man' and was rumored to have been
a party to many a scandal that was hushed up by the Palace. Princess Alexandra,
on the other hand, was an equivalent to today's Princess Di in that she
was much loved by the public who had great sympathy for her having to put
up with the antics of her husband.
By most reports, Eddy was a "slow" child and grew up to be
a rather dull adult. "Even his nearest and dearest, who were naturally
bent on making the best of poor Prince Eddy, could not bring themselves
to use more positive terms. Prince Eddy was certainly dear and good, kind
and considerate. He was also backward and utterly listless. He was self-indulgent
and not punctual. He had been given no proper education, and as a result
he was interested in nothing. He was as heedless and as aimless as a gleaming
gold-fish in a crystal bowl." (James Pope-Hennessy, Queen Mary.
Quoted in Rumbelow, p. 194.)
There were unconfirmed rumors that Eddy was mildly retarded. That his intelligence
was lower than expected of a future monarch is not disputed and it is believed
that this limited mental ability was one of the reasons why he required
a tutor at Cambridge. He was partially deaf, owing to inherited hearing
problems through his mother's side of the family. He had an unusually long
and thin neck which required him to wear long starched collars and led
to him receiving the nickname, "collars & cuffs".
Eddy was named Duke of Clarence and Avondale in 1891 and would likely
have followed Bertie to the throne had Eddy not fallen victim to the influenza
epidemic of 1891-92. The death was especially ironic as Eddy had become
engaged to Princess May of Teck (eventually to become Queen Mary) in December
of 1891. During Eddy's lifetime, there were rumors regarding his lifestyle,
intelligence, and physical health but nothing was ever proven.
During the time of the Ripper murders, there were no actual theories
presented linking Eddy to the crimes. Those would come much later after
many of the principal characters in the theories were dead. It would not
be until 1962 when the first theory regarding Eddy's involvement in the
murders became known. According to Jack the Ripper: A to Z (Begg,
Fido, and Skinner), the first allegation comes from Phillippe Jullien in
his book, Edouard VII. In it, Jullien remarks that "the prince
and 'the Duke of Bedford'" (A-Z, pg. 16) were rumored to be
responsible for the murders. I cannot find any details on this mysterious
"Duke of Bedford" to corroborate this remark.
This thread was taken up by Dr. Thomas Stowell who, in 1970, published
an article in The Criminologist called "A Solution". It
created a sensation by his veiled accusation of Prince Eddy as the killer.
Stowell apparently used the private papers of Sir William Gull as his primary
source material and it was these papers which led him to devise his theory.
Throughout his article, the killer is referred to as "S", but
there is enough internal evidence to identify Eddy as his chief culprit.
According to Stowell, Eddy was suffering from syphilis, contracted during
a shore party in the West Indies, and that this infection drove Eddy insane
and compelled him to commit the murders. In this theory, the Royal Family
knew that Eddy was the murderer "definitely ... after the second murder,
and possibly even after the first" (Rumbelow, p 196). Eddy's doctor
in this matter was supposedly Sir William Gull who informed Bertie that
his son was dying of syphilitic infection. Apparently no attempt was made
to restrain Eddy until after the Double Event when he was bundled away
in restraints to a private mental hospital. Eddy then escaped to carry
out the Kelly murder after which he was again locked away and died, not
of flu in 1892 as claimed, but of "softening of the brain" in
a private mental hospital in Sandringham. Stowell goes on to include Eddy's
resemblance to Druitt and the eye-witness accounts of the Ripper as proof
positive. While a neat and tidy theory, later Ripperologists have poked
several effective holes through it.
To begin with, Stowell claims of using Gull's private papers cannot
be substantiated due to Stowell's death within days of publishing his theory
and the burning of his own papers (unread) by the family. With the lack
of the papers, Stowell's claims of Eddy being homosexual (and nearly escaping
prosecution in the Cleveland Street scandal) and of Eddy's contracting
syphilis cannot be confirmed. Adding more confusion, Stowell used Gull's
papers for his theory but Eddy supposedly died in 1892 and Gull in 1890
so Gull could not have been able to comment on the cause of Eddy's death.
If the theory is true, Gull could be a source of confirming the infection
but not necessarily of it being the cause of Eddy's death. Being the two
most important parts of the theory, their elimination severely weakens
the case.
More importantly, examination of court and Royal records reveal that
Eddy was not even in London on the important murder dates.
"29 August-7 September 1888: The Prince was staying with Viscount
Downe at Danby Lodge, Grosmont, Yorkshire. (Nichols murdered 31 August.)
"7-10 September 1888: The Prince was at the Cavalry Barracks in
York. (Chapman murdered 8 September.)
"27-30 September: The Prince was at Abergeldie, Scotland, where
Queen Victoria recorded in her journal that he lunched with her on 30 September.
(Stride and Eddowes murdered between 1.00 and 2.00 a.m., 30 September.)
"1 November: Arrived in London from York.
"2-12 November: The Prince was at Sandringham. (Kelly murdered
9 November)" (A-Z, p. 17.)
Stowell argues that the Ripper's skill at dissection was obtained through
Eddy's experience at "dressing deer". A far leap in logic. Despite
the implausibility of Eddy actually being the Ripper, he was named as the
infamous killer in yet another book: Prince Jack by Frank Spiering.
This strange book takes the basic thrust of Stowell's theory, clearly
naming Eddy as the killer, and goes even further. Spiering claims to have
found a copy of Gull's notes in The New York Academy of Medicine in which,
supposedly, was a report of Gull hypnotizing Eddy and watching horrified
as Eddy acted out the murders. From this, Gull went on to diagnose Eddy
as having syphilis and that the accompanying pain was driving the Prince
out to commit the murders in fits of fantastic rage. Spiering goes on to
suggest that Lord Salisbury, in possibly collusion with Bertie, had Eddy
killed by a morphine overdose.
Rumbelow states that the book was called "Grade Z fiction"
by the American reviewer, Dale L. Walker and that Spiering's own response
to the criticism was to claim that the papers also included Eddy's confession
to Gull which was not mentioned in the book. Following this claim, both
Walker and Rumbelow attempted to trace the existence of these Gull documents
but were informed by The New York Academy of Medicine that "'None
of the entries in our catalog for works by or about Sir William Gull contain
the material referred to by Mr. Spiering." The response to Rumbelow's
request mentions that it is not inconceivable that the material could have
been misplaced "but it is highly unlikely". Rumbelow goes on
to show that Spiering's research was sloppy at best and therefore discredits
much of the theory.
In 1978, Spiering issued a challenge to Queen Elizabeth II to reveal
the truth about Eddy. Either she should open the Royal archives or hold
a press release detailing the Duke's activities as the Ripper. When a Buckingham
Palace spokesman stated that Spiering could examine the Royal Archives
(as other researchers had done) but that the accusation were "not
sufficiently serious to warrant a special statement from the Queen",
Spiering replied that he didn't want to see the files. Leaving Rumbelow
and others to deduce that the entire episode had been orchestrated to sell
copies of the book.
Since then Spiering has not made any further claims or produced any
further evidence supporting his theory.
Having survived accusation as the Ripper, Eddy now moved into the role
of supporting player to the murderer (or murderers) in two separate theories.
The first involved his old Cambridge tutor, James K. Stephen and was initially
made in Michael Harrison's biography of Eddy, Clarence. According
to this theory, Harrison had gone over Stowell's article and come to the
conclusion that "S" was not Eddy, but actually Stephens who was
committing the murders "out of a twisted desire for revenge"
because of the dissolution of a homosexual relationship with Eddy.
James Stephen was the son of infamous Maybrick judge, Sir James Fitzjames
Stephen, and cousin of Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf. In 1883, James
became Eddy's tutor at Cambridge where his mission was to try and bring
Eddy's intelligence up to acceptable levels. Eddy's mind was, according
to one former tutor, "abnormally dormant". During this period,
Harrison claims, a sexual relationship began between the tutor and pupil,
resulting in a scandal of which, apparently, little evidence remains. "The
accusation seems chiefly to be based on Harrison's interpretation of the
old rugby song, 'They Called the Bastard Stephen,' which he thinks refers
to Stephen and Clarence!" (Rumbelow, p 198)
The relationship supposedly ended when Eddy was gazetted to the 10th
Hussars on June 17th, 1885. There appears to be no further incident until
two years later when Stephen had a mysterious, and eventually fatal, accident.
Separate descriptions of the accident exist. Virginia Woolf's biographer,
Quentin Bell, says that the family tradition was that Stephen was struck
in the head by some object from a moving train. Harrison claims that Stephen
was injured when a horse he was riding shied and backed him into the moving
vane of a windmill. Whatever the case, the accident was a major one and
required a great deal of care. Although he originally appeared to have
made a complete recovery, it was later discovered that his brain had been
permanently damaged and Stephen was slowly going mad.
Stephen's behavior was quite unusual. Bell relates incidents of Stephen
plunging the blade from a sword stick into bread, becoming deluged that
he was a painter of great genius, rushing about insanely in a hansom, and
"'on another occasion he appeared at breakfast and announced, as though
it were an amusing incident, that the doctors had told him that he would
either die or go completely mad.'" (Rumbelow, p 199)
At this point, Stephen becomes a patient of Sir William Gull (Rumbelow
places it after Gull's first stroke in 1887) and begins a rapid mental
and physical decline. Stephen drifts from one project to the next with
little focus or interest. It is during this period that Stephen writes
two volumes of poetry that include extremely violent images against women.
Stephen was committed to a mental hospital in 1891, where he died the following
February.
Harrison contends that the breakup of the relationship with Eddy, combined
with the accident, provoked Stephen to try and avenge himself upon Eddy.
Why he would pick such pitiful women is not sufficiently answered. Harrison
argues that the murders are a kind of blood sacrifice through an elaborate
explanation that includes a savage deity named the Great Mother, the Roman
God Terminus, the relation of Frances Coles name translated into Greek,
and Stephen's pamphlet in defense of the compulsory study of Greek at the
universities. Harrison goes on to state that the Ripper in fact murdered
ten women (to fit into his theory he included Alice Mackenzie, Frances
Coles, Mellett or Davis and Annie Farmer) but Rumbelow disputes this counting
as Stride and Eddowes are counted as one and Annie Farmer was not murdered
at all. The ten women theory was important because Harrison believed that
Stephen was acting out his own poem "Air: Kaphoozelum" in which
the song's villain kills ten harlots.
Harrison tries again when he attempts to connect Stephen's handwriting
with the Ripper letters "From Hell" and "Dear Boss"
and that the internal style of some of Stephen's poems matches some of
the anonymous Ripper letters. This connection was rebutted by Thomas J.
Mann in an article in the Journal of the World Association of Document
Examiners (June 1975) in which Mann determines that only the Lusk letter
is likely to be genuine and that the connection between Stephen's handwriting
and that letter was minimal. "The overwhelming evidence is that the
two do not match; and if the author of the Lusk letter was indeed Jack
the Ripper, then J.K. Stephen was not that man." (Rumbelow, p. 204)
Not to be outdone, the Eddy/Stephen theory resurfaced in David Abrahamsen's
book, Murder and Madness, The Secret Life of Jack the Ripper. Abrahamsen
was a forensic psychiatrist who developed a psychological profile of Jack
based upon the murders and what little evidence was left behind. His conclusion
that the murderer was insane and that the murders were sexual in motive
was not anything new even though he did give some new interpretations of
some of the evidence and method. Where Abrahamsen fails is that he then
takes the profile and goes looking for someone to match it! Stephen is
the only logical choice because he is the only one of the KNOWN suspects
who matches the profile. This ignores the fact that the Ripper could still
be someone unknown to us at this time. Even more, Abrahamsen claims that
Eddy was an accomplice in the crimes and that he and Stephen enjoyed a
mutually dependent relationship with Stephen being the dominant partner.
As the theory is based virtually completely on psychological conclusions,
the lack, or contradicting nature, of some remaining evidence.
Eddy is unlikely to have been the source of Stephen's lovesick murder
madness, but Eddy returns in what is the most popular theory to date.
The Royal Conspiracy theory first appeared in 1973 in the BBC programme,
Jack the Ripper. In it, fictional detectives Barlow and Watt finally
solve the Ripper mystery through a series of conspiracies and cover-ups.
The story goes that the producers of the program, in doing research, were
told to contact a man named Sickert who knew about a secret marriage between
Eddy and a poor Catholic girl named Alice Mary Crook. Sickert painted a
strange story involving Eddy, Lord Salisbury, Sir Robert Anderson, Sir
William Gull, and even Queen Victoria herself!
The man, Joseph Sickert, was the son of famous painter, Walter Sickert,
from whom he reportedly got the story. Sickert had lived in the East End
during the time of the murders and was supposedly a close friend of the
Royal family. Princess Alex asked Sickert to take Eddy under his wing and
watch out for him. Sickert eventually introduced Eddy to a poor girl named
Annie Crook who worked in one of the local shops in Cleveland Street. Eddy
soon got the girl pregnant and they were living quite happily with their
daughter Alice until the Queen discovered her grandson's indiscretion and
demanded that the situation be terminated. Not only was Annie a commoner,
but a Catholic as well and there was belief that news of a Catholic heir
to the throne would spark a revolution. The Queen gave the matter to her
Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, to solve and he, in turn, went to Sir William
Gull. After a daring raid on the Cleveland Street love nest, Eddy was taken
away and Annie was sent to one of Gull's hospitals where Gull performed
experiments on her designed to erase her memory and drive her insane. Their
child, however, escaped the raid unharmed with her nanny, Mary Kelly.
Kelly had been a coworker of Annie's, as well as a model for Sickert,
and she became the child's nanny soon after its birth. Knowing that the
game was up, Kelly hid Alice with nuns and fled into the East End. Eventually,
she told the story to several of her cronies (Nichols, Stride and Chapman)
and they decided to blackmail the government when they needed money to
pay local protection thugs. When Salisbury learned of the threat, he called
on Gull again
This time, Gull devised an elaborate scheme to silence the women based
on Masonic rituals. Enlisting the help of John Netley, a coachman, he created
Jack the Ripper as a symbol of Freemasonry. Sir Robert Anderson was enlisted
to help cover up the crimes and act as lookout during the murders. The
murders would be silent messages about the power and strength of Masonry
and the fate awaiting any who opposed them.
Eddowes, Sickert said, was a mistake. She often went by the name of
Mary Kelly and it was a case of mistaken identity. Once the truth was known,
the real Mary Kelly was found and silenced. The conspiracy closed in upon
itself and chose M.J. Druitt as a scapegoat to take the blame and, Sickert
hinted, Druitt was murdered for it. The girl, Alice, grew up and later,
by an odd series of twists and turns, married Walter Sickert and gave birth
to Joseph.
The program caused a sensation and lead directly to the publication
of Stephen Knight's controversial book Jack the
Ripper: The Final Solution in 1978. In it, Knight tries to prove
that the conspiracy not only existed but that the third man in the murder
triad was not Sir Robert Anderson, but Walter Sickert himself!
The Knight theory, though interesting and entertaining in its own way,
has been effectively debunked by many Ripperologists. Most notable was
Rumbelow's refutation in his revised edition of Jack the Ripper: The
Complete Casebook where Rumbelow provides evidence that Annie lived
longer than Knight claims, spent time after 1888 in workhouses, and had
Alice with her through some of this time. There are no marriage or birth
records listing Eddy as Annie's husband or as Alice's father. Aside from
rumor or secondhand statements, there was never any hard evidence linking
Eddy to Cleveland Street, Annie Crook, or even Walter Sickert. The lack
of evidence, conspiracy theorists purport, proves the theory because all
evidence was destroyed! Regardless of the legitimate criticisms, the Royal
Conspiracy remains one of the most popular theories with several movies,
novels, and graphic novels built around it.
In the end, it is difficult to consider Eddy a serious suspect. Although
rumored, there is no concrete evidence that Eddy had mental problems (either
through syphilis or any other reason), he is reported being out of the
country during the murders, and no solid evidence has been produced that
links Eddy to sexual relationships with either James Stephen or Annie Crook.
Despite these facts, it appears likely that (outside of serious Ripper
circles) the theory of Eddy's involvement in the murders in some way will
never completely fade.
