The Times (London).
4 November 1970
Buckingham Palace is not officially reacting to the mischievous calumny that Albert Victor, the Duke of Clarence and Avondale and Earl of Athlone, was also Jack the Ripper. The idea that Edward VII's eldest son and, but for his early death of pneumonia aged 28, heir to the throne, should have bestially murdered five or six women of "unfortunate" class in the East End is regarded as too ridiculous for comment.
Nevertheless a loyalist on the staff at Buckingham Palace had engaged in some amateur detective work and come up with evidence on the Duke's behalf. Two women were murdered on September 30, 1888, in Berners Street and Mitre Square, and their murders were fully reported in The Times the following day.
The Times of October 1 also carried a court circular from Balmoral, stating: "Prince Henry of Battenberg, attended by Colonel Clerk, joined Prince Albert Victor of Wales (the Duke of Clarence as he was to be) at Glen Muick in a drive which Mr. Mackenzie had for black game."
Further, but less surely, he believes that the Duke was as Sandringham, celebrating his father's 47th birthday, on the occasion of the last murder of Marie Jeanette Kelly, in Miller's Court, on November 9, 1888. The court circular simply says that the then Prince of Wales celebrated his birthday with his family; but diary entries and other notes in the archives at Buckingham Palace suggest that the Duke was in fact at Sandringham during the early days of November until November 11.
Speculation that the Duke of Clarence might have been Jack the Ripper springs from an article by Thomas Stowell, a senior surgeon, in The Criminologist. Stowell says he has kept to himself for 50 years evidence which points to a man of noble family and, in some particulars, to the Duke. Stowell refuses to reveal who he thinks it was, but seemed to accept tacitly that it was the Duke on the B.B.C. news programme, 24 Hours, on Monday night.
