They All Love Jack by Bruce Robinson Review - Part One
Michael Maybrick, composer, singer, organist. freemason and Jack the Ripper suspect
Oh, for 'is heart is like the sea,
Ever open, brave an' free,
And his girl must lonely be,
Til 'is ship comes back.
But if love's the best of all,
What can a man befall?
For every girl at all,
They all love Jack!
Song written by Michael Maybrick
“Rarely has a book on Jack the Ripper been written with such visceral anger as this one by Bruce Robinson, the director and screenwriter of Withnail and I.”
So begins PD Smith’s review of They All Love Jack: Busting the Ripper in The Guardian.
For some, this anger will be a turn-off. The seeker, after truth, may feel that so much anger must choke his judgment.
Others will welcome so much passion and agree with PD Smith when he sums up his review by saying:
“If he’s right, it’s the biggest cover-up in British history. If he’s wrong – well, it’s still a bloody good read.”
Bruce Robinson is very angry.
Nor do other writers on the subject of Jack the Ripper escape his fury. They are whipped to within an inch of their lives.
However, it must be said that anger aimed at other Ripperologists in books by Ripperologists is just about de rigueur in books by Ripperologists.
But it is the Victorian establishment that bears the brunt of his fury.
The instances that raise a cheer in support from me are the many examples that Bruce offers, exposing the cruelty bred of arrogance and privilege.
“The English had been unwelcome occupiers of Ireland for seven bloody centuries . . . In 1649 the mother of them all had arrived . . . Oliver Cromwell.”
“ Intoxicated with Biblical fervour . . . Like the Victorians after him, this monster purported to believe that his colonial enterprise was ordained by God.”
“The massacres were fêtes of blood, down to the last innocent baby. Those who weren’t immediately put to the sword were stripped and left to starve. Some women had their hands and arms cut off. ‘yea, jointed alive’, wrote one contemporary observer. ‘To make them confess where their money was’”
“Those who were spared were shipped out in bondage, 500,000 of them in all. The first slaves in the British West Indies, at Barbados, were Irish men, women and children.”
And of his native Australia, Bruce quotes a Swedish cleric, Charles Lumholtz, in Victoria in 1888.
“To kill a native in Australia is the same as killing a dog in the eyes of the British colonist. . . . Your men made a point of hunting the Blacks, every Sunday [presumably after church] in the neighbourhood of their cities . . . systematically passing the whole day in that sport, simply for pleasure’s sake.”
Naturally, the Empire’s part in the ‘Scramble for Africa’ doesn’t escape Bruce’s wrath, Boy Scout founder Baden Powell included.
“Powell marched his column of fighting men from the beaches of the Gold Coast into deep up-country, his task once again ‘to bring back the gold’ and destroy the religious practices of the Ashanti.”
Unfortunately for the Ashanti, they could only give Powell 600 ounces of gold when he had asked for 50,000 ounces. Powell decided they needed a lesson, so he took their King and his mother prisoner.
“With their royal family as prisoners, the Africans stood by ‘like a flock of sheep’. There was not much for the civilisers to do before bidding their farewells except to ‘set fire to the holiest buildings in the town’.”
“‘The feeling against the niggers was very intense,’ wrote Powell, ‘and the whites intended to give them a lesson they wouldn’t forget.’ Bruce adds, “Some of them haven’t.”
Bruce presents all of this to show that the white race, or rather those of the white race elite who passed through the British public school system, had the God-given right to, as Cecil Rhodes said, ‘paint as much of the map of Africa British Red as possible”.
Cecil and his pals were not too fussed about the ethnicity of those who would provide the ‘red stuff’.
With all that background, we surely cannot be surprised when Bruce presents his argument that the Victorian elite were prepared to go to any lengths to protect their position at the top of the heap.
For Bruce integral to maintaining that position was protecting the reputation of the Masonic Order.
So, did he convince me that Edward, Prince of Wales, Sir Henry Mathews, Sir Charles Warren and all their mates could feel justified in protecting the Empire by any means, even when those means might include concealing the crime of the century?
Well, he certainly shows that the Empire’s inner circle had done worse things, so yes, I’m convinced that it wouldn’t be a lack of ‘moral fibre’ that would hold them back yf they thought it necessary..
Did he convince me that these murders were ritualistic and carried out by a demented freemason?
No, he did not convince me of that.
Did he convince me that “Masonry permeates every fibre of this conundrum.”
No, he did not convince me of that either.
He also did not convince me that the crimes were not solved because it was “an establishment conspiracy … an agenda to conceal a Freemason”.
I realise that my opinion of his evidence may be as much influenced by my particular character and worldview as it is by genuine objective scientific reasoning, just as Bruce Robinson’s opinion will be partly shaped by his character and worldview.
Before looking at some of the evidence presented in They All Love Jack: Busting the Ripper, here’s a quick biography of Bruce’s candidate for the role of Jack the Ripper.
Michael Maybrick was born in Liverpool on January 31 1841, died on August 26 1913, and was buried on the Isle of Wight.
He was the fourth of eight children. His father and grandfather served as parish clerks at St Peter’s, Liverpool, and his uncle was the organist at the church.
He played the piano, and by the age of 15, he had become the organist at St Peter’s and had also written anthems.
In 1865, he went to Leipzig to study keyboard and harmony but later decided to train as a baritone in Milan.
On February 25 1869 he appeared in Mendelssohn's Elijah in London and was soon singing his own songs published under the pseudonym Stephen Adams and mostly with lyrics by Fred Weatherly.
Songs ranging from ‘Nancy Lee’ and ‘Your Dear Brown Eyes’ to ‘The Star of Bethlehem’ and ‘The Holy City’.
But it was the song ‘They All Love Jack’ that gave Bruce Robinson the title for his book.
Judging by the number of men - it is mostly men - who have joined the hunt for ‘Jack’ and have written books about ‘Jack’ the title is appropriate.
Crucially for Bruce Robinson’s theory, Michael Maybrick was a Freemason, as was anybody who was anybody. It goes without saying anybody who was anybody generally meant any man.
Maybrick was a keen cricketer, yachtsman, cyclist, and captain in the Artists Rifles.
On March 9th 1893, at the age of 42, he married his forty-year-old housekeeper, Laura Withers, and settled with her at Ryde on the Isle of Wight.
They were joined there by the two children of his brother, James Maybrick.
On January 1st 1993, The Diary of Jack the Ripper was published, and James Maybrick was accused of being the serial killer known as Jack the Ripper.
Click here for my Blog Post on The Diary of Jack the Ripper.t
The publication of The Diary of Jack the Ripper certainly renewed interest in this case.
Perhaps Bruce Robinson’s appetite would not have been whetted without its publication.
After 15 years of research, They All Love Jack: Busting the Ripper was published in 2015.
The Telegraph gave it 4 stars.
Gavin Corbett in The Irish Times wrote:
“Withnail & I cult director Bruce Robinson tackles Jack the Ripper in this exhaustively researched, immensely entertaining – and bonkers – investigation”
PD Smith ends his Guardian review with:
“At the very least, one has to admire Robinson’s chutzpah. Most academic historians would break into a cold sweat at the very idea of publishing such an outrageous claim. But his research is undoubtedly impressive and has taken some 15 years. He argues his case with such conviction that it is in the end convincing – although I suspect whether you believe him will come down to whether you subscribe to the cock-up or the conspiracy theory of history. Most historians put the police’s failure to catch the Ripper down to incompetence. If he’s right, it’s the biggest cover-up in British history. If he’s wrong – well, it’s still a bloody good read.”
Obviously, this huge book - over 800 pages - deserves a second blog post so we can examine the evidence that convinces Bruce Robinson that Michael Maybrick was Jack the Ripper.