They All Love Jack by Bruce Robinson Review - Part Two
Bruce Robinson is not alone in believing he knows who Jack the Ripper was.
One of the detective inspectors closely connected to the investigation, Detective Inspector Frederick Abberline, believed he knew who the killer was.
In 1890, Detective Inspector Frederick Abberline was promoted to Chief Inspector, and in 1892, he retired.
It was during his retirement that he singled out Severin Antoniovich Klosowski, AKA George Chapman, as the killer known as Jack the Ripper.
Others have made different claims.
In his book Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution, Stephen Knight claimed the murders were committed as part of a conspiracy to protect the crown.
His book was published in 1976, just one year after former City of London Police Officer Donald Rumbelow published his highly regarded The Complete Jack the Ripper.
Jean Overton Fuller published Sickert And The Ripper Crimes in 1990. She named the Victorian artist Walter Sickert as the killer.
Twelve years later, Walter Sickert was presented as the killer by best-selling crime author Patricia Cornwell.
In 2002, she published Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper—Case Closed. Inevitably, Patricia Cornwell’s book became an international bestseller.
Patricia Cornwell published another best seller in 2017. Again, the artist Walter Sickert was the killer in RIPPER: THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER SICKERT.
In 1993, Shirley Harrison presented Liverpool cotton merchant James Maybrick in her book The Diary of Jack the Ripper.
In 1996, writer Bruce Paley said the killer was Joseph Barnett, the boyfriend of the last victim, Mary Jane Kelly. After years of research, his book Jack the Ripper: The Simple Truth was published.
In 1998, local man, George Hutchinson was named in From Hell: The Jack the Ripper Mystery by Bob Hinton,
In 2005, Trevor Marriott published Jack the Ripper: The 21st Century Investigation. The cover says, “A Top Murder Squad Detective Finally Uncovers the Truth”. Step forward German merchant sailor, Carl Feigenbaum.
In 2014, Russell Edwards published a book titled Naming Jack the Ripper. He named Jack the Ripper as Aaron Kosminski.
All are passionate in their convictions but none are more passionate than Bruce Robinson in his goal of busting the Ripper.
And at 800 plus pages, none can claim to have done more research.
He says that one result of all that research is that he “learned to loathe much of what was the Victorian governing class.” He certainly includes enough of his research to persuade me to agree.
How persuasive is the evidence that these murders were committed by a Freemason, leading Freemasons to do all they could to hide this fact?
In the case of the second of the five victims, Annie Chapman, who was the first victim to be disembowelled, Bruce says:
“Her killer had clearly performed some kind of postmortem ritual. Her throat was cut across, her abdomen had been slashed open and her intestines removed, and deposited on her left shoulder. A ring or rings had been wrenched from her fingers and, together with her womb, were missing from the crime scene. The assailant had also cut her pockets open, making a display of their contents at her feet. Amongst ‘other articles’, these consisted of a piece of muslin and a pair of combs. ‘There were also found’, reported the Telegraph, ‘two farthings polished brightly’ - coins soon to be named ‘the Mysterious coins’ and to become the subject of trivial controversy.”
Bruce explains that part of the Masonic initiation ritual is that “the Senior Deacon surreptitiously supplies the coins, and it’s my view that Jack supplied the farthings that were found near Annie Chapman’s body. Although these coins were described in contemporary press reports . . . . neither Phillips nor Inspector Chandler mentions coins at the inquest, hey presto, they couldn’t have been there.”
This is explained by Bruce as ‘memory loss’, which he explains is a ‘shared phenomenon among certain masons’.
So ‘Phillips’ who was Dr George Bagster Phillips, the police surgeon responsible for the examination of Annie Chapman’s body, and Inspector Chandler were Freemasons who lied about the presence of the farthings because non-Freemasons would be demanding a public enquiry into the role of Freemasons.
Did any Freemason need to lie about the farthings? Would anybody who was not a Freemason know about this strange Masonic ritual in which ‘the Senior Deacon surreptitiously supplies the coins’?
These coins were described in contemporary press reports, so the cat was out of the bag. The world was told by the press, but crowds weren’t gathering in Trafalgar Square demanding that Freemasonry be investigated.
Given that Bruce claims, ”Masonry permeates every fibre of this conundrum”, why weren’t the Freemasons at the Telegraph and other newspapers not in the loop?
Surely a conspiracy by Freemasons to hide any connection with Freemasonry to these murders needed the newspapers to keep quiet about the farthings?
Using Occam’s Razor to cut through all this complexity, we can say that it was a fact that the newspapers were hounding the police. Part of the reason for the abuse was that the police were not giving the journalists all the information that they wanted.
The result was that journalists had to use their imagination.
As Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, said, “Never let the truth get in the way of a good story”.
Mark Twain would know. He was, for a time, a journalist thirsty for good stories on the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise.
Two shiny farthings lying beside the dead body is the kind of enigmatic clue that would appear in any best-selling whodunnit.
Arthur Conan Doyle’s first Sherlock Holmes tale, The Study in Scarlet, had appeared in bookshops just the year before the murders began in Whitechapel.
Bruce can say, “It’s my view that Jack supplied the farthings that were found by Annie Chapman’s body.”
And I can equally say, “It’s my view that journalists ‘supplied’ the farthings that were found by Annie Chapman’s body”.
Bruce believes the Police Surgeon, Dr George Baxter Phillips, was again just covering up for the murderer when he said at the inquest that “he had better not go into further details of the mutilations, which would only be painful to the feelings of the jury and the public”.
The coroner, Wynne Baxter, told Dr Phillips that “Any mutilations which took place afterwards may suggest the character of the man who did it.’
Bruce seizes on this.
“‘The character of the man who did it’ was precisely what Phillips was trying to avoid. While feigning concern for the sensitivity of others, his posture was actually obscene, of utility to no one but the bloody outrage rampaging around Whitechapel. Phillips was covering up, cynically playing the same shabby card Warren was about to pull from his sleeve in Goulston Street.”
Bruce’s righteous anger obviously persuades him and no doubt many readers that Dr Bagster Phillips was happy to allow a monster who threatened the lives of impoverished, homeless women to remain at large simply to protect the reputation of Freemasonry.
Detective Chief Inspector Walter Dew, was a detective constable in the Whitechapel CID throughout the Ripper investigation. This is how he describes Dr Phillips in 1888:
"He was a character, an elderly man; he was ultra old-fashioned both in his personal appearance and his dress. He used to look for all the world as though he had stepped out of a century-old painting. His manners were charming: he was immensely popular both with the police and the public, and he was highly skilled"
On September 13, five days after the murder, Dr Phillips first gave a detailed description of the attack on Annie Chapman at the inquest at the end of it, he added:
“There are various other mutilations of the body, but I am of the opinion that they occurred subsequently to the death of the woman and to the large escape of blood from the neck. I am entirely in your hands, sir, but is it necessary that I should describe the further mutilations? From what I have said, I can state the cause of death.”
The Coroner wanted more:
“The object of the inquiry is not only to ascertain the cause of death, but the means by which it occurred. Any mutilation which took place afterwards may suggest the character of the man who did it. Possibly you can give us the conclusions to which you have come respecting the instrument used.”
Dr Phillips replied:
“You don't wish for details. I think if it is possible to escape the details it would be advisable. The cause of death is visible from injuries I have described.”
The interrogation ended when Coroner Baxter said:
“We will postpone that for the present.”
Six Days Later
So then, eleven days after the murder, Dr Phillips is recalled to the inquest.
Bruce Robinson writes of Coroner Wynne Baxter:
“Once again he wanted to know about the mutilations, and once again Bro Phillips didn’t want to tell him.”
Finally, Dr Phillips said:
“In giving these details to the public, I believe you are thwarting the ends of justice.”
Women and children were cleared from the court, and Dr Phillips described the mutilations.
The Telegraph reported:
“Very well. I will give you the results of my post-mortem examination. Witness then detailed the terrible wounds which had been inflicted upon the woman, and described the parts of the body which the perpetrator of the murder had carried away with him.”
Bruce Robinson writes:
“In reality, the mutilations didn’t represent anything as mundane as a ‘clue’ but were the essence of what these murders were, duplicated with escalating symbolic ferocity time after time. They were irrefutable evidence of ritualistic murder.”
This, for Bruce, explains why Dr Phillips was reticent about giving more information six days earlier. He held back for fear of making the world recognize “irrefutable evidence of ritualistic murder.”
Was Dr George Bagster Phillips Covering Up For The Freemasons?
This is what Dr Phillipshad said at the inquest six days earlier.
“The small intestines and other portions were lying on the right side of the body on the ground above the right shoulder, but attached. There was a large quantity of blood, with a part of the stomach above the left shoulder.”
The victim had been disembowelled. Her intestines had been drawn out and placed over her right shoulder. Part of her stomach had been placed over her left shoulder.
That is what was done. These were the terrible wounds inflicted. Described by Dr Phillips right at the beginning of his testimony at his first appearance at the inquest.
What is it that had to be added to make this “irrefutable evidence of ritualistic murder” by a Freemason?
The only bit added six days later was the removal of Annie Chapman’s uterus.
Where in the all-male world of Freemasonry do they write about the ritualistic removal of a uterus?
So, to repeat, in his first statement to the inquest, Dr Phillips has described a woman lying with her stomach ripped open, with her intestines above her right shoulder and her stomach over her left shoulder.
As Bruce says, “During his long career, Baxter was to preside over thousands of such hearings” and “Doing to death by unpleasant means was the stock in trade of a coroners court.”
So how is it that Coroner Baxter didn’t realize that the original evidence presented by Dr Phillips was quite obviously “irrefutable evidence of ritualistic murder”?
Especially since Bruce tells us that when, six days later, Coroner Baxter managed to drag out of Dr Phillips the additional information about the missing uterus, the scales fall from the Coroner’s eyes. As Bruce writes:
“Baxter must have realised what all the reticence was about. Bro Phillips was describing a ritualised enactment of Freemasonic penal, something any Freemason would have recognised immediately. Bro Baxter was a Freemason, and recognise it he surely did.”
Wait! The Coroner was a Freemason? Bruce, who was organising this conspiracy? This conspiracy in which “Masonry permeates every fibre of this conundrum”
Surely, at some point in the eleven days between Dr Phillips examining Annie’s body on September 8 and September 19, when Coroner Baxter dragged the second description from Dr Phillips, somebody, if not Bro Phillips, could have slipped Bro Baxter a funny handshake and whispered, “This is a ritualistic murder, old man. We need to close ranks in the name of the Grand Master.”
Bruce’s mind is clearly made up. It isn’t as clear to me.
Could Dr Phillips have had another reason for not wishing to give more publicity than was strictly necessary?
“A copycat crime is a criminal act that is modelled after or inspired by a previous crime that has been reported in the media or published in fiction.” Joni E Johnston - Psychology Today
It was the Jack the Ripper murders that were sensationally and widely reported in contemporary papers worldwide that first woke up the wider public to the phenomenon of copycat crimes.
But surely people who were repeatedly and closely connected with the investigation of crimes might have been aware of this phenomenon even if nobody had actually come up with the term ‘copycat crime’ or 'copycat murder.’
Now, whether Annie Chapman was ritualistically murdered is debatable.
What is not up for debate is that Annie Chapman was the first of the Whitechapel murder victims to have been disembowelled.
By the time of her murder, the media had whipped up a frenzy of mass hysteria over the Whitechapel murders.
Then, on the day before Annie Chapman was murdered, the Pall Mall Gazette published an article written by William Estall titled “A Precedent for the Whitechapel Murders”:
Around eighty years before the murders of 1888, two women had been lured to a remote cottage where they were brutally murdered.
William Estall makes the point that, like Martha Tabram and Polly Nichols, these women had been “frightfully mutilated”.
Estall adds that both women had been disembowelled.
The day after that totally irresponsible article appeared, Annie Chapman became the first victim to be disembowelled.
Occam’s Razor states that if there are several explanations for a particular event and none are obviously the cause, then go with the one that comes with the least complexity - go with the simplest explanation.
Would William of Occam see Bruce Robinson’s explanation as the simplest on offer?
“The rules of the ‘Funny Little Game’ were chosen by the dominant player, and were exclusively Freemasonic. It was a clever strategy by a clever psychopath. Freemasonry was an arena in which the killer was omnipotent and the System was most exposed. To protect itself, the system was obliged to protect him - and that’s about the size of the ‘mystery’.
At the end of the book - before the appendix - Bruce writes: “‘Time Reveals All’, and times up for Michael Maybrick. Jack the Ripper was a Victorian psychopath, he belongs to them, and posterity - for want of a word - should rejoice to be rid of him.”
Some will agree with PD Smith when he sums up his Guardian review with, “If he’s wrong – well, it’s still a bloody good read.”
Some will agree with Gavin Corbett, who said in his review in The Irish Times :
“Withnail & I cult director Bruce Robinson tackles Jack the Ripper in this exhaustively researched, immensely entertaining – and bonkers – investigation”
Fortunately, They All Love Jack: Busting the Ripper is easily available for you to make up your own mind.
Thank you for checking out this post.