Prince Albert Victor, The Royal Jack the Ripper Suspect
Prince Albert Victor, grandson of Queen Victoria is one of the most famous of the Jack the Ripper suspects. The Prince, also known as Eddy was born in 1864.
In The Complete Jack the Ripper: A to Z, researchers Paul Begg, Keith Skinner and Martin Fido state that: “The allegation that he was the Ripper was first published by Phillippe Jullian in his book Edward VII”, which was published in Paris in 1962.
In 1970, Dr Thomas Stowell picked up on the allegation when he wrote an article that appeared in the magazine Criminologist. Although he didn’t use the Prince’s name, simply calling him ’S’, he gave enough detail that it was clear that ’S’ was Prince Albert Victor.
According to Stowell, ’S' was arrested shortly after the murder of the fourth victim, Kate Eddowes. He was then certified as insane and sent to a private mental home under the care of Sir William Gull. Unfortunately, he escaped and murdered Mary Jane Kelly.
Stowell said that Prince Albert Victor contracted syphilis in the West Indies, and it was this disease that caused him to commit the murders. Stowell said that the royal Prince’s experiences of deer hunting, where he would have participated in butchering deer, explained his skill at dissecting his victims.
Prince Jack by Frank Spiering
In 1978, another writer claimed that Eddy was the Whitechapel fiend. In his book Prince Jack.
Frank Spiering said he had found a copy of Dr William Gull’s notes in the New York Academy of Medicine. The notes described how the doctor hypnotised Eddy and watched in horror as he acted out the murders.
According to Spiering, Gull believed it was the pain caused by his syphilis that created fits of rage and drove Eddy to commit the murders.
Spiering also suggested that Eddy’s father, the Prince of Wales and Lord Salisbury, eventually killed Eddy with an overdose of morphine.
When he first published, Prince Jack Spiering challenged Queen Elizabeth to open the Royal archives to reveal the truth about Prince Albert Victor.
A statement by the Palace said that a number of researchers had examined the Royal archives and Spiering could do the same but the Palace did not believe that it was “sufficiently serious to warrant a special statement by the Queen”.
At that point Spiering said he didn’t want to see the files. Which certainly makes you wonder why he turned down the kind offer.
Writer and researcher Donald Rumbelow contacted the New York Academy of Medicine about the notes of Dr William Gull that Frank Spiering claimed to have discovered there. The New York Academy of Medicine said: "'None of the entries in our catalog for works by or about Sir William Gull contain the material referred to by Mr. Spiering.”
Well despite the efforts of Phillippe Jullian, Dr Thomas Stowell and Frank Spiering experts are unimpressed and it is pointed out that the Prince cannot be shown to have been anywhere near any of the murder sites on the dates in question.
In the early hours August 31st when the first victim, Polly Nicholls, was murdered in Buck’s Row Eddy was in Yorkshire. He was staying with Viscount Downe at Danny Lodge, Grosmont, Yorkshire from August 29th until September 7th.
In the early morning of September 8th when Annie Chapman’s body was found in the little yard behind 29 Hanbury Street Eddy was staying at the Cavalry Barracks in York where he had arrived on the 7th and stayed until the 10th of September.
Then in the early hours of September 30th, the night of the ‘double event’ when both Liz Stride and Kate Eddowes were murdered Queen Victoria wrote that the Prince had lunch with her in Abergeldie Castle in the north of Scotland. So on September the 30th he was 500 miles north of where the two murders had taken taken place.
On November the 9th when Mary Jane Kelly was brutally murdered he was enjoying the delights of Sandringham where he stayed from November 2nd to the 12th.
For some though the connection to the Royal Family obviously makes this theory very appealing. And the royal connection has meant that this high profile suspect crops up in theories about others who have been put forward as suspects.
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