Gull Treated the Ripper

London's Sunday Times Suspects So.

Was Jack the Ripper Heir to the Throne?

LONDON (AP) - The Sunday Times expressed the belief that Jack the Ripper, fiendish London murderer of nearly 100 years ago, was Edward, Duke of Clarence, grandson of Queen Victoria, older brother of King George V, and heir to the British throne.
The Times was commenting on the statement of an eminent British surgeon that he knows the identity of the Ripper, who "was the heir to power and wealth." The surgeon, Thomas E.A. Stowell, refused to say in an article to be published Monday in the Criminologist, a magazine devoted to forensic medicine and criminology, who the Ripper was.
The Ripper, grisly murderer of at least five prostitutes in London's sleazy East End, was never arrested. In the autumn of 1888, four of his victims were murdered and disembowelled in one of the most gruesome series of crimes in British history.
Stowell, now in his 80's, was a child when the Ripper struck. He said he has kept to himself for 50 years evidence of the Ripper's identity because he did not want to involve as witnesses some close friends who were still alive.
The murderer, he said, "was the heir to power and wealth. His family, for 50 years, had earned the love and admiration of large numbers of people by its devotion to public service to all classes, particularly the poor, but as well to industry and the workers.
"His grandmother, who outlived him, was very much the stern Victorian matriarch, widely and deeply respected. His father, to whose title he was the heir, was a gay cosmopolitan and did much to improve the status of England internationally. His mother was an unusually beautiful woman with a gracious personal charm and was greatly beloved to all who knew her."
The Sunday Times added in an article by Magnus Linklater: "Another authority, Donald McCormick, author of "The Identity of Jack the Ripper," (to be republished Monday) names the killer as a Russian doctor called Konovalov who, he says, knew four of the murdered women and disappeared after the last murder. But Konovalov fits none of Mr. Stowell's evidence - and McCormick mentions in passing another suspect who does.
"It is a sensational name: Edward, Duke of Clarence, grandson of Queen Victoria, brother of George V and heir to the throne of England. All the points of Mr. Stowell's odd story fit this man. He did die young, he was ill, he was almost certainly affected mentally by his illness."
Linklater indicated he had asked Stowell to comment on this speculation but he only replied: "I would never dream of doing harm to a family whom I love and admire by revealing the name."
Stowell said the Ripper was a gay young bachelor who contracted syphilis during a world tour just after his 16th birthday.
Stowell said the killer was treated by the royal physician, Sir William Gull, who was seen on more than one occasion in the Whitechapel district of London on nights when the Ripper's murders were committed.
This, apparently, was Stowell's direct contact with the case, for he was a close friend of Sir William's daughter, Caroline Acland.
The surgeon said Mrs. Acland had once told him she had seen an entry in her father's diary for November 1889: "Informed Blank that his son was dying of syphilis of the brain."
Stowell said Sir William realized that his patient was Jack the Ripper and had sought the assistance of London's commissioner of police, Sir Charles Warren, in keeping the identity secret.
The Duke of Clarence, elder son of Edward VII and Queen Alexandra, was born Jan. 8, 1864. He died after what was described as a brief illness Jan. 14, 1892; when he was 28. The nature of the illness was never made public.
His younger brother, the Duke of York, then became heir to the throne, which he ascended as George V in 1910.

Source: The Stars and Stripes, November 2, 1970, Page 28

Prime example of how bad it gets when people dont check the facts. Victoria had no grandson called Edward. The duke of Clarence was her grandson Albert Victor!

If they cant even get the NAME right, what else can be trusted?

i fail to find any source whatsoever claiming that Sir William Gull was seen in whitechapel at the time of the murders.

I'm not sure that you were aware of this, but the Sandringham alibi has been discredited by the Court Circulars found in the Newspapers themselves!

See https://victorianripper.forumotion.com/t1111-sandringham-alibi-discredited

Ironically Gull's residence was next door to the Churchhills.
Doubt Jack or Gull treated each other in their last 19 months or so.
Both died in that time frame.

Stewart Evans traces Philippe's sources back to Thomas Stowell who published his Royal Conspiracy article in 1970. http://www.casebook.org/dissertation...nsorigins.html

Stowell twice gives his source as William Gull's daughter, Caroline Acland. She supposedly had secret papers about Prince Eddy and told a tale of Robert James Lees in Ghost Detective. The story goes Stowell met with her in the thirties but she died in 1929. http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.co...-02/1109226292

As someone who, if he has to, would put more stock in strong rumor over a lot of other controversial aspects of the case, it makes me wonder if the source can't be traced further back than 1929-30s....

Interestingly, Caroline Acland's husband is a cousin of the wife of the 2nd Earl of Carnarvon (Elizabeth Kitty Acland), making Thomas Dyke Acland cousins with the Carnarvon family.

It's interesting because, according to her family's genealogy, Elsie Frances Sullivan ne. Searle, wife of L'pool MJK's son, is the goddaughter of the 4th Earl of Carnarvon.

Since she also knew Prince Eddy's betrothed, Princess May, could this be the path for a tale of an "MJK" orphan who may not have known who real his father was?

Teck/Searle to Carnarvon to Acland to Stowell to Phillipe to Speare to Knight....

I would conclude that, even if Liverpool Mary Kelly is not the real MJK, then she is at least the source for the Stephen Knight conspiracy theory because her orphaned son William John, father possibly unknown, married into the "extended" Carnarvon family in 1919, and the William Gull/Prince Eddy story originated, according to Stowell, with the extended Carnarvons sometime after that.

Guest wrote:Interestingly, Caroline Acland's husband is a cousin of the wife of the 2nd Earl of Carnarvon (Elizabeth Kitty Acland), making Thomas (sic) [Theodore] Dyke Acland cousins with the Carnarvon family.

The Acland connection to the Carnarvons goes back to the 1700s through original ownership of the Carnarvon estates.

The Pixton and Tetton estates in Somerset were inherited by Elizabeth Kitty Acland on the death of her brother, Sir John Dyke Acland, 8th Bt, in 1785. In 1796 she married Henry Herbert, Lord Porchester, who in 1811 succeeded his father as 2nd Earl of Carnarvon.

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/a2a/records.aspx?cat=168-dddru&cid=0#0