Abberline: The Man Who Hunted Jack the Ripper

by Peter Thurgood

  Finally, we come to the subject of the ‘similar murders committed in America’ often referred to as evidence that Klosowski was indeed the Ripper. In actual fact, there was only one murder during the period that Klosowski was alleged to have been there, and that was of an elderly prostitute named Carrie Brown, or ‘Old Shakespeare’ as she was known. The assistant housekeeper at the lodging house where Carrie Brown was murdered, described the man she had seen Brown with as about 32 years of age, 5ft 8in tall, of slim build, with a long, sharp nose and heavy moustache of a light colour. He was dressed in a dark brown coat and black trousers, and wore an old and much-dented black derby hat. She said he had a foreign accent, and was possibly German.

  The description could possibly fit Klosowski but it was so loose that it could have fitted almost any other foreign immigrant. The important question here, however, is Klosowski was even in Jersey City at this particular time.

  On 5 April 1891, when the English census was taken, Klosowski was listed as still living in Tewkesbury Buildings, Whitechapel. The next listing for Klosowski being in England is shown as a whole year later, when he returned from America. When American records were searched, they did not show Klosowski being in Jersey City before 24 April, which seems to rule out completely his involvement in the Carrie Brown murder. But if we cast our minds back, it was the death of their son in March that prompted Klosowski and Baderski to move to America. Therefore it would be logical to assume that they moved to America as soon as possible between the date of his death on 3 March and after the census register of 5 April. That leaves just nineteen days for Klosowski and Baderski to pack their possessions and move to Jersey City. Nineteen days to settle in and for him to murder Carrie Brown. For most people such a tight fit would be almost impossible, but we must remember this was Klosowski, and a short study of his modus operandi shows that, with him, nothing is impossible!

  More on the positive side, as far as Abberline was concerned, were a number of facts. The first was that the date of Klosowski’s arrival in England coincided exactly with the start of the series of murders in Whitechapel; the murders also promptly ceased in London when Klosowski went to America, where a series of similar murders began to happen. There was also the fact that he studied medicine and surgery in Russia before immigrating to England, where a number of experts agreed that the Whitechapel murders were the work of someone with a detailed knowledge of surgery. It was also stated that the recent poisoning cases were proven to have been carried out by someone with more than an elementary knowledge of medicine.

  Another striking similarity that arises between the two sets of murders is that most experts agreed that the Ripper must have had a regular job, since all the murders occurred on weekends. The Ripper was, in all probability a single man, with no family ties, hence his propensity for staying out at all hours of the night. At Klosowski’s trial, his first wife, Lucy Baderski, brought up the fact that her husband had been in the habit of staying out into the early hours of the morning. She even described how he once attempted to murder her with a long knife while they lived in America.

  It was also a well-known fact that Klosowski had an enormous sexual appetite, and although the Ripper never actually committed any normal sexual acts with any of his victims, he was still classed as a sexual serial killer, for the simple reason that he always mutilated his victims’ sexual organs. Klosowski was a known mass murderer, which should be taken into account. There were many men who fitted the description of the Ripper in 1888, but few who were known to be able to commit murder, and fewer still who were known to be capable of committing mass murder.

  Klosowski was a man who seemingly took pleasure in watching his wives being slowly tortured to death by poison. Apart from the poisoning, he was capable of almost anything; even the attempted stabbing of his first wife, in such a cold-blooded manner, while they were living in New Jersey makes Abberline’s theory of him being guilty of both sets of crimes seem all the more plausible.

  Some experts expound the theory that someone who takes lives on a wholesale scale finds it impossible to stop until they are either arrested or die. The argument against this is the dissimilarity of character in the crimes, but the ghastliness is never eradicated. The victims in both cases continue to be women, but they are of different classes, and therefore call for different methods of dispatch.

  Some years later, another police officer, ex-Superintendent Arthur Neil, also endorsed his belief that Abberline’s theory regarding Klosowski was right. He urged that Klosowski took to poisoning his women victims as part of his diabolical cunning or insane urge to satisfy his inordinate vanity.

  To sum up the verdict for or against Klosowski: he was a misogynist with medical skill and American experience; he was of foreign extraction, very similar in looks and general description, apart from age, to witness descriptions at the time; he lived and worked in the immediate area of the murders throughout the autumn of 1888 when the Ripper murders took place; the Ripper murders ceased the moment he moved to America; another Ripper-style murder took place in America almost as soon as Klosowski moved there. Everything falls into place, with the exception of his modus operandi. One question remains unanswered, probably forever, and that is whether a frenzied and savage mutilator of women can, in any way, turn his modus operandi around and become a calculating poisoner just seven years later.

  15

  Highly Implausible?

  W e have been through a list of the main suspects in the Ripper case, and we have explored the pros and cons of Inspector Abberline’s number one suspect, Severin Klosowski. The most talked about, written about and romanticised name in any book, film or discussion about Jack the Ripper, however, is invariably Prince Albert Victor, known as ‘Eddy’ to his friends, and how the Freemasons allegedly came to his aid.

  By their very nature, Freemasons have always been a target for gossip and insinuation. Even the Goulston Street graffiti was said by some to be linked to them, mainly because of the spelling of the word ‘Juwes’, which, it has been alleged, referred not to ‘Jews’, but to Jubela, Jubelo and Jubelum, the three killers of Hiram Abiff, a semi-legendary figure in Freemasonry. This then, said the conspirators, must be part of a Masonic plot.

  Actual evidence implicating the Freemasons in the Ripper case was far and few between. The legend grew that a group of highly placed members of the brotherhood were actually involved in a murderous conspiracy to suppress knowledge of a secret and illegal marriage between Prince Albert Victor (Eddy), heir presumptive to the throne, and a shop assistant named Annie Crook, who duly delivered the prince a child.

  Their conspiracy involved finding the only other person who knew of this tryst, which was Mary Kelly, an old friend of Annie Crook, who had been employed by the couple as their nanny. When the group of Freemasons found out that both Crook and Kelly had worked as prostitutes in the East End, their target was enlarged, and they set out to silence Kelly and anyone who might have known her or that she might have related the story to.

  As unbelievable as it seems, this was accepted as fact by quite a number of people. In fact, it was this version of events that were used in numerous films and television series. The Freemasons’ version ends with them, having completed their ghastly deeds, withdrawing back into the shadows; and although the case was never really closed, no one was ever caught for the crimes and so the legend of Jack the Ripper lives on to this day.

  To accept that a group of highly placed, intelligent men sought to suppress knowledge of a secret royal marriage by means of a series of sensational and highly publicised murders is to accept the unbelievable.

  Although the East End of London was a large sprawling place, it was also reminiscent of a village, in the fact that most of the inhabitants were in the same boat, so to speak: nearly all were poor, many were out of work, and all of the victims were heavy drinkers or alcoholics who spent most of their free time in public houses. In such an environment, it would have been impossible for tongues not to wag. Also,
bearing in mind that the victims and their friends were all prostitutes and shared a common bond, gossip such as Prince Eddy’s supposed secret marriage to a low-class girl from the East End would have raced through the pubs of Whitechapel like wildfire, and no power on earth, least of all the Masons, could have prevented it.

  Upon initiation, a Freemason takes an oath, stating that the secrets of another Master Mason ‘Shall remain as secure and inviolable in my breast as in his own, when communicated to me, murder and treason excepted; and they left to my own election’.

  When the well-known actor and manager of London’s Lyceum Theatre, Henry Irving, was elected as a Master Mason, he took the oath, which would last for the rest of his life, to keep any secrets he may have learned, ‘Secure within his breast’.

  During the early autumn of 1888, the Lyceum Theatre was running a very successful version of the German drama Faust, which strangely enough, when used as the adjective, is often described as an arrangement in which an ambitious person surrenders moral integrity in order to achieve power and success: the proverbial ‘deal with the devil’.

  The Lyceum, under Henry Irving’s management, was doing good in the box office, and Faust was playing to packed houses. Irving, however, suddenly announced that he intended to discontinue its run and replace it with the Scottish play Macbeth, which was to open on 29 December with Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth and Irving repeating the lead role in which he had hitherto been only partially successful.

  So why had Irving suddenly taken Faust off, when it was so obviously a commercial success? He was a friend of the great and the good, many of whom waited eagerly for an invitation to supper in his private room at the Lyceum, known as the Beefsteak Room. A year earlier, Irving had helped found another Mason’s lodge called the Savage Club Lodge, which was composed almost exclusively of literary and theatrical artistes. Members of this new lodge were also honoured on some occasions to meet the Prince of Wales, who had been Chief Mason, the Most Worshipful Grand Master of England, for the past fifteen years, in addition to being a patron of the Lyceum Theatre.

  Taking into account the turmoil over the alleged association of the Freemasons and the Whitechapel murders, it is easy to see Irving’s reasoning behind his decision to drop the still-popular Faust from the Lyceum programme, and replace it with Macbeth.

  The public waited with baited breath for Macbeth to start. On the opening night, the leading Shakespearean actress Ellen Terry, commented on Irving’s gaunt look, with his straggling moustache, saying he was, ‘Like a great famished wolf’ as he padded across the shadowy hall in Dunsinane, thrust aloft the glittering bloodstained daggers and hissed triumphantly to his fellow conspirator, and to the enthralled audience, ‘I have done the deed!’

  Sir Charles Warren, who was head of the London Metropolitan Police at the time of the Ripper murders, was also the first Worshipful Master of Quatuor Coronati Lodge, the premier research lodge in the world. On 9 November 1888, the Quatuor Coronati Lodge held its quarterly meeting, while on this same night Mary Jane Kelly, the final victim of Jack the Ripper, was found murdered. Sir Charles Warren resigned as London Metropolitan Police chief immediately following this event.

  In summing up these events, we have a period of political unrest in the country as a whole: the previous autumn 100,000 unemployed had clashed with the army and police in Trafalgar Square. Rumours were starting to circulate of the imminent collapse of the established order, and London’s Masonic lodges were far from immune to such talk. So worried had they become that they had sent to their own Worshipful Grand Master a series of letters, imploring him to behave, as he might become a future monarch worthy of the title.

  Whether there is any real truth in the conspiracy theories surrounding the Masons’ involvement in the Ripper killings is still very much debatable, but we still need to look further into Prince Eddy and his alleged involvement.

  Eddy was born in 1864 to Prince Albert Edward, who was the son of Queen Victoria. Albert Edward, who was known as Bertie, would later become King Edward VII. He was not particularly well liked by the general public as he had a reputation of a ladies’ man, and was alleged to have been involved in a number of scandals. His wife, Princess Alexandra, on the other hand, was a sort of equivalent to the late Princess Diana. The public loved her and had great sympathy for her, for having to put up with the antics of her husband.

  It seemed that while Bertie was gallivanting and womanising, his son Eddy was sadly missing out on the parental love and control which most children take for granted. He had no formal education, and consequently became known as a ‘slow’ child. Being ‘slow’ did not mean he was deficient in any way, for he was, in every other aspect, a dear and loving child, but he lacked drive and tenacity. When he went to Cambridge, he had to have a private tutor, but this might have been due to his partial deafness.

  In 1891, Eddy was given the title of Duke of Clarence and Avondale, and was in line to follow his father to the throne. In that same year he became engaged to Princess May of Teck, but in 1892, just six weeks after the announcement of the engagement, a large-scale influenza epidemic broke out, which Eddy fell victim to and subsequently died. The following year, Princess May became engaged to Albert Victor’s next surviving brother, George, who subsequently became King George V.

  The Ripper murders happened in 1888, four years prior to these events, when many names were being bandied about as possible suspects; but Prince Albert was never named as a suspect by anyone.

  It wasn’t until the 1960s, long after the principal characters in the theories were dead, that Eddy’s name as an alleged suspect came to the fore. The first allegation came in a book entitled Edouard VII by Phillippe Jullien, in which the author states that Prince Albert and the Duke of Bedford were rumoured to be responsible for the Ripper murders, although there does not seem to be any evidence, prior or current, to support this theory.

  A few years later, in 1970, British surgeon Dr Thomas E. A. Stowell published an article in the November issue of The Criminologist, entitled ‘Jack the Ripper, A Solution?’ Stowell’s article states that the Ripper was an aristocrat who had contracted syphilis during a visit to the West Indies, and that it had driven him insane. His brain became addled by the disease and in this state of mind had perpetrated the five Jack the Ripper murders. Throughout his article, the killer is referred to as ‘S’, but there is enough internal evidence to identify Eddy as his chief suspect. Stowell even described in detail the suspect’s family and his physical appearance, leaving little doubt, if any, that the person he was referring to was none other than Queen Victoria’s grandson, Prince Albert Victor.

  Stowell’s article stated that following the Double Event murders on 30 September 1888, the suspect’s family had him committed to a private mental hospital in the south of England. Assuming that Eddy was the suspect Stowell was referring to in his article, he then, according to Stowell, escaped from the institution and on 9 November, committed yet another murder, before ultimately dying of syphilis.

  Stowell claimed that the information to back his theory had come from the private notes of Sir William Gull, a reputable physician who had treated members of the royal family. Stowell also claimed that his suspect drew his knowledge of anatomy and surgery, which most people accepted the Ripper must have had, from the disembowelment of deer that he had shot on the royal estates.

  Stowell’s claims seem ludicrous to say the least. It is a fact that Sir William Gull had died before Eddy had, and so could not have possibly known about Eddy’s death. It is also a fact that three doctors attended Eddy at his death in 1892, and they all agreed that he had died of pneumonia. If Eddy had died of syphilis, he would have had to have contracted the disease at least fifteen years earlier for it to have progressed to his brain, as syphilitic insanity. This would have meant that Eddy was infected at the age of 9, in about 1873, six years before he visited the West Indies.

  Phillippe Jullien and Thomas Stowell’s theories regarding Eddy being the Ri
pper are blown completely out of the water when one looks at the dates the murders were committed. They both seem to have overlooked the obvious and most important thing surrounding their theory, which was that on every single date on which a murder was committed, Eddy was not in London, and therefore could not have possibly committed them.

  Examination of court and royal records reveal exactly where Eddy was on the important murder dates:

  29 August to 7 September 1888: The Prince was staying with Viscount Downe at Danby Lodge, Grosmont, Yorkshire. (Polly Nichols was murdered on 31 August.)

  7 to 10 September 1888: The Prince was at the Cavalry Barracks in York. (Annie Chapman was murdered on 8 September.)

  27 to 30 September: The Prince was at Abergeldie, Scotland, where Queen Victoria recorded in her journal that he lunched with her on 30 September. (Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes were murdered between 1 a.m. and 2 a.m. on 30 September.)

  1 November: Arrived in London from York.

  2 to 12 November: The Prince was at Sandringham. (Mary Kelly was murdered on 9 November.)

  The above dates show without a doubt that Eddy could not have possibly been the Whitechapel murderer, but the theorists still seemed to like the idea of a royal connection, which would obviously sell books, and later, films and television programmes.

  In 1973 the theory of Prince Albert Victor’s involvement in the Ripper case was taken even further, when the BBC programme Jack the Ripper was aired. It was in this adaptation that the Royal Conspiracy Theory first appeared. In the programme, two fictional modern-day detectives finally solve the Ripper mystery through a series of conspiracies and cover-ups. It was alleged that whilst researching the story for the programme, the producers were contacted by a man named Joseph Sickert who said he knew about a secret marriage between Eddy and a poor Catholic girl named Annie Crook. Sickert’s story involved Eddy, Lord Salisbury, Sir Robert Anderson, Sir William Gull and even Queen Victoria!