Is this the real Jack the Ripper?
JACK THE RIPPER was an obscure singer whose identity was shielded by fellow Masons, new records suggest.
A new book by Bruce Robinson, the director and screenwriter of the classic film Withnail and I, claims that the notorious Whitechapel murderer was a man named Michael Maybrick.
In the book They All Love Jack: Busting the Ripper, Robinson argues that all of the Ripper killings bore the stamp of Masonic ritual, citing the symbol of a pair of compasses carved into the face of Catherine Eddowes, the removal of meal buttons and coins from the bodies of Eddowes and Annie Chapman.
He said the cryptic graffiti on a wall in Goulston St, which he claims was ‘‘the most flagrant clue of all’’. New archives prove for the first time that Maybrick and his brother James – who has previously been named as the Ripper – were both Masons.
They reveal that Freemasons were in prominent positions in the Scotland Yard inquiry, including the Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Charles Warren and the man he appointed to be his ‘‘eyes and ears’’ on the case, Chief Inspector Donald Swanson.
Two coroners who ruled on the murders, Wynne Baxter and Henry Crawford, and at least three of the police doctors who examined the bodies were also members of the Masons.
Maybrick, who was on the Supreme Grand Council of Freemasons, travelled the country as a performer. His entry in the carefully handwritten records describes him as a ‘‘vocalist’’.
It states that he was a member of the St Andrew’s Lodge from 1863 until 1887 – meaning he left a year before the nine-week period in 1888 when five women were murdered in the East End of London, in one of the biggest unsolved crimes in British history. Sir Charles is said to have been a senior member of the Masonic Society. He was a founder member of the Quatuor Coronati Lodge and an authority on Freemasonic history and ritual.
Robinson said: ‘‘It was endemic in the way England ran itself. At the time of Jack the Ripper, there were something like 360 Tory MPs, 330 of which I can identify as Masons. The whole of the ruling class was Masonic, from the heir to the throne down. It was part of being in the club.
‘‘Part of the whole ethic of Freemasonry is whatever it is, however it’s done, you protect the brotherhood – and that’s what happened.
‘‘They weren’t protecting Jack the Ripper, they were protecting the system that Jack the Ripper was threatening. And to protect the system, they had to protect him. And the Ripper knew it.’’