In November 1970,The Criminologistpublished an article by Dr. Thomas Stowell , an octogenarian operating surgeon with somethoughtsabout the identity ofJack the Ripper .
In his youth , Stowell was friends with Caroline Acland , the girl of a royal family MD named Sir William Gull . grant to Acland , her father had handle a young jovial man with syphilis , which he had perhaps contracted from a prostitute in the West Indies . By the recent 1880s , the disease had spread to the patient ’s mental capacity , apparently inspiring him to demand revenge upon nearby tart in London ’s Whitechapel territory . Gull start believing his patient role was Jack the Ripper , and he cabal with the police commissioner to embrace it up .
Stowell never identify a defendant in his clause , but he did n’t need to . Anybody with a cursory cognition of Britishroyal familyhistory knew of a prince who fit the bank bill : Queen Victoria ’s grandson , Prince Albert Victor , Duke of Clarence and Avondale .
Not only had rumors circulated about the prince ’s sexuality , but he also kick the bucket of malady ( grippe , not syphilis ) in 1892 , at just 28 years old . The medium took the mind and run with it , and Stowellappearedon the BBC to discuss his theory . Through all the promotion , however , he reject to indicate a finger at the prince . “ I have at no prison term assort His Royal Highness the late Duke of Clarence , with the Whitechapel manslayer or suggested that the manslayer was of royal blood , ” Stowell write toThe Times .
Within week , Stowell was drained . His death itself was n’t suspicious — he was in his late LXXX at the time — but it did complicate matter . Almost immediately following his dying , Stowell ’s Logos — Dr. T. Eldon Stowell — burn all documents associate to his sire ’s research on Jack the Ripper . “ I learn just sufficiently to make certain that there was nothing of importance , ” Dr. Stowelltoldthe press at the time . “ The family decided that this was the right affair to do . I am not inclined to discourse our grounds for doing so . ”
If Stowell had any concrete evidence from Gull ’s journals or elsewhere , he took it to the grave . Furthermore , Prince Albert Victor had an alibi for a few of the murder . A Buckingham Palace officialunearthedan issue ofThe Timesfrom October 1 , 1888 , which report that two women had been off in London the late night . In the very same newspaper , it was name that Prince Albert Victor had been at Balmoral Castle in Scotland on September 30 . Based on other record fromBuckingham Palace , it seemed likely that the prince had been with his family at Sandringham House on November 9 , 1888 , when another slaying had occurred in London .
The media fury finally languish , but Stowell was far from the last to suggest that Prince Albert Victor and Jack the Ripper were one and the same . As All That ’s Interestingreports , Stephen Knight put forth a fresh possibility in his 1976 bookJack the Ripper : Final Solution . The prince , Knight claimed , had we d a Catholic woman from Whitechapel and generate a secret tyke . for keep this shamefuloffenseunder wraps , the royal family had conspire to kill any mortal who bang about it . Though Knight ’s information had allegedly descend from the grandson of Albert Victor and his anon. wife , this theory — much like Dr. Thomas Stowell’s — go bad to prove a unmarried thing .
