Was Jack The Ripper A Freemason?

By Fu Ceyi

Every one loves a good detective story and Jack the Ripper, a serial murderer in England in the late 1880s is a small little industry on its own. When authors Stephen Knight and Martin Short linked the serial murderer to the “secretive” freemasons, their books instantly became best sellers.

Stephen Knight and Martin Short cashed in on the Freemasonry’s bandwagon by writing a couple of books sensationalizing Freemasonry. Stephen Knight’s books Jack the Ripper – The Final Solution (1976) and The Brotherhood (1983) and Martin Short’s Inside the Brotherhood (1989) and Lundy: The Destruction of Scotland Yard’s Finest Detective (1991) may have triggered a new witch-hunt against the freemasons accusing them of practicing among other devilish things not less than ten heresies.

It does not help that Stephen Knight died in July 1985 aged thirty-three eighteen months after the publication of his best-selling, controversial and much-disputed expose of Freemasonry, The Brotherhood. He died from epilepsy brought on by a hit on the head by a bat while playing cricket. Martin Short in his book, Inside the Brotherhood insinuated that he was murdered by freemasons because he criticized and exposed the freemasons in his book The Brotherhood. According to him many freemasons believed that their Masonic brothers murdered him.[i] Both books received sensational reviews by the press in their times. There are not counting other related works, no less than 76 books on Jack the Ripper since 1888 and no less than 56 films and television shows on the topic. For a more detailed list readers may wish to refer to the bibliography and filmography of The Mammoth Book of Jack the Ripper.

This article is a critique of Knight and Short’s books and seeks to provide a more balance alternative view. I thought it worthwhile to resurrect the Ripper issue because in a recent discussion on the latest Jack the Ripper movie From Hell, which followed faithfully the Sickert/Knight story line, a past master in the fraternity is of the view that this story is true. I believe that others who watched the movie From Hell may also believe the story, especially non Masons who are not familiar with the tenets and practice of Freemasonry. Good acting, with a sensational detective story supported by powerful audio and full color visual cinema impact can be dramatic and persuasive.

Johnny Depp, leading actor in the movie From Hell

My guess is the title of the movie From Hell was taken from this letter written in October 1888. The text of the letter reads:

From hell.
Mr Lusk,
Sor

I send you half the Kidne I took from one woman and prasarved it for you tother piece I fried and ate it was very nise. I may send you the bloody knif that took it out if you only wate a whil longer
signed

Catch me when you can Mishter Lusk

The "From Hell" letter postmarked 15th October 1888.

The "From Hell" letter is the name given to a letter mailed in 1888 together with half a human kidney preserved in alcohol by a man who claimed to be the killer known as Jack the Ripper. Amongst the many letters claiming to be from the killer received by the police then, this one was considered one of the few possibly authentic ones from the serial murderer. It is noteworthy that the writer did not sign his name as Jack the Ripper as many others did. The letter was addressed to and received by a George Lusk, then head of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee.

An earlier "Dear Boss" letter by another writer that claimed he was also Jack the Ripper was sent to the Central News Agency of London. It was dated 25th September and postmarked 27th September 1888. The letter was forwrded to Scotland Yard on 29th September.

The "Dear Boss" letter postmarked 27th September 1888.

Its content like most of the many alleged 'Ripper letters' that were later received, contains spelling and punctuation errors. It reads:

Dear Boss,

I keep on hearing the police have caught me but they wont fix me just yet. I have laughed when they look so clever and talk about being on the right track. That joke about Leather Apron gave me real fits. I am down on whores and I shant quit ripping them till I do get buckled. Grand work the last job was. I gave the lady no time to squeal. How can they catch me now. I love my work and want to start again. You will soon hear of me with my funny little games. I saved some of the proper red stuff in a ginger beer bottle over the last job to write with but it went thick like glue and I cant use it. Red ink is fit enough I hope ha ha . The next job I do I shall clip the ladys ears off and send to the police officers just for jolly wouldn't you. Keep this letter back till I do a bit more work, then give it out straight. My knife's so nice and sharp I want to get to work right away if I get a chance. Good Luck.

Yours truly
Jack the Ripper'
Dont mind me giving the trade name
PS Wasnt good enough to post this before I got all the red ink off my hands curse it No luck yet. They say I'm a doctor now ha ha.

Initially this letter was considered a hoax like many others but when the body of Cathrine Eddowes was found on 30th September with a ear severed off, the writer's promise to "clip the ladys ears off" gained attention.

The Police then published handbills with facsimiles of it and the Saucy Jack Postcard (which was the first to refer to the earlier message) hoping someone would recognise the handwriting, but nothing came of this effort. Many newspapers also reprinted the text in whole or in part. These two messages gained worldwide notoriety after their publication. It was the first time the "Jack the Ripper" name had been used to refer to the killer, and the term captured the imagination of the public. This started an avalance of other letters claiming to be from "Jack the Ripper". This is a most unusual display of male attitude, there were hundreds of Englishmen actually taking the trouble to write in claiming to be the serial murderer. The serial murderer was given the status of a popular celebrity. It would be unthinkable today, it most probably reflected the male attitude then towards women and woman prostitutes in particular.

After investigation police officials announced that this letter and the postcard were hoaxes by a local journalist. These statement was not well publicized and the perception that the killer had sent messages taunting the police became one of the enduring legends of the Ripper case. Modern scholars are divided on which, if any, of the letters should be considered genuine, but the "Dear Boss" and "From Hell" letters are considered most frequently as potentially having been written by the killer. A number of authors try to advance their theories by comparing handwriting samples of their suspects to the writing found in this letter.

There were many earlier publications on Jack the Ripper case, none has ever linked it to the freemasons. The gist of Stephen Knight and Martin Short’s books is that besides being heretics, freemasons are corrupt and mutually self-serving. They claimed that freemasons placed their loyalty to their Masonic brethren above their public duties and alleged that freemason judges and policemen will allow criminals to evade justice if they had identified themselves as freemasons by secret signs. Short tells many stories of incidents which he claimed were told him by High Court judges who made him promise not to reveal their identities.

In one incident according to him a judge was hearing a petition for custody of the children in a divorce matter between husband and wife. The judge had indicated during the proceedings to show that he was strongly in favor of the wife’s petition until the husband brushed his hand through the hair, turning his hand as he did so to communicate by secret sign that he was a freemason. According to him as soon as the judge saw it, he immediately changed his attitude, and after a few more questions gave judgment in favor of the husband, awarding him the custody of the children. This seems like an unlikely incident and sounds like the type of story you hear at a bar after a few drinks. It is so easy to exaggerate such a story to help sell his book by conveniently citing an anonymous judge as his source.

A more twisted allegation from Knight’s book The Brotherhood is the case of the trial of poisoner Frederick Seddon before Justice Bucknill in 1912 for the murder of Mrs. Barrow. When found guilty, the judge asked Seddon if he had anything to say before he passed sentence. Seddon swore that he was not guilty “by the Great Architect of the Universe”. Justice Bucknill, a well known freemason then sentenced him to death. However, he was old and ill and had shown signs during the trial and summing up of being emotionally affected. Knight then speculated that his distress was caused by his sorrow that Seddon, the murderer had not revealed that he was a freemason at an earlier stage in the trial, if he had, Justice Bucknill could have summed up in his favor and handled the trial in such a way that the jury would not have arrived at a guilty verdict.[ii]

This is a most preposterous speculation. The verdict speaks for itself. A freemason judge sentenced a freemason murderer to death. There were two obvious reasons for the judge being in difficulties in his summing up and during the trial. He was old and ill and knowing that the murderer was a freemason like himself may have distressed, shamed and disappointed him to such an extend as to upset him; but that did no prevent him from performing his duty as a judge. It was obvious that Knight ignored the simple truth in this case and read what he had intended to read. He was in fact mocking the British judiciary system and insulting members of the jury more than sensationalizing Freemasonry.

Knight’s most serious allegation came from his book Jack the Ripper – The Final Solution in which he alleged that 5 or 6 prostitutes of White Chapel in the East End of London were murdered by freemasons and disemboweled in a manner according to Masonic initiation rituals in 1888. Historically, Jack the Ripper was never caught, his identity is still a mystery and therefore this subject matter is always of interest to readers who love detective stories. Many books and articles have been written guessing the identity of the killer before Knight worked on the Masonic angle to make his book into a best seller.

The cover of the September 21, 1889 issue of Puck Magazine, featuring cartoonist Tom Merry's depiction of the unidentified Whitechapel murderer Jack the Ripper.

Books on Knights Templar and freemasons because of their mysterious and secretive backgrounds have always a ready captive audience. One good recent example is Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code which brought in more than 250 million dollars for the author. Other Jack the Ripper books usually identified the killer as a man who was afterwards caught and executed for another murder which had no connection with the Ripper killings. A popular belief in the 1890s was that Ripper was an eccentric clergyman who held open-air revivalist prayer meetings on the beach at Margate in the summer. According to author Jasper Ridley, “Stephen Knight, in Jack the Ripper, The Final Solution, put forward the most far-fetched theory of all – that the murders were committed by the freemasons at the instigation of Queen Victoria’s freemason doctor, Sir William Gull, and with the connivance of the freemason chief of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Charles Warren.” [iii]

Knight’s ‘far-fetched theory’ was that Prince Albert Edward (a freemason), Duke of Clarence, son of the Prince of Wales, future King Edward VII had secretly married a Roman Catholic woman without the consent of his grandmother the Queen and had bore him a child. The Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury (not a freemason), asked royal physician Dr Gull (a freemason) to imprison Edward’s secret bride in a private lunatic asylum. Unfortunately, five prostitutes came to know about this, and the Prime Minister asked Dr Gull to silence them. Dr Gull then obediently dispatched two freemasons to murder the five prostitutes.

The story gets more complicated on the night of the second murder on 30 September 1888, when a policeman found the disemboweled body of a prostitute, he also saw chalked on the wall in the square: “The Juwes are The Men That will not be blamed for nothing”. Sir Charles Warren ordered it to be washed off for fear that it might cause anti-Jewish riots in the East End.

Knight asserted that the "Juwes", a misspelling referred not to "Jews" but to Jubela, Jubelo and Jubelum, who figured in the story of the assassination of Hiram Abiff, a legendary figure in Freemasonry in the building of King Solomon’ s temple. He alleged that it was a message written by the killer or killers as part of a Masonic consipracy, and that Warren realized that freemasons were the ones who committed the Ripper murders and quickly ordered that the writing be washed off and that the inscription about the Jews was kept secret for nearly 90 years until he himself discovered it in the secret files of Scotland Yard in the 1970s. He also stated that Warren did not give any explanation for erasing the writing on the wall. Knight’s claims were lies. How far fetched can you go? Knight’s theory can easily be debunked for the following reasons and facts.

1. The existence of the inscription on the wall was not kept secret for 90 years as he alleged, it was discussed in several books published in the 1930s and the reason given by Warren that he wanted to avoid anti-Jewish riots was also discussed. Despite this fact, Knight went further in his The Brotherhood to allege that “Warren impeded the Ripper investigation at every stage” and that there was “an official cover-up of immense proportions that confirms that Freemasonry really was the unseen power behind the throne and government alike”. [iv]

2. Why should Lord Salisbury, a non freemason, statesman and a devout member of the Church of England order the death of five prostitutes just to hush up a scandal involving a member of the royal family? Even if the scandal was true, it was just about a young prince who fell in love secretly and why on earth would a Prime Minister take such a risk and ordered the murder of the five prostitutes for an alleged juvenal indiscretion. He was the Prime Minister, elected into power by the people to serve the people and not the royal family. England was and still is a constitutional Monarchy. The power rests with parliament. He runs the country, reports to Parliament and is accountable to the people, not the Queen.

3. Similarly why should Sir William Gull, the royal physician obey such an order from the Prime Minister and ordered other freemasons to murder the gossiping prostitutes? Even if he was mad and stupid enough to obey such an order, why were the prostitutes treated as though they were freemasons. Surely as a senior freemason he was aware English Freemasonry does not permit women members.

4. Any historian or freemason should know that Jubela, Jubelo and Jubelum are not referred to as ‘the Jews’ in the Masonic Hiram Abiff ritual. This idea has been rejected by experts, and there is no evidence that anyone prior to Knight had ever referred to those three figures by the term "Juwes".

5. Knight did not explain how the five murdered prostitutes came to know about Edward’s secret marriage to a Roman Catholic woman. Not even a hint.

6. Sir Charles Warren, Chief of the Metropolitan Police, was a dedicated historian and founder member of Lodge Quatuor Coronati, the research lodge well known for its informative and balanced articles on Masonic history would not have made the mistake Knight made with regards to item 4 above-mentioned.

7. Knight’s story was based almost entirely on artist Joseph Sickert’s story. Sickert claimed that his mother Alice Crook was the illegitimate daughter of the Duke of Clarence who had a clandestine relationship with his grand mother Annie Elizabeth Crook. Knight then a young journalist was so intrigued by Sickert’s story that he tracked down Joseph Sickert and wrote his story which became Jack the Ripper – The Final Solution. Joseph Sickert admitted to a Sunday Times journalist in 1977 that his Ripper story was an invention shortly before Knight’s publication in paperback. He again confirmed this fact with well known author Colin Wilson when they met in 1995.[v]

8. Simon Wood, editor of The Bloodhound who decided to track down information on Annie Elizabeth Crook (whom the Duke of Clarence was supposed to have secretly married and bore him a daughter), who according to Knight had been the victim of a brain operation by Gull to remove her memory and locked up in a lunatic asylum for the rest of her life discovered that Annie Crook had been alive and at liberty from late 1880s until her death in 1920. She was admitted briefly to the Endell Street Workhouse in 1889 with her daughter Alice and was sentenced to 14 days in prison in 1894 for an undisclosed offence. She died in a lunacy ward of the Fulham Road Workhouse in 1920 and the report of her death lists her religion as Church of England and not as Catholic as Knight claimed and gave as the reason for the Queen’s strong objection to the relationship between her and Clarence, the heir to the British throne. Wood confronted Knight in the early 1980s with his evidence but Knight was in Wood’s words, “smilingly unrepentant”. [vi]

Despite being discredited Knight repeated in the words of Colin Wilson “the whole preposterous theory in his bestselling book on the Freemasons, The Brotherhood in 1984”. Wilson had earlier in 1976 in a review in Books and Bookmen damned Knight’s book and among other things described his theory as “laughable and nonsense”. In his frustration over the case, Warren wrote to Sir James Fraser, his counterpart in the City, “We are inundated with suggestions and names of suspects!” on 9th October, 1888.[vii] Author Philip Sugden in his new edition Jack the Ripper reprinted a third time in 2002 concurred with, “It is a complaint that is as true today as it was a century ago”.

Sir Charles Warren, Metropolitan Polic Chief

Warren was the District Grand Master of the Eastern Archipelago based in Singapore from 1891 to 1895.[viii] He entered her Majesty’s service as an officer in the Royal Engineers in 1857, held the rank in Singapore of Major General and was the General Officer Commanding the British forces in the region. Knight’s Jack the Ripper – The Final solution is far from being the final solution according to more serious and professional writers. I concur with Colin Wilson’s opinion that Sugden’s book Jack the Ripper first printed in 1994 is by far the most balanced, factual and authoritative work on this case. According to Sugden, “I wrote this factual study of the Ripper case, now issued for the 3rd time as an antidote to the sensational identity theories and irresponsible journalism then in print”.

Sir Melville Macnaghten, second in command of the Criminal Investigation Department (C.I.D.) at Scotland Yard in June 1889 named the follwing as the most likely suspects: (1) Kosminski, a poor Polish Jew resident in Whitechapel; (2) Montague John Druitt, a 31 year old barrister and school teacher who committed suicide in December 1888; (3) Michael Ostrog, a Russian-born multi-pseudonymous thief and confidence trickster, believed to be 55 years old in 1888, and detained in asylums on several occasions.

Chief Inspector Donald Swan, the officer in charge of the case, believed Kosminski was certainly the chief suspect. The head of the C.I.D. then Dr. Robert Anderson supported Swan's case.

Freemasonry is dedicated to making good men better, teaching and practicing friendship, morality, brotherly love, relief of the distressed and truth. For centuries it has successfully fused together peoples from different races and religions to live together in peace and harmony under one roof. Hollywood is driven by the need for profit and celebrity status. Anyone who believes in things from sensational movies from Hollywood may have a problem facing the realities of life. I would not be surprised that after a few more years there will be another version of Jack the Ripper movie in the cinemas.

Endnotes

[i] Inside The Brotherhood, Martin Short, 16 - 21
[ii] Knight, The Brotherhood, 161 -6; Jasper Ridley, The Freemasons, 284 - 5
[iii] Jasper Ridley, The Freemasons, 281
[iv] Knight, The Brotherhood, 55; Jasper Ridley, The Freemasons, 282
[v] Maxim Jakubowski & Nathan Braund, The Mammoth Book of Jack The Ripper, 428
[vi] Ibid, 428.
[vii] Public Record Office (PRO) MEPO 1/48
[viii] The Lodge of St Michael No. 2933 E.C. Centenary Publication (2002), Singapore, 32