Top 10 Jack The Ripper Theories
#10: Prince Albert Victor
The grandson of Queen Victoria of England, his name wasn’t mentioned in company with the Jack the Ripper killings until over seventy years since they’d passed. The somewhat romantic and fanciful accusation was later explored in Stephen Knight's 1976 book “Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution,” which postulated a conspiracy theory encompassing not only the Royal Family, but also Freemasons and painter Walter Sickert, who is also frequently cited as a suspect himself. The claim was that the murders resulted from the need to cover up a marriage and an illegitimate child. While the theory has been largely debunked over the years, it is nevertheless titillating.
#9: Lewis Carroll
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Another curious Ripper theory involves none other than famed Alice in Wonderland author, Lewis Carroll. While many people believe that this theory truly goes down the rabbit hole, other are convinced of the connection. Lewis Carroll, known to trivia buffs and math fans as Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, was a very clever writer, incorporating math and puzzles into his writing – for example, “Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There” is actually, famously, a game of chess. With that in mind, the idea is that he was an intelligent psychopath and that some of the passages in his work are anagrammed confessions of the deeds.
#8: Montague Druitt
Montague John Druitt was the child of a successful Dorset surgeon, and was briefly employed as an assistant schoolmaster before pursuing a career in law. Rumors of his culpability began shortly after his death in 1888. Gossip had it that Jack the Ripper was the son of a surgeon and that he had drowned in the Thames River, perhaps due to the fact that the killings of 1888 seemed to end as conclusively as they had begun. Incidentally, Druitt had drowned in the Thames by apparent suicide that year. This information was not widely known until the 1960s, and he remains suspect in the minds of some Ripperologists.
#7: Thomas Hayne Cutbush
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Accusations were first made against Cutbush in 1894 by the Sun newspaper. Cutbush had been committed in 1891 on grounds of lunacy (possibly a result of syphilis as well as other untreated maladies). He had gone about attempting to stab women, often in the buttocks. It is possible that the Sun inflated the story after they got Cutbush confused with another criminal. This would be Colicot, who had been arrested and discharged because of bad police work and who had seemingly been imitating the work of the London Monster, a criminal from a hundred years earlier.
#6: Joseph Barnett
Considered a witness at the time of the original murders, Joseph Barnett is still one of the strongest contenders in Ripperology. Barnett roomed with Mary Jane Kelly – the last of the canonical five victims. He loathed prostitution, and the fact that Kelly, whom he apparently loved, worked in the sex trade. They fought on October 30th, supposedly over Kelly allowing a prostitute to move in, while Barnett himself moved out. He would visit Kelly for the following week until on November 9th when her mutilated body was discovered. Furthermore, the FBI’s psychological profile is an eerily close match for Barnett and his behavior.
#5: Mary Pearcey [aka ‘Jill the Ripper’]
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Some, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, have posited that the killer might have been a woman, as she could find a cover as a midwife, and roam the streets in bloodied clothing unnoticed. Born Mary Eleanor Wheeler, she took the surname Pearcey after the man she was living with – but not married to. She later moved in with Frank Hogg, yet he married one Phoebe Styles after getting her pregnant. On October 24th, 1890, the body of Phoebe Hogg and her baby were found brutally murdered, and Mary was sentenced to death. Some think that Phoebe was perhaps not Mary’s first victim.
#4: Francis Tumblety
Francis Tumblety was born in Ireland, but immigrated to the United States as a child. There he earned a reputation for eccentricity and braggadocio. He promoted himself as a “great physician,” but was in fact an untrained swindler. He was vocal about his hatred of women, especially prostitutes, and housed a collection of jarred uteruses in his study. Tumblety visited Europe and England frequently, and in November 1888, he was arrested for “gross indecency” in London. Knowing he was a Ripper suspect, he fled back to the US while awaiting trial. Police inspector Walter Andrews tracked him to NYC, but police there refused to extradite him.
#3: George Chapman
A known serial killer, George Chapman met his fate at the end of a hangman’s noose for poisoning three women in the late 1890s and early 1900s. At a young age, he had apprenticed to a surgeon in Zwoleń, Poland, eventually studying medicine, before moving to Whitechapel, London in 1888 – the year the killings began. Further adding to the theory is the long-held belief that the Ripper would have needed a medical background. Chapman was also known to be a violent, misogynistic man who beat both his fake wives. He also matches the description of the last man reported seen with Mary Jane Kelly.
#2: Aaron Kosminski
Aaron Kosminski was a hairdresser who lived in the Whitechapel district at the time of the murders. In 1891 – the year the killings officially ended – he was committed to an insane asylum. In his youth, he was likely subjected to harsh living conditions in the Pale of Settlement in Poland, and in London his unchecked mental illness seemed to worsen. At the time, his insanity was thought to be from "self-abuse"... that is, masturbation. However ludicrous a diagnosis, given that the victims were prostitutes, this psycho-sexual behavior paired with a troubled youth and mental instability make for a case worthy of note.
#1: Thomas Neill Cream
A Canadian doctor of Scottish birth, Cream started his life of crime as a poisoner, killing women with either chloroform or strychnine. While still in Canada, he murdered his wife, and then his lover before fleeing to Chicago, where he continued killing and was arrested in 1881. Upon release in 1891, he moved to London, England. Being incarcerated while the Whitechapel murders took place does not seem to have quelled the public interest in him as a suspect, owing largely to an unsubstituted claim that while being hanged for yet more murders, he began to say “I am Jack The – ” before the floor dropped out.
