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Authors: The Whitechapel Society
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Eddie, was dying from tertiary syphilis. Even more bizarre was the claim that Gull had hypnotised Eddie, and the heir to the throne had confessed to the Whitechapel Murders. He had become aroused watching butchers at work in Aldgate High Street, and had taken a knife to commit the crimes from the horse slaughterers in Buck’s Row (technically, the firm of Harrison in Winthrop Street). The Prince complained of headaches and was very talkative, showing signs of slight delirium. He also had a leather apron in his possession, a positive link to the notion of the butcher and one of the most famous red herrings in the entire Ripper case. In this version of the tale, of course, the Ripper is not Gull, but Eddie, and once again the Queen’s physician assumes the role of accessory after the fact.
Scratching around for circumstantial evidence, various commentators have hit upon ‘the grape theory’, which has resurfaced in more than one movie about Jack. In one of these, Gull uses poisoned grapes to lull his victims into a stupor before killing and mutilating them in his coach. According to Stephen Knight, Gull was a great believer in grapes as refreshment when tired, but the idea that he constantly carried a bunch with him seems a little unlikely. Poison of course is pre-eminently the doctor’s murder weapon, in fact as well as fiction, so this makes sense. In fact, it makes no sense at all. The publicity-seeking grocer, Matthew Packer, whose shop was close to Dutfield’s Yard in Berner Street, claimed to have sold a bunch of grapes to a man accompanying Liz Stride, shortly before she was murdered. Witnesses at the scene later – Louis Diemschutz, Isaac Kozebrodski, Fanny Mortimer and Eva Harstein – all claimed to have seen a grape stem in or near the dead woman’s hand. The police and doctors, who were called to Dutfield’s Yard (men trained to be observant), saw nothing of the kind, only the cachous (sweets) in Liz Stride’s left hand. At the inquest, Drs Bagster-Phillips and Blackwell swore that there were no grapes at the crime scene and none in the stomach of the deceased. Even if both these doctors were wrong, of course, it does not remotely point a finger at Gull, or anyone else in the medical profession. We might as well point the finger at the story-changing Matthew Packer.
Clutching at straws, other Ripperologists have pointed out that William Gull was a supporter of vivisection – the carrying out of experiments on animals for scientific purposes. This has been alleged as an example of his cruelty, but takes things entirely out of context. England has always had an animal-centric culture (the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was established forty years before the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, for example), but conversely, bad treatment of animals, especially horses, was commonplace and in all his writings, Gull put people first rather than animals second. Even if he was particularly callous in this regard (and there was no evidence for this), the leap of logic that he must be the Whitechapel murderer is extraordinary.
Then we have the fact that Gull delivered the Goulstonian Lectures at Guys Hospital, with all the delicious associations with Goulston Street and the irrelevant ‘Juwes’ graffito. Dr Goulston was actually a seventeenth-century physician and that, rather than the street, is the only link.
The case against Gull rests entirely on the royal connection, and I do not have the space in this chapter to demolish that nonsense; except to say that all the theories emanating from Sickert and Knight have been discredited by painstaking research. Psychological profilers, over the last thirty years, have established the likelihood that the Ripper was an asocial loner whose sexual activity may have involved prostitutes. He probably came from the same social class as his victims and would have passed unnoticed in the streets of Whitechapel, which he clearly
Scratching around for circumstantial evidence, various commentators have hit upon ‘the grape theory’, which has resurfaced in more than one movie about Jack. In one of these, Gull uses poisoned grapes to lull his victims into a stupor before killing and mutilating them in his coach. According to Stephen Knight, Gull was a great believer in grapes as refreshment when tired, but the idea that he constantly carried a bunch with him seems a little unlikely. Poison of course is pre-eminently the doctor’s murder weapon, in fact as well as fiction, so this makes sense. In fact, it makes no sense at all. The publicity-seeking grocer, Matthew Packer, whose shop was close to Dutfield’s Yard in Berner Street, claimed to have sold a bunch of grapes to a man accompanying Liz Stride, shortly before she was murdered. Witnesses at the scene later – Louis Diemschutz, Isaac Kozebrodski, Fanny Mortimer and Eva Harstein – all claimed to have seen a grape stem in or near the dead woman’s hand. The police and doctors, who were called to Dutfield’s Yard (men trained to be observant), saw nothing of the kind, only the cachous (sweets) in Liz Stride’s left hand. At the inquest, Drs Bagster-Phillips and Blackwell swore that there were no grapes at the crime scene and none in the stomach of the deceased. Even if both these doctors were wrong, of course, it does not remotely point a finger at Gull, or anyone else in the medical profession. We might as well point the finger at the story-changing Matthew Packer.
Clutching at straws, other Ripperologists have pointed out that William Gull was a supporter of vivisection – the carrying out of experiments on animals for scientific purposes. This has been alleged as an example of his cruelty, but takes things entirely out of context. England has always had an animal-centric culture (the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was established forty years before the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, for example), but conversely, bad treatment of animals, especially horses, was commonplace and in all his writings, Gull put people first rather than animals second. Even if he was particularly callous in this regard (and there was no evidence for this), the leap of logic that he must be the Whitechapel murderer is extraordinary.
Then we have the fact that Gull delivered the Goulstonian Lectures at Guys Hospital, with all the delicious associations with Goulston Street and the irrelevant ‘Juwes’ graffito. Dr Goulston was actually a seventeenth-century physician and that, rather than the street, is the only link.
The case against Gull rests entirely on the royal connection, and I do not have the space in this chapter to demolish that nonsense; except to say that all the theories emanating from Sickert and Knight have been discredited by painstaking research. Psychological profilers, over the last thirty years, have established the likelihood that the Ripper was an asocial loner whose sexual activity may have involved prostitutes. He probably came from the same social class as his victims and would have passed unnoticed in the streets of Whitechapel, which he clearly
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