A Study in Terror as basis for Royal Conspiracy

[kwestmo]

I just finished watching A STUDY IN TERROR (from 1965) and wondered if it was the first known version of the royal theory and perhaps if what Sickert and Stevens (??) based their stories in.

It seemed to have the basics

A royal family
A secret marrigae
An apartment in Whitechapel
A methodical search for the secret wife


Thanks for any help.

I posted this in the video section also.

Kent
Quick reply to this message

[Pcdunn]

I just finished watching A STUDY IN TERROR (from 1965) and wondered if it was the first known version of the royal theory and perhaps if what Sickert and Stevens (??) based their stories in.

It seemed to have the basics

A royal family
A secret marrigae
An apartment in Whitechapel
A methodical search for the secret wife


Thanks for any help.

I posted this in the video section also.

Kent
Quick reply to this message

Interesting idea. I think the movie might have been based on an earlier novel by the authors of Ellery Queen, a supposed lost story by Dr. Watson, which most 20th century patisches about Holmes said they were. I have read this story, being a big fan of Sherlock Holmes.

http://www.casebook.org/suspects/knight.html

That is a link to the dissertation about Knight's book in "The Royal Conspracy" part of the forum.

The problem with the Joseph Sickert input is that he changes his story more than once, which is suspicious in itself.
Alan Moore's anniversary edition of "From Hell: a Melodrama in Sixteen Chapters" includes an illustrated essay called "The Dance of the Gull-Catchers" which touches on the Sickert and Knight theory and the various flips back and forth in Sickert's story.

[kwestmo]

Pat,

Thanks for your response. I will try to find the EQ novel. A little more digging found a 2009 podcast on casebook.org where a knowledgeable group discussed the origins of the conspiracy. If I understood correctly the theory first popped up in the early 60's via discussion and the first written version showed up in the early 70's.

No mention of the novel or the movie.

I am still digging

Thanks again.


Kent

[kwestmo]

Pat, I have since found out the EQ novel was a novelization of ASIT

[MayBea]

The origin of the conspiracy theory is generally attributed to Dr. Thomas Stowell who said he got it from Gull's daughter. He met with Colin Wilson in 1960, and Wilson wrote about the theory in his Encyclopedia of Murder (1961).

This source predates the movie so you are right, kwestmo; the theory was already being discussed in the early 60s.

Phillip Jullien published a book on King Edward that first makes the claim that the Prince was Jack (1962 in French).
http://www.casebook.org/dissertation...nsorigins.html

[Pcdunn]

Thanks to everyone for their responses, very interesting indeed!

[MayBea]

Yes, thanks everyone and kwestmo.

A Study In Terror (1965) should perhaps rate a mention in the origin story as it may have helped bridged the gap between Colin Wilson in 1961 and Stowell and Knight in the 70s.

[Simon Wood]

Hi All,

There is nothing new under the sun.

A Royal Conspiracy [complete with a secret Catholic bride and illegitimate children, but, alas, no Impressionist painters or JtR] surfaced in 1893.

See my book "Deconstructing Jack", Chapter Fifteen.

Regards,

Simon

[MayBea]

A Royal Conspiracy [complete with a secret Catholic bride and illegitimate children, but, alas, no Impressionist painters or JtR] surfaced in 1893.

Does it feature Jack the Ripper or is it something like King Edward II and the "imposter child" with his "barren" Catholic wife?

I, of course, trace the source of the Royal Conspiracy back to Stowell's 'source', Gull's daughter, Lady Acland, and then from the Acland family through its marital links, etc., to the Carnarvons, who are linked to the mystery man, orphaned at 3, whose mother was a significant Mary Jane Kelly candidate, IMO, and who married into the a Carnarvon and Teck servant family in 1919.

She doesn't even have to be the real MJK for a rumor to start. Stowell said he got the story from Lady Acland in the late 1920s.