Jack the Ripper and Black Magic: Victorian Conspiracy Theories, Secret Societies and

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Dr. Hamilton Williams was an Irishman living in and around New York, a member of the Invincibles, the man who reportedly purchased the knives used in the Phoenix Park murders and was also a graduate of Trinity College. Presumably, therefore, Tynan was writing about Williams.

Hamilton Williams was also reportedly questioned by the American correspondent for the Irish Times in 1883. "Dr. Williams, who has been intimate with Tynan, says that Carey invented 'No. 1,' and was himself the main mover of the Phoenix Park murders. Tynan has been supposed by the British Government to be that 'No. 1,' but now they think they have made a mistake. Dr. Williams' testimony must of course be accepted for what it is worth."

Hamilton Williams may have been a graduate of Trinity College but so was Sir Robert Anderson, presumably they knew each other. As you know, and has been pointed out by Roger Palmer, Hamilton Williams was not the most reliable of sources. That is the point. It is not certain that Tynan wrote this addendum, and the additional corrective issue of the proclamation of the I.R.B. was learned by "we".

So little, in my opinion, is so straight forward of the period when it came to politics, the police and, murder with surgical knives. Yes, the addendum could possibly refer to Hamilton Williams but that does not ensure its accuracy.

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Good Morning,
Interesting thread, and I would appreciate your thoughts on some matters -- if you have the time.

Would you please tell me from what point the killings were regarded as terrorist acts?

From the very beginning with Tabram?

Maybe during the period following Chapman when the people were so aroused?

After Mary Kelly?

Or was the view that the murders were terrorist acts the reason for Anderson's appointment? Since he was appointed in August before the series really started . . . Was he appointed because the government was virtually certain "a plot was afoot?" and they would be dealing with a major terrorist outbreak of some sort?

I would appreciate your assessment.

Thanks,

curious

Curious,

It is not so much a matter of having the time but of having the space to address your multitude questioning. A full assessment, based on the available documentary evidence, is provided in my book, Jack the Ripper and Black Magic: Victorian Conspiracy Theories, Secret Societies and the Supernatural Mystique of the Whitechapel Murders.

Personally I feel that we owe it to the memory of the victims, the women who died at the hands of Jack the Ripper, to consider openly these fairly new and rarely discussed documentary sources. As mentioned, these further documentary sources were under the administrative control of Anderson, Littlechild, Macnaghten, Swanson, the Home Secretary and Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, James Monro.

As for your query on when, that is, a timeline according to the victim's deaths, how can you be so sure which were the work of Jack the Ripper? Do you judge these on the assurances of senior police officials and conflicting police surgeon's reports? Or by the retrospective fantasies of modern forensics based on a historical view of the MO and no surviving material evidence?

Ask yourself this; as there may have been as many as 11 and a few as 3 victims and, if these were indeed considered as acts of a "disturber of the peace" for political ends based on internal lines of police inquiries, do you really think we would hear about it? Why would Sir Robert Anderson, after the fact in 1910, assure the world that the identity of the Ripper was a matter of police consensus, a "definitely ascertained fact" bundled in with an admission that he had as an unofficial political crime adviser to the Home Office provided in 1887 intelligence and drafts to a newspaper that published the "Parnellism and Crime" articles?

Robert Anderson was appointed Assistant Commissioner (Crime) of the Metropolitan Police as a result of restructuring at Scotland Yard during 1888. That information is readily available in standard texts on the subject and is particularly well set out in, Jack the Ripper: Scotland Yard Investigates by Evans and Rumbelow.

Otherwise, thanks for your intriguing queries, they are certainly worth considering with the additional sources presented in my book.

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Table of Contents

For those who may be curious in what the book contains, here is an overview. This study is not intended to promote such theories but rather to examine them in a Victorian context and how they have shaped the history and interpretation of the Whitechapel murders.

The documentary sources are always examined in reference to the Scotland Yard investigation for the serial killer known as Jack the Ripper with credible suspects and legends that have grown around the case questioned or dispelled.

I have drawn some conclusions based on the evidence however, the rest is up to the reader to decide after carefully considering the material.

Acknowledgments vi
Foreword by Stewart P. Evans 1
Preface 5

1. Ghosts of the Ripper Wake 11
2. Sacred Prostitution 27
3. Faith and Occult Crimes 43
4. Suspect Dr. Roslyn D’Onston 74
5. Vittoria Cremers and the Lodger 98
6. Hexes, Hoaxes and the Beast 114
7. Whitechapel Secret Service 146

Chapter Notes 199
Bibliography 221
Index 225

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The Official Book Trailer!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiYqR...ature=youtu.be

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JACK THE RIPPER AND BLACK MAGIC: VICTORIAN CONSPIRACY THEORIES, SECRET SOCIETIES AND THE SUPERNATURAL MYSTIQUE OF THE WHITECHAPEL MURDERS

by
Spiro Dimolianis

With a foreword by Stewart P. Evans


Jack the Ripper; a name that still conjures up images of horror and the supernatural as the Victorians imagined it.

But how widespread and to what extent was Victorian London's view of Jack the Ripper, the occult, spiritualism and the supposed use of psychics by Scotland Yard. Many conjectures and theories have grown since the Whitechapel murders took place on these subjects but they have never been fully addressed before or considered in a Victorian context.

My new book, "Jack the Ripper and Black Magic: Victorian Conspiracy Theories, Secret Societies and the Supernatural Mystique of the Whitechapel Murders", is the first attempt to fully examine the sources and influence of these theories from a Victorian point of view.

What I found was remarkable. Not only were Victorian London's spiritualist and occult subcultures widely interested in the Jack the Ripper murders but that Scotland Yard had considered the use of psychics to catch him. With the absence of clues, numerous suggestions were also made to the police in letters, newspaper columns and obscure journals of most notably the Theosophical Society and the London Spiritualist Alliance.

Jack the Ripper, to mainstream Victorian society, was eventually seen as an invisible monster who lurked his East End haunts with stealth and cunning. A living vampire who terrorised the city with horrific acts of blood lust and the taking of organs from his poor prostitute victims.

For some, only supernatural means could locate him and solve the mystery. People like Stuart Cumberland whose celebrity status as a Victorian medium and his offers to Scotland Yard to help catch the culprit compares to the modern day efforts of Derek Acorah.

Such recorded stories have given the mystery of a Victorian serial killer a horror genre that has inspired countless books, films, games, theories and has entered mainstream school and university studies.

The extensive horror genre in particular on Jack the Ripper has its source in the documented Scotland Yard consideration of suspect Roslyn D'Onston, who was supposedly a practising black magician. Fuelled by the newspaper edited by spiritualist W.T. Stead, the Pall Mall Gazette, D'Onston's occult story influenced notable writers such as Arthur Machen and Aleister Crowley.

While the supernatural mystique of Jack the Ripper was growing in the press, populace and in novels, Scotland Yard and the Home Office were promoting quite different stories on the identity of the killer. Royal Masonic and other conspiracy theories have too been a fixture of the Whitechapel murders that have grown as a direct result of senior police ambiguity over time.

My book also considers the source and influence of these conspiracy theories and why they have emerged. The recent release of the Metropolitan Police Special Branch files on the Whitechapel murders are fully examined for the first time and in their Victorian context. What they reveal is extraordinary.

No, Jack the Ripper was not a leprechaun, but he was investigated as an Irish Fenian sympathiser. Today, this is the mother of all conspiracy theories on Jack the Ripper and may yet hold the key to solving the case. It also offers a clue as to why Scotland Yard officials gave conflicting stories in their memoirs.

As Sir Melville Macnaghten put it, in "Laying the Ghost of Jack the Ripper".

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Something to consider...

Here's an excerpt from the book which may interest some. It features two letters I searched for while researching, from the Home Office and New Scotland Yard in 1948 and 1949 sent in reply to inquiries made by forensic psychiatrist and Ripperologist, Dr. Donald J. West. Note they refer to official files after the death of Swanson and Anderson.

They were transcribed for the book but unfortunately could not be reproduced as they have only survived as photocopies. They are shown courtesy of Donald West and Stewart Evans.

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The Society for Psychical Research sixty years later commissioned a study by forensic psychiatrist and criminologist Dr. Donald J. West to investigate published claims of Scotland Yard’s psychic detection of Jack the Ripper. Reports widely circulated in the U.S. and UK from 1895, based on the legends of clairvoyant Robert James Lees, were derived from accounts made during the Whitechapel murders. The press story was revived and elaborated upon, notably in the tabloid Daily Express, during the 1930s. It was reprinted in subsequent and obscure publications as a validation of the psychic detection of crime and authenticity of spiritualism. The Lees story, probably the most famous example of a psychic connection in the Whitechapel murders, was perhaps the origin of the late 1970s Royal Masonic conspiracy theory of author Stephen Knight. In turn it produced high-profile fictions, a recent one being the 2002 movie From Hell starring Johnny Depp and Heather Graham.

West’s report was published in an internal research periodical in 1949 as The Identity of “Jack the Ripper”: An Examination of an Alleged Psychic Solution. It would appear to be the earliest documented public inquiry to the Home Office and New Scotland Yard on the then-closed official files of the Whitechapel murders. West, due to his inquiries, received in reply two letters stating the official position at that time and before the public release of the files from the late 1970s.

After Lees died in January 1931, his daughter Eva Lees was interviewed by a Mrs. Brackenbury, research officer for the Society for Psychical Research. In November 1948 Eva was interviewed by Donald West. She encouraged the belief that Robert Lees acted as Queen Victoria’s royal medium (for which some evidence exists), and that he knew the identity of the Ripper. Victoria herself held supernatural beliefs and conducted séances after the death of her husband. Cynthia Legh, a friend of the Lees family, expanded on the “Royal Ripper” tale and published in the spiritualist periodical Light in 1970. This was just six weeks before Dr. Thomas Stowell released his influential Royal Ripper conspiracy theory in Criminologist, implicating Prince Albert Victor, the grandson of Queen Victoria. Syndicated news accounts had apparently prepared the ground for the theories early in 1935 with the death of Dr. Thomas Dutton, allegedly a friend of the prince and a source for maverick journalist and author Donald McCormick.

Brackenbury reported for the Society for Psychical Research in May 1931, the results of her inquiries to New Scotland Yard officials. She also questioned ex–Chief Inspector Frederick Porter Wensley, a Metropolitan Police constable in Whitechapel during the murders in 1888. No one had ever heard of any involvement by Robert Lees or a psychic in detecting Jack the Ripper despite Lees himself confirming the claim before he died. However, Wensley at the time was also advising Bernard O’Donnell, an Old Bailey crime reporter for the Empire News, on O’Donnell’s unpublished work on occult Ripper suspect Dr. Roslyn D’Onston. Wensley considered the black magic theory as the most feasible to have emerged in the early 1930s. Wensley, along with another former detective turned author, Edwin T. Woodhall, were ostensibly basking in post-retirement Ripper media attention.

In the March 9 and 10, 1931, editions of the Daily Express, crime reporter Cyril Morton rehashed the early 1895 American press versions of the Lees story, claiming an exclusive for his British readers. E.T. Woodhall included Morton’s version, somewhat differing in detail and expanded upon, in his 1935 book Crime and the Supernatural. Woodhall wrote of the Lees story, “I have no actual proof of its truth, but during my years at the Yard it was more than once recounted to me as I have related it, and I have not the slightest doubt that it is true, and that psychic science, even 45 years ago, was enabled to step in where police work had lamentably failed.” Woodhall’s account also mentions a private file in the Home Office that is said to provide evidence of the truth of the Lees story. On written inquiry to the Home Office to test Woodhall’s claims for the 1949 Society for Psychical Research report, the following reply was received:



The reply from New Scotland Yard in the following year was as dismissive of the reported use of a medium in tracking Jack the Ripper but added further detail. With reference to Donald West’s request on the stories of Woodhall and the Daily Express, the letter denied any police knowledge of the killer, which Sir Robert Anderson was not prepared to do earlier in the century. Anderson claimed as fact that the Ripper was known, caged in an asylum, and was a “low-class” Polish Jew.



In his 1949 Society for Psychical Research report, Donald West concluded;

"At first sight it might not seem feasible that a famous murderer could be apprehended and shut away without any public announcement, but such informed opinion as we have been able to secure on this point is varied. If it were true that the identity of the Ripper was known to the police immediately after the commission of his last crime (9 November 1888), this would be difficult to reconcile with the fact that subsequent arrests were made of persons believed to be involved in the murders.”

[lynn cates]

thanks

Hello Spiro. This is interesting.

Thanks for posting it.

Cheers.
LC

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You're welcome Lynn...

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Serial Killers and the Supernatural - A Review

For those who might find it of interest, here is a recent review of my book by a name which needs no introduction, forensic psychologist Katherine Ramsland.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/...e-supernatural

[Phil H]

My copy arrived from Amazon today, and at first perusal, I am impressed. I think it will be one of those Ripper reference that goes on the "authoritative" and useful permanent reference shelf in my collection.

A warning - this is not a book for the Ripper-novice, I think. You need a solid frame of reference for the case and associated issues, personalities and investigation, or you would be easily lost.

Phil

[auspirograph]

My copy arrived from Amazon today, and at first perusal, I am impressed. I think it will be one of those Ripper reference that goes on the "authoritative" and useful permanent reference shelf in my collection.

A warning - this is not a book for the Ripper-novice, I think. You need a solid frame of reference for the case and associated issues, personalities and investigation, or you would be easily lost.

Phil

Thanks Phil,

Coming from you, I regard that as an objective compliment. Have always enjoyed reading your thoughtful posts.

Indeed, the book was intended as a useful reference and hope you continue to find it enjoyable and informative.

Cheers
Spiro

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Kindle

Just a brief reminder that this highly acclaimed and challenging book on the Whitechapel murders is also available on Amazon Kindle for those who wish to read and evaluate it.

It is based on a wide selection of historic sources and rare official reports that approaches the Jack the Ripper story and events from a broader and more period specific perspective.

The Macnaghten Memo and the Swanson Marginalia are simply not the only or crucial primary sources on the Whitechapel murders, though some would want that to be the case. Anderson and Swanson could not have conducted any such enquiry without informing their mandated immediate superiors, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner and the Home Secretary.

[Beowulf]

I am still reading this book, and on my little vacation in New Jersey got to absorb myself in it nightly.

So many fascinating characters. The theosophical movement started by Blavatsky, something I've wanted to read about for years.

Vittoria Cremers story, the Crowley connection, Betty May publishing it first, D'onston/suspect, O'Donnell, the press, what a cast of characters they were.

This book about black magic, Jack the Ripper and Victorian England is like slowly falling down that rabbit hole Alice found that took her to Wonderland. Many doors leading off in many directions...a long ponderous read. A complicated time.

Definitely worth the read.

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Alice in Ripperland

Thanks Beowolf, I'm pleased you are enjoying the book's narrative journey. Just wait till you get to the last extended chapter, "Whitechapel Secret Service" where the 'dark arts' of Victorian British intelligence are laid bare in the hunt for Jack the Ripper.

Fortunately, this is the only full account on the Whitechapel murders documented, now that the Special Branch investigation index books have been redacted and restricted to FOI requests. The entire story had to be re-constructed as historically, the period is blank before WW1.

Special Branch in the period, and in their formative years, did also investigate unsolved cases of suspected serial murder apart from their other duties. The Dr. Cream Lambeth poisoning case was another such example as the Whitechapel murders.

It is not a theory, but plausible, internal and parallel lines of police enquiry signed off by Anderson, Swanson, Monro and Chief Constable Macnaghten during tense political power struggles for a suspected serial killer with presence of mind to evade capture by three London police groups. Or perhaps, in spite and despite them.

[lynn cates]

cast of characters

Hello Barbara. Not to mention McDermott (Blotchy) and Millen (Astrakhan).

Cheers.
LC