Edmund Reid

Brother Abberline and
A Few Other Fellow Notable
Freemasons
By LINDSAY SIVITER
Today the United Grand Lodge of England claims to have over a quarter of a million Freemasonic
members. Worldwide there are approximately six million freemasons. 1 For many years, Ripperologists
and indeed the wider public have been fascinated with the notion that the Freemasons were
somehow involved in a conspiracy to conceal the truth about the identity of the perpetrator of the
infamous Jack the Ripper murders. While this theory is very much currently in the news thanks to
Bruce Robinson's They All Love Jack, much of it began back in 1976 with an intrigue convincingly
weaved by the late Stephen Knight in his book, Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution. So powerful
was the impact of this book that over the years several films have been heavily influenced by it,
most notably Murder by Decree in 1978 and From Hell in 2001.
However, before Knight's book was published, the premise had
already been established in an episode of the six-part series Jack the
Ripper in which two popular fictional TV detectives, Barlow and Watt,
took a look at the Whitechapel murders through the eyes of two modern
policemen. Towards the end of the series Joseph Sickert was seen briefly
explaining an amazing tale. Joseph claimed the murders were done as
a way of securing the silence of several women who had knowledge of
Queen Victoria’s grandson, Prince Albert Victor, having secretly married
a shop-girl called Annie Crook.
The secret wedding had apparently been witnessed by Mary Jane
Kelly, the final of the Ripper's canonical victims, who had to be silenced
after she threatened blackmail. Annie Crook, according to the story,
subsequently gave birth to a baby girl called Alice, whom Joseph Sickert
claimed to be his mother.
Knight later met Joseph, who supplied further details, and the
impressive tale was subsequently expounded on throughout Knight's
book. Whole sections argued that a masonic cover-up of the Ripper
murder had occurred, with several high-ranking freemasons being
involved including Sir William Gull, Lord Salisbury and Sir Charles
Warren.
Prince Albert Victor
As part of his research for the book, Knight spoke to John Hamill,
the Librarian at United Grand Lodge Library & Museum in Great Queen
Street, London, who told him that in actual fact only the latter of the
three men previously mentioned was a freemason. However, for some
reason, Knight chose to ignore this information, publishing several
erroneous statements in his book about how Gull, Salisbury and others
were freemasons despite official evidence to the contrary.
1 See www.ugle.org.uk for statistics.
Ripperologist 147 December 2015 14