Commonplace 104 George & Jack the Ripper. Read All About It!! PART TWO.
The Whitechapel Murders, attributed to a single killer referred to as Jack the Ripper, was active in late summer and the autumn of 1888. From August 31st - November 10th, to be precise. Somehow, George found his way into the long list of possible JTR suspects. Which is how we find him in Peter Ackroyd's Dan Leno and The Limehouse Golem' (see Commonplaces 94-96) How did he join this not very illustrious club? A visit to a message board from 2005 on Casebook: Jack The Ripper gives us some information.
This is where the rumour starts:
And this is why, from a post card posted in 1909:
The allegations about the involvement of the Duke of Clarence in the Whitechapel Murders goes back to the 1970s, when Stephen Knight wrote a book about the Jack the Ripper case being the work of Freemasons. The story goes something like this: the Duke of Clarence was in love with a working class girl, Annie Crook, and married her in secret. They had a child. In a time when the Royal Family was unpopular, the Establishment feared a revolution if this news got out. The Freemasons took on the job of saving the day. Jack the Ripper was a cover for getting rid of the women who knew about this marriage - all friends of the royal wife - and the poor Annie was taken away and dealt with by some sort of brain operation, and the child was smuggled abroad.
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| Prince Albert Victor - a bit of a lad and a total dimwit, but owner of a fine moustache. |
This is from the website message board:
Pat Pitman, who collaborated with Colin Wilson on an Encyclopaedia of Murder, has even mentioned the idea that Jack was George Gissing, the novelist—while even so benevolent a character as Dr. Barnardo has been named on the grounds that he was devoted to waifs and strays and that most of the unwanted children in his district were the offspring of prostitutes... Obviously Pitman must have had some publication containing the accusation of Gissing and perhaps Barnardo printed sometime between 1961, and 1970. Apart from Gissing, I myself must now admit, that like Gary Rowlands in his superb thesis of Barnardo entitled ‘The Mad Doctor’ printed in The Mammoth Book of Jack the Ripper (1999), believe and have done so since 1993, that Barnardo was the Ripper...
Pat Pittman's belief that George Gissing was 'JTR' is stated as a positive fact by Colin Wilson. Wilson states that Pittman's belief regarding Gissing's guilt is based on "no discernible grounds". This statement appears in The Mammoth Book of 'JTR', p. 431.
This follows, regarding author Richard Whittington-Egan (crime author, writer on JTR):
So - assuming that any really old reference is so obscure that he cannot now recall it and no other authority has mentioned it, we have these possibilities of a link to Gissing:
a) the writer was aware of Pat Pittman's view in the 60s (though these apparently had no basis known to her co-author);
b) read R W-E's book at some time (so rare that even though I was deeply interested in JtR when it was published, I have never seen a copy then or since);
c) that it was picked up from McCormick's admittedly popular work at some time post 1970;
d) that it is even more recent, dating from since the Mammoth Book came out (1999).
A recent (last 25 or last 5 years) fraud seems likely to me.
BUT
These links are only to Gissing - they make NO links between Gissing and PAV (Prince Albert Victor)!!
So how was the link made between Gissing (or his residence) and PAV and on what basis?
Are we dealing with:
a) something genuine - a hitherto unknown, roughly period, link between Gissing and PAV known to the writer of the inscription on the face of the card. To me this seems unlikely given what we have deduced about the history and origins of the card, it's sender and recipient;
b)a very well-informed hoax or prank (I discussed the possibility of an in-joke in a previous post) by someone who knows Ripper arcana;
c) a coincidence - the hoaxer knew nothing about the house or Gissing, and simply chose a period p/c of a London house and wrote on it. This too seems unlikely - if that were the case why not chose a p/c of Buckingham Palace, Marlborough House, Sandringham or some such with a known link to PAV? There must be loads of those around. The coincidence seems to me too great to uphold - and thus logically we must assume that whoever wrote the words about the Ripper knew who's house the picture showed, knew Gissing had been suspected and then inferred... what?
The other thing I can't understand, if it is a late hoax based on Gissing having lived in that house, is quite how it happened. Did someone come on this card at random in a postcard album, read the street name and house number, do the same sort of research that's just been done, work out that Gissing had lived in the house briefly, and then hatch the idea of a Ripper hoax, based on some now-forgotten connection between Gissing and the Duke of Clarence? I find that a bit difficult to believe. Or did they work in the reverse order - think up the idea of a hoax, then go in search of a postcard showing a house where Gissing had lived, and miraculously come up with this one? I find that impossible to believe.
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| Oakley Gardens today - the blue plaque just visible on the wall beyond the roof of the car. |
Then, one of the Casebook posters adds some research done on the pension paid to the Gissing boys after George's death:
The Times 24 June 1904
A pension of £74 a year has been granted to Mr. Walter Gissing and Mr. Alfred
Gissing during the minority of either and in recognition of the literary merits
of their late father, Mr. George Gissing and of their straitened circumstances.
The poster wonders why the pensions were paid, and in the realm of the conspiracy theorist, makes it look like these were paid for services rendered by serial killing cover up novelists. To misquote the Divine One, you would have to have a heart of stone not to laugh.
It's clearly nonsense. Apart from the fact he was no killer, George was never anywhere near the East End of London at the time of the murders - he was either in Wakefield at home, or on his way to Paris with Mr Plitt. On October 2nd, whilst in Paris, he writes a Diary entry about the crimes, after reading a piece in a French publication:
Apropos the Whitechapel murders, The Petit Journal says: 'When speaking of France the English affect such prudery that it would seem this country is cursed. But as we have demonstrated time and again, the English have no decency left; they are ignoble exploiters of human flesh. This is new evidence of it'.
To which George comments: This is the kind of trash a paper of great circulation gives to ignorant reader.
What on earth would he have made of this scurrilous association made by the website?? Or, of anyone thinking he might have something to talk about with Prince Albert Victor, a man with no love of academic subjects, and with no love of Art. The Prince was popular with his wide group of friends and was a notorious party animal. He was thought of as a supporter of the Liberals. There were rumours he was bisexual (when the Cleveland Street scandal blew up, he was at the heart of the scrum click), and amongst his friends were a few Jack the Ripper suspects in their own right (J K Stephen and Walter Sickert, to name but two).
He died in 1892 of pneumonia as a complication of influenza. He was just 28. George was living in darkest Devonshire, with his second wife and new baby boy. Never a Royalist, George makes no mention of the Prince's passing in his Diary.
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