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In reality, Robert Stephenson was no more a suspect in the Whitechapel Murders than Her Majesty, Queen Victoria. Yet, hundreds of thousands of words have been written in support of Stephenson as a suspect, primarily by Melvin Harris, Bernard O’Donnell and lately, Ivor Edwards. Stephenson’s whereabouts during the time of the Whitechapel Murders was within the confines of the London Hospital as most are aware of. He was, according to the stellar efforts of Spiro Dimolianis ( Australia) and Mike Covell (England ) not only in a hospital ward where he could not come and go as he pleased ( The Currie Ward ), but the authors of the two books promoting Stephenson as a suspect knew this long ago. Why they omitted the mention of the Currie Ward in their works and leave the impression that Stephenson was only in the Davis Ward is anyone’s guess. The signifigance of Stephenson being in the Currie Ward would immediately and effectively eliminate Stephenson from “possibly” being Jack The Ripper, since he was sinecured in that ward at least until October 16th, 1888…a full fortnight after the Catherine Eddowes murder. If research had not been undertaken to examine the actual London Hospital register ( as Dimolianis did by email and Covell did in person ), the declarations by both Harris and Edwards that Stephenson only spent time in the Davis Ward may have gone uncountered for years and years to come. Furthermore, the theory of Stephenson as Ripper according to Harris comes in two parts. First, in the book, The Ripper File, Mr.Harris did not know WHEN Stephenson entered the London Hospital, since on page 168 of that book he inadvertantly admits to as much by stating boldly that Stephenson entered the LH after the November 9th murder of Mary Kelly. When Harris discovered WHEN Stephenson entered the LH, he developed a new theory and placed it within the covers of his subsequent pro-D’Onston book, The True Face of JTR, in 1994. In this new theory, Harris posited the baseless and groundless concept that somehow Stephenson was faking his July 26th complaint of “neurasthenia”. Harris maintained that Stephenson didn’t need 134 days in a hospital to have this affliction cured. Needless to say, Melvin Harris was not a doctor and certainly not an attendant physician in the LH in July of 1888. But in omitting the Currie Ward from the public’s view, Harris was able to propel Stephenson within a select group of major Ripper suspects until the advent of a cadre of researchers I organized in 2005 which inevitably culminated in the Ripperological community becoming aware that indeed, the Currie Ward was mentioned as well as that Ward’s protocol being revealed which demolished and annihilated Harris’s theory…a theory that only existed as long as the Currie Ward was not fully examined and one both pro-authors knew full well existed. The other pro-D’Onston theorist, Ivor Edwards, took Stephenson to a new low with his theory of why these murders were committed by Stephenson. Edwards actually doesn’t expand on Stephensonian research as he claims Melvin Harris said he did in a quote found within his book. Edwards developed the theory, which even current and former ( such as myself ) Stephensonians simply dismiss or dismissed as science fiction, that Stephenson committed the murders based on an outline of a “sacred symbol” the pacifistic sign of the Vesica Pisces. Not only is the Vesica Pisces a sign of passivity, but no known “occult” or “black magic” references exist in the recorded history of humankind of this symbol being used in any way whatsoever to indicate the “occult”. More to come. |
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April 12th, 2008 at 10:09 am
So what really was the basis for what was mainstream Ripperology’s view that Stephenson was or could have been Jack The Ripper ?
1. The claim of faked neurasthenia and incidents within Stephenson’s life which appeared to Mr. Harris to be “convincing” of his guilt.
2. The implementation of a sacred symbol over Whitechapel to profane the Cross by Edwards.
3. The incomplete work of O’Donnell who himself had envisioned some sort of occultist link to these crimes, probably based on his relationship with Aleister Crowley.
4. The utterings of Aleister Crowley and the “box of ties” story undoubtedly shared by Vittoria Cremers, once Crowley’s secretary and also a one-time associate of Stephenson decades prior.
5. The tongue in cheek comments made by W.T. Stead that he felt Stephenson had been the “veritable Ripper” for about a year, despite the obvious facts that Stephenson and Stead exchanged letters, letters seen by another believer in Stephenson’s guilt, while Stephenson was in the London Hospital, and that Stead commissioned Stephenson to write TWO articles in early 1889. This leaves the reader with the untenable premise that Stead would willingly accept contributions to his Pall Mall Gazette from the “veritable Ripper”.
6. The hearsay comment made by Mabel Collins, a famous Theosophist and associate of Stephenson, who at some point bleated out to the aforementioned Cremers that she felt Stephenson was the Ripper for the reason Stephenson showed her “something”. What that “something” was, was undoubtedly insufficient or less than convincing for Collins to reveal it while in Court in 1891 with Stephenson ( Marylebone ) over the issue of purloined letters. Collins, it might be noted, suffered a nervous breakdown around the time of the 1889 liason with Stephenson.
7. Vittoria Cremers and all the allusions to Stephenson within the “Cremers Memoirs” in Chapters 3 & 4 of the O’Donnell Manuscript.
8. George Marsh, the umemployed ironmongery salesman, who, according to pro-Donston theorists ,was set up to in an effort to actually cast a suspicion of guilt upon Stephenson, by the dramatization Stephenson reenacted of the murders while quaffing beers in a nearby taproom.
Marsh, in reality. may have not been such a dupe as pro-Donston theorists maintain.
He had the wherewithall to take handwriting samples of Stephenson’s to Inspector Thomas Roots on December 24th, 1888 and made a deposition, of which the subsequent report filed by Inspector Roots has gone missing regarding the reaction of Scotland Yard. Evidently, Marsh was primarily focused on Stephenson’s possible connection to the plethora of Ripper letters by the handwriting.
9. Finally ,there is Stephenson himself. Had it not been for his “Barroom Drama” with Marsh in the first place, you and I ,dear reader, would not be reading this at this very moment.