The Robert D’Onston Stephenson Story

Stephenson’s Birth Certificate.

http://www.jtrforums.com/showthread.php?p=42685#post42685

 In the “True Face of Jack The Ripper” by Melvin Harris, Mr. Harris states that Stephenson was baptized, Robert D’Onston Stephenson.

  This birth certificate does NOT show Stephenson’s middle name appearing that way.

Document, courtesy of Mike Covell

http://www.jtrforums.com/showthread.php?p=42568&posted=1#post42568

 Apologies for being able to only transcribe the document.

 Three posts in all, including the press report.

http://www.jtrforums.com/showthread.php?p=42517#post42517

A letter from Mr. Harris critical of the 1988 program, “Jack The Ripper” featuring Michael Caine.

Photo of Mr. Harris ( date unknown ) with beard.

http://www.jtrforums.com/showthread.php?p=42514#post42514

http://www.jtrforums.com/showthread.php?p=42455#post42455

This is the oldest known document,aside from the 1841  and 1851 Censuses ,in which Stephenson’s name appears anywhere to this date ( 4/12/2008).

 Stephenson was 18 years old…and the excerpt is 149 years old.

Section of the blog which will deal with the single most baffling area of Robert Stephenson’s 75 years and 8 months on this mortal coil….how he made ends meet.

One of Mr. Harris’s most significant contributions to Ripperology was being the individual who first linked “Roslyn D’Onston” to Robert D’Onston Stephenson.

Prior to Mr. Harris, the reporter and novelist Bernard O’Donnell had been unsuccessful in linking the name Stephenson used ( Roslyn D’Onston) to his birth name.

Until Mr. Harris learned through the efforts of British Ripperologist Andrew Aliffe that one of Stephenson’s stories was true ( The 1868 shooting incident off in Flamborough,Yorkshire,England reported in a July 16th,1888 edition of the Bridlington Quay-Observer ), he had been reluctant to believe in Stephenson’s musings found in his writings.

From this point on, it is quite possible that Mr. Harris began to seriously consider that Stephenson wasn’t the ‘most fascinating liar in all of Ripperology’ as famed Ripperologist Martin Fido has credited Mr. Harris as having stated.

This section of the RDS blog will focus on the accomplishments of Mr.Harris and how he influenced modern Ripperology.

Mr. Harris wrote three Ripperological books over a 7 year span.

The first was “The Bloody Truth” which focused attention to the “Royal Conspiracy” and other theories found within mainstream Ripperology.  This book appeared in 1987.

The second book is entitled, The Ripper File, which came out in 1990.

The third and final book, The True Face of Jack The Ripper, appeared in 1994.

_______________________

Mr. Harris was perhaps the most vociferous opponent of the Maybrick Diary and based on his successful career as a B.B.C.  debunker and professional investigator, his influence is still felt within Ripperology.

Comments and recollections of Mr. Harris’s life in Ripperology are welcome on this thread. Those wishing anonymity may do so by contacting me in advance.

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.

http://www.jtrforums.com/showthread.php?t=4177

In order to save bandwidth for this blog, these two and any other photographs I place will be links and not the actual photograph.

The reader will be able to see that there is a slight difference in these two photographs courteously provided for the site, JTRForums.Com, by Stewart P. Evans.

The date which these were taken are unknown,hence his actual age is unknown at the time of the portrait shots taken by Meisenbach Studios.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=George+Meisenbach

Ample URL’s which mention George Meisenbach for the interested reader….