The Farce of the Light Brigade

To this day the Charge of the Light Brigade remains one the most catastrophic yet evocative cock-ups in British military history (second only to the clever and well-thought out decision to send a certain notification to the Imperial German ambassador on August 4th 1914). The date is October 25th 1854 and the Crimean War is raging between Tsar Nicholas I's Russian Empire and a polyglot coalition of British, French, Italian and Turkish forces for control and influence over the lands around the Black Sea and the Holy Land, which were fast becoming a free-for-all in the wake of the Ottoman Empire's ongoing terminal decline. The Russians failed to appreciate the Western European powers sticking their noses into what they perceived at quintessentially Eastern European business and it was the Tsar's meddling that led Britain and France to declare war, setting the stage for the carnage to come.

As the only major conflict between the European powers to take place in the hundred-year gap between the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte and the start of World War I, the Crimean War provided a brief glimpse into the direction that ideas of warfare were heading. It was the first major conflict to see a good use of railways and the telegraph whilst advances in weapons technology were all too evident, leading the conflict to be subsequently classed as the earliest of the "modern wars". From a British perspective it is also well known for the advances in combat medicine made through the work of nurses such as Florence Nightingale and Mary Seacole as they treated wounded soldiers, as well as Isambard Kingdom Brunel's prefabricated field hospitals, designed to be shipped out from Britain in bits and assembled in the war zone like a flat-pack shelving unit.

For all the good that came out of the Crimean War, however, the spectre of the Charge still dominates most historical thinking on the subject and no amount of Florence Nightingale can hide that fact. When the Charge of the Light Brigade took place the war had been raging for over a year and the campaign had moved into the Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula which Russia had bagged from the Ottoman Turks in the previous century. The Charge was just one move by the British during the wider, ultimately indecisive confrontation with the Russians known as the Battle of Balaclava. The coalition forces were seeking to capture the vital port city of Sevastopol and the Russians were fighting to the death to keep them away.

There were two major British cavalry units present at Balaclava on the day of the battle. The Heavy Brigade, commanded by Major General James Yorke Scarlett, consisted of  the 4th Royal Irish Dragoon Guards, the 5th Dragoon Guards, the 6th Inniskilling Dragoons and the Scots Greys. The Light Brigade was commanded by Major General James Brudenell, 7th Earl of Cardigan and consisted of the 4th and 13th Light Dragoons, 17th Lancers, and the 8th and 11th Hussars. Lieutenant General George Charles Bingham, 3rd Earl of Lucan was in overall command of the cavalry forces. Lord Lucan and Lord Cardigan were brothers-in-law and shared a bitter mutual dislike for one-another.

A Very British Balls-Up

The ill-fated moment came shortly after 11am on October 25th 1854. An order from General FitzRoy Somerset, 1st Baron Raglan, overall commander of the British army at Balaclava, was delivered to Lord Lucan. Lord Raglan's order was for the cavalry to charge and stop the Russians withdrawing the naval artillery from their recently captured redoubts on the south side of the Causeway Heights. However, in the process of its drafting and delivery Raglan's order had become somewhat vague and when it reached Lucan he was only able to interpret it as "Prevent the Russians from carrying away the guns." with very little suggestion as to which guns Raglan was actually referring to. Captain Louis Edward Nolan, the man who delivered the order to Lucan, appeared to indicate with a vague hand gesture that the cavalry had to charge the Russian guns to the NORTH of the Causeway Heights. With Lucan unable to see the captured redoubts for himself due to his position and the lay of the land he arrived at the conclusion that the gun battery at the Don Cossack Redoubt, which lay at the end of the northern valley between the Fedyukhin Heights to the north and the Causeway Heights to the south, was the intended target.

Map of the Light Brigade's mistaken charge through the north valley. The intended British goal was the redoubts on the north side of the south valley.

Still unsure as to why he should receive such a seemingly risky order, Lucan made the fateful decision to send his brother-in-law, Lord Cardigan and the Light Brigade to lead the charge through the valley towards the Don Cossack battery, with the intention of following up behind with Major General Scarlett and the Heavy Brigade. Lord Raglan could only watch in horror from his vantage point at the far side of the battlefield as Cardigan led his force of over 600 cavalry in completely the wrong direction, straight into what the poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson would later dub "The Valley of Death", bristling with 20 battalions of Russian infantry and over 50 artillery pieces. As Cardigan led the charge into the valley Captain Nolan was seen to ride across his path trying to get his attention. Before Nolan could say anything, the Russian guns on the Fedyukhin Heights opened fire, killing him stone dead. The Light Brigade continued on, taking heavy casualties from the artillery on both sides of the valley as well as from the Don Cossack Redoubt.

Lucan, Scarlett and the Heavy Brigade remained at the entrance to the valley, unwilling to risk their lives by coming to the aid of their comrades. That job was left to the French light cavalry, le Chasseurs d'Afrique, who fought with distinction to clear the Russians from the Fedyukhin heights and provide some cover for the retreating remnants of the Light Brigade, including Cardigan.

As the result of one simple yet monumental communications breakdown, 118 men were killed, 127 wounded and 60 taken prisoner. Although the charge did no harm at all to the British cavalry's heroic reputation it remains to this day a significant example of how a simple mistake in war can have fatal and far-reaching consequences, not to mention raise questions as to the continued usefulness of horse-mounted troops in the face of such powerful advanced artillery, which had come a long way from the cannons of old which had struggled to hit a barn door from three feet away. The fact it was even able to happen has also raised questions as to who amongst that aristocratic chain-of-command was truly responsible for sending the men of the Light Brigade to an unnecessary death...

So What Went Wrong?

Responsibility for the Charge of the Light Brigade rests solely upon the order to attack and how that order would go on to be interpreted. As the overall commander of the British army at the Battle of Balaclava, Lord Raglan would have had to take responsibility for not being clearer with his orders. The fact that only he himself could see the Causeway Heights redoubts from his good vantage point while Lucan could not means that Raglan was always going to be asking for trouble by simply telling his subordinate to go for the guns, especially when the only guns that Lucan was aware of were those of the Don Cossack battery. Regardless of who could see what, Raglan must accept a degree of blame for simply not being clear about where he wanted the cavalry to go.

Much attention has been focused on Captain Nolan over the years due to his behaviour on the battlefield that day and the nature of his death. It was Nolan's sweep of the hand that appeared to indicate to Lucan that the cavalry were to attack into the heavily defended northern valley. If he knew the true nature of the target then he should have looked where he was pointing. Given that it was his job to relay the order directly to Lucan from Raglan, verbally as well as by letter, the Captain was almost certainly aware of what was supposed to have happened as opposed to what actually transpired on the battlefield and his final moments alive seem to hint at that as well. The fact that Nolan attempted to get in front of Cardigan and the Light Brigade before he was killed suggests that he was indeed aware that they were charging the wrong target and his final moments were an attempt to stop or ward off the cavalry. Cardigan had only bad words to say about Nolan after the battle and believed that Nolan was attempting to take over the leadership of the charge from him before he was killed. This means that Nolan probably did not get the chance to speak to Cardigan and thus the cavalry continued oblivious.

(l-r) Lord Raglan, Lord Lucan, Lord Cardigan and Captain Nolan

To me the most interesting thing about the whole thing is the tense relationship and increasing rivalry between the in-laws, Lord Lucan and Lord Cardigan (which Lord Raglan was largely unaware of). The two men had pretty much hated each-others guts for 30 years and I personally would not dismiss the idea that Lucan was beyond ordering Cardigan to attack the wrong target on purpose either to get him killed or get him to take the blame and thus destroy his reputation. The fact that Lucan held back with the Heavy Brigade only goes to show his unwillingness to ensure his brother-in-law's safety although his official excuse was the desire not to put more men at unnecessary risk. While it seems unlikely that two professional army officers would put mens' lives at stake over such petty personal squabbles I still feel that it ought to be taken into account.

In all I feel that what happened to the Light Brigade was certainly the result of a mistaken interpretation  for which most of the people involved have to share the blame. Lord Raglan, as the man with the overall power of life and death over the men in his army, should have made his attack orders clearer with respect to what target to attack. On the other hand you must also rap both Lucan and Cardigan on the knuckles for not raising any further questions as to why on earth their commander would want to send the cavalry on a near-certain suicide mission. Nolan must also shoulder some blame for his rather laid-back confirmation of the target but his valiant attempt to halt the charge makes him, in my view, the hero of the piece. Regardless of who is really to blame for all this, the fact remains that the Charge of the Light Brigade and the subsequent slaughter that followed it happened simply due to basic human error. It was not the first time that such a thing had happened on the field of battle and it would certainly not be the last.

The Harrying of the North

On October 14th 1066, the invading army of Duke William of Normandy triumphed over the exhausted forces of the Anglo-Saxon King of England, Harold Godwinson, who now lay dead alongside many of his troops on the battlefield of Hastings. William's army began a murderous rampage across southern England, killing and destroying everything in its path as it circled menacingly around London, aiming to terrorise the native English into submission. Eventually the Witenagemot, the ruling council of Anglo-Saxon earls, abandoned their proclaimed successor to Harold, Edgar Ætheling, and accepted William as King. The Norman Duke, the bastard son of a tanner's daughter, was crowned in Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day 1066.

Now you might have thought that William's little escapade around the Home Counties would have been enough to put people off from standing up to him but it appears that a number of earls and many peasants were not willing to submit to the new regime and all its French airs and graces. Despite the new King's willingness to pardon and work with those who swore loyalty to him, many of the Saxon earls instead decided to either openly rebel or go underground and plot against William with the Viking kingdoms, which still had their desires for England.

As a result William spent much of his early reign directing his army all over the place to deal with the persistent English resistance. He managed to defeat an invasion of south-west England by Harold Godwinson's illegitimate sons in 1068 but in that same year the old Saxon earldoms of Mercia and Northumbria rose up in rebellion. William was able to secure the situation but could not capture the former Saxon heir, Edgar Ætheling who fled to Scotland and married his sister to the Scottish King Malcolm III in exchange for assistance. Northumbria rose up again in January 1069 as the rebels, with Scottish and Danish support, moved south from Durham to York. The rebels captured York but took no further action and with the arrival of William's army, Edgar lost his nerve and fled back to Scotland. William paid the Danes a reasonable sum in order to get them to leave English soil before enacting his revenge on the rebellious northern peoples.

It was the following events that have become immortalised in history as the "Harrying of the North". William's troops marched around the entire area of north-eastern England between the rivers Tees and Humber, burning every town and village they came across. Nearly every man, woman and child in that area was mercilessly slaughtered. Livestock was killed and the land contaminated with salt so that those locals who avoided the business end of a sword would instead starve in the brutal winter without food or shelter. It is estimated that over 100,000 people may have died as a result of William's pacification of the north. Even those who had always supported William could not hide their shock and disgust at his army's sheer uninhibited brutality. The 11th century Norman chronicler, Oderic Vitalis wrote:

"The King stopped at nothing to hunt his enemies. He cut down many people and destroyed homes and land. Nowhere else had he shown such cruelty. This made a real change.

To his shame, William made no effort to control his fury, punishing the innocent with the guilty. He ordered that crops and herds, tools and food be burned to ashes. More than 100,000 people perished of hunger.

I have often praised William in this book, but I can say nothing good about this brutal slaughter. God will punish him."

William's order for his men to show no mercy to the people of north was unquestionably ruthless. It was little more than cold hard punishment for their refusal to bow down to his authority. There is little doubt that the punishment worked and William never heard a peep of discontent from the area again, although that may have been because everyone was too dead to complain. The old Anglo-Danish earls were replaced with Normans to ensure that the area remained loyal and trouble free. The Harrying of the North also had a profound long-term impact on the area. The bloody depopulation of the north was certainly an economic disaster in its own right but the deliberate salting of the land destroyed its fertility for decades to come. Agriculture, as was with most places at the time, was the area's lifeblood and without the land to support the growing of crops it simply could not recover.

The historical final word on William's Harrying of the North is best demonstrated with a browse of the famous Domesday Book, William's all-encompassing land/property/population/tax survey compiled in 1087. The Domesday Book describes much of northern England as "wasta" (waste) with much of the land there being worth peanuts in comparison to its pre-conquest value. William's own record shows that even almost 20 years after the slaughter and the burnings, the area still not recovered. The new King had not only put down resistance in the area but he had also put back the economy of the north of England by decades. 

A Scam of Titanic Proportions?

RMS Olympic (left) and RMS Titanic (right) together at Belfast in early 1912

Staying on the subject of fanciful conspiracy theories that I first looked into with my previous post, I want to take the opportunity to look into another story, one which challenges almost everything that we know about one of the most scrutinised and studied events in modern history.

The disaster which befell the passenger liner RMS Titanic in April 1912 not only caused the deaths of over 1500 people but also changed the way people thought about man's apparent mastery over nature. The fact that the largest and most state-of-the-art moving object that human hands had cobbled together was sent to the bottom of the Atlantic by a chance encounter with a chunk of ice brought humanity back to earth with a crash. Man no longer felt invulnerable, his perception of being the master of the universe dying alongside the men, women and children who drowned or froze in the open ocean because it was apparently not necessary for a ship so safe to carry enough lifeboats.

Like all  heavily written-about historical events, the Titanic tragedy is not without its fair share of alternative theories which challenge the established point-of-view: that it all happened because of a combination of negligence, poor decision-making and sheer bad luck. One theory stands out in particular, however. It suggests that the whole disaster was the result of a massively cocked-up insurance scam and that the ship which sank on that fateful night was in fact not the Titanic but her near-identical sister ship, RMS Olympic. It is a far-fetched idea and yet it carries this sense of fascination which almost makes you want it to be true. If the White Star Line had managed to switch the ships it would undoubtedly be one of the biggest attempted swindles of all time.

Photograph showing the damage done to Olympic's stern by her 1911 collision with HMS Hawke. The unseen damage below the waterline was far greater than can be seen here.

The story has its foundations in an event which took place even before Titanic was completed. On September 20th 1911 the Olympic was manoeuvring in the Solent (the sea channel that separates Southampton and the English coast from the Isle of Wight) when the suction caused by her mammoth propellers pulled a Royal Navy cruiser, HMS Hawke, into her starboard side. Both ships suffered considerable damage in the collision, the Hawke's prow was crushed in whilst two of Olympic's aft watertight compartments were flooded and her starboard propeller shaft was badly twisted. Olympic being out of service proved to be a financial nightmare for her owners as their flagship limped back to her builders in Belfast for repairs, pulling men and resources from the incomplete Titanic and delaying the latter's maiden voyage. A subsequent inquiry into the incident found the Olympic to be responsible for causing the collision, meaning that her owners were not entitled to claim back on insurance to cover her damage.

The conspiracy theory states that the collision with HMS Hawke had actually caused more damage to Olympic than the White Star Line let on. It was suggested that the collision had actually "broken her back" (i.e. snapped her keel), making her officially a write-off and no longer legally seaworthy. To avoid financial disaster through losing the ship in an incident for which they were found to be liable, White Star kept the true nature of the damage a secret and instead patched her up as best they could and then, once Titanic was completed, took the opportunity switched the identities of the two ships whilst they were both in the same place. The crippled Olympic, disguised as the Titanic, was then to be deliberately sunk on the maiden voyage so that White Star could claim back on the insurance for the loss of the Titanic. The ship's crew set out from Southampton with orders to ignore all ice warnings and plow into the first big berg they could inevitably find on the journey to New York.

Fraud aside, sinking a ship on purpose sounds like a particularly callous thing to do considering that there was a high number of human lives at risk. The story goes that White Star planned to have compliant vessels standing by ready to act as rescue ships and take off her passengers and crew. However something went spectacularly badly wrong in the communications department and the rescue ships either ended up being too far away to offer assistance or failed to heed the cue to come and help and stayed away. It was these mistakes that led to 1500 people losing their lives. The subsequent legal fallout and compensation claims following the disaster meant that White Star were not able to benefit from the insurance money but nonetheless the furore over the loss of life meant that the scam itself went undiscovered. Titanic would go on to perform over 20 years of distinguished service under Olympic's name before being broken up for scrap in the late 1930s.

As I mentioned on my previous post, I have a hard time believing in theories about vast conspiracies which must have involved a great many people in order to pull off, such as the idea that the Moon landings were faked. If that really were the case it be simply impossible to prevent the truth getting out eventually either through some leaked evidence or though someone who was involved going public. The amount of people that would have had to be in on a scam to fake the Moon landings would have made it impossible to keep secret and the same thing would have to be said for the idea of an insurance scam involving the Olympic and Titanic.

Not only do the sheer logistics of such a scam make it difficult to pull off but we must also consider how well the deception would have worked. the two ships certainly looked almost identical, especially on the inside, but there were a few key differences on the outside that made the two ships easy enough to tell apart.

Photographs pointing out the key differences between Olympic (top) and Titanic (bottom).

The above photos show the giveaway exterior features that tell the two sister ships apart. You can see that the A-Deck promenade (directly below the lifeboats) on the Olympic is open along its entire length whereas the forward half of Titanic's A-Deck promenade is enclosed behind windows. Photographs taken on April 10th 1912 clearly show the semi-enclosed promenade deck, proving that it was indeed the Titanic that set out on the fateful voyage. All post-disaster imagery of the Olympic, including that of her final trip to the breakers, shows that her promenade deck is entirely open. Granted, you could argue that this added feature of Titanic's may have also been swapped over to the Olympic to give greater credibility to the deception but to me that just does not seem possible to pull off without someone outside the conspiracy noticing. Nameplates are one thing but hundreds of feet of steel and window panels are a whole different kettle of fish.

Perhaps the most significant piece of evidence that suggests there was nothing untoward going on was discovered during one of the many submarine expeditions to the wreck of the Titanic. An examination of the remains of her stern revealed three numbers still just about visible on one of her propeller blades: 401. The number 401 was Titanic's official order number assigned to her by her Belfast shipbuilder, Harland and Wolff. This all but proves the true identity of the wreck as it is highly unlikely that White Star would have felt the need to swap the order numbers round, it was just too subtle a detail to bother with, especially considering that only those knew most about the ships (and hence were most probably in on any such scam) would have been aware of it. Had it really been the Olympic that went down that night, chances are they would have found her original order number of 400 on the wreck.

In all, a fascinating theory though it is, the idea that the two biggest ships of their age could be swapped at the drop of a hat in order to pull off the crime of the century is a bit ridiculous and any such scam simply would not be able to stand up to those factors that worked against it. The only real crimes involved here were negligence and arrogance. It was those things that allowed so much faith to be put into these great ships with little regard for the real safety of the people that travelled on them. The scores of extra lifeboats that were seen aboard Olympic in her later years following the disaster goes to show just how much attitudes had changed as a result of what happened to her unfortunate sister. If there was any punishable act at all to be spoken of in relation to the Titanic disaster, it is that such a tragic loss of life was ever allowed to happen at all.

The Royal Ripper: A Masonic Murder Mystery?

In the late Summer and Autumn of 1888 a wave of terror swept through the narrow, twisting alleys of London's East End as the most infamous and most mysterious serial killer in history went about his ghoulish work. Several of the impoverished area's fallen women would cross the path of this knife-wielding stranger and become more famous in death than they could ever have hoped to have been in the tragic existence they called life.

The killer is an eternal enigma, a man able to cut his victims' throats, savagely mutilate their mortal remains and vanish into the smoggy London night without anyone seeing or hearing a thing. He constantly evaded the police's efforts to catch him, apparently taunting them and bragging about his exploits in a series of letters, most of which were undoubtedly forged by various parties in an attempt to confuse the authorities or feed the appetite of the ravenous press industry. It was one of those proven-false letters, however, that gave us the epithet we now bestow upon him: Jack the Ripper. Whoever "Jack" really was, he died a free man with his true identity remaining unknown.

The fact that the killer was never caught allowed both contemporary investigators and historians to come up with their own theories as to who Jack the Ripper might have been, some of which are far more plausible than others. The more believable suspects include the schoolmaster and barrister Montague John Druitt, who committed suicide shortly after the murders, and a mentally unstable Polish Jew by the name of Aaron Kosminski. Other theories are rather more fanciful such as the one which points the finger at none other than Lewis Carroll, the foppish author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. Perhaps the most colourful theory of all first began to circulate in the early 1960s and it involves some very powerful people indeed. Could the mysterious Jack the Ripper have really been nothing more than a pawn in a vast conspiracy involving the British government, the Freemasons and the Royal Family?

The theory of a high-level Ripper conspiracy focuses on the fellow above, Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale. Albert Victor was the eldest son of Albert Edward, Prince of Wales (the future King Edward VII) and as such was second-in-line to the throne. Early versions of the Royal Ripper theory implicated Albert Victor directly in the murders. It was suggested that the Prince, driven insane by syphilis, went on a psychotic murder spree in the East End. The fact that the killer was never caught was explained as being part of an official cover-up to hide Albert Victor's involvement. His premature death in 1892 at the age of 28 is also pointed out as evidence of his guilt, suggesting that he had either died of syphilis or was somehow "removed" in order to prevent him from becoming King, allowing his younger brother, the Duke of York to eventually succeed their father as George V in 1910.

The idea that Prince Albert Victor could himself have been the Ripper, however, has since been entirely written off by virtue of the fact that he was known to be nowhere near London when any of the so-called "canonical five" murders (those most commonly attributed to Jack the Ripper) were committed. He was staying with a friend in North Yorkshire when Mary Nichols was murdered on August 31st and was at the cavalry barracks in York on September 8th when Annie Chapman was slain. Queen Victoria's diary records her taking tea with Albert Victor at Abergeldie in Scotland on September 30th, the date of the double-murder of Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes. On November 9th, the day of Mary Kelly's murder, the Prince was on a shooting trip at the Sandringham estate in Norfolk. There is also no evidence to suggest that he suffered from syphilis or any other serious mental health problems beyond a possible case of mild epilepsy. The real cause of the Prince's early death was influenza and there is nothing to suggest either foul play or a cover-up.

Despite the alibis and general belief that he was of sound mind and body, the idea that Prince Albert Victor was in some way involved in the Ripper murders has evolved into a full-blown conspiracy theory that goes far further up the chain of power than the lowly status of the victims might normally merit. Rather than point the finger at Albert Victor directly, it suggests that the murders were actually a government-sanctioned plot carried out by the Freemasons on his behalf.

Sir William Gull

The story goes that Albert Victor had secretly and illegally married a Catholic woman by the name of Anne Elizabeth Crook and had sired a daughter by her. Marrying a Roman Catholic was, and still is, a big no-no for members of the Royal Family and those who do so invite scandal and face being barred from the line of succession. To cover-up the clandestine union and avert a potential Royal scandal involving the heir to the throne, Queen Victoria's physician, Sir William Gull (above) had Anne institutionalized and performed a lobotomy on her, reducing her to a gibbering lunatic that nobody would ever take seriously. That would have been that were it not for the secret child's nursemaid, Mary Kelly, who fled to the East End and fell in with the local prostitutes who then, using Kelly's knowledge, together hatched a scheme to blackmail the government.

The Prime Minister Lord Salisbury, a Freemason, entrusted his fellow Mason Gull with the task of dealing with the troublesome women and ensuring that their highly sensitive information did not go public. With the help of the artist Walter Sickert (who was also suggested as a potential Ripper suspect in his own right) and Albert Victor's coachman John Netley, Gull headed into the Seedy London underworld to seek out Kelly and her co-extortionists, with the full knowledge of the police (the Metropolitan Police commissioner, Sir Charles Warren was himself allegedly a Freemason). One by one he lured the women into his stagecoach and murdered them by cutting their throats, mutilating their bodies in a Masonic ritual fashion and dumping them in various locations around the East End to make it look like a psychopathic serial killer with a grudge against prostitutes was on the loose.

Freemasons' Hall, London

It has long been suspected that Jack the Ripper was a Freemason or at least knew a great deal about the semi-secret fraternal organisation. As well as the manner of his murders, which suggest possible a ritual element, there was also the discovery of the graffito chalked on the wall of a building close to a bloody fragment of Catherine Eddowes' apron on the night of the double-murder. It read:

"The Juwes are the men that will not be blamed for nothing."

The official version of events states that Commissioner Warren of the Met ordered the erasure of this potentially vital clue because it would have been an incitement to racial violence against the already vilified Jewish community in the East End had the message remained on the wall until daylight when it could be photographed, allowing passers-by to see it. However, it has since been suggested that Warren ordered the message to erased because he was aware of the Masonic spelling of "Juwes" and feared that others might link Freemasonry with the murders.

In all, I believe that the theory of a Masonic/royal/political conspiracy being behind the Jack the Ripper murders is a very fanciful one and one which is supported by little more evidence than the idea that Prince Albert Victor went out there and butchered the women himself despite being 200 miles away. It works brilliantly as a basis for fiction, as demonstrated by the graphic novel-based 2001 movie From Hell but in reality the facts just do not add up. I feel the same way about this theory as I do about the theory that the moon landings were faked in that if it were true, surely the truth or at least some hard evidence would have come out by now, especially considering the number of people that would have had to be involved in such a plot. 

Also it is hard to believe that all the murders took place in a horse-drawn carriage. Despite the rudimentary evidence available at the time, the authorities were still able to deduce with certainty that all of the Ripper's victims died where they were found. You could say that this was because the authorities were in on the supposed plot but nonetheless it would have been almost impossible to move the badly-mutilated bodies from the carriage to often inconvenient "murder spots" in one of the most densely populated parts of London without being noticed, especially considering the amount of Ripper-hunting vigilantes in the area that were operating outside the influence of the law.

The butchered remains of Mary Kelly

As for the Freemason angle it also seems to be too much of a stretch to believe that there was a Masonic conspiracy. If there was then why would the killer risk blowing the lid on the whole thing by writing that message on the wall? I believe that either Jack the Ripper was not literate enough to spell "Jews" correctly or that he did indeed know something about Freemasonry but was nonetheless acting alone and not involved in a wider conspiracy. The manner of the actual killings, although gruesome to say the least, point more towards the women being victims of frenzied attacks as opposed to calculated ritual mutilation. All in all I think we can safely disregard any idea of a Masonic plot. If there were any elements of Freemasonry to the character of Jack the Ripper, they are not particularly relevant to what he did.

The unavoidable fact of all this is that we will almost certainly never know the true identity of Jack the Ripper. Fanciful conspiracy theories like the one I've looked at here certainly don't help matters. The concept of a Masonic plot, an entertaining hypothesis though it is, relies too heavily on supposition and disprovable evidence to be considered a plausible theory. It seems as though people just cannot accept that a high-profile killer is able to act alone without some form of higher power pulling their strings (Lee Harvey Oswald leaps to mind). The fact that Commissioner Warren ended up losing his job due to his force's failure to catch the killer also casts doubt on the premise that the police were in on any alleged conspiracy.

The Masonic conspiracy is just one theory out of many, however, and the general consensus remains that whoever Jack the Ripper really was, the serial killer who stalked the vulnerable of the East End in 1888 was just that, a serial killer, nothing more. He acted alone on his own violent and possibly psychopathic impulses. He might have been a Freemason but that most likely doesn't matter. He may have scrawled the message on the wall in order to keep general suspicion focused on the Jewish community and away from him. Whatever his motivations, this so-called "Jack the Ripper" will remain one of the most enigmatic and ultimately fascinating figures in the history of crime. Maybe its better if we don't know who he was......