Post by Tamrin on Sept 9, 2008 16:58:57 GMT 10
Mozart and the Morgan Affair not withstanding, the other great crime with which the name of Freemasonry has been intimately linked is that of Jack the Ripper. Melvin Harris in his 1987 book "Jack the Ripper: The Bloody Truth" has convincingly annihilated any such connections. But Melvyn Fairclough (The Ripper and the Royals) resurrected the problem in 1991 in nothing more than an extension of the Stephen Knight fantasies.
I would like to present four points against this story:
1. Howells & Skinner have found absolutely no connection between Walter Sickert and Princess Alexandra, nor between any member of the Sickert family and that of the Danish Royal family. So it is most unlikely that Queen Alexandra would call on the Sickert family to look after her son, a prince of the realm.
2. Alice Margaret Crook was born on 18 April 1885 which means that her conception must have occurred between 18 July and 11 August 1884 - a time when Eddy was 400 miles away in Heidelberg with his German tutor.
3. The Royal Marriages Act was - and still is - operative. Any such marriage between Clarence and Cook could have been set aside as illegal because Clarence was under twenty-five years old at the time of the "marriage"; and he had "married" without the Queen's consent.
This Act had been specifically designed by King George III to stop his sons from entering into marriages of which he disapproved; it was even used to nullify the marriage of Augustus, Duke of Sussex, although a second son had been born in lawful wedlock!
Further, the Act of Settlement, promulgated in 1772, expressly debars anyone who marries a Roman Catholic from "inheriting the Crown". So the "marriage" of Eddy would have been null and void and easily patched up(24). Why on earth should Eddy, the heir presumptive, be so dramatically protected from scandal?
His father, the Prince of Wales, was involved in so many scandals it is difficult to know where to start.
For example, twelve years earlier the Prince of Wales was prominent in a scandal involving Lord Randolph Churchill (Winston's father); a complicated affair (no pun intended) with comic opera overtones(25). The Prince had earlier had a secret love affair with the wife of the Earl of Aylesford (a close friend). While Aylesford was in India with the Prince of Wales making an official good will tour of Britain's Imperial possessions, Lady Aylesford wrote saying she was going to elope with Lord Blandford (Lord Randolph's elder brother) who was also prepared to leave his wife for Lady Aylesford.
Aylesford immediately returned home and the Prince of Wales denounced Lord Blandford as "the greatest blackguard alive" - conveniently forgetting he, himself, had earlier indulged in a serious flirtation with Lady Aylesford. Both families convinced the lovers not to elope, but Aylesford was intent upon a divorce, citing Lord Blandford as co-respondent. Lady Aylesford passed to Lord Blandford a series of letters the Prince of Wales had written to her during their flirtation ("harmless enough, but containing an undue familiarity"). Blandford, in turn, passed the letters to his brother.
In a naive effort to keep his brother's name out of a potentially messy divorce trial (all of the Victorian aristocracy's divorce trials were potentially messy), Lord Randolph foolishly went to the Princess of Wales with the letters. His motive was to enlist the aid of the Princess to convince her husband to bring pressure on Aylesford to call off the divorce proceedings and to avoid a major scandal. To no one's surprise (but Lord Randolph's) the Prince of Wales became furious, accused him of blackmail, and challenged him to a duel. Queen Victoria became aware of the situation and the duel never took place. Instead, Lord Randolph was banished to a government post in Ireland and the Prince was denied access to his mother for some time (a relief to both of them if one believes contemporary accounts).
The affair is often held up as proof, if proof be needed, that the true measure of Victorian respectability, among the upper classes, at least, lay not in refraining from extramarital sex, but engaging in it with discretion. Or, as one member of society put it: "It doesn't matter what you do, as long as you don't do it in the street and frighten the horses!"
4. In March 1987, Simon Wood published his researches into all this Sickert family background in a now-defunct magazine - "The Bloodhound." He found that in 1888 Annie Crook and Walter Sickert could not have been living at 15 Cleveland Street (identified by Stephen Knight and Joseph Sickert as the place where Walter had his studio and where Eddy and Annie would meet)(26) since the building and its neighbour #17 were demolished in Michaelmas 1886 and the gap stayed vacant until the Middlesex Hospital Trained Nurses Institute was built on the site in November 1887! He also showed conclusively that Annie Crook was not a Catholic and was not confined from 1888 in one or more hospitals until her death. The rate books for Cleveland Street also show that, rather than being kidnapped by Freemasons and subjected to imprisonment in Guy's Hospital, Crook lived in the basement of #6 throughout 1888, was still there in 1889 and for every year up to 1893!
But all this Sickert family history aside, Fairclough's thesis quickly involves the prominent Freemasons of the late nineteenth century viz The Duke of St Albans, the Earls of Carnarvon, Derby, and Limerick, the Marquess of Lincolnshire, the Queen's Physician-in-Ordinary (Sir William Withey Gull), the Chief Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police (Sir Charles Warren) and so on. Oh yes, they include Eddy, Duke of Clarence and Avondale who was, at the time of the murders in 1888, Right Worshipful Master of the Royal Alpha Lodge(27).
So far, no major problems; but Fairclough seem to go right off the rails at this point. Not content to quote Knight as a source of Masonic practices (highly questionable, if not downright laughable), he also cites William Morgan's (of the "Morgan Affair" infamy) "Freemasonry Exposed," published in 1836.
Fairclough insists in using the present tense in the paragraphs purporting to expose the nefarious activities of the Freemasons. Yet Morgan's "exposure" (sic) was published some 50 years before the events under analysis. For example, the Oath of a Royal Arch Mason quoted by Fairclough on page 54, bears no relation to any Royal Arch oath with which I am familiar. Yet Fairclough's tense makes it appear modern. The author's attitude is typical of the erroneous misinformation bandied about and is not only vexatious but (with the wealth of correct information available to Cowans in the United Kingdom under the relaxed policies of the Grand Lodge) this cannot be anything less than a premeditated and deliberate attempt to denigrate the Craft. Even Walter Hannah (Darkness Visible and Christian by Degrees) had better information forty years ago.
1. Howells & Skinner have found absolutely no connection between Walter Sickert and Princess Alexandra, nor between any member of the Sickert family and that of the Danish Royal family. So it is most unlikely that Queen Alexandra would call on the Sickert family to look after her son, a prince of the realm.
2. Alice Margaret Crook was born on 18 April 1885 which means that her conception must have occurred between 18 July and 11 August 1884 - a time when Eddy was 400 miles away in Heidelberg with his German tutor.
3. The Royal Marriages Act was - and still is - operative. Any such marriage between Clarence and Cook could have been set aside as illegal because Clarence was under twenty-five years old at the time of the "marriage"; and he had "married" without the Queen's consent.
This Act had been specifically designed by King George III to stop his sons from entering into marriages of which he disapproved; it was even used to nullify the marriage of Augustus, Duke of Sussex, although a second son had been born in lawful wedlock!
Further, the Act of Settlement, promulgated in 1772, expressly debars anyone who marries a Roman Catholic from "inheriting the Crown". So the "marriage" of Eddy would have been null and void and easily patched up(24). Why on earth should Eddy, the heir presumptive, be so dramatically protected from scandal?
His father, the Prince of Wales, was involved in so many scandals it is difficult to know where to start.
For example, twelve years earlier the Prince of Wales was prominent in a scandal involving Lord Randolph Churchill (Winston's father); a complicated affair (no pun intended) with comic opera overtones(25). The Prince had earlier had a secret love affair with the wife of the Earl of Aylesford (a close friend). While Aylesford was in India with the Prince of Wales making an official good will tour of Britain's Imperial possessions, Lady Aylesford wrote saying she was going to elope with Lord Blandford (Lord Randolph's elder brother) who was also prepared to leave his wife for Lady Aylesford.
Aylesford immediately returned home and the Prince of Wales denounced Lord Blandford as "the greatest blackguard alive" - conveniently forgetting he, himself, had earlier indulged in a serious flirtation with Lady Aylesford. Both families convinced the lovers not to elope, but Aylesford was intent upon a divorce, citing Lord Blandford as co-respondent. Lady Aylesford passed to Lord Blandford a series of letters the Prince of Wales had written to her during their flirtation ("harmless enough, but containing an undue familiarity"). Blandford, in turn, passed the letters to his brother.
In a naive effort to keep his brother's name out of a potentially messy divorce trial (all of the Victorian aristocracy's divorce trials were potentially messy), Lord Randolph foolishly went to the Princess of Wales with the letters. His motive was to enlist the aid of the Princess to convince her husband to bring pressure on Aylesford to call off the divorce proceedings and to avoid a major scandal. To no one's surprise (but Lord Randolph's) the Prince of Wales became furious, accused him of blackmail, and challenged him to a duel. Queen Victoria became aware of the situation and the duel never took place. Instead, Lord Randolph was banished to a government post in Ireland and the Prince was denied access to his mother for some time (a relief to both of them if one believes contemporary accounts).
The affair is often held up as proof, if proof be needed, that the true measure of Victorian respectability, among the upper classes, at least, lay not in refraining from extramarital sex, but engaging in it with discretion. Or, as one member of society put it: "It doesn't matter what you do, as long as you don't do it in the street and frighten the horses!"
4. In March 1987, Simon Wood published his researches into all this Sickert family background in a now-defunct magazine - "The Bloodhound." He found that in 1888 Annie Crook and Walter Sickert could not have been living at 15 Cleveland Street (identified by Stephen Knight and Joseph Sickert as the place where Walter had his studio and where Eddy and Annie would meet)(26) since the building and its neighbour #17 were demolished in Michaelmas 1886 and the gap stayed vacant until the Middlesex Hospital Trained Nurses Institute was built on the site in November 1887! He also showed conclusively that Annie Crook was not a Catholic and was not confined from 1888 in one or more hospitals until her death. The rate books for Cleveland Street also show that, rather than being kidnapped by Freemasons and subjected to imprisonment in Guy's Hospital, Crook lived in the basement of #6 throughout 1888, was still there in 1889 and for every year up to 1893!
But all this Sickert family history aside, Fairclough's thesis quickly involves the prominent Freemasons of the late nineteenth century viz The Duke of St Albans, the Earls of Carnarvon, Derby, and Limerick, the Marquess of Lincolnshire, the Queen's Physician-in-Ordinary (Sir William Withey Gull), the Chief Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police (Sir Charles Warren) and so on. Oh yes, they include Eddy, Duke of Clarence and Avondale who was, at the time of the murders in 1888, Right Worshipful Master of the Royal Alpha Lodge(27).
So far, no major problems; but Fairclough seem to go right off the rails at this point. Not content to quote Knight as a source of Masonic practices (highly questionable, if not downright laughable), he also cites William Morgan's (of the "Morgan Affair" infamy) "Freemasonry Exposed," published in 1836.
Fairclough insists in using the present tense in the paragraphs purporting to expose the nefarious activities of the Freemasons. Yet Morgan's "exposure" (sic) was published some 50 years before the events under analysis. For example, the Oath of a Royal Arch Mason quoted by Fairclough on page 54, bears no relation to any Royal Arch oath with which I am familiar. Yet Fairclough's tense makes it appear modern. The author's attitude is typical of the erroneous misinformation bandied about and is not only vexatious but (with the wealth of correct information available to Cowans in the United Kingdom under the relaxed policies of the Grand Lodge) this cannot be anything less than a premeditated and deliberate attempt to denigrate the Craft. Even Walter Hannah (Darkness Visible and Christian by Degrees) had better information forty years ago.