They All Love Jack

by Bruce Robinson

  Before attempting to make sense of this letter, we need to go back a couple of months and take a look at another. It was mailed out of Birmingham on 8 October 1888, addressed to ‘the Detective Offices Scotland Yd’, where it arrived on 9 October. It’s another letter from on the road: ‘I am as you see by this note amongst the slogging town of Brum [Birmingham].’ The rest of the text rehearses his usual mirth at the expense of cruelty: ‘3 families will be thrown into a state of delightful mourning. Ha Ha. My bloody whim must have its way.’

  But this thing isn’t about the text. Out of all the Ripper correspondence it is the most fastidious in its artwork. He sat down and bothered with it, using different-coloured inks. This macabre assembly meant something to its author, and was designed to mean something to its recipient. In my philosophy, it had to mean something to Charlie Warren.

  When I first saw it I thought it was some kind of sneer at Freemasonry, the Brotherhood Jack abhorred. What makes it important is that (George Sims apart) there was never an inkling of Masonry in the newspaper reports of the murders, and no other so-called ‘hoaxer’ had ever made reference to it. So what was the catalyst for it now? What was it that stimulated the creation of this picture? It has many Masonic ingredients – a skull and crossed bones, a sword dripping blood, crossed with a poignard, an upright coffin with a cross and a heart on it, and a skeleton taking a stroll. The latter is unusual in the lexicon of Freemasonry, although it occasionally gets a look-in, and the rest are all common symbols. Yet, like ‘Jack the Floater’, there isn’t the remotest suggestion of the significance of this letter to be found in the entire Metropolitan Police files.

  Selective myopia is a scandalous alibi when you’re chasing a serial murderer. One can only assume the police were all of a ‘Melvin’ frame of mind. ‘Get thee glass eyes’; but they must have known that swaddling Jack and his perversion of Masonry meant that he would up the ante in his Funny Little Game, and hit back with something worse. Much worse.

  The key to his next outrage, following Kelly, was, as I later understood, advertised in his Birmingham artwork. But at first I struggled to get traction on it. Everything about it said Masonry – except the letters around the skull and the halo above it, which are not Masonic. I didn’t know what the letters meant, but I thought that one of them, like an ‘F’ on its back, might possibly be a crude representation of something called ‘Dr Valpy’s Crest’, described by a not entirely reliable Victorian source, Mr Hargrave Jennings, as a ‘Notable Cabbalistic & Rosicrucian emblem’.8

  In the archetypal painting below we see a skull and crossed bones over the temple door, together with a sword crossed with a poignard. At the bottom left a Bible is open at St John. The text over the temple door, incidentally, ‘In Hoc Signo Vinces’ (In This Sign Thou Shalt Conquer), is said to represent a cosmic hallucination of a fiery cross witnessed by the Emperor Constantine, causing him to convert to Christianity.

  Even if Jennings was right – even if my interpretation was right – it didn’t really get me anywhere. Beyond the obvious Masonic symbols, I couldn’t see how it might relate to Warren. Then one winter’s afternoon I ran into a bit of good fortune. My researcher Keith and I were in the library at Freemasons’ Hall. One of the librarians introduced us to a fellow visitor who clearly knew his Masonic onions. I showed him the Birmingham artwork (shorn of its text) to see what he might make of it, anticipating that he would prop up my thinking by confirming it as a smirk at Masonry. But he didn’t. He said, and I quote from my notes, ‘It looks like something from the Golden Dawn.’

  These were early days in my research, and at that time this meant absolutely nothing to me. I’d never heard of the ‘Golden Dawn’, and was then so innocent of my subject that I actually asked what the Masonic initials I.T.N.O.T.G.A.O.T.U. meant. He wouldn’t tell me, and as we talked he seemed to become progressively less fond of my face. Nevertheless, he confirmed that the Birmingham drawing was some kind of aberrant visual derivative of the Golden Dawn.

  There are a lot of ‘world experts’ in this caper. I didn’t realise I was actually talking to one. I thought he was a devious Mason selling me a bum steer. It wasn’t until I started swatting up on the Golden Dawn that I discovered he was telling the truth. Mr R.A. Gilbert is an authority on matters cabbalistic, and had written books on the subject that I was now reading.9

  The Golden Dawn was the creation of a trio of occult obsessives by the names of Bro Dr William Robert Woodman, Bro Dr William W. Westcott, and a young weirdo, Bro Samuel L. MacGregor Mathers.

  From its inception, ‘the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn’ was predicated on mysteriously faked documents and an equally phoney provenance, just as was MacGregor Mathers himself. He sold his act as that of a baronial Scot, when in reality he was the son of a West Hackney clerk. MacGregor wasn’t even his real name. He was born Samuel Liddell Mathers, but adopted ‘MacGregor’ from the Scottish clan motto ‘S Rioghail Ma Dhream’ (Royal is my Race).

  When Woodman and Westcott first liaised with him, the Highlands were some way off: Mathers was living just outside Bournemouth. He joined Freemasonry at the age of twenty-three, initiated into the Lodge of Hengist (194) while working as a clerk at an estate agents, also in Bournemouth. As the history of Hengist remarks, it wasn’t many years before S.L. MacGregor Mathers had become ‘a shining light in Rosicrucian circles’.

  Another was Dr William Wynn Westcott, also a bit of a Victorian weirdo. I don’t necessarily mean that in a pejorative sense, but he kept a human hand as a paperweight, and his thinking was perverse even by the standards of esoteric Freemasonry.

  Both Westcott and Mathers were Rosicrucians, and Dr Valpy and his crest were beginning to shape up. Westcott opened his first lodge of the Golden Dawn, called Isis-Urania, Temple No. 3, in London in 1888. That same year he opened his Osiris Temple at Weston in Somerset (8 October 1888), and Mathers his temple at Bradford, called Horus, the following day.10 These dates are interesting, corresponding precisely with those of the Birmingham artwork, mailed from there on 8 October and received at Scotland Yard on 9 October 1888.

  When Ripperology and its shadowy sidekick Freemasology run into any Ripper correspondence that might resist immediate dismissal as ‘hoax’, they move seamlessly into their second-favourite default position, ‘coincidence’. Anything risking interpretation as evidence is branded thus. Well, let’s see if these dates add anything like coincidence to the dates of the Golden Dawn.

  Let us assume for a moment that the Masonic artwork was the spontaneous creation of some hoaxer in Birmingham, and then ask a very reasonable question. How did this Ripper wannabe know about the Golden Dawn, and understand a hybrid of Masonry that as yet was barely in existence? Seminars on the foundation of the Golden Dawn weren’t held in the saloon bar of the Dog and Duck. It wasn’t front-page news for some twerp in Birmingham to read. As a matter of fact, the first reference to its existence wasn’t made until the following year. On 9 February 1889 it attracted a fleeting mention in Madame Blavatsky’s short-lived occult periodical Lucifer, and that’s it.11

  Even the most virulent deviationist of the Melvin School would be hard put to deny the Freemasonic content of this drawing, and if he did he wouldn’t be arguing with me, but with an acknowledged expert. Deferring to Mr Gilbert’s unimpeachable scholarship vis à vis the Golden Dawn, it’s clear that the creator of this artwork knew something about discussions held behind extremely closed doors. It seemed to me that something of importance was beginning to assemble itself. The question now was, what doors, and where?

  Westcott’s Osiris Lodge was situated in Weston, and perhaps here it’s appropriate to return to the Ripper’s ‘Weston’ letter. It was mailed out of Taunton, approximately twenty miles south of Weston, on 4 December 1888, arriving in London on 5 December.

  Once again, the dates are important in relation to the Golden Dawn. On 5 December 1888 the name for the lodge was finally chosen, and the ‘Chiefs of the Second Order chartered the Osiris Temple No. 4
at Somersetshire’. The day before, someone signing himself ‘Jack the Skipper’ was little more than half an hour away, and apparently on the case. As has been mentioned, his letter of 4 December is extremely difficult to read, the only clear word being ‘Weston’. But here’s my shot at interpreting it:

  Dear Boss … sensible to wait … try after blood … so I was going to act soon … some more … down among the Counted ones … and have fixed places or/or … on Taunton … After I’ll pick Weston to do another Whitechapel … shall hear again of JaCk THE Skipper

  Most of it remains unintelligible, but it’s clear that his homicidal interest is in Somerset, as he nominates two towns in that county. The curious assembly of words, ‘down among the Counted ones’, begins to make jocular sense in the context of Jack’s jibes and Westcott’s Golden Dawn.

  The Westcott/Mathers Rosicrucian indulgence was predicated on the magic of numbers. Westcott actually published a book about this, The Occult Power of Numbers, and every experiment in the Golden Dawn’s mystical canon referred itself back to numbers.12 ‘The absolute hieroglyphic science,’ wrote Mathers, ‘had for its basis an alphabet of which all the gods were letters, and all the letters ideas, all the ideas numbers, and all the numbers perfect signs.’13

  Thus they all sat in the candlelit gloom of ‘Osiris’ at Weston and ‘Horus’ at Bradford, postulating astral formulations nobody in the room could understand, even though they were wearing the right hat.14

  The charts above are Golden Dawn, and the table below from The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception,15 a baffling onslaught of numbers, but presumably something the adepts had ‘counted’.

  I am of the view that the Golden Dawn became the motor of Jack’s thinking, orientated around Westcott’s Osiris Temple at Weston and Mather’s Horus at Bradford. I don’t want to get ahead of my narrative, but within thirty days of the ‘Weston’ letter, a little girl (as promised in Jack’s December correspondence) had her throat cut and stomach slashed, literally outside Westcott’s old family home in the remote Somerset village of Martock,16 and a little boy (as promised in Jack’s December correspondence) was killed in traditional Masonic style at Bradford. The child murdered at Martock had a cord fastened around her neck. But ‘death was not caused by strangulation, and there was no mark left round the neck by the cord’.17 Described as having a ‘slip-knot’,18 this cord was no less Jack’s calling card than anything he visited upon the unfortunate women in Whitechapel. It’s a classic piece of Masonic symbolism, called a ‘cable-tow’. ‘Well known to every Mason’ – and worn by all candidates at initiation – ‘it is an emblem of death, symbolically fastened round the necks of captives to show that they were absolutely at the mercy of their conquerors.’19

  I think both the Martock and the Bradford atrocities fall within the parameters of the Fiend’s Funny Little Game with Charlie Warren. So what was the connection between ‘Charlie, Dear Charlie’ and the Golden Dawn?

  On the night before the murder of Mary Jane Kelly, 8 November 1888, a meeting of Warren’s Quatuor Coronati Lodge was held at Freemasons’ Hall. Present that evening were about thirty members and guests, including some names of interest. A Founder Member, listed as second in seniority only to Warren himself, was William Harry Rylands, Past Assistant Director of Ceremonies, and Secretary of the Society of Biblical Archaeology at 9 Conduit Street – a street, it will be remembered, of no little importance to my candidate, and to someone signing himself ‘Jack the Ripper’. One of Rylands’ Biblical Archaeological members, and an officer of Michael Maybrick’s ‘Orpheus’ Chapter, the Reverend Charles James Ball, was also present. As was yet another of Maybrick’s Masonic intimates, William Matthew Bywater, an officer of ‘Orpheus’, and Number 11 on Warren’s Quatuor Coronati roll-call. Maybrick had some pals inside Bro Warren’s lodge.20

  But there were more important faces present. Bro William Wynn Westcott, of the Osiris Temple at Weston, who had joined the Quatuor Coronati two years previously, on 2 December 1886, was to receive a distinction that night. He was appointed an officer of the Quatuor Coronati Lodge, and Bro MacGregor Mathers, of the Horus Temple at Bradford, was there to congratulate him.21

  The first Grand Master and founder of the Lodge, Number 1, Bro Sir Charles Warren, was expected to attend, ‘but was detained owing to the necessity of preparing for the Lord Mayor’s Show’ on the following day, 9 November22 – which was to include the additional spectacle of the dismemberment of Mary Kelly (according to the instructions of Ezekiel) about twelve hours hence. Warren and Westcott were Masonically close, as were Westcott and Mathers, both of whom were familiar faces at Warren’s lodge. If nothing else, this meeting of the Quatuor Coronati demonstrates an exclusive association between Westcott, Mathers and Warren, and by definition the latter’s association with the Golden Dawn.

  I think that when Warren saw the Birmingham artwork (initialled in the top left-hand corner by his ‘eyes and ears’, Bro Inspector Donald Swanson), he could read it as readily as Bro Gilbert, and that it was as clear to him as the writing on the wall. I think it must have smacked him around the head like a sockful of wet sand, because it would have shown him, unequivocally, that Jack the Ripper was on the inside.

  From November 1888, the Ripper began to threaten the murder of children. He wrote that he was going to kill a little boy of about seven years, and in Bradford he killed a little boy aged eight. He wrote that he was going to kill a little girl, and in Somerset he killed a little girl aged ten.

  It isn’t surprising that the ‘Melvin School’ of Ripperology has kept well clear of the murders of Emma Davey and little Johnnie Gill. Bang goes the ‘canonical’, already risible after the Scotland Yard trunk. In the light of these murders, you’d have to share the cognisance of an earthworm not to abandon the ‘hoax’ routine in respect of Jack’s mail. If they’re hoaxes, they’re written by a team of independent clairvoyants, predicting with uncanny accuracy the Ripper’s itinerary over the next forty days.

  On 14 November 1888 the Murderer to Her Majesty wrote, ‘I am going to commit 3 more, 2 girls and a boy about 7 years this time,’23 and on 20 November he threatens that his next job will be ‘head off and legs off’, adding, ‘please will you pass this onto sir Charlie dear Charlie’.24 On 26 November he will murder some ‘young youth’, and it will be worse than the women: ‘I shall take their hearts, and rip them up in the same way’; and on 27 November, ‘I shall give the police enough running around on Christmas,’ a promise reiterated on 3 December in a letter signed ‘Jack the Ripper’ and addressed personally to Sir Charles Warren at Scotland Yard: ‘I will send you something for a Christmas Box.’

  Because the Ripper was a trash act, his melodramatic impulse never rises much above that of the spiteful child, and his thinking is therefore relatively easy to interpret. He was going to give ‘Charlie’ a dead boy for Christmas. If the coppers were stupid enough to be duped by their own propaganda, believing they had evaporated the bastard with ‘suicide’ after Miller’s Court, the next outrage would surely disabuse them. Bro Jack was going to conjugate every insult in his Masonic death spree to assault Bro Warren’s Freemasonry like a sledgehammer.

  Following the murder of little Johnnie Gill, it is a bitter indictment that the Bradford press were able to comprehend something that was apparently far beyond the deductive competence of the Metropolitan Police. On Saturday, 5 January 1889, à propos of the little girl butchered in Somerset, the Bradford Daily Telegraph wrote: ‘It is stated that the popular belief in the vicinity of the crime is that “Jack the Ripper” is on a murderous tour.’ This assumption was echoed in the Bradford Observer of Tuesday, 8 January: ‘People seriously maintain an impression that “Jack the Ripper” has visited Bradford in the course of a provincial tour.’

  By extraordinary coincidence, Michael Maybrick was also on a ‘provincial tour’ in the autumn/winter of 1888–89. Like his aforementioned contemporaries Ada Crossley and Mr Durward Lely, he was city-hopping all over England, clocking up hundreds of r
ailway miles every day. By way of brief example, on 20 November 1888 he was singing at the Free Trades Hall in Manchester,25 from where, by extraordinary coincidence, Jack the Ripper mailed a letter: ‘I am now in Manchester.’ And the following night, 21 November, Maybrick was back in London, at St James’s Hall.26 The day after, 22 November, he was performing in Glasgow,27 shifting east on 23–24 November to ‘shout’ at Edinburgh.28 Then back to St James’s Hall, London, on 26 November, travelling to Sheffield next day, 27 November,29 and clattering back over the rails for St James’s Hall again, singing in a concert there on 28 November.30

  This endless criss-crossing of the Kingdom would of course provide excellent opportunity for anyone, should he be so inclined, to mail his childish insults from where he would – Birmingham, Liverpool, Glasgow. At every terminus, at every change of trains, this compulsively itinerant ‘team of hoaxers’ on ‘Her Majesty’s Service’ could pop another one into the box. Except they weren’t a team, they were one and the same man, and he wasn’t a ‘hoaxer’. He was Jack the Ripper on a ‘provincial tour’.

  Mailed out of Glasgow on 19 November 1888, this collage prefaces the religious mania of the Alice McKenzie letter the following year (30 July 1889). Homicide is God’s business there: ‘that the Lord hath designed it to do’, and murder the Lord’s mouthpiece here: ‘THE LORD WILL DO HIS guaranteed WORK.’

  Meanwhile the author is ‘IN A FIRST CLASS [railway carriage] AT GOVAN’, a borough south of the River Clyde just outside the municipal boundaries of Glasgow. The card is signed ‘NO CLUE’ – except that Michael Maybrick was habitually sitting in first-class railway carriages, and repeatedly in and out of Scotland, that same week. Hundreds upon hundreds of miles were travelled between venues. On 19 December 1888 a scrawl signed ‘Jack the ripper’ confided, ‘I have come to Liverpool you will soon hear of me.’