Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
News

6 Suspects in Jack the Ripper Case

In the past 50 years, armchair theorists have accused numerous prominent Victorians of being the Whitechapel murderer. Here are the most outrageous suspects.

Lewis Carroll

The anagrams of sentences in Carroll’s books described the killings in detail, Richard Wallace argued in his 1996 book “Jack the Ripper, Light-Hearted Friend.”

King Leopold II of Belgium

The monarch presided over a vicious slave trade victimizing the population of the Congo. Writer Jacquemine Charrot Lodwidge speculated that Leopold became unhinged after a visit to the Congo, and that a psychic identified him to the police as the Ripper.

Vincent Van Gogh

The artist’s painting “Irises” supposedly contains concealed images of the face and body of Ripper victim Mary Jane Kelly, Dale Larner argued in the forthcoming book “Vincent Alias Jack.”

Hidden Message? Vincent van Gogh’s ‘Irises’ supposedly contains concealed images of the face and body of Ripper victim Mary Jane Kelly. Image by Wikimedia Commons

Boston Corbett

The man who shot Abraham Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth, was a religious fanatic who, according to author Jacob Corbett (not a relative), castrated himself to prevent temptation from prostitutes, and later killed people as the Ripper in revenge for his own self-mutilation.

William Gladstone

The former British prime minister was a zealous opponent of prostitution who invited streetwalkers into his house for tea to persuade them to change professions. He was accused of adopting a violent approach to showing these women the error of their ways.

Sir William Gull

Queen Victoria’s physician was accused of committing the crimes along with Scotland Yard’s Robert Anderson and the painter Walter Sickert as part of a Masonic conspiracy to conceal the existence of an illegitimate daughter of the Queen’s grandson, the Duke of Clarence.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.