Was Jack the Ripper a Singer Protected by the Masons?

A turn through the Monday papers over a full English breakfast here in London this morning turned up an interesting story about a trove of formerly secret documents about the Masons stretching back to 1733 that’s been made public.

The eye-catching headline in the print edition of The Daily Mail claimed that Masons protected their friends when it came to the inquiry held into the sinking of the Titanic, essentially fixing the outcome so no one was prosecuted. Deeper in the story is a line about Jack the Ripper being a Mason who was also protected by his fellows but doesn’t go much deeper.

However, the Mail Online picks up the story.

Jack the Ripper may finally have been unmasked following a claim he was an ‘obscure singer who was protected by Masonic police’.

The theory was put forward by an author of a new book who believes that all of the Ripper killings were the feature of Masonic ritual and the notorious Whitechapel murderer was a man called Michael Maybrick.

The author argues that citing the symbol of a pair of compasses carved into the face of Catherine Eddowes, the removal of meal buttons and coins from the bodies of Eddowes were all signs of Mason’s custom.

Now, in an extraordinary turn of events, new archives prove for the first time that Maybrick and his brother James – who has previously been named as the Ripper – were both Masons.

Read more here.