Ripper Redux

This stuff always interests us: There's a new theory about Jack the Ripper. This one says he was a sailor and struck in countries besides England. Link.

Here's an excerpt of biographical sketches of a few JR suspects:

About 140 people have been fingered for the Ripper's crimes over the years, including:

· George Chapman A Polish immigrant arrested in 1902 for poisoning several women, including his wife. Chapman's arrival in England coincided with the start of the Whitechapel murders and the killings ceased when he went to America.

· Prince Albert Victor According to one theory, Prince Albert, Queen Victoria's grandson, committed the murders after being driven mad by syphilis. According to another, the murders were committed with the aid of Victoria's physician, Sir William Gull, as part of a cover-up to protect the royal family from Albert's affair with a Catholic commoner whose nanny was Mary Kelly.

· Walter Sickert German-born painter who supposedly trawled the East End for prostitutes to model for him. One of his paintings, The Camden Town Murder, is said to bear a striking resemblance to the Mary Kelly murder scene.

· James Maybrick Liverpool cotton merchant who frequented brothels and was addicted to arsenic and strychnine. In the early 1990s Michael Barrett, a former Liverpool scrap merchant, "discovered" a diary in which Maybrick confessed to the Whitechapel murders. Barrett later confessed to forging the diaries.

· Francis Tumblety An American quack doctor who was in London at the time of the murders. Named as a suspect in 1913 by former special branch chief JG Littlechild, Tumblety was a sadist and homosexual who kept female body parts in a cabinet in his home.

· Sir John Williams Queen Victoria's former obstetrician and founder of the National Library of Wales, Williams is the latest Ripper suspect. According to his great-great nephew, Swansea author Tony Williams, he was obsessed with female anatomy and infertility because of his wife's failure to conceive. He also worked at the Whitechapel workhouse infirmary, where he treated Mary Ann Nichols and three other Ripper victims.