Prince Albert Victor
Prince Albert Victor Christian Edward, the grandson of Queen Victoria, was the most famous of all Ripper suspects. Called Eddy, the prince was reported to be rather dull and not overly bright. He would, had he outlived his father, have been heir to the British crown.
The Prince was not considered a suspect at the time of the killings, but began to appear in books on Jack the Ripper after 1962 and more extensively after the publication of Dr. Thomas Stowell’s article, “A Solution”. Stowell, claimed to rely upon papers from the royal physical, Sir Thomas Gull.
Stowell claimed that the Prince had contracted syphilis, and became insane as a result of brain lesions associated with the disease. Stowell also claimed the cause of the prince’s death was faked; however, Gull died prior to Prince Albert Victor. Royal records show that the Prince was not present in London on the dates of the various Ripper killings.
Other ripperologists have linked Prince Albert Victor to the Ripper killings in other ways. Some have suggested that James Stephens, the Prince’s tutor at Cambridge, was the Ripper. Stephens suffered a traumatic brain injury in 1887, leading to madness. While there are no known instances of violence, Stephens produced a number of poems that are quite violent toward women.
It has been suggested that James Stephens and Prince Albert Victor had a romantic and sexual relationship, and at least one theory suggests that Albert Victor was an accomplice to the crimes. More extensive theories claim a royal conspiracy in which the Ripper killings were actually part of a cover-up of a royal scandal.
Prince Albert Victor could not, simply by virtue of his location, be the Ripper. As to James Stephens, he had no connections with the Whitechapel area and was never known to be violent.