ABSTRACT, - KNIGHT, STEPHEN – JACK THE RIPPER: THE FINAL SOLUTION.1976. Harrap & Co. One of the best-written and conclusive
modern investigations into the Whitehapel murders of 1888, though it is not the final one, as many theories have arisen since Knight’s work emerged. Knight was working on a BBC documentary about Jack, and the book continues his study of the case. His most radical discovery was that the five
victims of the killer all knew each other. They were prostitutes in the East End slum district of Whitechapel. They were whores in a close-knit communal network. Knight believes that Jack, (a name coined by the media at the time), was not a random serial killer, but that he was an assassin, or a group of killers sent out to silence the five women to cover up for royal indiscretions. It is believed that a leading member of the Victorian royal family had impregnated one of Jack’s victims. The killings were conducted by the British Secret Service to avoid a scandal that could have shaken the Empire to its core. It is a bold theory, for which Knight produces some credible evidence. At some point, jack, or an ally, wrote in calk on a wall near to one of his victims, the word Jewes. A British bobby wiped the word away. The incident was logged in the records but never made public. The assumption by criminologists was that the wording was erased to avoid anti-Semitism, but the spelling, to Knight, was an indication of the
involvement in the case of the Freemasons (he wrote a later book, The Brotherhood on the extent British police involvement in Freemasonry). The book was well thought out, and sold well. It inspired a Sherlock Holmes movie, Murder By Decree, which had Holmes come to exactly the same discovery as Knight had done. Alan Moore later used the story again for his graphic Novel From Hell, which was it filmed soon afterwards.