On the day of his murder Hiram was alone in the building – at least, according to the legend he believed he was alone – when three figures emerged from three sides.
At the south gate he is accosted by the first of the Assassins. ‘Give me the Master Mason’s word,’ demands Jubela, ‘or I will take your life.’
‘I cannot give it now,’ protests Hiram. ‘But if you will wait until the Temple is completed, and the Grand Lodge assembles at Jerusalem, if you are worthy, you shall then receive it, otherwise you cannot.’
‘Talk not to me of Temple or Grand Lodges! Give me the word, or die.’
Thereupon, Jubela strikes Hiram across the throat with a twenty-four-inch gauge. In fear for his life, Hiram retreats to the west gate, where once more he is waylaid.
‘Give me the grip and word of a Master Mason,’ demands Jubelo, ‘or die.’
Again Hiram refuses, and Jubelo strikes him across the breast with a square. In desperation the Grand Master seeks exit via the east gate, only to find his way blocked again, by the last of the Assassins.
‘Give me the grip and password of a Master Mason,’ demands Jubelum, ‘or die.’
At the east gate threat becomes reality. Jubelum strikes Hiram a fatal blow to the forehead with his gavel, and the great architect falls dead to the temple floor.
It isn’t long before Solomon realises Hiram is missing, and a search party is sent out. Later in the day a crude grave is discovered, marked by an incriminating sprig of acacia. Soon after, the Assassins themselves are found, hiding like curs in a cave. With much lamentation and contrition, they are bound and brought back to face the wrath of Solomon. The severity of his judgement and subsequent punishments constitute the acme of revenge in Masonic ritual. All three murderous Jews are sentenced to die by the King, put to death in the following horrendous manner.
JUBELA: Vile and impious wretch, hold up your head and hear your sentence. It is my order that you be taken without the walls of the Temple, and there have your throat cut across from ear to ear, your tongue torn out by the root, your body buried in the rough sands of the sea, where the tide ebbs and flows twice in twenty-four hours.
JUBELO: Vile and impious wretch, etc., etc. It is my order that you be taken without the gates of the Temple, and have your left breast torn open, your heart and vitals taken from thence and thrown over your left shoulder, and carried to the valley of Jehosaphat, there to become a prey to the wild beasts in the field, and vultures of the air.
JUBELUM: Vile and impious wretch, etc. It is my order that you be taken without the walls of the Temple, and there have your body severed in two, and divided to the north and south, your bowels burnt to ashes in the centre, and scattered to the four winds of heaven.21
Pretty stringent even by Biblical standards. Mix it with a psychopath and you’re well on your way to Whitechapel. Permutations of these horrors can readily be identified in all of the Ripper’s victims. One was severed in two (‘the Scotland Yard trunk’), one had her bowels burnt to ashes (Mary Jane Kelly), more than one had her ‘vitals’ thrown over her shoulder (Annie Chapman, Catherine Eddowes), and all had their throats cut across. The vengeance and ritual execution is the story of the ‘Three Ruffians’, and to his profound amusement, it is the story Jack the Ripper was telling.
Infantile attempts to present Commissioner Warren as a Masonic novice, and thus incapable of recognising these horrors, is to wilfully misrepresent what all Masons knew, and who Warren actually was. In the year of the consecration of his Lodge of Masonic Research (1886), Warren’s fellow founding member Professor T. Hayter Lewis read a paper entitled ‘An Early Version of the Hiram Legend’, to which Warren replied in amused understatement, ‘I think I do know something about the Temple at Jerusalem.’22
Most certainly he did. He had its dirt in his fingernails, and scars on his back, and was probably better informed about Hiram Abiff and his Three Jewish Assassins than any other man on earth.
An almost endearing characteristic of Ripperology is its enthusiasm for taking some of the greatest liars of the nineteenth century at their word. They’ve got it into their heads that policemen like Sir Charles Warren and Assistant Met Commissioner Sir Robert Anderson are on their side, and that they’re all ‘mucking in together’ in the great conundrum of detection. Personally, I wouldn’t give the servants of so perfidious a System the benefit of a modest doubt. The subordinates of that exalted crowd were no more likely to have anything to do with the truth than their political paymasters.
They almost blew it at Cleveland Street, but nothing less than the same machine, and for much the same reasons, was at work to secure the anonymity of London’s ‘mystery fiend’.
The prostitutes of Whitechapel were under threat from more than just the hazards of their trade. There was also the constant virus of official disinformation. The bogey of ‘Leather Apron’ was speedily superseded by the truly awful prospect of ‘the Womb-Collector’. This extraordinary gent, whose provenance must wait, had no more substance than a whiff of scent from a passing tooth fairy. He was a figment of panicked imagination, and about as credible as Kosminski and his dazzling wrist. ‘The Womb-Collector’ was just one of many fabulous creatures invented by the authorities; he would later pupate into ‘the Insane Medical Student’, metamorphosing as and when required.
I’m not going to trouble the reader just yet with a roll-call of also-rans, who at this juncture are best left in their lairs. However, there is one ludicrous suspect (albeit of profound ancillary importance) that we need to haul into the light before returning him to his state-funded mausoleum at Frogmore in Windsor. He was a member of the very upper classes indeed, a Freemason, and far from the usual lairs, this one lived in a palace. He was, of course, none other than Queen Victoria’s dissolute grandson, Prince Albert Victor, the Duke of Clarence.
Problems for the fans of Clarence as Jack the Ripper get into the queue on page one. The least of them is that he was out of town, and provably so, when he needed to be in London murdering. The folly of perusing this effete little half-wit almost spares his inclusion in my list of no-hopers, but Clarence carries important luggage in which I have a more than casual interest.
Nobody could take this unfortunate royal as a serious contender, yet in his book The Final Solution (1976), an otherwise intelligent journalist called Stephen Knight did. His is a well-presented dissertation of comprehensive nonsense. Every facet of it is ridiculous. It is a twerp history.
So where did he get it? Well, without beating a way through the camouflage, like Kosminski (Robert Anderson), and ‘the Womb-Collector’ (a Masonic coroner), the Duke of Clarence originates courtesy of the System – to wit, the Metropolitan Police.
The theory promoting Clarence is so absurd it falls apart even as you tell it. But I’ll try to deal with its mechanics as quickly as I can. The gist is something like this.
Despite being a practising homosexual, and of a class that considered working people as shit, the Duke of Clarence, in a moment of regal amnesia, forgets all this and puts a bun in the oven of a whore called Annie Crook. We know he got her pregnant, because he hired future Ripper victim Mary Jane Kelly as a nursemaid. This compelling scenario is compounded by the fact that Crook is a Catholic, which was something up with which Buckingham Palace would not put. But being the decent chap he is, Clarence does the right thing and marries her in a secret ceremony, possibly over Hoxton way.
A major ingredient of this twaddle has already gone into the toilet. It seems implausible that Clarence should clandestinely marry a Catholic prostitute at a time when he was concurrently, and quite openly, attempting to marry a Catholic princess. The Palace wasn’t the problem. It was the Princess’s Catholic father, the pretender to the French throne the Count of Paris, who didn’t like the idea.
But back to the newlyweds. Marital bliss was rapidly