Meanwhile, on 23 April 1888, St George’s Chapter (42) presented an MWS Jewel (Most Wise Sovereign of a Rose Croix Chapter) to Bro Michael Maybrick ‘for services rendered during the past year’.14 His award was conferred by a galaxy of eminence, representing some of the most distinguished names in English Masonry. Only one need detain us.
Colonel Thomas Henry Shadwell Clerke, author of the quote at the beginning of Chapter 3, Grand Secretary of English Freemasons and liaison officer between Masonry and the Prince of Wales, was a close personal friend of Michael Maybrick.15 Whenever Edward failed to show, which was just about always, it was Shadwell Clerke who made the apologies. ‘As regards H.R.H.,’ he was oft to say, ‘the brethren must not fancy, because they do not see him at their meetings, that he is neglectful of the Craft.’ He (Clerke) could assure them from personal knowledge that HRH ‘took the greatest interest in all that concerned Masonry’. When their MWGM (Most Worshipful Grand Master) was in London, he (Clerke) ‘was in constant attendance at Marlborough House, for all matters of importance were submitted to H.R.H.’. And further, if they couldn’t have the fat man, ‘The names of Lord Carnarvon and Lathom were well known, for these two Brethren exercised a watchful care over all that affected Freemasonry.’
In the matter of James Maybrick, more watchful eyes could hardly be imagined. But back to Bro Michael, who was no less eminent a Mason than Lathom and Clerke, serving, as they did, as an Officer of the Grand Lodge, a body constituting the zenith of Freemasonic authority in the land.
I put Michael Maybrick into the picture not with the intention of impugning anyone around him, but to demonstrate just how much a part of the picture he was. Maybrick was no less a public celebrity than he was (in occult places) a celebrated Freemason, both facts that put him inside the inner social circles of London’s greatest past-master of decadence, Edward, Prince of Wales.
Nothing encapsulates this more succinctly than his membership of the Savage. Maybrick joined on 5 July 1880, preceding His Royal Highness’s initiation by a couple of years. By the time Maybrick walked through its portals at 6–7 Adelphi Terrace, the club had elevated itself into something of significance, opening its doors to ‘practitioners of every branch of science, including the law, with the result that Music Hall Stars, political cartoonists and actor-managers rubbed shoulders with distinguished lawyers such as Bro Lord Justice Moulton, Bro Sir Richard Webster, Bro Sir Edward Clerke Q.C.’ and many more who have made or will make themselves known to this narrative.
The most illustrious of them all, Edward, Prince of Wales, was invited to become a lifetime honorary member on the occasion of the club’s twenty-fifth anniversary, in April 1882. He was further invited to nominate one or two pals as special guests, and selected a duo who wouldn’t have spoiled Michael Maybrick’s evening, because, at the risk of labouring it, Sir Arthur Sullivan and Sir Frederick Leighton were special friends of his too.
It’s perhaps worth pointing out that, just as Michael Maybrick was one of Sullivan’s closest friends, so too was Sir Charles Russell QC MP, making subsequent events at the High Court in Liverpool more than somewhat mind-blowing. (It was Russell who was to ‘defend’ Florence Maybrick against the charge of murdering her husband James.)
But I’ve run out of detour, and return to the Savage and its special gala night. It was what the Victorians liked to describe as ‘a singular occasion’, with actors, musicians, singers and wits all eager to do their dazzling thing. Among them was Wilhelm Ganz, a leading light in Masonic and musical circles, and long a friend of Michael Maybrick. By coincidence, Ganz lived a few doors down from Sir Charles Russell in Harley Street.
‘The entertainment which followed the annual dinner, was similar to that which occurs every Saturday evening,’ wrote the man from the Illustrated London News, ‘and Mr Harry Furniss has happily depicted the best points of it in our engraving.’
Michael Maybrick is represented at the piano (middle row, second from right). His performance that evening was preceded by Mr George Grossmith’s rendition of ‘Itinerant Niggers’, the fun of which must have contrasted agreeably with the pathos of Maybrick’s ‘The Midshipmite’, his hit song from 1879.
Leighton, Sullivan, Russell and Maybrick were fellow Savages and fellow Masons. They were among the men ‘in the know’, as Rudyard Kipling put it, who between politics and Freemasonry and the law knew just about everything there was to know. Like His Royal Highness’s plenipotentiary Bro Sir Francis Knollys, ‘who saw everything, heard everything, and was consulted about everything for forty-two years’, and who, above all, ‘knew how to be silent’, so did this confederacy of savages.16
In 1888 the Worshipful Master of the Savage Lodge was J. Somers Vine MP, installed in February of that year at Freemasons’ Hall by Maybrick’s fraternal pal Bro Colonel Thomas Shadwell Clerke, in the presence of a distinguished assembly that included the Earl of Lathom. Almost exactly a year later the proceedings were replicated for the incoming Worshipful Master, Bro Thomas Catling. On the grand night of installation, Catling put all propriety aside and rose amidst the toasts to propose ‘the election of an honorary member of the Savage Club Lodge, the Right Worshipful H.R.H., Prince Albert Victor, the Duke of Clarence’.
Clarence’s membership was unanimously approved and applauded, but not every member had been able to attend. The future Commander of Her Majesty’s Army, Bro Lord Wolseley, regretted that the pressure of official duties precluded his presence, a sentiment echoed by the Lord Chancellor, Bro Lord Halsbury. Further apologies were received from a Brother who wrote that he ‘had been looking forward with great pleasure to the evening’s entertainment, but was prevented by sudden indisposition’, leaving one wondering just what Police Commissioner Sir Charles Warren was busy with.17
With Thomas Catling and Dr Gordon Brown (and possibly even Sir Charles Warren) as fraternal associates of Michael Maybrick, both (short of murdering her themselves) were as intimate as it got to the slaying of Catherine Eddowes. It becomes incredible to claim their supposed first publication in 1987 as a disqualification for the authenticity of the words ‘Damn it, the tin box was empty’ in the Liverpool Document.
It was in the course of my research into Michael Maybrick that I discovered that his brother James was a Freemason. This wasn’t without interest, because I was certain Michael had murdered James, and framed James’s wife Florence for the deed. I was also certain that the flagrancy of the Masonic ‘clues’ decorating the crime scenes in Whitechapel was grist to the enterprise, as indeed was his so-called ‘diary’. In other words, they were the work of a crazy Mason, or someone trying to blame one. It wasn’t just Florence who was to be framed. It was also Brother Jim. James was not only married to an American, but had spent years living in the United States. Hence the ‘Americanisms’ in the Ripper correspondence (of which more later). The clues Jack left were the servants of a unique criminal, and presented an intriguing scenario.
But with James Maybrick in ceremonial apron, the jigsaw began to shape up. The Ripper was flaunting Freemasonry, and James was a murdered Freemason whose Masonry was suppressed by Freemasons. You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to find something of interest in that. As has been mentioned, James has been considered by some as a Ripper candidate. Mr Paul Feldman wrote a sizeable book about just such a possibility,18 as did Mrs Shirley Harrison. Between them these two authors share perhaps a decade of research, yet neither of them, and subsequently no one plaguing the internet for twenty years after, has ever discovered James Maybrick’s ‘Masonic secret’.19
The obvious question is, why