We've got to get a little bit serious with this week's conspiracy theory, as it involves murder and two of the biggest names in history. Whilst Lewis Carroll and Jack The Ripper are a million miles away from one another on the face of things, there are some who believe that they are in fact the same person, and not at all that different after all! With Jack The Ripper never unmasked, could it be that the author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was also a crazed psychopath?
Where did the conspiracy come from?
Back in 1996, author Richard Wallace offered up his theory that something dangerous was lurking behind the calm and collected persona presented by Carroll. He claimed that the writer may have had a second personality, and could be responsible for some of the most infamous slayings in British criminal history.
How are the two tied together?
Carroll was born in 1832, and lived until he was aged 65, dying in January 1898. Jack The Ripper murdered and mutilated at least five women in 1888 in London's Whitechapel district, and some believe he remained active until 1891.
Initial suspects included Queen Victoria's personal physician, William Gull, whilst another man named Charles Cross was suspected because murders took place in areas between his home and place of work. Then there was James Maybrick, who's said to have left a diary confessing to the crimes. None were ever 100% proven however, and it's unlikely we'll ever know exactly who was behind the killings.
So why Carroll's name all these years later?
For a start, the author had a personal library with over 100 books on medical topics, which could have given him the education he'd need to vivisect his victims in the way Jack The Ripper did.
Then there's the case of how he was in the right location to have committed the crimes during their taking place.
The strangest piece of 'evidence'given by Wallace however, is his anagrammatical take on some of Carroll's work. In The Nursery Alice, one sentence in particular can be turned into: "If I find one street whore, you know what will happen! ‘Twill be off with her head!"
Wallace then combines this with another paragraph, turning the whole thing into: "Oh, we, Thomas Bayne, Charles Dodgson, coited into the slain, nude body, expected to taste, devour, enjoy a nice meal of a dead whore’s uterus. We made do, found it awful—wan and tough like a worn, dirty, goat hog. We both threw it out. – Jack the Ripper".
Charles Dodgson is Carroll's real name, whilst Thomas Bayne was a lifelong friend of his. Could the two have teamed up to take down the women of London for no reason other than to whet their appetites for murder? Unlikely, but we'll never know for sure...
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