10 Theories About The Identity Of Jack The Ripper

The main problem with the rather fantastical Lewis Carroll/Jack the Ripper theory? Given enough letters to play with, you can find anagrams that point to murder in nearly any collection of sentences in the English language. Critics of the theory did just that, taking an example from A. A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh and finding passages that fingered him as the killer. Oh bother.

The more you dig, the less likely the Carroll connection is to be based in fact. Some of the supposed cryptic messages found in Carroll's writings were, at best, little more than gibberish. Even by the standards of an author known for nonsense poems like The Jabberwocky.

Beyond that, Lewis appears to have an ironclad alibi during the Autumn of Terror in Whitechapel, while Vere Bayne suffered from back pain so severe that in the summer of 1888, he was reportedly barely able to move. Not much of an accomplice, in other words. The idea of Jack the Ripper having a partner in crime, while not totally unique to the Carroll theory (Sir William Gull, himself a Ripper suspect, allegedly had coachman John Netley aiding him), also makes it all the less likely. Nowhere in any of his writings did Jack the Ripper ever suggest any other figures were involved in his crimes, and there was precious little in the way of physical evidence suggesting it.