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Jack the Ripper: The Hand of a Woman
by John Morris

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Book Summary
Written by the Author John Morris (John Morris is a retired solicitor, currently living in County Wicklow, Ireland)

When Victorian London was terrorised by serial killer, Jack the Ripper, in the autumn of 1888, the police should have actually been searching for a Jill.

Jack the Ripper was not in fact Sir William Gull, Walter Sickert, the Duke of Clarence or any one of the dozens of villains who have been suspected, from time to time, as being Britain’s most notorious murderer, but one Lizzie Williams, a woman.

Mary Elizabeth Hughes, Lizzie, an upper middle-class, middle-aged housewife from Wales, was the wife of Royal gynaecologist, Dr John Williams, a surgeon so eminent that he even became Queen Victoria’s family doctor.

My Eureka moment came in 2005 when I read a new book in which Dr John Williams was named as Jack the Ripper. My father was a historical researcher and he had just completed his exhaustive research into the life of Dr Williams.

Dr Williams enjoyed an affair with the Ripper’s last victim, a young pretty Irish girl from Limerick, named Mary Kelly. But we were unable to pinpoint a single reason why he would want to murder her. However, there was every reason why his wife, Lizzie, would want her out of the way.

Lizzie Williams was the daughter of Richard Hughes, a wealthy Swansea businessman. She loved her husband at the outset, but while he was desperate for a child, she was infertile and unable to conceive. As time went by, he fell out of love with her and started an affair with Mary Kelly. This distressed Lizzie greatly, but her family money gave her the consolation she needed.

But in the summer of 1888, Lizzie’s father lost all his money. Suddenly she found herself married to a man who no longer loved her, and her own money was gone. She became concerned that Dr Williams would abandon her, or even father a baby by Kelly. And so she set out to murder her and put her out of the way. It was jealousy, pure and simple.

Everybody assumes that Jack the Ripper was a man. But this is only because the police received a letter signed ‘Jack the Ripper’, admitting to the murders, and the horrendous nature of the crimes. Three of the five victims had their uterus taken, whilst an attempt to take the uterus of the first victim failed.

But our investigation showed us was that the letter was a fake. It was written by Frederick Best, a journalist at the Star newspaper, to increase circulation figures. This was at the behest of Thomas P. O’Conner also of Limerick, one of Fleet Street’s greatest newspaper barons.

And as for the crimes, the type of attack committed by Jack the Ripper, the theft or attempted theft of uteri, have only ever since this time, been committed by women.

Of all the suspects proposed as Jack the Ripper, only one possessed all the attributes the murderer needed to commit such terrible crimes, and only one had the means the motive and the opportunity to do so. Lizzie Williams was that person.
 

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