John Williams, AKA Uncle Jack, and his surgical knife.
When it comes to characters suspected of being Jack the Ripper, the most interesting theory is the belief that Queen Victoria’s personal surgeon, John Williams, had the free time to butcher five prostitutes when he wasn’t attending to the queen’s medical needs. One of many reasonable theories, it’s gaining popularity as the years go on. Now, it’s looking as if more fuel is being added to the fire surrounding John Williams. Is this six-inch surgeon’s knife found in John Williams’s possessions the knife of Jack The Ripper?
”It is widely know that the person who carried out the killings would have had significant medical knowledge. ’Sir John Williams was an accomplished surgeon and routinely performed abortions on women. He held surgeries all over London at the time of the murders,” said Tony Williams, the great-great-great-great nephew of Sir John. ”Dr. Thomas Bond, a pathologist who examined the body of Mary Kelly, said the ripper had used the same six inch knife in all the murders. ’He said it would have been at least six inches long, very sharp, pointed at the top and about an inch in width – a surgeon’s knife. ’This is the knife that fits the description that I’ve held in my hand back in the National Library of Wales.”
John Williams, a Welshman known as Uncle Jack to his family, left London after the killings to return to his native Wales. There he founded the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth. When he died in 1926, he bequeathed the bulk of his money and belongings to the library, which has them to this very day; indeed, the National Library is where Tony Williams first encountered his long-dead uncle’s surgeon’s knife and three glass slides smeared with uterine matter.
Williams was obsessed with infertility treatments (his wife was barren) and he had even performed an abortion on Ripper victim Mary Ann Nicholls in the infirmary of a Whitechapel workhouse, which suggests he knew the victim and spent time in the Whitechapel area. Given the skill needed for surgery, and the surgical precision of Jack The Ripper’s disembowelings, it seems more reasonable than most other theories.
Tags: Sir John Williams, Tony Williams, National Library of Wales, Queen Victoria, Uncle Jack, Jack the Ripper, Jack the Ripper’s knife, Sir John Williams is Jack The Ripper, Queen Victoria’s surgeon John Williams suspected of being Jack the Ripper, Jack the Ripper knife, Whitechapel Murders, Aberystwyth, Whitechapel, Mary Ann Nicholls
