Donston,Gurney & Brighton...by Aliffe

[How Brown]

A big special thanks to Spiro Dimolianis for his efforts in transcribing the article by Andy Aliffe which follows. This is the article which Andy provided for the attendees at the recent 2005 Brighton Conference.
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A STRANGE CASE OF ASSOCIATIONS
Roslyn D’Onston, The Society of Psychical Research and a Death at the Royal Albion Hotel, Brighton.

By Andy Aliffe@


By the early 1900’s Brighton, like many other seaside resorts, was in decline. It’s fashionable visitors had long since departed and the middle classes were seeking other places. This left the town to the day-trippers. According to a contemporary issue of the ‘Daily Mail’, the town was an “un-enterprising, unattractive and outdated holiday resort”.

In 1901, local dignitary, hotelier and sportsman, Sir Harry Preston, purchased Brighton’s derelict Royal York Hotel. Following the refurbishment he wined and dined London newspaper editors to promote visitors, particularly motorists, to the town and to encourage them to stay at his hotel. In this he was spectacularly successful and ever the entrepreneur, in 1913, he bought for 13,550 pounds the nearby Royal Albion Hotel, which had been closed since 1900.

It could be claimed that the Royal Albion stands on the foundations of the future cause and development of Brighton’s prosperity and fame to come. The hotel is situated on the site of Russell House, built in the mid 1700’s for Dr. Richard Russell.

The small-impoverished Sussex fishing village of Brighthelmstone, Brighton’s original name, was transformed in 1750 when Dr. Russell, a resident of Lewes, published a paper called ‘A Dissertation on the Use of Seawater in the Affections of the Glands’ in which he claimed that bathing in ‘oceanic fluid’ was good for the health. The rich soon began to come to Brighton hoping to be cured of some illness by the seawater. At first they were a trickle, but later became a flood. In 1783 the Prince of Wales and his friends visited Brighton, which ensured its popularity. Suddenly Brighton began to revive and prosper.

By the 1790’s the ‘Bathing Machine’ had become a popular attraction on Brighton Beach; a guide book of the time explains how they were used ‘By means of a hook ladder the bather ascends the machine, which is formed of wood and raised on high wheels. It is drawn to a proper distance from the shore, and then plunges into the sea, guides or ‘Dippers’ attending on each side to assist. The ‘Dippers’ are strong, active and careful; and in every respect adapted to their employment’. Perhaps one of the most famous of ‘Dippers’ was Martha Gunn, whose beach pitch was opposite the site on which the Royal Albion now stands.

The Albion Hotel opened on 5 August 1823. It was designed by Amon Henry Wilds, and is an exceptionally elegant four-story building with giant Corinthian pilasters and columns, shell decorations and a large Doric porch. In 1847 it became the ‘Royal Albion’ and bears the coat of arms over the entrance. Dr. Russell is also remembered in a plaque at the hotel, which reads ‘If you seek his monument, look around’, echoing the same sentiment of Sir Christopher Wren’s monument at St. Paul’s Cathedral.

Throughout the 1920’s and early 30’s the Royal Albion became the town’s leading hotel where authors, actors, film stars, sportsmen and even the Prince of Wales were entertained by Preston who had a wonderful feel for publicity.

But the Royal Albion has a dark secret, created in 1888 by a mysterious death in one of the hotel bedrooms, investigated in the book ‘The Strange Case of Edmund Gurney’ by Trevor Hall, consulted and quoted from throughout this article.

During the evening of Friday 22nd June 1888, a gentleman named Edmund Gurney, whose home was in London arrived at the Royal Albion. He had not booked a room in advance and was not known at the hotel. Gurney had been a frequent visitor to Brighton but usually stayed in the house of Mrs Margaret Alice Smith, the mother of a local colleague. He dined alone in the coffee-room and afterwards asked a waiter for a glass of water as he went upstairs to bed at about ten o’clock. By two o’clock on Saturday afternoon Gurney had failed to respond to repeated knocking, first by the maid and then by the hotel manageress, his bedroom door, locked on the inside, was broken open.

Gurney was found dead in bed. His mouth and nose were covered by a sponge bag, and a small bottle, containing a quantity of colourless and odourless fluid, was found by his side. Gurney was forty-one, and survived by his wife and a young daughter.

Part of the obituary in the ‘Athenaeum’ dated 30th June stated: ‘The deceased suffered from obstinate sleeplessness and occasional neuralgia, prompting recourse to opiates, though he was in full social and literary activity. He succumbed to an overdose of chloroform, incautiously taken when alone at a hotel in Brighton. The body was identified by a letter found in his coat, inviting a friend to join him in the business on which he had visited Brighton’. A further obituary reference in the spiritualist magazine ‘Light’, reported that the unnamed address and recipient of the letter was referred to as ‘a colleague’, and the undisclosed objective which had brought Gurney to Brighton was described as an ‘inquiry’. It was never posted or produced as evidence at the subsequent inquest.

Gurney was born, the son of a London clergyman, at Hersham, near Walton-on-Thames, on the 23rd of March 1847. He was educated at Blackheath Proprietary School and read Classics at Trinity College, Cambridge, graduating in 1871. He was intimately acquainted with members of the artistic, political and intellectual community of his time, ranging from George Elliot, future Prime Minister Arthur Balfour and Charles Darwin.

Gurney had ambitions to become a professional musician, but recognised his own lack of talent, though he published a study of the aesthetics and psychology of music, ‘The Power of Sound’ (1880). He was a pioneer in bringing music to the underprivileged and during the mid 1870’s campaigned for a band, with a repertoire of contemporary popular tunes, to be established in the heart of London’s East End.

From music he transferred to medicine, devoting himself to physics, chemistry and physiology, studying for four years before the suffering he witnessed at the London teaching hospital, St. George’s, became too much for him to bear. So he changed again, this time to law, studying at Lincoln Inns Field between 1881 and 1883, and managed two years before giving up on this as well, apparently from terminal boredom.

Gurney had been invited in 1882 by Professor Henry Sidgwick, Professor William F. Barrett and Frederic W.H. Myers to become a founding member of the ‘Society for Psychical Research’ (SPR), which would also included in its future membership, recently suggested Ripper suspect Lewis Carroll aka Rev. Charles Dodgson, Ripper commentators Robert James Lees, W.T. Stead, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

In the role as Honorary Secretary, Gurney completed an enormous body of work including the two-volume, 1300 page collection, of anecdotal stories of psychic phenomena, entitled ‘Phantasms of the Living’, co-authored with members Myers and Frank Podmore. He also edited both the society’s periodicals, ‘The Journal’ and ‘The Proceedings’.

The reason for Gurney’s solitary visit to Brighton on 22nd June 1888 has remained undiscovered. It is however certain that it was quite different from that which had regularly brought him to Brighton during the previous five years.

Gurney’s work in Brighton for the ‘Society for Psychical Research’ during 1883 to 1888 was concerned with experiments in mesmerism and alleged thought-transference under hypnosis. The experiments took place in Brighton because the subjects were a group of working-class youths who lived in the town, introduced to the Society by a young man of eighteen (in 1882), George Albert Smith, who became Gurney’s paid private secretary from 1883 until his employers death in 1888. Gurney carried out a number of ‘hypnotic experiments’, with Smith as the ‘hypnotiser’.

George Albert Smith later became one of the most important figures in Victorian cinema. He was born on 4 January 1864 in London. After the death of his father, his mother moved the family to Brighton where she ran a boarding house on Grand Parade. In the early 1880’s Smith began to perform in small Brighton halls as a hypnotist. From 1882, Smith and his new partner Douglas Blackburn, developed a ‘second sight act’ (the assistant hides an object in the theatre and then the performer, blindfolded, leads him to it) and feats of ‘muscle-reading’ (the performer transmits to the blindfolded ‘medium’ on the stage the identity of objects selected by the audience). Successful shows were staged at the Brighton Aquarium, adjacent to the Royal Albion Hotel. Representatives of the SPR attended, believing that Smith and Blackburn had the true gift of ‘Thought Reading’.

By 1892 Smith had left the SPR and became, for a short time, a theatrical agent, before acquiring the lease to St Ann’s Well Garden in Hove, transforming it into a popular pleasure garden. The garden would also become the location for his ‘film factory’ where he built a ‘glasshouse’ studio making over thirty films by 1897. His stock company of actors included his wife Laura Eugenia Bayley and local Brighton comedian, Tom Green.

In 1905 he purchased a new home at Southwick, Sussex, and built ‘Laboratory Lodge’, where he developed early colour film processing. Today, all that remains of Smith’s film career is the park, St Ann’s Well, and a one storey shed near to Hove Railway Station, where one can still read the word ‘KINEMACOLOR’.

[How Brown]

Both Queen Victoria and King Edward the Seventh saw some of his work, and on the death of the latter, Smith took colour films of the funeral procession entering St. Georges Chapel at Windsor.

Smith was on his honeymoon in the Isle of Wight at the time of Gurney’s death making it clear that Gurney’s unexpected arrival in Brighton was not to continue with the experimental work, which had been the sole purpose of his numerous earlier stays in the town. It is, indeed, rather curious that Gurney’s last journey to Brighton should have been made during the very period when his secretary-cum-hypnotist was preoccupied elsewhere.

[How Brown]

On the evening of Thursday 21st June 1888, Gurney dinned at the House of Commons with his friend Cyril Flower M.P. When he returned to his home at 26 Montpelier Square he found a letter awaiting him asking him to go to Brighton, which he did on the following day. His wife, Mrs Kate Gurney, never knew who wrote the letter, which Gurney took with him on his last journey, although she seemed aware that he faced a catastrophe in his affairs. However she did know that it was postmarked and sent from Brighton. Either the invitation itself was urgent, or Gurney himself regarded the content of the letter not wanting a delay, left straight away. Mrs Gurney would be unlikely to appreciate that the temporary absence of G.A. Smith in the Isle of Wight meant that no experiments with the Brighton boys were possible. Kate Gurney never saw her husband alive again.

[How Brown]

Quite apart from Gurney’s failure to tell his wife who the letter was from, it seems quite obvious that the summons and the visit were not for everyday purpose, on the very reasonable assumption that Gurney went to Brighton to meet his mysterious correspondent. This unknown person did not give evidence at the inquest and presumably was not discovered by the police despite the extreme likelihood that he or she was the last person to see and talk to Gurney alive, apart from the staff of the Royal Albion Hotel.

Why on this last journey to Brighton, did he choose a large hotel where, in the event, his body could only be identified by the opening of a letter found in his pocket? If he had signed the hotel register, why had he not given his address? Nothing else was found about his person or room. No visiting cards, diary, wallet, bills or other papers and letters, which could have immediately revealed his identity. Intriguingly the one obvious missing item was the letter urging him to come to Brighton!

A few hundred yards away from the Royal Albion, another man would have watched and waited with interest, as the period of events surrounding the death and inquest of Edmund Gurney were unfolding. Claiming to be a journalist, this man would have eagerly read of the much-reported tragedy in the local press.

Just around the corner from the hotel was the ‘Cricketers Inn’, then a notorious drinking den with cheap accommodation, and this, in June 1888, was the address given by alleged Jack the Ripper suspect and commentator, Roslyn D’Onston, aka Robert Donston Stephenson.

From the ‘Penny Illustrated’ January 1888. ‘Are you suffering from ‘the blues’, down with ‘the dumps’, afflicted with ‘vapours’, neuralgia, rheumatism, pains in the back, or ‘tic doloreux’? Then try my prescription! Go in for a Brighton Brightener. Remember that many a time and oft when it’s foggy and gloomy in town, the Sun shines gaily in Brighton, chasing away Dull Care, and infusing some of the salubrious sparkle of good champagne into your veins. It brings us within measurable distance of the health giving ozone of the Channel, of breezy rambles on the downs and bracing ‘dips’ in salt water. A Brighton Brightener! Elixir of life! The dose of longevity and vigour!’

D’Onston was in Brighton apparently suffering from excessive fatigue, excitability, stress and sleeplessness, the symptoms of neurosthenia. The treatment was a ‘Brighton Brightener’ rest cure: a light diet, no stimulants and plenty of fresh air.

The SPR’s attention had been called to the Whitechapel Murders by a letter published under the editorship of W.T. Stead, in the Pall Mall Gazette, dated 4th October 1888. Tom Wescott (Ripperologist 56 November 2004) suggests that ‘ it is almost certainly written by D’Onston’. That true or not, it refers to the ‘Dear Boss Letter’ and ‘Saucy Jack’ post card. The letter reads: ‘Clairvoyance’s, even if the mere local influence be sufficient to unseal their spiritual eyes, might set work upon ‘Jack the Ripper’s letter and determine whether it be genuine or a hoax. Why does the Society of Psychical Research stand ingloriously idle?’

Of D’Onston, newspaper editor, social reformer and psychical commentator, WT Stead had written: ‘He is one of the most remarkable persons I have ever met. For more than a year I was under the impression he was the veritable Jack the Ripper; an impression which I believe was shared by the police, who, at least once, had him under arrest, although, as he completely satisfied them, they liberated him without bringing him to court’.

A case has been attempted to link D’Onston and the death of Edmund Gurney in Brighton, with D’Onston as an agent acting on behalf of Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and the Theosophical Society.

Both D’Onston and Blavatsky had served under Giuseppe Garibaldi in the struggle for Italian Independence.

D’Onston joined the campaign as one of the legions of British ‘Excursionists’ with the rank of Lieutenant. Swapping sword for scalpel when needed, he gained his medical background administering wounds and amputations on the battlefields of Southern Italy.

During 1867 Blavatsky spent several months travelling in Europe. On November 3rd she was in the town of Mentana, north east of Rome. On that day the ‘Battle of Mentana’ was fought between the Italian patriots and the French. Blavatsky participated, with other women, although unconfirmed sources say she fought disguised as a man, being wounded five times, including sabre cuts to the right shoulder and broken left arm.

In the 1880’s, the ‘Society of Psychical Research’ commissioned a report by member Richard Hodgson, on fraudulent psychics and mediums, supported in a letter to the Spiritualist journal ‘Light’ by Sherlock Holmes creator and psychic investigator, Arthur Conan Doyle, quoted as saying, ‘As a Spiritualist, I for one should like to see every possible facility given to Mr Hodgson in his investigations. If Spiritualism be true and the phenomena genuine, why should mediums be warned against Mr Hodgson or any other inquirer?’ A major focus of the report was on the activities of Madame Blavatsky in India and sent Hodgson to investigate. His final report in 1885 labelled her as one of the most successful impostors in history, although Myers and Gurney were once among the witnesses to one of Madame’s most successful séances, which they were unable to explain to their own satisfaction.

Edmund Gurney had been one of the main figures in the instigation of this report and was becoming a thorn in the side of the Theosophical movement. The scenario of D’Onston and Gurney creates a picture of D’Onston, fully aware of the reported hypnotic experiments, tempting Gurney to Brighton by the mysterious content of a written communication. D’Onston as a murderer does away with Gurney in an act of retribution on behalf of his friend, mentor and confidant, Madame Blavatsky.

A fanciful idea and purely the stuff of fiction, but that Edmund Gurney and Roslyn D’Onston were acquainted, will be explored. There are many interesting connections, and associations relating to their lives and beliefs. Had they met in the foyer of the Royal Albion Hotel on that fateful night, they would surely have recognised each other, as they knew and moved within the same circle of ‘occult science’ initiates.

The Hodgson report on Blavatsky had supposedly brought to attention her fraudulent occult practices and theosophical beliefs, however an attempt to expose Blavatsky came from within her own following. Mabel Collins, fashion journalist, author and associate editor of the Theosophical Journal ‘Lucifer’ was becoming disillusioned with the movement. By 1889 her name had disappeared without comment or reason, from the pages of Lucifer’.

[How Brown]

During 1888 Mabel had corresponded and became associated with Elliot Cous. Cous was an American Theosophist, a colleague of Gurney and an early member of the SPR, who was in London in 1884 at the time the SPR was making its ‘preliminary investigation and report’ on the Theosophical phenomena. He enlisted Mabel’s help in trying to discredit Blavatsky and leading members of the Theosophical movement.

On May 11, 1889, there appeared in the “Religio-Philosophical Journal” a correspondence from Elliott Cous, embodying a letter to him from Mabel Collins. The Cous-Collins letters, and other communications from the same source in later issues of the Journal, made grave charges against Blavatsky, grave in themselves, and doubly so from the reputation of those who made them. All parties concerned were slanderous, including the accusation by Blavatsky that Collins was involved in ‘Tantric Sexual Black Magic’, and a critical and damning dissociation of Mabel’s Theosophical novel ‘Light on the Path’. In the aftermath of events, Collins sued Blavatsky for libel. The case was thrown out of court and Mabel was dismissed from the Theosophical movement as a ‘failure in occultism’.

In December 1888 an article was published in the Pall Mall Gazette, suggesting that the Ripper also practiced ‘black magic’. Although unsigned, it is established that it was written by D’Onston, in a letter, by him, outlining the same theory, received by the City of London Police, dated 16th October. In January 1889, another article, signed ‘RD’ appeared about Rider Haggard’s incredibly popular novel ‘She’. Numerous readers had written in requesting more. ‘RD’ obliged with a further piece giving an account of African devil worship, horror, blasphemy and obscenity. This time it was signed Roslyn D’Onston.

[How Brown]

D’Onston had been a patient at the London Hospital in 1888 and admitted again in 1889. It was during his second stay that he received a letter, prompted by his articles, from Mabel Collins. After a few weeks she received a reply. RDS wrote to say that he was ill in hospital but as soon as he recovered he would arrange to meet Mabel. He did so and Mabel began her association with a man she believed to be a great magician and later to believe was Jack the Ripper himself.

Mabel’s business partner and fellow Theosophist Vittoria Cremers travelled to a shabby lodging house in Southsea. Here she met D’Onston and heard from Mabel what a great man he was. Mabel explained that she was caring for him and planned to return to London soon.

Southsea was also at the time, the home and medical practice of Doctor Arthur Conan Doyle. Doyle was becoming something of a local sporting celebrity. He was a founding member of ‘Portsmouth Football Club’ and captained ‘Portsmouth Cricket Club’, playing on occasions for the MCC and the ‘Incogniti’ the very same teams to which alleged Ripper suspect Montague John Druitt had also once belonged!

Doyle was also making his mark in the world of publishing. W.T. Stead had, during 1888, serialised one of Doyle’s earliest stories, ‘The Mystery of Cloomber’, in both the ‘Pall Mall Gazette’ and the ‘Pall Mall Budget’, a fact that wouldn’t be lost on D’Onston.

It was during the same period of D’Onston’s recuperation in Southsea, that Doyle was Secretary of the ‘Portsmouth Literature and Scientific Society’, regularly chairing and giving thanks to a number of speakers, who gave talks on such topics as ‘Witches and Witchcraft’ and ‘The Art of Killing’, all of which would have been of great intellectual interest to temporary local resident D’Onston. Doyle and D’Onston shared connections with adventures in West Africa, hypnotism, the occult and Spiritualism.

The ‘Portsmouth Literary and Scientific Society’ was the focal point of the areas middle class society. Mabel Collins had already established herself and was well known in the field of journalism and literature. Infatuated by the man, she may well have accompanied D’Onston, as his guest, to these evening soiree’s.

Doyle, who, over the years, had been questioned by journalists on both sides of the Atlantic about the Ripper murders, also belonged to the ‘Crimes Club’. Known also as ‘Our Society’, its membership included Ripper associated Arthur Griffiths, G. R. Sims, Sir Melville Macnaughten and Sir Arthur Diosy. In 1905 Doyle was one of a group from ‘Our Society’ who was given a tour of the murder sites by the City of London Police Surgeon, Fredrick Gordon Brown. This occasion was to be recalled in the memoirs of retired coroner S Ingleby Oddie and connects ‘occultist’ Diosy, quoted by Oddie, with the Jack the Ripper ‘black magic theory’, reported and believed-in by D’Onston. Chris T. George gives the full account on page 6 of Ripperologist - January – 2005, but in basic terms, it seems that Diosy and D’Onston, independently arrived at the same idea at the same time, although Diosy claims that he told the police of the ‘necromantic motive’ two days before D’Onston wrote to the authorities. The question remains, did they know each other and discuss the theory?

Diosy had an intimate friendship and frequently corresponded with the Irish-American writer Lafcadio Hearn, who said of himself ‘I have pledged me to the worship of the Odd, the Queer, the Strange, the Exotic and the Monstrous’. Hearn, an initiate of the ‘occult sciences’, was also an active member of the ‘American Society of Psychical Research’ and personally known to Gurney and the UK leaders of the SPR through his writings for the ‘Occult Review’, his work on ‘reincarnation’ and his published studies on Chinese and Japanese Ghosts.

Conan Doyle was also well acquainted with Gurney and other luminaries of the SPR. He attended a civic dinner in Southsea held in honour of his close friend and SPR member Arthur Balfour. Indeed on a later adventure, Doyle joined Frank Podmore on a ‘ghost hunt’ at a house in Dorset, investigating the sounds of ‘chains being dragged across the floor and the moans of a soul in torment’.

As an aside, during the early 1900’s, while Doyle was promoting Spiritualism in Australia, a woman in the audience of a gathering in Sydney, who believed what Doyle was saying was blasphemous, publicly denounced him as being Jack the Ripper!

On their return to London from Southsea, Mabel suggested that she, Vittoria and D’Onston, should go into business. Together they set up the Pompadour Cosmetique Company and took premises in Upper Baker Street, (opposite Sherlock Holmes fictional address of 221B), providing accommodation for both Cremers and D’Onston.

It was not a congenial working partnership. One day Mabel entered their offices looking nervous and questioned Vittoria as to the whereabouts of D’Onston. There, Mabel told Vittoria that something he had shown her convinced her that he was Jack the Ripper. Mabel credited him with great powers and was clearly worried that they would be turned against her. More than anything she wanted to be free of him.

Within a short time the Pompadour Cosmetique Company was floundering. Vittoria decided that it would be a good idea to wind the business up.

Vittoria had come to despise D’Onston and his relationship with Mabel. D’Onston had claimed to Vittoria that he knew the identity of the Ripper, graphically demonstrating how the women were murdered. He also told of how the Ripper carried away the missing organs ‘tucked between his shirt and tie’. One day while he was absent she let herself into his room. There she found, in a tin trunk, a number of bloodstained ties. The evidence now in front of her was complete. Vittoria also came to believe he was Jack the Ripper.

At Cambridge, Gurney became involved with several esoteric and secret societies, including the ‘Apostles’, with its reputation of a ‘homosexual clique’, and whose membership included alleged Jack the Ripper suspect J K Stephen, and at one time, his father, the Maybrick associated Sir James Fitzjames. Gurney also joined the forerunner of the ‘Society of Psychical Research’, the Cambridge ‘Ghost Club’. These groups included the original committee of the SPR and a majority of its early membership.

[How Brown]

The founder of the ‘Ghost Club’ was Gurney’s friend and mentor, Trinity fellow and future Bishop of Durham, Brooke Foss Westcott. In the explanatory preface of Roslyn D’Onston’s only book, ‘The Patristic Gospels’, he writes of a long personal discussion with Westcott some months before the Bishop’s death.

The associations and connections between Gurney and D’Onston continue.

In an extensive autobiographical piece found in the pages of ‘Borderland’ (vol.3 – 1896) D’Onston tells of a visit to the hospital at the ‘Salpetriere’ in Paris to meet an acquaintance, Dr. Jean Martin Charcot, the founder of modern neurology. (Conan Doyle was a student of Charcot’s work). D’Onston wanted to witness and discuss Charcot’s experiments in hypnotism. Frederic Myers confirms in the SPR ‘Proceedings’ that, ‘through the kindness of Dr. Charcot, I have witnessed typical hypnosis experiments at the Salpetriere in Paris, and have been allowed to perform experiments with the aid of Mr. Gurney on the principle subjects whose cases are recorded.’

Unfortunately for D’Onston, Charcot was away. However he did meet another friend, ‘an analytical chemist, a Frenchman of Italian origin, with whom I had at one time been associated in a series of toxicological experiments’.

This author identifies the man as Alfred Joseph Naquet. Naquet was a French chemist and politician. He became professor in the faculty of medicine in Paris in 1863, and in the same year professor of chemistry at Palermo, where he delivered his lectures in Italian. The thesis, written in 1859, for his doctorate, was entitled ‘Application de l’analyse ‘himique & la toxicologie’. Naquet was a pupil of Dr.Charcot and was present when Myers and Gurney visited Paris.

However, D’Onston’s trip to Paris wasn’t wasted. So as not to disappoint, Naquet did manage to arrange a practical experiment of hypnotism, performed by one of Charcot’s team, at a nearby private clinic.

During D’Onston’s Southsea period, Conan Doyle attended a lecture at the Portsmouth Hall, on ‘The New Hypnotism’, given by Frenchman, Professor Milo de Meyer. It was an entertaining presentation of the more serious work being carried out by Charcot. An attempt to hypnotise Doyle failed but included a subject having a small pointed instrument thrust through his arm without pain and the motions of committing murder by another. This was the same starting type of ‘act’ witnessed by Myers, Gurney and D’Onston in France, and the same topic of hypnotic performance witnessed by D’Onston in India.

The ‘ Society of Psychical Research’ had long been fascinated by the occult mysticism of the Indian Fakirs and many members visited that continent to witness first hand displays of the ‘Mysteries of the Mahatmas’.


Written under his hermetic name of ‘Tautriadelta’, D’Onston regaled the readers of ‘Borderland’ as he told of his investigation into ‘Indian Magic’ and his encounter with the illusions and conjuring of Mr. Jacob of Simla, whose talents had been recognised by Gurney and fellows since the mid 1880’s. The events of the D’Onston’s ‘Borderland’ tale were confirmed, by an independent witness, in a letter from a member of the SPR, published in a later edition of the journal.

But who really was Mr. Jacob? ‘The Daily Graphic’ of 23rd December 1891 gives interesting background details, purporting to be first-hand. Jacob was born Alexander Jacob in about 1849. He was an Armenian Jew who arrived in Simla in 1871, where he became a dealer in precious stones. As a boy he had worked for the British Telegraph Service and later for the Indian Government in Persia. He served as the model for at least two characters in fiction, the most celebrated being ‘Lurgan’ in Rudyard Kipling’s novel ‘Kim’. The other, from a novel entitled ‘Mr Isaacs’ (1882) written about him by American author, F. Marion Crawford. Another account can also be found in John Lord’s book ‘The Maharajahs’, published in 1972, where he recounts the strange story of A.M. Jacob. Lord writes:

‘Jacob was notorious, from Simla to the fashionable spa of Homburg, for his powers of magic. The gullible credited him with the ability to walk on water and even the least credulous granted him powers of mesmerism and telepathy. British and Indians generally believed alike that he practiced white magic, and it was variously reported that he was a Jew, an Armenian, a Russian agent, and a British agent. It was obvious to all that he was the most important dealer in jewels and antiquities in India, and known to a few that he had in fact undertaken missions for the Secret Department of the government of India. He travelled by private train. His little store in Simla was an Aladdin’s Cave of riches, blazing with gold and smoky with incense, and in it Jacob squatted, pale and subtle, keeping a diary full of secrets.’

Within the same ‘Borderland’ article came Jacob of Simla’s own challenge to the SPR. Referring to the illusions witnessed by D’Onston, he believed that most western investigators dismissed ‘Indian Magic’ as the result of hypnotic suggestion or collective hallucinations, commenting ‘I would make the society six times what it is. If you will guarantee the expenses I will undertake to send men to London who will do the performances and satisfy the SPR or anyone else who’d like to see it’.

Alexander Jacob died in 1921, ever associated with the Hyderabad (Jacob) Dramond Scandal.

Future Prime Minister, Arthur Balfour, was, during the reign of the Whitechapel Murderer, Chief Secretary for Ireland. In an unsupported claim, a Fenian plot to assassinate Balfour was linked to the deeds and identity of Jack the Ripper.

Arthur Balfour, Edmund Gurney’s great friend, associate and fellow ‘Apostle’, was part of the Trinity College enclave that dominated the foundation of the ‘Society of Psychical Research’, becoming its President in the early 1890’s. As a family affair, Arthur’s sister Nora was married to Gurney’s friend, co-founder and first President of the SPR, Henry Sidgwick. Other connections include Arthur’s brother Gerald, who also became a President of the SPR, and who was the brother-in-law of noted Theosophist, Emily Lytton Lutyens, daughter of Edward Robert Lytton and granddaughter of another Trinity man, occultist, Lord Edward Bulwer Lytton.

D’Onston had made the acquaintance of the young Lytton in Paris in the mid 1860’s and an introduction to Lytton senior, ‘The Imperator of the Internal College of the Rosy-Cross’ soon followed. D’Onston continues: ‘He presented me to his father as an earnest student of occultism. I was then about 22 years of age. I suppose Sir Edward was attracted to me partly by my irrepressible hero-worship, of which he was the object, and partly because he saw I possessed a cool, logical brain, and had iron nerve and, above all, was genuinely, terribly in earnest.’ At a further meeting with D’Onston, Lytton, ‘administered to me the oaths of a neophyte of the ‘Hermetic Lodge of Alexandria’, oaths of obedience and secrecy’.

Esoteric ‘cults’ were popular with the Victorians. 1888 saw the emergence, from its ‘Rosicrucian and Theosophical’ roots, the ‘Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn’, a magical group devoted to so-called ‘White Magic Rituals’. Its co-founder and primary mover was yet another alleged Ripper suspect, William Wynn Westcott. Westcott was Queen’s Coroner for North London and had also been a member of the inner circle of the ‘Theosophical Society’, and a known associate of D’Onston’s lover, Mabel Collins.

The arcane nature of the ‘Golden Dawn’s philosophy was a direct crossover with the beliefs of the SPR and Gurney’s studies of the ‘higher phenomena’. So much so, that the ‘Order’ became closely connected with Gurney and the SPR council, with some associates becoming members. It may have held special interest to D’Onston himself. His chosen ‘non de plume’ of Roslyn has a ‘Rosicrucian’ origin.

D’Onston had over the years, contributed to several publications edited by W.T. Stead, including the article ‘Dead or Alive’, featured as part of a New Year supplement in Stead’s ‘Review of Reviews’, and later in ‘Real Ghost Stories’. In short, it tells of D’Onston’s own psychic encounter during a tryst with a prostitute and their pact to meet again at the same time and place the following year. Unaware the prostitute had died, D’Onston arrived at the pre-arranged rendezvous, only to hear her spectral voice and footsteps amongst the fog. This incident mirrored Gurney’s lifetime belief and writing on ‘cross correspondence’; messages from the dead by telepathy.

Stead had both professional and social contact with the SPR group, including Ripper psychic Robert James Lees, and included pieces on psychic topics by Gurney and colleagues in his own publications, in turn, reciprocated material by Stead, was published in the ‘Journal’ and ‘Proceedings’ of the SPR.

[How Brown]

In ‘More Ghost Stories’ and ‘Real Ghost Stories’, Stead equalled the output and subject matter of Gurney’s ‘Phantasms of the Living’. ‘More Ghost Stories’ included Stead’s own personal contribution, ‘Letters from Julia – Light from the Borderland’. This was an authenticated story of ‘spirit or automatic writing’ purporting to have been received from his deceased friend and concerning the conditions of the afterlife. In reporting the article to the SPR, F. W. Myers attested to Stead’s sincerity but was critical of the inconsistent evidence, after which, lively and published ‘tit-for-tat’ criticism of each other’s periodicals and ‘studies’ ensured!

In the 1920’s, a rumour became current that Gurney and other SPR leaders of the period that had been secretly engaged in homosexual practices in Brighton, involving G.A. Smith and his circle of young working-class hypnotic subjects. This suggestion, which had its origins in Brighton and has persisted over the years, included the hypothesis that homosexual intent or blackmail was the cause of Gurney’s death. As noted earlier, Gurney and several other individuals of the SPR had been members of the ‘Apostles’ with its philosophy of the ‘Higher Sodomy’.

In the mid 1950’s, Smith, then ninety years old, was questioned about the Brighton subjects. His answer seemed veiled in a homosexual connotation, referring to the boys as ‘Mr. Podmore’s young men’.

It’s probable that F.W.H. Myers and Henry Sidgwick inclined towards homosexual tastes, Gurney and Smith didn’t, but Frank Podmore was active and practising.

Podmore was employed as a senior clerk in the Secretary General’s Department of the Post Office in the Headquarters building at St. Martin’s-le-Grand in London. Some of the young hypnotic subjects, such as the favourite ‘Tiger’ and ‘the lad Murphy’ were employed at the Brighton Post Office as messengers.

In 1889, the year after Gurney’s death, London was shocked by the outrage of local post office ‘telegraph boys’ involved with a male brothel at 19 Cleveland Street, notoriously known thereafter as the ‘Cleveland Street Scandal’.


The brothel, investigated by Ripper associated Inspector Abbeline, implicated and involved several eminent and titled Victorian gentlemen. This included alleged Ripper suspect Prince ‘Eddy’ Albert Victor. Those named in the aftermath of the trial, found themselves in disgrace, resigning from positions of authority, fleeing the country or surrounded by a ‘code of silence’ created by a cover-up of the details.

There was some homosexual activity involving junior Post Office employers, connected with a clerk who worked in the same building as Podmore during 1888.

It’s probable that the association of important men and the type of youth’s used in the Brighton hypnotic experiments provided a circumstantial background for the suspicion of Gurney’s homosexuality and subsequent death.

Gurney’s depression was growing worse, he’d failed in three careers, reached a mid-life crisis and his high hopes for psychical research were foundering.

The huge amount of work that went into ‘Phantasms of the Living’ seemed all in vain. Published in 1886, it was by 1887 becoming discredited. Very few, of the over seven hundred stories could be authenticated. Co-editors Myers and Podmore, quickly disassociated themselves, leaving Gurney to face public criticism alone.

Was it suicide? Doubt hangs over whether or not Gurney suffered from neuralgia or took the prescribed drugs. ‘The Brighton and Hove Herald’, one of the many local and national papers covering the events of the inquest, reported the testimony of Dr. A.T. Myers, brother of Fredric. ‘Dr. A.T.Myers of 9 Lower Berkley Street, London said he had been an intimate friend of the deceased for nineteen years and as a friend he had sometimes advised Mr. Gurney professionally. Deceased had for many years been subject to sudden and severe fits of neuralgia pains, generally about the face, and had been a bad sleeper. In order to relieve this pain and sleeplessness he had, himself, given him large doses of morphia without it producing as much effect as it would in most people.

He had also administered chloral and belladonna to him. Deceased had often discussed with him the use of chloroform in small doses for relief of pain. Witness had often spoken of the danger of it and he had no certain knowledge that deceased had ever used chloroform. Deceased had gone through a medical education for three years, and evidently knew the way to use the anaesthetics. Witness had no reason to believe that the deceased intended to make away with himself’.

Gurney’s brothers, not fully aware of the facts, were also called to give testimony and were of the same opinion, as Dr. Myers. This seemed at odds with what Smith, Gurney’s private secretary for five years, believed. In daily contact for almost all of that time, Smith had never heard Gurney ever complain of, or take opiates for, neuralgia. Even Henry Sidgwick, Gurney intimate friend of that period had ‘painful doubts’ whether he suffered from the infliction.

Another inconsistency is that early in 1888, Gurney published a paper in the SPR ‘Proceedings’ entitled ‘Removal of Pain by Suggestion’. In it he documents the work of Smith and his success in curing one of the Brighton subjects, of toothache and headache by hypnosis. If a cure for facial pain had worked for one why not another? If Gurney had suffered from neuralgia why didn’t he ask Smith to try to give him a similarly induced relief?

It has been suggested that Gurney killed himself after brooding over the discovery of fraud on the part of his telepathic subjects.

Evidence available shows that Gurney and other, independent commentators, may have been aware of the fraud very early on in the investigations, but, ‘wanting to believe’ and having produced and published the results for it’s own journals, the SPR leaders continued to keep up the pretence, to protect their own reputations and save the society from ridicule.

[How Brown]

This would explain the inexplicable omission of the Smith-Blackburn experiments from the commercially available book ‘Phantasms of the Living’.

In a series of articles in the periodical ‘John Bull’, from December 1908 to January 1909, Douglas Blackburn revealed that all the experiments in ‘thought-transference’ conducted by the SPR with Smith and himself were a hoax so far as the two subjects were concerned, and had been accomplished by wholly natural means. He said that the results of the experiments were produced by a system of codes, assisted by tricks, coincidences and fortuitous circumstances, and were in no instance genuine.

A further article, compounding the ‘hoax revelation’, was published in the ‘Daily News’ in September 1911 under the title of ‘Confessions of a Telepathist – Mr. Douglas Blackburn & the Scientists – 30 Year Hoax Exposed – How the Deception was Planned and Worked’. Blackburn’s summary of the situation was contained in the following words: ‘Messrs. Myers and Gurney were too anxious to get corroboration of their theories on telepathy to hold the balance impartially. Again and again they gave the benefit of doubt to experiments that were failures. They allowed us to impose our own conditions, accepted our explanations of failure, and, in short, exhibited a confidence, which, however complimentary to us, was scarcely consonant with a strict investigation on behalf of the public. The reports of those trained and conscientious observers, Gurney and Myers, contain many absolute inaccuracies. Describing one of our experiments they reported emphatically, ‘In no case did B (Blackburn) touch S (Smith) even in the slightest manner’. I touched him eight times, that being the only way in which our code was then worked’. Smith however always denied Blackburn’s accusations and continued his work with the SPR.

The post mortem on Gurney showed there was nothing to indicate the reason for his sudden death. No trace of chloroform was found in the body and if the bottle did contain the anaesthetic, it had long since evaporated. Curiously, the jury were also assured that having the contents of the stomach analysed would prove nothing. The Coroner’s verdict was ‘Accidental death, due to the deceased inhaling an overdose of chloroform to relieve pain’.

Some of the evidence at the Gurney inquest was not presented or hurriedly covered up. For example, it was never explained why his room was so devoid of any means of personal identification, or why his own doctor wasn’t called to be questioned.

It was Dr. A.T. Myers who was summoned by the Brighton police to identify Gurney’s body. Therefore, by deduction, it was the doctor who was the unidentified ‘colleague’, named in the ‘Light’ obituary, and therefore the recipient of the addressed but undelivered letter. Myers travelled back to London late on the Saturday evening to break the news to Gurney’s now widowed wife Kate, leaving for Cambridge early on the Sunday morning, to a hurriedly arranged meeting of the SPR council, at the home of his brother Fredric.

In piecing together the evidence, Trevor Hall in his book ‘The Strange Case Of Edmund Gurney’ surmises that Smith had over the years, deceived Gurney for financial gain. That the letter that brought Gurney to Brighton was from Smith’s sister Alice, who took advantage to send it while her brother, was on honeymoon. Alice was in her brother’s confidence and had been party in assisting in some of the experiments. Aware of Gurney’s growing paranoia and disillusionment, and for the sake of his reputation, at the sacrifice of her own brother’s, she wanted to confess to Gurney that he had been ‘duped’ into believing the results of the Brighton hypnotic tests were genuine.

Trevor Hall suggests that Dr. A.T. Myers, with a sense of foreboding, knowing something of the validity of the preceding events, concluded that Gurney had taken his own life.

Gurney had become obsessed with the use of hypnotism and telepathy as a stepping-stone to the proof of survival after death. For many years he devoted his immense energy and great intellectual powers to the subject of psychical research, a great burden, which became his fatal point of vulnerability. He had often spoken of ‘a desire to end all things’.
Now, with documentary evidence, his work and faith in human nature were destroyed in one mortal blow by Alice’s admission. He had failed yet again in his beliefs and convictions. Perhaps his demise would be the ultimate test and proof positive of contact from beyond the grave?

To conceal the truth, Myers immediate trip to Cambridge was to call together those members of the SPR who had direct contact with Gurney’s Brighton work, and to concoct a story, so that Gurney’s suicide would not bring the reputation of the Society into disrepute, or for it to be questioned and investigated on its authority and integrity.

The ‘ hearing’ was held on June 26th 1888. It is known that Dr. A.T. Myers had several ‘per-inquest meetings’. He spoke with the Stipendiary Magistrate, Charles Heathcote, stating ‘and told my version of the story to him’, which was regarded as ‘completely decisive and satisfactory’. Myers also suggested to the Coroner that Gurney’s death was an unfortunate accident, and at the Royal Albion, Myers had an informative talk with Gurney’s brothers Alfred and Harry about Edmund’s ‘use of opiates to relieve neuralgia and sleeplessness’.

By the persuasion of a professional medical man, Dr Myers, the ‘cover-up’ story had worked. A verdict of ‘suicide’ was averted and reputations saved. It only left Smith, whose silence was bought by the promise of continued paid work for the SPR.

This is of course all supposition by Trevor Hall, but a great theory that stands up to scrutiny.

[How Brown]

Amidst all of this was Roslyn D’Onston. The Brighton inquest was an unrestricted affair and it’s not beyond possibilities that knowing of the personalities involved, D’Onston may have attended the public galleries out of curiosity.

Intriguingly, D’Onston was known to be a habitual user of chloroform and other opiates supposedly associated with Gurney’s death.

By the end of July 1888, D’Onston, still suffering from neurosthenia, was back in the capital, for a prolonged stay as a patient at the London Hospital.

Jack the Ripper commenced his reign of terror in August. Mary Ann Nichols, the first victim of the ‘canonical five’ was found murdered only 3 minutes walk away from D’Onston’s medical confinement.

Perhaps D’Onston, touched by Christian doctrine, became reborn. In 1893 his attentions were turned to the work of Victoria Woodhull. Now introducing himself from the page as ‘A Church of England Clergyman’, D’Onston writes in a short article of a meeting at her Bloomsbury home.

The tone of the piece is ‘adoring and idolising worship’, calling her ‘the last and greatest High Priestess of Nature’. Within the same page and using his Hermetic name of ‘Tautriadelta’ he also writes a verse in her honour, called ‘Victoria Vitrix’.

Woodhull, was a charismatic figure. She became the first woman to run for the American presidency, was active in the ‘Women’s Suffrage Movement’ and along with Karl Marx, led the way to founding the ‘International Working Men’s Clubs’, such as the one established in London’s East End, Jubilee Street. As a young girl she discovered her talents as a ‘spiritualist medium’, becoming later in life a leading member of the ‘Society of Psychical Research’, lecturing on, amongst other things, the ‘Survival of Bodily Death’, the subject of Gurney’s lifelong pursuit.

By the early 1900’s D’Onston had disappeared into obscurity. Perhaps the last person known to have contact with him was the publisher of his book ‘The Patristic Gospels’, Grant Richards. D’Onston would call at his office to collect any royalty cheques that were due. Richards described him as ‘A weird uncanny creature who would come into the office and sit in silence without uttering a word I could see him…I felt sure D’Onston was not his real name. He was a quite, calculating sort of fellow, nerveless and with a calm that nothing would disturb, I should imagine’.

And so it is that Grant Richards makes the last link. Recalled in his autobiography ‘Memories of a Misspent Youth’, Richards vividly describes how, as a sixteen year old, he walked the streets to and from work, during the ‘Whitechapel Murders’. ‘Some of us must have seen him. The man whom I passed just now in the grey-orange light of that lamppost may have been the murderer himself. Somewhere close by, at least, he lurked, his knife held firmly against his wrist. The policeman passing him would suppose that his right hand was in his pocket for the sake of warmth. Did he walk silently on rubber heels or was he brisk and brusque and of an un-furtive mien? For weeks as I hurried through the deepening fog, I would imagine myself stumbling upon the scene of some fresh crime. There were nights when I thought it better to run than to walk. Later in the house, when it was almost time to go to bed, suddenly in the distance, one would hear the shouting one knew. The shouting of newsboys. Nearer and nearer it came. “Another Whitechapel Murder”.

[How Brown]

Richards was an intimate friend and close work colleague of W.T. Stead. He had been Stead’s right-hand man for seven years, working along side the young Marie Belloc, in the offices of the ‘Review of Reviews’. Marie would later write the ‘Ripper’ inspired novel ‘The Lodger’ under her married name of Marie Belloc-Lowndes. It was in fact Richards who introduced Marie to her future husband, Frederick. Richards went on to publish W.T. Stead’s ‘Real Ghost Stories’, and that, along with the ‘Review of Reviews’ included contributions from D’Onston. He also published some early work by his great friend, Arthur Conan Doyle.

There is a likelihood that D’Onston, having worked for and shared the same interests as Stead for a number of years, would have known and moved in the same circle of friends. It may also be that it was on Stead’s suggestion, and as a favour, that D’Onston took his manuscript to Richards. ‘The Patristic Gospels’, seems such an insignificant work to have been normally accepted by the great publishing house.

The name D’Onston would already have been known to the publisher.

[How Brown]

Grant Richards’ company would also go onto publish material by friend Walter Sickert, yet another recently alleged Ripper suspect! Richards himself had an interest in the ‘occult’ (he sat with Stead at several séances) and it was through Richard’s growing publishing empire that many of Gurney’s contemporaries and future members of the ‘Society of Psychical Research’ had their books published.
The ‘Supernatural’ element of the ‘Ripper’ murders captured the attention of the press. In the reporting of the inquest on Elizabeth Stride, the ‘East London Advertiser’, Saturday 6 October 1888 reported the following: ‘All the circumstances connected with the terrible East End murders are of a nature to stir up people’s imagination in an exceptional degree. But even amid so much that is awe-inspiring and dramatic one fact that was elicited at the inquest on the unfortunate woman Stride or Watts was of a peculiarly thrilling nature. If anything were wanted to heighten the horrors of these tragedies it was the introduction of the supernatural element. This was supplied by the evidence of the murdered woman’s sister. (In reality a miss-identification of Elizabeth Stokes Watts with her sister Mary Malcolm) The coroner (Mr. Wynne Baxter) had evidently been informed that the witness had received what for want of a better word we will call an occult warning of her sister’s death. He, therefore, pressed her closely on the point. At first she was disposed to deny the fact, but finally admitted it, and stated its nature. She was lying awake in bed, when, to give her own words: “About twenty minutes past one on Sunday morning I felt a pressure on my breast and heard three distinct kisses.” Now, this was just about the time at which the sister was giving up her life under the hands of the awful being in Berner Street. It was more than probable that Judas-like he first betrayed his victim with a kiss, and the pressure on the breast is what would naturally occur as he knelt over to cut her throat. Here then we have a representation of what was happening to the murdered woman reproduced at the same time in the mind of her sister. Of course it is quite possible that the circumstances she related only came into the mind of the witness after she had heard of her sister’s death. But it could easily be ascertained whether she spoke of her presentiment to any of her neighbours prior to the news of the murder having reached her. If it could be satisfactorily proved that she did a very interesting case would be ready for the investigation of the Psychical Research Society. The late Mr. Edmund Gurney, in his “Phantasms of the Living,” gives several instances of telepathy, or thought-transference, occurring at the moment of a person’s death. At such a moment, according to the theory he advances, the sensations of a person are most likely to be transferred to any one with whom they have been closely connected during life. That thoughts can pass between two people during life by other channels than those at present recognised is now fairly well established. It would be interesting if a distinct case of thought-transference taking place at the moment of a person’s demise could be authenticated. But the value of the evidence all depends upon whether Stride’s sister related her experiences before she knew of her unfortunate sister’s death. We shall be surprised if this proves to be the case’.

Despite Gurney’s death, the Brighton experiments continued throughout 1888. At one of the sittings the regular SPR gathering included F.W. Myers, Mr. & Mrs. G.A. Smith and Doctor John Dill of the Sussex General Hospital, Brighton. Dill, who had written several papers for the society’s journal on the use of hypnotism as a cure for alcoholism, was to be the ‘mesmerist’ for the proceedings and the ‘medium’, one of Gurney’s regular local youths named Parsons.

All were present to witness what was communicated by Parsons under a hypnotic trance, written down by Dill and included in Fredric Myers book ‘Human Personality and its Survival After Death’ (Vol. 1).

Dill, by the process of ‘telepathy’, transmitted a variety of contemporary subjects tp Parsons, which included in part, the topicality of Jack the Ripper.
Tantalisingly, Parsons revealed the Ripper’s identity, suggesting he recognised the killer, but not named in Myers final printed account, from which I now quote:-

‘Jack the Ripper committing a murder.’ (Subject written down by D.)

P. ‘I can see something now – it’s a man – rather faint. A very awful – looking man. Repulsive and dirty looking. Has something in his hand – it’s a knife. Good gracious! What a terrible-looking man – in rags – with his hat coming over his eyes – looks like a murderer.’

D. ‘Is anyone with him?’

P. ‘No, he’s alone.’ (Presently) ‘Yes, he is talking to some one – another man. No, it’s a woman.’ (A few more details are seen and P. recognises the murderer.)

Oh well, so near, and yet so far!

On Sunday October 29th 1967, TV channel BBC 2 transmitted ‘The Magicians’, the last of a three part series under the banner of ‘Theatre 625’. The episode was called ‘Edmund Gurney and the Brighton Mesmerist’, and starred a young Ray Brooks as Smith and Richard Todd, as Gurney. Intriguingly Todd said of his character ‘He was a very honest sincere man whose tragedy was to discover everyone around him, in whom he trusted, was a fraud’.

In summing up, I will use a short extract from an essay by Derek Greatrex – ‘It has been suggested that Kate Gurney was a more practical character than her husband, and had little sympathy with his psychic activities and friends. In his fits of depression, did he perhaps reflect that his death would clear the way for her to find a more congenial partner? In the event, she married again a few months after he died.

And here’s fuel for even wilder speculation (Victorian London encourages this sort of thing, as it recedes from us into a foggy, smoky, impressionist twilight). Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic opera Patience was first produced in 1881, when the Gurney’s were members of Sullivan’s social circle in London. In the opera, a high-minded aesthetic poet is engaged to a down-to-earth milkmaid, who eventually rejects him for an earthier poet named Archibald Grosvenor. Kate Gurney’s second husband was a journalist named Archibald Grove. Intriguing, but almost certainly just one of those weird coincidences! At least Gurney died just two months too soon to be a possible Jack the Ripper; or, given his medical training and gloomy temperament, some Ripperologists would have accused him by now’.

[How Brown]

Such, as written in the pages of the above article, are the connections, associations, events and background to the death at the Royal Albion Hotel, the venue for the 2005 ‘Jack the Ripper’ conference. Unfortunately the hotel registers are no longer available prior to 1929, so it is impossible to establish in which room the mysterious tragedy occurred. However this weekend we would welcome reports from delegates, of any apparitions, or things that go bump in the night. If an attendee, don’t forget to visit D’Onston’s old ‘haunt’, the ‘Cricketers’ just 5 minutes away. Sleep tight!


N.B.
A tenuous D’Onston – Lewis Carroll link, is that Carroll’s grandparents, whom it’s known he visited regularly, lived in Charlotte Street, Sculcoates, Hull, just around the corner from D’Onston’s family, the Stephenson’s, in Charles Street. And that a relative of Carroll’s grandparents, named Lutwidge had, like D’Onston, worked in the Hull docks for H.M. Customs. So it is possible that D’Onston and Carroll could have bumped into each other, as their paths literally did cross! A possible Druitt and Carroll link, is the fact that an entry in Dodgson’s (Carroll’s real name) diary for 12th December 1878 makes a reference to someone called Drewitt with the possible first name of Mowtnay? Who stayed over night in his college room.


REFERENCES AND SOURCES

A fictional account of Gurney and his death can be found in MJ Trow’s book ‘Lestrade and the Ripper’.

Most of the biographical material on Gurney in this article has been taken from Trevor Hall’s book ‘The Strange Case of Edmund Gurney’. Corrected versions of these events can be found in ‘The Mind of Edmund Gurney’ by Gordon Epperson – 1997 and ‘The Silences of Mr. Trevor Hall – ‘International Journal of Parapsychology’ – 8 no. 1 – Winter 1966 – p 5-59.

‘A Study in Southsea – The Un-Revealed Life of Doctor Arthur Conan Doyle’ – by Geffrey Stavert – Milestone Publishing – 1987.

‘The Real World of Sherlock Holmes – True Crimes Investigated by Arthur Conan Doyle’ – Peter Costello – Carroll & Graf – 1991.

‘Jack the Ripper’s Black Magic Rituals’ – Ivor Edwards – Penny Publishing 2001.

‘The True Face of Jack the Ripper’ – Melvin Harris – Michael O’Mara Books Ltd – 1994.

‘Montague Druitt – Portrait of a Killer’ – D.J.Leighton – Hydrangea Publishing – 2005.

‘Jack the Ripper’ – Light-hearted Friend’ – Richard Wallace – Gemini Press – 1996.

Photographs of the BBC2 production of ‘Edmund Gurney and the Brighton Mesmerist’ are ‘stills’ from Trevor Hall’s own rehearsal script, now owned by the author of this article.

Various Internet sites on WT Stead, Conan Doyle, Blavatsky, the Theosophical Society and the Society of Psychical Research.

‘Casebook – Jack the Ripper’ – Internet Research Site – Stephen Ryder.

‘Borderland’ – London – July 1896 – ‘Borderland’ Vol. IV, 1897.

Thanks to Stewart Evans.

Thanks also to my Baker Street ‘Irregular’, Nick Utechin and my Commercial Street ‘Regular’, Adam Wood.

As yet, I have been unable to discover if D’Onston was a member of any Clubs, Orders or Societies mentioned in the article – Any takers?

My research has been limited, so I would welcome further corrections or additions to any part of my work.

Gurney, D’Onston and SPR connections and links still have to be found with the Earl of Stanhope, Lieutenant Morrison (better known as ‘Zadkiel) and the author of Art Magic’ (sic?)

ANDY ALIFFE – 2004/2005