Jack the Ripper Suspect – Sir John Williams

Williams was obstetrician to Queen Victoria’s daughter Princess Beatrice, and was accused of the Ripper crimes in a 2005 book, Uncle Jack, written by one of the surgeon’s descendants, Tony Williams, and Humphrey Price.

The author’s theory is that Williams, in an attempt to find a cure for his wife’s apparent infertility, stalked Whitechapel looking for women of a similar age whom he may have been familiar with from his clinic in Whitechapel (where he was an obstetrician), killed them, removed their uteri which he took back to the hospital to study. and that a blunt surgical knife, which belonged to Williams, was the murder weapon.

Jennifer Pegg has demonstrated that much of the research in the book was flawed; for example, the version of the notebook entry used to argue that Williams had met Ripper victim Mary Ann Nichols had been altered for print and did not match the original document, and the line as found in the original document was in handwriting that did not match the rest of the notebook.

Williams’ wife, Lizzie, was named as a possible suspect by author John Morris, who claims that she was unable to have children and, in an unhinged state, took revenge on those who could by killing them. See Jill the Ripper

Conclusion: It is highly unlikely that Sir John Williams was Jack the Ripper.