The
Suspects
Theories
as to the murderer's identity have pointed to a Russian doctor named Michael
Ostrog and Montague John Druitt, a Harley Street surgeon, among others.
There has also been a strong suggestion that the Ripper murders involved
some connection between the squalid realities of London's East End demi-monde
and the very highest levels of society in 
Victorian
Britain. It has been said that they were instigated by eminent Freemasons,
among them the Royal Physician, Sir William Gull, to avert a sexual scandal
involving Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence, son of the Prince of
Wales (the future Edward VII); suspicion has also fallen on the Duke of
Clarence himself and on his purported male lover, James Kenneth Stephen.
