Carnations and Roses

Walter Sickert, Oscar Wilde, Prince Eddy and their artistic acquaintance who enjoyed 'slummin it' in the west and east End of London formed a part of the romantic, aesthetic set. The 'romantics' were an integral part of the 1880's era. Dandies in their top hats, gents 'slumming it' in the East end, romantic advertisements in newspapers left by the aristocratic gents who arranged rendezvous with their secret acquaintance....the 'students of the butterfly.'

To ignore this aspect of the era is to overlook the lost époque, without a true understanding of which the 1888 Whitechapel murder case cannot be solved. Elisabeth Stride, fourth J t R victim, who died on the night of the Jack Rip 'double event murders', was seen just over ten minutes before she died, by one PC Smith, talking with a man carrying a parcel, holding in her hand, a red flower- evidently from the man. Red and white, by his description; 'red outside, white inside'...possibly a gentleman's carnation. This fact is world famous, though the rose is rarely referred to directly by modern authors and film makers. Superintendent Swansen considered it a very important piece of evidence, and referred to it as a rose. Elisabeth, by the evidence, was to deliver this parcel to Mary Kelly. Mary Kelly and her people. Minutes later she was intercepted and killed, still outside the Berner Street club, which, by the Special Branch documents, was a rendezvous meeting place for an extraordinary conglomeration of people from the highest to the lowest classes, all of whom were considered rebels in the face of the prevalent government and Security Services.....

The rose ( or carnation) is relevant. It is evidence. The modern analysts, who object ferociously to any paradigm shift, refute this for its own sake. Anything remotely touching the popular Romanticism of the English era flies into the face of their theories and demonstrates that since the first, mistaken 'conspiracy theory' that emerged consequent to the Jack Rip murders they have taken the wrong path in refuting the involvement of royalty and aristocracy in East end Whitechapel.


I explore Swansens' and PC Smith's evidence at some length in my thesis, which also explores the significance of the Berner Street club, and the extent of its Fenian and rebel goings on. The Berner Street Club outside which Elisabeth Stride was killed by a slashing of the throat was of the greatest importance to Jenkinson, Anderson and Melville from a serveillance point of view. Melville and Littlechild themselves regularly operated there as spies undercover.