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the last murder, thereby drawing suspicion to himself as a suspect; Abberline later dismissed him as such. Another suspect was George Chapman – no relation to Annie Chapman – who poisoned three of his wives; however, he was never known to have used a knife (although he had once threatened his wife with one). Then there was Francis Tumblety, a quack ‘doctor’ who collected uteri and kept them in specimen jars; Mary Kelly’s uterus, though cut out of her body, was not removed from the crime scene. Dr Thomas Neill Cream, another poisoner who secretly performed unlawful abortions but was supposedly in prison in the United States on the dates when the crimes were committed, was also an official suspect, and there are perhaps a dozen others, all of whom were, in our opinion, equally unlikely to have committed the murders.
    More recent theories have identified a similar number of candidates , including Sir William Gull, the suspect named by Stephen Knight, but much of Knight’s work was later discredited when Walter Sickert’s son, Joseph, who was then an old man himself, retracted his story which formed the basis of Knight’s tale, and admitted that it was a hoax. Patricia Cornwell also accused the twisted but unlikely artist Walter Sickert. Other popular suspects are Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence, ‘Eddy,’ a grandson of Queen Victoria, who had an alibi for each of the nights when the murders were committed, and Sir John Williams, the sacrificial lamb offered by his great-great-nephew, author Tony Williams.
    However, the one important element missing in every case was that none of the suspects had a motive for committing the murders. We could find nothing in their backgrounds that would drive any of them to carry out such terrible, vicious crimes. None of the suspects had even the slightest connection with any of the victims – except one.
    But after all the research my father had undertaken into this most distinguished of Welshmen, we thought – no, we knew – that Sir John Williams could not possibly have been involved in any of the murders.
     
    John Williams was born on 6 November 1840, the son of a farmer and part-time Methodist minister who died of typhoid fever when John was just two years old. His mother recognised her son’s potential and intellect at an early age and struggled to provide him with a good education. Young John attended school in Swansea, before going on to Glasgow University aged sixteen, where he studied mathematics for a year. His natural aptitude for the sciences took him to University College Hospital in London where he studied medicine for six years, working at both the Brompton Hospital for Consumption (tuberculosis) and the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children. He was, by all accounts, a brilliant student, studying under William Jenner for one, who was credited with the invention of the smallpox vaccine.
    He completed his medical course (M.R.C.S, and M.B., London) in 1866, and in 1867 he qualified as a doctor (M.D., London). At University College Hospital, he made several friends among his student colleagues, one of whom, Markus Beck, was the nephew of Joseph Lister, pioneer of antiseptic which he used to prevent death from infected wounds and injuries. By early recognition and adoption of Lister’s discovery, this later helped Dr Williams to become an outstanding surgeon. His work was unpaid at this time, so lack of money, rather than ability, forced him to return to Swansea, where he practised for five years as a local GP.
    During the time he worked in Swansea, Williams had the good fortune to meet Mary Elizabeth Ann Hughes, who was then quite young. She was the daughter of Richard Hughes, a wealthy businessman and tinplate factory owner. On 3 April 1872, the couple married in Libanus Chapel in the industrial town of Morriston, three miles to the north-east of Swansea. Following the wedding, they enjoyed a short working honeymoon abroad, which allowed Dr