Prince Eddy

Prince Eddy clearly had some strengths, but far more weaknesses. He was apparently almost an imbecile, completely incapable of learning, and indeed could barely read. As he was a masterful card-player, some have suggested that he may have been something of an idiot savant. His interests and tastes ran to pure hedonism, and he appears to have had no moral sense whatever, indulging himself in whatever pleased him despite possible ramifications. Under the tutelage of JamesKennethStephen, he joined in the latter's homosexual circles and, it seems certain, orgies; from his other exploits, however, he would appear to have been bisexual, or perhaps better, simply very sexually oriented and not at all conscious of social mores that would have guided his preferences. "Eddy was so backward and lethargic as to be nearly uneducable. He had a reputation for taciturnity, but only because he had nothing to say. He could barely read, had inherited deafness from his mother, had a drooping, vacant face that some women—and perhaps some men—found attractive.” (Stanley Weintraub, Victoria: An Intimate Biography)

One of his early tutors wrote to the PrinceOfWales in 1879, "He fails not in one or two subjects, but in all. The abnormally dormant condition of his mind, which deprives him of the ability to fix his attention to any given subject for more than a few minutes consecutively rules out any lingering hope that it might be possible to send him to a public school^?." And in 1880, "Prince Eddy sits listless and vacant and wastes as much time in doing nothing as he ever wasted.... This weakness of brain, this feebleness and lack of power to grasp almost anything put before him, is manifested ... also in his hours of recreation and social intercourse. It is a fault of nature."

Eddy nevertheless became a dandy, something he could readily afford, and some of his fashions -- notably his adoption of extremely high collars to cover a thin and overlong neck -- became popular among other aesthetes. Images like the one above were also popular with a certain stratum of society which likes to idolize its heroic rulers.

In Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution, Stephen Knight proposed that Eddy had been secretly married to a common prostitute named Annie Elizabeth Crook, a close friend of MaryJaneKelly, and that the Ripper murders were part of an elaborate Masonic plot to cover this up. This seems extremely unlikely. (See the JackTheRipperBibliography, and the wonderful overview in Casebook: Jack the Ripper.)

On January 14, 1892, Prince Eddy died, almost certainly of influenza; syphilis has also been suggested.

See TheRoyals. The discussion of Eddy as a Ripper suspect in Casebook: Jack the Ripper (not the same page as that above) contains many excellent references for more serious research on Eddy.

-- ChrisLehrich^? - 29 Dec 2004

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