Knight presented an elaborate conspiracy theory involving the British royal family, freemasonry and the painter Walter Sickert.

He concluded that the victims were murdered to cover up a secret marriage between the second-in-line to the throne, Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale, and Annie Elizabeth Crook, a working class girl.

[1] It was the basis for the graphic novel From Hell and its film adaptation, as well as other dramatisations, and has influenced crime fiction writers, such as Patricia Cornwell and Anne Perry.

[2] The removal of internal organs from three of the victims led to contemporary proposals that "considerable anatomical knowledge was displayed by the murderer, which would seem to indicate that his occupation was that of a butcher or a surgeon.

"[3] Media organisations and the police received many letters and postcards purportedly written by the killer, who was dubbed "Jack the Ripper" after one of the signatories.

[7] Stowell said his information came from the private notes of Sir William Gull, a reputable physician who had treated members of the royal family.

While the timescale of disease progression is never absolute, for Albert Victor to have suffered from syphilitic insanity in 1888, he would probably have to have been infected at the age of nine in about 1873, six years before he visited the West Indies.

[13] Stowell claimed that his suspect had been incarcerated in a mental institution, when Albert Victor was serving in the British army, making regular public appearances, and visiting friends at country houses.

[14] Newspaper reports, Queen Victoria's diary, family letters, and official documents prove that Albert Victor was attending functions in public, or meeting foreign royalty, or hundreds of miles from London at the time of each of the five canonical murders.

The series mixed documentary and drama; it featured real evidence but was hosted by fictional detectives Barlow and Watt, played by Stratford Johns and Frank Windsor, respectively.

Captivated by Gorman's story, journalist Stephen Knight decided to investigate the claims further,[24] and eventually published his research as the book Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution in 1976.

In April 1888, Gorman continues, Queen Victoria and the British Prime Minister Lord Salisbury discovered Albert Victor's secret.

Gorman accuses Salisbury of ordering a raid on the apartment because he was afraid that public knowledge of a potential Catholic heir to the throne would result in a revolution.

Gorman asserts that at first Kelly was content to hide the child, but then she, along with her friends Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman and Elizabeth Stride, decided to blackmail the government.

Gorman accuses Salisbury of conspiring with his fellow freemasons, including senior policemen in the London Metropolitan Police, to stop the scandal by staging the murders of the women.

[27] In describing the progress of his investigation, Knight reveals a series of coincidences: both Albert Victor's mother and Alice Crook were deaf;[28] both Albert Victor's mother and Walter Sickert were Danish;[29] Sickert is obsessed by the Ripper;[30] the murders ended with the death of Mary Kelly;[31] there was growing republican sentiment at the time of the murders,[32] as well as anti-Catholic prejudice;[33] a woman named "Elizabeth Cook", who Knight claims could be Annie Elizabeth Crook misspelt, did live at 6 Cleveland Street;[34] Annie Crook was institutionalised;[35] rumours of the time link Prince Albert Victor to a scandal in Cleveland Street;[36] Gull was fond of grapes, and one of the victims may have been eating some at the time of her death;[37] Gull matches the description of an unnamed physician accused by clairvoyant Robert James Lees, who claimed to have identified the Ripper by using psychic powers.

[45] Reviewers at the time of first publication met the book with undisguised scepticism and satire, but felt that Knight presented his unlikely case with ingenuity.

Quentin Bell wrote in The Times Literary Supplement: "[The book] begins bravely and fairly by presenting the greater part of the author's case and admitting at once that 'it all sounds terribly unlikely'.

"[47] Since then, scholars from multiple disciplines have rejected Gorman's story as a ridiculous fantasy, and highlight many facts which contradict the version of events presented by Knight.

Ripper expert Don Rumbelow has suggested that the name of Alice's father was omitted from her birth certificate either because she was illegitimate or to conceal an incestuous relationship between her mother, Annie, and grandfather, William.

[50] Knight admitted that parts of Gorman's story were wrong but claimed that such mistakes were "stronger support of the fact that he was telling the truth".

[79] After Knight implicated Sickert, Joseph Gorman withdrew his testimony, admitting to The Sunday Times newspaper that "it was a hoax ... a whopping fib".

[89] Knight's theory features in the final book of Philip José Farmer's Riverworld series, Gods of Riverworld, and novels utilising Knight's book as a base include Robin Paige's Death at Whitechapel (New York: Berkley Publishing Group, 2000) and Anne Perry's The Whitechapel Conspiracy (London: Headline, 2001).