Conspiracy Theories: From Jack the Ripper to COVID-19

Watching dear old Christopher Frayling’s 1988 Timewatch documentary about Jack the Ripper (made to commemorate the centenary of the murders and available on Auntie’s iPlayer), my mind inevitably wondered back to the Coronavirus. Because the Ripper’s identity was just as much of a mystery to the Establishment 130 years ago as the nature of the Covid-19 disease is today. And just as both the MSM and “mainstream” politicians nowadays are finding themselves swept up in theories that even if they aren’t “conspiracy theories” are at least outlandish, so the Metropolitan Police of 1888 often had little more to go on than the evidence-free speculations of the general public.

The breakdown in relations between the police and the press of course has its own echoes in the rising number of horror stories in today’s ’papers and social media about unfortunate plods trying and failing to implement the Government’s social distancing and self-isolation regulations. The search for answers about the virus’s origins and spread has (albeit quite rightly!) turned attention to the secret activities of foreigners (i.e. Red China). And sooner or later, there is no doubt, there will be serious questions asked (even if they’re not in practice asked by particularly “serious” people) about why some social and ethnic groups have been affected by the virus worse that others.

And of course over both phenomena has hung the perennial and ultimate horror of death.

The only real contrast between the London of the 1880s and the London of the 2020s is that nowadays there is almost universal and unconditional respect for doctors and for men of “science” generally. But as the economic consequences of the Government’s response start to become apparent, and as some inevitably start to raise questions about the wisdom of implicitly trusting the judgement of latter-day quacks and wizards (because there is, it turns out, more to good government - and indeed preserving lives - than just “protecting the NHS), that too may very well change.