Sir George Arthur
Sir George Compton Archibald Arthur was born in 1860, and was the son of Colonel Sir Frederick Arthur and Lady Elizabeth Hay-Drummond. He succeeded to the title of 3rd Baronet Arthur of Upper Canada on 1 June 1878, and married Kate Hamet Brandon on 11 August 1898. He gained the rank of Lieutenant in the service of the 2nd Life Guards and later fought in both the Boer War 1900-01 and the First World War 1914-18. Between the years 1914-16 he held the office of Personal Private Secretary to the Secretary of State for War, he also wrote a number of military biographies on Kitchener Wolseley and Haig, and died at the age of 85 on 14 January 1946. At the time of the Whitechapel murders he was a 28 year old captain in the Royal Horse Guard and also an amateur actor, appearing as the corpse when Bancroft produced Theodora. He liked to engage in what was then a favourite and fashionable pastime of the wealthy Victorian, he liked to slum it in the poor areas. Arthur unfortunately chose Whitechapel at the time of the Ripper murders as a good place to slum, and thus became a suspect. Dressed in an old shooting coat and slouch hat he was spotted by two alert Constables approaching a well known prostitute. Fitting the popular description of Jack the Ripper he was arrested, much to the amusement of the newspapers. He was soon able to prove his innocence.
