throughout the 1960s, until the advent of theories in the 1970s that the murders were not the work of a single serial killer but the result of a conspiracy involving the British royal family and Freemasonry. These theories, widely condemned as ridiculous, implicate Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale, his tutor James Stephen, and their doctor Sir William Gull to varying degrees. One version of the conspiracy promoted by Stephen Knight in his 1976 book Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution supposed that Druitt was a scapegoat, chosen by officialdom to take the blame for the murders. Martin Howells and Keith Skinner followed the same line in their 1987 book The Ripper Legacy, which was panned by one critic as being based on "no evidence whatever". The theories attempted to link Druitt with Clarence, Gull and Stephen through a network of mutual acquaintances and possible connections. Reginald Acland, the brother of Gull's son-in-law, had legal chambers in King's Bench Walk near Druitt's, as did Harry Stephen, who was James Stephen's brother. Harry Stephen was good friends with Harry Wilson, who had a house in Chiswick, "The Osiers", near to where Druitt's body was found. Wilson and James Stephen were close friends of Clarence, and were both members of an exclusive society called the Cambridge Apostles. As a schoolboy, Druitt had played cricket against two of Wilson's friends, Kynaston Studd and Henry Goodhart, who was also one of the Apostles. Another potential connection between Druitt and Wilson is through John Henry Lonsdale. Lonsdale's name and Blackheath address are written in a diary belonging to Wilson now in the possession of Trinity College, Cambridge. Lonsdale's address is a few yards from the school at which Druitt worked and lived, and Lonsdale had been a barrister and had also rented legal chambers in King's Bench Walk. In 1887, Lonsdale entered the church and was assigned as curate to Wimborne Minster, where the Druitt family worshiped. Lonsdale and Macnaghten were classmates at Eton, and so theorists argue that Lonsdale might have been in a position to provide "private information" to Macnaghten regarding Druitt. The connections between the Apostles and Druitt led to the suggestion that he was part of the same social set. Druitt, his mother, and his sister Georgiana, were invited to a ball in honour of Clarence at the home of Lord Wimborne on 17 December 1888, although they did