Sir William Withey Gull, 1st Baronet (31 December 181629 January 1890) was an English physician. Of modest family origins, he established a lucrative private practice and served as Governor of Guy's Hospital, Fullerian Professor of Physiology and President of the Clinical Society. In 1871, having successfully treated the Prince of Wales during a life-threatening attack of typhoid fever, he was created a Baronet and appointed to be one of the Physicians-in-Ordinary to Queen Victoria. Gull made some significant contributions to medical science, including advancing the understanding of myxoedema, Bright's disease, paraplegia and anorexia nervosa (for which he first established the name). A widely discredited masonic/royal conspiracy theory created in the 1970s alleged that Gull knew the identity of Jack the Ripper, or even that he himself was the murderer. Although scholars have dismissed it, and Gull was 71 years old and in ill health when the murders were committed, it has been used by creators of fictional works. Examples for his portrayal as Jack the Ripper include the films Jack the Ripper (1988) and From Hell (2001), the latter based on the graphic novel. Childhood and early life William Withey Gull was born on 31 December 1816 in Colchester, Essex. His father, John Gull, was a barge owner and wharfinger and was thirty-eight years old at the time of his son's birth. William was born aboard his barge The Dove, then moored at St Osyth Mill in the parish of Saint Leonards, Shoreditch. His mother's maiden name was Elizabeth Chilver and she was forty years old when William was born. William's middle name, Withey, came from his godfather, Captain Withey, a friend and employer of his father and also a local barge owner. He was the youngest of eight children, two of whom died in infancy. Of William's surviving five siblings, two were brothers (John and Joseph) and three were sisters (Elizabeth, Mary and Maria). When William was about four years old the family moved to Thorpe-le-Soken, Essex. His father died of cholera in London in 1827, when William was ten years old, and was buried at Thorpe-le-Soken. After her husband's death, Elizabeth Gull devoted herself to her children's upbringing on very slender means. She was a woman of character, instilling in her children the proverb "whatever is worth doing is worth doing well." William Gull often said that his real education had been given him by his mother. Elizabeth