Druitt was a favoured suspect in the Jack the Ripper crimes 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 "" 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".