Jack the Ripper, the singer, the Mason ...

Jack the Ripper was an obscure singer whose identity was shielded by fellow Masons, new records suggest.

A book by Bruce Robinson, the director and screenwriter of the classic film Withnail and I, claims the notorious Whitechapel killer was named Michael Maybrick.

In They All Love Jack: Busting the Ripper, Robinson argues that all of the Ripper killings bore the stamp of Masonic ritual, citing the symbol of a pair of compasses carved into the face of Catherine Eddowes, and the removal of meal buttons and coins from her and Annie Chapman. The cryptic graffiti daubed on a wall in Goulston St was "the most flagrant clue of all".

New archives prove for the first time that Maybrick and his brother James - who has previously been named as the Ripper - were both Masons.

They reveal Freemasons were in prominent positions in the Scotland Yard inquiry, including Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Charles Warren and Chief Inspector Donald Swanson.

Two coroners who ruled on the murders, Wynne Baxter and Henry Crawford, and at least three of the police doctors who examined the bodies were also Masons.

Maybrick, who was on the Supreme Grand Council of Freemasons, travelled the country as a performer.

His entry in the carefully handwritten records describes him as a "vocalist". It says he was a member of the St Andrew's Lodge from 1863 until 1887 - meaning he left a year before the nine-week period in 1888 when five women were murdered in the East End of London, in one of the biggest unsolved crimes in British history.

Warren is said to have been a senior member of the Masonic Society. He was a founder member of the Quatuor Coronati Lodge and an authority on Freemasonic history and ritual.

Robinson told the Daily Telegraph: "It was endemic in the way England ran itself. At the time of Jack the Ripper, there were something like 360 Tory MPs, 330 of which I can identify as Masons.

"The whole of the ruling class was Masonic, from the heir to the throne down. It was part of being in the club.

"Part of the whole ethic of Freemasonry is whatever it is, however it's done, you protect the brotherhood - and that's what happened.

"They weren't protecting Jack the Ripper, they were protecting the system that Jack the Ripper was threatening. And to protect the system, they had to protect him. And the Ripper knew it."