No, not Rosslyn as in Rosslyn Chapel, but Roslyn as in Roslyn of Whitechapel. Roslyn D’Onston Stephenson.
The coincidence in the adopted name of Robert Donston Stephenson, Jack the Ripper suspect, and the chapel of Davinci Code fame seems to have spawned a copycat hoax. Call it the Donston Hoax if you want.
What is the “Donston Hoax”? Is it his candidacy as a Ripper suspect or is it something to do with the Davinci Code? Look at the similarities. The Ripper story shares a prostitute named Mary, a secret “Royal” child, and an artist with a code, its own “Rosslyn” with one S, and a BBC documentary in the early 70s. Is there some connection?

Got any referances for us to look up?

I say name any two random persons or events and I   David B. or Acci will come up with at least three “amazing” similarities.  Go ahead.  I

They dare you.

Howard Brown (yes, another guy named Brown) and Mike Covell are the leading Donston web researchers and both have blogs on the hoax. Mike even writes that Ripper author, Melvin Harris, discovered Roslyn while researching psychic hoaxes.
Roslyn made many claims of psychic experiences, including becoming a doppleganger and using the evil eye, all a big hoax, but the biggest hoax involving him may only now be coming out from the shadow of the Davinci Code.

That’s why references so far are few and far between. blog.casebook.org/mcbebe blog.casebook.org/HowardBrown....
Mary Jane Kelly’s identity has never been verified so she is easy to attach to any fabricated legend (her and Prince Eddy and Annie Crook, etc.). Same goes for Jack the Ripper. Any unsolved case like JtR is an easy one for aspiring professionals to cash in without necessarily producing anything.
P.S. I just saw the simultaneous last post and I think I just named two people but, since they’re unidentified as I said, it’s probably too easy! Ha ha!

So, are you saying Dan Brown based The Da Vinci Code on the Ripper case?

Rosslyn Chapel is a real place and so ingrained in fringe Templar theories that he would have been ripped to bits by the League of Naff Authors for not mentioning. So a Ripper suspect used Roslyn as a pseudonym- it’s a Gaelic name and not that uncommon in Scotland and Ireland. What does this have to do with the novel?

And as for there being a murdered prostitute called ‘Mary’ as well as Mary Magdalene of the Da Vinci Code (formerly of the Bible); well done. Worked that out?

Mary being possibly the single most popular name for poor Irish Catholic girls in the 1800s (and pretty much every century before and since) who made up most of the prostitutes in Whitechapel. An Irish girl called Mary isn’t a coincidence, it’s got odds of 2/1 at the bookies.

I don’t get the Ripper connection but your suspicious coincidences mainly comprising people sharing common names like ‘Mary’ and ‘Brown’ are pretty paltry.

Well Howard Brown is obviously in on it with Dan, but apart from that, can we actually be sure either person FC names even exists.

It seems a strange coincidence that they are called Howard Brown and Mike Covell, when there’s a Mr. Covell-Brown in charge of “Transworld Garnet”, garnet having long been used as an industrial abrasive for cutting and polishing steel, especially high-grade surgical steel. Interestingly, Garnet Jackson also once wrote a book with Dan Brown about famous explorers. Explorers like Pedro de Mendoza, the founder of Buenos Aires. Mendoza was born in Guadix, Grenada, which gives its name to the Guadix Basin, a prominent source of garnet-bearing schists.

And is it just a coincidence that a very similar murder to those of the Ripper occurred in Buenos Aries in 1850, known for garnet-rich gneisses, a full 13 years before the first Whitechapel murder (as detailed at this ripper site), news of which was conveniently displaced from the papers by the futile attempt to relieve Khartoum by Sir Garnet Wolseley?

So perhaps we are looking for someone involved with a lot of international travel? Someone who also had access to the very precise blades of a 19th century surgeon? Someone, perhaps, intimately involved with their manufacture? Could JTR actually have been a major figure in the industrial garnet trade, who struck first in Buenos Aries while there procuring raw materials, then having acquired a taste for it, repeated his bloody crime at home in London? Could this man’s successors, or even descendants, still be covering this up by using multiple online presences to spread disinformation and confusion about the case?

—

(Like that you mean, Bebe?)

Garnets, of course, take their name from the Pomegranate, which was simultaneously the Jewish symbol for justice and the classical Greek symbol for death, the latter coming from the story of Persephone, a girl tricked into spending time in the underworld!

So we are looking for a well-to-do gentleman, born sometime around January, a resident of London with a passion for garnets. Obviously he trades in them, but he must also have close (familial?) ties to the Wolseley family in order for his first crime to have been covered up by the events at Khartoum (this smacks of at least pre-knowledge of the events, if not a direct hand in bringing them about). I suspect he was classically educated, probably by a Jewish tutor, and was driven by a need to send ‘bad girls’ to a just death, to literally trick them into Hell.

David B. - 02 May 2008 08:51 AM

  (Like that you mean, Bebe?)

Yep.  You’re good, alright David.

You forgot Garnet, the network coordinated by the Centre for Globalization!....They have someone named Mary and Brown working there!

Renquist - 01 May 2008 09:48 PM

So, are you saying Dan Brown based The Da Vinci Code on the Ripper case?

Well…. I used to think Leigh, Baigent, and Lincoln got their idea from Stephen Knight whose Ripper conspiracy book came out 3 years before Holy Blood Holy Grail.

Bebelicious - 01 May 2008 07:26 PM

I say name any two random persons or events and

I

  David B. or Acci will come up with at least three “amazing” similarities.  Go ahead.

I

They dare you.

Okay, how about Mary Jane Kelly, based on witness reports, and Arthur Sullivan.
We already know Mary Jane Kelly is connected to Prince Eddy and Sir Arthur was his father’s good friend, but we won’t count that.

And the meridian through Paris, mentioned in The Da Vinci Code, are in fact The Arago medallions and is the work of a dutchman.

So there you have it.

Fou Cault - 02 May 2008 01:57 PM

Bebelicious - 01 May 2008 07:26 PM

I say name any two random persons or events and

I

  David B. or Acci will come up with at least three “amazing” similarities.  Go ahead.

I

They dare you.

Okay, how about Mary Jane Kelly, based on witness reports, and Arthur Sullivan.
We already know Mary Jane Kelly is connected to Prince Eddy and Sir Arthur was his father’s good friend, but we won’t count that.

Then it’s not very random.  Randomness kind of being my point.