Childhood and education Born in
Marylebone in London, the son of psychiatrist
Forbes Benignus Winslow and Susan Winslow née Holt, his older brother was
Edward Winslow Forbes, the vicar of
Epping and his sister Susanna Frances married the humourist
Arthur William à Beckett. As a boy he was brought up in
lunatic asylums owned by his father, and was educated at
Rugby School. He began at
Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, transferring to
Downing College at the
University of Cambridge after four terms, where he took the MB degree in 1870. He was also a
DCL (1873) of
Trinity College Oxford and
LL.D. of Cambridge University. A keen
cricketer, Winslow captained the Downing College XI. In July 1864 he was a member of the
Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) team which played against South Wales, in which team was
W. G. Grace. The public notoriety the Weldon case caused earned him the displeasure of the medical establishment, which continued even after his death. He became an adherent of the benefits of
hypnotism in dealing with
psychiatric cases. He took an active role in securing a reprieve for the four people sentenced to death for the murder by starvation of
Mrs. Harriet Staunton at Penge in 1877. In the same year he wrote
Handbook For Attendants on the Insane and the pamphlet
Spiritualistic Madness. The latter work identified
spiritualism as a cause of
insanity. He wrote that many believers in spiritualism were women and victims of their own gullibility. Winslow wrote that most believers in spiritualism were insane and suffer from mental
delusions. He affirmed that there were "nearly ten thousand [such] persons in America" who had been confined in
lunatic asylums. In 1878 he inquired into the mental condition of the Rev. Mr. Dodwell, who had shot at Sir
George Jessel, the
Master of the Rolls.
Jack the Ripper , from the
Illustrated Police News In 1888, with a little manipulation of the evidence, Winslow came to believe he knew the identity of
Jack the Ripper, and believed that if he was given a team of six police constables he could catch the murderer. His suspect was Canadian G. Wentworth Smith, who had come to London to work for the Toronto Trust Society, and who lodged with a Mr and Mrs Callaghan at 27 Sun Street,
Finsbury Square. Mr Callaghan became suspicious of Smith when he was heard saying that all prostitutes should be drowned. Smith also talked and moaned to himself, and kept three loaded revolvers hidden in a chest of drawers. Callaghan went to Winslow to express his suspicions, and he in turn contacted the police, who fully investigated his theory and showed it to be without foundation. In his 1910 memoirs Winslow describes how he spent days and nights in
Whitechapel: "The detectives knew me, the lodging house keepers knew me, and at last the poor creatures of the streets came to know me. In terror they rushed to me with every scrap of information which might, to my mind, be of value to me. The frightened women looked for hope in my presence. They felt reassured and welcomed me to their dens and obeyed my commands eagerly, and I found the bits of information I wanted". When Winslow's claims about knowing the identity of the Ripper were reported in the English press
Scotland Yard sent
Chief Inspector Donald Swanson to interview him. Confronted with this senior police officer, Forbes Winslow immediately began to back-pedal. He said the story printed in the newspaper was not accurate and misrepresented the entire conversation between himself and the reporter. He further stated that the reporter had tricked him into talking about the Ripper murders. Winslow had never given any information to the police with the exception of his earlier theory concerning an escaped lunatic, which he had by then abandoned. Nevertheless, convinced that he was correct, for many years Winslow declared his theory at every chance, and claimed that his actions were responsible for forcing Jack the Ripper into abandoning murder and fleeing the country. He appears as the central figure in the 2003 novel
A Handbook for Attendants on the Insane, since republished in a new edition as
The Revelation of Jack the Ripper by
Alan Scarfe.
Later life In the 1880s, he was the owner of the famous progenitor of the modern
English Mastiff, Ch. Crown Prince. He was involved in the trials of
Percy Lefroy Mapleton (1881),
Florence Maybrick (1889) and
Amelia Dyer (1896) and also appeared in many civil actions and some American cases involving lunacy. He visited New York City in August 1895 to chair a meeting on lunacy at an International Medico-Legal Congress. He published his memoirs under the title
Recollections of Forty Years in 1910 and died at his home in
Devonshire Street, London, of a heart attack, aged 69. He had married twice and on his death he left a widow, three sons and a daughter, Dulcie Sylvia, who, in 1906, married
Roland St John Braddell (1880–1966). ==Arms==