UK Press: Freemasons fixed inquiry into Titanic to protect Establishment, claims secret archive that lists two million members

You can't beat the British press when it comes to Mason bashing. Like this announcement from Ancestry.com that the UGLE is making an historical list of Masonic membership available to genealogy searchers that is appearing in papers all across Britain with the same ridiculous headline.

From the Daily Mail:

Freemasons fixed inquiry into Titanic to protect Establishment, claims secret archive that lists two million members - including Winston Churchill - and reveals secretive group of elites ruled society for 200 years

Freemasons dominated the inquiry into the sinking of the Titanic and may have allowed Establishment figures to escape blame, it was claimed last night.

The investigation into the 1912 tragedy that cost 1,500 lives exonerated most of those involved, including the ship’s White Star Line owners as well as its captain.

Now the publication of a secret archive of Freemasons – containing two million names of members from 1733 to 1923 – reveals the scale of Masonic involvement across the highest echelons of British society.

The archive contains the names of three kings, statesmen, judges, military top brass and bishops.

Experts believe it could lead to a re-examination of almost 200 years of British history, revealing the scale of Masonic influence at all levels of British society when the UK was one of the world’s most powerful countries.

The records are due to be published online by genealogy service Ancestry.

While the Masonic connections of figures such as Sir Winston Churchill, Oscar Wilde, Lord Kitchener, Rudyard Kipling and Edward VIII are known, the records offer the first comprehensive view of the reach of Freemasonry at the height of the British Empire.

They reveal the close ties between Establishment figures involved in the investigation into the Titanic’s sinking, the Telegraph reported.

A US Senate inquiry singled out the British Board of Trade, saying the small number of lifeboats on the ship was a result of lax regulations.

However, the UK investigation, overseen by Lord Mersey, exonerated the Board of Trade.

Lord Mersey himself was a Freemason, the newly published records show. He was initiated in 1881 at the Northern Bar Lodge in London.

Crucially, so too was Board of Trade president Sydney Buxton, initiated in 1888 when he was an MP.

The names of at least two of the inquiry’s five expert assessors – John Harvard Biles, a specialist in naval architecture, and Edward Chaston, the senior engineer assessor – can also be found in the Masonic archive.

Lord Pirrie, who was not only chairman of the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast, which built the Titanic, but also one of the directors of White Star’s parent company, also appears to have been a Freemason.

Titanic expert Nic Compton said: ‘The Titanic inquiry in Britain was branded a “whitewash” because it exonerated most of those involved. Only three passengers were interviewed, and they were all from first class.’

The archive even suggests the Jack the Ripper may have been a Freemason, and his identity was shielded by fellow Masons.

A new book by Bruce Robinson, the director and screenwriter of the cult film Withnail and I, claims that the notorious Whitechapel murderer was a man named Michael Maybrick.

He 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 one of the Ripper’s victims.