Was Jack the Ripper a Londoner with 20 wives who fled to Australia?

The only clue to the possible sinister identity of the body lying six feet under is a headstone carrying the grainy image of a caped figure raising a dagger.

But it is in this Australian plot, with the epitaph merely reading 'Bessie, died 25th June 1957 and her husband', that some historians believe the body of Jack the Ripper lies.

As the 120th anniversary of the first of the five prostitute murders by Jack in London's Whitechapel was remembered today, experts said it was possible that the man in the grave in Toowong Cemetery, in the west of Brisbane, is none other than the notorious killer.

'Ripperologists' believe Jack the Ripper was actually Walter Thomas Porriott, also known to police as Andrew John Gibson.

Porriott, who had lived in London when all five murders were committed before he sailed to Australia - after which the murders stopped - had a colourful background.

A convicted killer, imposter and fraudster, who had no less than 20 wives, he was buried amid family shame beneath his faithful last wife Eliza Bessie Porriott in 1952 on a hill with views of Brisbane.

Many Ripper fanatics continue to debate the true identity of Jack the Ripper and some are convinced there is strong evidence implicating Porriott in the string of prostitute murders.

The habitual bigamist, who broke many hearts, also tricked banks out of large sums of money.

But he managed to create confusion about his background, so that by the time he died - when he was believed to be in his 80s - he was officially recorded to be aged 59.

Porriott's Sydney-based great grandson, Steven Wilson, claimed in 1997 that he had little doubt his relative was the notorious serial killer who stalked prostitutes in the fog-shrouded streets of old London in 1888.

But his suggestion made little headway until this weekend, when it was taken up with enthusiasm by Australian newspapers.

The killer has captured the imaginatrion of the public ever since his rampage, and was named the worst Briton of the last 1,000 years in a recent BBC poll

Brisbane historian Paul Tully admitted while evidence is 'sketchy,' the possibility of Porriott being the killer could not be ruled out.

Exhuming the grave for DNA testing would be 'inappropriate' he said - and forensic scientists have no way of searching for DNA on any of Jack the Ripper's victims.

Cat-and-mouse: The killer taunted 19th century police with a series of letters, which gave details of the killings and claimed they would continue

'It is possible we might still find out one day who Jack the Ripper was, but it's equally possible that no-one will ever know,' said Mr Tully.

Historians admit that the only link with Porriott and Jack is the fact that he was in London when the murders occurred and the killings stopped when he sailed to Australia.

His reputation as a crook added to suspicion along with that mysterious, faded etching on the grave of a man with a dagger.

He was also sent to jail for causing the death of a patient by negligence when he was posing as a doctor.

There have been hundreds of theories about the identity of Jack the Ripper, among the strongest suspects being surgeon's son Montague Druitt, Polish Jew Aaron Kosminksi and Russian doctor Michael Ostrog.

Queen Victoria's grandson, Prince Albert Edward Victor, was also named as a Ripper suspect.

Crime novelist Patricia Cornwell claimed in her book Portrait of a Killer that German-born artist Walter Sickert was the Ripper, based largely on what she saw as misogyny in his art and her belief that the taunting letters claiming to be from the killer were written by him.

Sickert is not considered a serious suspect by most who study the case, and strong evidence shows he was in France at the time of most of the Ripper murders.