ABSTRACT
This chapter evaluates the growth of conspiracy stories about Kitchener's demise and the political and commercial manipulation of the theories, focusing on a number of individual cases where treachery, negligence or intrigue was alleged. It was clearly easier to demolish the concrete claims of corruption on the part of Churchill than to swipe away at innuendoes about vague Jewish conspiracies to kill Kitchener. Even after the Kitchener body hoax was revealed and Power fundamentally discredited, the conspiracy theories about Kitchener's death did not end, they merely receded from the forefront of public scrutiny. In all the cases, the promoters of Kitchener conspiracy theories had pecuniary objectives as one of their motives: they hoped to appropriate Kitchener and sensationalize his death as a way of making money. Some, like Douglas, raised the spectre of a sinister 'age-old Jewish conspiracy' behind the state's failure to protect Kitchener.
