Abberline: The Man Who Hunted Jack the Ripper (13 page)

While Abberline diligently carried on with his investigations, arrests by other officers were certainly being carried out. Men were pulled up on the street, questioned, and often arrested if they wore outlandish clothing, shouted or acted suspicious in any way. This would obviously include such unfortunates as the mentally handicapped.

One such incident involved a Swiss butcher, Jacob Isenschmidt, who matched the description of a bloodstained man seen acting strangely on the morning of the murder. The landlady of a public house, Mrs Fiddymont, had reported a ‘strange looking man’ with bloodstains on his clothing, acting very suspiciously close to the scene of the murder. When the police did pick him up, the only thing ‘strange’ about his appearance turned out to be nothing more than his large ginger moustache. There were indeed bloodstains on his clothing, but when it was checked out, these were found to be animal blood, obtained from his work as a butcher. He was found to have a history of mental illness, and after being examined by a police doctor, was detained in a mental asylum. When Abberline heard of this, and the fact that his alibi had been checked out and cleared him of any involvement in the murder, he felt that he couldn’t stand back and watch such a travesty of justice take place and immediately ordered the man’s release.

Other examples of this type of hysteria included a local street-market trader, Friedrich Schumacher, apothecary assistant Edward McKenna, medical student John Sanders, and Oswald Puckridge, who was undergoing treatment for mental health problems. All had undoubtedly acted in some seemingly strange way or another, but when investigated there was no evidence against any of them and all were released.

Not every suspect was, of course, suffering from some form of illness. Some were arrested purely for their ‘strange’ looks or so-called ‘strange’ behaviour. One such example was a ship’s cook, William Henry Piggott, who was detained after causing a disturbance in the street which involved shouting at women and making misogynist remarks. When he was searched, the police found him to be in possession of a blood-stained shirt. He was arrested and taken to the police station, where he claimed that he had been bitten by a woman, which he said was the reason he was shouting in the street and that the blood on the shirt was his own. After spending a night in the cells he was thoroughly investigated and, like so many others, released without charge.

Another suspect, whose actions were more than a little strange, was a German hairdresser, named Charles Ludwig. He was arrested after an argument at a coffee stall, where he allegedly attempted to stab a man. The man had accused him of attacking a prostitute earlier, a charge which Ludwig firmly denied, along with the subsequent attempted stabbing charge. Ludwig was exonerated from all charges after another murder was committed while he was in custody. All these cases seemed to have one thing in common, which was that in every instance the suspect either looked strange or acted strange. None had any real connection to the actual case, and, much to Abberline’s chagrin, wasted an awful lot of valuable police time.

While these so-called suspects were being arrested and questioned, the real work surrounding the crimes was, of course, still going on. At the inquest into Annie Chapman’s death, John Pizer, the man the press had dubbed ‘Leather Apron’, and whom Inspector Abberline had long since ruled out as a suspect, was called as a witness. He was closely questioned and subsequently cleared of any involvement in Chapman’s murder, and went on to successfully claim compensation from one of the newspapers that had named him as the murderer. Directly after his acquittal, the name ‘Leather Apron’ was to be supplanted by ‘Jack the Ripper’ as the media’s favourite name for the murderer.

At this particular time, however, Jack the Ripper had not yet been invented. The three previous murders had certainly caused the people of East London to feel very worried when going about their business, particularly women, and especially if it involved being out after dark. The death of Annie Chapman, however, turned their fear into hysteria, with street mobs turning on anyone who looked or acted differently, and leading to a wave of anti-Semitism. Innocent Jews, or anyone with an unpronounceable name whom the angry crowd assumed to be Jewish, were attacked. The police were put on standby, expecting full blown anti-Jewish rioting at any time, after reports of harassment and attacks upon Jews and other foreigners were received. The general consensus upon the streets seemed to be that no Englishman could possibly be capable of such crimes.

Even though Pizer, who was a Jew, had been exonerated from the crime, anti-Semitic feelings were still riding high. As one newspaper reported: ‘A touch would fire the whole district in the mood which it is now in’, while the
Jewish Chronicle
warned: ‘There may soon be murders from panic to add to murders from a lust for blood.’

As if to add to Abberline’s woes, George Lusk and his Whitechapel Vigilance Committee suddenly appeared in the headlines again, as well as on posters around Whitechapel, appealing for information concerning the identity of the murderer. Not only did the posters appeal for information, they also allegedly scared the living daylights out of the local populace. According to the press, men spoke of the horrible murders with bated breath and pale-faced women shuddered as they read the ghastly details.

Hoardings became so graphic that they were denounced by
Punch
magazine thus: ‘Imagine the effects of these gigantic pictures of violence and assassination, on the morbid imagination of imbalanced minds.’ Paper boys on the streets called the headlines out to a public that seemed eager for yet more gory details and titillation. ‘Another horrible murder and mutilation in Whitechapel,’ they yelled, while dishing out more papers than they had ever sold in their lives.

The
Daily Telegraph
printed a letter from an irate reader, stating that he was fed up with ‘hoarse voiced ruffians, yelling at the top of their hideous voices, “murder – mutilation – special murder edition”.’ The reader went on to say that in his opinion, ‘It is monstrous that police are doing nothing to protect us from such flagrant and ghastly nuisances’.

Not only was Abberline and his team being berated for not catching the murderer, now they were being asked to deal with paper boys as well, for selling their newspapers too loudly.

Women were allegedly fainting, after reading the graphic accounts of the murders, and one publican in Whitechapel even blamed his bankruptcy on the incompetence of the police. ‘If they were doing their job properly,’ he said, ‘the killer would have been caught by now, and people would be back on the streets of Whitechapel once again.’

Lusk also complained about the lack of a reward from the government for information. There is no doubt that Lusk’s intentions were honourable, but he was also a shrewd businessman and, as such, knew how to manipulate the media. Not only was he doing his best to force the government into offering a reward, but he was also appealing to public sympathy, by saying that he had received threatening letters through the post, allegedly from the murderer.

Maybe he did receive such letters the public will never know for certain whether the letters he was said to have received were real or not. Some say they were created by a journalist in order to sell more newspapers; others have suggested that Lusk himself wrote them, but there is always the possibility that some of them were genuine.

During that autumn, hundreds of letters were sent to the police and local press purporting to be written by the Whitechapel killer. Most of these were discarded immediately as hoaxes, including one received at the Central News Agency on 27 September 1888.This was looked at, albeit briefly, and tossed aside with a number of other letters received that week from the alleged murderer.

Even though not much attention was paid to this letter at the time, it did include one thing that no other letter had contained before, which was the name ‘Jack the Ripper’.

The transcript of that letter, which has since become known as the ‘Dear Boss’ letter, is as follows:

Dear Boss
,

I keep on hearing the police have caught me but they wont fix me just yet. I have laughed when they look so clever and talk about being on the right track. That joke about Leather Apron gave me real fits. I am down on whores and I shant quit ripping them till I do get buckled. Grand work the last job was. I gave the lady no time to squeal. How can they catch me now. I love my work and want to start again. You will soon hear of me with my funny little games. I saved some of the proper red stuff in a ginger beer bottle over the last job to write with but it went thick like glue and I cant use it. Red ink is fit enough I hope ha. ha. The next job I do I shall clip the ladys ears off and send to the police officers just for jolly wouldn’t you. Keep this letter back till I do a bit more work, then give it out straight. My knife’s so nice and sharp I want to get to work right away if I get a chance. Good Luck.

Yours truly

Jack the Ripper

Dont mind me giving the trade name

PS Wasnt good enough to post this before I got all the red ink off my hands curse it No luck yet. They say I’m a doctor now. ha ha

Five days later, on 1 October 1888, the Central News Agency received yet another communication signed with the name ‘Jack the Ripper’. This time it was a postcard, which became known as the ‘Saucy Jacky’ postcard.This in turn made direct reference to both the ‘Dear Boss’ letter and the murders, which were to become known as the ‘Double Event’. The general consensus of opinion was that the postcard was genuine: it mentions the removal of Elizabeth Stride’s ear and the Double Event before it had been published by the press.

The transcript of the ‘Saucy Jacky’ postcard is as follows:

I was not codding dear old Boss when I gave you the tip, you’ll hear about Saucy Jacky’s work tomorrow double event this time number one squealed a bit couldn’t finish straight off. ha not the time to get ears for police. thanks for keeping last letter back till I got to work again.

Jack the Ripper

The letter and the postcard had both happened so quickly that the press hardly had time to act upon them, and were still hard at work besmirching Abberline and his team’s efforts in failing to catch the killer, while at the same time increasingly taking up Lusk’s cause.

8

When Evidence is not to be had – Theories Abound

H 
aving ascertained that the main investigating police officers in the Ripper case did not have a singular suspect in mind does not mean that there were no discernible suspects. As already pointed out, many arrests had been made over the course of the investigation. Following the murder of Annie Chapman on 8 September 1888, the
Daily Telegraph
reported: ‘More than one person was detained on suspicion; one at Limehouse, another at Bethnal-green, and a third at Deptford, but in each case no tangible result followed.’ The press reported many such stories throughout the years 1888–91, when various men were arrested on suspicion and later released. Very little, if anything, is known regarding the identity of these men, whom we can only assume to have been innocent with no connection to the murders.

Whenever and wherever murders are committed, the publicity surrounding them nearly always inspires a series of twisted individuals cum publicity seekers to emerge from the woodwork and claim responsibility for the crime or crimes. The Whitechapel murders were no exception to this rule, and inspired numerous individuals to hold their hands up to being Jack the Ripper.

A
LFRED
N
APIER
B
LANCHARD

On 5 October 1888, Alfred Napier Blanchard was drinking at the Fox and Goose tavern at Aston (Greater Birmingham). As with most drunks, the more he drank, the louder he became, as his main aim was to get people listening and taking notice of him. He finally got his wish by confessing that he was none other than Jack the Ripper. The landlord of the pub reported him to the police, and Blanchard was arrested and remanded in custody while the police checked up on his story. The confession was eventually found to be completely made up so he was charged in court with being drunk and wasting police time, and was fined and dismissed by the local magistrate, with the words: ‘What a foolish man you have been.’

On the same day that Blanchard was trying to establish a name for himself in the annals of notoriety, a young medical student named William Bull walked into Bishopsgate police station and confessed to the murder of Catherine Eddowes. His so-called confession was looked into by the police, and it was decided that, as with Blanchard, he could not have possibly committed the crime. He was released without charge.