Abberline: The Man Who Hunted Jack the Ripper (29 page)

Another side to this question is: if Cross was the Ripper, and had heard footsteps and seen Robert Paul coming towards him just as he was in the midst of slaughtering Polly Nichols, why didn’t he flee the scene before Paul got too close and was able to recognise him?

His other options, of course, would have been firstly to attack and maybe even kill Paul, or secondly, to establish an illusion that he was just an innocent, on his way to work, who had the misfortune to discover a corpse in Buck’s Row. At the end of the day, Charles Cross was accepted by the police and everyone else at the time as an ordinary car-man on his way to work who had stumbled across the body of Polly Nichols.

What knowledge there is of Charles Cross is very limited. The surviving police records are basic and uninformative, as are the few newspaper articles in which he was briefly mentioned. When
The Times
reported on the inquest on 4 September 1888, they didn’t even bother to double check as to Cross’ first name, and published it as George.

This misnomer could have been due to the fact that when Charles Cross and Robert Paul went off together to find a police officer, they found and reported it to PC Jonas Mizen, and it was his evidence at the inquest that may have caused the newspaper’s confusion over Cross’ first name. It was Mizen who referred to the car-man who had spoken to him on the morning in question as George Cross, and
The Times
as well as the
Morning Advertiser
had picked up on that name and used it in their articles.

As unimportant as the newspapers and the police seemed to think Cross was at the time, we should still consider him as a suspect for a number of reasons, not least because he was found at the scene of the crime. There are also some discrepancies regarding the time he left his home in Doveton Street and the information given by the newspapers, which was contradictory.

On 3 September,
The Star
wrote that Cross was employed by Pickfords, that he left home on Friday at 3.20 a.m. and got to Pickfords’ yard, Broad Street at 4 a.m.
The Times
confirmed this in their article. Both statements, however, were wrong. Charles Cross was with Robert Paul in Buck’s Row at approximately 3.45 a.m. It took the two men approximately five minutes searching the streets before they found PC Mizen. If one allows another five minutes to report to Mizen what they had seen, this would then have meant Cross getting to Pickfords’ in Broad Street in just five minutes, which is impossible.

To walk from Doveton Street, where Cross lived, to Broad Street, where he worked for Pickfords’, usually took Cross approximately forty minutes. On this particular Friday, however, he said that he was late for work and didn’t leave home until 3.30 a.m.; this would have meant arriving in Buck’s Row at approximately 3.36 a.m.

Dr Llewellyn, who lived close by, was called by the police within minutes of them arriving at the murder scene. When the
Daily News
and the
Evening News
for 1 September published a statement given to them by the doctor, he allegedly gave them the time of his arrival on the murder scene as about 3.55 a.m. The following day, after giving evidence at the inquest, he told reporters that he was called to Buck’s Row at about 4 a.m., which is a lot less precise than his earlier statement. More importantly, perhaps, might be: what time did he actually arrive in Buck’s Row?

These might seem like minor points, but if we consider the fact that when Dr Llewellyn first saw Polly Nichols, he stated that, in his opinion, she had not been dead for more than half an hour at the most. In Inspector Abberline’s report, which was written after the inquest, he gave the time for Cross’ finding of the body at about 3.40 a.m.

At the inquest, Cross gave evidence that he had just arrived by the body of Polly Nichols when he was joined by Paul, but Paul said he had left home, about 3.45 a.m. This would mean that one of the men was not telling the truth. If Cross was lying, and had left his home in Doveton Street at his normal time of 3.20 a.m., he would have had time to meet and kill Polly Nichols. If he had left at 3.30 a.m., he would still have had time to attack her before being interrupted by Paul.

A reporter for the newspaper
Lloyd’s Weekly
interviewed Robert Paul on the night of the murder, and the article was published in the paper that Sunday. This was the day before Cross gave evidence at the coroner’s court. In the article Robert Paul stated that it was exactly 3.45 a.m. when he walked up Buck’s Row, on his way to work, and saw the crouched man. The inquest into the death of Polly Nichols was delayed for two weeks, while further evidence was searched for. When it was resumed, Robert Paul was called to give evidence, and according to
The Times
dated 18 September, he stated that as he passed up Buck’s Row he saw a man standing in the roadway. No one bothered to establish the exact distance that Cross was to the body when Paul saw him there that morning. There seemed to be no suspicion whatsoever that Cross was anything other than the harmless witness he appeared. When
The Star
newspaper wrote its piece on the inquest, it did not even bother giving Cross’ name, and no one bothered to ask his age, although one newspaper did mention that he had worked for Pickfords’ for more than twenty years. He was mentioned as a witness, who happened to be a car-man, and wore a coarse sacking apron.

There is, however, one more very important piece of information that connects Charles Cross with the Ripper murders. His route between his home in Doveton Street and his place of work at Broad Street took him directly through the area in which the Ripper murders took place. Cross had multiple choices he could take, all eventually taking him to his final destination. Whitechapel Road would be the direct route, but one can cut off any number of different streets from there to eventually lead to his destination at Broad Street. He could walk through Osborn Street into Brick Lane, or through Old Montague Street or Wentworth Street. He could head down Hanbury Street or Dorset Street. In the warren of narrow streets and alleys that intertwine this area, all streets lead to Rome as they say, or, in this instance, Ripper Territory.

As already pointed out, Polly Nichols was murdered on Cross’ path to work in late August. Annie Chapman was murdered in Hanbury Street, which was another possible route. Mary Kelly was found mutilated in Miller’s Court, just off Dorset Street, which again is just off Commercial Street, and most definitely a possible route for Cross. Elizabeth Stride was found dead in Dutfield’s Yard, Berner Street, which is a little off the normal Ripper patch, but still only some five minute’s walk away. She lived in Flower and Dean Street, which was on Cross’ route and could have easily been followed by the murderer from there to her place of death. Lastly, we have Catherine Eddowes, who also lived in Flower and Dean Street, but had been arrested by the police on the night of her death and held for some hours at Bishopsgate police station. This police station is just a few minutes’ walk away from Cross’ place of work at Broad Street.

If these scenes of murder and mutilation were not enough to make Charles Cross a major suspect, then we need to also consider two more murders, which have been downgraded, so to speak, as ‘possible’ Ripper murders.

On Tuesday 7 August, the body of Martha Tabram was found in the stairwell of George Yard Buildings, just off Wentworth Street. This would also have fitted in perfectly with the route Cross would have taken on his way to work, and even his timings would have been perfect. Martha Tabram has never been officially recognised as a Ripper victim, only a possibility, but the opportunity and the known timetable of Charles Cross was there.

The final ‘coincidence’ happened in April 1888, and involved yet another known prostitute named Emma Smith. There is no suggestion whatsoever that Smith was a victim of the Ripper, as she lived long enough to identify her assailants as a gang of ruffians who robbed and assaulted her. She died of her wounds several days later in the London Hospital. She was subjected to the assault at the junction of Osborn Street and Wentworth Street, and was left wounded and bleeding in a shop doorway. The time she was lying there coincided exactly with the time Cross would have been walking to work through Wentworth Street.

There is no suggestion that Cross committed this crime, as Smith had already named the people who committed it as a gang, but the location of her killing occurred on streets he knew well, and there is a strong possibility that he had walked past her body that morning and seen her lying in a pool of blood. The sight of this death may have triggered something off within his subconscious, which later evolved and helped turn his fantasies into reality that autumn.

The evidence against Cross might well be circumstantial, but we need to bear in mind that Cross was seen by most people, the police included, as a poor working man and nobody of any significance. People like Cross were familiar sights on the streets of Whitechapel; they blended in with their surroundings. While the police and the press looked for madmen and strange-looking foreigners carrying packages and lurking in doorways, ordinary-looking working men such as Cross were ignored as they trudged through the darkly lit streets on their way to work. While the police struggled to keep pace with the continuing murders, Cross completely vanished from their investigations. He was just a part of the Nichols murder paperwork, pigeon-holed forever as the car-man witness who discovered her body.

Even today, not many people have shown a great deal of interest in Cross as a likely contender for Jack the Ripper. This might be in part due to the intellectual appeal of the far more complex theories, in stark contrast to Cross, the ordinary man in the street. Cross was not an elegantly dressed gentleman, a Mason or a mad doctor out for revenge. Neither was he an artist or a member of the royal family. If one wanted to sell a story about Jack the Ripper, Cross would probably be the last name on the author’s lips, for he was just an unknown local man who had, according to police records, been found beside a dead woman. He is most definitely not the most romantic solution to the Jack the Ripper murders, but he just could be the right one. One day, I am sure, we will hear much more about Charles Cross.

17

Did Abberline
Know the Identity of the Ripper?

A
bberline was not looking for romantic solutions to the murders; he was a genuine pragmatist in his approach to work. Why then did he not take suspects such as Charles Cross seriously? We have to take into account that when Abberline was still working for the police, most if not all of the actual evidence gathered by the Metropolitan Police in the course of the investigation, passed through his hands at some point. In spite of this, however, he was not known to have ever expressed a definite opinion on the Ripper’s identity during this period.

In March 1889, Albert Backart, a high-ranking member of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee, expressed the committee’s displeasure that since there had not been any more murders for some months, there seemed to be a great deal of complacency within the force regarding any ongoing investigation into the Ripper case.

It is then alleged that a senior officer contacted Backart and told him that he would explain all if he would agree to swear to secrecy, which he then did. The officer went on to tell him that the Vigilance Committee and its patrols could now be safely disbanded, as the police were quite certain that the Ripper murders were finished. Backart protested and said he needed to know more, to which the officer replied, ‘It isn’t necessary for you to know any more, the man in question is dead. He was fished out of the Thames two months ago and it would only cause pain to relatives if we said any more than that.’

The man the police were talking about was obviously Montague Druitt, who was found drowned in the Thames on 31 December 1888. Abberline himself didn’t acknowledge the fact, as others had done, that the Ripper was known to have been dead soon after the autumn of 1888 – as per his interview with the
Pall Mall Gazette
in 1903, mentioned earlier.