Abberline: The Man Who Hunted Jack the Ripper (30 page)

The man Abberline always suspected the most was, of course, Severin Klosowski (aka George Chapman), and in 1903 Klosowski was indeed dead; in fact; he was hanged at Wandsworth prison on 7 April; 1903. When Sergeant George Albert Godley, who was once part of Abberline’s team in the hunt for the Ripper, actually arrested Klosowski and charged him with poisoning his wife, Abberline is alleged to have said to him, ‘You’ve caught Jack the Ripper at last!’

It has also been alleged that this remark was actually made after Klosowski was convicted and not when Godley first arrested him. So why did Abberline pick Klosowski?

When Abberline was speaking about the case in 1903, he said that during one of the inquests into the murders, the coroner ‘Told the jury a very queer story’. It seemed that the divisional surgeon who made the post-mortem examination spoke of the skill and precision in the way the killer had wielded his knife. He stated that there was overwhelming evidence to show that the killer had mutilated the body in such a way that he could possess himself of one or more of the victim’s organs.

When the coroner spoke of his ‘very queer story’, he went on to say that he had been told by the sub-curator of the pathological museum connected with one of the great medical schools that, a few months earlier, an American had called upon him and asked him to supply him with a number of organ specimens. The American apparently stated that he was willing to pay $100 for each specimen.

The strange American was told in no uncertain terms that his request was impossible to fulfil. Undeterred by this, the American went on to repeat his request at another similar institution in London, where once again he was turned down. In summing up these strange requests, the coroner went on to say:

Is it not possible that a knowledge of this demand may have inspired some abandoned wretch to possess himself of such specimens? It seems beyond belief that such inhuman wickedness could enter into the mind of any man; but, unfortunately, our criminal annals prove that every crime is possible!

When Abberline made the statement in the 1903
Pall Mall Gazette
, he also elaborated on his thoughts regarding Severin Klosowski:

I have been so struck with the remarkable coincidences in the two series of murders that I have not been able to think of anything else for several days past – not, in fact, since the Attorney-General made his opening statement at the recent trial, and traced the antecedents of Chapman before he came to this country in 1888. Since then the idea has taken full possession of me, and everything fits in and dovetails so well that I cannot help feeling that this is the man we struggled so hard to capture fifteen years ago.

As I say, there are a score of things which make one believe that Chapman is the man; and you must understand that we have never believed all those stories about Jack the Ripper being dead, or that he was a lunatic, or anything of that kind. For instance, the date of the arrival in England coincides with the beginning of the series of murders in Whitechapel; there is a coincidence also in the fact that the murders ceased in London when Chapman went to America, while similar murders began to be perpetrated in America after he landed there. The fact that he studied medicine and surgery in Russia before he came over here is well established, and it is curious to note that the first series of murders was the work of an expert surgeon, while the recent poisoning cases were proved to be done by a man with more than an elementary knowledge of medicine. The story told by Chapman’s wife of the attempt to murder her with a long knife while in America is not to be ignored.

When Frederick George Abberline wrote his memoirs, in the early 1920s, he was totally silent on the subject. However, Abberline was not the only person involved in the Ripper case to voice his opinion or non-opinion, as the case might be, as to the identity of the Ripper.

S
IR
R
OBERT
A
NDERSON

Sir Robert Anderson had replaced James Monro as the Assistant Commissioner of the CID in August 1888.

Anderson was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1841. He received a BA from Trinity College Dublin in 1862, and in 1863 was called to the Bar. In 1876 he was brought over to London as part of an intelligence branch to combat Fenianism. The branch was soon closed but Anderson remained in London as a Home Office ‘Advisor in matters relating to political crime’. He was also the controller for the spy Thomas Miller Beach, who had penetrated the Fenian movement. In 1886, however, he was relieved of all duties, with the exception of controlling Thomas Beach, after becoming embroiled in a political argument with the Home Secretary Hugh Childers.

As well as being the Assistant Commissioner of the CID, he was also made secretary of the Prison Commissioners in 1887–88. With such a high position in public life and such obviously close connections to what was going on within police circles, Anderson’s views, especially on the subject of the Ripper, were particularly sought after. After he retired in 1901, he set about writing his memoirs, entitled,
The Lighter Side of My Official Life
, which were published in 1910. In this book he stated: ‘In saying that he was a Polish Jew I am merely stating a definitely ascertained fact.’

His certainty of this statement is reinforced in the
Police Encyclopaedia
(1920), which he wrote the introduction to, saying: ‘There was no doubt whatever as to the identity of the criminal.’ Anderson is not just saying that he suspected somebody, but that the identity of the killer was known to the police and the investigating team.

S
IR
C
HARLES
W
ARREN

Born in Bangor, North Wales, in 1840, Sir Charles Warren was educated at Cheltenham, and commissioned into the Royal Engineers in 1857. Upon the outbreak of the Kaffir War, he was appointed to command the Diamond Fields Horse Regiment, and was promoted to lieutenant colonel. He went from strength to strength, reaching the position of major general and then colonel.

In 1885 Colonel Sir Charles Warren was appointed to the post of Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, upon the resignation of Sir E. Henderson. He had, during his three years of rule, many very difficult and complicated problems to solve, among which were the suppression of the Trafalgar Square riots (when troops sent in by Warren to clear the square opened fire on the rioters) and, of course, the Jack the Ripper case.

Warren’s biggest difficulty with the Jack the Ripper case was that he was probably unfairly blamed for the failure to track down the killer. He also faced press accusations that were frequently baseless. He was accused of failing to offer a reward for information, although in fact he supported the idea but it was blocked by the Home Office. He was also accused of not putting enough police officers on the ground, whereas in fact Whitechapel was swamped with them.

It was said that he cared more about uniformed policing than detective work, which simply wasn’t true, because the course that he did take was to allow his experienced detective officers to conduct their own affairs and he rarely interfered in their operations.

He was quite rightly very angry with these unfounded accusations about him, and responded by writing an article in
Murray’s Magazine
, in which he stated that he supported vigilante activity, which the police on the streets didn’t agree with at all. He also complained in public about the lack of control he was allowed over the CID. The Home Office was not very pleased at all about his remarks, and officially reprimanded him for discussing his office publicly without permission.

On 9 November 1888, Warren had had enough and resigned. Later that same night, Mary Jane Kelly was found murdered in her room in Spitalfields. Earlier on in the investigations, he had given an order that if another murder occurred nobody was to enter the scene until he arrived to direct the investigation. The police did not enter the murder scene for over three hours because, unaware of his resignation, they were waiting for Warren to arrive.

During the period of his career in the police force, Sir Charles Warren did not profess to have knowledge or private thoughts on the identity of the Ripper. After his resignation, Warren returned to military duties. He died in 1927 at the age of 87.

J
OHN
G
EORGE
L
ITTLECHILD

Born in Royston, Hertfordshire, on 21 December 1847, John George Littlechild joined the Metropolitan Police in 1867. In 1871 he was transferred to Scotland Yard, where later that same year he was promoted to sergeant.

In the next few years he worked on, and solved, several important cases, including the turf fraud scandal and a number of high-profile murder cases. In 1878 he was again promoted, this time to inspector.

In 1882 he was promoted to chief inspector and was involved in the investigation into the Phoenix Park murders. The following year he was made head of the Special Irish Branch. After a further eleven years of hard work, he eventually retired in 1893, possibly due to ill health, but he still continued to work as a private investigator.

On 23 September 1913, he wrote a letter to a journalist, Mr G.R. Sims, in which he named Francis Tumblety as a strong suspect for the Ripper. This was somewhat strange, in the fact that Littlechild had never worked on the Ripper case.

In the letter, Littlechild states that he had never heard of a Dr Druitt, but he goes on to say that Dr Tumblety was to his mind a very likely suspect. He also says that Sir Robert Anderson famously stated that he only thought he knew who the killer was, which undermines the certainty with which Anderson had written his version of events in the first place. Littlechild then seems to undermine himself, as he does not say that Tumblety was the Ripper, only that he could have been. The very words ‘could have been’ might apply to almost anyone, but he says his views were based on events at the time of the murders and not hindsight, which he claimed were what Abberline’s views were based upon. Nobody was looking for Severin Klosowski in 1888, says Littlechild, because Klosowski had not done anything.

M
ELVILLE
L
ESLIE
M
ACNAGHTEN

Born in 1853, Melville Leslie Macnaghten was the son of the last chairman of the East India Company. He was educated at Eton, and by 1887 had become overseer of the family tea plantations in India.

In 1881 he met James Monro, who was district judge and inspector general of police in Bengal at the time. The two men became good friends. When he returned to England in 1887 he was offered the job of assistant chief constable in the Metropolitan Police by his good friend James Monro. When Commissioner Warren discovered the two men’s connections, however, he blocked the appointment, thus causing a rift between Warren and Macnaghten, which lasted for years. Two years later, however, he was appointed assistant chief constable in the CID, and from there promoted to chief constable in the CID the following year.

In 1914, after he had retired, he published his memoirs,
Days of My Years
, in which he devoted a whole chapter to the Ripper murders, and implied that the identity of the killer was known. The description in the chapter points to Druitt. Many years later, Macnaghten’s daughter, Lady Christabel Aberconway, made a transcript of the notes that he used to dictate his report to his elder daughter, and in 1959 she showed it to the author Daniel Farson. He later used much of this information in his book about the Ripper.

In Aberconway’s version, Macnaghten wrote that he had always held strong opinions regarding Druitt. ‘The more I think the matter over,’ wrote Macnaghten, ‘the stronger do these opinions become.’

In
Days of My Years
, Macnaghten confirmed his suspicions of Druitt, when he wrote, ‘Although the Whitechapel murderer, in all probability put an end to himself soon after the Dorset Street affair in November 1888, certain facts, pointing to this conclusion, were not in the possession of the police till some years after I became a detective officer’.

Although Macnaghten did not join the Metropolitan Police until June 1889, he had worked with Monro, Anderson and Swanson and so was very well informed about the case. He was also adamant about the number of victims, stating: ‘The Whitechapel murderer had 5 victims, and 5 victims only.’

J
AMES
M
ONRO

Born in Scotland in 1838, James Monro spent nearly thirty years in India, where he joined the legal branch of the Indian Civil Service and met Melville Leslie Macnaghten. In 1884, Monro resigned from the Indian Civil Service and returned to Britain, where he was appointed as the first Assistant Commissioner of Crime in London. He succeeded Howard Vincent, whose title had been Director of Criminal Investigation, as head of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID). He resigned as Assistant Commissioner Metropolitan Police (CID) after a breakdown of relationship with Commissioner Warren. The actual date of his resignation was 31 August 1888, which was the day Polly Nichols was murdered, and also the date that Abberline was brought in. Monro resigned and returned to India in 1890 after further arguments. He died in England in 1920 without publishing any memoirs.

When Monro was interviewed in
Cassells Magazine
he said that he had ‘Decidedly formed a theory and when I do theorise it is from a practical standpoint and not upon any visionary foundation’. He failed, however, to say exactly who the choice of the subject was in his so-called theory. After his retirement, he was also reported to have said, ‘Jack the Ripper should have been caught’. Most people will agree with that statement, but Monro sounded like he was saying more than that. As he worked with all the major players involved in the case, was he then saying that someone, perhaps everyone, knew the identity of the Ripper?