Abberline: The Man Who Hunted Jack the Ripper (31 page)

I
NSPECTOR
E
DMUND
R
EID

Born in 1846, Edmund Reid joined the Metropolitan Police in 1872 and was transferred to the CID in 1874. He was promoted to sergeant in 1878 and to detective inspector at Scotland Yard in 1884.

Reid was a hard-working and diligent police officer who impressed his superiors. In 1886 he organised J Division, Bethnal Green CID, and was transferred to Whitechapel in 1888, the year the Ripper murders began, as local inspector, head of CID, H Division.

Reid retired in 1896 and gave a number of press interviews. He also wrote about the Ripper in an article he sent to the
Morning Star
in 1903. He held out his beliefs that there were nine Ripper murders, not five as the official line proclaimed. Reid declared that Frances Coles, who was murdered on 13 February 1891, was the last, and that there was no more after her because the killer was himself then dead, although he never published his thoughts as to how or where the Ripper died.

In 1912, Reid published yet more of his reminiscences on the case in
Lloyd’s Weekly News
. He said that, ‘It still amuses me to read the writings of such men as Dr Anderson, Dr Forbes Winslow, Major Arthur Griffiths, and many others, all holding different theories, but all of them wrong’. Once again Reid was quick to condemn others’ theories as wrong, without ever bothering to say why and, if they were wrong, what he considered to be right.

Reid didn’t seem to have a particular name in mind when speaking about his opinions on the Ripper. He believed the Ripper to be a man who was in the habit of using a certain public house where prostitutes gathered. The man would probably need to get drunk before plucking up the courage to talk to one of these women and eventually leave with her. According to Reid’s theory, the man would then take her to some dark street or alley, where, under the influence of drink, he would go about the ghastly business of murdering her and ripping her up. Having satisfied his maniacal blood lust, he would go away home, and the next day would presumably know nothing about it. Reid’s suspect, then, was not an individual, but a theory of the type of person the Ripper was.

S
IR
H
ENRY
S
MITH

Born in 1835, Sir Henry Smith was educated at Edinburgh Academy and Edinburgh University. In 1869 he was commissioned in Suffolk Artillery Militia, and in 1885 he was appointed chief superintendent for City of London Police.

He became Commissioner of City of London Police from 1890 to 1901, and was knighted in 1910. He also published his memoirs,
From Constable to Commissioner
, in that same year. He died in 1920.

In his memoirs Smith admitted that Jack the Ripper had beaten him, as well as every other police officer in London. He claimed to have known more about the Ripper’s crimes than anybody else, but as to the identity of the killer, he said he had no more idea about who he was or where he lived than he had twenty years earlier.

At one time, during the Ripper murders, Smith thought he was very close to catching the murderer. This was on the night of the Catherine Eddowes murder, but in reality the Ripper must have long escaped from the immediate scene. If Smith’s claim has any element of truth in it, then surely he would have had some idea of who it was that he claimed he was close to catching.

Another contradiction to his statement of having absolutely no knowledge of who the Ripper might be comes a short while after the Eddowes murder, when he stated categorically that he did have a suspect. He then stated that his suspect had been a medical student, had been in a lunatic asylum and had spent a great deal of time with women of loose character. According to Smith, his ‘lunatic’ suspect also used to swindle these women by passing polished farthings off on them, making them out to be sovereigns.

Smith said that he even sent two men to a house in Rupert Street, Haymarket, after receiving a tip off that his suspect would be there. The suspect did indeed turn out to be there, but he had what Smith described as a perfect alibi, even though he also had a number of polished farthings in his possession. Not much can be gathered from the statements and writings of Smith; he seems to leap backwards and forwards, one minute saying that he had no idea whatsoever as to the Ripper’s identity, and the next saying that he was hot on the trail of the killer. At one time he even attacked Sir Robert Anderson for saying that the ripper’s identity was known and that he was a Jew.

D
ONALD
S
UTHERLAND
S
WANSON

Born in Thurso, Wick, Scotland, in 1848, Donald Sutherland Swanson joined the Metropolitan Police on 27 April 1868, and by November 1887 had achieved the rank of chief inspector, CID, Scotland Yard.

In 1896 he was promoted to superintendent, and was involved in a crackdown on male prostitution in 1897. He retired from the force in 1903 and died in 1924.

Swanson was a close friend of Robert Anderson. Melville Macnaghten called him a very capable officer. In the famous
Swanson Marginalia
, Swanson wrote that the suspect was sent to Stepney Workhouse and then to Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum where he died shortly afterwards. Swanson does not say that Kosminski was the killer, only that he was the suspect Anderson was referring to. This shows that Kosminski was a serious suspect and not just a name that Macnaghten had plucked out of the air.

An article in the
Pall Mall Gazette
, dated 7 May 1895, stated that Mr Swanson believed the crimes to be the work of a man who was now dead. It did not name a specific person, but it could well refer to Kosminski, who Swanson said he thought was dead, but it could also refer to Druitt or many others.

P
OLICE
S
UPERINTENDENT
T
HOMAS
A
RNOLD

Born at Weald in Essex on 7 April 1835, Thomas Arnold joined the Metropolitan Police’s B Division (Chelsea) on 19 March 1855 and resigned again on 20 September that same year in order to fight in the Crimean War. On 29 September 1856, when the war had ended, he rejoined the police and was attached to K Division (West Ham). He served most of his career in London’s East End. He was promoted to inspector on 14 March 1866, and transferred to B Division.

In 1887 Arnold was involved in the Lipski case. Israel Lipski was a Polish Jew, living in the East End of London. On 28 June 1887, police were summoned to 16 Batty Street, where a young woman named Miriam Angel had been murdered after being forced to consume nitric acid. She was six months pregnant at the time. Lipski was found underneath her bed, with acid burns inside his own mouth, and was subsequently arrested. Lipski protested his innocence, claiming that Schmuss and Rosenbloom (two employees of his) were responsible, but he was charged with murder, found guilty and hanged on 21 August 1887 in the yard of Newgate prison

By 1888 Arnold had been made police superintendent of H Division (Whitechapel) at the time of the Whitechapel murders in that district.

In an interview with the
Eastern Post
in February 1893, Arnold stated that not more than four of the Ripper murders were committed by the same person. The four he spoke of were the murders of Annie Chapman in Hanbury Street, Polly Nichols in Buck’s Row, Elizabeth Stride in Berner Street and Mary Kelly in Mitre Square. There seemed to be some confusion between Eddowes and Kelly, as he had earlier said that he did not believe the murder of Kelly had been committed by the same person.

W
ALTER
D
EW

Born in 1863, Walter Dew joined the Metropolitan Police in 1882 and was posted to X Division (Paddington Green). He was transferred to H Division (Whitechapel) in 1887.

In 1906 he was promoted to chief inspector, and in 1910 he arrested Dr Crippen, after which he resigned from the force and set up as a confidential agent. In 1938 he published his memoirs,
I Caught Crippen
. Dew died in 1947.

In his book, Dew described the sight of Mary Kelly’s body in her room as ‘The most gruesome memory of the whole of my Police career’. In the same book, he set out that he was of the opinion that Emma Smith was the first victim of Jack the Ripper and ‘Someone, somewhere shared Jack the Ripper’s guilty secret’. He also dismissed the idea that the Ripper displayed some sort of medical skill.

L
EWIS
H
ENRY
K
EATON

Lewis Henry Keaton was born in 1870, and joined the Metropolitan Police in August 1891. He eventually retired from the force in 1917, having achieved the rank of inspector.

Before he died, aged 100 in 1970, ex-Inspector Lewis Henry Keaton gave a recorded interview, in 1969, in which he proposed the theory that the Ripper was a doctor who was collecting specimens of wombs infected with venereal disease and that he used strychnine. It has been said that he could have been confusing the Ripper with Doctor Thomas Neil Cream, who was a Scottish-born serial killer, also known as the Lambeth Poisoner. We must not forget that Keaton was very old at the time of this interview, and his mind might have been somewhat muddled.

He did try to name the doctor who he claimed was the Ripper, but just as he was about to name his suspect as either Dr Cohn or Koch, or someone else whose name he could not recall, the interviewer spoke over him and drowned out Keaton’s words.

Keaton did not, in fact, join the police force until 1891, which was three years after the Ripper murders had ceased, so therefore he had no first-hand knowledge of the Ripper case.

B
ENJAMIN
L
EESON

Leeson did not join the police until October 1890 and was not posted to Whitechapel until 1891. This means that he was not a police officer at the time of the Ripper murders, but it does not mean that he knew nothing of them. The best historians and archaeologists in the world were not around when their particular subject was actually being lived out, but they are nevertheless experts on their chosen subjects.

In Leeson’s memoirs were
Lost London
, which were published in 1934, Leeson wrote, ‘Amongst the police who were most concerned in the case there was a general feeling that a certain doctor, known to me, could have thrown quite a lot of light on the subject.’ Some authors have questioned Leeson’s reliability, saying that he was often wrong about events revolving around the siege of Sidney Street, even though he was very much involved in them. In spite of his lack of first-hand knowledge into the case, both Leeson’s and Keaton’s views may reflect a widespread belief amongst the lower ranks of the police that the Ripper was a doctor.

R
OBERT
S
AGAR

Born in 1852, and died in 1924, Robert Sagar became a City of London CID officer, later promoted to inspector. According to the press reports of his retirement, Robert Sagar also represented the City of London Police at Leman Street police station in nightly meetings with the Metropolitan Police during the period of the Whitechapel murders.

Sagar prided himself in his ability to disguise himself and track down suspects. So effectual was his disguise, that on one particular night, when he donned the disguise of a labourer in order to follow a Ripper suspect in Butchers’ Row, Aldgate, he was actually tracked himself by two police officers, who thought they had reason to regard him as a suspicious character.

Regarding the murders and the identity of the killer, several of Sagar’s opinions are quoted in the reports of his retirement. One such report stated: ‘We had good reason to suspect a man who worked in Butchers’ Row, Aldgate. There was no doubt that this man was insane, and after a time his friends thought it advisable to have him removed to a private asylum. After he was removed there were no more Ripper atrocities.’ This is especially interesting as it sounds very similar to what Swanson wrote about Kosminski. It is strange, however, that Henry Smith made no mention of this suspect since he also knew Sagar, and later wrote, ‘A better or more intelligent officer than Robert Sagar I never had under my command’.

F
REDERICK
P
ORTER
W
ENSLEY

Wensley joined the Metropolitan Police in January 1888, serving in H Division (Whitechapel), and was therefore directly involved in the investigation of the Ripper murders.

During the time Wensley was with the force, he rose in rank to eventually become chief constable of the CID. He published his memoirs, under the title
Detective Days
, in 1931. The title was later changed to
Forty Years of Scotland Yard
.

In
Detective Days
Wensley wrote, ‘Only five, with a possible sixth, murders were officially attributed to Jack the Ripper.’

In the latter edition,
Forty Years of Scotland Yard
, Wensley seemed to play down his role in the investigation, writing in a somewhat light-hearted manner that the only discovery he was privy to was the invention of the rubber-soled boot, which was worn by patrolmen on their beat. From this light-hearted intervention, he then goes on to detail the Frances Coles murder, which happened on Friday 13 February 1891, almost two years after the official five victims were murdered. Was this, then, the sixth murder he spoke of earlier?

I
N SUMMING UP THE POLICE AND THEIR SUSPECTS

We need to ask did the police, as a collective body, know who Jack the Ripper was? The above list of policemen and their views shows that they did not have one equally shared view regarding the identity of the Ripper. There is even disagreement among them as to the number of victims, with estimates ranging from four to nine. One thing that they do seem to have in common is that the murderer was dead or in an asylum. If we consider, however, that the majority of their summing up happened quite some time after the events occurred, it doesn’t take too much intellectual consideration to assess that the killer would have almost certainly been either dead or in an asylum by this time. In fact, it would have been quite an obvious conclusion.