Fundamentally, this is not so different from the way a homicide is handled in England today, except that a coroner’s court would hold an inquest at the conclusion of the scene investigation and examination of the body. Information and witnesses would be marshalled before the coroner and a jury, and a decision would be rendered by verdict as to whether the death was natural, an accident, a suicide, or a homicide. In Virginia, the manner of death would be the sole decision of the forensic pathologist who performed the autopsy. In England, the decision would rely on jurors, which can be unfortunate if a majority of them don’t comprehend the medico-legal facts of the case, especially if those facts are weak.
However, jurors can go a step further than the forensic pathologist and commit an “undetermined” case to trial. I think of the case of a “drowned” woman whose husband has just taken out a large life insurance policy on her. The medical expert’s job is not to make deductions, no matter what he or she privately believes. But jurors can. Jurors could convene in their private room and suspect the woman was murdered by her greedy husband and send the case to court.
The American way of investigating death was imported from England. But over the decades, individual U.S. states, counties, and cities have slowly been withdrawing from the notion of the “coroner,” who is usually a nonmedical person elected and invested with the power to decide how someone died and whether a crime was committed. When I first began working at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Richmond, I assumed that other jurisdictions had the same medical examiner system that Virginia did. I was dismayed to learn this wasn’t true. Many elected coroners in other states were funeral home directors, which at best is a conflict of interest. At worst, it is an occasion for medico-legal incompetence and the financial abuse of people who are grieving.
The U.S. has never had a national standard of death investigation, and we are far from it now. Some cities or states continue to have elected coroners who go to the scenes but do not perform the autopsies because they are not forensic pathologists or even physicians. There are offices—such as the one in Los Angeles—in which the chief medical examiner is called a coroner, even though he isn’t elected and is a forensic pathologist.
Then there are states that have medical examiners in some cities and coroners in others. Some locales have neither, and local government begrudgingly pays a small fee for what I call a “circuit forensic pathologist” to ride in and handle a medico-legal case, usually in an inadequate—if not appalling—location such as a funeral home. The worst facility I remember was one in Pennsylvania. The autopsy was performed in a hospital “morgue” used as a temporary storage room for stillborn infants and amputated body parts.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
HUE AND CRY
The English system of investigating death can be traced back some eight hundred years to the reign of Richard I, when it was decreed that in every county of His Majesty’s realm, officers would ensure the “pleas of the crown.” These men were called “crowners,” a name that eventually evolved into “coroner.”
Coroners were elected by the freeholders of the county and were required to be a knight, assuring they were financially secure, of good standing, and, of course, objective and honest in their collection of revenues due to the crown. A sudden death was a potential source of income for the king if there was a finding of wrongdoing in murders and suicides, or even if there was an inappropriate response by the one who discovered the dead body—such as not responding at all and looking the other way.
It is human nature to make a hue and cry when one stumbles upon a dead body, but during the medieval era, not to do so was to risk punishment and financial penalty. When a person died suddenly, the coroner was to be notified immediately. He would respond as quickly as he could and assemble a jury for what would later be called an inquest. It is frightening to consider how many deaths were labeled evil deeds when the truth may have been that the poor soul simply choked on his mutton, had a stroke, or dropped dead at a young age from a congenitally bad heart or an aneurysm. Suicides and homicides were sins against God and the king. If a person took his or her own life or someone else did, the coroner and jury determined wrongdoing by the deceased or perpetrator, and the offender’s entire estate could end up in the crown’s coffers. This placed the coroner in a tempting position to perhaps bargain a bit and show a little compassion before riding off with coins jingling in his pockets.
Eventually, the coroner’s power placed him in a seat of judgment and he became an enforcer of the law. Suspects seeking refuge in the church would soon enough find themselves face-to-face with the coroner, who would demand a confession and arrange the seizure of the man’s assets in the name of the crown. Coroners were involved in the gruesome practice of trial by ordeal, requiring a person to prove innocence by showing no pain or injury after holding a hand in the fire or enduring other dreadful tortures while the coroner sat nearby and somberly watched. Before the days of medico-legal autopsies and professional police investigation, a wife’s tumble down the castle steps might be murder if her husband could not endure terrible tortures and escape unscathed.
If a forensic pathologist today were the equivalent of a coroner of old, he would have no medical training and would drive a morgue van to a death scene, glance at the body, listen to witnesses, find out how much the dead person is worth, decide that a sudden death from a bee sting was a homicidal poisoning, test the wife’s innocence by holding her head under water, and if she didn’t drown after five or ten minutes, conclude she was innocent. If she drowned, wrongdoing would be the verdict and the family estate would be forfeited to the queen or the president of the United States, depending on where the death occurred. In the coroner system of days gone by, jurors could be bribed. Coroners could increase their wealth. Innocent people could lose everything they owned or be hanged. It was best not to die suddenly, if possible.
Times did change for the better. In the sixteenth century, the coroner’s role narrowed its focus to the investigation of sudden deaths and stayed clear of law enforcement and trial by ordeal. In 1860—the year Walter Sickert was born—a committee recommended that the election process for coroner be treated as seriously as voting for Members of Parliament. A growing awareness of the importance of competent postmortem examinations and handling of evidence added further value and prestige to the office of coroner, and in 1888—when the Ripper murders began—a governmental act mandated that death investigation findings by coroners would no longer render any sort of financial benefit to the crown.
These important pieces of legislation are rarely if ever mentioned in connection with the Ripper crimes. Objective death investigation became a priority, and the possibility of material gain by the crown was removed. The change in law meant a change of mind-set that allowed and encouraged the coroner to concentrate on justice and not insidious pressure from the royals. The crown had nothing to gain by interfering with the inquests of Martha Tabran, Mary Ann Nichols, or the Ripper’s other victims—even if the women had been upper-class subjects with influence and wealth. The coroner had nothing to gain but plenty to lose if the freewheeling press depicted him as an incompetent fool, a liar, or a greedy tyrant. Men such as Wynne Baxter supported themselves through respectable legal practices. They did not add much to their incomes by presiding over inquests, but put their livelihoods at risk if their integrity and skills were impugned.
The evolution in the coroner’s system had reached a new level of objectivity and seriousness in 1888, reinforcing my belief that there was no investigative or political conspiracy to “cover up” some nefarious secret during the Ripper murders or after they were believed to have ended. There were, of course, the usual bureaucratic attempts to prevent further embarrassment by discouraging the publication of police memoirs and classifying secret official memorandums that were never written for the public to see. Discretion and nondisclosure may not be popular, but they do not always imply scandal. Honest people delete personal e-mails and use
shredding machines. But try as I might, for the longest time I could find no excuse for the silence of the elusive Inspector Abberline. So much is made of him. So little is known. So absent does he seem from the Ripper investigation he headed.
Frederick George Abberline was a modest, courteous man of high morals who was as reliable and methodical as the clocks he repaired before he joined the Metropolitan Police in 1863. During his thirty years of service, he earned eighty-four commendations and rewards from judges, magistrates, and the commissioner of police. As Abberline himself matter-of-factly put it, “I think [I] was considered very exceptional.”
He was admired, if not cherished, by his colleagues and the public he served, and does not seem the sort to deliberately outshine anyone, but took great pride in a job well done. I find it significant that there is not a single photograph of him that anybody seems to know of, and I don’t believe this is so because all of them “walked away” from Scotland Yard’s archives and files. I would expect that “pinched” pictures would have been recirculating for years, their prices mounting with each resale. It also seems that any existing pictures would have been published at least once somewhere.
But if there is even one photograph of Abberline, I do not know of it. The only hint of what he looked like is to be found in a few sketches published in magazines that don’t always spell his name correctly. Artistic versions of the legendary inspector show an indistinct-looking man with muttonchops, small ears, a straight nose, and a high forehead. In 1885, it appears, he was losing his hair. He may have slumped a bit and doesn’t impress me as particularly tall. As was true of the mythical East End monster Abberline tracked but never caught, the detective could disappear at will and become anybody in a crowd.
His love of clocks and gardening says a great deal about him. These are solitary, gentle pursuits that require patience, concentration, tenacity, meticulousness, a light touch, and a love of life and the way things work. I can’t think of many better qualities for a detective, except, of course, honesty, and I have no doubt that Frederick Abberline was as true as a tuning fork. Although he never wrote his autobiography or allowed anyone else to tell his story, he did keep a diary of sorts, a hundred-page clipping book about crimes he worked interspersed with comments written in his graceful, generous hand.
Based on the way he assembled his clipping book, I would say that he didn’t get around to it until after his retirement. When he died in 1929, this collection of newsprint remnants of his shining career remained the property of his descendants, who eventually donated it to a person or persons unknown. I knew nothing about it until early in 2002 when I was doing further research in London and an official with the Yard showed me the eight-by-eleven book bound in black. I don’t know whether it had just been donated or had just turned up; I have no idea whether it actually belongs to Scotland Yard or perhaps to someone who works there. Exactly where this little-known clipping book has been since Abberline pasted it together and when it turned up at Scotland Yard are questions I can’t answer. Typically, Abberline remains mysterious and offers few answers even now.
His diary is neither confessional nor full of details about his life, but he does reveal his personality in the way he worked cases and in the comments he wrote. He was a brave, intelligent man who kept his word and abided by the rules, which included not divulging details about the very sorts of cases I expected and hoped to find hidden between his clipping book’s covers. Abberline’s entries abruptly stop with an October 1887 case of what he called “spontaneous combustion” and do not resume until a March 1891 case of trafficking in infants.
There is not so much as a hint about Jack the Ripper. One won’t find a single word about the 1889 Cleveland Street male brothel scandal that must have been a briar patch for Abberline, as accusations included the names of men close to the throne. To read Abberline’s diary is to think the Ripper murders and the Cleveland Street scandal never happened, and I have no reason to suspect that someone removed any related pages from the cuttings book. It appears Abberline chose not to include what he knew would be the most sought-after and controversial details of his investigative career.
On pages 44-45 of his diary, he offers an explanation for his silence:I think it is just as well to record here the reason why as from the various cuttings from the newspapers as well as the many other matters that I was called upon to investigate—that never became public property—it must be apparent that I could write many things that would be very interesting to read.
At the time I retired from the service the authorities were very much opposed to retired officers writing anything for the press as previously some retired officers had from time to time been very indiscreet in what they had caused to be published and to my knowledge had been called upon to explain their conduct—and in fact—they had been threatened with actions for libel.
Apart from that there is no doubt the fact that in describing what you did in detecting certain crimes you are putting the criminal classes on their guard and in some cases you may be absolutely telling them how to commit crime.
As an example in the FingerPrint detection you find now the expert thief wears gloves.
The opposition to former officers writing their memoirs did not deter everyone, whether it was the men of Scotland Yard or the City of London Police. I have three examples on my desk: Sir Melville Macnaghten’s Days of My Years, Sir Henry Smith’s From Constable to Commissioner, and Benjamin Leeson’s Lost London: The Memoirs of an East End Detective. All three include Jack the Ripper anecdotes and analyses that I think the world would be better without. It is sad that men whose lives and careers were touched by the Ripper cases would spin theories almost as baseless as some of those offered by people who weren’t even born at the time of the crimes.
Henry Smith was the Acting Commissioner of the City of London Police during the murders of 1888, and he modestly writes, “There is no man living who knows as much of those murders as I do.” He declares that after the “second crime”—which may have been Mary Ann Nichols, who was not murdered in Smith’s jurisdiction—he “discovered” a suspect he was fairly sure was the murderer. Smith described him as a former medical student who had been in a lunatic asylum and had spent “all of this time” with prostitutes, whom he cheated by passing off polished farthings as sovereigns.
Smith conveyed this intelligence to Sir Charles Warren, who did not find the suspect, according to Smith. It was just as well. The former lunatic turned out to be the wrong man. I feel compelled to add that a sovereign would have been unusually generous payment for an Unfortunate who was more than accustomed to exchanging favors for farthings. The damage done by Smith during the Ripper investigation was to perpetuate the notion that the Ripper was a doctor or a medical student or someone involved in a field connected with medicine.
I don’t know why Smith made such an assumption as early as the “second case,” when no victim had been disemboweled yet and no organs had been taken. Following Mary Ann Nichols’s murder, there was no suggestion that the weapon was a surgical knife or that the killer possessed even the slightest surgical skills. Unless Smith simply has the timing wrong in his recollections, there was no reason for the police to suspect a so-called medically trained individual this early in the investigation.
Smith’s overtures to Charles Warren apparently evoked no response, and Smith took it upon himself to put “nearly a third” of his police force in plainclothes and instruct them to “do everything which, under ordinary circumstances, a constable should not do,” he says in his memoirs. These clandestine activities included sitting on doorsteps smoking pipes and lingering in public houses, gossiping with the locals. Smith wasn’t idle, either. He visited “every butcher’s shop in the city,” and I find this almost comical as I imagine the commissioner—perhaps in disguise or a suit and tie—dropping by to quiz slaughterhouse butchers about suspicious-looking men of their profession who might be going about cutting up women. I feel quite sure the Metropolitan Police
would not have appreciated his enthusiasm or violation of boundaries.
Sir Melville Macnaghten probably detoured if not derailed the Ripper investigation permanently with his certainties that were not based on firsthand information or the open-minded and experienced deductions of an Abberline. In 1889, Macnaghten joined the Metropolitan Police as assistant commissioner of CID. He had nothing to recommend him but twelve years of work on his family’s tea plantations in Bengal, where he went out each morning to shoot wildcats, foxes, or alligators, or maybe have a go at a good pig sticking.
When his memoirs were published in 1914, four years after Smith published his recollections, Macnaghten restrained himself until page 55, where he began engaging in a little literary pig sticking that was followed by amateurish sleuthing and pomposity. He alluded to Henry Smith as being “on the tiptoe of expectation” and having a “prophetic soul” since Smith was in hot pursuit of the murderer weeks before the first murder had even happened—according to Macnaghten. Smith considered the August 7th slaying of Martha Tabran as the Ripper’s debut, while Macnaghten was certain that the first murder was Mary Ann Nichols on August 31st.
Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper - Case Closed Page 16