Abberline: The Man Who Hunted Jack the Ripper

by Peter Thurgood

  There were sixteen people living at 29 Hanbury Street, none of whom had seen or heard anything at the time of the murder. The passage led from the street door right through the house, and out to the backyard. It was never locked as it was frequented by the residents at all hours of the day and night, as the yard was the location of the only toilet in the house. The street door was wide open when Chapman’s body was discovered, which was also quite normal. Another witness said he had often seen strangers, both men and women, in the passage of the house, using the yard’s toilet as if it were a public one.

  While the yard was still undergoing a thorough search, Abberline was busy noting all of Chapman’s private belongings, which were pitifully lacking, to say the least. These items included a piece of muslin, a comb, and the coins and brass rings, which he had noted laid out around the feet of the corpse. Abberline discovered later that the bloodstained envelope also found in the yard, with the crest of the Sussex Regiment upon it, did in fact belong to Chapman. She had apparently picked it up from her lodgings and used it to carry two pills in, for her lung condition.

  The coins and the brass rings, which Abberline had told his constable to make a note of, strangely went missing sometime between having been found and the time of the inquest. They were never mentioned again, not even in surviving police records. This could, of course, have been nothing more than an oversight or police incompetence, but during this period, medical students, who were not exactly paid large amounts of money, were known to polish farthings and try to pass them off as half sovereigns. As the rumours surrounding Jack the Ripper grew, so too did the assumption by many people that the Ripper was undeniably someone with a knowledge of surgery: a medical student perhaps?

  After the preliminary police investigation at the scene of the crime, Dr George Bagster Phillips, the police surgeon, examined the body and noted that Chapman was probably killed sometime between 4 a.m. and 5 a.m. He also made several notes on her injuries and the position she was found.

  The body was conveyed later that day to Whitechapel mortuary, in the same police ambulance that had been used for Polly Nichols. The inquest into Annie Chapman’s death was opened on 10 September at the Working Lad’s Institute, Whitechapel. The coroner was Wynne Edwin Baxter. Dr George Bagster Phillips described the body as he saw it at 6.30 a.m. in the backyard of the house at 29 Hanbury Street:

  The left arm was placed across the left breast. The legs were drawn up, the feet resting on the ground, and the knees turned outwards. The face was swollen and turned on the right side. The tongue protruded between the front teeth, but not beyond the lips. The tongue was evidently much swollen. The front teeth were perfect as far as the first molar, top and bottom and very fine teeth they were. The body was terribly mutilated … the stiffness of the limbs was not marked, but was evidently commencing.

  The throat was dissevered deeply; the incision through the skin were jagged and reached right round the neck … On the wooden paling between the yard in question and the next, smears of blood, corresponding to where the head of the deceased lay, were to be seen. These were about 14 inches from the ground, and immediately above the part where the blood from the neck lay.

  Dr Phillips also commented on the instrument that was used to mutilate and murder Annie Chapman, stating that it must have been around 6–8 in in length, a very sharp and narrow blade, possibly the type used by a slaughterman which has normally been ground down in the sharpening process.

  He ruled out the use of a bayonet or a sword type of weapon. He also discounted the possibility that it might have been an instrument used by a medical practitioner, as a knife of this particular shape would only be used for post-mortem purposes, and the ordinary surgical case would not contain such an instrument. However, he did go on to say that there were indications of anatomical knowledge.

  Owing to the particularly cool weather for that time of year and the amount of blood Chapman had lost, it was very difficult to decipher the exact time of death as the body was cold when he first examined it. All he could say with any certainty was that there was no evidence of a struggle having taken place, and that he was positive the deceased had entered the yard alive.

  Apart from the disappearing coins, another strange thing regarding Chapman’s body was that, when she was found, there was a handkerchief tied around her throat: not a scarf, which might have possibly been worn to ward off the cold weather, but an ordinary small handkerchief. Dr Phillips testified that, in his opinion, the handkerchief was not tied on after the throat was cut. In other words, it was there when the killer struck, so firstly, why was the handkerchief there at all, and secondly, how could the killer have cut Chapman’s throat while completely avoiding the handkerchief, and getting no blood on it whatsoever?

  Her throat had been cut from left to right, and she had been disembowelled, with her intestines pulled out of her abdomen and placed over each of her shoulders. The morgue examination also revealed that part of her uterus was missing. Dr Phillips also concluded that Chapman’s protruding tongue and swollen face led him to think that she may have been asphyxiated with the handkerchief around her neck before her throat was cut. He was certain that she was killed on the spot where she was found, as there was no blood trail leading from the street to the yard.

  Dr Phillips formed the opinion that the murderer must have possessed some anatomical knowledge in order to have sliced out the reproductive organs in a single movement with such a relatively short blade. Dr Phillips’ theory was, however, dismissed by other experts, who thought it more likely the organ had been removed by mortuary staff, who took advantage of bodies that had already been opened to extract and sell the organs as surgical specimens, in a lucrative market at the time.

  It was also suggested in some circles that Chapman had been murdered deliberately to obtain the uterus. This theory was based on the premise that an American had made enquiries at a London medical school for the purchase of such organs. Both the Lancet and the British Medical Journal were dismissive of this idea; the British Medical Journal reported that the physician who requested the samples had left the country eighteen months before the murder and was a highly reputable doctor, although they didn’t name him. The Chicago Tribune then picked up on this story and claimed the American doctor was from Philadelphia.This quickly led others to speculate that the man in question was the notorious Francis Tumblety, who had either lived in, or travelled to, almost every American state and later became a prime suspect in the Jack the Ripper case.

  7

  Arrests

  At this point in the investigation, neither Inspector Abberline, nor any of his fellow officers, had any real suspects in mind. It was alleged that Abberline had been ordered direct from Scotland Yard: to start giving the public and the press what they were seemingly clambering for: arrests. There were far too many strange and suspicious-looking people on the streets, especially around the East End, and the public did not feel safe.

  Abberline was far from comfortable with this method of working; he had been a policeman for far too long to issue casual arrest warrants based upon a person’s looks or sometimes erratic behaviour. Using a special hand-picked team of men, he continued with his investigations in the manner he saw fit, while leaving what he termed these ‘panic arrests’ to lower ranked officers and other stations.

  Not only was Abberline and his team working diligently to catch the killer, the ordinary citizens of the East End also did their best to assist the police as much as they could. They reported every suspicious person and every overheard piece of conversation which they deemed to be relevant to the case. These actions were commendable, but they also hindered the investigations to an extent, as every single witness statement that was reported to the police had to be recorded and looked into.

  So great was the amount of extra work that this entailed that it actually took officers off the street. Abberline was under great strain and pressure to bring the murderer to justice, and with this now smaller team of detecti
ves actually out on the streets, it meant that he would spend almost the whole day directing his staff, and then go out onto the streets himself, often in disguise.

  He had been known to spend hours on the streets, often until the early hours of the morning. Then, feeling too weak to walk home, he would hail a hansom cab to finally arrive home, worn out and weary, at 5 a.m. Even then he was often deprived of sleep, as just as he was about to get into bed, he would often be sent a telegram, summoning him back to the East End to interrogate some lunatic or suspected person whom the inspector in charge would not take the responsibility of questioning.

  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.