Clearly, the spark which had kindled this particular fire was the latest killing, but more particularly the belief, expressed consistently, loudly and frequently by the crowds of concerned and frightened East End residents, that the latest murder had been so brutal and the mutilations so gross and horrific that no Englishman could possibly have perpetrated it. And, because of the very large Jewish population in the area, it was therefore deemed logical to assume that the killing had been performed by a Jew.
The inevitable result of this piece of tortuous illogic was that the crowds began threatening, and in some cases attacking, any Jews they found on the streets. Fortunately, there was still a heavy police presence in the area, and the few fights which broke out were quickly brought under control, and nobody was seriously hurt.
There was a further superstition, which also gained ground around this time, that any Jew who had enjoyed carnal knowledge of a Christian woman would be required, in accordance with the laws promulgated in the Talmud, to afterwards kill and mutilate her as a form of atonement for his ‘sin’. Some people even began quoting selected passages from this book to ‘prove’ the case and assert, at least by implication, that the Whitechapel murderer was very obviously a Jew.
Another result of the anti-Semitic feeling was a peculiar obsession which appeared to be shared by all three interested groups in London – the press, the residents of Whitechapel and, to a lesser extent, the police. They had all become fascinated by a Jewish cobbler who had somehow acquired the nickname ‘Leather Apron’. Cobblers, of whatever race or religion, commonly wore such a garment, so the soubriquet was hardly unique, though it was undeniably appropriate. This man very quickly achieved an almost mythic status, and in the process became, in the eyes of the people, a virtual embodiment of fundamental evil.
The newspapers were quick to exploit the story. On both the fifth and sixth of September the Star had printed lurid articles which were clearly designed to capture the public imagination. The first of these bore the headline:
“LEATHER APRON”
THE ONLY NAME LINKED WITH THE
WHITECHAPEL MURDERS
A NOISELESS MIDNIGHT TERROR
The Strange Character who Prowls About Whitechapel After Midnight – Universal Fear Among the Women – Slippered Feet and a Sharp Leather-knife
The headline was enough to send shivers of fear down the collective spines of the Whitechapel prostitutes, though the stories themselves were noticeably devoid of facts, and appeared to be little more than a collection of rumours, half-truths and complete fabrications. ‘Leather Apron’ was allegedly a Jewish slipper-maker who had decided to embark on a second career by threatening prostitutes and demanding money from them.
But it wasn’t just the Star which printed such material, and the other London papers were quick to join in. A report in Lloyd’s Weekly London Newspaper contained a typical description of ‘Leather Apron’, similar to those in most of the other periodicals. It stated that: ‘His expression is sinister and seems to be full of terror for the women who describe it. His eyes are small and glittering. His lips are usually parted in a grin which is not only not reassuring, but excessively repellent.’ The paper went on to describe him as ‘a Jew, or of the Jewish parentage’, and as a ‘slip maker’ but asserted that his principal trade was blackmailing women late at night, a statement that cried out for clarification, but which the reporter did not elaborate upon. He was also believed to carry a sharp knife which ‘a number of women have seen’ but, strangely if he really was the ‘Fiend of Whitechapel’, he had not apparently attacked anybody with it.
His most alarming characteristic for the prostitutes of Whitechapel, however, was that he never made any noise when moving about, and the first indication most women had of his presence was when he materialized right beside them. He was also apparently frightened of men and ran away the moment any male approached to assist one of the ladies he was presumably blackmailing and, according to one paper, he also had the extremely unusual, not to say anatomically unlikely, habit of walking without bending his knees.
On Monday, 10 September, public concern over the alleged activities of the man nicknamed ‘Leather Apron’ had reached such a level that Detective Inspector Abberline, who was still waiting to be officially confirmed as the senior officer in charge of the investigation into the series of murders, knew he had to do something about it or anti-Jewish riots would be quite likely to rage through the East End. And the odd thing was that the police already knew the identity of ‘Leather Apron’.
Abberline called in one of the detective sergeants at the police station, a heavily built man with dark hair and a luxuriant moustache named William Thick, and told him what he wanted him to do.
‘Are you quite sure about this, sir?’ Thick asked. ‘I thought we’d already looked at this man and decided he didn’t have anything to do with these killings?’
‘We have, we did, and he doesn’t, Sergeant,’ Abberline replied, his voice resigned and flat. ‘We know that he’s innocent, but my concern is that if we don’t bring him in, we could find that some of the local citizens in Whitechapel will decide to do our job for us. And if that happens, this man might not survive. So this is as much for his benefit and safety as anything.’
A short time later, a small group of police officers walked into Mulberry Street, off Commercial Road East, led by Detective Sergeant Thick. He knocked on the door of number 22, which was opened by a Polish Jew who was dark and thickset.
‘We want you,’ Thick stated, as his opening gambit.
‘What for?’ the Pole replied.
‘You know what for. You will have to come with me.’
‘Very well, sir. I’ll go down to the station with you with the greatest of pleasure.’
The Pole’s name was John Pizer, and he was the man who had – for reasons nobody was ever able to clearly explain – acquired the nickname the ‘Fiend of Whitechapel’, and who was otherwise known as ‘Leather Apron’. But far from being the very incarnation of evil, he was an insignificant little man of thirty-eight years. He was short, standing only about five feet four inches tall, and of unpleasant appearance, at least according to the East London Observer, with thin and cruel lips.
Under Abberline’s guidance, the police went through the motions in an attempt to satisfy public opinion. Pizer was placed in an identity parade, and entirely unsurprisingly none of the women who had alleged that they had been molested by ‘Leather Apron’ recognized him. Several people who knew him attested to his good character, and it was easily established that he had unbreakable alibis for the times when Nichols and Chapman had been murdered.
Despite this unequivocal proof of his innocence, Pizer continued to be harassed for the rest of his time in Whitechapel, and on one occasion was physically attacked on the streets.
The edition of the East London Observer for 8 September had described the events in and around Hanbury Street as ‘A Riot Against the Jews’, and attempted to bring a measure of reason to the situation, pointing out that since Jews began returning to England in 1649, only two members of that race had been hanged for murder. The article went on to say that: ‘There is something too horrible, too unnatural, too un-Jewish, I would say, in the terrible series of murders for an Israelite to be the murderer.’
Despite this, anti-Semitic sentiments continued to linger in the East End of London for several months afterwards, and this caused sufficient concern within the Jewish community as a whole for it to offer a financial reward for the capture of the man who would shortly become known as ‘Jack the Ripper’.
* * *
Alexei Pedachenko had, as usual, bought all the weekend papers, and all those published on Monday morning as well, and had consumed every word about his latest killing, searching for information.
When he had been making his plans to begin this killing spree, he had decided to establish a series of ground rules, so to speak, to ensure as far as possible that he would never get caught. And unfortunat
ely, during his latest attack, he had broken almost every one of them.
The sudden appearance of the woman pedestrian, walking down the street behind him, and passing so close that he could probably have reached out and touched her, had been entirely unexpected and a very unpleasant surprise. With hindsight he knew that what he should have done was to just walk away. Make some excuse and leave the prostitute alive. Maybe he should even have gone through with the transaction he was pretending to negotiate with her, though the mere thought of copulating with such a female filled the Russian with shuddering horror.
But what he certainly shouldn’t have done was what he did in fact do: he shouldn’t have killed her. Absolutely the only saving grace was that the prostitute had been standing with her back to the wall, which meant that, because he was facing her, the only part of his body that the woman pedestrian could have seen with any clarity was his back. If she’d seen his face, that would have been an entirely different matter. And the reports he had read in the newspapers seemed to confirm that the police still had no accurate description of him to go on. All the pedestrian had been able to supply was a rough word picture which included his approximate height and build, and the clothes he had been wearing, clothes that Pedachenko had already disposed of.
Even that very rough description concerned him. He had expected that, as soon as he had accomplished two or three murders, the female population of Whitechapel and Spitalfields would be placed in a state of extreme alertness, and would be very suspicious of strangers. But he hadn’t anticipated that anyone would actually see him about his work, except the woman he had selected as his victim, and obviously she would be in no position to talk to anyone once he’d finished with her.
So next time, if there had to be a next time – which, of course, depended upon what Charles Warren now did – he knew it would be necessary to change his tactics. The latest killing and the brutal mutilation which had followed it meant that any man – whether he appeared to be respectable or not – who approached a lone prostitute on a deserted street late at night would immediately arouse suspicion, and he’d find it much more difficult to carry out his work. He would have to devise some way of allying the fear that such an encounter would produce, and that wouldn’t be easy.
Friday, 14 September 1888
Whitechapel, London
The inquest into the death of Annie Chapman was held on the Friday following her killing, and was attended both by a large crowd of spectators and by several officials, including Inspector Abberline as the senior investigating officer.
Chapman had quickly been identified by Timothy Donovan, the deputy of Crossingham’s Lodging House at 35 Dorset Street. He stated that he had known her for almost a year and a half, during which time she had operated as a prostitute, and that for about the previous four months she had been a lodger in his doss house, the common term for a lodging house. He also confirmed the circumstances of the last evening when he’d seen her alive.
When the collection of evidence moved on to the discovery of the body, one of the first witnesses called was Mrs Amelia Richardson, who held the lease for the entire premises. When she was questioned about the presence of a dead prostitute at her property, she claimed that she had often in the past turned such women out of her yard when they appeared there with their clients.
But her son John fuelled a certain amount of speculation when he claimed in his later evidence that they had also often had prostitutes ‘working’ on the first-floor landing of the building, a practice, he said, that had been going on for years.
His mother was visibly less than impressed with the suggestion that her property had been used for immoral purposes, especially as she was known to hold weekly prayer meetings there, but John Richardson didn’t waver and stuck to his story.
‘But you did recognize this woman, Mrs Richardson?’ the coroner asked her.
‘I did, sir, yes. I did not know her well, and I did not know her name, but I recognized her as the dark woman that used to come around with cotton and crochet work.’
‘So you knew her as a hawker, rather than as an unfortunate?’
‘That is so. I might also add that I frequently bought such goods from her, not because I needed the products she was selling, but because of my charitable nature.’
And it was certainly true that Annie Chapman did act as a hawker as well as a prostitute. But this suggestion made for much less exciting copy for the newspapers than the alternative explanation that Mrs Richardson she had recognized Chapman as a prostitute who had previously used parts of her premises for her liaisons.
But it was the medical evidence for which everybody at the inquest had been waiting.
Dr George Bagster Phillips, the man who’d been called out to the scene of the killing at Hanbury Street, and who had later performed the autopsy at the Whitechapel Workhouse Infirmary Mortuary, delivered his statement in as calm and dispassionate a manner as was possible, but there was no mistaking the sensational implications of the report he had to give.
He began by explaining to the coroner’s court why the circumstances of the autopsy had been far from ideal.
‘When I arrived at the Whitechapel Workhouse Infirmary Mortuary in Eagle Street, I discovered that the body had already been stripped of its clothing and partially washed. This was unfortunate, because it would have destroyed any clues which the killer might have left upon the body,’ Phillips stated.
By now, following the murders of Martha Tabram and Mary Ann Nichols by a knife-wielding killer, the people of London, and especially the residents of Whitechapel, had probably come to expect that the victim’s throat would have been cut and that there would be other wounds to the body. In this respect, they were not to be disappointed, but Dr Phillips had far more to explain.
‘Moving on to what I witnessed at the scene of the crime, let me start by describing the gross position of the body. The victim’s left arm was placed across her left breast, and her legs had been drawn up with the feet resting on the ground. I noted that the knees were splayed outwards, into a position which implied at least the possibility of sexual contact or connection.’
‘Did you find any evidence that such a connection had taken place?’ the coroner asked, interrupting him.
‘No, sir, I did not. Her face was quite swollen and turned to the right, and the tongue, which was very swollen, was protruding between her front teeth. I might also add that, unusually for a person of her class, Annie Chapman’s teeth were in very good condition.’
But nobody at the inquest was particularly interested in the dead woman’s dental hygiene.
Phillips then went on to describe some of the other injuries to the corpse.
‘The body was terribly mutilated. Her throat had been deeply cut by a very sharp knife. The incisions reached right around the neck and penetrated the tissues all the way down to the spinal column.’
‘And was that, in your opinion, the cause of death?’
Phillips nodded.
‘Almost certainly,’ he replied. ‘The cause I have noted in my report was syncope, the failure of the heart to continue working due to a massive loss of blood. And this loss, of course, was caused by the major arteries in the neck having been severed.’
He went on to describe the bruising to the face and the very swollen tongue, both of which he believed were consistent with the woman having been asphyxiated, which in this case had probably been enough to render her unconscious, but had not been sufficient to kill her.
‘I also discovered that there were abrasions to the ring finger of her left hand, though these clearly had nothing to do with the cause of her death. I understand from enquiries made by the police that the victim was known to always wear two brass rings, a wedding ring and a keeper, on that finger. These abrasions suggested to me that these rings had been removed by force, presumably by the murderer.’
‘Were these rings of any value?’ the coroner asked. ‘Is it possible that the motive of the killer could have been robbe
ry rather than murder?’
‘I do not believe so. The woman could simply have been rendered unconscious and the rings removed then. It would not have been necessary for her to be murdered in order to take them. And they were, to the best of my knowledge, of little or no value.’
‘And what of the other mutilations to the body?’ the coroner asked.
But Dr Phillips was noticeably reluctant to provide a detailed answer to this particular question.
‘It is my understanding that the purpose of this inquest is solely to determine the cause of death, and I have already covered this in my previous evidence. I can say that there were further mutilations, but these had no bearing upon the manner of death of the victim. There is however, one more fact that I feel I should bring to your attention. The whole of the body was not present, the absent portions being from the abdomen. The mode in which these portions were extracted showed some anatomical knowledge.’
Despite further questioning, Dr Phillips would not be moved from his position.
The coroner then turned his attention to the evidence supplied by the police, and in particular whether any clues of any sort had been discovered at the scene.
‘I regret to inform you that we have recovered no useful evidence or clues from the scene of the crime,’ Inspector Abberline stated, in answer to the question. ‘Various objects were discovered in the yard of the property, but all of these were unhelpful to our investigation. We discovered a leather apron there, but it was uncontaminated by blood and appeared to have been in the yard for some time. This was subsequently confirmed by Mrs Richardson, who advised us that she had found the apron in the cellar, covered in mildew, and had washed it thoroughly under the tap in the yard before leaving it out there to dry off.
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