Abberline: The Man Who Hunted Jack the Ripper Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Foreword

  1 The Cleveland Street Scandal

  2 Early life – Undercover Work and Marriage

  3 The Whitechapel Murders

  4 In Charge?

  5 Leather Apron

  6 Searching for the Real Annie Chapman

  7 Arrests

  8 When Evidence is not to be had – Theories Abound

  9 The Double Event

  10 The Final Ripper Victim

  11 Hell

  12 The Suspects

  13 Abberline’s Number One Suspect

  14 The Argument For and Against Klosowski

  15 Highly Implausible?

  16 Another Ripper Suspect?

  17 Did Abberline Know the Identity of the Ripper?

  18 Victims

  19 An Inspector Calls

  20 Retirement Beckons

  Plate Section

  Copyright

  Foreword

  T he name Frederick George Abberline, later to become Detective Inspector Abberline, has become synonymous with the Whitechapel murders, particularly those attributed to ‘Jack the Ripper’.

  Indeed, the murders have been shrouded by controversy from day one. We have been led to believe that Jack’s reign of terror spread like wildfire through the streets of London; that the population were too scared to leave their houses at night. The Star newspaper wrote an editorial in September 1888, stating the following:

  London lies today under the spell of a great terror. A nameless reprobate – half beast, half man – is at large. The ghoul-like creature who stalks through the streets of London, staking [sic] down his victim like a Pawnee Indian, is simply drunk with blood and he will have more.

  At the time of The Star’s editorial being published, the second murder attributed to the Ripper had only just taken place, and considering that murders were not exactly scarce in London at this time, these two did not score as being very significant to London’s crime figures, apart from the fact of their ferociousness. We need to bear in mind here that this ‘ghoul-like creature’ who was said to be ‘stalking the streets of London’ and casting his spell of terror upon ordinary Londoners had, in fact, only been in existence for just over one week.

  The press at this time intimated that women were not safe in the streets, that people were hiding in their homes, too afraid to venture out after dark, and that bodies were being found scattered throughout the streets of London. The truth, however, was much simpler; two women had been murdered in the Whitechapel area of London, thus causing some panic, if any, in that area alone, and certainly not causing people to lock themselves in their homes.

  From 31 August 1888, when the first victim, Mary Ann ‘Polly’ Nichols, was discovered, to 9 November that same year, when the body of Marie Jeanette Kelly was found in her room, a total of just five Ripper murders had taken place, over a period of ten weeks. All five Ripper victims were mutilated and dispatched with a grizzly precision, their throats slit and their entrails removed and displayed, almost in a sacrificial manner by someone with what has since been described as a considerable amount of anatomical knowledge.

  If we are to believe this more reasoned version of the series of events that became known as the Jack the Ripper murders, then we must also discount the sensationalist reports of the press at the time, who much like their counterparts of today, would do almost anything to sell their newspapers. Their reports of a crazed madman terrorising a whole city and haphazardly butchering women on the streets is pure sensationalism carried out by journalists in order to make money.

  Within hours of the first murder, letters started pouring into the press offices, and by the time of the last murder, more than 250 of them had arrived in the in-trays of the popular press, and all purporting to have come from the killer. It was in a letter received by the Central News Agency on 27 September 1888 that the name Jack the Ripper was first used. This letter was originally believed to be just another hoax, but three days later, the double murders of Stride and Eddowes made the police reconsider, especially once they learned a portion of Eddowes’ earlobe was found cut off from the body, eerily reminiscent of a promise made within the letter. The police deemed the ‘Dear Boss’ letter important enough to reproduce in newspapers and post-bills of the time, hoping someone would recognise the handwriting.

  The image that was being popularised by the press was one of a blood-thirsty killer stalking women at random through the dimly lit streets of the East End, before ripping them to pieces for no apparent reason other than to satisfy his blood lust. From the letters that arrived on the editors’ desks, however, it is clear that although a few of them must have come from isolated cranks intent on generating a lurid terror in those that read them, many more were written by genuinely concerned members of the public. The character of Jack the Ripper nevertheless remains a paradox. His letters purport to come from a rough-and-ready ‘working-class man’ who had learned his writing skills in a ‘national school’, but their contents are cleverly headline-seeking, and the astuteness with which they were targeted, suggest that the senders came from a different stratum of society. As George R. Sims, the successful author and playwright, wrote in The Sunday Referee newspaper, in October 1888:

  How many among you, my dear readers, would have hit upon the idea of ‘The Central News’ as a receptacle for your confidence? You might have sent your joke to the Telegraph, The Times, any morning or evening paper, but I will lay long odds that it would never have occurred to you to communicate with a Press agency. Curious, is it not, that this maniac makes his communication to an agency which serves the entire press?

  Sims was by no means alone in suspecting that the authors of many of the letters, certainly of those purporting to come from the Ripper himself, were in all probability educated and worldly men who were fostering a reign of terror to underline their own political agenda.

  From the first body found, there were rumours that the highest in the land were involved in the killings. As The Star wrote in November 1888:

  We have heard the wildest stories … it is believed by people who pass among their neighbours as sensible folk that the Government do not want the murderer to be convicted, that they are interested in concealing his identity.

  Could this be true? Inspector Abberline certainly didn’t think so. He was appointed to the case on 1 September 1888, which was the day after Polly Nichols’ disembowelled body had been found on 31 August 1888 lying on the ground in front of a gated stable entrance in Buck’s Row, Whitechapel.

  Abberline worked on the Ripper case during its entirety, though unfortunately never procuring a conviction. It is this case that people know him for, but during the course of his career he did head up other investigations that resulted in much better outcomes than the Ripper case did.

  1

  The Cleveland Street Scandal

  J uly 1889 was one of the hottest Julys on record. Office staff at the City of London Police headquarters at 26 Old Jewry had been given special dispensation, allowing them to work in their shirt sleeves; probably a first for this period in time, but not something carried forward to uniformed police officers. Even though Sir James Fraser was the Commissioner of the City of London Police, he did not receive any different treatment on this particular ruling than his uniformed officers. Sir James wasn’t an easy man to get on with at the best of times: an ex-military man who was used to issuing commands and having them obeyed without question, something that didn’t quite work in the same way in the city police force. He was also used to having his every comfort taken care of by his own personal batman; again, something sorely missing in
his new post.

  It came then as no surprise to his subordinates when he went absolutely berserk, after opening a letter addressed personally to him from Scotland Yard telling him to deal with a case regarding a series of alleged thefts from the London Central Telegraph Office, in St Martin’s le Grand. ‘Who the hell do these people think they are dealing with?’ he bellowed. ‘This is nothing more than a case of petty theft, I am the Commissioner, God damn it.’ He threw the letter across the room to the sergeant who had just delivered it, and told him to deal with it. The sergeant had seen Sir James in one of his moods before on several occasions, and knew instinctively when not to say anything; he just scooped the letter up, mumbled a brief ‘yes sir’ and left the room.

  Police Constable Luke Hanks was on desk duty when the sergeant approached him and gave him his orders to go to the London Central Telegraph Office, where he was to be in charge of this investigation. The amounts of money, the sergeant told him, were believed to be mainly small sums, but added together they could become a considerable amount. ‘If you handle this correctly,’ the sergeant said, ‘it could lead to promotion, so get over there and be thorough in your investigation.’

  PC Hanks couldn’t wait to get out of the heat of the office, and the thought of being in charge of his own case, with possible promotion at the end of it, prompted him to move quicker than he had done for years.

  One hour later, Hanks, with his note pad and pencil at the ready, was at the London Central Telegraph Office being shown into a room, which had been allocated to him to work and take statements. The room was not much bigger than a broom cupboard, with a tiny desk, two upright wooden chairs and one small window, set so high on the wall behind him that he could not see out of it, let alone reach it in order to open it. Hanks nevertheless entered into his work with gusto, and by midday he had interviewed and taken statements from at least twenty workers. Not only did Hanks carry out his work with verve and vigour, but he also stuck strictly to the rules regarding police dress code, meaning that he kept his heavy serge tunic buttoned to the neck and his large and cumbersome helmet on his head the whole time he was conducting the interviews. By the afternoon, however, the heat generated by the close proximity of the interviewees and PC Hanks, in such a small room, became more than he could bear. He was not, after all, a very young man: fast approaching 50, and with a little more body weight to carry around than he was prepared to admit.

  No one from his station was likely to turn up, so at 4 p.m., Hanks decided to take a chance and take off both his tunic and helmet, along with a few pounds in weight which he had possibly shed as well. The heat, however, was still unbearable, even though he was working in his shirtsleeves, so while waiting for the next interviewee, he climbed up on to the desktop and wrestled with the catch on the small window, finally managing to ease it open slightly. The first draft of air that drifted through the open space was wonderful, cooling him down almost immediately, but along with the air, came something else: a smell so foul it almost caused him to vomit; for what he hadn’t known was that immediately outside this room was the stabling yard for the Telegraph Office’s horses. No wonder the window had been set high into the wall and kept closed. Needless to say, Hanks closed the window immediately, and preferred to sweat it out rather than try to open it again.

  Weather-wise, the second day wasn’t very different from the first, and as there was no way he was going to have the window open again, Hanks decided to try to speed things up a little. Instead of just taking formal statements, which was very slow and laborious, he insisted on each staff member supplying a written statement, which would include all their personal details, as well as all monetary transactions they had dealt with in the last two weeks. Each interviewee then had to empty their pockets out on to the desk, where Hanks would make a note of the exact amount each person had on them. Younger members of staff, who were employed as telegraph boys, were strictly forbidden to carry any personal money on them in the course of their duties, purely to prevent any confusion as to whether such money could be classed as their own or the customer’s. This, of course, helped Hanks out a lot, especially when he called the next boy, Charles Thomas Swinscow, into the room, and asked him to empty his pockets on to the desk. Hanks was more than surprised to see the princely sum of 14s, which was approximately four weeks’ wages at that time, or around £400 today.

  A look of satisfaction spread over Hanks’ face, as he stood up and started putting his tunic and helmet back on, which had been hanging on a hook behind the door. He felt that, at long last, he was getting somewhere with his investigation, and there was no better way to impress the young, and the gullible, than to confront them with authority; the overall look of his complete uniform would, he was sure, do exactly that.

  ‘How would you feel about spending the next ten years of your life locked up in a prison cell?’ he asked the young lad. Within minutes, the boy had broken down and was pleading with PC Hanks not to imprison him. He hadn’t stolen this money at all, he had earned it, he said. Hanks, however, begged to differ, pointing out that he would have had to work for a whole month to get such a large amount as this. He gave the lad an ultimatum: either say where the money had really come from or he would place him under arrest and charge him with theft.

  Charles Swinscow was still in his early teens, and was almost at breaking point. The very thought of imprisonment would probably kill his mother, he said, let alone what it would do to him. He begged PC Hanks for mercy, saying he would tell him all he knew, if he promised not to gaol him. Hanks told the boy to calm down; if he started talking, he would do everything he could to help him.

  Swinscow blurted out how he came by the money: he hadn’t stolen it, but had earned it from a man named Charles Hammond, for supplying services at his premises at 19 Cleveland Street, in neighbouring Fitzrovia. ‘Services,’ said Hanks, ‘is a very vague word, would you care to elaborate?’ The young Swinscow squirmed in his chair, his face starting to redden, and his voice lowered a tone as he explained that the ‘services’ he had provided were in the form of male prostitution for clients that Charles Hammond provided at his premises. He went on to say that he was introduced to Hammond by 18-year-old Henry Newlove, who worked as a General Post Office clerk. In addition to this, he named two 17-year-old telegraph boys, George Alma Wright and Charles Ernest Thickbroom, who also rented out their services to Hammond.

  PC Hanks quickly realised that he was on to something much bigger here than petty theft from the Central Telegraph Office; for at this period in time, all homosexual acts between men, as well as procurement or attempted procurement of such acts, were strictly against the law, and punishable by varying terms of imprisonment. With this in mind, Hanks obtained corroborating statements from both Wright and Thickbroom. Once armed with these, it was much easier to squeeze a confession out of Newlove, which included him dropping several well-known names into the equation, probably in the hope of being seen as someone who was willing to help the police in every way he could. Amongst those named were Lord Arthur Somerset, who was the head of the Prince of Wales’ stables; Henry FitzRoy, Earl of Euston; and an army colonel by the name of Jervois. Newlove agreed that all these men were regular visitors to the Cleveland Street address, but said it was more than his life was worth to state this in writing.

  PC Hanks began to realise that what he had stumbled upon here was probably a matter of great, maybe even national, importance, for these men were connected to royalty. When his superiors saw his report they would undoubtedly recognise the excellent manner in which he had handled the case so far, and hand him the much-wanted promotion that he so desired. This was what PC Hanks hoped for, and indeed expected when he presented his findings, along with the statements and confessions that he had obtained from the boys. But instead of the recognition that he craved for, all he received was an obligatory nod and a smile, coupled with ‘Well done Constable Hanks’. His superiors deemed the case far too important for them to handle on their own, and immediate
ly passed it over to Scotland Yard, thus ending PC Hanks’ dream of obtaining promotion and the possible fame and money that went with it. He was immediately detailed to forget about the Cleveland Street scandal, as it became known, and to continue his work, in the miserable little office backing on to the stables, regarding the alleged thefts at the Central Telegraph Office.

  Sir James Monro, was greatly worried by the names listed in Hanks’ original report, which were allegedly connected to the Cleveland Street case. There was no doubt in his mind that the case needed thorough investigation, but at the same time, he also felt that it needed to be handled in a very restrained manner. He feared if the press discovered such people as Lord Somerset, with his royal connections, might be involved, as well as the other names and their political implications, it could bring down not just the government, but possibly the royal family as well.

  Monro knew that he had to tread very carefully indeed with this case; he needed a top officer in charge, but not one who would bring too much publicity along with him. The obvious first choice was Melville Macnaghten, whom he had great faith in, and whom he had earlier offered the post of first chief constable in the Metropolitan Police. This appointment, however, never came to fruition, as it was opposed by Charles Warren, who at this time, was London’s Commissioner of Police. It seemed that Warren and Monro had never had a great affinity to each other, which only succeeded in Warren’s rejection of Macnaghten, or probably anyone who Monro suggested.

  With this ongoing rift between Monro and Warren, Monro decided to go for what some say he saw as a soft option: a name that everyone would recognise, but without any of the controversies attached that a more senior officer such as Macnaghten would possibly bring to the case with him. He announced, without delay, the appointment of Inspector First Class Frederick George Abberline to the case. Abberline had previously worked at Scotland Yard for almost a year, until September 1888, when he, along with several other officers, were drafted into H Division, Whitechapel, East London, working on the infamous Jack the Ripper case. Abberline’s move to East London came just after the disembowelled body of Mary Ann Nichols was discovered lying in the gutter of Buck’s Row, Whitechapel. Nichols was allegedly the first Jack the Ripper victim. I use the word ‘allegedly’ as there were eleven separate murders dating from 3 April 1888 to 13 February 1891, all of which were included in the London Metropolitan Police Service investigation. They were known collectively in the police files as the ‘Whitechapel murders’.