Abberline: The Man Who Hunted Jack the Ripper (16 page)

Stewart claims that the particular mutilations practised by the killer held a psychological fascination and horror for all women, and the midwife would be no exception to this rule.

Stewart was not content with just naming the type of person he thought the Ripper was, but continued his assertions by suggesting that the modus operandi between his mad midwife theory and a woman named Mary Pearcey were too similar not to be taken seriously. In October 1890 Pearcey had stabbed her lover’s wife and child to death and cut their throats. She then placed their bodies onto a handcart and wheeled them into a secluded street.

The two striking similarities here, according to Stewart, were, firstly, the savage throat cutting, and secondly, the modus operandi of killing in private and then dumping the bodies in a public place. This, he says, also explains why there were no witnesses who heard any of the Ripper victims scream.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, had his personal theory on the possibility of the Ripper being a woman. He said he was sure the Ripper was a man, but that he disguised himself as a woman in order to avoid capture and become more readily accessible to other women. Contrary to this suggestion, a potential female Ripper would not be more accessible to other women; in fact, she would be at something of a disadvantage to her male counterpart. As far as the Whitechapel murders were concerned, the victims were all prostitutes, and as such they would be plying their trade to men, not women. Prostitutes are willing to go with men who are complete strangers to them, but are usually wary of women, unless they personally know them. Bearing this in mind, there seems to be no good reason for believing that Jack the Ripper was a woman.

I
NSPECTOR
A
BBERLINE AND THE
P
OLICE
F
ORCE

As far as I know, no one thus far has suggested that Inspector Abberline was Jack the Ripper, or that the murders were the result of a police conspiracy to embarrass the then unpopular Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Charles Warren, and force him into resigning. If no one has brought up these theories, then you might well ask why I have brought it up.

The simple reason I have used these two examples as possible future theories, is that no one has any real proof as to the identity of Jack the Ripper, and in all probability, no one ever will.

On 26 June 1976 an article was first published in the
Evening News
and later re-published in the book.
The Ripper and the Royals
by Nigel Morland, where the author recalled visiting Abberline when the inspector was living in retirement in Dorset. Morland claimed that Abberline told him that the case was shut. ‘I’ve given my word to keep my mouth permanently closed about it,’ said Abberline. ‘I know and my superiors know certain facts. The Ripper wasn’t a butcher, Yid or foreign skipper, you would have to look for him not at the bottom of London society at the time, but a long way up.’ Given Abberline’s other statements about the identity of the Ripper not being known, this alleged statement should be treated with considerable scepticism and caution.

On 10 November 1888, which was the day subsequent to the final Ripper murder of Mary Jane Kelly,
The Times
newspaper: proclaimed in its editorial: ‘When evidence is not to be had, theories abound.’ Even with all the modern – day technology we now have, no further evidence has surfaced regarding the true identity of the Ripper, and just as
The Times
stated all those years ago, theories are still continuing to abound.

9

The Double Event

T 
hree days after the arrival of the ‘Dear Boss’ letter, yet another event took place which shook not just the public’s imagination but also that of Inspector Abberline and indeed the whole police force. What happened on this date was to later become known as the Double Event. It started at approximately 1 a.m. on Sunday 30 September 1888.

26-year-old Louis Diemschutz, a Russian Jew who lived with his wife in rooms above the International Working Men’s Educational Club, had been hard at work all day as a stallholder, selling cheap imitation jewellery. He travelled by pony and cart to various markets around London and this particular Sunday had been set up in a street market at Westow Hill, Crystal Palace. Street markets around this time would often last late into the night, and the Westow Hill Market had not finished until almost midnight, which then left Diemschutz quite a long drive home.

By the time Diemschutz drove his pony and cart into Berner Street it was almost 1 a.m. As he turned the cart into Dutfield’s Yard, all he could think of was unloading his unsold stock and hopefully having something to eat, before taking his pony and cart back to the stables at George Yard, Cable Street. He looked up at the International Working Men’s Educational Club, which was on the corner of Dutfield’s Yard and Berner Street, and smiled to himself as he heard the singing and laughing coming from an open window there. He would have liked to have joined in, but by the time he had taken his pony and cart back to the stables and walked home, it would probably be closed; even though he acted as a sort of steward there, he couldn’t control the opening hours, much to his chagrin.

There was no street lamp near to the entrance of the yard, so Diemschutz didn’t notice that the gates were wide open until he had jumped down from his cart with his key, ready to open them. No one else normally used the yard that late at night, but who was he to complain, he thought, as he jumped back up onto the cart again and ordered the horse on.

Just a few steps into the yard, his pony suddenly shied to the left and started whinnying, refusing to go any further. Diemschutz started to get angry, as he had had a terrible day’s trading and now just wanted to get his work done and eventually have something to eat with his wife, before retiring for the night. He shouted at the horse a couple of times, trying his best to coax it further into the yard, but it was useless, it just wouldn’t move. ‘Stupid animal,’ he grumbled, ‘probably nothing more than a damned rat or something.’

By this time, however, his eyes were starting to grow accustomed to the darkness and he could just make out something lying in the yard. He was not able to distinguish exactly what it was, but it certainly wasn’t a rat; it was something much bigger and it wasn’t moving. He prodded the object with his whip, noting that it was heavy but soft to the touch. He then got down from his cart, struck a match, and cupped it with his hands to prevent the wind blowing it out. In the flickering light, he could just about make out the horribly mutilated body of a woman lying on the ground.

Diemschutz gazed in disbelief for a moment or two, holding his hand over his mouth in order to stop himself throwing up. As soon as he had composed himself, he rushed straight into the club, shouting at the top of his voice to make himself heard. His wife was the first to see him and rushed over to see what was wrong. He told her, and two other men who were standing nearby, about the woman lying in the yard next door. At this point, he still wasn’t certain if she was dead, even though he had seen some of her injuries. He quickly obtained a candle from behind the bar, and led the other two men out into the yard, where, by the flickering illumination, they could all see a stream of blood running from the woman’s body, which had by then formed a large pool on the ground.

The three men decided to all go off in different directions to alert the police. Within a few minutes Police Constable Henry Lamb and another constable were on the scene. PC Lamb felt the woman’s face, which he later described as still warm, but couldn’t detect any sign of a pulse. He sent the other constable off to find a doctor while he continued to examine the corpse, noting that he did not see any signs of a struggle, and neither were the woman’s clothes unduly disturbed, which was unlike the earlier victims, whose skirts had been raised up above their knees.

By 1.16 a.m., Doctor Frederick Blackwell, whom the police had used on several occasions before, had arrived on the scene and started making a detailed examination of the body, the details of which were read out at the later inquest, as follows:

The deceased was lying on her left side obliquely across the passage, her face looking towards the right wall. Her legs were drawn up; her feet close against the wall of the right side of the passage. Her head was resting beyond the carriage-wheel rug, the neck lying over the rut. The neck and chest were quite warm, as were also the legs, and the face was slightly warm. The hands were cold. The right hand was open and on the chest, and was smeared with blood. The left hand, lying on the ground, was partially closed, and contained a small packet of cachous [popular Victorian breath sweeteners] wrapped in tissue paper.

The appearance of the face was quite placid. The mouth was slightly opened. In the neck there was a long incision which commenced on the left side, 2 inches below the angle of the jaw, and almost in a direct line with it, nearly severing the vessels on that side, cutting the windpipe completely in two, and terminating on the opposite side.

While Dr Blackwell was examining the body, he was joined by the official police surgeon, Dr Phillips. Between them, they estimated the time of death to be between 12.36 a.m. and 12.56 a.m.

A number of police officers were called in to continue with routine investigations and searches, but no senior detectives at this point were drafted in. Abberline was furious when he found out the following day; he had not even been woken from his bed, even though he could have been on the scene within minutes, which, as he later pointed out, could have helped immensely with the investigation. A search of the yard and immediate area was undertaken by the officers at hand, but nothing in the way of clues or weapon were found. It was noted, however, that the chairman of the International Working Men’s Educational Club had walked through the yard around 12.40 a.m., which was roughly twenty minutes before the body was discovered, and he had seen nothing suspicious or anyone loitering nearby. The story was the same with Diemschutz, who had discovered the body when he had pulled into the yard at 1 a.m. The yard, he said, was completely deserted, apart from the body, which was later identified as the body of Elizabeth Stride.

While all this was going on in Whitechapel, just a quarter of a mile away in Mitre Square, which comes under the jurisdiction of the City of London, another gruesome find was about to be uncovered. Catherine ‘Kate’ Eddowes, who also worked as a prostitute, had just been released from Bishopsgate police station.

She had been arrested on Aldgate High Street at around 8.30 p.m. the previous night for being drunk and disorderly. The arresting constable said that she was trying to entertain passers-by with a drunken rendition of a very popular song at the time called,
Any Old Iron
; it has been alleged that she was doing an imitation of a fire engine, but that is very doubtful as fire engines at that time were horse drawn and had a single bell, not a siren as they have today, and how anybody would attempt to imitate such a vehicle is a mystery. As she finished her inebriated performance, Eddowes tried to take a bow, but was so drunk that she couldn’t stand up again and just toppled over onto the pavement, where she tried to go to sleep. The constable lifted her to her feet and propped her against a wall, but every time he tried this she just slid back down to the floor again. At this point, the constable saw another police officer and got him to help take Eddowes to Bishopsgate police station.

Eddowes was so drunk that when they got her to the police station and asked for her name, she either couldn’t remember it or couldn’t be bothered to tell them, her answer to that question being, ‘No one’. She was obviously not in a position to be able to look after herself, so it was decided to place her in a cell until she sobered up. An officer checked on her several times over the next few hours but each time found her to be sleeping soundly.