Abberline: The Man Who Hunted Jack the Ripper (8 page)

This wasn’t quite what the gang had in mind, and so they took to their heels, running as fast as they could through the crowded market street, overturning stalls, throwing goods into the gutters and shoving the traders over wherever they could. As they departed they shouted that they would return the following week, and if their demands were not met, then the traders could expect more of what they had just received.

Unbeknown to the gang, the street traders were so incensed at the way they had been treated that they called a meeting that same day after the market had finished. One of the traders had recognised one of the youths as coming from an area close to Westminster, where Strutton Ground was, and where the gang had got their name from. The traders were not prepared to wait until the following week and lay themselves open to attack again, so they decided there and then to take the battle direct to the gang. They armed themselves with clubs, sticks, rocks and any other weapon they could lay their hands on, and proceeded to Strutton Ground, where they located the homes of the youths in the gang and duly started wrecking them. The Strutton Ground Boys got wind of what was going on and hurriedly returned to their homes to find the market traders still in action, smashing their properties to pieces. A fierce fight developed and the local police were called, who eventually arrested all concerned, including the market traders. However, when the facts were established the traders were released and the gang members were charged and imprisoned, ending yet another attempted gangland coup in the East End.

Petticoat Lane, however, was still not devoid of its criminal groups. A twenty-strong group of pickpockets, called the Blind Beggar Gang, after the famous or now infamous pub of that same name, were happily plying their trade there in broad daylight. This was until undercover police officers, using Abberline’s plain-clothes techniques, finally busted them.

Abberline’s persistence and dogged determination were starting to pay off. Whitechapel was beginning to get an air of normality about it. This is not to say that crime no longer existed there, as it most certainly did, but people were starting to feel safer, even the women, many of whom would now walk down streets where they would not have dreamt of walking a few months earlier. Abberline became a well-known face and name on the streets of Whitechapel, as a desk-bound office job wasn’t for him and he never felt better than when he was out there, meeting and talking to the local inhabitants. ‘How else,’ he would say, ‘are we going to get to know them, and find out what is happening on the streets?’ Even his colleagues in the force were now starting to accept him as a leading expert on the area, and many of these were men who had lived in the Whitechapel area all their lives.

However, even the most dedicated policemen need to take some time off for recreation now and then, and Abberline was no exception; in fact, he was very pleased indeed when members of his team decided to treat him and another senior officer to a night out at the Hoxton Varieties Music Hall, in Pitfield Street, Hoxton. On the night, however, the other officer backed out because of a severe case of influenza and Abberline was forced to go alone.

Nevertheless, it seemed that fate had different plans for Abberline, for as he arrived at the theatre he found his way blocked by three young women who were engaged in some sort of dispute at the entrance. One of the young ladies had lost or mislaid her ticket and was being refused entry. Being the gentleman that he was, Abberline offered his spare ticket to the young lady, which not only solved her problem, but also allowed him to get in before the show actually started.

Once inside the theatre, Abberline quickly took his seat in the second row from the front, as the lights began to dim for the start of the performance. The orchestra began to play, the curtains swung open and a troupe of acrobats came bounding onto the stage. At this point he heard voices to his left, and glancing round, he saw the young lady making her way past the other members of the audience towards the seat next to his. He had let the three young ladies go before him, how come she was late taking her seat and disrupting the show, he thought. ‘Sorry,’ she whispered, as she finally took her seat. He noticed that even one of the acrobats took a slight tumble as he took his eye off the others in the troupe for a moment, to look at the young lady.

Did the acrobat falter because of her interruption to his show, or was it because of her beauty, Abberline wondered. He shed a brief glance towards the young lady, and sure enough she was very beautiful. As he did so, however, she also glanced towards him. Abberline felt himself blush at being caught in the act of looking at the girl, but she quickly overcame the situation by smiling at him and saying, ‘They’re very good aren’t they?’

True to form, Abberline didn’t look in the direction of the young lady for the rest of the performance, and only gave her a very brief look and half smile as the show finished, and she got up to leave. She, in turn, smiled back at him and bade him goodnight.

During this period of time, theatres were not the relatively genteel places that we know today, especially in areas such as the East End, where the audience went to drink as much as they did to see the actual show. There was also plenty of interaction between the audience and the performers, mostly from the direction of the audience, who could not only be very vociferous at times, but also threw bad fruit and vegetables at the performers if they thought they were not performing up to scratch.

Women, as a whole, did not usually attend such places of variety unless accompanied by a man, which was probably another of the deciding factors that encouraged Abberline to give the young lady his spare ticket. Sitting next to him, he thought, would surely offer her some sort of protection, and so it did, while she was inside the theatre.

It had started to rain as Abberline made his way out of the theatre and a crowd was building up under cover of the theatre’s awning. Hansom cabs were few and far between on such a night, and especially in weather like this, so Abberline turned his coat collar up, patted his hat down firmly upon his head and stepped out into the pouring rain. He had only just made it across the road when he heard a scream, followed by a lot of shouting. He turned to see a young man pushing and shoving his way through the crowd, and then starting to run. The man was carrying a ladies’ purse in his hand, which he had just stolen, and the victim, who was screaming and attempting to run after him, was none other than the young lady Abberline had given his ticket to.

Without hesitation, Abberline took up the chase after the man, who, obviously not knowing who Abberline was, had run across the road, in Abberline’s direction. As the man reached a horse-drinking trough, Abberline threw his walking cane at him, catching him between the legs and causing him to stumble. By the time the man had started to pull himself back to his feet, Abberline was upon him, causing the man to stumble back, half falling into the horse trough and enabling Abberline to retrieve the purse and make an arrest.

Cases like this were dealt with very quickly during this period, and within a couple of weeks the man had been tried in court and sentenced to two years’ hard labour. During the course of preparing the case, Abberline got to know the young lady victim of the crime: her name was Emma Beament, a 32-year-old daughter of a merchant from Hoxton New Town, Shoreditch.

The criminal case against the man might well have been over, but Abberline’s case for Emma Beament was only just beginning. As shy and awkward as he was with women, Abberline made sure not to lose contact with Emma, first calling on her on the pretext of seeing how she was bearing up, to use his own words, after the terrible ordeal she had been through. Her father was very impressed with Abberline, firstly for going to the aid of his daughter and apprehending the criminal, and secondly, for having a man of such distinction visiting his house, even if it was, as he quite rightly suspected, to court the favours of his daughter.

The relationship between Abberline and Emma continued to grow, but after the terrible calamity he had experienced with his first wife, he was adamant that nothing like that would ever happen again, and so it took him nearly three years to pluck up the courage to ask Emma to marry him, which she immediately accepted. They were married on 17 December 1876.

On 8 April 1878, Abberline was promoted yet again, this time to local inspector in charge of H Division’s CID. His reputation for hard work was obviously starting to grow, with his name cropping up more and more on various documents and cases. On 26 February 1887 Abberline was transferred to A Division (Whitehall), and then moved to CO Division (Central Office) at Scotland Yard on 19 November 1887.

On 17 December 1887 the
East London Observer
reported on a guest of honour celebration at the Unicorn Tavern, Shoreditch, where Abberline was honoured with promotion to Scotland Yard from H Division:

On the occasion of a dinner and a presentation to Detective Inspector Abberline, late of the H Division of police but now attached to the central office, Great Scotland Yard. The chairman, Mr. George Hay Young said, ‘The inhabitants felt they could not let such an officer leave them for another district after being many years in their service without some little souvenir of their esteem and regard, and in recognition and appreciation of his services’.

Turning to Abberline, Mr Young presented him with a beautiful gold keyless hunting watch and a purse full of gold. On the watch was engraved ‘Presented together with a purse of gold to Inspector F.G. Abberline by the inhabitants of Spitalfields, Whitechapel etc, on his leaving the district after fourteen years of service as a mark of their esteem and regard’. Abberline, in responding, said he could hardly find the language to express his thanks to the chairman for his too flattering expressions, and to the company present for the honour they did him that evening and for the beautiful and substantial testimonial of their goodwill presented to him by the chairman on their behalf. He assured them that he was deeply indebted to them for the many kindnesses he had received during the fourteen years he was with them. Superintendent Arnold commented that he was very sorry to lose Mr Abberline from the division, for a better officer there could not be, and he was afraid it would be a long time before he could find another to equal him.

The move, however, was not to last, for on 1 September 1888, Abberline was seconded back to Whitechapel to investigate the murder of Mary Ann Nichols.

3

The Whitechapel Murders

N 
ichols was the third woman, who had been working as a prostitute in the area, to have been found murdered and horribly mutilated within the past six months. The first was Emma Elizabeth Smith, a 45-year-old mother of two, a widower and a prostitute. Emma Smith was the only Whitechapel murder victim to live long enough to tell the tale.

On the night of Easter Monday, 3 April 1888, Emma Smith left her lodgings in Limehouse and went out, apparently looking for trade. In the early hours of the following morning, she was seen by a neighbour staggering back towards her lodgings with her face covered in blood and her left ear almost severed. She was clutching her woollen shawl, which was also dripping with blood, tightly between her legs. It was later discovered to be there to try to stem the flow of blood from another terrible injury, which she would later die from.

The neighbour rushed to help her as she tried to hold herself up against the brick wall next to her door, and called for the lodging house manager to come out and help. The lodging house manager brought a chair with her, which they sat Smith down in while the lodging house manager ran off to call a hansom cab. Ignoring Smith’s protestations, they managed to get her into the cab when it arrived and rushed her to the London Hospital on Whitechapel Road. George Haslip was the house surgeon on duty and had been working all night, since 3 p.m. the previous day. As tired as Haslip was, he tried everything in his power to save the young woman, but she had already lost so much blood that he knew he was fighting a losing battle. Before she eventually slipped into a coma, she managed to describe her assailants and the details of her assault, which a nurse took down. Smith’s wounds were unfortunately too severe for her to survive, and she died four days later having never regained consciousness.