The Complete and Essential Jack the Ripper (5 page)

6 September 1880–31 May 1881: Lambeth workhouse.

31 May 1881–24 April 1882: not known.

24 April 1882–18 January 1883: Lambeth workhouse.

18 January 1883–20 January 1883: Lambeth infirmary.

20 January 1883–24 March 1883: Lambeth workhouse.

24 March 1883–21 May 1883: lived with her father but left after a quarrel, probably about her drinking.

21 May 1883–2 June 1883: Lambeth workhouse.

2 June 1883–25 October 1887: Lived with Thomas Stuart Drew at 15 York Street.

25 October 1887: Spent one day in St Giles’s workhouse, Endell Street.

26 October 1887–2 December 1887: Strand workhouse, Edmonton.

19 December 1887–29 December 1887: Lambeth workhouse.

29 December 1887–4 January 1888: no record.

4 January 1888–16 April 1888: Mitcham workhouse (Holborn) and Holborn infirmary (Archway hospital).

In mid-April 1888, Mary Ann secured work as a domestic for Samuel and Sarah Cowdrey in Wandsworth and for a moment at least, her fortunes appeared to be improving. On 17 April, she wrote to her father:

I just write to say you will be glad to know that I am settled in my new place, and going all right up to now. My people went out yesterday, and have not returned, so I am left in charge. It is a grand place inside, with trees and gardens back and front. All has been newly done up. They are teetotallers, and very
religious, so I ought to get on. They are very nice people, and I have not much to do. I hope you are all right and the boy has work. So goodbye now for the present.

Yours truly, ‘Polly’

Answer soon please, and let me know how you are.
¹⁹

Edward Walker replied to the letter but never received a reply. Alas, any optimism for a new start in life was short-lived when, on 12 July, Mary Ann absconded from the Cowdreys’ home, taking with her clothing to the value of £3 10s.
²⁰
After a day at Gray’s Inn temporary workhouse on 1 August, she arrived at Wilmott’s lodging house at 18 Thrawl Street, Spitalfields, and for a while shared a room with three other women, who all paid the going rate of 4d per night for a separate, single bed.
²¹
On 24 August she moved over to 56 Flower and Dean Street, ‘The White House’,
²²
a rather disreputable lodging house which allegedly permitted men and women to sleep together.

The movements of Mary Ann Nichols on the last night of her life come to us from various sources. Inspector Joseph Helson’s official report stated that she had been seen walking along Whitechapel Road at 11.00 p.m. and leaving the Frying Pan public house on Brick Lane at 12.30 a.m. before arriving at 18 Thrawl Street, where she was seen by the deputy at 1.20 a.m.
²³
Unable to come up with the required money for a night’s lodging, Mary Ann, apparently showing the effects of alcohol, merely laughed and said, ‘I’ll soon get my “doss” money; see what a jolly bonnet I’ve got now.’
²⁴
She drew attention to the little black straw and velvet bonnet which had not been seen before and which, before too long, would be lying by her corpse in Buck’s Row.

At that time, Ellen Holland was returning to Thrawl Street
after spending some time near the London docks, where a huge fire had been raging for much of the night. Such conflagrations often doubled up as spectator events, and Ellen Holland was probably one of many who went to view at close hand what could actually be seen illuminating the sky for miles. As she approached the corner of Osborn Street and Whitechapel Road, she noticed Mary Ann coming toward her, and they stopped to speak. Mary Ann said she was without money and had not been allowed to stay at the lodging house, but also that she had indeed already had the money three times that day and had spent it. The two women parted company, and Mary Ann said she would find the money and return;
²⁵
it was 2.30 a.m., and the last occasion upon which she was reported as being seen alive. And so ended the account, fabricated from inquest testimony, police intelligence and newspaper interviews, of the demise of Mary Ann Nichols.

The four-day inquest, presided over by Coroner Wynne Baxter on 1, 3, 17 and 22 September, was reported widely in the local and national press. The surge of interest in what was becoming an alarmingly regular occurrence in Whitechapel generated many column inches, and, remarkably, newspapers from overseas had begun to take notice.
²⁶
The press, in their turn, would be responsible for generating a groundswell of sensation surrounding the crimes and, for later students of the case, flesh out the stories of those involved with detail not included in official inquest transcripts and summarized police reports. But they would also create conflicting accounts in their thirst for ‘the big story’ and, even though they added colour to many aspects of the Whitechapel murders case, it would not always necessarily be the right colour.

But even with the increase in information regarding the events surrounding the murder of Mary Ann Nichols, the
inquest jury were once again forced to deliver the verdict of ‘wilful murder against person or persons unknown’. There was also serious talk of a connection with the murders of Emma Smith and Martha Tabram:

Few occurrences of the kind have ever created greater sensation, and the sensation is not likely to be allayed, at least in the neighbourhood of the murder, until the mystery which at present surrounds it has been dispelled, and the criminal discovered. The identity of the wretched victim may be considered fully established, and the very fact that she is shown to have belonged to the same unhappy class as the two women previously butchered under similar circumstances of brutality and mystery adds, if possible, to the horror of the occurrence. It tends to show that the three murders are not isolated crimes, but are the work of the same hand or the same gang of assassins; and until some light shall have been thrown upon the tragedy the people of Whitechapel may reasonably feel apprehensive that any night fresh horrors may be perpetrated in their midst.
²⁷

On the first day of the Nichols inquest, Dr Robert Anderson officially took up his role as assistant commissioner (CID), albeit in readiness to take his sick leave. And with the investigation into the Buck’s Row murder underway, headed by Inspector Helson, another important figure made his first appearance – Inspector Frederick Abberline.

Abberline was brought in to work on the Whitechapel case thanks to his exceptional knowledge of the East End, gained from his fourteen years’ previous experience as inspector of H-division (Whitechapel) from 1873. In 1887 he was transferred to A-division (Whitehall) and was effectively removed from
field-work on placement at the commissioner’s office. When somebody with local clout was required, Abberline was returned to his old stomping ground. Over the years, he has been promoted in popular culture as the head of the Whitechapel murders investigation, which has been somewhat of an exaggeration, but his role was to become important in the autumn of 1888, as he became responsible for coordinating the on-the-ground investigations into those murders which took place on Metropolitan Police territory. The man truly in charge of the investigation overall would be Chief Inspector Donald Swanson, who from mid-September onwards – and in the subsequent absence of Anderson – would be given this great responsibility by Charles Warren:

[Swanson] must be acquainted with every detail. I look upon him for the time being as the eyes & ears of the Commr. in this particular case. He must have a room to himself, & every paper, every document, every report every telegram must pass through his hands. He must be consulted on every source. I would not send any directions anywhere on the subject of the murder without consulting him.
²⁸

But between Abberline and Swanson’s new appointments, events would take a more dramatic turn than anybody could have imagined.

After three unsolved murders of an extraordinarily brutal nature, the Metropolitan Police were nowhere near finding any perpetrator, or indeed even establishing once and for all whether these unique crimes were by a single hand. Newspaper reports of Wynne Baxter’s lengthy inquest into the death of Mary Ann Nichols made for exciting reading for sure, as did the interviews with some of the witnesses, and the public were now well and truly becoming exposed to the growing sensation that would bolster press coverage of the Whitechapel murders from here on in. The concern caused by the crimes had also generated a public desire for a reward for the capture of those responsible. On 31 August, staff of L. & P. Walter and Son, of Church Street, Spitalfields, wrote to the police on just such a matter.
¹
However, as the offer of rewards had for some time been discontinued by the Metropolitan Police because of the problems that offers of money often generated, the suggestion was swiftly turned down.
²

With the police struggling to gain definitive leads, the newspapers, with one ear to the ground, began to pick up on local hearsay. There was one such rumour in particular which unexpectedly snowballed to become the first major affair to grow around the murders – the individual known as ‘Leather Apron’.

The first apparent mention of this alarming figure came the day after the Nichols murder when the
Sheffield and Rotherham Independent
,
talking to a ‘woman in a position similar to the deceased’, stated:

that there is a man who goes by the name of the ‘Leather Apron’ who has more than once attacked unfortunate and defenceless women. His dodge is, it is asserted, to get them in to a house on the pretence of offering them money. He then takes whatever little they have and ‘half kills’ them in addition.
³

It was obvious that this report was suggesting that ‘Leather Apron’ could have something to do with the murders. Within a few days the story had spread, and by 4 September the
Star
– an infamously radical and some would say sensationalist evening newspaper – had latched on, describing him as the ‘noiseless midnight terror’. He was, as far as the
Star
was concerned, ‘the only name linked with the Whitechapel murders’:

‘Leather Apron’ by himself is quite an unpleasant character. If, as many of the people suspect, he is the real author of the three murders which, in everybody’s judgement, were done by the same person, he is a more ghoulish and devilish brute than can be found in all the pages of shocking fiction. He has ranged Whitechapel for a long time. He exercises over the unfortunates who ply their trade after twelve o’clock at night, a sway that is based on universal terror. He has kicked, injured, bruised, and terrified a hundred of them who are ready to testify to the outrages. He has made a certain threat, his favourite threat, to any number of them, and each of the three dead bodies represents that threat carried out. He carries a razor-like knife, and two weeks ago drew it on a woman called ‘Widow Annie’ as she was crossing the square near London Hospital, threatening at the same time, with his ugly grin and his malignant
eyes, to ‘rip her up.’ He is a character so much like the invention of a story writer that the accounts of him given by all the street-walkers of the Whitechapel district seem like romances. The remarkable thing is, however, that they all agree in every particular.
⁴

Much of this account (and what followed) smacks of over-sensation, and whether there really were a hundred women ready to testify against ‘Leather Apron’ is debatable. But the seeds of uproar were now being sown, and, as other newspapers followed the
Star
’s lead, the man who effectively became the first major suspect in the case began to take on increasingly repellent characteristics, no doubt fuelling considerable anxiety in the East End neighbourhoods and beyond. He was ‘a mysterious being’,
⁵
a ‘half crazy creature, with fiendish black eyes’
⁶
and ‘unquestionably mad’.
⁷
The efforts of a
Star
reporter to flesh out this character were published in a number of newspapers:

He is five feet four or five inches in height, and wears a dark close-fitting cap. He is thickset, and has an unusually thick neck. His hair is black, and closely clipped, his age being about thirty-eight or forty. He has a small black moustache. The distinguishing feature of costume is a leather apron, which he always wears, and from which he gets his nickname. 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. He is a slipper-maker by trade, but does not work. His business is blackmailing women late at night. A number of men in Whitechapel follow this interesting profession. He has never cut anybody, so far as is known, but
always carries a leather knife, presumably as sharp as leather knives are wont to be. This knife a number of the women have seen. His name nobody knows, but all are united in the belief that he is a Jew or of Jewish parentage, his face being of a marked Hebrew type. But the most singular characteristic of the man is the universal statement that in moving about he never makes any noise. What he wears on his feet the women do not know, but they agree that he moves noiselessly. His uncanny peculiarity to them is that they never see him or know of his presence until he is close by them …
⁸

In the meantime, Inspector Helson continued enquiries regarding the Buck’s Row murder, now with the involvement of Inspector Abberline and other officers. No arrests had been made in connection with Nichols’s death, but there was a suggestion that numerous individuals were being watched and that perhaps somebody not directly involved in the crime, but cognizant of the events, might come forward to confess. Such speculation was again the work of the press, and the police, it appears, were keeping any developments close to their chests.
⁹
What the newspapers were unaware of was that the police had in fact identified a man, possibly ‘Leather Apron’ himself, whom they wished to question. In a report dated 7 September, Inspector Helson revealed that their enquiries had come across a man named ‘Jack Pizer, alias Leather Apron’, who had for some time been in the habit of ill-treating prostitutes in the East End and other parts of London.
¹⁰
All attempts to locate him had so far failed, but as the matter was of some urgency and a good lead obviously needed, the search continued in earnest, even though there was nothing concrete to suggest that ‘Jack Pizer’ had killed anybody.

Nevertheless, ‘Leather Apron’ continued to grace the pages
of the press and it did not go unnoticed by some journalists that there was the distinct possibility that he was ‘a mythical outgrowth of the reporter’s fancy’.
¹¹
Despite the assurances of the womenfolk he allegedly assaulted, the newspapers who gained much copy from his enigmatic menace and the police’s wish to find ‘Jack Pizer’, it is quite possible that in reality ‘Leather Apron’ did not actually exist, but was an amalgam of various unpleasant characters who were in the habit of abusing prostitutes. In other words, once the name had been thrown into the public domain, anybody who behaved in the manner of ‘Leather Apron’ became him.

As Wynne Baxter’s inquest into the death of Mary Ann Nichols sputtered on intermittently, the unfortunate woman herself was finally buried, on 6 September, at the City of London Cemetery (Little Ilford) in Manor Park. The cortège consisted of the hearse and two mourning coaches, which carried Edward Walker, William Nichols and Edward Nichols, Mary Ann’s eldest son. The funeral arrangements were made by Mr Henry Smith, undertaker of Hanbury Street, and it was that very thoroughfare that would become the centre of outrage and panic only two days later.

At 5.45 a.m. on the morning of 8 September, John Davis, a carman, rose from his bed and made himself a cup of tea before leaving for work at Leadenhall market. He had been living at 29 Hanbury Street, Spitalfields, for two weeks with his wife and three sons, and together they occupied the top-floor front room of the three-storey house, which had seventeen tenants in total. He had gone to bed at 8.00 p.m. the previous night, with the rest of the family following suit at various times until 10.45 p.m. Davis had been awake from 3.00 to 5.00 a.m. and, after dozing for the last forty-five minutes, got up at the sound of the bell of Christ Church on
nearby Commercial Street.
¹²
At around 6.00 a.m., he descended the staircase on his way to the back yard and noticed that the front door was thrown wide open. This was a common enough sight, as, with so many residents coming and going at all hours, locking the front door was perhaps not particularly practical. The door leading to the back yard was closed, and Davis pushed it open before descending the few stone steps which led from the door to the paved yard beyond. As he did so, he saw a sight that was to cause him considerable distress; the body of a woman was lying on the ground, parallel with the fence, her head almost touching the steps. There was a horrid gash in her throat; her skirts had been pushed up above the groin and her abdomen cut open. Bloody pieces of flesh lay over the left shoulder and her intestines, still attached by a string of viscera to the inside of her body, had been pulled out and were lying in a heap over the right shoulder.

John Davis, obviously in a state of shock, ran back through the passage and out into Hanbury Street. A few doors down were James Green and James Kent, two employees of Bailey’s packing case makers at 23a Hanbury Street, who were loitering outside their work premises. When he alerted them to what he had found, they followed him back to view the body, but neither dared venture into the yard itself. The three men left together as Henry Holland was passing the house and, after being made aware of what had happened, he went to the back yard with them to see for himself. At that point, Davis went off in the direction of Commercial Street police station, and Holland went looking for a policeman at Spitalfields market, while Green and Kent returned to Bailey’s; the latter was so shaken, he procured himself a brandy to steady his nerves before looking for a piece of canvas to throw over the body.
¹³

Holland had found a police officer at the market but was disgruntled when the officer said that, as he was on fixed point duty, he was unable to leave his post, an issue which Holland later made a complaint about. Davis had better luck and bumped into Inspector Joseph Chandler at the corner of Commercial Street and Hanbury Street. Immediately the two men returned to no. 29, Chandler remaining with the body while sending for further assistance in the form of Dr George Bagster Phillips, police reinforcements and an ambulance. By the time James Kent returned with the canvas sheet, a crowd had gathered at the front of the house, with any intruders being cleared from the passage by Chandler, who refused any further admittance to the building until Dr Phillips arrived at 6.30 a.m:
¹⁴

I found the body of the deceased lying in the yard on her back, on the left hand of the steps that lead from the passage. The head was about 6in in front of the level of the bottom step, and the feet were towards a shed at the end of the yard. The left arm was across the left breast, and 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, and the tongue protruded between the front teeth, but not beyond the lips; it was much swollen. The small intestines and other portions were lying on the right side of the body on the ground above the right shoulder, but attached. There was a large quantity of blood, with a part of the stomach above the left shoulder. I searched the yard and found a small piece of coarse muslin, a small-tooth comb, and a pocket-comb, in a paper case, near the railing. They had apparently been arranged there. I also discovered various other articles, which I handed to the police. The body was cold, except that there was a certain remaining
heat, under the intestines, in the body. Stiffness of the limbs was not marked, but it was commencing. The throat was dissevered deeply. I noticed that the incision of the skin was jagged, and reached right round the neck. On the back wall of the house, between the steps and the palings, on the left side, about 18in from the ground, there were about six patches of blood, varying in size from a sixpenny piece to a small point, and on the wooden fence there were smears of blood, corresponding to where the head of the deceased laid, and immediately above the part where the blood had mainly flowed from the neck, which was well clotted.
¹⁵

By 7.00 a.m. the body had been taken by Sergeant Badham to the Whitechapel workhouse mortuary, the same ‘shed’ that had previously received the bodies of Martha Tabram and Mary Ann Nichols. Once the yard was clear, Inspector Chandler made an inspection of the scene. A portion of envelope was found, which contained two pills and bore the crest of the Sussex Regiment and the letter ‘M’. These objects had been noted by Dr Phillips earlier, who later said that they looked as if they had been ‘arranged’.
¹⁶

Before long, the woman had been identified as Annie Chapman, alias ‘Annie Sievey’, a woman of the same class as the previous victims, who had been residing at Crossingham’s lodging house at 35 Dorset Street, Spitalfields. Her life story was typical of the downward path that the ‘unfortunates’ of the East End travelled and arguably was the most tragic of the Whitechapel murders victims.

She was born Annie Eliza Smith in Paddington on 25 September 1840,
¹⁷
the eldest child of George Smith, a soldier, and Ruth Chapman, the couple being unmarried at the time of her birth. The family were living in Knightsbridge, west London,
for a time and later in Clewer, Berkshire, before returning to London, when, in 1860, and at his own request, George was pensioned off from the army and became a valet. The family appeared to move back to Clewer, but this time without Annie, who probably stayed in London, and her life at this time is unknown. George Smith died at Clewer in 1866.