Abberline: The Man Who Hunted Jack the Ripper

by Peter Thurgood

  On 3 September, The Star wrote that Cross was employed by Pickfords, that he left home on Friday at 3.20 a.m. and got to Pickfords’ yard, Broad Street at 4 a.m. The Times confirmed this in their article. Both statements, however, were wrong. Charles Cross was with Robert Paul in Buck’s Row at approximately 3.45 a.m. It took the two men approximately five minutes searching the streets before they found PC Mizen. If one allows another five minutes to report to Mizen what they had seen, this would then have meant Cross getting to Pickfords’ in Broad Street in just five minutes, which is impossible.

  To walk from Doveton Street, where Cross lived, to Broad Street, where he worked for Pickfords’, usually took Cross approximately forty minutes. On this particular Friday, however, he said that he was late for work and didn’t leave home until 3.30 a.m.; this would have meant arriving in Buck’s Row at approximately 3.36 a.m.

  Dr Llewellyn, who lived close by, was called by the police within minutes of them arriving at the murder scene. When the Daily News and the Evening News for 1 September published a statement given to them by the doctor, he allegedly gave them the time of his arrival on the murder scene as about 3.55 a.m. The following day, after giving evidence at the inquest, he told reporters that he was called to Buck’s Row at about 4 a.m., which is a lot less precise than his earlier statement. More importantly, perhaps, might be: what time did he actually arrive in Buck’s Row?

  These might seem like minor points, but if we consider the fact that when Dr Llewellyn first saw Polly Nichols, he stated that, in his opinion, she had not been dead for more than half an hour at the most. In Inspector Abberline’s report, which was written after the inquest, he gave the time for Cross’ finding of the body at about 3.40 a.m.

  At the inquest, Cross gave evidence that he had just arrived by the body of Polly Nichols when he was joined by Paul, but Paul said he had left home, about 3.45 a.m. This would mean that one of the men was not telling the truth. If Cross was lying, and had left his home in Doveton Street at his normal time of 3.20 a.m., he would have had time to meet and kill Polly Nichols. If he had left at 3.30 a.m., he would still have had time to attack her before being interrupted by Paul.

  A reporter for the newspaper Lloyd’s Weekly interviewed Robert Paul on the night of the murder, and the article was published in the paper that Sunday. This was the day before Cross gave evidence at the coroner’s court. In the article Robert Paul stated that it was exactly 3.45 a.m. when he walked up Buck’s Row, on his way to work, and saw the crouched man. The inquest into the death of Polly Nichols was delayed for two weeks, while further evidence was searched for. When it was resumed, Robert Paul was called to give evidence, and according to The Times dated 18 September, he stated that as he passed up Buck’s Row he saw a man standing in the roadway. No one bothered to establish the exact distance that Cross was to the body when Paul saw him there that morning. There seemed to be no suspicion whatsoever that Cross was anything other than the harmless witness he appeared. When The Star newspaper wrote its piece on the inquest, it did not even bother giving Cross’ name, and no one bothered to ask his age, although one newspaper did mention that he had worked for Pickfords’ for more than twenty years. He was mentioned as a witness, who happened to be a car-man, and wore a coarse sacking apron.

  There is, however, one more very important piece of information that connects Charles Cross with the Ripper murders. His route between his home in Doveton Street and his place of work at Broad Street took him directly through the area in which the Ripper murders took place. Cross had multiple choices he could take, all eventually taking him to his final destination. Whitechapel Road would be the direct route, but one can cut off any number of different streets from there to eventually lead to his destination at Broad Street. He could walk through Osborn Street into Brick Lane, or through Old Montague Street or Wentworth Street. He could head down Hanbury Street or Dorset Street. In the warren of narrow streets and alleys that intertwine this area, all streets lead to Rome as they say, or, in this instance, Ripper Territory.

  As already pointed out, Polly Nichols was murdered on Cross’ path to work in late August. Annie Chapman was murdered in Hanbury Street, which was another possible route. Mary Kelly was found mutilated in Miller’s Court, just off Dorset Street, which again is just off Commercial Street, and most definitely a possible route for Cross. Elizabeth Stride was found dead in Dutfield’s Yard, Berner Street, which is a little off the normal Ripper patch, but still only some five minute’s walk away. She lived in Flower and Dean Street, which was on Cross’ route and could have easily been followed by the murderer from there to her place of death. Lastly, we have Catherine Eddowes, who also lived in Flower and Dean Street, but had been arrested by the police on the night of her death and held for some hours at Bishopsgate police station. This police station is just a few minutes’ walk away from Cross’ place of work at Broad Street.

  If these scenes of murder and mutilation were not enough to make Charles Cross a major suspect, then we need to also consider two more murders, which have been downgraded, so to speak, as ‘possible’ Ripper murders.

  On Tuesday 7 August, the body of Martha Tabram was found in the stairwell of George Yard Buildings, just off Wentworth Street. This would also have fitted in perfectly with the route Cross would have taken on his way to work, and even his timings would have been perfect. Martha Tabram has never been officially recognised as a Ripper victim, only a possibility, but the opportunity and the known timetable of Charles Cross was there.

  The final ‘coincidence’ happened in April 1888, and involved yet another known prostitute named Emma Smith. There is no suggestion whatsoever that Smith was a victim of the Ripper, as she lived long enough to identify her assailants as a gang of ruffians who robbed and assaulted her. She died of her wounds several days later in the London Hospital. She was subjected to the assault at the junction of Osborn Street and Wentworth Street, and was left wounded and bleeding in a shop doorway. The time she was lying there coincided exactly with the time Cross would have been walking to work through Wentworth Street.

  There is no suggestion that Cross committed this crime, as Smith had already named the people who committed it as a gang, but the location of her killing occurred on streets he knew well, and there is a strong possibility that he had walked past her body that morning and seen her lying in a pool of blood. The sight of this death may have triggered something off within his subconscious, which later evolved and helped turn his fantasies into reality that autumn.

  The evidence against Cross might well be circumstantial, but we need to bear in mind that Cross was seen by most people, the police included, as a poor working man and nobody of any significance. People like Cross were familiar sights on the streets of Whitechapel; they blended in with their surroundings. While the police and the press looked for madmen and strange-looking foreigners carrying packages and lurking in doorways, ordinary-looking working men such as Cross were ignored as they trudged through the darkly lit streets on their way to work. While the police struggled to keep pace with the continuing murders, Cross completely vanished from their investigations. He was just a part of the Nichols murder paperwork, pigeon-holed forever as the car-man witness who discovered her body.

  Even today, not many people have shown a great deal of interest in Cross as a likely contender for Jack the Ripper. This might be in part due to the intellectual appeal of the far more complex theories, in stark contrast to Cross, the ordinary man in the street. Cross was not an elegantly dressed gentleman, a Mason or a mad doctor out for revenge. Neither was he an artist or a member of the royal family. If one wanted to sell a story about Jack the Ripper, Cross would probably be the last name on the author’s lips, for he was just an unknown local man who had, according to police records, been found beside a dead woman. He is most definitely not the most romantic solution to the Jack the Ripper murders, but he just could be the right one. One day, I am sure, we will hear much more about Charles Cross.

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  Did Abberline

  Know the Identity of the Ripper?

  Abberline was not looking for romantic solutions to the murders; he was a genuine pragmatist in his approach to work. Why then did he not take suspects such as Charles Cross seriously? We have to take into account that when Abberline was still working for the police, most if not all of the actual evidence gathered by the Metropolitan Police in the course of the investigation, passed through his hands at some point. In spite of this, however, he was not known to have ever expressed a definite opinion on the Ripper’s identity during this period.

  In March 1889, Albert Backart, a high-ranking member of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee, expressed the committee’s displeasure that since there had not been any more murders for some months, there seemed to be a great deal of complacency within the force regarding any ongoing investigation into the Ripper case.

  It is then alleged that a senior officer contacted Backart and told him that he would explain all if he would agree to swear to secrecy, which he then did. The officer went on to tell him that the Vigilance Committee and its patrols could now be safely disbanded, as the police were quite certain that the Ripper murders were finished. Backart protested and said he needed to know more, to which the officer replied, ‘It isn’t necessary for you to know any more, the man in question is dead. He was fished out of the Thames two months ago and it would only cause pain to relatives if we said any more than that.’

  The man the police were talking about was obviously Montague Druitt, who was found drowned in the Thames on 31 December 1888. Abberline himself didn’t acknowledge the fact, as others had done, that the Ripper was known to have been dead soon after the autumn of 1888 – as per his interview with the Pall Mall Gazette in 1903, mentioned earlier.

  The man Abberline always suspected the most was, of course, Severin Klosowski (aka George Chapman), and in 1903 Klosowski was indeed dead; in fact; he was hanged at Wandsworth prison on 7 April; 1903. When Sergeant George Albert Godley, who was once part of Abberline’s team in the hunt for the Ripper, actually arrested Klosowski and charged him with poisoning his wife, Abberline is alleged to have said to him, ‘You’ve caught Jack the Ripper at last!’

  It has also been alleged that this remark was actually made after Klosowski was convicted and not when Godley first arrested him. So why did Abberline pick Klosowski?

  When Abberline was speaking about the case in 1903, he said that during one of the inquests into the murders, the coroner ‘Told the jury a very queer story’. It seemed that the divisional surgeon who made the post-mortem examination spoke of the skill and precision in the way the killer had wielded his knife. He stated that there was overwhelming evidence to show that the killer had mutilated the body in such a way that he could possess himself of one or more of the victim’s organs.

  When the coroner spoke of his ‘very queer story’, he went on to say that he had been told by the sub-curator of the pathological museum connected with one of the great medical schools that, a few months earlier, an American had called upon him and asked him to supply him with a number of organ specimens. The American apparently stated that he was willing to pay $100 for each specimen.

  The strange American was told in no uncertain terms that his request was impossible to fulfil. Undeterred by this, the American went on to repeat his request at another similar institution in London, where once again he was turned down. In summing up these strange requests, the coroner went on to say:

  Is it not possible that a knowledge of this demand may have inspired some abandoned wretch to possess himself of such specimens? It seems beyond belief that such inhuman wickedness could enter into the mind of any man; but, unfortunately, our criminal annals prove that every crime is possible!

  When Abberline made the statement in the 1903 Pall Mall Gazette, he also elaborated on his thoughts regarding Severin Klosowski:

  I have been so struck with the remarkable coincidences in the two series of murders that I have not been able to think of anything else for several days past – not, in fact, since the Attorney-General made his opening statement at the recent trial, and traced the antecedents of Chapman before he came to this country in 1888. Since then the idea has taken full possession of me, and everything fits in and dovetails so well that I cannot help feeling that this is the man we struggled so hard to capture fifteen years ago.

  As I say, there are a score of things which make one believe that Chapman is the man; and you must understand that we have never believed all those stories about Jack the Ripper being dead, or that he was a lunatic, or anything of that kind. For instance, the date of the arrival in England coincides with the beginning of the series of murders in Whitechapel; there is a coincidence also in the fact that the murders ceased in London when Chapman went to America, while similar murders began to be perpetrated in America after he landed there. The fact that he studied medicine and surgery in Russia before he came over here is well established, and it is curious to note that the first series of murders was the work of an expert surgeon, while the recent poisoning cases were proved to be done by a man with more than an elementary knowledge of medicine. The story told by Chapman’s wife of the attempt to murder her with a long knife while in America is not to be ignored.

  When Frederick George Abberline wrote his memoirs, in the early 1920s, he was totally silent on the subject. However, Abberline was not the only person involved in the Ripper case to voice his opinion or non-opinion, as the case might be, as to the identity of the Ripper.

  SIR ROBERT ANDERSON

  Sir Robert Anderson had replaced James Monro as the Assistant Commissioner of the CID in August 1888.

  Anderson was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1841. He received a BA from Trinity College Dublin in 1862, and in 1863 was called to the Bar. In 1876 he was brought over to London as part of an intelligence branch to combat Fenianism. The branch was soon closed but Anderson remained in London as a Home Office ‘Advisor in matters relating to political crime’. He was also the controller for the spy Thomas Miller Beach, who had penetrated the Fenian movement. In 1886, however, he was relieved of all duties, with the exception of controlling Thomas Beach, after becoming embroiled in a political argument with the Home Secretary Hugh Childers.

  As well as being the Assistant Commissioner of the CID, he was also made secretary of the Prison Commissioners in 1887–88. With such a high position in public life and such obviously close connections to what was going on within police circles, Anderson’s views, especially on the subject of the Ripper, were particularly sought after. After he retired in 1901, he set about writing his memoirs, entitled, The Lighter Side of My Official Life, which were published in 1910. In this book he stated: ‘In saying that he was a Polish Jew I am merely stating a definitely ascertained fact.’

  His certainty of this statement is reinforced in the Police Encyclopaedia (1920), which he wrote the introduction to, saying: ‘There was no doubt whatever as to the identity of the criminal.’ Anderson is not just saying that he suspected somebody, but that the identity of the killer was known to the police and the investigating team.

  SIR CHARLES WARREN

  Born in Bangor, North Wales, in 1840, Sir Charles Warren was educated at Cheltenham, and commissioned into the Royal Engineers in 1857. Upon the outbreak of the Kaffir War, he was appointed to command the Diamond Fields Horse Regiment, and was promoted to lieutenant colonel. He went from strength to strength, reaching the position of major general and then colonel.

  In 1885 Colonel Sir Charles Warren was appointed to the post of Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, upon the resignation of Sir E. Henderson. He had, during his three years of rule, many very difficult and complicated problems to solve, among which were the suppression of the Trafalgar Square riots (when troops sent in by Warren to clear the square opened fire on the rioters) and, of course, the Jack the Ripper case.

  Warren’s biggest difficulty with the Jack the Ripper case was that he was probably unfairly blamed for the
failure to track down the killer. He also faced press accusations that were frequently baseless. He was accused of failing to offer a reward for information, although in fact he supported the idea but it was blocked by the Home Office. He was also accused of not putting enough police officers on the ground, whereas in fact Whitechapel was swamped with them.

  It was said that he cared more about uniformed policing than detective work, which simply wasn’t true, because the course that he did take was to allow his experienced detective officers to conduct their own affairs and he rarely interfered in their operations.

  He was quite rightly very angry with these unfounded accusations about him, and responded by writing an article in Murray’s Magazine, in which he stated that he supported vigilante activity, which the police on the streets didn’t agree with at all. He also complained in public about the lack of control he was allowed over the CID. The Home Office was not very pleased at all about his remarks, and officially reprimanded him for discussing his office publicly without permission.

  On 9 November 1888, Warren had had enough and resigned. Later that same night, Mary Jane Kelly was found murdered in her room in Spitalfields. Earlier on in the investigations, he had given an order that if another murder occurred nobody was to enter the scene until he arrived to direct the investigation. The police did not enter the murder scene for over three hours because, unaware of his resignation, they were waiting for Warren to arrive.

  During the period of his career in the police force, Sir Charles Warren did not profess to have knowledge or private thoughts on the identity of the Ripper. After his resignation, Warren returned to military duties. He died in 1927 at the age of 87.

  JOHN GEORGE LITTLECHILD

  Born in Royston, Hertfordshire, on 21 December 1847, John George Littlechild joined the Metropolitan Police in 1867. In 1871 he was transferred to Scotland Yard, where later that same year he was promoted to sergeant.