Ward's Book of Days.
Pages of interesting anniversaries.
What happened on this day in history.
JANUARY 8th
On this day in history in 1843, was born Frederick Abberline.
Abberline
was a copper who tried to hunt down Jack the Ripper but couldn’t catch him.
Frederick
George Abberline was born on 8th January 1843 at Blandford Forum,
Dorset, son of Edward and Hannah Abberline. We know little about his early
life but we know that in 1863, he was living in Islington and there he joined
the Metropolitan Police as a constable. He worked conscientiously for the
police force at Whitechapel, Stepney and Westminster, being promoted to
sergeant then inspector and in 1887, first class inspector. He was then
assigned to investigate a series of murders, presumed to be all by the
pseudonymous culprit, Jack the Ripper.
The
Ripper case was one of the most famous unsolved mysteries in British crime
history, involving the murderer of at least seven women, all prostitutes, in
or about Whitechapel in the East End of London's East End, in the latter
months of 1888. There were at least five victims of the Ripper, and there were
other murders that could be attributed to him. The five certain victims, known
as The Canonical Five, were killed
while soliciting in the street. Their throats were cut and the bodies
mutilated in a way that suggested that the killer had some knowledge of
anatomy and surgery. On one occasion, a part of a human kidney, purporting to
have been taken from a victim, was sent to the police through the post. The
police also received a number of notes, from a person calling himself Jack the
Ripper, mocking the inefficiency of the police and their inability to catch
the murderer. The murders ceased abruptly but the Ripper was never caught. The
case has become an enduring mystery and is the source of numerous lurid
literary and cinema productions.
A
major difficulty in identifying the Ripper is the considerable number of
horrific attacks against women at this time, and the lack of police manpower
to deal with them. In addition, The Metropolitan Police did not have access to
fingerprinting, DNA sampling or other forensic science techniques that are
today taken for granted. Abberline had many suspects but could not pin down
any of them. His main suspect was Seweryn Antonowicz Kłosowski, alias
George Chapman, a Polish immigrant who was hanged in 1903 for murdering three
of his mistresses. Also in the frame was Francis Tumblety, an American so
called doctor, who had no authenticated qualifications. He was arrested in
1888 on charges of gross indecency, homosexuality was then a crime, and fled
to America before the case came to court. The murders ceased abruptly once he
had left. Also William Bury who left London for Dundee in 1888 and in 1889 was
hanged for murdering his wife and carving up her remains which he tried to
dispose of in a suitcase.
When
in retirement, Abberline was interviewed by a reporter. He refused to make any
specific comments about the case saying he had been told “to keep my mouth
permanently closed about it”. He did mention that "I know and my
superiors know certain facts." The Ripper was not “a butcher, a Jew or
a foreigner. You'd have to look for him not at the bottom of London society at
the time but a long way up”. At the time this was taken to mean that the
Ripper was a professional man, presumably a doctor.
©2006 Ward’s Book of Days