Jack The Ripper History.
The Aftermath of Mary Nicholls Murder.
  31st August 1888 - 7th September 1888 Since the murder had taken place in Whitechapel, responsibility for investigating it fell to the detectives of the Metropolitan Police’s ‘H’ division, headed by Inspector Edmund Reid. He was already investigating two other murders that had recently taken place in the neighbourhood. In April 1888 a prostitute named Emma Smith had been viciously attacked on Brick Lane and died of her injuries the next day. She appears to have been the victim of a street gang and was almost certainly NOT a victim of Jack the Ripper. The next victim was Martha Tabram, whose body was found on a landing of George Yard Buildings in early August 1888. Although some commentators think her murder may have been the early work of Jack the Ripper, her injuries were in fact quite different from the Ripper’s modus operandi (she had been repeatedly stabbed with what appeared to be a bayonet) and it is highly probable that her murderer was a soldier at the Tower of London.
 But whether or not the murders of Smith, Tabram and Nichols were the work of the same hand, three such horrific killings in such close proximity forged a gruesome link between them and the police began to face the alarming possibility that a repeat killer was loose on the streets of Whitechapel.
This coupled with the local disquiet that the crimes were causing, led to the involvement of officers from the Metropolitan Police’s headquarters at Scotland Yard. Their Commissioner was Sir Charles Warren, an ex-military man who in the coming weeks would find his competence questioned in the newspapers on an almost daily basis.
On the very day of the Polly Nichols murder Dr Robert Anderson had been appointed the new assistant commissioner and head of Scotland Yard’s Criminal Investigation Department, or C.I.D, he would become the police official in overall charge of the Jack the Ripper enquiry.
Unfortunately Robert Anderson came to his post suffering from exhaustion and his doctor ordered an immediate holiday. So no sooner had he taken up office than he left London for Switzerland, and in his absence overall responsibility for the investigation fell to Chief Inspector Donald Sutherland Swanson, a highly educated official whom one contemporary described as being “one of the best class of officers.” As the detective with overall responsibility for the police investigation and for reading and assessing virtually every piece of evidence and information to do with the murders, Swanson would acquire an almost unrivalled knowledge of the case.
As a result of the disquiet that the Nichols murder was now generating in the area Scotland Yard decided to draft one of its most able officers, Inspector George Frederick Abberline, into the district to take charge of the on the ground investigation. He had already enjoyed a brilliant career in the East End of London, and knew its streets and underworld intimately. Just before the Ripper murders began he had been promoted to Scotland Yard. However, with the onset of the Ripper crimes it was decided his expertise could be best utilised on the Streets of Whitechapel and so he was transferred or moved back across to the East End to oversee the investigation on the ground in that area because he knew it so well.
One of the problems facing the police was that the district where the murders occurred was one of the most crime ridden and densely populated quarters of the Victorian metropolis. Often referred to as “darkest London” or “outcast London” it was a slum ridden warren of overcrowded dwelling houses where vice and violence flourished. There were several streets known as the “blackest of the black streets” (including Thrawl Street where Polly Nichols had been living at the time of her murder). So dangerous were these streets that policemen wouldn’t go down them unless they were in groups of four. But despite the frequent violence, murder itself was quite uncommon and the killing’s began to stir up genuine revulsion in the area.
 On the streets of Whitechapel Reid and Abberline were in a desperate race against time to catch the killer before he struck again. And then their enquiries amongst the district’s prostitutes turned up a likely sounding suspect in the form of a man whom the streetwalkers knew simply as Leather Apron. According to the local prostitutes he would often try to extort money from them with threats of violence and his favoured weapon was a knife.
 Desperate to trace him if only to eliminate him as a suspect the police began door to door enquiries at the common lodging houses. But then there investigation suffered an unexpected set back when local gossip brought their suspicions to the attention of the press. On the 5th September The Star newspaper ran a headline that was as terrifying to the local residents as it was frustrating to the police officers, who had hoped to keep their suspicions a closely guarded secret for fear of alerting the suspect that they were looking for him. It read :-
LEATHER APRON THE ONLY NAME LINKED WITH THE WHITECHAPEL MURDERS. THE STRANGE CHARACTER WHO PROWLS ABOUT AFTER MIDNIGHT. UNIVERSAL FEAR AMONG WOMEN - SLIPPERED FEET AND A SHARP LEATHER-KNIFE.
The Star newspaper really did build Leather Apron up into a demon kind of character and gave the most graphic and sensational descriptions of him. It would appear that the police thought all along that he was a man named John Pizer. But the press campaign to alert the public to the menace of Leather Apron alerted Pizer to the fact that the police were trying to trace him, and finding himself public enemy number one, he became terrified by the prospect of falling victim to a baying mob and promptly went into hiding amongst his relatives, thus frustrating the police operation to find him.
The police reacted by adopting an arms length approach to journalists who, stung by this evident lack of trust, began grubbing around for every morsel of information they could find. They shadowed detectives in the hope of discovering the identities of their witnesses. They attempted to loosen the tongues of police constables with drink or bribes. Some even adopted an almost comical approach to newsgathering in the hope gaining a sensational scoop for their papers.
In one particular case there was a journalist who dressed up as a woman and was walking around the East End hoping that he might be approached by Jack the Ripper. Since, at the time, there were many plain clothes officers going about in disguise, a uniformed officer approached the journalist and asked him “are you one of us.” The embarrassed journalist was promptly taken to the nearest police station and detained for two hours whilst he explained why he happened to be wandering the streets dressed as a woman!
The Leather Apron scare, however, had another more sinister effect on the neighbourhood. The Leather Apron was the standard garment worn by a wide range of Jewish tradesmen, and egged on by lurid press speculation the area began signs of racial unrest began to surface in the area.
On the 7th September a journalist on the East London Advertiser sat down to pen his article for the next morning’s edition. Referring to the murder of Mary Nichols he wrote.
“The murderer must creep out from somewhere. He must patrol the streets in search of his victims. Doubtless he is out night by night and unless a watch of the strictest order be kept, the murder of Thursday will certainly be followed by a fourth.”
And in the early hours of that same morning after the journalist had written his chilling prediction but before the newspaper had actually hit the streets - the murderer struck again.
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