Free Abberline: The Man Who Hunted Jack the Ripper by Peter Thurgood

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