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

fourteen years of service as a mark of their esteem and regard’. Abberline, in responding, said he could hardly find the language to express his thanks to the chairman for his too flattering expressions, and to the company present for the honour they did him that evening and for the beautiful and substantial testimonial of their goodwill presented to him by the chairman on their behalf. He assured them that he was deeply indebted to them for the many kindnesses he had received during the fourteen years he was with them. Superintendent Arnold commented that he was very sorry to lose Mr Abberline from the division, for a better officer there could not be, and he was afraid it would be a long time before he could find another to equal him.
    The move, however, was not to last, for on 1 September 1888, Abberline was seconded back to Whitechapel to investigate the murder of Mary Ann Nichols.

3
The Whitechapel Murders
    N  ichols was the third woman, who had been working as a prostitute in the area, to have been found murdered and horribly mutilated within the past six months. The first was Emma Elizabeth Smith, a 45-year-old mother of two, a widower and a prostitute. Emma Smith was the only Whitechapel murder victim to live long enough to tell the tale.
    On the night of Easter Monday, 3 April 1888, Emma Smith left her lodgings in Limehouse and went out, apparently looking for trade. In the early hours of the following morning, she was seen by a neighbour staggering back towards her lodgings with her face covered in blood and her left ear almost severed. She was clutching her woollen shawl, which was also dripping with blood, tightly between her legs. It was later discovered to be there to try to stem the flow of blood from another terrible injury, which she would later die from.
    The neighbour rushed to help her as she tried to hold herself up against the brick wall next to her door, and called for the lodging house manager to come out and help. The lodging house manager brought a chair with her, which they sat Smith down in while the lodging house manager ran off to call a hansom cab. Ignoring Smith’s protestations, they managed to get her into the cab when it arrived and rushed her to the London Hospital on Whitechapel Road. George Haslip was the house surgeon on duty and had been working all night, since 3 p.m. the previous day. As tired as Haslip was, he tried everything in his power to save the young woman, but she had already lost so much blood that he knew he was fighting a losing battle. Before she eventually slipped into a coma, she managed to describe her assailants and the details of her assault, which a nurse took down. Smith’s wounds were unfortunately too severe for her to survive, and she died four days later having never regained consciousness.
    The details of what had happened to her that night, as she reported before her death, were that she was returning home, ‘after having a drink or two’, when a group of three or four young men started to follow her. She first noticed them as she crossed the road near to Whitechapel church and made her way into Brick Lane. The men stopped her on the corner of Brick Lane and Wentworth Street, where they pushed her into a doorway, and beat, raped and robbed her. If this wasn’t bad enough, before leaving the scene, one of them slashed at her face with a knife causing the severing of her ear, while another of the men viciously jabbed a blunt object into her vagina, tearing the perineum.
    Emma Smith passed out with the excruciating pain and collapsed in a heap in the doorway. Passers-by ignored her, probably thinking she was just another rough sleeper taking refuge in the doorway, but some twenty minutes later, when she finally regained consciousness, she managed to pull herself to her feet and drag herself back to her lodgings, which were at least 1 mile away.
    The murder of Emma Smith was at first attributed to one of the many Whitechapel gangs who were known to patrol