Free Naming Jack the Ripper: The Biggest Forensic Breakthrough Since 1888 by Russell Edwards

was rather more interesting. Being in the habit of checking the security of the cellar doors (in the back yard) following an
earlier burglary, John had sat on the steps leading from the back door at 4.45 a.m. that morning and had seen nothing. He also commented that it was already getting light.
    One story that appeared in several newspapers claimed that Annie was seen in the Ten Bells pub on Commercial Street between 5 and 5.30 a.m. Some accounts say she was drinking with a man, others
that she was alone, and that a man wearing a skull cap and no jacket popped his head in the door and called for her before immediately leaving, at which she followed him out. Apparently the
description of the woman tallied with that of Annie Chapman, especially with regard to age, hair and clothing. This story is not reliable, however: there were plenty of other women who fitted the
loose description.
    At about 7 a.m. that same morning, a Mrs Fiddymont, who ran the Prince Albert Pub on Brushfield Street, said that a man came into the pub and excited quite a bit of suspicion. He was wearing a
dark coat and a brown stiff hat which was pulled down over his eyes. He asked for half a pint of ‘four ale’ and Mrs Fiddymont was immediately struck by the fact that therewere blood spots on the back of his right hand, on his collar and below his ear, and that he behaved most suspiciously, as if he didn’t want to attract attention to himself. The
man drank the beer in one gulp and left in a hurry, at which Mrs Fiddymont’s friend, Mary Chappell, followed him into Brushfield Street. She pointed the man out to passer-by Joseph Taylor who
followed him in the direction of Bishopsgate before he lost sight of him.
    This was the kind of vague testimony the police became used to, as the murders created such a storm of publicity. The killer of Mary Ann Nichols was not caught, and yet another vicious murder
involving horrific mutilations created a tidal wave of anger, frustration and sheer panic amongst the East End community. The fact that he had taken Annie through the passageway of a busy house, at
a time when at least some of the seventeen lodgers living in the building were likely to be getting up for work, and walked back out the same way, presumably with blood on him and carrying the
organs he removed from the body, without being seen, added to the escalating fear and hysteria. Newspaper reports spoke of outbreaks of unrest in the area and innocent men being targeted as
‘Leather Apron’. The police had to use precious resources and men just keeping the peace.
    Despite their problems, there was a brief glimmer of hope when, on 10 September, Sergeant William Thick went to the Whitechapel home of John Pizer, a Jewish slipper-maker, and arrested him on
suspicion of Annie Chapman’s murder, and of being ‘Leather Apron’ himself. Fortunately for Pizer, despite being a person of interest to the police for some time, he could show he
was elsewhere when both Mary Ann Nichols and Annie Chapman were murdered. On 31 August, he wasin Holloway in north London, staying at a lodging house called Crossman’s
(just over a century later, in 1989, I moved to Holloway, another of the small ways in which my own story overlaps with the history I have researched). He had even spoken to a policeman regarding
the glow from a fire in the London docks that could be seen even from that distance. On 8 September he was at home, kept there by his family who felt, with the rumours flying about that he was
‘Leather Apron’, it was wise to keep a low profile. With Pizer having cast-iron alibis, there was nothing else of substance for the police to go on, and there was a growing feeling of
dissatisfaction with them. The sensational newspapers summed up the situation in outlandish terms, none more so than the
Star
:
    London lies today under the spell of a great terror. A nameless reprobate – half beast, half man – is at large, who is daily gratifying his