Jack The Ripper - Mark Whitehead [15]
Some Contemporary Suspects
At 7am on the morning of Annie Chapman’s murder, Mrs Fiddymont, landlady of the Prince Albert pub in Brushfield Street (about 400 yards from 29, Hanbury Street) was in the bar with her friend Mary Chappell.While they were talking a rough-looking man came in and asked for ale. He looked ‘so startling and terrifying’ that their suspicions were immediately aroused. His shirt was torn on the right shoulder and a narrow streak of blood visible under his right ear. On the back of his right hand were several spots of blood and there was dried blood between his fingers. Seeing he was being watched, he drank up and left.
He was followed from the pub by Joseph Taylor, a builder, alerted by Mrs Fiddymont. Taylor followed the man as far as Half Moon Street, Bishopsgate. He described the man as middle-aged, medium height with short, sandy hair and a ginger moustache which curled at its ends. He had faint hollows under his cheekbones and his eyes were wild and staring. The man’s dress was ‘shabby-genteel’, with pepper-and-salt trousers and a dark coat.When Taylor drew level with him to get a better look, ‘his look was enough to frighten any woman’. The description would preoccupy Abberline during the arrest of several suspects.Two days after Annie Chapman’s murder, the police thought they’d finally caught their man.
Leather Apron
On the morning of 10 September, Sergeant William Thick and another officer knocked at the door of 22, Mulberry Street. The door was opened by John Pizer, alias ‘Leather Apron’.Allegedly Thick said:‘You are just the man I’m looking for.’ Thick took Pizer to Leman Street Police station together with some knives found on the premises. This was so casually handled that they were inside the station before word spread that ‘Leather Apron’ had been captured and a huge crowd gathered outside. Inside, Pizer was interrogated about his movements on the nights of Nichols’ and Chapman’s murders. On the night of Nichols’ death he was, he claimed, lodging at ‘The Round-House’ in Holloway Road. From 6 September, he had been in hiding at 22, Mulberry Street in fear for his life.
The police were able to verify these claims. The landlord of the Holloway Road lodging house remembered Pizer because, that night, there had been a fire at the Albert Docks. Seeing reflections of it in the sky, Pizer had discussed the fire with the landlord and two police officers outside. His brother told how Pizer had fled to lodgings in Westminster on 2 September after being pointed out as ‘Leather Apron’ and pursued by a ‘howling crowd’. The Thursday before Chapman’s death, Pizer had returned to Whitechapel. He had immediately gone into hiding at 22, Mulberry Street (his brother’s and stepmother’s home) on being told there was still ‘false suspicion’ of him.
Pizer was part of an identity parade held on 10 September. Mrs Fiddymont was unable to identify him but one Emmanuel Violenia claimed to have seen him threatening a woman with a knife in Hanbury Street the night Chapman died. Violenia added that he knew Pizer as ‘Leather Apron’. Under further questioning Violenia was discredited. The police believed that he’d fabricated the story in order to see Chapman’s body. Pizer was released.
On 12 September, Pizer was summoned to formally clear himself of suspicion of murder. His claim that Sergeant Thick had known him for eighteen years was cut short by the coroner. Thick, however, stated the same day that when people referred to ‘Leather Apron’, they meant Pizer (despite claims of Pizer, his friends and family to the contrary).
While Pizer was undoubtedly the ‘John Pozer’ sentenced to six months