Jack The Ripper - Mark Whitehead [16]
William Henry Pigott
53-year-old Pigott was arrested at Gravesend where he had attracted suspicion by loudly expressing a hatred of women. One of his hands was also injured. Sources alternately claim he was a ship’s cook or a failed Hoxton publican. Both state that he was believed to be mentally unstable. He was arrested on 9 September in the Pope’s Head Tavern. A paper parcel that he had left behind in a fish shop was found to contain clothing, including a bloodstained shirt with a torn pocket. Pigott claimed that he’d seen a woman collapse in a fit in Whitechapel about 4.30am on Saturday 8th. When he went to help her she bit his hand and he struck her in return. Seeing policemen heading towards him, he fled.
Informed by telegram of Pigott’s arrest, Inspector Abberline escorted him back to Whitechapel where he was put in an identity parade. Neither Mrs Fiddymont nor Joseph Taylor picked him out. Mrs Chappell did so but remained uncertain about whether Pigott was indeed the man. The police found no evidence to connect Pigott to Chapman’s death and his movements were accounted for. On 10 September, he was committed to the Whitechapel Workhouse Infirmary where he was treated for delirium tremens and later discharged.
Jacob Isenschmid
Isenschmid was a Swiss butcher, located in Holloway. When his business failed, he suffered a nervous breakdown resulting in a ten-week stay at Colney Hatch Asylum in 1887. On 11 September, acting on a letter from Doctors Cowan and Crabb of Holloway, who believed him to be the Whitechapel murderer, the police investigated his lodgings at 60, Milford Road and his former home at 97, Duncombe Road, Holloway, where his wife still lived. She told the police that she hadn’t seen him in two months and that he often carried butchers’ knives with him. His landlord reported that on the night of Annie Chapman’s murder he’d come back at about 9pm and left again at 1am. He’d repeated the same pattern four times out of five previous nights. The police staked out both addresses until it was discovered that Isenschmid had been leaving at night to buy sheep’s heads and other offcuts to dress and sell in the West End. By the later murders he was back in Colney Hatch.
Charles Ludwig (aka Charles Ludwig Wetzel)
Early in the morning of 18 September, prostitute Elizabeth Burns accompanied Charles Ludwig to Three Kings Court, The Minories, a small dark court near some railway arches. Here, Ludwig pulled a knife on her. Her cries of ‘Murder!’ attracted the attention of City PC John Johnson. Johnson sent Ludwig on his way and Burns went with the policeman. Obviously frightened, it was only then that she mentioned that Ludwig had threatened her with a knife. Johnson returned to the court, but Ludwig had vanished.
Ludwig resurfaced, the worse for drink, at about 3am at a coffee stall on Whitechapel High Street. Here he threatened Alexander Finlay with a long-bladed penknife. This drew the attention of PC John Gallagher who hauled him off to Leman Street police station.When searched he was found to be carrying a razor and a pair of long-bladed scissors. Brought before Thames Magistrates Court that day, he was charged with being drunk and disorderly and threatening to stab. The magistrate remanded him in custody for a week. During this time, the police laboured to find out everything that they could about him.
A recent immigrant, Ludwig had been employed as a barber’s assistant by a Mr Partridge at Richter’s, a German club in Houndsditch. Ludwig slept on the shop’s floor for a while but then went to stay with a tailor named Johannes, in Church Street. Johannes apparently took exception to Ludwig’s habits and forced him to leave on 17 September. That day, increasingly drunk, he went to Richter’s and to a hotel in Finsbury where his threatening