The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: The Whitechapel Horrors by Edward B. Hanna Page A

of it. They made much of the fact that not only was there no motive but there was no real suspect, and frantic efforts on the part of the police were leading nowhere. For a while the attentions of the police inquiry, as Abberline had revealed, focused on a thirty-three-year-old Polish Jew by the name of John Pizer, the man known in the district as Leather Apron. Early on the morning of Monday the 10th, Pizer was traced to a house in Mulberry Street, where he was duly arrested by Sergeant Thicke and taken in for questioning.
    The evidence against him was entirely circumstantial and tenuous at best: The presence of the leather apron in the courtyard behind 29 Hanbury Street; the fact that he had a “reputation” for ill-treating prostitutes; the fact that he was seen wearing a deerstalker hat similar to the one worn by Annie Chapman’s killer; and the added fact that Chapman’s lodging-house keeper told a Press Association reporter that he had ejected Pizer from the lodging house a few months earlier for attacking, or threatening to attack (he was somewhat vague on the point), one of the female lodgers.
    The police were convinced they had their man.
    A broadsheet hawked in the streets gave these details:
At nine o’clock this morning Detective Sergeant William Thicke, H-Division, who has had charge of this case, succeeded in capturing the man known as Leather Apron.
    There is no doubt that he is the murderer, for a large number of long-bladed knives was found in his possession.
    Thicke was the man of the hour. Adding to the neatness of his case was the “evidence” found in Pizer’s room in Mulberry Street, described variously by the press as “long-bladed” knives and “long-handled” knives. The “large number” turned out to be five. They proved to be boot-finisher’s knives, and the reason they were in Pizer’s possession was soon established: Pizer by trade was a boot finisher.
    He was taken to the Leman Street police station, accompanied voluntarily by the friends with whom he had been lodging. He and they protested his innocence, insisting he had not been out of the house since the previous Thursday.
    Pizer’s arrest had immediate repercussions for the sizable population of Jewish immigrants living in Whitechapel. Within hours, scores of unfortunate Jews were harassed and beaten in the streets in a wave of almost spontaneous anti-Semitism. Commented The Daily News : “There may soon be murders from panic to add to murders from lust for blood...”
    That same afternoon another arrest was made, that of one William Piggott, who bore a resemblance to Pizer. He was spotted drinking in a pub in Gravesend, wearing bloodstained clothing and boots and was found to be carrying a bundle of shirts that were also stained with blood. When questioned, Piggott proved to be a willing witness, albeit sometimes incoherent, and sometimes all too willing: He willingly admitted he had been in Whitechapel the Saturday morning in question. He willingly admitted he had walked down Brick Lane and had gotten into an altercation with a prostitute. He willingly admitted he had struck her. As for the bloodstained clothing, he had no rational explanation, but seemed willing to admit to any explanation at all. Theproblem was that none of the police witnesses (or all-too-cooperative individuals who made claim to being witnesses) could identify Piggott, and after a few hours in cells his speech and behavior became so strange and erratic that a physician was summoned. The physician took one look at him and declared him insane.
    For several hours suspicion was focused on yet a third man, a market porter by the name of John Richardson, whose mother rented the ground floor of 29 Hanbury Street as well as the yard in the rear and a workshop off the yard. It was soon determined that it was his leather apron that had been found in the yard. He freely admitted it. He customarily wore it when working in the cellar, he said, and it had been in the