Inspector Frederick Abberline

Although hundreds of police officers were involved in the investigation of the murders attributed to Jack the Ripper, Chief Inspector Frederick George Abberline is the name most people associate with the police effort to find the killer of five women in London’s Whitechapel.

Frederick George Abberline was born Dorset in 1843. After moving to London, he joined the ranks of the Metropolitan police in January 1863 and was appointed to N Division (Islington) His superiors were so impressed with his abilities that he was promoted to sergeant two years after joining the Force. As a plainclothes officer, he investigated the activities of Irish nationals known as Fenians. In April 1878, he was appointed Local Inspector in charge of H Division’s Criminal Investigation Division in Whitechapel.

In February 1887, he moved to Central Office Division at Scotland Yard and was promoted to Inspector First-Class in February 1888. Less than six months later, Mary Ann Nichols was brutally murdered in Whitechapel, the first of the murder victims attributed to Jack the Ripper. After Abberline was seconded to Whitechapel, he was placed in charge of the various detectives investigating the Ripper murders. Abberline’s knowledge of Whitechapel made him the most important member of the murder investigation team.

During the course of the investigation, over 2,000 people were interviewed, 300 people investigated, and eighty people detained. Because all the victims were mutilated, butchers, slaughterers, surgeons, and physicians were questioned. A report from Inspector Swanson to the Home Office stated that seventy-six butchers and slaughterers were visited as well as their employees for the previous six months.

At the end of October, police surgeon, Thomas Bond, was asked to give his opinion on the extent of the murderer’s surgical skill and knowledge. His opinion is the earliest surviving offender profile on record. Bond’s assessment was based on his own examination of the most extensively mutilated victim and the post-mortem notes from the four previous murders. Bond did not believe that the murderer possessed any kind of scientific or anatomical knowledge or even “the technical knowledge of a butcher or horse slaughterer.” In his opinion the killer was a man of solitary habits subject to “periodical attacks of homicidal and erotic mania.”

Punch Cartoon Mocking
Police Efforts
to Find the Ripper

The murderer was never caught. Partly because of dissatisfaction with the police effort, a group of volunteer citizens in London’s East End called the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee patrolled the streets looking for suspicious characters, petitioned the government to raise a reward for information about the killer, and hired private detectives to question witnesses independently.

Legacy of the Ripper Murders: The nature of the murders and of the victims drew attention to the poor living conditions in the East End and galvanized public opinion against the overcrowded and unsanitary slums. In the two decades following the murders, the worst of the slums were cleared.

Abberline was subsequently involved in the investigation of the Cleveland Street Scandal in 1889. He retired from the police on in 1892, having received eighty-four commendations and awards, and worked as a private enquiry agent before taking over the European Agency of the famous Pinkerton National Detective Agency of America where he worked for twelve years. He died in 1929.

Sources: Wikipedia Jack the Ripper and Frederick Abberline. A picture of Abberline’s headstone can be found at this Ancestry.com link.

Summary: The Cleveland Street Scandal occurred in 1889, when a male brothel in Cleveland Street, Fitzrovia, London was discovered by the police. At the time, sexual acts between men were illegal in Britain, and the brothel’s clients faced possible prosecution and certain social ostracism if discovered. It was rumored that one client was Prince Albert Victor, the eldest son of the Prince of Wales and second in line to the British throne. The government was accused of covering up the scandal to protect the names of its aristocratic patrons.

The Scandal: In July 1889, Police Constable Luke Hanks was investigating a theft from the London Central Telegraph Office. During the investigation, a fifteen-year-old telegraph boy named Charles Thomas Swinscow was discovered to be in possession of fourteen shillings, the equivalent of several weeks’ wages. After being brought in for questioning, Swinscow admitted he had earned the money working as a prostitute for a man named Charles Hammond, who operated a male brothel at 19 Cleveland Street. According to Swinscow, he was introduced to Hammond by a General Post Office clerk, eighteen-year-old Henry Newlove. After obtaining corroborating statements from two seventeen-year-old boys, Constable Hanks was able to obtain a confession from Newlove.

Inspector Frederick Abberline

On the way to the police station, Newlove named Lord Arthur Somerset and Henry FitzRoy, Earl of Euston, as visitors to Cleveland Street.Somerset was the head of the Prince of Wales’ stables. Although Somerset was interviewed by police, no immediate action was taken against him, and the authorities were slow to act on the allegations of his involvement.

On 19 August, an arrest warrant was issued in the name of George Veck. Veck had worked at the Telegraph Office, but had been sacked for “improper conduct” with the messenger boys. A seventeen-year-old youth found in Veck’s London lodgings revealed to the police that Veck had gone to Portsmouth and was returning shortly by train. When the police arrested Veck at Waterloo Station, in his pockets were letters from Algernon Allies of Suffolk. Allies admitted receiving money from Somerset, having a sexual relationship with him, and working at Cleveland Street for Hammond. On 22 August, police interviewed Somerset for a second time, after which, Somerset left for Bad Homburg in Germany where the Prince of Wales was taking his summer holiday.

On 11 September, Newlove and Veck were committed for trial. By this time, the press was referring to “noble lords” implicated in the trial. After pleading guilty to indecency on 18 September, Newlove and Veck were sentenced to four and nine months’ hard labor respectively, lenient sentences for the time. Hammond escaped to France, but the French authorities expelled him after pressure from the British. Hammond then moved to Belgium from where he emigrated to the United States, Somerset’s solicitor paying for Hammond’s passage. On the advice of the Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, no extradition proceedings were attempted, and the case against Hammond was quietly dropped.

Lord Arthur Somerset

When Somerset returned to Britain to attend the funeral of his grandmother, Emily Somerset, Dowager Duchess of Beaufort, the Commissioner of Police, James Monro, was pressed to take action against Somerset, but Lord Halsbury, the Lord Chancellor, blocked any prosecution. Because of rumors of Somerset’s involvement in the scandal, on 19 October, Somerset fled back to France. Lord Salisbury was later accused of warning Somerset that a warrant for his arrest was imminent, an accusation Salisbury denied.The Prince of Wales wrote to Salisbury expressing his satisfaction that Somerset had been allowed to leave the country and asking “if Somerset should ever dare to show his face in England again, he would remain unmolested by the authorities.” But Salisbury was also being pressured by the police to prosecute Somerset. On 12 November, a warrant for Somerset’s arrest was finally issued. By then, Somerset was safely abroad, and the warrant caught little public attention. Somerset lived out the remainder of his life in comfortable exile in the south of France.

The affair would have faded quickly from public memory if not for journalist Ernest Parke, the editor of the obscure political weekly The North London Press who began to question why the prostitutes had been given such light sentences relative to their offense (the usual penalty for gross indecency was two years) and how Hammond had been able to evade arrest. His curiosity aroused, Parke found out that the boys had named prominent aristocrats. He subsequently ran a story on 28 September, hinting at their involvement, but without detailing specific names. It was only on 16 November that he published a follow-up story specifically naming Henry Fitzroy, Earl of Euston, in “an indescribably loathsome scandal in Cleveland Street.” He further alleged that Euston may have gone to Peru and that he had been allowed to escape to cover up the involvement of a more highly placed person, who was not named but was believed by some to be Prince Albert Victor. (In September 1889, the prince went on a seven-month tour of British India to avoid the press and trials.)

In fact, Euston was still in England and immediately filed a libel suit against Parke. At the trial, Euston admitted that when walking along Piccadilly, a “tout” had given him a card which read: “Poses plastiques. C. Hammond, 19 Cleveland Street.” Euston testified that he went to the house believing he was to see a display of female nudes. Upon entering the building, Euston said he was appalled to discover the improper nature of the place and immediately left. The defense witnesses contradicted each other and could not describe Euston accurately. The final defense witness, John Saul, was a male prostitute who admitted to earning his living by leading an immoral life and “practicing criminality.” The defense did not call either Newlove or Veck as witnesses and could not produce any evidence that Euston had left the country. On 16 January 1890, the jury found Parke guilty, and the judge sentenced him to twelve months in prison. H. Montgomery Hyde, an eminent historian of homosexuality, later wrote that there was little doubt Euston was telling the truth and only visited Cleveland Street once because he was misled by the card.

Aftermath: Public interest in the scandal eventually faded. Nevertheless, newspaper coverage reinforced negative attitudes about male homosexuality as an aristocratic vice, presenting the telegraph boys as corrupted and exploited by members of the upper class. This attitude reached its climax a few years later when Oscar Wilde was tried for gross indecency as the result of his affair with Lord Alfred Douglas.

Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence

Oscar Wilde alluded to the scandal in The Picture of Dorian Gray, first published in 1890.In a clear reference to the Cleveland Street scandal, one reviewer called it suitable for “none but outlawed noblemen and perverted telegraph boys.” In 1895, Wilde unsuccessfully sued Lord Alfred’s father, the Marquess of Queensberry, for libel. After the failure of his suit, Wilde was charged with gross indecency, found guilty, and subsequently sentenced to two years’ hard labor.

Prince Albert Victor died in 1892, but society gossip about his sex life continued. Some biographers have contended that the prince was bisexual. However, this is strongly contested by others who refer to him as “ardently heterosexual.”

*Abberline was to investigate the Jack the Ripper murders.

This edited and revised post was taken in its entirety from a Wikipedia article about The Cleveland Street Scandal.

London was a city of prisons. “In 1800, there were nineteen prisons (including the Tower of London). Newgate Prison had served as London’s main jail (gaol) for 800 years. At least two of the gates in the Roman walls of London, Newgate and Ludgate, had been prisons from medieval times… After the Great Fire of 1666, the prisons and courthouses were the first public buildings to be rebuilt… Newgate was the central prison for those on remand for major crimes, for City debtors and for prisoners awaiting execution and transportation.”(1)*

The idea of an organized, paid police force had first been proposed in the mid 18^th century, but had been blocked by the City of London, who wanted to remain in charge of its own policing. (To this day, the “Square Mile” within London has its own police force with its distinctive red and white checked caps and epaulettes.) In 1829, Home Secretary Robert Peel succeeded in getting a bill through Parliament creating the Metropolitan Police where uniformed men patrolled the streets by day as well as night. Their district was the whole of London, excluding the Square Mile.

From Wikipedia: “Due to public fears concerning the deployment of the military in domestic matters, Robert Peel organized the force along civilian lines, rather than paramilitary. To appear neutral, the uniform was deliberately manufactured in blue, rather than red, which was then a military color. The officers were armed only with a wooden truncheon (later an expandable baton) and a rattle (later a whistle) to signal the need for assistance.

“Metropolitan Police patrols took to the streets on 29 September 1829, patrolling the streets within a seven-mile (11 km) radius of Charing Cross, in order to prevent crime and pursue offenders. The initial force consisted of two commissioners, eight superintendents, twenty inspectors, eighty-eight sergeants, and 895 constables. Between 1829 and 1830, seventeen local details, each with its own police station, were established, each lettered A to V, allocating each London Borough with a designated letter. These divisions were: A (Westminster); B (Chelsea); C (Mayfair and Soho); D (Marylebone); E (Holborn); F (Kensington); G (Kings Cross); H (Stepney); K (West Ham); L (Lambeth); M (Southwark); N (Islington); P (Peckham); R (Greenwich); S (Hampstead); T (Hammersmith) and V (Wandsworth). In 1865 three more divisions were created, W (Clapham); X (Willesden) and Y (Tottenham); J Division (Bethnal Green) was added in 1886. “Indications of the Constabulary’s unpopularity of the time were such nicknames as Raw Lobsters, Blue Devils, and Peels Bloody Gang.

“In 1839, the Bow Street Runners, the Foot and Horse Patrol, and the Thames River Police were amalgamated with the Metropolitan Police. In 1842 taking over a function formerly the responsibility of the Runners, a new investigative force was formed as the Detective Branch One of the first cases investigated by the newly formed Detective Branch was The Bermondsey Horror of 1849, in which a married couple, Frederick and Marie Manning, murdered Patrick O’Connor and buried his body under the kitchen floor. After going on the run they were tracked down by Detective Sergeants Thornton and Langley and publicly hanged outside Horsemonger Gaol in Southwark.”

According to an article in Smithsonian magazine: “The staff of Scotland Yard was responsible for the protection of important individuals, community patrols, public affairs, recruitment and personnel management. When the Yard sent out its first plainclothes police agents in 1842, the public felt uncomfortable with these ‘spies’ on the streets. But the force’s role in several important cases, and the charisma of many of its detectives, helped it win the people’s trust. One such personality, Inspector Charles Frederick Field, joined the force upon its establishment in 1829. He became good friends with Charles Dickens, who occasionally accompanied constables on their nightly rounds. Dickens wrote a short essay about Field, “On Duty With Inspector Field,” and used him as a model for the all-knowing, charming Inspector Bucket in his novel Bleak House. Field retired as a chief of the detective branch in 1852.”(4)

“It took time to establish the standards of discipline expected today from a police force. In 1863, 215 officers were arrested for being intoxicated while on duty.” (Wikipedia) Even so, the command structure was in place. London now joined Glasgow and Paris as the only cities in Europe to have an organized non-paramilitary police force.

Why Scotland Yard?  “The name Scotland Yard comes from its very earliest days, soon after the establishment of the police force in London in 1829. The first Metropolitan Police station was opened on 6 October 1829 in a street called Great Scotland Yard and was at the rear of 4 Whitehall Place which served as the office of the two newly appointed police commissioners. The origin of the name Scotland Yard (both Great and Little) is unknown, but may be named after a former landowner or a connection with the Kings of Scotland. The name was in use by the 17th century.” (History House) (4)

Next: London policing in the Victorian Era

*Newgate prison was demolished in 1904. The Old Bailey now stands on the site.

Sources:

(1) The Book of London, The Evolution of A Great City, edited by Michael Leapman, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, New York, NY (1989)

(2) London, The Story of a Great City, by Jerry White, Sevenoaks, an imprint of Carolton Publishing Group, London (2011)

(3) “A Brief History of Scotland Yard, September 28, 2007,” http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/brief-scotland.html#ixzz2pAxrABdC

(4) Blog – History House – http://www.historyhouse.co.uk/articles/scotland_yard.html

Wikipedia