The Suspect Known As Leather Apron also Known as John Pizer
Where the police struggled journalists leapt in. Newspapers came up with a new and different kind of suspect. On September the 1st, the day after the murder of Polly Nichols, The Sunderland Daily Echo, wrote:
“The women in a position similar to that of the deceased allege that there is a man who goes by the name of ‘Leather Apron’ who has more than once attacked unfortunate and defenceless women. His dodge is, it is asserted, to get them into some house on the pretence of offering them money. He then takes whatever little they have and "half kills" them in addition."
And the Sheffield and Rotherham Independent had their journalists on the case. They carried the same quote but this time it didn’t come from “The women in a position similar to that of the deceased” but from a single source. The quote, said the Sheffield and Rotherham Independent, came from ‘a woman in a position similar to the deceased’.
Other newspapers joined in and The Star, one of the more ‘tabloid’ in its approach to news, on September 4th described Leather Apron as this “noiseless midnight terror”. The Star went so far as to state that he was “the only name linked with the Whitechapel Murders’.
Nine days after Polly Nichols was found murdered in Buck’s Row Lloyd's Weekly wrote:
“When the tragedy was first discovered on Friday the hapless females who haunt the East-end freely denounced a particular individual whom they style "Leather Apron." "Leather Apron" by himself is, it appears, quite an unpleasant character. He has ranged Whitechapel for a long time. He exercises over the unfortunates who ply their trade after 12 o'clock at night a sway that is based on universal terror. He has kicked, injured, bruised, and terrified a hundred of them who are ready to testify to the outrages... He carries a razor-like knife, and two weeks ago drew it on a woman called "Widow Annie" as she was crossing the square near London hospital, threatening at the same time, with an ugly grin and his malignant eyes, to do her harm... From all accounts he is five feet four or five inches in height, and wears a dark, close-fitting cap. He is thickset, and has an unusually thick neck. His hair is black, and closely clipped, his age being about 38 or 40. He has a small, black moustache. The distinguishing feature of his costume is a leather apron, which he always wears, and from which he gets his nickname.”
The murders, of course, massively increased the sale of all these newspapers ‘Leather Apron’ became a useful brand name for the stories.
When Annie Chapman’s body was discovered in the yard behind 29 Hanbury Street on September 8th, the cry went up from the newspapers that the police must find Leather Apron.
On September the 10th, Sergeant Thick arrested the man. He was a Jewish bookmaker called John Pizer.
Pizer rejected the description that the newspapers had printed and presented evidence that proved he was nowhere near the murder sites at the time the victim was killed. One of his witnesses was a police officer.
Polly Nichols was murdered at around 3:30 a.m. on the 31st of August, and at 1:30 a.m. on that date, John Pizer was 4 miles away standing outside Crossman’s Lodging House on Holloway Road. He was talking to a policeman about a fire that was blazing at the docks.
He walked off to get a better view, but by 2:15, he was back at Crossman’s, where he paid fourpence for a bed. He sat for a while in the kitchen smoking a pipe, then went to bed and slept until 11 a.m. The next day, he learned of the murder when he saw a newspaper placard.
Leather Apron was dismissed as a suspect by the police, but the idea that the killer was a lone wolf targeting prostitutes remained and the theories began.
As one detective inspector involved in the case said, “Theories? We were almost lost in theories!”
Detective Inspector Frederick Aberline would have been amazed at just how many theories we are all now lost in when we try to unravel the mystery of Jack the Ripper.
The police interviewed hundreds of people as suspects at the time but without any success. And it wasn’t until some of the senior police officers were looking back at the case that some of the names that are still talked about began to be mentioned.
Thank you for checking out this post.