The evolution in the coroner's system had reached a new level of objectivity and seriousness in 1888, reinforcing my belief that there was no investigative or political conspiracy to "cover up" some nefarious secret during the Ripper murders or after they were believed to have ended. There were, of course, the usual bureaucratic attempts to prevent further embarrassment by discouraging the publication of police memoirs and classifying secret official memorandums that were never written for the public to see. Discretion and nondisclosure may not be popular, but they do not always imply scandal. Honest people delete personal e-mails and use shredding machines. But try as I might, for the longest time I could find no excuse for the silence of the elusive Inspector Abberline. So much is made of him. So little is known. So absent does he seem from the Ripper investigation he headed.
Frederick George Abberline was a modest, courteous man of high morals who was as reliable and methodical as the clocks he repaired before he joined the Metropolitan Police in 1863. During his thirty years of service, he earned eighty-four commendations and rewards from judges, magistrates, and the commissioner of police. As Abberline himself matter-of-factly put it, "I think [I] was considered very exceptional."
He was admired, if not cherished, by his colleagues and the public he served, and does not seem the sort to deliberately outshine anyone, but took great pride in a job well done. I find it significant that there is not a single photograph of him that anybody seems to know of, and I don': believe this is so because all of them "walked away" from Scotland Yard's archives and files. I would expect "pinched" pictures would have been recirculating for years, their prices mounting with each resale. It also seems that any existing pictures would have been published at least once somewhere.
But if there is even one photograph of Abberline, I do not know of it. The only hint of what he looked like is to be found in a few sketches published in magazines that don't always spell his name correctly. Artistic versions of the legendary inspector show an indistinct-looking man with mutton chops, small ears, a straight nose, and a high forehead. In 1885. it appears, he was losing his hair. He may have slumped a bit and doesn't impress me as particularly tall. As was true of the mythical East End monster Abberline tracked but never caught, the detective could disappear at will and become anybody in a crowd.
His love of clocks and gardening says a great deal about him. These are solitary, gentle pursuits that require patience, concentration, tenacity, meticulousness, a light touch, and a love of life and the way things work. I can't think of many better qualities for a detective, except, of course, honesty, and I have no doubt that Frederick Abberline was as true as a tuning fork. Although he never wrote his autobiography or allowed anyone else to tell his story, he did keep a diary of sorts, a hundred-page clipping book about crimes he worked interspersed with comments written in his graceful, generous hand.
Based on the way he assembled his clipping book, I would say that he didn't get around to it until after his retirement. When he died in 1929, this collection of newsprint remnants of his shining career remained the property of his descendants, who eventually donated it to a person or persons unknown. I knew nothing about it until early in 2002 when I was doing further research in London and an official with the Yard showed me the eight-by-eleven book bound in black. I don't know if it had just been donated or had just turned up. I don't know if it actually belongs to Scotland Yard or perhaps to someone who works there. Exactly where this little-known clipping book has been since Abberline pasted it together and when it turned up at Scotland Yard are questions I can't answer. Typically, Abberline remains mysterious and offers few answers even now.
His diary is neither confessional nor full of details about his life, but he does reveal his personality in the way he worked cases and in the comments he wrote. He was a brave, intelligent man who kept his word and abided by the rules, which included not divulging details about the very sorts of cases I expected and hoped to find hidden between his clipping book's covers. Abberline's entries abruptly stop with an October 1887 case of what he called "spontaneous combustion" and do not resume until a March 1891 case of trafficking in infants.
There is not so much as a hint about Jack the Ripper. One won't find a single word about the 1889 Cleveland Street male brothel scandal that must have been a briar patch for Abberline, as accusations included the names of men close to the throne. To read Abberline's diary is to think the Ripper murders and the Cleveland Street scandal never happened, and I have no reason to suspect that someone removed any related pages from the cuttings book. It appears Abberline chose not to include what he knew would be the most sought-after and controversial details of his investigative career.
On pages 44-45 of his diary, he offers an explanation for his silence:
I think it is just as well to record here the reason why as from the various cuttings from the newspapers as well as the many other matters that I was called upon to investigate that never became public property - it must be apparent that I could write many things that would be very interesting to read.
At the time I retired from the service the authorities were very much opposed to retired officers writing anything for the press as previously some retired officers had from time to time been very indiscreet in what they had caused to be published and to my knowledge had been called upon to explain their conduct - and in fact - they had been threatened with action for libel.
Apart from that there is no doubt the fact that in describing what you did in detecting certain crimes you are putting the criminal closer on their guard and in some cases you may be absolutely telling them how to commit crime.
As an example in the Finger-Print detection you find now the expert thief wears gloves.
The opposition to former officers writing their memoirs did not deter everyone, whether it was the men of Scotland Yard or the City of London Police. I have three examples on my desk: Sir Melville Macnaghten's Days of My Years, Sir Henry Smith's From Constable to Commissioner, and Benjamin Leeson's Lost London: The Memoirs of an East End Detective. All three include Jack the Ripper anecdotes and analyses which I think the world would be better without. It is sad that men whose lives and careers were touched by the Ripper cases would spin theories almost as baseless as some of those offered by people who weren't even born at the time of the crimes.
Henry Smith was the Acting Commissioner of the City of London Police during the murders of 1888, and he modestly writes, "There is no man living who knows as much of those murders as I do." He declares that after the "second crime" - which may have been Mary Ann Nichols, who was not murdered in Smith's jurisdiction - he "discovered" a suspect he was fairly sure was the murderer. Smith described him as a former medical student who had been in a lunatic asylum and had spent "all of this time" with prostitutes, whom he cheated by passing off polished farthings as sovereigns.
Smith conveyed this intelligence to Sir Charles Warren, who did not find the suspect, according to Smith. It was just as well. The former lunatic turned out to be the wrong man. I feel compelled to add that a sovereign would have been unusually generous payment for an Unfortunate who was more than accustomed to exchanging favors for farthings. The damage done by Smith during the Ripper investigation was to perpetuate the notion that the Ripper was a doctor or a medical student or someone involved in a field connected with medicine.
I don't know why Smith made such an assumption as early as the "second case," when no victim had been disemboweled yet and no organs had been taken. Following Mary Ann Nichols's murder, there was no suggestion that the weapon was a surgical knife or that the killer possessed even the slightest surgical skills. Unless Smith simply has the timing wrong in his recollections, there was no reason for the police to suspect a so-called medically trained individual this early in the investigation.