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** This is an archived, static copy of the Casebook messages boards dating from 1998 to 2003. These threads cannot be replied to here. If you want to participate in our current forums please go to https://forum.casebook.org **
Anderson suspect
Casebook Message Boards: Ripper Suspects: Ripper Suspects:
Anderson suspect
Author: Ashleah Skinner
Saturday, 03 August 2002 - 06:59 pm |        | I believe that the Anderson suspect was a poor polish jew who was already aquited of the murders previously but was sent to an asylum.
Pizer was aquited earlier so could he have been JTR but put in the asylum under a new name to protect him? |
Author: Joseph P. Matthews
Saturday, 03 August 2002 - 07:50 pm | | Hi Ashleah,
Pizer was arrested on Monday 10 September by Sergeant William Thick and another officer at 22 Mulberry Street on suspicions of being "Leather Apron." He was taken to Leman Street police station and placed in an indentification parade. Emmanuel Violenia identified him as a man she had seen talking angrily with a woman outside of 29 Hanbury Street in the early morning of 8 September. She was dropped from the case as being unreliable. No evidence could be found against him and on Tuesday evening he was released. On 11 October he was summoned to Annie Chapman's inquest to be cleared of all suspicion of murder. In answers to the opening questions, he said that he was Leather Apron. The undoubted fact of his presence in Holloway on the night of the Nichols murder was brought out, and Pizer was told he could go. There was some dispute as to whether Pizer was actually known as "Leather Apron" before being arrested. Sgt. Thick testified that he had known Pizer for many years and when people spoke of "Leather Apron," they meant him. The press, however, was totally unable to confirm this as Pizer, as well as his friends, family, and neighbors denied the fact when interviewed.
As for Pizer being placed in an asylum under a new name to protect him, I do not think so. Pizer died of gastro-enteritis in the London Hospital in July 1897.
Given all of that, I think it highly unlikely that John Pizer was Jack the Ripper.
Best wishes,
Joe
All this information is found in The Jack the Ripper: A-Z |
Author: Martin Fido
Sunday, 04 August 2002 - 06:20 am | | I agree with every word Joe has written, Ashleah. Yet I think you are again asking a very sensible question, going to the heart of a vital Ripper mystery issue. the Pizer/Leather Apron question has always been so problematic that it seemed to me, even before I had researched it, that it must provide a key to the police thinking as reported by Anderson. Once I had done the research I knew why I had found Pizer and Leather Apron puzzling. For the police must have been well aware that their own identifier of Leather Apron, Sergeant Thick, was actually no more than "almost sure" Pizer was Leather Apron; that Pizer's friends and neighbours resolutely denied this; and Pizer himself, although replying with a puzzling, "Yes," when asked by the coroner whether he was Leather Apron, unhesitatingly told the press that he had never known that he was thought of as Leather Apron until Segeant Thick, who had known him for eighteen years, suddenly told him this was why he ws being arrested. In spite of all this, first Helson, then police officialdom as a whole, firmly propagate the claim that Leather Apron had been discovered and Pizer was he, although they have never used any witness to identify him except the broken reed Violenia; while the prostitutes who named Leather Apron were easily available to be rounded up, and Tim Donovan, who knew Leather Apron and had kicked him out of Crossingham's, was available at the inquest on Annie Chapman where Pizer was put up as both Leather Apron and innocent of the murders. Yet Donovan was never asked about him.
And in the teeth of all this police determination to close the Leather Apron panic, the press and public quite clearly continued to believe that the murderous Leather Apron was NOT Pizer: there was still Leather Apron out there waiting to kill women; and only the more exciting name "Jack the Ripper" finally dispelled the conviction that the Whitechapel murderer was the prostitutes' suspect Leather Apron.
Which makes very interesting the reported draft of Macnaghten's notes saying that the Jewish suspect (later named as Kosminski)WAS Leather Apron. Especially (I think) as the undoubted heairdresser Aaron Kosminski, fully identified by his sane siblings, couldn't possibly have earned the sobriquet, whereas the incoherent lunatic David Cohen with no known friends or relations might easily have been wrongly identified as a tailor, or have taken up the occupation (as unskilled Jewish workers could find instant employment as tailors or shoemakers) after the Leather Apron panic began.
All the best,
Martin F |
Author: Timsta
Sunday, 04 August 2002 - 03:06 pm | | Martin:
Greater minds than I have already raised the possibility that "Are you known by the nickname of Leather Apron? - Yes, sir" indicates nothing more than the fact that Pizer was identified as "Leather Apron" by Thick, arrested on suspicion of being "Leather Apron" (essentially), referred to by the press as "Leather Apron", etc. Therefore upon being questioned at the inquest, it's not too surprising that upon being asked that question, Pizer might respond "Yes", if only because by the time of the inquest he certainly *was* known as "Leather Apron". Additionally, I imagine he was not totally fluent in English, which may have some bearing.
Personally, I suspect the whole "Leather Apron" thing to be a folk myth generated out of public hysteria and gossip. It seems to have that whole "bogeyman" ring about it. Surely calling a man "Leather Apron" in 1888 Whitechapel would be like calling a man "Blue Jeans" today? How far do we have to look before we find another man known to wear a leather apron? John Richardson 
regards
timsta |
Author: Martin Fido
Sunday, 04 August 2002 - 04:51 pm | | Hi Timsta,
Of course I agree with you and the greater minds than ours: I'm just wary of repeating my own speculations which fill in hiatuses or lacunae in my chain of deductive argument.
My own belief is that the later press report that the police were still interested in a man suggested as a suspect by three prostitutes early in the case, and (I think it was) one-armed Liz saying to the Police Gazette that the women on the street suspected a man who had been threatening them, show that there really was a figure sussed by the prostitutes - or, equally probably, that several bullies who had threatened women on the street became amalgamated into one; one of them being identified by the leather apron he had been wearing in one or more attacks; and either he or others also having a two-peaked cap and a thick neck. Probably Tim Donovan believed the man he had thrown out from Crossingham's was the man the women described - and possibly he was, or was one of them.
On this slender basis, I agree, the press went to town!
All the best,
Martin F
All the best,
Martin F |
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