The Railway Policeman
Theorist Bernard Brown, in the publication Murder Most Foul, put forward the suggestion that Jack the Ripper may have been a railway policeman, who used the underground to make good his getaway. The first tube station in Whitechapel was opened in 1876, and Shoreditch Station was less then five minutes from Bucks Row, where Mary Ann Nichols was murdered, and St Mary's Station was only a few yards from Berner Street, where Elizabeth Stride was murdered. Unfortunately, Brown does not name his police suspect.
Although it is true a policeman would inspire a degree of confidence in his victims, the weakness of this theory is that no witnesses reported seeing a policeman with any of the victims shortly before they were murdered. John Pizer Brown, during research, did discover the story of a 40 year old prostitute named Emily Wood, of 11 Hungerford Street, Commercial Road, who in the early hours of 7 January 1899 while walking along Commercial Road, claimed that she was accosted and attacked by a tall policeman with a dark moustache, who stabbed her and left her for dead. When examined she was found to have been stabbed in a delicate area, causing a two inch wound. She recovered from her ordeal and despite claiming to have known the officer for some time and could easily recognise him again, the policeman was never traced. No evidence, nor records exist to confirm this story, interesting though it is.
