Moralists and commentators posed some difficult questions. Surely the poverty and depravity suffered by the innocents of the East End were a matter of public responsibility? If the lawless, morally corrupt and dangerous conditions there created killers such as Leather Apron, who would address them?
On Monday the tenth of September, Leather Apron was found, hiding in a house on Mulberry Street. His real name was John Pizer. The police discovered several long blades in the house, which Pizer said were for his work as a boot finisher. He protested his innocence but was taken, along with those who had hidden him, to Leman Street Police Station.
It came as a surprise to find myself deflated, disappointed even. Was that it? If it was Pizer, then that meant I was to be stuck with the man I had married. I think I had rather hoped the police would knock on the door one day and take him away, solving my problems. Still, I had to take comfort that it was my wild imagination making Thomas capable of such horrific acts. Of course that was absurd. It was the drops. I needed to cut down on them; they were sending my thoughts racing, making my dreams surreal. I had to accept the humiliating truth that Thomas’s hatred and anger were apparently only for me. But if he wasn’t out murdering women, what he was up to?
Even so, I needed to know conclusively that this John Pizer was the murderer. I scoured the countless inches of cheap hearsay and unfounded opinion filling the columns of every newspaper known to womankind, but there were gaping holes all over the place. Often I became so frustrated, I almost tore the papers in pieces. I considered writing my own version of the story of Leather Apron. Putting him into the picture alongside Little Lost Polly and Dark Annie in an attempt to understand more about him, try and fathom his motives but I couldn’t find enough about him to conjure up anything worth writing down. I could not understand such a man. What struck me was that I had not felt this lack of understanding when it came to the victims, and that filled me with fear. Why was it so easy for me to imagine their lives, had I not moved far enough away from that fate, was my writing hobby a danger? A way of pulling me back to the fate I had escaped.
The city waited with bated breath for the confession, but then all of a sudden Pizer was released without charge. I couldn’t believe it. It wasn’t him! Leather Apron was not the Whitechapel murderer, though everyone – the papers, the people, and myself – had assumed his guilt was a certainty. But John Pizer’s alibis stood up. He was a rogue; that was not in doubt. He was an altogether nasty person, and a quite horrible and violent bully of women. But they couldn’t imprison him for that. If they had, they’d have had to lock up half of London, and most of Westminster.
I had resigned myself to the fact that the monster had been caught and had laughed at my ridiculous suspicions about Thomas, but now that was all possible again. I felt a twinge of satisfaction that my instincts could be correct, but it was difficult to find solace in being right when I was petrified of what I might be right about. I had not seen Thomas since the night of our argument and Annie Chapman’s murder, and that was some days ago now.
I found myself back at the beginning, with no answers at all, no clue as to where my husband was or with whom, and dreading him walking through the door.
22
The days passed and I still had no idea where Thomas was hiding. If Mrs Wiggs knew any better, she kept that to herself. I fantasised that he’d killed himself, taken by a fit of guilt after beating his wife and murdering Annie Chapman and the others, or that the police had him, or that he’d tripped, knocked himself out and drowned in the Thames. I rehearsed in my mind the various conversations I would have with the police should they turn up.
The longer Thomas stayed away, the more fearful I was of how things would be should he return. My cheek was bruised and my lip split on my left side. I studied my face in the mirror every day, sometimes every few hours, and convinced myself it was getting better. I wished I could have shown Mabel at least. We could have compared wounds, to measure who was the bigger fool, but I hadn’t heard from her, hadn’t received any letter. Cloistered in my bedroom, I broke up the hours by taking my drops with brandy, abandoning my self-imposed rule of never doing so during the daytime. I thought of Mabel often, and worried what would happen to me. By the end of the week I had taken all the clothes, feathers and frivolous things that Thomas had bought me, dumped them outside my bedroom door and told Mrs Wiggs to get rid of them.
‘Where? What on earth for? What are you going to wear?’ I think she had serious concerns I was about to parade naked through the streets of Chelsea.
‘Give them to charity for all I care.’ I found out later she stored them in an unoccupied bedroom, along with the shrunken head that had made me scream.
From then on I wore my old dresses and hats: dour grey and brown linsey frocks and plain black bonnets. They matched my mood and I felt more comfortable that
