Saucy Jacky

John Pizer, a Jewish shoemaker in Whitechapel,  was the first person accused of being the Whitechapel murderer but was cleared after providing alibis for two of the murders. Nevertheless, he testified as a witness at the coroner’s inquest into the death of  Annie Chapman.

On 6 July 1887, Pizer was at the shop of rival shoemaker James Willis on Morgan Street when he lunged at Willis with a knife after Willis told him to leave. Pizer aimed for Willis’ face but stabbed him in the hand. On 7 July, the court sentenced Pizer to six months of hard labour for wounding Willis. 

On 4 August 1888, Pizer appeared at Thames Magistrates’ Court on a charge of indecent assault. Prosecutors claimed Pizer threatened Sara Jones with a knife over money, but the Magistrate had to dismiss the case when Jones failed to appear.

After the Nichols murder on 31 August 1888,  detectives questioned local prostitutes to learn if anyone had acted violently towards them. The police hoped to obtain a lead to help solve the Nichols and Tabram cases. The police learnt that a man ran a protection racket  involving blackmailing and mugging the girls and extorting money at knifepoint. Whitechapel prostitutes called him ‘Leather Apron’ because of the apron he wore. 

Police Sergeant William Thick believed ‘Leather Apron’ was John Pizer and that he had committed a string of minor assaults on prostitutes over several years. Thick knew where Pizer was and quickly arrested him. Pizer initially denied being ‘Leather Apron’ but admitted it when the coroner questioned him at the inquest. After the inquest, Pizer reverted to his previous position and denied he was Loarher Apron.’

When the Star learned about ‘Leather Apron’, it ran a series of articles starting on 5 September 1888 that caused genuine unease in the East End and had far-reaching consequences on the police investigation. The Star’s September 5 edition  described ‘Leather Apron’ in the following terms:

‘His business is blackmailing women late at night. A number of men in Whitechapel follow this interesting profession. He has never cut anybody so far as known but always carries a leather knife, presumably as sharp as leather knives are wont to be. This knife a number of the women have seen. His name nobody knows, but all are united in the belief that he is a Jew or of Jewish parentage, his face being of a marked Hebrew type.’ 

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The Star’s emphasis on the suspect’s Hebrew appearance fed a growing belief amongst the gentile populace of Whitechapel that the murderer was a Jew, as no Englishman could commit such horrendous crimes.

Anti-Semitism had grown steadily in the 1880s as waves of European Jews fleeing persecution on the Continent settled in the East End. The police feared the Whitechapel murders might exacerbate racial tensions and lead to full-scale rioting and the deaths of innocent Jews.

Consequently, the police played down suggestions that the killer was a Jewish immigrant. On several occasions, witness statements referring to suspects being of ‘Jewish appearance’ were altered to the more benign-sounding ‘foreign appearance’, but I doubt the euphemism fooled the canny East Enders.  Gentile witnesses throughout the Autumn of Terror said the killer was Jewish, while Jewish witnesses described a gentile.