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Lincoln Springfield claimed in 1924 that "Leather Apron" had been a journalistic invention on the part of his former colleague on The Star, Harry Dam [Begg, The Facts, p. 99].
An article entitled "The Police Reporter" by Vance Thompson, published in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine, volume 62, pp. 283-288 (July-December 1898) purports to tell the story of how this invention arose. (This volume is available at http://books.google.com) The account is interesting, though obviously wildly inaccurate in many details. I have added a few notes.
____________________________________
[p. 283]
Once upon a time there was a young man who came over-sea. He had smoked putative pipes and "boned" Kant and Haeckel in a musty German university, had mooned through Italy and fluttered in Paris, moreover had written verses and dramas, - unpublished to date, - and had his Horace and his Richepin on the end of his tongue. In short, he would have frankly confessed himself an Amalek of a fellow.
[p. 284]
He was young, and he went to Chicago. A perfectly useless eye-glass was screwed into one eye; he wore a long-caped top-coat, outrageously red and yellow; on his feet were patent-leather boots with yellow silk "spats;" he had terra-cotta gloves and a very fine walking-stick and a very tall silk hat.
He wanted to reform Western journalism. That was his object in life in those days, and he offered his services to the city editor of a Chicago newspaper.
[There follows an anecdote about this "idiot with the eye-glass" being sent on a fool's errand by a senior reporter, falling upon "an adventure, horrible and weird", seeing his account of it printed on the front page and thus winning the city editor's approbation.]
[p. 287]
In New York and London there is none of the loyalty to one paper that sends the police reporter far afield in dangerous ways. The "bureau system" runs rampant; that is, there is a system whereby the newspapers farm out the gathering of police news to different agencies. In New York there are two of these of importance; in London each police court is controlled by one man, who has the right that time gives to furnish stenographic reports. To be sure, there is plenty of "outside work" - one must be pardoned for using the slang, catch-penny phrases of journalism - for the night police reporter on any London paper, even as there is on any American journal. That is, "something big" comes up, and the editor of the paper pays no attention to the "flimsy-factories," the agencies that grind out the ordinary grist of petty police news, but calls upon one of his trusty reporters.
And here again I find it pleasant to look back upon an idiot who was reporting for one of the London papers in '88 and '89. The editor of the paper was an Irish member of Parliament. [1]
There had been two or three murders, - ghastly murders, where women were done to death. One night, for instance, - and this was the first, - there was a woman slain in St. George's Square, East, and there were thirty-three stabs in her body; then another woman was killed off the Mile-End Road; and a third in Hanbury Square: all of these down in the wretched ruins of Whitechapel.
Then there began to be a deal of excitement in the newspaper offices. Another murder came; a poor degraded bit of femininity was slashed
[p. 288]
to death in one of the black, blind courts off Mile-End Road; then another was cut to pieces in Mitre Square, near Aldgate, in the old city of London. So the newspapers were aroused - even the London editors; and be it said, with proper respect, that it takes an earthquake of news to arouse a London editor. Thereupon all the journalists in London who could "write a wee bit" were sent out to do the Whitechapel murders. And one of these reporters was an idiot with an eye-glass, - he had degenerated to the eye-glass again, - and the plump editor ordered him to go to Whitechapel and discover and describe "Jack the Ripper."
The young reporter led his eye-glass down the stairs and found himself in Fleet Street. He did not know how to set about the business, so he strolled into Mitre Court, which is off Fleet Street, and there he found a tavern that is known as The Mitre. In other days Burke and Garrick and Reynolds and Dr. Johnson and Goldsmith, in a peach-blossom coat, and Boswell, in green velvet smalls, gathered there and drank Oporto. [2]
And there, in The Mitre, the idiot met a man who wrote the opera of "Billee Taylor," once famous in these parts. [3]
"What are you doing?" he asked.
"The Whitechapel murders," said the reporter.
"Descriptive?"
"Yes, a general descriptive story."
"Why don't you read up De Quincey?"
"What - Leathern-Apron?"
"To be sure: it is excellent stuff," said Stephens.
Then the young man - who had read his De Quincey - sat down and wrote up a description of the wicked man who had done to death the wicked women of Whitechapel. He used as prototype the curious creature of De Quincey, the leathern-aproned Jew with the knife in his belt and the white face blurred with black eyebrows. There was something startlingly realistic about the picture. Then the idiot went down and interviewed the periwinkle-men and apple-women of Mile-End Road. Of course they had seen Leathern-Apron slinking about the streets, with his knife whisking in his hand.
So it was a good story, and the young man turned it in to the office. But there was one odd end to it: the day after the story was printed the police began to look for Leathern-Apron. By some whimsical mischance they found a poor innocent Hebrew who answered the description: he was a butcher down in Besis Court, and he lay in jail for two weeks, and - well, "Billee Taylor" was responsible for it.
____________________________________
[1] In 1888 the founder and proprietor - though not the editor - of The Star was T. P. O'Connor, the Irish M.P. for Liverpool Scotland.
[2] The Mitre Tavern in Mitre Court had certainly existed, and had been frequented by Johnson, Boswell and Goldsmith, but it had ceased to be a tavern a century before the Whitechapel murders, and had been demolished in 1829.
[3] Henry Pottinger Stephens (1851-1903), the librettist of Billee Taylor (1880).
An article entitled "The Police Reporter" by Vance Thompson, published in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine, volume 62, pp. 283-288 (July-December 1898) purports to tell the story of how this invention arose. (This volume is available at http://books.google.com) The account is interesting, though obviously wildly inaccurate in many details. I have added a few notes.
____________________________________
[p. 283]
Once upon a time there was a young man who came over-sea. He had smoked putative pipes and "boned" Kant and Haeckel in a musty German university, had mooned through Italy and fluttered in Paris, moreover had written verses and dramas, - unpublished to date, - and had his Horace and his Richepin on the end of his tongue. In short, he would have frankly confessed himself an Amalek of a fellow.
[p. 284]
He was young, and he went to Chicago. A perfectly useless eye-glass was screwed into one eye; he wore a long-caped top-coat, outrageously red and yellow; on his feet were patent-leather boots with yellow silk "spats;" he had terra-cotta gloves and a very fine walking-stick and a very tall silk hat.
He wanted to reform Western journalism. That was his object in life in those days, and he offered his services to the city editor of a Chicago newspaper.
[There follows an anecdote about this "idiot with the eye-glass" being sent on a fool's errand by a senior reporter, falling upon "an adventure, horrible and weird", seeing his account of it printed on the front page and thus winning the city editor's approbation.]
[p. 287]
In New York and London there is none of the loyalty to one paper that sends the police reporter far afield in dangerous ways. The "bureau system" runs rampant; that is, there is a system whereby the newspapers farm out the gathering of police news to different agencies. In New York there are two of these of importance; in London each police court is controlled by one man, who has the right that time gives to furnish stenographic reports. To be sure, there is plenty of "outside work" - one must be pardoned for using the slang, catch-penny phrases of journalism - for the night police reporter on any London paper, even as there is on any American journal. That is, "something big" comes up, and the editor of the paper pays no attention to the "flimsy-factories," the agencies that grind out the ordinary grist of petty police news, but calls upon one of his trusty reporters.
And here again I find it pleasant to look back upon an idiot who was reporting for one of the London papers in '88 and '89. The editor of the paper was an Irish member of Parliament. [1]
There had been two or three murders, - ghastly murders, where women were done to death. One night, for instance, - and this was the first, - there was a woman slain in St. George's Square, East, and there were thirty-three stabs in her body; then another woman was killed off the Mile-End Road; and a third in Hanbury Square: all of these down in the wretched ruins of Whitechapel.
Then there began to be a deal of excitement in the newspaper offices. Another murder came; a poor degraded bit of femininity was slashed
[p. 288]
to death in one of the black, blind courts off Mile-End Road; then another was cut to pieces in Mitre Square, near Aldgate, in the old city of London. So the newspapers were aroused - even the London editors; and be it said, with proper respect, that it takes an earthquake of news to arouse a London editor. Thereupon all the journalists in London who could "write a wee bit" were sent out to do the Whitechapel murders. And one of these reporters was an idiot with an eye-glass, - he had degenerated to the eye-glass again, - and the plump editor ordered him to go to Whitechapel and discover and describe "Jack the Ripper."
The young reporter led his eye-glass down the stairs and found himself in Fleet Street. He did not know how to set about the business, so he strolled into Mitre Court, which is off Fleet Street, and there he found a tavern that is known as The Mitre. In other days Burke and Garrick and Reynolds and Dr. Johnson and Goldsmith, in a peach-blossom coat, and Boswell, in green velvet smalls, gathered there and drank Oporto. [2]
And there, in The Mitre, the idiot met a man who wrote the opera of "Billee Taylor," once famous in these parts. [3]
"What are you doing?" he asked.
"The Whitechapel murders," said the reporter.
"Descriptive?"
"Yes, a general descriptive story."
"Why don't you read up De Quincey?"
"What - Leathern-Apron?"
"To be sure: it is excellent stuff," said Stephens.
Then the young man - who had read his De Quincey - sat down and wrote up a description of the wicked man who had done to death the wicked women of Whitechapel. He used as prototype the curious creature of De Quincey, the leathern-aproned Jew with the knife in his belt and the white face blurred with black eyebrows. There was something startlingly realistic about the picture. Then the idiot went down and interviewed the periwinkle-men and apple-women of Mile-End Road. Of course they had seen Leathern-Apron slinking about the streets, with his knife whisking in his hand.
So it was a good story, and the young man turned it in to the office. But there was one odd end to it: the day after the story was printed the police began to look for Leathern-Apron. By some whimsical mischance they found a poor innocent Hebrew who answered the description: he was a butcher down in Besis Court, and he lay in jail for two weeks, and - well, "Billee Taylor" was responsible for it.
____________________________________
[1] In 1888 the founder and proprietor - though not the editor - of The Star was T. P. O'Connor, the Irish M.P. for Liverpool Scotland.
[2] The Mitre Tavern in Mitre Court had certainly existed, and had been frequented by Johnson, Boswell and Goldsmith, but it had ceased to be a tavern a century before the Whitechapel murders, and had been demolished in 1829.
[3] Henry Pottinger Stephens (1851-1903), the librettist of Billee Taylor (1880).
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