Leather Apron

[Steven Russell]

This is from the Echo 16th Sept and was posted by Simon Wood on another thread.

Simon's point in posting the article (and thanks, SW) seems to have been to discredit Richardson since Pizer had been cleared some days before this event is supposed to have taken place.

But notice that JR is quoted as saying, "... the real 'Leather Apron'". So this article could easily be seen as evidence that either Pizer was not LA, or that more than one man had earned the nickname.

Best wishes,
Steve.

[lynn cates]

LA

Hello Steven. That's a good distinction since there were 3 or 4 wandering lunatics, some of which matched the LA description.

Here's something to chew on. Timothy Donovan and his deputy BOTH claimed to have known Leather Apron well. They evicted him for his treatment of women. Whom was he?

Cheers.
LC

[Steven Russell]

There's no shortage of candidates - that's the problem.

Best wishes,
Steve.

PS Donovan WAS the deputy wasn't he, Lynn?

[Wickerman]

Here's something to chew on. Timothy Donovan and his deputy BOTH claimed to have known Leather Apron well. They evicted him for his treatment of women. Whom was he?

That was the previous year, 12 months ago.
Donovan never saw this character recently?

Regards, Jon S.

[lynn cates]

Donovan

Hello Steven. Yes, he ran a lodging house or two. Used to be Mr. Rumbelow's favourite for JTR.

And you are right about the candidates.

Cheers.
LC

[lynn cates]

timing

Hello Jon. Well, "The Times" story said "some months ago." A bit ambiguous.

Of course, my lad had played the same trick the previous Autumn. So I can live with one year.

Cheers.
LC

[Steven Russell]

Thanks , Lynn. What I meant was: you say ... "Donovan and his deputy BOTH claimed..." whereas Donovan WAS the deputy.

Best wishes,
Steve.

[lynn cates]

down the food chain

Hello Steven. Yes, I should have said night watchman. I was thinking in terms of "lieutenant."

Sorry.

Cheers.
LC

[Steven Russell]

I understand. Do you have a name for the watchman, Lynn? I can find reference to a lodger called West who claimed to know LA, but no other members of staff.

Best wishes,
Steve.

[lynn cates]

Go West.

Hello Steven. Yes, West. It refers to him as a former watcher. Perhaps not the same as night watchman?

Cheers.
LC

[Bridewell]

Who Else Wore Leather Aprons?

To start, I'd say carpenters, coopers, machinists, farriers, and blacksmiths.

There must have been quite a few of each working in the East End, so the garment alone wouldn't make a man particularly distinctive. It leaves me wondering how, & why, someone would acquire "Leather Apron" as a nickname? Was it someone whose wearing of such an item was incongruous? A working man who wore it even when not at work? A man who wore it for no reason? A man who was not known to any of his victims by name, but who wore a leather apron when abusing prostitutes. An otherwise nondescript individual?

How could it be that Thicke knew Pizer by such a nickname but, seemingly, everyone else - even those who knew him well - did not?

Regards, Bridewell.

[Mad Dan Eccles]

The Legend of the Demon Cobbler?

Firstly, this is my very first post, so, hello everyone! And since there's rather a lot of material on this forum, I haven't read it all (seriously, has anyone?), so I aplogise in advance if this topic has been discussed before.

Consider Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, who had first been introduced to the public in an 18-part 'penny dreadful' serial published in 1846-7. Of course, Sweeney Todd was clearly established to be fictional, even though as early as 1850 the publishers of an expanded compilation volume tried to make it even more thrilling by claiming that the story was at least partially true. Needless to say, no historical evidence has ever been found to support such a claim. Not that it stopped Peter Haining from still believing it in the second half of the 20th century. Or at any rate, saying he did and using it as an excuse to write yet another poorly-researched book about gothic weird stuff.

But anyway, my point is that by 1888, Londoners, particularly the lower classes who read that type of literature, would have been as familiar with the character as we are with James Bond. And actually it's rather a frightening concept. A seemingly honest and in no way extraordinary tradesman of a kind who might have a shop on any street is secretly a bestial maniac who slaughters literally hundreds of people for no apparent reason.

Oh, he ostensibly does it to rob them, but his lifestyle doesn't seem to be any different from that of a normal barber (except that he's a serial killer, obviously), and how much would the average person have in their pockets when they visit the barber anyway? He doesn't need the money - he just likes killing people. And having killed and robbed his victims, it's just plain excessive to arrange to have the nice lady who runs the pie shop next door dispose of the remains by selling them to the unsuspecting public as "mutton" pies!

So the basic concept is that a seemingly ordinary tradesman, whose trade just happens to involve sharp knives, thus giving him a legitimate excuse to carry a blade at all times, goes around killing people for no apparent reason, specifically by cutting their throats with his primary working tool. He then literally butchers the bodies, and may or may not be a cannibal. Actually, to be fair to Sweeney Todd, it isn't clear whether he is himself a cannibal, or whether he just thinks it's a splendid joke to turn thousands of Londoners into involuntary anthropophagi. But certainly, cannibalism is involved.

So let's get back to Leather Apron, very much the Pete Best of Ripperology (tip for younger readers who may have missed that reference: google "fifth Beatle"). I've just described him, haven't I? Except that instead of cutting hair he mends shoes.

Now let's think about Saucy Jacky and his funny little games. It only took two canonical killings before people were already terrified of him, and attributing numerous earlier attacks to him. It's true that at least one non-canonical earlier victim - Martha Tabram - deserves serious enough consideration to belong, if not in the canon, at least in the apocrypha. But most of them obviously don't - they were simply prostitutes who happened to die violently at roughly the right time in roughly the right place. And at least one of them - "Fairy Fay" - doesn't appear to have actually existed.

It seems that Jack didn't have to do very much actual killing before a legend about a throat-cutting corpse-butchering serial killer (at a time when the concept of serial killers didn't exist) clicked into place around him, complete with scary nickname. Everyone forgets this nowadays because he shortly afterwards acquired the even scarier nickname by which we've all heard of him. But it does read to me as if "Leather Apron" was already a firmly-established urban myth.

Consider the following hypothesis. East End Prostitutes, who were obviously at risk in all sorts of ways, gradually came to believe, or more likely half-believe, in Leather Apron, a mythical bogeyman directly inspired by Sweeney Todd, to whom they half-jokingly attributed any unsolved murders among their number, of which over the years there must have been quite a few. And there were certainly friend-of-a-friend stories circulating right from the start, since the press easily got hold of the sad tale of the entirely fictitious Fairy Fay to boost the body-count with.

Of course, people who weren't prostitutes or their associates wouldn't tend to hear this story, so it probably wouldn't have been written down until the press picked up on it in 1888. But Leather Apron may already have been around as a concept for decades.

This would explain the conflicting stories about the circumstances surrounding the arrest of John Pizer. By the way, since I can find no evidence of any kind that Sqt Thicke was corrupt or otherwise a bad cop, beyond the assumption made by some modern writers that the nickname "Johnny Upright" may have been bestowed ironically, I'll assume that he was doing his job fairly well, and that he arrested Pizer for the reason that he said he did - some people referred to both Pizer and the murderer as "Leather Apron", which made Pizer a very obvious suspect indeed.

Assuming Thicke to be reliable, it appears that Pizer was a deeply unpleasant but ultimately rather pathetic bully who used to vaguely threaten low-class whores with no pimp to protect them by hinting that he might be the dreaded Leather Apron, and a ripping might be coming their way if they didn't hand over a few pennies from their pitiful earnings. This is the kind of thing a thoroughly vile man might brag about to his cronies in the pub, but not the kind of thing he'd mention at all to his family and less disreputable acquaintances.

More importantly, if the nickname existed long before anyone got murdered for real, it would have meant that, while it was true that some people did indeed refer to Pizer as Leather Apron, and perhaps had done for some time, for reasons which made him a thoroughly nasty piece of work, it was a generic hard-man nickname which nobody really took seriously - the working girls probably paid up more to be on the safe side than because they truly thought he'd killed anyone - after all, he was an obviously unpleasant and probably quite large man holding a knife.

But outing him in the media as not just any old Leather Apron, but the Leather Apron who really did exist and was specifically accused of killing several people in ghastly ways was a different kettle of fish! That could have gotten him lynched, and it appears that for a while he was terrified, probably with good reason, that this might happen. I think the judge would have had no choice but to award those damages to anybody except the actual murderer, and Pizer had of course been totally exonerated by the police. I don't suppose anyone really thought he deserved the money, but the law had to take its proper course, even if meant ruling in favour of a scumbag.

I'm also assuming that people such as Sgt Thick would have known about the mythical aspects of the story, but officials higher up the pecking order probably didn't. Under the circumstances, the arresting officer might well play down the "I've arrested a non-existent bogeyman" side of the story!

My scenario is basically this. Pizer made his nasty little bit of cash on the side by claiming to be a made-up ogre quite a lot of people half-believed in, but unless he actually used his knife on one of the girls, they couldn't very well tell a copper. It would have been like trying to have somebody arrested for claiming to be Spring-Heeled Jack! And then suddenly Leather Apron is apparently a real person who has actually done a few truly horrific murders, and Pizer has been telling women who know where he lives that he's Leather Apron therefore they have to give him tuppence - no wonder he was scared!

This of course very strongly suggests that he must have been doing so long before Jack killed anyone - he'd have had to have been absolutely stark raving mad to only start doing it afterwards! Are there any records of Pizer coming to police attention before all the real fuss started? If so, it seems reasonable to suppose that any references to Leather Apron might well have been omitted from the report by constables not wishing to put up with endless jokes about arresting pixies and so forth.

I could go a bit further with this line of speculation, but since it is just speculation, I'll leave it there for now. But I do have a question to any folklorists out there. Has anybody ever looked into the possibility of the legend of Leather Apron existing before the Ripper killings made it famous (albeit very briefly)? If so, and if I'm right in thinking that he's just Sweeney Todd with a different day-job, these tales might go all the way back to the 1850s. Is there any practical way of looking into this?

[Scott Nelson]

So then, do you think "Mickeldy Joe" was a real person?

[Cogidubnus]

Hi Mad Dan

Welcome to the boards.

It did occur to me that Thicke not only knew all about Pizer, but as a good street copper, knew all about his unsavoury activities...just had been unable to prove it and so "pull" him...If that were the case I'm sure he'd see nicking Pizer as a JtR suspect as a good way of putting a thorough scare into him, as well as a possible crimp in his activities...

All the best

Dave

[lynn cates]

LA

Hello Dan, Dave. There is a "Times" article from 12 September, I believe, in which Donavan claimed to know "Leather Apron" well, having ejected him from the premises previously. He was puzzled that the Met had not asked him to the station as he could identify him in double quick time.

If Piser were LA, surely there were those who could identify him?

(By the way, welcome to the boards, Dan.)

Cheers.
LC