Jill the Ripper

[Wickerman]

So Abberline never threw it out there? Saying something to the effect of maybe we're dealing with a woman here?

Abberline has not left a whole lot of writings, most of what we know from him comes from press interviews.
There is a comment going around that Abberline believed the killer escaped in Mary Kelly's clothes, yet Abberline knew that her clothes were still in the room, some over a chair?, and some in the ashes of the fireplace. So clearly that story has no merit.
Perhaps Conan Doyle made some remark about the Ripper being a woman, but as far as I know the police never considered the possibility.
Mary Pearcey was a murderess in the years following the Ripper, so she was never named in 1888.

[jerryd]

Right, no woman was ever suspected at the time as far as I recall. All this "Jill the Ripper" nonsense evolved much later.
It's just another later fantasy idea, not a theory, just someone's idea.

From Bachert's bio here on Casebook.

A week after Bachert's letter appeared in the Advertiser, he tipped another paper, The Eastern Post and City Chronicle, that police were investigating a different type of suspect in the Whitechapel murders. The Chronicle's 21 September 1889 edition carried a story in which Bachert said that the authorities at Leman Street Police Station received a letter, which gave information that "a tall, strong woman has for some time been working at different slaughter-houses, attired as a man." Bachert also told the paper that police had made inquiries at slaughterhouses in Aldgate and Whitechapel the morning of 19 September, presumably in connection with the Ripper murders. The paper supplied no further details of the letter, or how Bachert knew about it.

[Wickerman]

Thanks Jerry, yes an anonymous accusation a year after the murders, which is like Mary Pearcey, she was also named in the years 'after' the murders, but at the time, which is 1888, are there any hints anywhere that the police suspected a woman?
I'm not aware of one.