Whitechapel by Bryan Lightbody Page A

Constable Neil, both of whom were local offciers and knew each other well. They had been walking on separate but adjacent ‘beats’ which allowed them to arrive within minutes of each other. Thain shone his oil lamp into the prostrate woman’s face and looked up at Neil saying in a distressed manner, only having seen her hours earlier “Bloody ‘ell John, it’s Polly Nicholls!”
    It was 3.45.a.m.

CHAPTER FIVE  
    Inspector Frederick Abberline stirred on hearing the sound of his large copper mechanical alarm clock begin to strike at around 6.30.a.m. He rolled over from the cuddled sleeping position he found himself in with his wife Emma and turned it off. He sat up on the side of his bed in the three bedroom terraced house in the leafy east of London suburb of East Ham and rubbed his eyes. He stood up and began shuffling across the bedroom to head out to the bathroom mindful of not stepping on the tail or anything else of his wife’s beloved Norwich terrier ‘George’ sleeping on the landing. He walked into the bathroom and lent on the washbasin and faced into the mirror above it.
    Fred Abberline was born in Blandford, Dorset the son of Edward and Hannah and moved to London in 1863 to join the Metropolitan Police. He had worked extensively in the East End during his twenty-five year service spending fourteen of them as an inspector in the area and therefore had an intimate knowledge of the geography and society of that side of London. This would be a profound factor in his selection, as yet unknown to him, in heading the immediate investigation of the two prostitute murders in Whitechapel at ‘street level’. He currently worked directly out of the detective department or C.I.D at Scotland Yard and little did he know that the second murder of a local prostitute was about to have a profound effect on the rest of his police career and life.
    Staring into the mirror he saw looking back at him a rather greying and becoming marginally paunchy forty-five year old in dire need of a shave. A decade of alcohol abuse during the 1870s the period during which he spent so much time in the East End had taken its toll on him. The stress of being at the inspector level in both uniform and the C.I.D in the area drove most to the solace of a drink after hours, and sometimes even during it, to relieve the tension that dealing with countless rapes, assaults, robberies and occasional murders all with extreme violence created. His face was somewhat lined a little beyond his years hence his propensity for maintaining either a beard or mutton chop moustache to try to break up the weathered look of his skin. He washed his face and ran a comb through his short hair and decided that was enough grooming for this morning, the bonus of currently sporting the beard was the lack of necessity to endure Victorian poor quality razors and the razor burns they inflicted. He dressed in a fairly typical Victorian gentleman type way with a smart three piece single breasted suit, rounded collar white shirt and tie, black brogue shoes and eventually a trilby type hat. He had in fact now been off of the ‘demon drink’ for the best part of a year since working in the more civilised surroundings of Scotland Yard, little did he know that was to all too imminently to change.
    He kissed Emma as she lay slumbering still and then headed off downstairs with George in tow. Opening the back door the dog ran out into the fresh August morning air and came to dead stop in the middle of the garden with his nose held high in the air sniffing the atmosphere intently. He then looked around at Abberline and came running back in doors barking as he came now wanting some breakfast as his master would be preparing his own. Abberline bent down and gave him a good rub on his head and then grabbed a couple of biscuits from a tin marked ‘George’ and fed them to the little terrier who ate them briskly and enthusiastically and then ran back outside for his own inevitable