Frederick Abberline
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An illustration of Abberline from an 1888 newspaper

Frederick George Abberline (born January 8, 1843 in Blandford Forum, Dorset – died December 10, 1929) was a Chief Inspector for the London Metropolitan Police and was a prominent police figure in the investigation into the Jack the Ripper murders of 1888.

Early life

Frederick Abberline was the son of Edward Abberline, a saddlemaker and Sheriff's Officer and Clerk of the Market, minor local government positions, and his wife Hannah (née Chinn). Edward Abberline died in 1849, and his widow opened a small shop and brought up her four children, Emily, Harriett, Edward and Frederick, alone.

Police career

Frederick was a clockmaker until he left home to go to London, where he enlisted in the Metropolitan Police on January 5, 1863, being appointed to N Division (Islington) with the Warrant Number 43519. PC Abberline so impressed his superiors that they promoted him to Sergeant two years later on August 19, 1865. On his promotion he moved to Y Division (Highgate). Throughout 1867 he investigated Fenian activities as a plain clothes officer.^[1] He was promoted to Inspector on March 10, 1873, and three days later, on March 13 transferred to H Division in Whitechapel. On April 8, 1878 Abberline was appointed Local Inspector in charge of H Division's CID.

On February 26, 1887 Abberline transferred to A Division (Whitehall), and then moved to CO Division (Central Office) at Scotland Yard on November 19, 1887, being promoted to Inspector First-Class on February 9, 1888 and to Chief Inspector on December 22, 1890. Following the murder of Mary Ann Nichols on August 31, 1888, Abberline was seconded back to Whitechapel due to his extensive experience in the area. He was placed in charge of the various detectives investigating the Ripper murders. Chief Inspector Walter Dew, then a detective constable in Whitechapel's H Division in 1888, knew Abberline and, while describing him as sounding and looking like a bank manager, also stated that his knowledge of the area made him one of the most important members of the Whitechapel murder investigation team.^[2]

Among the many suspects in the case, Abberline's primary suspect was Severin Antoniovich Klosowski, aka George Chapman.

Abberline was subsequently involved in the investigation of the Cleveland Street scandal in 1889. Chief Inspector Abberline retired from the police on February 8, 1892, having received 84 commendations and awards, and worked as a private enquiry agent, including three seasons at Monte Carlo, before taking over the European Agency of the famous Pinkerton National Detective Agency of America, for whom he worked for 12 years.^[3]

Personal life

Abberline was married twice: once in March 1868 to 25-year-old Martha Mackness, the daughter of a labourer, from Elton, Northamptonshire; she died two months after the marriage of tuberculosis. On 17 December 1876, a decade before the Ripper murders, Abberline married 32-year-old Emma Beament, the daughter of a merchant, from Hoxton New Town, Shoreditch. Although they had no children, there is no credible evidence that the couple were unhappy, and the marriage lasted until Frederick’s death over 50 years later. On his retirement from the Pinkerton Detective Agency in 1904 Abberline retired to Bournemouth.

Frederick George Abberline died in 1929 aged 86 at his home, "Estcourt", 195 Holdenhurst Road, Bournemouth, and was buried in Bournemouth at Wimborne Road Cemetery. In 2007, following a campaign for Abberline's unmarked grave to be recognised, and with the approval of his surviving relatives, a black granite headstone, inscribed and donated by a local stonemason, was erected on the grave where Abberline and his second wife Emma are buried .^[4] A blue plaque commemorating Abberline was unveiled at 195 Holdenhurst Road (now divided into flats) on September 29, 2001.^[5]

Abberline in popular culture

Several fictional retellings of the events have cast Abberline in a central role. The suggestion is often but erroneously made for the sake of drama that Abberline was unmarried and formed an attachment to one of the women connected to the events. The two most popular film depictions have also cast him as an addict, for which there is no known historical basis.

• Abberline was played by Michael Caine in a 1988 television film called Jack the Ripper. Here, the character was an aging alcoholic whose quest to solve the murder gives him the strength to give up drinking.

• A fictionalized Abberline was featured as a central figure in Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell's graphic novel From Hell, and subsequently portrayed by Johnny Depp in the very liberal film adaptation of that work. The graphic novel paints him as a sulky but sympathetic policeman, different from his peers only in his moralism and being overweight, and takes pain to include little-known details of his life such as his involvement with the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. The film's version of Abberline was portrayed as a libertine clairvoyant addicted to opium and absinthe.

• In "The Ripper", an episode of the TV series The Collector, Abberline was played by Robert Wisden.

References

External links

• Brief profile from Casebook.org
• Casebook.org message board thread discussing the Abberline grave project
• Photograph of Abberline's grave with its granite headstone in situ