One of the suggestions made at the height of the Jack the Ripper scare, was that bloodhounds might be used to track the killer through the teeming streets of Whitechapel.
Sir Charles Warren, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, had even gone so far as to conduct experiments with the dogs in several London parks, and was sufficiently impressed by the results to order their involvement in any future murders.
LOOKING BACK ON THE BLOODHOUNDS
As it happens, bloodhounds were never used on the case, but, in 1895, The Windsor Magazine published an article about bloodhounds as detectives.
This caused The Lincolnshire Echo, in its edition of Thursday the 4th of April, to look back on their proposed use in the Whitechapel murders:-
BLOODHOUNDS AS DETECTIVES
The Windsor Magazine for April contains a very striking article on this question, in the course of which the writer, Mr. A. Croxton Smith, reminds us that six or seven years ago, when the scare occasioned by the terrible Whitechapel murders was at its height, the mystic word ‘bloodhound’ was mooted with bated breath.
ARGUMENTS AGAINST
Many felt that here was an agent that might succeed in detecting the criminal where all the skilled upholders of the law had failed.
Others, who knew little about the subject, pooh-poohed the idea, characterising the modern representative of St. Hubert’s breed as nothing but a magnificent show animal, a brute minus all those special faculties for which it was erstwhile famous.
AN ABSURD CONTENTION
It is not difficult, however, to demonstrate the absurdity this contention.
The bloodhound is as capable of running anyone down today as ever he was, his scenting powers having in no way deteriorated, despite what detractors of the patrician of the show bench may have to say to the contrary.
In plenty of cases, I am convinced, bloodhounds would prove invaluable auxiliaries to the police in tracking criminals, especially in rural districts where the scent would lie well.
Mr. Edwin Brough, our greatest living authority on the breed, has proved this beyond refutation, most of his hounds being trained to hunt the clean boot with ease.
A LONG HISTORY OF DETECTION
Moreover, it is not long since they were instrumental in detecting poachers and similar ‘wild fowl.’
Forty or fifty years ago there were bloodhounds that could hunt the scent of man 24, or even 36, hours old, and since then breeders have vastly improved the characteristics which denote scent, the long, narrow, peaked head and immense flews always associated with this faculty having been developed to an extent never known before.
EXAMPLES FROM AMERICA
Mr. Brough has letters from two men having charge of hounds attached to penitentiaries in Texas, containing wonderful accounts of the capture of convicts, although the rogues had in some instances a start of a day and a half.
In one case a man was run down 40 miles from home.