In the aftermath of the murder of Mary Nichols, which took place in Buck’s Row, Whitechapel, on August the 31st 1888, the police were on the lookout for anyone who may potentially have seen the killer, or who might be able to provide them with any information that might lead to the breakthrough that was so evidently eluding them in their hunt for the Whitechapel murderer.

There also appears to have been a dramatic increase in public interest in the case, and people were coming forward to report any suspicious characters who they thought might be the man the police were looking for.

Just looking slightly odd, or even walking in a suspicious manner, could, as the following story illustrates, lead to people becoming suspicious of innocent pedestrians or passers-by.

THOMAS EADE’S SUSPICIONS

At around noon on Saturday the 8th of September, which also happened to be the day on which Annie Chapman was murdered, Thomas Eade, a signalman for the East London Railway, was passing Forrester’s Music Hall, which used to stand where a block of flats called Sovereign House, now stands on Cambridge Heath Road.

“He had a peculiar appearance, as if he had a wooden arm”, Eade later told the inquest into Mary Nichols’s death – which was held at the Working Lads Institute on Whitechapel Road – when he appeared as a witness on Monday the 17th of September.

“I passed him once or twice,” Eade continued, “and as he put his hand in his pocket, I caught sight of the blade of a knife, which was up his sleeve. I saw about four inches of steel.”

A DESCRIPTION OF THE MAN

It is illustrative of the different accounts that appeared in the press that several newspapers reported that the knife had, in fact, been in the man’s trouser pocket.

Describing the man, Eade observed that he was about 5ft. 8in. tall, 35 years of age, and that he had the appearance of a mechanic.

“He had dark moustachios and whiskers, wore a dark brown jacket, white overalls, and had on a double-peaked cap.”

THE CORONER’S QUESTIONS

“How did he walk?” Quizzed the Coroner, Wynne Edwin Baxter.

“As though he had got stiff knees; that was what made me notice him first, replied Eade.

“Were his overalls dirty?”, asked Baxter.

“No, they were perfectly clean.”

NO-ONE WOULD HELP

“Three men were standing nearby,” Eade went on “and I he called upon them to assist me in apprehending this suspicious looking character. One of the men said that he was willing to do so, but his two companions refused.”

At this point the man saw that he had attracted Eade’s attention, and he hurried away.

Eade followed him, intending to give him Into custody, but the man had slipped down some street, causing Eade to lose sight of him.

MORE QUESTIONS

The Coroner asked if he had seen what kind of knife the man was carrying, to which Eade replied that he hadn’t got that good a view of it, although he thought the blade was about two and a half inches wide.

Replying to a question from one of the jurors, Eade said that the man was not a muscular or stout man.

THE POLICE TRACE THE MAN

It would appear that authorities took Eade’s story seriously, and the police set about tracing the man, which they had done by the final day of the inquest, which took place on Saturday the 22nd of September 1888.

As a consequence Eade was recalled and was the only witness to appear that day, the rest of which was given over to the Coroner’s summing up and the Jury’s verdict.

THOMAS EADE’S TESTIMONY

The Brighouse and Rastrick Gazette, in its edition of Saturday the 29th of September 1888, published a brief synopsis of his testimony:-

“The only further evidence taken was that of Thomas Eade, the signalman, who had previously deposed to having seen a man carrying a knife near the scene of the murder.

Eade now testified that since last giving evidence he had identified John James, of Hackney, as the man whom he had seen with the knife.

The coroner observed that the man in question was a well known harmless lunatic of whose innocence there was no question, so that what the witness had seen was no clue to this crime.

WHY WAS HE CARRYING A KNIFE?

Interestingly, nobody seems to have questioned why John James had been carrying a concealed knife, or if they did, no mention of the reason was given at the inquest.

Nor was it stated whether the knife had been confiscated from him, which would probably have been a wise course of action, as you can’t help feeling that, no matter how harmless he might have been, the prospect of him wandering around Whitechapel with a knife couldn’t, by any stretch of the imagination, be described as an appealing one.

THOMAS EADE FADES BACK INTO OBSCURITY

Nonetheless, the Coroner, having gone on the record to describe John James as a harmless lunatic who was innocent of any crime, proceeded with his summing up, and, like so many minor players in the saga, Thomas Eade went back to his everyday life, to become little more than a footnote in a story that, by the time it ended, if it could be said to have ever ended, would feature hundreds of similar characters who made brief appearances, added a little more to the plot, and then faded back into obscurity.