Frederick Porter Wensley

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Frederick Porter Wensley (1865—1949) was a British police officer from 1888 until 1929, reaching the rank of chief constable of the Scotland Yard CID and receiving hundreds of awards.^[1] Serving in Whitechapel for part of his career, Wensley was involved in the investigation of the Jack the Ripper murders,^[2] details of which he would later publish in his memoirs in 1931, focusing particularly on the murders of Frances Coles and constable Ernest Thompson.^[3][4]

Wensley also worked on the murder of Frenchwoman Emilienne Gerard, whose body was discovered on November 2, 1917. Wensley interviewed Gerad's lover, Louis Voisin, and arrested him after discovering that he mispelt 'bloody' in the same was as the murderer who had left "bloodie Belgium" at the crime scene.^[2]

[edit] Published works

While Wensley's memoirs appear under the more common title of Forty Years of Scotland Yard, they were originally published in London under the title Detective Days and were only renamed upon subsequent publishing in New York City.^[3] In them, Wensley downplays his own role in the investigation of the Ripper murders:

Not that I had much to do with it. In common with hundreds of others I was drafted there, and we patrolled the streets usually in pairs-without any tangible result. We did, however, rather anticipate a great commercial invention. To our clumsy regulation boots we nailed strips of rubber, usually bits of old bicycle tires, and so ensured some measure of silence when walking.^[3]

Wensley also agrees with commonly held theories that the police were never sure of their suspects:^[5]

Officially, only five (with a possible sixth) murders were attributed to Jack the Ripper.^[5][6]

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

• Wensley, Frederick Porter Forty Years of Scotland Yard, New York City, 1931 ISBN 1417989971