ABSTRACT
Benjamin Charles Leeson (1871–1946) was another East End detective who joined the Metropolitan Police in 1890 and was posted to Whitechapel in 1891. The cause might be the quality of the beer, the reason for their husband’s imprisonment, or perhaps just the effects of the beer itself, but whatever it was, in a moment the children were forgotten and a fight had started in which every woman in the place joined, tearing the hair from each other’s heads, and only ceasing when all the combatants were exhausted and had had nearly every strip of clothing torn from their bodies. Education and the removal of some of the foul courts and alley-ways has done much to improve the conditions of life in the East End, but the taint remains. Cross and burning candles told the reason for the man’s return home.
