Ankle-Jacks in Whitechapel

Police use of ‘silent’ rubber boots was common enough that ordinary people were aware detectives wore India Rubber soles. Coincidentally, at 29 Hanbury Street, a Mr Taylor made tennis shoes. Sir Charles Warren trialled several varieties of boots both waterproof and/or silent. The extent of the test isn’t known, but that silent rubber soles existed and weren’t rare was presumably known by police/ripper – after all, a ‘mere’ streetwalker recognised the sneaky footwear. Curiously, a style of this boot was called Ankle-Jacks

The code of immorality in the East End is, or was, unabashed in its depths of degradation. A woman was content to live with a man so long as he was in work, it being an understood thing that, if he lost his job, she would support him by the only means open to her. On this occasion the unemployed man was toasting bloaters, and, when his lady returned, asked her “if she had had any luck.” She replied with an adjective negative, and went on to say in effect that she had thought her lucky star was in the ascendant when she had inveigled a “bloke” down a dark alley, but that suddenly a detective, with India rubber soles to his shoes, had sprung up from behind a wagon, and the bloke had taken fright and flight.

With additional adjectives the lady expressed her determination to go out again after supper, and when her man reminded her of the dangers of the streets if “he” (meaning the murderer) was out and about, the poor woman replied (with no adjectives this time), ‘Well, let him come—the sooner the better for such as I.’ A sordid picture, my masters, but what infinite pathos is therein portrayed! Melville Macnaghten.

Amelia Richardson, 29, Hanbury-street, deposed: I am a widow, and occupy half of the house- i.e., the first floor, ground floor, and workshops in the cellar. I carry on the business of a packing-case maker there, and the shops are used by my son John, aged thirty-seven, and a man Francis Tyler, who have worked for me eighteen years . . . 

[Coroner] Did you hear any noise during the night? - No.

[Coroner] Who occupies the first floor back? - Mr. Walker, a maker of lawn-tennis boots. He is an old gentleman, and he sleeps there with his son, twenty-seven years of age.

Excerpt of police letter, undated. From an unknown person to Henry Matthews, the Secretary of State, reporting on trials of police boots. During the past twelve months Sir Charles Warren has had trials made of several varieties of boots with [text missing] waterproof or silent [text missing] none have [text missing] suitable for the [text missing] police force of [text missing] adapted [text missing] when the changes of [text missing] and weather are taken into consideration though in [text missing] instances they have been found very suitable in particular cases.

The constable has to walk daily for 8 hours and the greatest caution is required in making changes in his boots, as upon these his efficiency so much depends.

Two important complaints against the noiseless boots are that the wearer is very much more fatigued than when ordinary boots are worn, and that the feet are ‘drawn’ and made sore.

Many very strong reasons have been sent to the Commissioner by the public in favour of the retention by Police on their beats of boots which are not silent.

Ankle-jacks were short, sporting boots, that stopped at the ankle and had five lace-up eyelets on either side. They were popular between the 1840s and the 1870s, and these lace-up boots were said to “thrive chiefly in the neighbourhoods of  Houndsditch, Whitechapel, and Billingsgate. They attach[ed] themselves principally to butchers’ boys, Israelitish disposers . . . itinerant misnomers of ‘live fish.’ . . . Their term of servitude varies from three to six weeks: during the first they are fastened to the topmost of their ten holes; the next fortnight, owning to the breaking of the lace, and its frequent knotting, they are shorn of half their glories, and upon the total destruction of the thong (a thing never replaced), it appears a matter of courtesy on their parts to remain on at all. On some occasions various…wearers have transferred them as a legacy to very considerable mobs, without particularly stating for which . . . individual they were intended.”