|
 |
 |
|
|
|
** This is an archived, static copy of the Casebook messages boards dating from 1998 to 2003. These threads cannot be replied to here. If you want to participate in our current forums please go to https://forum.casebook.org **
News Articles
Casebook Message Boards: Ripper Media: General Discussion:
News Articles
Author: Billy Markland
Saturday, 04 January 2003 - 09:55 am |        | A highly sarcastic opinion from Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper published 10/20/1888.
THE WHITECHAPEL MURDERS
No solution of the mystery attending the commission of a series of murders in the heart of London has as yet been found. The impression is almost universal that the failure to arrest the culprits, and consequent failure of justice, is the fault of the London police. This force has not kept pace with the growth of the great city, and is now generally conceded to be inadequate. Sir Charles Warren, the ornamental head of the force, is a visionary theorist, as is shown by his fanciful scheme to introduce bloodhounds into the detective force. Savage dogs may be more intelligent than the average London policeman, but can hardly be trusted to make nice discriminations as to the quilt or innocence of the victims upon whom they might fasten their teeth. Nor could they testify in a court of justice. And they are liable to lose the scent and get off the track, as was the case when they were experimentally following Sir Charles Warren in a public park. If dogs can only solve the Whitechapel mystery, it will probably remain unsolved. The keenest detectives are needed to trace the clews [sic] and facts back from the known to the unknown. Each theory must be tested in the light of all these recent murders, and in the light of all like crimes. The theory that a dozen assasinations are all the work of one lunatic does not seem plausible. Presumably lunatics with homicidal mania are not running at large in London to any great extent. If there are any such, or any thought to be so unbalanced, they would all be under suspicion and would be so watched as to prevent the secrecy and concealments made necessary by so many monstrous crimes. Nor is the theory that it is the work of a woman, or of women, worthy of consideration.
But that the assassin or assassins are dressed and disguised in women's clothes is probably true. Such a disguise would greatly aid in the commission of these crimes, and would facilitate escape. As to the motive, it may be recalled that a hitherto respectable man shot dead a woman of ill-repute in a public restaurant in the heart of New York under a sense of fancied wrong. It therefore might happen that an ill-balanced person, frenzied by the wrong he believes he has suffered through a degraded class of women, should attempt to wreak vengeance upon the class, hoping thereby to strike down the one who had wronged him most. This theory is plausible because known facts support it.
It is possible, also, that a small gang of criminals, gamblers, or even medical students, have become so debased and degraded as to descend to murder as a means of accomplishing the unheard of mutilation to which all the Whitechapel victims have been subjected. Such incredibly morbid wretches may live, and yet escape both the gallows and the asylums. |
|
|
|
|
