Seven Diabolical Butcheries
From the Cincinnati Enquirer.
The Details of Another Whitechapel Murder
London, November 9.
Another shocking murder of the well known Whitechapel type was perpetrated this morning within three hundred yards of the spot where the woman Chapman was killed last September. Details of this tragedy are even more revolting than the six which preceded it. Accurate circumstances of the affair are hard to discover, the police, as usual, placing every obstacle in the way of investigation by reporters but all reports go to prove that the murder is far surpassing in
all the terrible crimes with which the east end of London has been familiarized within the past six months. The woman, twenty six years old, Mary Jane Kelly by name, had lived four months in a front room on the second floor of a house up an alley known as Cartin's Court. This poor woman was in service a short time ago, but since she came to reside in the court had been recognized by her neighbors as a person who, like so many unfortunate members of her sex within the eastern end of the town, managed to live a wretched existence by the practice of immorality under the most degrading conditions.
The court faces a small square with a narrow entrance and surrounded by squalid lodging houses let to women of this unfortunate class. Mary Kelly is described as a tall woman, not bad looking, dark complexioned, and she generally wore an old black velvet jacket. She was wearing this jacket this morning, when about quarter past eight she went down the court, jug in hand, and returned shortly afterward with milk for breakfast. She was next seen about ten o'clock, when she went to a neighboring beer house and stayed drinking for half an hour. This was
The woman was behind in her rent, and had been told by her landlord that she would be put out if she did not pay today. She went on the streets last night to earn money to pay the rent, and it seems to be clearly established that she returned to her room with a man who passed the night with her. No one has been found who saw the man go in, but some neighbors heard him talking to Mary Kelly in the room, and heard her singing as though drunk. At eleven o'clock this morning a man named Bowyer, agent of the landlord, went to Kelley's (sic) room to collect the rent. When he knocked at the door he received no answer. Removing the curtain drawn across the window of the room and looking through the broken pane, he saw the woman lying on the bed on her back, stark naked, while marks of blood were all over the place. He tried the handle of the door and found it locked, while the key had been removed from the lock. Without going into the room, Bowyer called the police, who promptly proceeded to
In less than two hours the doctors had the body in the morgue, and were probing it precisely as they did the Mitre square victim. They refused to give any details of the examination, but one of the physicians who was present said that he had passed much of his life in dissecting rooms, but never saw such a horrible spectacle as this murdered woman.
The man who was called in to identify the body gives the following description, which seems to be reliable: The head was nearly severed from the shoulders and the face was lacerated almost beyond recognition. The breasts were both cut off and placed on the table. The heart and liver were between the woman's legs. The uterus was missing. There seemed to be at least forty cuts on the body, and bog pieces of flesh were literally stripped off and strewed on the floor. There were no indications in this case of a hand skilled in the use of a knife.
but there is no doubt at all that it was the work of the person who has become known throughout the world as the Whitechapel murderer. Mystery in this case is
as deep as in the preceding crimes. The fiend got away without leaving the slightest clew. He chose his time well. At the moment which Bowyer discovered the murdered body, that gorgeous annual nuisance, which goes by the name of the lord mayor's show, was blocking the traffic of the great city for hours, and was organizing near the Mansion house. Scarcely a mile away nearly three million people were packed in the streets between the Mansion house and the Enquirer office in Trafalgar square, with nearly every policeman in the city braced as a barricade along the curb to keep them in order. The rigid police patrol maintained in Whitechapel since the last double murder in October was relaxed for one day, and in that day the assassin struck down another victim.
It is scarcely necessary to say much about Kelly. She was a married woman who fell into dissolute ways, and was deserted by her husband. She had a boy eleven years old, who was begging on the streets while his mother was being murdered. The woman had as a paramour a man who sells oranges on the streets, and on whom, as he could not be found, suspicion at once reverted, but he turned up all right tonight and fainted when he was shown the body.
Like the sand that slowly filter through an hour glass when reversed, the great throng in the streets who had been cheering the new lord mayor found their way into Whitechapel when the news of the murder was spread about. Every heart was filled with horror. When was this going to end? How long was this fiend in human form going to carve people to pieces under the noses of the police and mock their feeble efforts to catch him? The London police are not allowed to club a crowd into submission as the New York police are, unless in absolute riot, but the
was so great in Whitechapel today that it was necessary for them to use harsh measures. Profiting by previous blunders the police called a photographer to take a picture of the room before the body was removed from it. This gives rise to reports that there is more handwriting on the wall, though three or four people who were allowed into the room say they did not observe it; but possibly they were too excited to notice such a detail.
A young woman who knew the murdered woman well says that about ten o'clock last night she met her and that she said she had no money and could not get any. She would never go out any more, but would do away with herself. Soon after they parted, and a man, who is described as respectably dressed, came by and spoke to the murdered woman and offered her money. The man then accompanied her to her lodgings Her little boy was removed from the room and taken to a neighbor's house. The boy has been found and corroborates this but says he does not remember the man's face.
Another curious circumstance worth mentioning is that the murder was not made public until twelve o'clock.
Mrs. Paumier, who seems to be a creditable person, sells walnuts in Sandy's Row, near to the scene of the murder. She states that at eleven o'clock today a respectably dressed man, carrying a black bag, cam up to her and began
He appeared to know everything about it. He did not buy any walnuts, and, after standing a few, went away. Mrs. Paumier describes him as a man about thirty years old and five feet six inches in height. He wore speckled trousers and a black coat. Several girls in the neighborhood say the same man accosted them and they chaffed him. When they asked him what he had in the black bag he said: "Something the ladies don't like." That is all that is known. If the police have further information they carefully conceal it, but there is no reason to believe that they have.
