Bangor Daily Whig and Courier
Maine, U.S.A.
Thursday, 30 November 1899

After thirty years of bright, hard work, Henry Moore, chief detective inspector of Scotland Yard, has been retired. The story of his exploits and successes is almost a complete history of that famous home of England's Criminal Investigation Department known to the public as Scotland Yard, and to the nest of detectives themselves as C.O. - Central office. Most detectives have a speciality in criminal calendar, or, perhaps, more than one, to which they devote themselves. and consequently do inferior work in lines outside their own, but Moore always did credit to himself in whatever work fell to his hands. He admits one failure, however, and that is that he did not catch Jack the Ripper. Still, there is some satisfaction to him in the thought that even of he didn't succeed in getting the fiend of Whitechapel, no one else did any better.

"The police," says Moore, "were handicapped in their work. It was almost impossible to get anything like a trustworthy statement while every crank in England was sending postcards or writing on walls. The class of woman we had to deal with have told any number of stories for a shilling, and it was impossible to believe any woman, owing to the hysterical state of fear they get themselves into. If we had tried to keep under observation the persons we were told were "Jack the Ripper" we should have needed every soldier in the British army to have become a detective. We have in the East End foreigners from every corner of the earth, and when they hate they will tell such lies as would make your hair stand on end. Of course, every one wants to know who Jack the Ripper was, Well, so far as i could make out, he was a mad foreign sailor, who paid periodical visits to London on board ship. He committed the crimes and then went back to his ship, and remembered nothing about them. The class of victim made the work of the police exceedingly difficult. Why, once I had occasion to stand near the arch of Pinchin street Whitechapel, and I remarked to another office, 'This is just the place for Jack the Ripper,' and sure enough, some few months later a 'Ripper' body was found there in a sack. One of these days, now I have more leisure, I may go to work and before I die I might have the luck to see 'Jack the Ripper' standing in the door of the Old Bailey. It's the only failure I ever had but I'm not at all sure it is a failure yet."