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Brooklyn Daily Eagle
New York, USA
15 February 1891

IS THIS MAN JACK THE RIPPER?

Blood Was On the Clothing of the Whitechapel Prisoner.

London, February 14.

The man arrested today on suspicion of having murdered "Carroty Nell" is a saddler by trade. The inquiries made by the police concerning the prisoner show that he has been absent from England eighteen months, or about the period since the last Whitechapel murder.

A woman who is detained as a witness asserts that she saw the prisoner quarreling with the murdered woman early in the evening before the crime was committed.

A policeman who was on duty Friday night and morning on the streets about Tower hill and in the vicinity of the crime has identified the prisoner as a man he met about a quarter of an hour after the murder. The policeman, noticing that the man had blood on his clothes, stopped him on Tower hill and asked several questions as to how the blood stains happened to be on his garments. The man, according to the policeman, replied that he had been assaulted while passing through a street in the neighborhood of the docks.

The policeman not being aware that a murder had been committed and not having heard the alarm whistles from the police, who had evidently then reached the scene of the murder, allowed himself to be satisfied that the blood stained man was telling the truth and so allowed him to pass on his way.

The prisoner's face is badly scratched, as if by a woman's finger nails. In reply to questions as to how he came by these scratches the man said that he was so injured when he was assaulted near the docks. The prisoner stoutly denies having at any time met the murdered woman. He will be confronted with the railroad employee and with others who may have seen the man who is supposed to have been in company with "Carroty Nell" on Friday night.


THE WHITECHAPEL ATROCITY

The police seem confident that they have at last nabbed the notorious Jack the Ripper, but the general public is skeptical as to the fact of the sailor man with the bloody clothing being the hero of the dozen murders which have preceded that of Francis Coleman (sic). It is quite likely that he committed the last crime, but there is nothing to connect him with the long series of similar atrocities which have terrorized the Whitechapel district. The police authorities are being censured for having relaxed the vigilance with which, until recently, the district haunted by the Ripper was guarded. The last crime is attributed to this negligence, just as the long immunity from these horrors since the last previous butchery is attributed to the extreme activity of the officials. It seems like pretty good evidence of the correctness of this theory that it was only a fortnight ago that the precaution of wearing rubber boots was given up by the patrolmen of the district. The noiselessness with which the constables went their rounds made such murders as that of "Carroty Nell" impossible, or too risky to be attempted even by the daring "Jack." But the sound of an officer's approaching steps, audible a long distance at night, served as a guide to the whereabouts of the minion of the law, and made crime comparatively easy. the newspapers are full of letters from citizens offering various suggestions for the benefit of the police in their search for the murderer. Few of these are original, most of the proposals having been brought forward at the time of the former excitement over the same matter. The Star takes this occasion to advocate the redemption of the poverty stricken and crime ridden masses, as the only cure for such monstrous crimes. It declares that the realization of General Booth's scheme for the improvement of the condition of the lower classes is less of a dream than is the extinction of such criminals as "Jack the Ripper ", so long as the mass of misery and wretchedness on which such criminals thrive is left to exist.


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