London, July 18.
After holding the inquest on the body of the latest victim of the
Whitechapel fiend the police appear to be as hopelessly in the dark as
ever and to have as little prospect of catching the criminal as when the
first of the murdered women was found bleeding in the street. This time
the woman's body was scarcely cold before discovered. The warm blood was
flowing from the gashes in her body. A policeman was stalking about within
fifty yards of the spot. Lights were moving in the windows of the adjacent
tenement houses, but the murderer did his work so swiftly and silently
that no one heard the victim's cry. He was allowed to escape and will
remain unmolested till he gets ready to commit another butchery. Thus far
Chief Commissioner Munroe's (sic) tactics have been practically the same
as those of Sir Charles Warren. He has filled the Whitechapel district
with police, who, acting under special orders, kept the newspapers in the
dark as much as possible. As in the case of the previous murders,
suspected men were dragged into police stations all day long yesterday
simply because they wore rags or had no home, and were immediately let go
again. Some of them were so ignorant that they did not know that there had
been a murder. One effect of this policy is to fan into a fierce flame the
public excitement.
Of false news of arrest, of wild rumors and of sensational rumors there
are no end; of useful facts which may lead to a clew to catch the murderer
there are but very few. In the matter of details this murder differs but
very little from the others. It is true that there are no such revolting
mutilations, but everything goes to show that this is simply because the
assassin had been interrupted in his work, being frightened by a drunken
peddler, who had stopped to wrangle with the policeman on the beat. The
press correspondent saw the body of the victim yesterday in the morgue.
The throat was cut in the same manner as in the case of the Berner street
woman, by plunging a knife just under the left ear and cutting towards the
right ear sufficiently to completely sever the windpipe. The woman
probably never had time to utter a cry. The only other wound on the body
was a deep cut in the stomach, extending from the waist to the pit of the
abdomen. The intestines were not disturbed. Not till last night were the
police able to find out who the woman was. Her name was Alice MacKenzie
and, as in the case of Jack the Ripper's other victims, she was one of
those unfortunate creatures who find their living on the streets. A
newspaper correspondent talked to two women, who saw her at 11:30 Tuesday
night. She was sober then, At 2:30, when all the public houses are closed
by law, the barkeeper of the "Pub", situated a quarter of a mile from the
scene of the murder, says that he turned her out into the street and that
she had been drinking some but was not actually drunk. Making her way
home, the woman turned into Commercial street, the exact region where most
of the other murders have been committed. Here all trace of her was lost
till the body was found in Castle alley at 12:50 (sic) in the morning.
Four policemen patrol the vicinity of Castle alley. It is considered one
of the worst places in London. The officer whose special duty it is to
watch the alley swears that he passed the spot ten minutes before he found
the body and that there was nothing there then. There are four entrances
to Castle alley. It is about twenty feet wide and 400 feet long. At night
costermongers living near are allowed to store their wagons and hand carts
there. Two tenement houses, a huge warehouse with a watchman in it, and a
public bath house surround it. It is almost impossible that any struggle
should have occurred without somebody hearing it. Only a few yards away is
a street as broad as the Bowery and thronged with people going home, the
"Pubs" and concert halls, and just as busy a thoroughfare, in fact, as the
Bowery is at midnight. An ex member of the metropolitan police, who was
standing talking with a friend at the corner of Castle alley, not more
than forty yards distant, about the time of the murder, neither saw nor
heard anything. Mrs. Smith, who keeps the public bath house, says she did
not go to bed till after 1. She was moving about the kitchen with the
windows facing the alley wide open and heard no noise till the officer
gave the alarm. She does not think that the body was quite dead when it
was found. Isaac Lewis, who claims to be the first civilian who saw the
body after the murder, watched it while the police went for assistance. He
says that the blood was still spurting from the throat when the woman was
found, indicating that the heart had not ceased to beat. The clothes were
all crushed upon the chest of the body and the legs were nude. There were
blood marks on the face and on the left thigh, as if a hand covered with
blood had been placed there to hold the woman down. Lewis adds that a
watchmen had been employed at the Castle alley till two weeks ago to look
after the wheelbarrows. When the barrows were removed the man was
discharged. He thinks the murderer knew all this. Some fifty constables,
selected from other districts of the metropolis last spring for special
duty in the Whitechapel, were removed this week. Three weeks ago the
police received several letters saying that Jack the Ripper was going to
begin operations again. No attention was paid to them. They were signed
Jack the Ripper, and indicated in the same disguised writing as the
letters received last Spring. The Pall Mall Gazette says that a fortnight
ago a man said he knew the East End well, and he was sure the butcheries
there would soon begin again. At the inquest held on the body of the woman
found murdered in the Whitechapel district yesterday morning the fact was
developed that in addition to two large gashes there were fourteen other
wounds on the body. The greater number of the wounds, however, were only
skin deep.
