East London Observer
Saturday, 1 December 1888.
On Tuesday afternoon Mr. Saunders, presiding magistrate at the Thames Police Court, received a letter purporting to come from "Jack the Ripper," which bore the Hastings post-mark, and which was addressed to "Head Magistrate, Police Court, Whitechapel." It read as follows:- "DEAR BOSS, - It is no good looking for me in London or in Portsmouth, for I have reached Hastings now, but I shan't be long before I get to London again, back to my work again; but not the man with the black moustache. Ha! ha! ha! - Yours, JACK THE RIPPER."
The Novosti, a Russian paper, is responsible for the following startling revelation regarding the Whitechapel murderer:- "He was born in Tiraspol in South Russia in 1847, and graduated at the Odessa University. After 1870 he became a fanatical Anarchist, and emigrated to Paris, where he went out of his mind. His monomania was that fallen women could only be redeemed and go to heaven if they were murdered. This led him to perpetrate a number of murders in Paris. The Paris police arrested him, but on discovering that he was a lunatic they shut him up in an asylum. That was sixteen years ago. He was kept there until a short time prior to the first murder in Whitechapel, when he was released as cured. He went to London, and there lodged with different compatriot refugees until the first woman was assassinated in Whitechapel, since which time his friends have no seen him".
