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El Chisme (Mexico)
5 July 1900

Translation

FAMOUS CRIMES

JACK THE RIPPER

Just as the human body throws out its secretions such as saliva and wax etc., and just as the sea washes bodies up on the beach, in the same way cities push into certain areas the human rottenness which putrefies its entrails.

London, like all other great cities, has its human rubbish heap, which is called the City, a district inhabited by thieves, low prostitutes and murderers.

The stranger who wants to acquaint himself with this place needs a policeman as a guide, for without such a guardian angel he would not return safe and sound to the centre of the immense capital.

Mexico also has similar districts such as Manzanares and Santa Ana.

It was about ten years ago that in this district of the city of London, in a place called Whitechapel, that there was found the body of a young woman of the lowest class with a wide wound from which the entrails protruded, and the uterus extracted.

The police put inquiries under way and made various arrests, but nothing emerged.

A few days later another woman's body was found with the same wound on the abdomen.

New police investigations and new disappointment. The murderer was not found.

A succession of dead women were found in the early morning, all with the abdomen ripped open.

The panic grew and no woman dared to pass through the city from this time after ten o'clock at night, the hours during which the murderer committed his killings.

Those crimes did not follow a motive of robbery or revenge. The victims varied and none was missing clothing, earrings, rings or the money that they carried in their pockets.

The killer was undoubtedly a monomaniac.

The wounds were always the same, made on the abdomen with a skill, as the legal doctors judged, that would only be possessed by a surgeon or a student studying medicine.

The police agents adopted various disguises, exercised their imagination, found a thousand ways to try and deceive and... nothing.

When they had just walked along a street, a cry was heard and they came upon the body of a murdered woman.

On the body of the latest victim was found a piece of paper on which was written:

"It is useless for them to look for me and try to catch me out. I am more than a match for the police. My name is Jack and I will finish my task when it suits me."

A few days later, in the early morning, there was found another women, victim of the mysterious killer, and then there were no further crimes.

After one month there was found in a district of Paris a young woman with the same abdominal injury which was seen in the women killed by Jack the Ripper whose horribly fame is still not dimmed.

Who is this mysterious killer, this Wandering Jew whom the police have tried with such little success to discover?

What is the implacable motive that stirs him?

Perhaps he was the victim of a woman's infidelity and he wants to avenge himself on them? Why have all the wounds been in the abdomen?

These are some of the questions which, until now, remain unanswered.

It is ten years since the memory of the crimes of Jack the Ripper was erased. Few people remember him.

Nevertheless, in a Spanish newspaper we find the following article:-

"Certain crimes recently discovered lead us to believe that Jack the Ripper of London has an opportunistic disciple in Paris.

One month ago, indeed, the police found in a dirty hovel in Les Valles, between Colombes and Asnierre (?), an old woman with her entrails torn out. As the woman was very poor and lived on public charity, robbery could not have been a motive for the crime.

One week later, in Clichy, a poor elderly woman, the widow Caition (?), was murdered in the same way.

Finally, today a sailor came across the body of another women in Sena whose entrails had been taken out.

The police assume that the perpetrator of the three crimes is the same man."

Will the police in Paris have better luck than those in London, bringing about the capture of the mysterious Ripper of women?


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