Translation
Accusations Against the London Police
In the southern part of the Hampstead district of London there was found on 24th October the horribly mutilated body of a woman, with the abdomen opened, the uterus extracted and huge knife cuts on the neck. Great panic ran through the city, particularly among women, because it was feared that Jack the Ripper had stared with this crime the series of killings which he announced a few days before.
The police had not the slightest doubt that Jack was the killer and that he had taken advantage of the fact that police forces were now concentrated in Whitechapel hoping to capture him there, to carry out the Hampstead crime.
The London Pall Mall Gazette published the following day a violent article against the police because of the said murder. This newspaper says that its editors have been able to verify that for two policemen to converge on a given spot in the city, at least eight minutes always elapse, as indicated in the article of which we spoke a few days ago to the readers of El Universal.
The Pall Mall Gazette adds that its reporter arrived at Hampstead, where the body of the woman was, at the same time as the police and that until the police change their personnel completely from the police chief to the newest recruit, they will not succeed in finding Jack the Ripper. The murdered woman did not belong to the same low class as the previous victims of the genuine Whitechapel killer. She was elegantly dressed and wore expensive garments. When the necessary investigations had been made, it emerged that the woman was the wife of the messenger Hobbs and had been murdered by Nelly Piercey, Hobb's lover.
The statements taken from him by the examining court have thrown much light on the matter. To the questions which the judge asked him Hobbs answered under oath that he had had amorous relations with Nelly Piercey for some time and that she used to visit him at odd times entering the house with a key.
Questioned as to whether Mrs. Hobbs, his wife, knew of the relationship that existed between him and Nelly Piercey, he replied that he assumed that his wife did not know of this relationship.
It has been stated that the chief of London police has received a letter signed Jack the Ripper and with the same writing as the former ones, attributed to the famous killer, in which he says that the death of Mrs. Hobbs was a commonplace crime which he had not committed and he was amused by the insistence with which it was attributed to him. The letter concludes by announcing that before continuing his "anatomical studies on living women" in Whitechapel, he will kill two in Piccadilly.
