London, U.K.
9 November 1888
(Transcribed from a partially damaged original)
About noon today... another terrible murder... those which recently horrified the community had been perpetrated in Miller's court, Dorset street, Spitalfields. It will be remembered that the news of the other murders was very early made known, and consequently the late hour of the day in which the present intelligence came to us seemed to argue against the truth of the rumour. We at once sent a reporter to the spot, who, on applying to the inspector at the Commercial street Station, was informed that orders had been received not to give any information beyond the bare fact that a woman had been murdered, all official information being forwarded to Scotland yard.
Consequently the details of the crime are difficult to obtain, but inquiry in the neighbourhood elicited the information that the victim's head was nearly, or quite severed from the body, and that, as in the other terrible cases, the abdomen was ripped open.
The Press Association says: At half past ten this morning, the dead body of a woman with her head almost severed from her body was found in an untenanted outhouse or shed in Dorset court, Dorset street, Commercial street, Spitalfields. It had evidently lain there for some hours, but several scavengers who were in the court at nine o'clock this morning declare the body was not there then. They might, however, have been mistaken, as the place is very dark. An alarm was immediately raised, and an inspector of police and a number of constables were soon on the spot. It is remarkable that Dorset court is exactly opposite the house in Dorset street in which the unfortunate woman, Annie Chapman, used to lodge. The discovery created the greatest excitement in the neighbourhood, and crowds quickly gathered at the scene.
The City Police have made an official report that a woman was found cut to pieces at a house in Dorset street, at 10.45 this morning.
It is stated that Mr. Gent-Davis proposes today to move the adjournment of the House of Commons in order to call attention to the circumstances under which Mr. Monro resigned his post as Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police.
Colonel Howard Vincent, some time head of the Criminal Investigation Department, is preparing a reply to Sir Charles Warren's article on the London police which appeared in Murray's Magazine, and was made the subject of a question in the House of Commons last night.