Evening Star (Washington, D.C.)
29 December 1890
"Jack the Ripper" May Be a Jill
T. C. Crawford in New York Tribune
Another English visitor brings an item of interest from London. He says
that the London police have not wholly given up hope
of finding the mysterious assassin who is known to the world as "Jack the
Ripper." He says the police are working entirely
upon a new theory, upon a suggestion made to them by the French police. No
one has ever thought that the criminal could be
anything but a man. Some of the murders have been committed directly under
the noses of the police and in a district so
rigidly patrolled that every man coming in and going out was the object of
careful scrutiny. The suspicion and detective work
now are directed to the finding of a woman who is believed to have
committed these most atrocious crimes. The London police
have never suspected the possibility of a woman's having committed these
crimes, and during the height of the panic in London
no one ever thought of watching the movements of the women of the criminal
class in the dustrict where the greater part of
the murders were committed.