OF THE SEETHING SLUMS OF THE GREAT CITY OF LONDON
The Whitechapel Murders Direct Attention to a Place Where Vice and Utter Degradation Hold High Carnival - Gin Soaked hags - Revolting Language
London, October 1 (Special)
The horrible crimes committed in Whitechapel of late have attracted attention to that quarter of the city where crimes predominate. A walk through the place is worthy of description. The best idea of the degradation of men there can be gathered from the description of the women, whose ability to keep alive proves the existence of men so low as to consort with them. These wretched women swarm the streets by thousands even now, but keep closely together and look sharply around for murderers, even while pretending to laugh and asking whose turn it is to be cut up. The language in which they speak of the fiend who has made it his business to murder them it is impossible to reproduce. Such profanity and piteously filthy language as may be heard coming from a group of women on a Whitechapel corner can probably not be heard anywhere else. Some of these women have actually grown old in their misery - shrivelled, horrible,
who fight and quarrel on the gutter's edge, and to approach within a yard of them is simply torture. The younger women, the queens of these slums, are even more distressing to look at. Some are mere girls, almost children; but all celebrate any stroke of fortune by getting drunk. Bright colors distinguish them. Light blue is their favorite color. Cheap brocades dragging in the mud and ostrich feathers as sadly out of curl as the dissipated owner's hair are favored outward signs of such prosperity as may be attained at Whitechapel. The poor creatures when born were dropped upon the surface of the filthiest pool of human degradation that can be boasted of by any great city on earth, and all they can do is
into it, fighting and drinking cheap gin as they go. The maniac who is murdering them is a benefactor to those whom he cuts short in their downward journey, and if he could only act in such a way as to destroy every one of the creatures that swarm there in London he would be a most useful man. But this fact the Whitechapel residents do not appreciate. Infants brawling through heaps of refuse in the slums, never having been made jealous by a sight of robust babyhood, were fairly contented, and their parents evidently found their lives much enlivened by the sensation which has come upon them. The scenes of both murders were swarming with curious crowds, preference being given to the place where the most savage murder occurred, and up to midnight morbid citizens were busy lighting wax matches in the dark corners of Mitre square trying to discover bloodstains.
worth entertaining has been put forward. That first advanced on September 8, namely, that the murderer, whether a maniac or not, must possess some knowledge of surgery, is accepted as proven. The attempt to connect the crimes with some American medical student who is supposed to have offered large sums to various hospitals for a certain part of the female body which was missing in a recent victim, has been given up as ridiculous. The anatomical specimen in question can be easily obtained for a few shillings. It is suggested that the murderer must be a respectable looking individual, as in the present state of terror the most degraded Whitechapel women would not dare to trust themselves with a rough. But that is rubbish, for every social law in Whitechapel is based on want and hunger, and the low(est) brute on earth with means to buy gin would as quickly find a Whitechapel woman to help drink it. The murderer must be very strong since he appears to have been able in each case to
with ease and to stifle any loud outcry. Besides being strong, the murderer had a terribly sharp knife, for a visit to the mortuary where the first of last night's victims lies with a gaping wound in the throat shows plainly the division of the jugular vein and the notch caused by the knife coming in contact with the vertebrae. the wounds on the throat of the Mitre square victim are almost identical. It is evident that the police are not going to do much, and if the legendary detective instinct which sniffs out criminals still exists in America its owner had better come over here, humiliate Scotland Yard, earn the thanks of England and also earn £5000 reward, which would pay his expenses. A detective leaving New York now might arrive just in time for the next bad murder.
