Sensational Theories and Wild Rumors Without End - Police, as Usual, Paralyzed - The Carver Interrupted in His Work - Other Crimes
MORE ABOUT THE LATEST VICTIM OF THE WHITECHAPEL FIEND
London, July 18. (Special)
After holding the inquest tonight on the body of the latest victim of the Whitechapel fiend, the police appear to be as hopelessly in the dark as ever, and to have as little prospect of catching the criminal as when the first of the murdered women was found bleeding in the street. This time the woman's body was scarcely cold before she was discovered. The warm blood was flowing from the gashes in her body. A policeman was stalking about within about fifty yards of the spot. Lights were moving in the windows of the adjacent tenement houses, but the murderer did his work so swiftly and silently that no one heard the victim's cry. He was allowed to escape, and will remain unmolested till he gets ready to commit another butchery. Thus far Chief Commissioner Munro's tactics have been practically the same as those of Sir Charles Warren. He has supplied the Whitechapel district with police who, acting under special orders, kept the newspapers in the dark as much as possible.
As in the case of the previous murders, suspected men have been dragged into the police stations all day long, simply because they wore rags or had no home, and were immediately let go again. Some of them were so ignorant that they did not know that there had been a murder. One effect of this policy is to fan into fierce flames the public excitement. Of false news, of arrests, of wild rumors and of sensational theories there are no end. Of useful facts, which may lead to a clew to catch the murderer, there are but very few. It is true that there was no such revolting mutilation, but everything goes to show that is simply because the assassin had been interrupted in his work, being frightened by a drunken peddler who had stopped to wrangle with the policeman on the beat. The World's correspondent saw the body of the victim today in the mortuary. The throat was cut in the same manner as the case of the Berner street women by plunging a knife just under the left ear and cutting toward the right ear sufficiently to completely sever the windpipe.
The woman probably never had time to utter a cry. The only other wound in the body was a deep cut in the stomach, extending from the waist to the pit of the abdomen. The intestines were not disturbed. Not till tonight were the police able to find out who the woman was. Her name is Alice Mackenzie, and, as in the case of Jack the Ripper's other victims, she was one of those unfortunate creatures who find their living on the streets. The World correspondent talked to two women who saw her at 11.30 last night. She was sober then, At 12.30 when all the public houses are closed by law, the barkeeper of a "pub" situated a quarter of a mile from the scene of the murder, says that he turned her into the street, and that she had been drinking some, but was not actually drunk. making her way home the woman turned into Commercial street - the exact region where most of the other murders had been committed. Here all traces of her were lost till the body was found in Castle alley at 12.50 this morning. Four policemen patrol the vicinity of Castle alley. It is considered one of the worst places in London. The officer whose special duty it is to watch the alley swears that he passed the spot ten minutes before he found the body, and that there was nothing there then. There are four entrances to Castle alley. It is about 50 feet wide and 400 feet long. At night costermongers living near are allowed to store their wagons and hand carts there.
