19 November 1888
NEW YORK, Nov, 10--A well-dress Englishman, with a full black beard, approached policeman Ripple, of the 19th precinct, last night and asked where he was. Being informed, he asked, "London?".
"No, New York," replied the policeman. The man looked bewildered, and after askeing the question over several times said that at his last recollection he was in Cheapside, London. "I must have been insane," he declared. The strange individual readily consented to be taken to the station house. Standing before the desk he appeared perfectly rational and expressed his inability to realise that he was not in London. "I came to my senses a few minutes ago," said he to the sergeant, "when I heard a voice saying 'There goes the Whitechapel murderer,' and I imagined everybody was looking at me." The sergeant deemed it advisable to detain the man, to which the latter made no objection. He gave the name of Henry Johnson, and said he was 37 years old that his home was in West London. He said he believed he had been in a trance. Soon after being consigned to a cell the man began shouting loudly and the doorman found him lying on the cell floor struggling about. He attacked the door man when the latter entered his cell, and an ambulance which was summoned conveyed the strange prisoner to Bellevue Hospital. The police found in the Englishman's pockets portaits taken by a London photographer, of two young ladies, and a third one was that of an old lady. There was also a lock of grey hair and a letter addressed to Lizzie McKay, of London.