Ohio, USA
10 November 1888
Another Horrible Murder Added to the List
THE BODY OF A WOMAN DISCOVERED IN LONDON
It is Mutilated in the Same manner as the Other Whitechapel Victims - The Police Unable to
Discover a Clew - Bloodhounds Endeavoring to Track the Murderer
London, Nov.10.
The murder fiend has added another to his list of victims. At 11 o'clock Friday morning
the body of a woman cut into pieces, was discovered in a house on Dorset street,
Spitalfields. The police are endeavoring to track the murderer with the aid of
bloodhounds. The remains were mutilated in the same horrible manner as were those of the
women murdered in Whitechapel.
The name of the unfortunate woman was Mary Jane Lawrence. She was married to and lived with a man named Lawrence, who had abandoned her. The appearance of the remains was frightful and the mutilation was even greater than in the previous cases. The head had been severed amnd placed beneath one of the arms. The ears and nose had been cut off. The body had been disemboweled and the flesh was torn from the thighs. Certain organs were missing. The skin had been torn off the forehead and cheeks. One hand had been pushed into the stomach.
The murder is undeniably a continuation of the series which was for a time interrupted for want of opportunity or inclination. In this case the murderer worked leisurely, as is made evident by the fact that the murder was done in a room fronting on the street, on the ground floor and within a few yards of a temporary police station, whence officers issued hourly to patrol the district. Although the metropolitan police system is not yet discredited, the bloodhound theory is entirely thrown out, since the murder was not discovered until 10 o'clock in the morning while the streets were teeming with people and traffic was going on uninterruptedly.
Gen. Sir Charles Warren was early on the scene and told a reporter that all the precaution in the world could not prevent the work of such murderers. The sole chance remaining to the police, he said, was to catch them red-handed, and their change of tactics increased the difficulty. In the open air, where the killing had been done hitherto, the chance of their apprehension was slight, but in the case of an indoor murder, such as the last, the hope of arresting the perpetrator was almost barren of fruition. This latest murder will undoubtedly cause a large number of arrests on suspicion. But the monster will be brought to bay is a matter of extreme doubt, since he has left no clues, not worked over by the officers investigating the previous cases.
The most annoying feature of the case is that the arrest of a number of innocent persons on suspicion will have to be repeated. The opinion of Archibald Forbes and Mr. Winslow, that the assassin is a homicidal maniac is confirmed by the latest murder, and the prediction had become general that another murder will soon follow. The brutality of the mutilation to which the last body was subjected, surpassed all the others. In the room to which the corpse was taken chunks of flesh and portions of the visicera (sic) were strewed upon the floor, and the dissecting table and the stomach of one of the surgeons gave way at the spectacle.