Middletown Daily Times
Middletown, New York, U.S.A.
8 August 1891

London, Aug. 8.
The London police insist on a theory of suicide in the case of the old woman Woolfe found dying from horrible wounds that suggested the work of Jack the Ripper. The police have found that the woman was insured for £30 for the benefit of her son, and they allege that she probably cut herself with the razor in order to give the impression of a Ripper murder and to secure the insurance to her son, she being aged and feeble and with no interest in life.

Physicians say, however, that it was impossible for the woman herself to have inflicted the wounds, and some critics aver that the police are hopeless of catching the murderer and wish to dismiss the crime as self perpetrated.

Early in the morning an unknown man attacked the woman, who is seventy years old, and a resident of Whitechapel. When aid reached the mortally and terribly wounded woman it was seen that he had cut her throat, and that she had been slashed in the body and on one arm.

Her assailant escaped, and thus far the police are without any knowledge as to his whereabouts. Of his identity nothing is known.

The woman says that the man sprang upon and attacked her without a word of warning.

She suddenly saw the glitter of a knife and mechanically raised her arm to ward off the impending blow. Then she fell to the step, where she was subsequently discovered, and remained where she fell until the police finally came to her assistance. On the arrival of the police a razor smeared with blood was found lying near the wounded woman.