New York Times
September 9, 1888
OLD WORLD NEWS BY CABLE
"Whitechapel Startled by a Fourth Murder"
from our own correspondent.
London, Sept. 8.-- Not even during the riots and fog of February, 1886,
have I seen London so thoroughly excited as it is to-night. The Whitechapel
fiend murdered his fourth victim this morning and still continues undetected,
unseen, and unknown. There is a panic in Whitechapel which will instantly
extend to other districts should he change his locality, as the four murders
are in everybody's mouth. The papers are full of them, and nothing else is
talked of. The latest murder is exactly like its predecessor. The victim was
a woman street walker of the lowest class. She had no money, having been
refused lodgings shortly before because she lacked 8d. Her throat was cut so
completely that everything but the spine was severed, and the body was ripped
up, all the viscera being scattered about. The murder in all its details was
inhuman to the last degree, and, like the others, could have been the work
only of a bloodthirsty beast in human shape. It was committed in the most
daring manner possible. The victim was found in the back yard of a house in
Hanbury-street at 6 o'clock. At 5:15 the yard was empty. To get there the
murderer must have led her through a passageway in the house full of sleeping
people, and murdered her within a few yards of several people sleeping by
open windows. To get away, covered with blood as he must have been, he had to
go back through the passageway and into a street filled with early market
people, Spitalfields being close by. Nevertheless, not a sound was heard and
no trace of the murderer exists.
All day long Whitechapel has been wild with excitement. The four murders
have been committed within a gunshot of each other, but the detectives have
no clue. The London police and detective force is probably the stupidest in
the world. The man called "Leather Apron," of whom I cabled you, is still at
large. He is well known, but they have not been able to arrest him, and he
will doubtless do another murder in a day or so. One clue discovered this
morning by a reporter may develop into something. An hour and a half after
the murder a man with bloody hands, torn shirt, and a wild look entered a
public house half a mile from the scene of the murder. The police have a good
description of him and are trying to trace it. The assassin, however, is as
cunning as he is daring. Both in this and in the last murder he took but a
few minutes to murder his victim in a spot which had been examined but a
quarter of an hour before. Both the character of the deed and the cool
cunning alike exhibit the qualities of a monomaniac.
Such a series of murders has not been known in London for a hundred
years. There is a bare possibility that it may turn out to be something like
a case of Jekyll and Hyde, as Joseph Taylor, a perfectly reliable man, who
saw the suspected person this morning in a shabby dress, swears that he has
seen the same man coming out of a lodging house in Wilton-street very
differently dressed. However that may be, the murders are certainly the most
ghastly and mysterious known to English police history. What adds to the
weird effect they exert on the London mind is the fact that they occur while
everybody is talking about Mansfield's "Jekyll and Hyde" at the Lyceum.
