HIS NINTH VICTIM
Jack the Ripper Startles London with Another Whitechapel Murder.
As Usual, the Victim Is from the Lowest Strata of Society, and the Body is Horribly Mutilated.
A front Room on the Ground Floor of a Dwelling the Scene of the Murder, the Ninth Recorded.
Sir Charles Warren's Bloodhounds a Failure, as Predicted – No Clue to the Fiend of Fiends.
London, Nov. 9. – (United Press Cable.) – The murder fiend has added another to his list of victims. At 11 o'clock this 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 blood hounds. The remains were mutilated in the same horrible manner as were those of the women murdered in Whitechapel.
The appearance of the remains was frightful and the mutilation was even greater than in the previous cases. The head had been severed and 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. The womb and other organs were missing. The skin had been torn off the forehead and cheeks. One hand had been pushed into the stomach.
The victim, like all the others, was a prostitute. She was married and her husband was a porter. They had lived together at spasmodic intervals. Her name is believed to have been Lizzie Fisher, but to most of the habitues of the haunts she visited she was known as Mary Jane. She had a room in the house where she was murdered. She carried a latch key and no one knew at what hour she entered the house last night. Therefore it is hardly likely that her assassin will ever be identified. He might easily have left the house at any time between 1 and 6 o'clock this morning without attracting attention. The doctors who have examined the remains refuse to make any statement until the inquest is held.
Three bloodhounds belonging to private citizens were taken to the place where the body lay and placed on a scent of the murder, but they were unable to keep it for any great distance, and all hope of running the assassin down with their assistance will have to be abandoned.
The murdered woman told a companion last evening that she was without money, and would commit suicide if she did not obtain a supply. It has been learned that a man, respectably dressed, accosted the victim and offered her money. They went to her lodging, on the second floor of the Dorset street house. No noise was heard during the night, and nothing was known of the murder until the landlady went to the room early this morning to ask for her rent. The first thing she saw on entering the room was the woman's breasts and viscera lying on a table. Dorset street is short and narrow, and is situated close to Mitre square and Hanbury street.
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 [head of the London Metropolitan Police] 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 viscera were strewed upon the floor, and the dissecting table and the stomach of one of the surgeons gave way at the spectacle.
