18th Sep 1888 - The Rise of The Star
Good evening from Whitechapel in 1888. Let's take a look at "the largest Circulation of Any Evening Paper in the Kingdom." The Star comments: "We are glad that the jury have spoken out strongly on the failure of the authorities to offer a reward." This obnoxious publication knows best about everything: "We have said from the first that this thing ought to have been done." It adds: "Another thing which ought equally to have been done was to offer a pardon for information from any accomplice." They question whether "police were awake to their responsibilities. It will be difficult to convince anyone of that now."
Along with another gratuitous and unrelated story about a throat-slitting, there's coverage of the recent arrest: "The Holloway lunatic, who is detained on suspicion in connection with the Whitechapel murders, is Swiss. He kept a pork butcher's shop in Elthorne-road, Holloway, and he is what is known in the trade as a "cutter-up." A Star reporter had an interview this morning with Mrs. Isenschmid. She said, "5 or 6 years ago he had some sort of a fit." He has been in the asylum once before, but he was not quite right in his mind when they let him out." In 10 weeks, he's been home "5 or 6 times, generally in the night, but never stopped long and never said where he had been to. On one occasion he came home at six o'clock in the morning with a big grey dog. He walks about till he's nearly starved. 'I must be a very wicked man if all the Bible says is true,' he would sometimes say. He became very dangerous."
In other news, it sounds as if a possible murder weapon has been found. Once again the Star reports this lurid discovery. "A knife with a white bone handle and A BLADE ABOUT TEN INCHES LONG, and had dark stains, was found in a Hampstead pond." The Star here also rehashes a letter to The Times newspaper which it's noted was written "in big type" with a new theory: "It is within the range of my belief that one or both these Whitechapel murders may have been COMMITTED BY FEMALE HANDS. There is far more jealousy between women in regard to those with whom they cohabit." And there is another theory offered: "Missing parts of the body: There is evidence of the work of some half-mad physiologist in search of living tissues or organs." The paper devotes further column inches to continue its attack on the police system with interviews that support their claim: "Public discontent increases every day without any satisfactory clue obtained to the perpetrator of the Whitechapel horrors."
The Star is insisting they're the voice of the people, but their 'opinions' seem to be stirred trouble rather than reporting it.