Wednesday 21st Nov 1888
Good evening from Whitechapel on Wednesday 21st November 1888. Winter is coming and the Autumn of Terror is nearly at an end. But tonight the news reports another stabbing which happened just this morning. Here's how the Star covers the events...
"The neighborhood was thrown into a most harmful state of excitement, and the Echo and the Evening News rushed into print: ""Another horrible murder and mutilation in Spitalfields." The sale of their issue was very brisk for a long time." The facts: "Great excitement was in the East-end this morning by a rumor that another murder had been attempted in lodgings in George St. William Sullivan, who lives in the house said "I had just taken my grub out of my pocket, when I saw a woman coming downstairs. She was crying and calling out "Darkie, Darkie" - that's the watchman in the house, and I saw the woman standing there. She had blood coming from her throat. Her breast was bare, and blood was running down it. She said, "A man has cut my throat."
Another witness saw the man. "His mouth was bleeding. As he ran past me he said, 'What a cow!'" And the story starts to unravel: "Four lodgers immediately gave chase, but he escaped." The other papers have clearly got things very wrong. The Star says: "One of the inspectors said there was nothing in the case, and in all probability the woman inflicted the injuries herself. "At all events, they appear to be confident that the man was not the Whitechapel murderer." The Star is critical of other papers: "Our contemporaries endeavored to cover the consequences of their sensational blundering by gross exaggerations. Whether this morning's outrage be the work of the murder-maniac or not, it has greatly excited Whitechapel. George St is packed with curious people pushing and striving to get a sight of the house. The police station, is surrounded. The policemen have all their work cut out to press them off the pavement. The "detectives" are wildly running about. The policemen on fixed points stare at all who pass them. The case, anyhow, has a bearing on the previous crimes. An outrage has been committed in the very heart of the district supposed now to be the best watched of all London. A district so profoundly agitated by crimes of unprecedented horrors, a continuation of which everybody is sure of. And yet this man has managed to make his escape in broad daylight." An important comment on why the Ripper hasn't been caught.