Thursday 22nd Nov 1888
Good evening and welcome to Whitechapel on Thursday 22nd November 1888. The Autumn of Terror is turning to winter ...
It is three months and three weeks since we began visiting Whitechapel in 1888 and living day-by-day with its residents. Three months and three days ago Martha Tabram was found brutally stabbed in George's Yard, causing much concern. About three weeks after that, a similar attack on Polly Nichols saw a new feature – dreadful mutilations inflicted upon her. September was a month of horrors, with Annie Chapman dreadfully Ripped up in a back yard, and further failed attacks on women. Then on the last day of that month two women were killed in one night, and absolute panic descended. The media frenzy erupted. The level of intensity, the lack of women on the streets, and the number of police around, meant the killer couldn't hunt. And despite the fear, October passed us by completely quietly, save for the usual scares. But then the killer sprung a surprise. With police on every street and on high alert, he kills Mary Jane Kelly in her own home, with mutilation beyond description. Whitechapel reaches a state of unparalleled terror. The police make arrests by the dozen, and accusations are made constantly. But then the head of the Met police resigns, and Mary Jane Kelly's inquest is wrapped up in one day with no gory details. And inferno of media panic is starved of fuel. The coverage quickly begins to dry up. In the last days it's barely mentioned.
Today's Star recaps the embarrassment of yesterday's murder-scare in George Street in which a topless woman cried of attack. "Police are of the opinion that the man who made the attack is not the individual who has been the terror of the locality. They base this view upon the fact that the injuries inflicted by the man yesterday were of a superficial character." The wounds "appear to have been produced by a blunt rather than a keen- edged knife" - unlike the real killer. "In view of the many exaggerated statements which were circulated by the London evening papers yesterday," the Star points out... "It should be known that no edition of The Star yesterday contained the report that a woman had been murdered." And after this blunder of journalism, it's as if the papers' eagerness to cover the Whitechapel crimes at all, is ebbing away. And thus we are seeing an end to the horrors of Whitechapel which have befallen the city for nearly four months past.