"Blood was still spurting.."

SWIFT BUTCHERY.

Jack the Ripper's Job Unfinished.
Interrupted by Noisy Pedler.

Police Dazed by His Last And Boldest Crime.
London Filled with Wild Rumors.

Hundreds were Near at the Time of the Murder.
[Copyright.]

LONDON, July 17. - After holding an inquest tonight on the eighth victim of the Whitechapel murderer, the police have no more prospect of catching the criminal than they had when the first victim was found bleeding in the street.
This time the woman, was scarcely dead when she was discovered, warm blood flowing from the gashes in her body. A policeman was stalking about within 50 yards of the spot, but the murderer did his work so swiftly, and silently that no one heard a cry. He was allowed to escape unmolested till he gets ready to commit another butchery.
So far Monroe's tactics are practically the same as Warren's. He has flooded the Whitechapel district with police who are under special orders to the keep the newspapers in the dark as much as possible. As in the case of previous murders, suspected men have been dragged into police stations all day; simply because they wore rags or had no home, and were immediately let go again. Some of them were so ignorant of the case that they did not even know there had been a murder. One effect of this policy is to fan to a fierce flame public excitement by false news of arrests.
Of wild rumors and sensational theories there is no end. Of useful facts which may lead to a clue to the catch the murderer there are very few. In matters of detail this murder differs very little from the others. There was no such revolting mutilation, but everything goes to show that this is simply because the assassin was interrupted in his work, frightened by a drunken pedler who stopped to wrangle with a policeman on his beat.
THE GLOBE correspondent saw the body of the victim today at the mortuary. The throat was cut the same way as that of the Berner street woman, by plunging a knife just under the left ear and cutting towards the right ear sufficiently to completely sever the windpipe. The woman probably never had time to utter a cry. The stab was nearly an inch wide and very deep, indicating that a large

Knife With a Sharp Point

was used. The only other wound on the body was a deep cut extending from the waist to the pit of the stomach.
Not till tonight were the police able to find out who she was. Her name was Alice Mackenzie. She had found a living in the streets and by cleaning out public houses.
THE GLOBE correspondent talked with two women who saw her at 11:30 last night. She was sober then, they said. At 12:30, when all public houses are closed by law, a barkeeper in a place a quarter of a mile from the scene of the murder turned her into the street. She had been drinking some, he says, but was not drunk, and was making her way home.
The woman turned into Commercial street in the exact region where all the murders have been committed. Here all trace of her is lost till the body was found in Castle alley at 12:50 a.m. by four policemen on patrol in the vicinity of Castle alley. It is considered one of the worst places in London.
The officer whose special duty it is to watch this alley swears that he passed the spot 10 minutes before the body was found. There was nothing there then.
There are four entrances to Castle alley. It is about 20 feet wide and 400 feet long. At night costermongers living near were allowed to keep their wagons there. Two tenement houses, a large warehouse, with a watchman in it, and a public bathhouse surrounded it.
It is almost impossible that any struggle could have occurred and somebody not have heard it. Only a few yards away is a street as broad as Green street in Boston, thronged with people going home from public houses and concert halls. It was just as busy as the Bowery in New York at midnight. An ex-member of the metropolitan police, who was standing talking with a friend at the corner of Castle alley, not more than 40 yards distant, about the time of the murder, saw and heard nothing.
Mrs. Smith, who keeps the public bathhouse, says she did not go to bed till after 1 a.m. She was about the kitchen with the windows facing the alley open; but

She Heard no Noise

till the officer gave the alarm. She does not think the woman was quite dead when found.
Isaac Lewis, who claimed to be the first civilian who saw the body after the murder, watched it while the officers went for assistance. He says blood was still spurting from the throat when the woman was found, indicating that the heart had not ceased to beat. The clothes were all crushed up on the chest. The limbs were nude. There were blood marks on the face and left thigh, as if hands covered with blood had been placed there to hold the woman down. Lewis says a watchman was employed in Castle alley until two weeks ago looking after wheelbarrows. When the barrows were removed the man was discharged. He thinks the murderer knew this.
Some 50 constables, taken from other districts last spring, were moved from Whitechapel this week.
Three weeks ago the police got several letters saying that Jack the Ripper was going to begin operations again, but no attention was paid to them. They were signed "Jack the Ripper," in the same disguised handwriting as the letters were written in last spring.
The Pall Mall Gazette says tonight that a fortnight ago a man called at its office and said he knew the East End well and was sure the butcheries would soon begin again.
At a late hour tonight no trace has been discovered of the Whitechapel murderer. The police despair of finding a clue.

Source: The Boston Daily Globe, Thursday Morning, July 18, 1889