Dr. Savage's Opinion

THE WHITECHAPEL MURDERS.

Dr. Savage, one of the most experienced and skilful alienists in England, has not been able to contribute much towards the solution of the Whitechapel horrors. He rather resents what he considers the unfounded hypothesis that the murderer is a medical man. He is inclined to believe, indeed, that more than one person (though without combination) were concerned in the atrocities. His idea is that the account of the first crime having circulated far and wide through the newspapers, the deed soon found imitators among brooding and impressible maniacs. He thinks the cunning of the crimes beyond what an epileptic or drunken maniac could have exercised. In each murder there was only a single agent. The knowledge of anatomy necessary for the dissecting skill might, he thinks, have been possessed by a butcher or the porter of a post mortem or anatomy room. "The cunning of the evasion," he concludes, "the ferocity of the crimes, the special selection of the victims seem to me to depend either on a fiendishly criminal revenge, or also upon some fully organized delusion of persecution or world regeneration." This last phrase has reference to certain classes of homicidal religious maniacs, who believe that they must shed the blood of which mankind is to be redeemed.

Source: Quebec Mercury, Monday November 12, 1888, Page 2