Clay Pipe Alice

July 18, 1 pm mat.

The ninth crime of Whitechapel.

It is impossible to speak of anything other than the new crime of Whitechapel, which has plunged this unfortunate area into a panic that is impossible to describe. Wednesday morning, at ten minutes before one, that is to say, twenty minutes after the closure of many public houses of low repute, which abound in these parts, a policeman on his beat noticed in a corner of a door a bundle, that is to say that the incidence of meeting a drunk passed out in one of these dark alleys, in this manner, serving as a dormitory for unfortunates who did not save the 20 cents that was necessary to pay the hospitality of humble lodgings. It was at the corner of Castle Alley, less than fifty meters from the theater's latest crime attributed to the fantastic imaginary being which gives the public the name of Jack the Ripper. As the policeman bent down to wake up the drunk, he realized that he was in the presence of a corpse lying in a pool of blood. The victim wore a mortal throat wound, only instead of being wide open and across, the wound was a deep hole like that is found around the necks of sheep, by the butcher's knife. The belly and thighs were all injured, but the mutilations had not been accomplished, the murderer probably lacked the time, and was disturbed by the passage of a number of workers living in the alleys and returning from neighboring taverns. The victim's body was still warm and, as a witness stated that ten minutes before he passed the spot where it was found and there was nobody assumes that when the discovery was made, the crime had been committed seven to eight minutes earlier, at most. Like all others, the victim belongs to the unfortunate class, was aged 40 to 45 years, blond, with a very fine complexion and very well preserved. The clothes are in poor condition which demonstrates the abject poverty in which she lived. It was old boots she was wearing clung to her feet. She had no hat, nothing to cover her hair whatsoever, but only on her shoulders one of these shawls that has two ends that are tied into a scarf and headdress worn by unfortunates in Whitechapel. The killer has left behind him no clue, except one of these sassy short pipes, such as innkeepers of these parts usually provide free to customers who come to drink their beer or gin. It has been seen by anyone and the police have not any data to search through a maze of alleys without doors, of refuges open to all winds and trimmed bottom floor, where surveillance is obviously impossible and whose patrons are accustomed to seeing nothing. The exact location of the passage of the alley where the crime was committed, is the most prominent, at the foot of the single gas lamp that illuminates more or less, besides, since the crime of Whitechapel, the avenue that has not less than a half-dozen issues, had been submitted by the police surveillance of a constable on duty, from midnight to five o'clock in the morning. And this policeman saw nothing, heard nothing and he stated that the blow of the assassin was so sudden that the victim could not issue even a groan which would have been heard. As the opportunities of this kind, the police operated in the day two arrests, but we can not take on individual and cons of compromising the two individuals that holds a precaution. The policeman who discovered the victim had to move every ten minutes the place where she was found and he says he has not breached this pattern since ten o'clock, when he came on duty. It was truly disorienting to all human foresight and precautions imaginable. As for the panic of the neighborhood's population, it is indescribable.

Source: Journal De Geneve, July 20, 1889, Page 2