Strange Man In A Dress

A LADY'S FRIGHT.

Is There a Jack, the Ripper, in Town?

Making the Sign of the Cross With a Dagger and Searing the Residents of South Brooklyn.

Residents of Fifty-third, Fifty-fourth and Fifty-fifth streets, South Brooklyn, are considerably disturbed over the actions of a strange man, who, they say, is only awaiting a favorable opportunity to play the role of Jack the Ripper. One evening about a week ago a woman rushed into Harry Edwards' house, 113 Fifty-fifth street, and declared that a man had seized her by the back of the neck as she came through a dark section of the street, and, muttering uncanny gibberish in her ear, had made the sign of the cross with a dagger held in his right hand. She broke away and ran up the street followed by the stranger, who was tall, clad in a long coat, and who wore a small cap. The woman fainted as soon as she reached Mr. Edward's door and it was several minutes before they could get any statement from her. She lives on Fifty-fourth street, between Third and Fourth avenues. Afterward the mysterious individual was seen by Mrs. Cook, who lives at Mr. Edwards' house, and Moses Dunn, living in Fifty-fifth street, saw a tall mustached figure in a woman's dress skulking among the trees on Third avenue. The more conservative people of the district think that some drunken or half witted person has been trying to frighten women and children under the impression that he is having lots of fun. They say that if they catch him he will be compelled to change his ideas of what is amusing and what is not.

Source: Brooklyn Eagle, February 20, 1889, Page 6