The horrors of Whitechapel have become blacker this week. Shortly
before 1 o'clock on Sunday morning, the body of a woman named Elizabeth Stride, originally most re- spectable, but, utterly lost through drink, was found in a yard off Berner Street, a small street leading out of the Commercial Road, Whitechapel. She was just dead, her throat having been cut, but the body remaining otherwise unmutilated. It is supposed, from the attitude in which the corpse was found, that the murderer was disturbed by the entrance of a cart into the yard, and hurried off to seek a fresh victim. At all events, three-quarters of an hour later, another woman, named Eddowes, though generally called Kelly, from the name of a labourer with whom she lived, was found murdered in the south-west corner of Mitre Square, Aldgate, within the City jurisdiction. The throat had been cut in this instance also, but the body had been disembowelled, as in the case of Mrs. Chapman, found in Hanbury Street. The murderer must have been mad with blood-thirst, for the square is perfectly re- spectable, is entered at three points, and is patrolled by the police every fifteen minutes. The excitement, of course, both in the locality and in London generally, has been terrible; but no clue whatever to the perpetrator of the crimes has yet been discovered. The police, both of the Metropolis and the City, are working hard at the case, and rewards have been offered by the Lord Mayor and private individuals amounting in the aggregate to more than 21,000 ; but, for the present, the criminal has disappeared into apace. He is thought to be an educated man, thirty years of age, wearing dark clothes, 5 ft. 7 in. in height, and with a manner which reassures the women he addresses ; but of proof as to his identity producible in court, there is not one trace. The district is full of detectives, as it is believed the murderer is still within it, and, moved either by mania or by the intoxication of successful crime, will renew his attempts.
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