One hundred years ago
IT was thought on Tuesday that the Whitechapel murderer had been at his work again. A constable, passing through Pinchin Street in that district, found in the railway-arch the trunk of a woman, naked, except for a torn piece of linen, and with the head and legs cut off. The trunk had been mutilated in a way which suggested previous murders, and the butchery, as in those cases, had been performed by a left-handed man. It is now, however, doubted whether the murder is due to the Whitechapel miscreant,•whose work is less scientifi- cally perfect, who always left his victim immediately on the completion of his crime, and who had no motive whatever for preventing her identification by so risky a process as carrying off the head. The police incline to the theory that the murderer is the same man — probably a surgeon engaged in illegal operations — who cut up a woman found at West- minster, if not also another found at Rainham, and that he conveyed the body to Whitechapel in order to divert suspicion from himself to the well- known murderer.
The Spectator, 14 September 1889
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