So what letter does this refer to

[GUT]

The Hobart Mercury

3 October 1890

JACK THE RIPPER AGAIN.

Jack the Ripper has repeated his warnings again, and some disquietude prevails among East Londoners.

[Mayerling]

The Hobart Mercury

3 October 1890

From the Hawke's Bay Daily Telegraph (issue 592) 3 October 1890, Special Cables p. 3 - a word for word replay of your quote.

But:

Auckland Star, Volume XXI, issue 234, 3Octover 1890, p. 3

"JACK THE RIPPER

London, October 2

The Miscreant known as "Jack the Ripper," whose horrid series of crimes paralysed Whitechapel some years ago, has given warnings of his intention to "begin work" again within the dark evenings."

The original has to be some London or British newspaper, and it may be that if an actual letter set off this item, the phrase "begin work" was inside it since that is in quotation marks.

There is more that I have found. But I wanted to get this down first. I had problems copying it all earlier.

[Mayerling]

News down under.

The website I looked at specialized on New Zealand newspapers and news weeklies. But I found some interesting stuff.

Wellington Evening Post, Vol. XXXVII, issue 120, 22 May 1889, P. 2:

"JACK THE RIPPER.

Reported Arrival in Melbourne

[United Press Associations]

Melbourne, 21st May.

It is reported that when the police were paraded at the barracks this morning the men were warned to be on the alert, as it was believed Jack the Ripper, alleged author of the recent Whitechapel horrors, had arrived in the colony, the Police Department having received information that he had been seen in Melbourne. Rumours of the warning were afloat in the city during the day, and caused a great sensation."

[Interestingly, on May 21, 1892 Frederick Deeming, who sometimes has been suggested as being Jack the Ripper, was hanged for the murder of his second wife Emily in Melbourne the previous January.]

This may have not been the only time Saucy Jack travelled in the lands down under.

This is from the Wellington Evening Post, Volume XL, Issue 28, 1 August 1890, p. 2:

"JACK THE RIPPER

A SYDNEY SCARE.

[United Press Association]

Sydney, 31 July

Ten days ago, the Sydney police received a letter signed "Jack the Ripper" stating that he had arrived and intended to commence operations in a certain street within a week of his writing. When compared with facsimiles of the letters received from the London police, the letters showed a strong resemblance, and the police and detectives were strengthened and kept on alert. The affair, however, is believed to be a hoax. The police are reticent and the press is silent on the matter."

While the Wellington Evening Post had no reference I found to that message of 3 October 1890, it did have a curious item a week later:

The Wellington Evening Post, Vol. XL, Issue 90, 13 October 1890, P. 2:

"JACK THE RIPPER"

AN EXTROADINARY STORY

THE STATEMENT DISCREDITED

[Special]

[Received October 13, 9:30 a.m.]

London, 11th October

A woman belonging to the lower Whitechapel class asserts that Jack the Ripper hired a bedroom of her. She describes him as a young man of superior class. She saw portions of liver, brains, and some wedding rings, and bloodstains in the room, and as soon as the man observed she had noticed them he bolted. This was on the day of the last last murder.
LATER

The woman who furnished the particulars about jack the Ripper has since modified her statements and little importance is now attached to them."

Can you beat that last one. One sees an old time Hollywood film set in a newspaper building, and the crack reporter runs in and shouts, "HOLD THE PRESSES!!!" and the story is printing, but just before the paper is printed and sent out word comes from a source at headquarters that the woman was full of it. So they tack on that, rather than kill a great sounding lie!

Historical mysteries always sell newspapers. Not only unsolved murders like Whitechapel, but sea tragedies like the "Mary Celeste", or the fate of unfound kidnap victims like Charlie Ross. Most of the newspaper items about Jack and the crimes printed from 1888 onward are more colorful lies than anything else. If the period was dull throw in a story about the unsolved murders of 1888. In fact, by 1890 there is a woozy vagueness creeping in. One of the articles I put down here or before said the crimes were a few year back. In fact they were only two years old - it wasn't like talking about Dr. Palmer's poisonings in the 1850s.

Occasionally something really interesting crops up. How about this:

Wellington Evening Post, Volume XL, issue 8, 9 July 1890, p. 2:

"JACK THE RIPPER AGAIN"

OUTRAGE AND MURDER"

[United Press Association]

London, 8, July

The body of a girl, twelve years of age, has been discovered violated and mutilated in the same style as the former victims attributed to Jack the Ripper."

I am curious about this. Could this be a reference to the discovery of the corpse of Amelia Jeffs, a young girl whose body was found stuffed in a cupboard in a house that was just being built. I wrote an article about her once on the old Casebook Board, and there was never any arrest because the inquiry reached a dead heat. Three members of the same family might have killed Amelia, but nobody was talking, and one of them (a local building contractor - it was in one of his buildings that Amelia was found) had pull locally. So no arrests, although that family was rather cold shouldered afterwards. Interestingly whenever the Jeffs murder case is discussed, it is supposedly part of those "West Ham disappearances" between 1870 and 1890, but the actual details of what happened to Amelia and to another "victim of the cursed area" (Charles Wagner) are disregarded. The authorities and public knew what happened to both, but couldn't prove it to a certainty.

But Amelia was raped and strangled. She wasn't cut to pieces like Mary Kelly.

The last item I found from the Wellington, Evening Post has some interest because of recent discussions about a sick bastard named W. L. Turner, who appears to have been a bloody handed child killer.

Evening Post, Volume XLI, Issue 139, 15 June 1891, p.2:

"THE LEEDS MURDER."

ALLEGED CAPTURE OF JACK THE RIPPER

[United Press Association]

A man arrested in Leeds on suspicion of being connected with the murder of a child there, under circumstances similar to those attributed to "Jack the Ripper," has confessed that he committed the Whitechapel murders."

[Rosella]

I thought Charles Wagner was robbed of £150 of gold, presumably takings from his father's West Ham butcher's shop, by John Walters who was charged with murder then theft?

The West Ham disappearances were a weird series of events all right, including a 67 year old woman.

[Mayerling]

I thought Charles Wagner was robbed of £150 of gold, presumably takings from his father's West Ham butcher's shop, by John Walters who was charged with murder then theft?

The West Ham disappearances were a weird series of events all right, including a 67 year old woman.

Hi Rosella,

The story about the death of young Wagner was more complicated than that. Apparently Walters worked for the victim's father, but was fired for theft. Still he had remained close to Charles, and probably convinced the latter to steal the 150 pounds to go off on a toot with Walters. They went to Margate, and Walters was careful enough to keep his contacts (in public) with Charles to a minimum. There was a cliff at that seaside resort that people went to - that the police had partly roped off because too many people fell off it and died either accidentally or by suicide. Charles is found dead at the base of the cliff, and when Walters is found by the police he admits going to the cliff with Charles but not going up (and that Charles went at night - meaning he could have fallen by accident). Walters was arrested, but the jury could not pinpoint the exact proof that Walters pushed Charles off the cliff (which probably is what happened). So Walters was acquitted. So you can see that this segment of the "West Ham Disappearance Mystery" is really no mystery at all.

I suspect that most of those disappearances, if probed carefully enough, would tend to have really rational explanations. The problem when dealing with books mentioning "the West Ham Disappearances", is that writers tend to mention something that other, older writers alluded to, and rarely look into them if they are copying the information as simple filler in their books or essays or whatever. The one who first mentioned this was Eliot O'Donnell in his book "Strange Disappearances", and I have seen his word for word accounts of the "West Ham Disappearances" be used (without any footnote or cite) by Michael Harrison in "In the Footsteps of Sherlock Holmes" and in Jay Robert Nash's encyclopedic "Among the Missing".

Jeff

[Mayerling]

Brooklyn Eagle of Friday, 3 October 1890

I found this on page four in a column of small news items:

"The alleged Jack the Ripper warning sent to the London police is now said to be a hoax."

I tried to trace any report in the Brooklyn Eagle of the receipt of the threat, up to September 26, 1890, but nothing was reported.

Jeff

[Mayerling]

The New York Times

From the New York Times of October 2, 1890 the following bit of an article appeared:

"A WARNING TO WHITECHAPEL"

Oct. 1. The police of the Whitechapel district have received a warning from "Jack the Ripper" that he is about to kill another woman. The handwriting in the note is identical..."

That was all I could get.

At least we now have a closer idea of a time frame:

1 October 1890 - letter to sent to the police in Whitechapel of intention to kill another woman

2. New York Times prints that story, but on same day the police in London declare the letter a hoax.

3. The Brooklyn Eagle reveals the letter of warning was a hoax, but the Australian/New Zealand newspapers mention the warning, and more details (apparently) are given in the Auckland Star of possible terms in the contents.

How much of this was newspaper imaginatory rubbish and how much is from an actual communication to the London police I can't tell.

Jeff

[Rosella]

Hi Rosella,

The story about the death of young Wagner was more complicated than that. Apparently Walters worked for the victim's father, but was fired for theft. Still he had remained close to Charles, and probably convinced the latter to steal the 150 pounds to go off on a toot with Walters. They went to Margate, and Walters was careful enough to keep his contacts (in public) with Charles to a minimum. There was a cliff at that seaside resort that people went to - that the police had partly roped off because too many people fell off it and died either accidentally or by suicide. Charles is found dead at the base of the cliff, and when Walters is found by the police he admits going to the cliff with Charles but not going up (and that Charles went at night - meaning he could have fallen by accident). Walters was arrested, but the jury could not pinpoint the exact proof that Walters pushed Charles off the cliff (which probably is what happened). So Walters was acquitted. So you can see that this segment of the "West Ham Disappearance Mystery" is really no mystery at all.

I suspect that most of those disappearances, if probed carefully enough, would tend to have really rational explanations. The problem when dealing with books mentioning "the West Ham Disappearances", is that writers tend to mention something that other, older writers alluded to, and rarely look into them if they are copying the information as simple filler in their books or essays or whatever. The one who first mentioned this was Eliot O'Donnell in his book "Strange Disappearances", and I have seen his word for word accounts of the "West Ham Disappearances" be used (without any footnote or cite) by Michael Harrison in "In the Footsteps of Sherlock Holmes" and in Jay Robert Nash's encyclopedic "Among the Missing".

Jeff

Hi Mayerling. Thanks for that. The only time I've ever read about these quite obscure disappearances was in 'The Who's Who of Unsolved Murders' in which the missing girls' stories appear as footnotes, without accreditation and in two pages describing the Eliza Carter disappearance in 1882, Millie Seward's in 1881 and Millie Jeff's murder in 1890. Apparently their families lived quite near to each other.

The Who's Who also mentions that Walters bought Wagner a pair of trousers (presumably in Margate) paying for them in gold coin. This was probably unusual enough in those days for it to be taken note of.

[GUT]

Thanks for those Jeff, the Melbourne one s very interesting, and as you wrote about Deeming [or pretty close to that time] I was in the Court where he was sentenced.

[GUT]

When I get a minute or two I'll post up a letter found in an Aussie news paper about James Kelly and JtR very interesting stuff.

[GUT]

G'day Jeff

This is from the Wellington Evening Post, Volume XL, Issue 28, 1 August 1890, p. 2:

"JACK THE RIPPER

A SYDNEY SCARE.

[United Press Association]

Sydney, 31 July

Ten days ago, the Sydney police received a letter signed "Jack the Ripper" stating that he had arrived and intended to commence operations in a certain street within a week of his writing. When compared with facsimiles of the letters received from the London police, the letters showed a strong resemblance, and the police and detectives were strengthened and kept on alert. The affair, however, is believed to be a hoax. The police are reticent and the press is silent on the matter."

While the Wellington Evening Post had no reference I found to that message of 3 October 1890, it did have a curious item a week later:

The Wellington Evening Post, Vol. XL, Issue 90, 13 October 1890, P. 2:

That one was in the Sydney papers as well.

[Mayerling]

G'day Jeff


That one was in the Sydney papers as well.

I'll be curious to see what you can find.

Also, I am about to start a separate thread under the section on the police concerning a matter that has cropped up here. To whit: how did the Australian police quickly establish that letters may look like Ripper letters when some letter threatening them was mailed to them? It seems they have copies.

Jeff

[GUT]

I'll be curious to see what you can find.

Also, I am about to start a separate thread under the section on the police concerning a matter that has cropped up here. To whit: how did the Australian police quickly establish that letters may look like Ripper letters when some letter threatening them was mailed to them? It seems they have copies.

Jeff

I look forward to that thread.

I have some inquiries being made if there is a facsimile of the "Dear Boss" letter in the police archives.