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I am transcribing an 1890 article which describes a visit to Bucks Row but refers to the victim killed there not as Mary Nichols but as Annie Hyde. Ive done a search on Casebook and can find no other mention of this name
Here is the section in question:
Then, take next, that blank wall in Buck's Row where the next victim was butchered. Nothing whatever in the way of change of any kind has taken place there. The wall is just as blank, the light at night is just as indistinct, and the Row at midnight is just as denuded of civilians and policemen as when the unfortunate woman Hyde was stabbed and mutilated there. It was rare, even before the murder, to find any pedestrians in Buck's Row after midnight; it always had a bad name for robberies and assaults; and it was given up by general consent to the cluster of houseless unfortunates who were in the habit of sleeping there. After the tragedy even the unfortunates fled from it, and its pavements only resounded at night to the measured tread of the temporary police patrol. But now the unfortunates have forgotten the fate of their "pal," the police patrol has been withdrawn, and passers by at night are rarer than ever. It might, perhaps, be a slight exaggeration to say that the murderer of Annie Hyde would find it just as easy to repeat his hellish work tomorrow night, for a police "point" has been established a little nearer Buck's Row than formerly; but this at all events can be safely said - that the operation would be attended with but the merest fraction of increased difficulty. A curious illustration - or rather, proof - of this statement occurred in the course of my investigation. At about one o'clock on one morning I happened to be near Buck's Row, when my attention was attracted by violent screaming, evidently proceeding from that locality. I proceeded there and found, lying on the pavement within twenty yards of the scene of the murder, a woman evidently pretty far gone in drink. She was bleeding from a wound in the temple, sustained, perhaps, in her fall to the ground, and had taken to an hysterical fit of screaming. It was actually between four and five minutes before a policeman arrived on the scene to know "what all the row was about." He tried, on finding her condition, to "move her on," but the woman violently resisted, and even attacked him. Assistance was evidently necessary then to take her to the police station, and the writer, with hearty goodwill, set about blowing a police whistle which he had with him. Yet, with all that hullabaloo, another three minutes were required for a second policeman to put in appearance. It was only a drunken woman, you say? True. But it might have been a victim screaming in her last agonies, and eight minutes to get two policemen together on the very scene of a former murder is a big start to give the quick heeled Ripper. It would make all the difference between his capture and his getting safely off with another murder added to his long record.
Has anyone heard this before?
Many thanks
Chris
Here is the section in question:
Then, take next, that blank wall in Buck's Row where the next victim was butchered. Nothing whatever in the way of change of any kind has taken place there. The wall is just as blank, the light at night is just as indistinct, and the Row at midnight is just as denuded of civilians and policemen as when the unfortunate woman Hyde was stabbed and mutilated there. It was rare, even before the murder, to find any pedestrians in Buck's Row after midnight; it always had a bad name for robberies and assaults; and it was given up by general consent to the cluster of houseless unfortunates who were in the habit of sleeping there. After the tragedy even the unfortunates fled from it, and its pavements only resounded at night to the measured tread of the temporary police patrol. But now the unfortunates have forgotten the fate of their "pal," the police patrol has been withdrawn, and passers by at night are rarer than ever. It might, perhaps, be a slight exaggeration to say that the murderer of Annie Hyde would find it just as easy to repeat his hellish work tomorrow night, for a police "point" has been established a little nearer Buck's Row than formerly; but this at all events can be safely said - that the operation would be attended with but the merest fraction of increased difficulty. A curious illustration - or rather, proof - of this statement occurred in the course of my investigation. At about one o'clock on one morning I happened to be near Buck's Row, when my attention was attracted by violent screaming, evidently proceeding from that locality. I proceeded there and found, lying on the pavement within twenty yards of the scene of the murder, a woman evidently pretty far gone in drink. She was bleeding from a wound in the temple, sustained, perhaps, in her fall to the ground, and had taken to an hysterical fit of screaming. It was actually between four and five minutes before a policeman arrived on the scene to know "what all the row was about." He tried, on finding her condition, to "move her on," but the woman violently resisted, and even attacked him. Assistance was evidently necessary then to take her to the police station, and the writer, with hearty goodwill, set about blowing a police whistle which he had with him. Yet, with all that hullabaloo, another three minutes were required for a second policeman to put in appearance. It was only a drunken woman, you say? True. But it might have been a victim screaming in her last agonies, and eight minutes to get two policemen together on the very scene of a former murder is a big start to give the quick heeled Ripper. It would make all the difference between his capture and his getting safely off with another murder added to his long record.
Has anyone heard this before?
Many thanks
Chris
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