Alderly and Wilmslow Advertiser

Friday, 5 October, 1888
The peace of the London Sunday was disturbed this week in a manner that it has rarely been before by the news published in the papers of the morning that a few hours previously two awful murders had been committed in the East End, and within a third of a mile of each other. Following so closely on the four that had preceded them within a month, and which had already stricken the Whitechapel District with a panic, it is no wonder that a delirium of alarm and indignation should prevail. The thing is so utterly without precedent or parallel, is so, so mysterious and entirely unaccountable, the murder--for all the probabilities points to its being the work of one hand--is so audacious and yet so cunning, the motive is impossible to understand, that it is no wonder the people should be bewildered, and that terror should reign throughout the district.
The fact is no satisfactory hypothesis has been offered to account for the extraordinary tragedies. To eery theory that has been stared objections suggest themselves that appear to be serious if not fatal, and all the efforts that have been made to obtain a clue, much less to track the murderer, have failed. Perhaps the theory that has the least formidable objections against it is the work of a monomaniac whose fatal impulse is to make war on the wretched outcasts of the street.