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Austin Statesman (Texas, USA)
Wednesday, 5 September 1888

The English Murder Mystery.

The dispatches this morning give a description in detail of the midnight assassin alleged to have perpetrated, last Friday night, the awful crime of the murder of Mary Ann Nichols. The victim was literally cut to pieces with a knife in the hands of a mysterious being, whose footsteps could not be heard, while those of the woman resounded in the shadows as she fled from the murderer. The crime, committed last Friday night, has shocked the whole of England, and is generally charged to a short, thickset, half crazy creature, with fiendish black eyes, and known as “Leather Apron.” He frequented the dark alleys, and like a veritable imp haunted the gloom of the halls and passage ways of Whitechapel, and lived by robbing the female Arabs who roamed the streets after nightfall. Of powerful muscle, carrying a knife which he brandished over his victims, the London murder fiend was too terrible an assailant for the victim that cowered beneath the glitter of cold steel. He is charged with two other murders of women besides Mary Ann Nichols, in none of which was left the most distant clue to the assassin, whose identity is supposed to have been established by reports of women whom he had robbed, but not murdered.

There is a striking similarity which must be a mere coincidence between these murderers across the water and the servant girl murderers in Austin in 1885, which latter remains a mystery as profound and unraveled as that of Whitechapel. All were perpetrated in the same mysterious and impenetrable silence, and what makes the coincidence more singular is that the Austin murder fiend, who was seen on one occasion, was, like “Leather Apron,” a short, heavy set personage.


Related pages:
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       Press Reports: Austin Statesman - 05 September 1888 
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  Leather Apron
       Press Reports: Atchison Daily Globe - 5 September 1888 
       Press Reports: Daily Telegraph - 11 September 1888 
       Press Reports: Daily Telegraph - 12 September 1888 
       Press Reports: Galveston Daily News - 5 September 1888 
       Press Reports: Irish Times - 10 September 1888 
       Press Reports: Irish Times: 11 September 1888 
       Press Reports: Lloyds Weekly News - 9 September 1888 
       Press Reports: Manchester Guardian - 6 September 1888 
       Press Reports: News of the World - 21 October 1900 
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       Press Reports: Times [London] - 11 September 1888 
       Press Reports: Weekly Herald - 14 September 1888 
       Suspects: David Cohen 
       Witnesses: Elizabeth Allen 
  Polly Nichols
       Home: Timeline - Mary Ann Nichols 
       Dissertations: Old Wounds: Re-examining the Bucks Row Murder 
       Dissertations: The Riddle of New Cottage 
       Message Boards: Mary Ann Nichols 
       Official Documents: Bucks Row - Census Listings 
       Official Documents: Polly Nichol's Inquest 
       Press Reports: Atchison Daily Globe - 3 September 1888 
       Press Reports: British Daily Whig - 1 September 1888 
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       Press Reports: Illustrated Police News - 22 September 1888 
       Press Reports: Illustrated Police News - 8 September 1888 
       Press Reports: Irish Times - 18 September 1888 
       Press Reports: Irish Times - 24 September 1888 
       Press Reports: Lloyds Weekly News - 2 September 1888 
       Press Reports: Manchester Guardian - 1 September 1888 
       Press Reports: Manchester Guardian - 3 September 1888 
       Press Reports: Manchester Guardian - 4 September 1888 
       Press Reports: Manchester Guardian - 5 September 1888 
       Press Reports: Morning Advertiser - 1 September 1888 
       Press Reports: Morning Advertiser - 18 September 1888 
       Press Reports: Morning Advertiser - 24 September 1888 
       Press Reports: Morning Advertiser - 3 September 1888 
       Press Reports: Morning Advertiser - 4 September 1888 
       Press Reports: New York Times - 1 September 1888 
       Press Reports: Pall Mall Gazette - 1 September 1888 
       Press Reports: Pall Mall Gazette - 18 September 1888 
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       Press Reports: Penny Illustrated Paper - 22 September 1888 
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       Press Reports: Penny Illustrated Paper - 8 September 1888 
       Press Reports: People - 2 September 1888 
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       Press Reports: Times [London] - 1 September 1888 
       Press Reports: Times [London] - 18 September 1888 
       Press Reports: Times [London] - 24 September 1888 
       Press Reports: Times [London] - 27 April 1866 
       Press Reports: Times [London] - 3 September 1888 
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       Press Reports: Walthamstow and Leyton Guardian - 8 September 1888 
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       Victims: Mary Ann 'Polly' Nichols 
       Victims: Testimonies of Charles Cross and PC John Neil 
       Victorian London: Buck's Row 
       Witnesses: Henry Tomkins, James Mumford and Charles Brittain 

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