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The Clutha Leader
New Zealand

5 October 1888

THE MYSTERIOUS MURDERS IN LONDON

The Whitechapel coroner has been informed that purchasers, for anatomical purposes, are found in America for portions of human bodies such as are missing from the corpses of persons recently murdered. In consequence of this information, the coroner states his belief that the murders were committed by some anatomist desirous of obtaining human organs for a medical exhibition in America.

The investigation of the Whitechapel murders still continues and it has been ascertained that an American offered the curator of a London hospital the sum of £20 for each specimen of part of an internal organ he could procure for him. The applicant stated his object in endeavoring to secure these specimens was to issue an actual specimen with a copy of a new medical work to be published shortly, and he desired that they should be packed in glycerine to preserve them. The curator refused to entertain the proposal. Acting on the information of the coroner, the police arrested a man named Fitzgerald on a charge of murder, and he has confessed to having committed the latest crime.

At 2.20 on Sunday morning, near the junction of Leadenhall and Fenchurch streets, Aldgate, the body of a woman aged about 35 years was discovered. It was completely disembowelled and the nose was severed from the face.

An hour earlier the body of another woman, with the throat cut, was discovered in a back yard in Berners street, but as the body was not mutilated in any way it is not thought that the murder was of the same class as those that have been reported lately.

In consequence of the discovery of the mutilated body in Leadenhall street there is great excitement in the city. No arrests have been made up to the present.

It is said that the mutilations of the body of the woman found in the Aldgate district eclipse the horrors in connection with similar outrages in Whitechapel.

The panic excited by the recent murders continues. The police are apparently paralysed, and their helplessness is denounced on all sides.

Her Majesty has been petitioned to offer a reward for the apprehension of the assassins.

The Times urges that bloodhounds should be set on the track of the Aldgate murderer.

In consequence of the recent murders women in the city are in a state of terror.

Several indignation meetings have been held, at which resolutions demanded the immediate resignation of Mr. Matthews (Home Secretary) and Sir Charles Warren (Commissioner of Police) were passed.


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