Joseph Woods
Following the murder of Annie Chapman, a suggestion was made that every streetwalker on the street after midnight should be either arrested or provided with a police whistle. A young prostitute named Eleanor Candy took the latter advice. She picked up drunken 18 year old Joseph Woods, the son of a licensed victualler, in Commercial Street, shortly after midnight, and during conversation with him confided that she never ventured out after dark without her police whistle. Woods in reply said, 'And I never go out without my trusty little knife, if you want to know who I am, I am the Whitechapel murderer'. Candy blew her police whistle and Woods was immediately arrested for indecent assault.
In court, Candy said the prisoner, Woods, and another man, approached her and accosted her in a very rough manner, and seized her by the waist and then her throat, breaking her necklace in the process. He then threw her to the ground and assaulted her. She remonstrated with him, and he thereupon produced a clasp knife, exclaiming, 'Look at this, I'll put it right through you'. She said, 'Are you one of the Whitechapel men', to which he replied, 'Yes, I am.
