I spent a lonely evening in Baker Street. I was asleep
when, at half past two in the morning, a cab arrived
to take me to Whitechapel. Another woman had
met a violent death.
As I travelled through the dark, empty streets, London
seemed a strange and ghostly place - it lay there like
the body of a great animal, not sleeping but dead.
The driver took me east, towards the poorest parts of
the city.
He stopped in a narrow lane off Leadenhall Street. I
saw a group of policemen standing under a light,
and went up to them. Holmes was not there, but I
was introduced to the police doctor. He offered to
show me the body.
'I know you are a doctor,' he said, 'but I must warn
you. You have never seen anything like this before.'
He led me to a dark corner, where something lay
covered on the ground. He held up a light for me to
see and pulled back the cover.
No words can describe the awfulness of what I saw
then, For a moment my head felt light, I began to
shake and was afraid I would fall. The thing on the
ground had been a woman, but it was not a woman
now. It was no more than blood and meat, cut open
and ripped up with a terrible, unnatural violence. I
knew now why the killer called himself Jack the
Ripper.
The doctor covered the body, and I walked back to
the group of policemen.
'Have you seen Mr Holmes?' I asked one of them,
'Oh yes, sir,' he said. 'He was here with Inspector
Lestrade.
They carne straight from the other murder.'
'The other murder!' I cried. 'Has there been more than
one murder tonight?'