Is Jack the Ripper a Woman?

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume III, Issue 377, 14 November 1889, Page 2

Is Jack the Ripper a Woman?

Mb Lawson Tait, the eminent women’s surgeon, has been interviewed by a London reporter in reference to the suggestion that Jack the Ripper might be a woman. Mr Tait favors the idea that the murderer is some big strong woman engaged at a slaughterhouse in cleaning up, and now and then in actually cutting up meat. “Again, in a number of instances the women when found were hardly dead. The bodies were warm ; the murderer oould not be far away. The faot that the police were so close upon the criminal goes to prove to a wonderful degree that the operator was a woman. I will tell you why. On the discovery of one of the murders the police promptly made a circuit round the neighbourhood, Nobody was arrested, or, rather, no man was arrested—they did not look for a woman." “How oould a woman have so olevarly committed the deed “It must be clearly understood that whoever was the criminal would he thoroughly splashed with the blood. It would be impossible to haok and hew a warm body In * Ripper’ fashion without getting all over blood. A man who thus besmeared

himself could not possibly have got cleai away time after time. The thing would bi perfectly easy for a woman. See here.’ Here Mr Lav sin Tait picked up a Libert, “ ohair back" and placed it round himsel like an apron. " Conceive the murdir done and the woman all splashed. All she has t< do is to roll up her skirt to her waist, leaving her petticoat, and fold up the shawl that ii over her shoulders and tucked in at he: middle. Then she might pass through th« crowd with the rery slightestrlsk of detection.

Then, as to washing the blood-dyed garmente. What would a man do ? Plunge them into hot water. Result, the blood coagulates, won’t come off, and stains the clothes. And where is he to get hot water, nr how ia he to pour away bloody water undetected ’ A woman is always at the washing-tub, and she would put the cbthesin cold water, when, with a little soap and rubbing, they would become clean, practically unstained, and she would be unsuspected. An important point la to be noted in connection with what has been termed the fiendish disembowelling of the bodies, and with reference to the particular place at which the incisions have been begun. It is nn wild slashing, done without method by a novice with the knife. Having qut the victim*’ throat from behind, the oneptor simply by an act of unconscious cerebration goes to work in the regular butcher fashion Having slit a oalf’e neck, the next thing to be done is to make an incision at the bottom of the abdomen, and lay aside the various organs in the very fashion reported at the inquests as having been done." The resemblance between tha ’ Ripper’s’ work and that of the butcher’s is complete."