Staunton spectator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1849-1896, 1890-10-22

ROOM.
LONDON, Oct. 13-A sensation of the
most enormous proportions has been caused
here by the statement made by lodging
house keeper who is located In the White
chapel district, and claims. with apparent
good evidence to support the claim, that it
was at her house Jack the Ripper lived
during his sanguinary escapades there
abouts.
The woman who keeps the house came
to Mr.. Albert Backert, the chairman of the
vigilance committee, and in the presence
of several witnesses told her story and
afterwards swore to it.
The woman, who is a respectable person,
known to the police to be quiet and con-
Quoting a thoroughly respectable place,
says that during the period marked by the
distinctive murders of the Ripper young
man called at her house and engaged q
bedroom. He stated to her in reply to
her questions as to his business and his
ability to pay for the accommodations that
he had been to sea up to the time of his
coming there; that he did not work at all,
but was in receipt of an allowance from his
father of 81 per week and that his brother,
who was physician, gave him further
allowance of a trife over this amount.
BLOOD ON THE TOWELS.
He was in the habit of lying abed gen.
orally until the afternoon and would rise
about o'clock and leave the house. She
could not say at what time he returned
because she never chanced to see him when
he was re-entering the house.
What first excited her suspicion that
there was anything unusual about him was
the bloody condition in which she often
found the towels ssnt to his room. For
this she finally spoke 20 the man and re-
monstrated with him for soiling the articles
in such manner, and asked what could
have caused such profusion of blood as
was there to be found. This direct question
he endeavored to explain away by saying
that he was very fond of painting, and in
his preparations for those artistic moments
he was in the habit of wipiDg his brushes
on the towels, and thereby stained them so
as to give the impression that it was blood.
Further than this, the woman states that
she knows from her own knowledge that
be sent several persons pieces of what ap-
peared to be raw liver.
RAW FLESH IN HIS ROOM.
One afternoon she happened in his room
for the purpose of attending to some Of her
household duties, and there she saw hin
with newspaper spread out upon his table
and upon it a large piece of raw meat that
she at a distance took to be liver She
asked him what it was and where it came
from, and he replied that it was q piece of
frozen mutton that had been given him by
friend who was employed on boat that
came from New Zealand bearing cargo of
this meat.
The reasonable element in this, and which
served to make the woman blind to what
the chunks Of meat might really be, lies in
the fact that most of her boarders, this
young man among them. prepared their
meals in their own rooms. Upon another
occasion, somewhat later than this, she
saw the man do up piece of this meat in
a small box, tie it up securely and address
it to the chairman of the vigilance commit
tee and leave the house with 1t under his
arm. She never saw it or the box after
wards. Further even than this, the woman
affirms that she saw the man place small
bits of flesh in envelopes, which he ad-
dressed to different news agencies and
papers, and also to prominent members of
the police.
WHAT HE LEFT BEHIND him.
With great apparent carelessness he left
these envelopes and their contents in the
ioom WHICH, 10 VdcdIou IL, ana tno woman,
discovering them when cleaning the apart.
ment after he had given it up, threw them
into the dust bin. On two occasions he
brought homo with him bloodstaiued
aprons, which he gave to her and which
she still las and is ready to turn over to
the police, believing now that they be-
longed to two of his victims, for now she is
convinced that her lodger was Jack the
Ripper. She says that he always seemed
to have ample money and spent it with
degree of lavishness not often met in that
locality.
On the morning of the Castle alley muir
der, which was the last that Jack has thus
far committed, her lodgez loft, and has not
yet returned. In addition to the envelopes
that he left behind the woman found in his
closet pair of silent shoes, several bags
and long overcoat, all of which, she as.
serts, are bloodstained in almost every
pars. The woman gives as her reason tor
not speaking earlier the fact that she did
not suspect the identity of the man until
after he had got beyond her reach, and
then she feared to go to the police, but the
secret las SO weighed upon her mind that
she could keep it no longer, and now she
comes forward to warn others against this
suspicious lodger.