I have this neighbor who lives around the corner from me. I think I've only seen him about three times in the past year. He has a hedge around his house, overgrown to all proportions so that you can hardly see his house and nothing of his yard. He is about 6' 6" tall and broad shouldered with a grey beard down to his belt. He also wears a kilt. When I first saw him, I thought to myself that if I had been an 18th. century English soldier in the highlands of Scotland and saw this guy running towards me wielding a broadsword, I would run like hell. Perception. The next time I saw him he was walking his dog. You're probably expecting him to have something like a Scottish Deerhound or such. I swear, I think that the weight of the dog leash was more than the weight of the dog. So now I saw him walking over the highlands with the tiny dog cradled to his Brest minus the broadsword. Perception. (A way of regarding, understanding, or interpreting something; a mental impression.)
'PC.97J. NEIL reports at 3.45.a[m] 31st inst, he found the dead body of a woman lying on her back with her clothes a little above her knees...' So begins a vivid account on lined notepaper, by a Superintendent J Keating, under the heading 'Metropolitan Police'. The ink seems as fresh as a morning newspaper. Yet it is dated 31 August, 1888.
This is one of the police reports filed just hours after Jack the Ripper claimed another victim in London's East End. It is one of numerous documents relating to the Victorian killer which, after more than a century in the archives, are to go on public display for the first time.
Handwritten accounts from the scenes of the crimes, detectives' case reports, coroners' inquiry records, witness statements, photographs and letters will form the centrepiece of a major exhibition, 'Jack the Ripper and the East End', at the Museum in Docklands, London. Visitors will not be spared graphic descriptions, such as 'her throat cut from ear to ear', in the retelling of the bloody and gruesome crimes.
