Today on the Jack the Ripper Tours.

The Evening News on the 6th November 1888 reported how on the previous Sunday a very excited man had rushed in to Commercial Street Police Station and told the the desk Sergeant that he wanted to know "... about these mutilated remains found in Osborne-street,"

The police at once took notice and asked him what mutilated remains he was referring too. The man took out a copy of a Sunday paper in which there was an article about the supposed crime mentioned in the letter in my blog of 5th November.

Even though it was clearly stated that the article was a hoax the man had evidently being "dwelling on the painful incident of the district for the past few weeks" and his mind, according to the Evening News reporter "had become affected."

The visitor then went on to accuse a perfectly respectable man of being Jack the Ripper and was duly asked to make a statement which he refused to do. He simply gave his address as being on Brick Lane and was then allowed to leave the police station.

The police then paid a visit to Osborne Street but no trace was found of any fresh crime.

This incident shows how the police in 1888 were hampered by informants coming forward to give their opinions on who Jack the Ripper was. At the height of the ripper panic, not only did they have to go and investigate a possible, though as it transpired fruitless, fresh murder, but they also had to interview the perfectly respectable man whom the informant had accused o being Jack the Ripper. According to the Evening News the man i n question was quickly proved innocent of any involvement in the crime.

Osborn Street where the "mutilated remains" were said to have been left is featured very early on in our Jack the Ripper Tour.

It most certainly features in the story of the murders in that Emma Smith, the first victim on the Whitechapel Murders File was attacked at its junction with Brick Lane and Wentworth Street in early April 1888. She would later die of her injuries.

But for the people of Whitechapel on November 6th 1888 there had been no murders since 30th September and they were starting to think that the murders had come to an end.