The ‘Whitechapel Martyr.’

New Zealand Mail, Issue 873, 23 November 1888, Page 5

The ‘Whitechapel Martyr.’

What ‘Dark Annie ’ has Achieved. The London Daily Telegraph had the following remarkable piece of * fine ’ writing : * Dark, Annie’s ’ spirit still walks Whiteohapel, unavenged by- Justice—most misermost/desolate, 1 most degraded, most forgotten and forsaken of all her sex in this vast Metropolis. . Destiny also reserved for her .to perish most awfully and mysteriously of all the recent martyrs of negleot by the hand'Of some horrible assassin who, not content with slaying, desecrated and mutilated the body of his victim. The inhuman murderer stll comes:.and goes about our streets free: and’unpunished, holding j n his guilty heart the secret known only to him, to heaven, and to the dead, and yet even this forlorn, and despised citizen of London cannot be. said to have suffered in vain. On the contrary she has effected more by her death than:, many long speeches in Parliament and conhtless columns of letters to the newspapers could have brought about. She has. forced innumerable people, who never gave one serious thought before to the sub. jeot, to realise how it is, and where it is,, that our vast floating population, the waifs and strays of bur thoroughfares, live and sleep at nights, and what sort, of accommodation our rich and .enlightened capital provides for them after so many Acts of Parliament passcd'to improve the dwellings of the poor, and so many-millions spent by oar Board of Works, our vestries, and what not. It is comparatively easy to be virtuous when one.retirea. at. the first feeling .of sleep to a oosyrbedroom with luxurious appointments, all kinds of comforts, and the bright fire-light perohahoe dancing upon soft pillows and snowy sheets. It is easy to be respectable even with simple comfort without luxury • but ‘ Dark Annie's L dreadful end has compelled a hundred thousand Londoners to reflect what it must be like to have no home at all except the ’ common kitchen ’ of a low lodglug-bonse, to sit there—sick and weak and bruised and wretched ; for lack of four penoe with which to pay for the right of a ‘doss,’ to. be turned outafter midnight to earn- the' requisite - pence anyhow and anywhere, and in course of earning it to come across yonr murderer an& to caress your assassin. As all know, she never did come back, and-Mr Matthews, who will not spend a hundred pounds to find her butcher, has not the ghost of an idea' where to And him. 'Nevertheless,- ‘ Dark Aunie ’ will effect in one way what fifty Secretaries of State could never accomplish. By her ghastly fate, incurred upon that hard errand'to earn a few hoars’sleep,"she has constrained all London' to meditate'once more' Upon these hideous holes and corners where our very poor huddle at night .to hide and slumber-—these foul breeding-places of vice and filthy refuges of recklessness, where'womanhood must unsex itself and self-respect abandons everything to despair, and where: to be decent is out of the question; and, to'remain 1 virtuous is unpermitted and impossible.