On Wednesday the 21st of November, 1888, two days after the funeral of Mary Kelly has taken place, rumours began to circulate that another Jack the Ripper murder had occurred at a common lodging house in Spitalfields.
Several reporters headed for the district and tried to find out as much as they could about this latest atrocity. Unfortunately, not a great deal of information was available, and, with deadlines for the evening papers looming, the journalists did what many of them had been doing since the onset of the murders, they improvised and created their own facts!
The result was that word got out that yet another horrible murder, a brutal as the previous crimes had occurred, and panicstricken crowds began to arrive at the supposed scene of the crime, a common lodging house in George Street, Spitalfields, where the rumour mill went into overdrive.
Later that day, as the fact began to become available, it transpired that some of the first reporters had, to say the least, jumped the gun, as no murder had, in fact, taken place, but, rather, a woman by the name of Annie Farmer had been attacked.
It was reported that her attacker had fled the scene of the crimes within minutes of having committed the assault and that he had been pursued by several of the residents of the lodging house as he ran through the streets. Unfortunately they had lost him in the crowds on Brick Lane.
The consensus in the district that day was that this perpetrator was Jack the Ripper, and as the news spread far and wide, more and more people began to arrive at the scene, as well as at the police station to which the victim had been taken.
It quickly became apparent that this attack was nothing to do with Jack the Ripper, and there were rumours over the next few days that it was actually a disagreement over money between Annie Farmer and a client.
In this video we tell the story of the events of that day as they unfolded, and, suing contemporary newspaper reports and witness accounts, we gauge the mood of the East End residents as they faced up to the alarming and horrible prospect that yet another atrocity had taken place in their midst.