A woman was reported in The Pall Mall Gazette on September 4, 1888, as having been assaulted when she was threatened with a knife to her throat—close to where Polly Nichols had been slain.

The woman had left the Foresters’ Music Hall in Cambridge Heath-road at 10pm on September 1 after spending the evening in the company of a sea captain, when a well-dressed man requested her to walk a short distance with him, as he wanted to meet a friend.

They had reached a point near to the scene of the murder the night before of the woman Polly Nichols near Buck’s-row, behind Whitechapel railway station, when the man violently seized her by the throat and dragged her down a court.

He was immediately joined by a gang of women and bullies, who stripped the unfortunate woman of her necklace, earrings, and brooch and stole her purse.

The woman was brutally assaulted and attempted to shout for aid, when one of the gang laid a large knife across her throat and told her: “We will serve you as we did the others.”

She was, however, eventually released. The Metropolitan Police have been informed and are prosecuting inquiries into the matter, it being regarded as a probable clue to the previous tragedies.

[The report is referring to the murders of Polly Nichols and Martha Tabram on the streets of Whitechapel]