1889: The Peterborough Advertiser of 19 January carried a small article on a woman named Alice McKenzie. It reported that at 10 a.m. on 15 January, she had entered Mrs Popp's pork butcher's shop in Long Causeway and purchased a pennyworth of 'chitterlings' (the small intestines of a pig), which she immediately devoured in the shop, in such a hurried way that Mrs Popp formed the distinct impression that she was starving. Having eaten these she demanded more - for free. Mrs Popp called for help from the police - more, she said, to get Alice out of her shop than to have her arrested. When PC Smith arrived, he took Alice out of the shop and straight to the police station in Milton Street - with Alice singing her head off. At the station she was charged with begging, but at the court hearing, the chairman of the bench stated that there was no basis for a conviction and Alice was free to go. Six months later, the national newspapers were reporting on Alice McKenzie again. She had been found dead in Castle Alley, Whitechapel. Could she have been the eighth and final victim of Jack the Ripper? (Peterborough Local History Magazine)

Taken from The Peterborough Book of Days by Brian Jones, The History Press, 2014.