Daphne Dalome Hysterical News Agency Eastern Seaboard Correspondent. New York City June 21. 0300 hours

The news released from The Bloomer Building, Madison Avenue, NYC, appropriately in the dead of night that the History Maintenance Commission will input the question contained in this headline to the Omphalos and, dependant upon the results, unleash constructive efforts to keep Jack The Ripper away from any First-Aid courses in and around England’s capital approaching the fall of 1888. This move is bound to draw controversy in light of the depraved and sadistic nature of the never captured miscreant’s crimes. If the Omphalos concludes that the presence of Jack The Ripper, as we currently know him, must be preserved in history, and every endeavour made to achieve this objective, then will the History Maintenance Commission effectively become accessories to murder!

No doubt aware of the sensitive nature of this topic, the news was released without fanfare or further comment and under the veil of darkness into a city in which most of its inhabitants are asleep.

Here follows what we know of Jack The Ripper here at The Hysterical News Agency:

C. 1860

Jack is born at a young age somewhere near Watford, England, give or take a few hundred miles.

C. 1861

He first becomes known as Jack The Nipper.

1871

Jack refuses to take the blame for a series of thefts from churches in his vicinity of their musical instruments. This despite the fact that in a piece of schoolwork Jack admitted that he loves nothing more than the thought of roaming the streets and removing organs.

1872

Teachers start to show concerns when Jack no longer submits his homework on paper but writes his essays and other messages on walls instead. This proves particularly galling for Mr Lucas the Religious Education teacher Who has to hire scaffolding equipment and a series of long ladders to enable him to mark an essay about the Jewish Diaspora located near the top of an industrial chimney near Wapping.

1874

Jack finds the Times are hard upon leaving school. Why the editor chose to include bitumen in the paper making process during this period has never been satisfactorily explained.

1875

Jack is engaged on a fish stall at Billingsgate Market, where he becomes widely known as Jack The Kipper Ripper. Unfortunately, he is thrown out of his lodgings nearby as fellow residents are afraid to have a nap in his vicinity.

1878

Jack becomes a trainee stonemason and is allowed, by his tutor, to add the final word to each gravestone. As a consequence he becomes known as Jack The RIPer.

1885

Jack realises that he is set upon a path to nowhere and curses that he didn’t move when the concrete was being laid. He extricates himself but has to leave his boots behind.

1887

Jack is increasingly besotted with knives and the potential for destruction that they can cause. He joins a group called ‘The Whitechapel Slashers’ but is dismayed to discover that they are not a group of kindred spirits devoted to the wanton wielding of blades, but a group of senior citizens campaigning for the reopening of public urinals on Goulston Street.

Then in the fall of 1888 come the Jack The Ripper murders that will not be glorified here. Punctuated by communications received by The Central News Agency and also by George Lusk, Secretary of The Whitechapel Vigilance Committee, proporting to derive from Jack The Ripper himself.