NEWS NOTE ON JOSEPH VACHER'S ARREST: DAILY KENNEBEC JOURNAL, OCTOBER 13, 1897

In Augusta, Maine, the news that France had caught its Ripper arrived as one paragraph on page two, wedged among the short items of the day. The Daily Kennebec Journal printed it on October 13, 1897, three days after Joseph Vacher began to confess to the magistrate at Belley. The paper did not even have his first name. "A shepherd named Vacher," it said, had been arrested in the department of Ain, "charged with committing a series of so-called Jack-the-Ripper murders."

The paragraph is short, but it carries nearly everything the French authorities had announced. He had confessed to killing three shepherds, three girls and two women. He had been confined in an asylum for the insane. The killings had begun in 1895, and to the paper they seemed "actuated by purely bloodthirsty instincts, as the victims were all poor people." The bodies had been mutilated after the throats were cut. The dead were young people working alone in the fields and a widow in her cottage, people no one had connected across half of France.

Eight was only the start. Vacher went on to confess to eleven killings, and on October 25 investigators following his directions found the bones of Claudius Beaupied, fourteen, at the bottom of a well near Lyon. The prosecution tried him for one death only, that of Victor Portalier, a young shepherd found in a field near Bénonces on August 31, 1895. On October 28, 1898, a jury at Bourg-en-Bresse rejected his plea of insanity and found him guilty, and he was guillotined there on December 31, 1898.

A same-week summary, without a headline, of what the French authorities had announced, set in a column of news notes; it reports the moment the case broke and nothing more. The paper says he was arrested at Belley, but he was caught on August 4, 1897, at Champis in the Ardèche, after an attack on a farm woman, and was later brought to Belley for questioning. It dates the series from 1895; the earliest killing he confessed to was in May 1894. The paper calls him a shepherd, though he was a vagrant who tramped the roads, and several of his victims were shepherds. Eleven killings are accepted on his confessions; a jury ruled on one, the murder of Victor Portalier.

The Daily Kennebec Journal of October 13, 1897, is more than a century old and in the public domain. The Library of Congress copy in Chronicling America supplies the scan, and the citation and rights statement are reproduced below it.

Every word of the paragraph was legible, and the transcription needed no illegible marks. It keeps "Jack-the-Ripper" hyphenated, "department of Ain," "Lyons" for Lyon, and "criminally assaulted," the period's euphemism for rape. The items printed above and below it are about other matters; their edges are visible in the crop and they are not transcribed.

Transcription

Transcribed word for word from the page scan. Original spelling, punctuation, capitalisation and typographical errors have been kept exactly as printed. Unreadable words are marked [illegible]. Nothing has been modernised or corrected.

A shepherd named Vacher has been arrested at Belley, department of Ain, 44 miles from Lyons, France, charged with committing a series of so-called Jack-the-Ripper murders. He has confessed to killing three shepherds, three girls and two women. Vacher, the authorities announce, was confined in an asylum for the insane. The series of murders attributed to him commenced in 1895 and they appear to have been actuated by purely bloodthirsty instincts, as the victims were all poor people. They were terribly mutilated after their throats had been cut and all the women were criminally assaulted.

Transcriber's notes

- Readability: excellent. Clean, well-inked type. No [illegible] markers were needed.

- Kept as printed: "Jack-the-Ripper" hyphenated throughout, "department of Ain", "Lyons" for Lyon, and "criminally assaulted" (the period euphemism for rape).

- This is a single-paragraph item with no headline of its own, set in a column of brief foreign and domestic news notes. It is not a passing mention: it reports the arrest, the confession and its count, the asylum history, the date the series began and the condition of the bodies. The paragraphs immediately above and below it concern unrelated matters and are visible at the edges of the crop.

- The confession figure given here, eight, is the one announced at arrest; Vacher later admitted eleven killings and was guillotined on 31 December 1898.