~*Victorian Whitechapel*~

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Elizabeth Jackson (aka Lizzie)

Birth date: March 18, 1865 Killed and found (age): Ca. June 3rd 1889, June 5th 1889 (24)

Complexion: Fair  Eyes colour: ?  Hair colour:  Sandy, light red or auburn Height: 5’5” (165 cm) Occupation: domestic servant

Clothes at the time of murder/discovery: Grey Ulster’s coat, black dress button, brown linsey dress, burgundy skirt with red selvedge, blue-and-white waistband/drawers bearing the name of L. E. Fisher, ?

Resting place: ?

***

Early life

Elizabeth Jackson, also known as Lizzie, was born on 18 March 1865 in the neighbourhood of Chenie-place, Pimlico (City of Westminster). She was the daughter of John Jackson, a stonemason who was born in County Tipperary, Ireland, and his wife Catherine, who was also born in Ireland but hailed from County Cork. She was the youngest of three daughters, the others were Annie and May, and she also had a brother, James. When she was about twelve she had an accident with a vase leaving her a scar in her left forearm.

In 1881, when she was sixteen, she had gone out to work as a domestic servant in the neighbourhood of Chelsea. She had been described as “of excellent character” until, in November 1888, something happened which occasioned her leaving both her job and her home. Thereafter, she had been living in various common lodging houses in the vicinity of Chelsea. Her last known address was 14 Turk’s Row, which was near Chelsea Barracks. It was there when Lizzie and her sister Anne had a nasty row, as the latter accused the former of picking up men for immoral purposes.

Later months

In November 1888 she was well known to the local police, and she took up with a casually met Cambridgeshire man, a thirty-seven-year-old millstone grinder named John Fairclough (born March 1853), with whom she moved to Ipswich in January 1889. He said they met in a public house at the corner of Turk’s Row. She had told him she had been living with a man named Charlie but the relationship was over. She bought a pair of drawers bearing the name “L.E. Fisher” at a lodging-house at Ipswich, they had belonged originally to a domestic servant at Kirkley, near Lowestoft, and had been sold as old rags by her mother while staying near her daughter in November 1888. Elizabeth and John were in Colchester on March 30th 1889 and, unable to find work there, walked all the way back to London where they settled into lodgings in Manilla Street, Millwall, taking a room at four Schillings a week, with a Mrs. Kate Pane, who would afterwards testify that Fairclough was violent in his treatment of Elizabeth, knocking her about, irrespective of her being five months pregnant.

The pair parted on 28th April, Fairclough going off to Croydon in search of a job. Mary Minter, a family friend of Elizabeth’s, gave her an Ulster’s coat not long before she disappeared. On May 31st Catherine Jackson saw his daughter only one day or two before she was murdered in Queen’s Road, Chelsea, and the two spent the time together. Lizzie was a 24 year-old  homeless prostitute about eight months pregnant, and living in London’s Soho Square at the time of her murder in early June 1889.

Discovery

On Tuesday 4th June 1889 in the morning, one package containing portions of a woman’s body was found by two boys, as witnessed by waterside labourer John Regan at George’s Stairs, Horselydown (just below London Bridge). At 10:00am, standing along the bank of the Thames, Regan noticed a couple of boys “throwing stones at an object in the water”. When one of the boys pulled the package out of the water, and realizing the contents of the package were that of human remains, contacted the Thames River police division. These remains were taken to Wapping police station by Alfred Freshwater of the Thames Police. Several experienced Scotland Yard detectives and Dr. Thomas Bond, the chief surgeon to the Metropolitan police, proceeded to Wapping (a district in East London in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets) to commence investigations. Among the first detectives and police at the scene was Melville Macnaghten, the newly appointed Assistant Chief Constable of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID).

The remains were the lower part of a female body; and she had evidently not been dead long as Dr. Bond noticed a slight ooze of blood from the ragged edges of the cut parts of flesh. Dr Bond was instantly of the opinion that the body part was that of a young woman and that an attempt had been made to carry out an illegal operation, which had been successful. None of the press reports described exactly what was found within this parcel to draw these conclusions from, but according to the medical jurisprudence book ’A system of legal medicine’, which contains details from some of Dr. Bond’s cases, there were flaps of abdominal skin and the uterus of the victim, complete with cord and placenta, “… The skin was fair, and the mons veneris was covered with light sandy hair…”

Almost simultaneous to the discovery by the two boys, was the finding of another parcel by fifteen-year-old Isaac Brett, of 7 Lawrence Street in Chelsea, who earned his living as a wood cutter. When taking a walk near the Albert Bridge, Battersea (South West London, within the London Borough of Wandsworth, about 5 miles from the spot of the first discovery), Brett decided to take a bath. Upon submerging he noticed a strange object being nudged by the tide against the muddy foreshore and tied with a bootlace. He took it ashore but didn’t open it. Upon the advice of a passing stranger, he took it straight to the Battersea Police Station, where sergeant William Briggs of V division opened it. The assistant divisional surgeon for Battersea, Dr. Felix Charles Kempster, was called in. He declared it to be a portion of a human thigh from hip to knee; his opinion was that the limb had not been in the water above 24 hours. The white cloth was the right leg of a pair of drawers, on the waistband (an item of ladies underclothing) of which had the name L.E. Fisher written in black ink along it. Fastened to another portion of the material was a piece of tweed seemingly torn from the right breast area of a lady’s long Ulster coat.

The local police immediately alerted Scotland Yard and Inspector John Bennett Tonbridge or Tunbridge of the criminal investigation department alerted Dr. Bond, who concluded that the two body parts corresponded and there were no doubts that they belonged to the same body, further proof that backed this up came from the fact the parcel found at Horselydown was wrapped in a portion of underwear identical to the portion found with the thigh section at the Albert bridge and also contained another portion of the bottom left hand side of a woman’s Ulster coat. The whole parcel had been tied up with mohair boot laces and was slightly stained with blood. Further examinations of the thigh, by Dr. Kempster and Mr. Athelstan Braxton Hicks found it to be the left one, and most likely that of a young woman within the 20 to 30 age range. Bruises made by finger marks were also found upon the thigh, and these were concluded to have been made before death.

On Wednesday 5th June 1889, the coroner of East Middlesex Wynne Edwin Baxter, who had presided over the inquests of Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman and Elizabeth Stride, opened an inquest at the Vestry hall, Wapping, into the remains found at Horselydown. He expressed doubts as to whether it was a proper case for an inquiry as it was difficult to draw the line as to what part of a body was sufficient enough to warrant an inquest. However, he had decided that an inquiry should be held and he summoned a jury. John Regan and Alfred Freshwater gave evidence at the inquest and repeated their stories. The inquest was then adjourned until the 3rd of July.

On Thursday 6th June, in the afternoon, Joseph Davis, a gardener at Battersea Park, was at work near some greenery rhododendron shrubbery when he noticed a parcel laying on the ground in an area that was closed to the public. The shrubbery was situated about 200 yards from the shore of the Thames and was a place not frequented usually by the public or employed staff at the park. On nearing the bundle, that was rides with white Venetian blind cord, he noticed an unpleasant smell emanating from it. Upon open it, Davis threw the thing in shock, horrified to recognise parcelled therein bits and pieces from a human body wrapped in a burgundy-coloured skirt. Off he shot in a desperate dash in search of one of the patrolling park policemen. He found police constable Walter Augier of V division, and conveyed the parcel to Battersea police station by means of a garden basket. Dr Kempster, whose surgery was only a few yards from the police station, was alerted to the find by Sergeants Viney and Briggs, Viney being in charge of local inquires into the case. Telegrams were despatched to police headquarters describing the remains found as thus: the upper part of a woman’s trunk, probably a portion of other human remains found in the Thames. The chest cavity was empty but among the remains were the spleen, both kidneys, a portion of the intestines and a portion of the stomach. There was also a portion of midriff and both breasts present. The chest had been cut through the centre, thought to have possibly been done by a saw. Kempster was of the opinion that due to the state of decomposure, they were probably looking at another portion of the same remains previously found in the Thames, and that the murder might have taken place as early as June 2nd.

That same Thursday afternoon, around 4pm, Charles Marlow, a man working on a barge at Covington’s Wharf adjacent to the London, Brighton and South Coast railway at Battersea and coincidentally, almost immediately opposite the spot where an arm belonging to the ’Whitehall torso’ was found in the previous year, noticed a parcel floating up the river, he fished the bundle, wrapped in portions of a woman’s dark coloured skirt and tied with ordinary string, out with a broom. Once again a passing Thames police boat was flagged down and Inspector William Law of the Thames division took possession of it at Waterloo Pier, and was conveyed to Battersea police station to await the scrutiny of Dr. Kempster. This latest find was the upper part of a woman’s trunk, the arms had been taken off cleanly at the shoulder joints and the head separated from the body close to the shoulders. The chest had been cut down the centre in a similar fashion to the other portion of the trunk. A portion of the windpipe remained within the trunk but the lungs were missing. An earlier supposition that the victim had light red or auburn hair was substantiated on the finding on this portion of the body.

The doctors and police were now gradually building up a physical description of the woman, based on measurements of the various body parts already found and this description was widely circulated. The police regarded the name of L.E. Fisher, stencilled into the underwear found wrapping parts of the body, as an important clue that may lead to her identification. Several people reported missing female relatives that fitted the description.

By Friday 7th June several other missing portions of the body began to be discovered. A section of the lower right leg and foot were picked up by gyspy Solomon Hearne on the foreshore near Wandsworth Bridge in Fulham (an area of the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham in South West London), wrapped in the same tweed Ulster coat fragments as the previous finds. The left leg and foot were found near Limehouse (district in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets in East London) by lighterman Edward Stanton, this piece was wrapped in the sleeve of the same Ulster. A liver and other portions of supposed abdominal flesh, were also found around this time in the Thames by nitric acid maker David Goodman and the Inspector Hodson of the Thames Division dully passed it on to Dr. Kempster to be analysed and assessed as to whether they came from the same body or not. The police and large numbers of volunteers, including the Royal Humane society, were engaged in searches and dredging along the river in the Battersea area. A portion of lung was discovered at Palace Wharf, Vauxhall (Surrey, Central London) and brought to Dr Kempster at Battersea, all the found pieces were preserved in spirits and doctors were of the opinion that there was no doubt they all belonged to the same body. Portions of the clothing that accompanied the finds were taken along to the Bridge Road police station at Battersea in order that they could be inspected by anyone who may have been missing a female friend or relative fitting the description. An inquest was also held at Pimlico (City of Westminster) concerning the body of a newborn female child found bundled in ragged, filthy clothing and bedding and dumped in an underground station near Edbury Bridge. There was some suspicion that this may have connection with the case under investigation, based on some press reports that the victim found in the Thames had been delivered of a child recently. The cause of death of this child could not be ascertained however.

On Friday 8th June the left arm and hand turned up in the river Thames off Bankside. Dr Kempster described the hands as pale delicate and genteel and evidently that of a person who was in a superior position in life, although the nails had been bitten down to the quick. There were marks from a ring being removed later discovered on the left hand, indicating the deceased had probably been married. Vaccination marks were also found upon the arm. This time the limb was wrapped in brown paper and tied up with string.

On the Saturday afternoon the buttocks and the bony pelvis, with all the organs missing, were picked up near Battersea steam boat pier. These parts were all found to correspond with other parts found among the first discoveries at Horselydown a few days earlier. The bladder was said to have been cut through in the pubic arch. According to the Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper of Sunday 9th June, a strange discovery was made on examining the buttocks closer. A fine piece of linen, approximately 9.5in. by 8in., possibly a handkerchief, was found rolled up and pushed into the back passage: “The third portion of the trunk consisted of the pelvis from below the third lumbar vertebra. The thighs had been taken off opposite The hip joints by long, sweeping incisions through the skin, muscles and tissues down to the joint, the heads of the bones neatly disarticulated… The pelvis contained the lower part of the vagina and the lower part of the rectum, the front part of the bladder including the urethra…”

The right thigh was also found the same day in the garden of the poet Sir Percy Byshee Shelley’s Chelsea house, which was being rented out to another occupier at the time. It was very much decomposed and wrapped in some more portions of the now familiar Ulster coat as well as what appeared to be the coarse fabric pocket of an apron, similar to those used by meat or fish salesman or costermongers.

On the 10th June the right arm and hand were found floating in the Thames off Newton’s Wharf near Blackfriars Bridge. The only portions of the body still missing were the heart, lungs, head and neck and the intestines. By Tuesday the 11th June no further human remains had been discovered and it was doubted whether any further portions would turn up, although on the 12th June the remains of a male foetus, of approximately 5 or 6 months gestation, was found floating in the river near Whitehall, in a jar similar to the ones used for pickles, the doctors were undecided if this had any connection to the case in hand.

Drs Bond, Charles A. Hebbert and Kempster then made their final examination of all the remains at the Battersea mortuary in preparation for making their final report to the Commissioners of Police. It was conclusively established that the remains were that of a woman under the age range of twenty five, and approximately 5ft. 5 in. tall with bright reddish-golden hair. It was believed from the condition of the hands, showing no signs of hard labour or manual work, that the murdered woman had occupied a better position in life than was indicated by the clothing found with the body.

‘The Times’ of 13th June reported that the body was accompanied by “an old brown linsey dress, red selvedge, two flounces round the bottom, waistband made of small blue-and-white check material like duster clothe, a piece of canvas roughly sewn on the end of the band, a large brass pin in the skirt and a black dress button, about the size of a threepenny piece, with lines across in the pocket.” The torn pieces of Ulster’s coat was get with a black cross-hatching pattern forming a check design. The material was of good quality but old.

Inquest

On Saturday the 15th June, the inquest on the circumstances surrounding the death of the woman whose mutilated remains were found over a 12 day period in June, in and around the Thames, was opened at The Star and Garter Battersea by Mr A. Braxton Hicks, coroner for Mid Surrey. No less than 23 witnesses were in attendance that day. Dr Thomas Bond handed the coroner a lengthy report on the medical findings and the description of the woman was again repeated including the fact that she was pregnant by about seven to eight months and undelivered at the time of her death, the unborn child having been removed, by an incision into the uterus after the mother’s death. Dr Bond went on to state that as part of the stomach was missing there was no way of knowing if the victim had been administered drugs of any kind, but he had seen no trace of instruments having been used for an unlawful purpose. The cause of death could not be determined as the head, throat, lungs and heart had never been recovered, although attempts had been made to recover the head using the dog, Smoker, who had been successful at discovering missing parts in the Whitehall case. He also stated that the medical men had concluded that “the division of the parts showed skill and design: not, however, the anatomical skill of a surgeon, but the practical knowledge of a butcher or a knacker. There was a great similarity between the condition, as regarded cutting up, of the remains and that of those found at Rainham, and at the new police building on the Thames Embankment.”

Various witness testimonies were then heard, describing the finding of the various portions of the body, including the testimony of Joseph Churcher, sub inspector of the Thames police, who had found the buttocks and pelvis. He repeated the fact, that this portion of the body had a piece of linen placed inside it. The full details as reported in the earlier Lloyd’s article were not however mentioned in the inquest press reports. At this point it was stated that the identification of the victim was still a mystery and very few people had been to view the remains or clothing by that time. The inquest was then adjourned for two weeks.

On June the 26th, via the central news agency and coinciding with fresh reports that the victim had now been possibly identified as an unfortunate named Elizabeth Jackson, came news of previously undisclosed information that ‘various circumstances connected with the fate of this victim had led to a belief that she was really a victim of the Whitechapel fiend, Jack the Ripper.’ It was reported that this information involved “a nameless indignity inflicted upon the corpse, which it was then considered advisable to suppress in the published reports. That indignity was of a character instinctively to suggest the handiwork of the most brutal of murderers”.

In the 11 days since the last inquest, the Metropolitan police, acting on information received, had been investigating the possibility that the victim was a missing homeless unfortunate named Elizabeth Jackson. She had not been seen by most family or friends since the end of May and her father had expressed concern in a letter to another of his daughters, that the Thames victim may have been his missing daughter Elizabeth.

The identification came about by means of the clothing of the victim, her description, pregnant condition at the time of her disappearance and also the fact that Elizabeth had a scar on her wrist as a result of a childhood accident. This was investigated by the doctors and by lifting away a small amount of skin from the slightly decomposed arm of the victim they were able to locate traces of similar scar on the wrist.

The police traced Elizabeth’s movements up until the time of her disappearance. She had been a frequenter of common lodging houses in the Chelsea area and was last known to have lived at a house in Turk’s Row, close to the Chelsea Barracks. Police discovered she had not been seen in any of her usual haunts or been an inmate of any casual wards, workhouses or hospitals in London since her disappearance. Given that she was destitute, the only option if she had left the London area would have been for her to tramp on foot, but because of her physical condition, police thought this would have been difficult for her and most unlikely. The lodging houses that Elizabeth had lodged from time to time and the areas she promenaded at night were all within a short distance of Battersea Bridge, the area where it was believed that the lighter parts of the body were disposed of from.

Elizabeth had boasted to friends, in particular a close friend nicknamed ‘Ginger Nell,’ that she had been in the habit of remaining in Battersea Park, the area where the upper portion of her trunk had been discovered, after the park gates had been closed to the public. The park was also known to be one of the areas the unfortunate 'promenaded.’ This information gave rise in some newspapers to the theory that Elizabeth had been accosted, murdered and dismembered in the park itself, and that there were serious grounds for connecting the murder of Elizabeth Jackson with the Whitechapel atrocities.

Other reports suggested the idea that there were two main theories connected with this case. One being the abortion theory, the other one being the fact that Elizabeth had been in the habit of sleeping outdoors on the Chelsea Embankment and on disclosure of this fact had been warned, again by her friend 'Ginger Nell,’ that she should be wary of the rough character of the waterside labourers and their treatment of homeless unfortunates. It was believed she may have fallen victim to one of these rough characters that frequented the areas around the Thames and may have been murdered outdoors alongside the Thames or else met her death on board a vessel there.

On Monday July 1st the inquest into the death was resumed before Mr. Braxton Hicks. Elizabeth Jackson’s mother, sisters and various friends and acquaintances of Elizabeth’s were present and gave witness testimony to the effect that they were convinced beyond doubt of the identification of the body found in the Thames as that of Elizabeth Jackson, only Elizabeth’s brother expressed any doubts as to the identification, on account of the description of the 'genteel’ hands. Mention was also made of John Faircloth, who up until that point had remained untraced. Police expressed their eagerness to interview him, whose photograph was in the process of being circulated around various parts of the country, with a view to locating him. Faircloth, a former soldier and punished deserter from the 3rd battalion Grenadier Guards, was said to have been the father of Elizabeth’s child and she had passed herself off as his wife, even wearing a cheap brass ring to carry this off. Police also made it known that the deceased had been seen alive and in the company of a man a little over twenty four hours previous to the first discoveries in the Thames. The inquiry was then adjourned again until Faircloth, and the man seen with Elizabeth on the alleged night of her death could be located by police, descriptions were given of both men. The inquest ended with the coroner making an order for the remains to be buried in the name of Elizabeth Jackson.

By July 8th came news from Scotland Yard that a man named John Faircloth, fitting the description of the paramour of Elizabeth Jackson had been located in Tipton St John, Devon. Sergeant Pope of the Devonshire constabulary communicated with Scotland Yard and Inspector Tunbridge of the Criminal Investigation Department was sent to Tipton to find Faircloth and bring him back to London. Faircloth was found and proved to be the man wanted to help with inquiries into Elizabeth’s death. He proceeded willingly and voluntarily back to London, stating that he had heard no news whatsoever of Elizabeth’s death, and being an illiterate man, had been unable to read anything of the matter. He was however, willing to answer any questions he could to help in the inquiry and would give a full account of his life with Elizabeth and their subsequent split.

As a result of Faircloth’s return to London, the previously adjourned inquest was resumed earlier than had been scheduled. On Monday 8th July Faircloth was the main witness at the inquest. His life with Elizabeth and his whereabouts at the time of her death, and since, were discussed in great detail. The inquest was then adjourned again until the 25th July so as to allow the police to thoroughly check out Faircloth’s story and continue with their investigations.

On July the 17th, between these two inquests, came the reports of the murder of Alice Mckenzie in Castle Alley, Whitechapel. These reports again included comment from The Central News Agency that it was thought by not a few people, that the Thames mystery was also the work of the wretch, believed to have left off after the Mary Jane Kelly murder of 9th November 1888. This was owed principally to the fact that the various portions of the body found, seemed to show that the murderer had taken a fiendish delight in performing mutilations upon it.

On the 25th July, Mr. Braxton Hicks opened his very last enquiry into the circumstances surrounding the death of Elizabeth Jackson. Inspector Tunbridge stated that after exhaustive and thorough efforts by police, the exact whereabouts of the man Faircloth, at the time of the murder of Elizabeth Jackson had been confirmed without a doubt. He was found to have been nowhere in the vicinity of London or within travelling distance for a period of time before the murder. Faircloth had a solid and witnessed alibi for the days leading up to the murder of Elizabeth. The Coroner then stated that was all the evidence. He remarked that this case was somewhat different to the cases that had unfortunately occurred in Whitechapel. This was a case in which a woman had died under circumstances that in themselves were excessively suspicious. He went on to say that everything on the body pointed to the conclusion that the body was that of Elizabeth Jackson and suggested to the jury that a verdict of wilful murder, by some person or persons unknown should be returned. A verdict in accordance with the coroner’s direction was reached and the jury complemented the police engaged on the case on their vigilance and the ability they had shown in bringing the matter to an issue.

Aftermath

The previous press claims that the murder of Elizabeth Jackson could be linked to the Whitechapel fiend; Jack the Ripper soon lost their momentum. By the time of the discovery of the Pinchin Street torso in Whitechapel in September 1889, the press were linking the murder of Elizabeth Jackson to this more recent murder. The two murders were also linked by the press to the previous Rainham and Whitehall mysteries. Inspector Tunbridge, who had been in charge of the Jackson murder investigation, was brought in to view the Pinchin Street torso, along with detectives who had been involved in the other similar cases. It was reported that the general opinion of these detectives was that the mode of dismemberment in all these cases was strikingly similar and there was also an opinion expressed that these murders were of a 'different origin’ to the Whitechapel atrocities.

***

TO KNOW MORE:

Casebook Website – Casebook Message Boards – Debra Arif report on Casebook – Casebook Forums - Dr. Hebberd’s reports on Elizabeth Jackson and the Whitehall Mystery – Casebook Forums - Elizabeth’s location in Battersea Park – Casebook Forums - was Elizabeth’s murder related to abortion? – Casebook Message Boards - L. E. Fisher

JTR Forums - Elizabeth Jackson – JTR Forums - Elizabeth Jackson’s press reports – JTR Forums - Elizabeth Jackson’s as Whitechapel Murders’ victim

Jack The Ripper Tour

Thomas Bond page

Wiki Visually

Red Jack Blogspot (in Italian)

Jack The Ripper German Forum (in German)

BEGG, Paul & BENNETT, John (2014): The forgotten victims.

BEGG, Paul; FIDO, Martin & SKINNER, Keith (1996): The Jack The Ripper A – Z.

BROWNING, Corey (2010): The Darker Side of Evolution, in The Casebook Examiner, NUM. 5, December.

EDDLESTON, John J. (2001): Jack the Ripper: An Encyclopedia.

GORDON, R. Michael (2015): The Thames Torso Murders of Victorian London.

HAMILTON, Allan McLane & GODKIN, Edwin Lawrence (1894): A System of Legal Medicine.

MACNAGHTEN, Sir Melville L. (1914): Days of My Years.

TROW, Meirion James (2011): The Thames Torso Murders. 

1877 – When she is about twelve she has an accident with a vase leaving her a scar in her left forearm.

1881 – Aged 16, Elizabeth goes out to work as a domestic servant in the neighbourhood of Chelsea, South West London.

1888 – Elizabeth leaves both her job and her home, and tereafter, she lives in various common lodging houses in the vicinity of Chelsea (November).

1888 – Elizabeth lives with a much older man, thirty-seven-year-old millstone grinder named John Fairclough (November).

1889 – Elizabeth and John go to live at Ipswich, Suffolk, East Anglia, where she buys a pair of second-hand drawers bearing the name “L.E. Fisher” (January).

1889 – Elizabeth and John are in Colchester, Essex, and, unable to find work there, they walk all the way back to London, where they settle into lodgings in Manilla Street, Millwall, East London. She is five months pregnant (March 30).

1889 – They break-up, John goes to Croydon, south London, in search of a job. Mary Minter, a family friend of Elizabeth’s, gives her an Ulster’s coat (April 28).

1889 – Catherine Jackson sees her daughter Elizabeth in Queen’s Road, Chelsea, and the two spent the time together (May 31).

1889 – One package containing portions of a woman’s body is found by two boys at George’s Stairs, Horselydown, just below London Bridge (June 4).

1889 – After many dismembered body limbs and clothes are found around London, she is identified as Lizzie Jackson. She was 24 years old and about eight months pregnant (June 26).

International Women’s Day (IWD) is celebrated on the 8th of March every year. It is a focal point in the movement for woman’s rights. German revolutionary Clara Zetkin proposed at the 1910 International Socialist Woman’s Conference that 8 March be honored as a day annually in memory of working women.  The day has been celebrated as International Women’s Day or International Working Women’s Day ever since.

Women’s rights are the rights and entitlements claimed for women and girls worldwide, and which formed the basis for the women’s rights movement in the 19th century and feminist movement during the 20th century. Issues commonly associated with notions of women’s rights include the right to bodily integrity and autonomy; to be free from sexual violence; to vote; to hold public office; to enter into legal contracts; to have equal rights in family law; to work; to fair wages or equal pay; to have reproductive rights; to own property; to education.

Between 1873 and 1891 eleven poor and working class women (pictured, Ada Wilson, Emma Elizabeth Smith, Martha Tabram, Annie Chapman, Mary Ann Nichols, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, Mary Jane Kelly, Rose Mylett, Alice McKenzie and Frances Coles) were attacked and murdered in London’s East End by a killer(s) who was never caught, and other 7 (including Annie Millwood and Elizabeth Jackson, and 5 unidentified ones) suffered a similar fate. They were murdered just because they were women and their murderer(s) was a misogynistic psycho.

While the killer(s) went onto have a large amount of tours and walks, studies and published works (regarding who he might was, different theories as why he did it), the victims were divided in categories and some of them completely forgotten. So here you find a list of research/non-fiction books about these women if you are interested to know more about them (the list is going to be updated when new books are published, thanks).

·         BEGG, Paul & BENNETT, John (2014): The forgotten victims.

·         CHAUVET, Didier (2002): Mary Jane Kelly: La dernière victime.

·         FROST, Rebecca (2018): The Ripper’s Victims in Print. The Rethoric Portrayals Since 1929.

·         HUME, Robert (2019): The hidden lives of Jack the Ripper’s victims.

·         KEEFE, John. E. (2010, revisited 2012): Carroty Nell. The last victim of Jack the Ripper.

·         RANDALL, Anthony J. (2013): Jack the Ripper. Blood lines.

·         RUBENHOLD, Hallie (2019): The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women killed by Jack the Ripper / The Five: The Lives of Jack the Ripper’s Women.

·         SCOTT, Chris (2005): Will the real Mary Kelly…?.

·         SHELDEN, Neal E. (2013): Mary Jane Kelly and the Victims of Jack the Ripper: The 125th Anniversary.

·         SHELDEN STUBBINGS, Neal (2007): The Victims of Jack the Ripper.

·         WHITTINGTON-EGAN, Richard (2015): Mr Atherstone Leaves the Stage. The Battersea Murder Mystery: A Twisting and Tragic Tale of Love, Jealousy and Violence in the age of Vaudeville.

·         YOST, Dave (2008): Elizabeth Stride and Jack The Ripper.

**

You may be interested in the “A Hidden History of Women in the East End: The Alternative Jack the Ripper tour” to know how these women lived in Victorian Whitechapel.

May they never be forgotten.

**

Alice “Clay Pipe” McKenzie

Alice McKenzie (b. Alice Pitts, aka Alice Kinsey, “Clay Pipe” Alice, Alice Bryant, Kelly)

Birth date: March 8, 1845 Attacked and killed (age): July 17, 1889 (44)

Complexion: Freckle-faced Eyes colour: Hazel Hair colour: Auburn Height: 5′4″ (163 cm) Ocupation: Washerwoman and charwoman

Clothes at the time of murder/discovery: A black coat; a brown/black staff skirt; a red staff bodice; a linsey petticoat; black stockings; buttoned boots; a Paisley shawl.

Resting place: Plaistow Cemetery, Bromley.

***

Early Life

Alice McKenzie was born Alice Pitts on March 8th 1845 in the Precincts of Peterborough Minster (Cathedral), Cambridgeshire (England) to Charles Pitts, a post office messenger, and Martha, neé Watson. She had four older siblings, William, John, Martha and Jane, and two younger brothers, Charles and Thomas.

Around 1860, when she was 15, Alice worked for Mrs Strickland in her refreshment rooms in St. John Street, Peterborough. In 1861, aged 17, Alice no longer lived with her family, but  in the household of a master brazier named Edward Miller in High Cross Street, Leicester where she was employed as a house servant.

On October 11th1863 Alice Pitts marries Joseph Kinsey or McKenzie, a chair and cabinet maker at All Saints Church, Leicester. Three years later, on 21st July 1866 they became parents of Joseph James at Freeman’s Common, St Mary, Leicester. Sadly, on October 12th of the same year baby Joseph James died of ‘marasmus’ (a form of malnutrition) at 4 Joseph Street, St. Mary, Leicester. The informant was his mother, Alice, who was present at the death. The following year, on 18thFebruary 1867 Joseph Kinsey died aged 25 of tuberculosis at the same place. The informant was Alice Kinsey, then aged around 22, who was present at the death. Notices of Joseph’s death were printed in several local newspapers.

On 31st October 1873, a 27-year-old laundress named Alice McKenzie, widow of carpenter Joseph McKenzie was convicted of ’D & R’ at Southwark police court. She was fined 10s and sentenced to 7 days imprisonment with hard labour, which she served in Wandsworth Prison. She was described as 5ft 4 ½ ins tall, with Auburn hair, hazel eyes and pale complexion. She was released on 6th November, 1873. Prior to that, she had already been convicted, but the details haven’t arrived to this day.

Later life

She was later to move into the East End of London sometime before 1874. On August 13th 1875 she was admitted to the Whitechapel Infirmary from Leman Street police station because she was ‘Ill and destitute’. She was discharged on 20thAugust, 1875. She went there again on June 14th 1877 due to an ulcer and stayed until the 23rd. On August 1st she was admitted to the St George Workhouse, Mint Street, Southwark having been charged with being drunk but was discharged the same day. On March 1878 her father Charles Pitts died in Peterborough, aged 74. On June 26th, a 32-year-old laundress and hawker was convicted at Southwark police court of being ‘drunk in a thoro'fare’. She was fined 5s and sentenced to 7 days imprisonment with hard labour, which she served in Wandsworth Prison. She was released on 2nd July, 1878. From 1883 Alice lived, off and on, with an Irishman named John McCormack (also Bryant) who was in the employ of some Jewish tailors in Hamburg Street as a porter, at various East End common lodging and doss-houses. On August 11th, aged 37, she was admitted to the Whitechapel Infirmary due to an ulcer and she was discharged on 24th August. From November 5th to 16th she was admitted to the workhouse infirmary by a policeman who found her drunk in ‘Dorset Street’. On December 20th another policeman brought her to the Whitechapel Infirmary for alcoholism and fits. She was discharged on 23rd December.

On December 1885 her mother Martha Pitts died in Peterborough, aged 74. 

Last months and murder

On January 1889 Alice was arrested for causing a disturbance in a butcher’s shop in Long Causeway, Peterborough, very near the Minster Precincts. Besides that, Alice worked for her Jewish neighbours as a washerwoman and charwoman, and from April she resided with John McCormack mainly at Mr. Tenpenny’s common lodging house, 52 Gun Street, Spitalfields. It was managed by Mrs. Elizabeth Ryder, wife of Richard John Ryder. At this time, Alice was around 43 years of age, described as a freckle-faced woman with a penchant for both smoke and drink. She preferred the smoke of a pipe, which was soon to grant her the name “Clay Pipe” Alice by her friends and acquaintances. Her left thumb was also injured in what was no doubt some sort of industrial accident.

On Tuesday 16th July 1889 she spent the day at the common lodging house but the evening possibly at the Cambridge Music Hall with a blind boy. From 11:30pm to midnight, Alice chatted with three women, Margaret Franklin, Catherine Hughes and Sarah Marney in Flower and Dean Street, and then left alone toward Whitechapel.

On Wednesday 17th July, at 12:15am Police Constable Joseph Allen took a break under a street lamp in Castle Alley, a dark and dismal snickleway that led off Whitechapel High Street, for a bite to eat. The narrowness and overall dismalness of this alley had, for several years prior, been the subject of much comment in the local press, and this latest Whitechapel murder led to calls for the local authority to “do something” about its condition. According to Allen the alley was completely deserted. After about five minutes, Allen noticed another constable entering the alley. It was P.C. Walter Andrews, who remained in the alley for about three minutes. He saw nothing of a suspicious nature.

At about 12:25am, Sarah Smith, deputy of the Whitechapel Baths and Washhouses (which lined Castle Alley) retired to her room. She began reading in bed, the closed window of her room overlooking the entire alley. Sarah later testified she heard nothing suspicious until she heard the blow of Andrews’ whistle.

At 12:45am it began to rain in Whitechapel. Five minutes later, P.C. Andrews returned to Castle Alley on his regular beat, about twenty-seven minutes having passed since he left the area. This time, however, he discovered the body of a woman lying on the pavement, her head angled toward the curb and her feet toward the wall. Blood flowed from two stabs in the left side of her neck and her skirts had been lifted, revealing blood across her abdomen, which had been mutilated.

The pavement beneath the body of Alice was still dry, placing her death sometime after 12:25am and before 12:45am, when it began to rain. In her possession were found a clay pipe often referred to as a ‘nose warmer’ and a bronze farthing. She was noticed to have been wearing some ‘odd stockings.’ P.C. Andrews heard someone approaching the alley soon after, it was Isaac Lewis Jacobs, of Old Castle-street, who was running home when the police-constable came towards him and asked him “for God’s sake” to go to the woman and stand by while he called assistance. Lewis went to the spot while the constable was blowing his whistle. At 1:10am Inspector Edmund Reid arrived only moments before the Divisional Police Surgeon, Dr George Bagster Philips, and noted that blood was still flowing, but by when Philips arrived, about 1:12am, he pronounced life extinct.

It would be several hours before the body was identified, in the meantime a description was circulated to the newspapers, with one peculiarity: part of the nail on the thumb on the left hand was deficient. The papers also mentioned the clay pipe found near the body. Several hours elapsed before the woman was identified, but John McCormack came forward during the day and recognised her. He stated that he did not know whether the deceased had been married, and that the reason of her going out last night was that they had had a slight quarrel, and that she had never, to his knowledge, been out late at night previously. He also said that she was a hard-working woman and was very much upset about her fate. He also identified the clay pipe as belonging to her.

Investigation

Dr. Philips performed the post-mortem and declared that the cause of death was from severance of the left carotid artery. She also suffered two stabs in the left side of the neck , some bruising on chest and five bruises or marks on left side of abdomen. Cut was made from left to right, apparently while McKenzie was on the ground. The body also presented a long (seven-inch) ‘but not unduly deep’ wound from the bottom of the left breast to the navel, seven or eight scratches beginning at the navel and pointing toward the genitalia and small cut across the mons veneris. Dr. Phillips believed there was a degree of anatomical knowledge necessary to have committed the atrocities to McKenzie.

The mutilations committed upon McKenzie were mostly superficial in manner, the deepest of which opened neither the abdominal cavity nor the muscular structure. The wounds also suggested that the killer was left-handed (as opposed to the Ripper being right-handed). Phillips suggested the five marks on the left side of her body were an imprint of the killer’s right hand, which left only his left hand to facilitate the injuries. Dr. Thomas Bond disagreed, claiming there was no evidence to support the theory that those marks were made through such processes (admittedly, Bond saw the body the day after the post mortem, and it had already begun to decompose). The weapon was agreed upon to have been a ‘sharp- pointed weapon,’ although it could be smaller than the one used by the Ripper.

Phillips ultimately claimed that McKenzie’s death was not attributable to the Ripper. Dr. Thomas Bond chose the opposite conclusion, telling Sir Robert Anderson he believed it was indeed a Ripper killing, but Anderson himself disagreed, writing: “I am here assuming that the murder of Alice McKenzie on the 17th of July 1889, was by another hand. I was absent from London when it occurred, but the Chief Commissioner investigated the case on the spot and decided it was an ordinary murder, and not the work of a sexual maniac.” Inspector Frederick Abberline also believed this was not a Ripper murder.

Commissioner James Monro, who had replaced Sir Charles Warren in the position, was on duty during the investigation since Anderson was on leave at the time, and disagreed: “I need not say that every effort will be made by the police to discover the murderer, who, I am inclined to believe, is identical with the notorious Jack the Ripper of last year.” In fact, on the day of the murder, Monro deployed 3 sergeants and 39 constables on duty in Whitechapel, increasing the force with 22 extra men.

At the inquest, which was held on July 17th and 19th, and later adjourned to August 14th, Coroner Wynne Edwin Baxter acknowledged that Alice could have been either killed by the Ripper or another killer, and concluded: “There is great similarity between this and the other class of cases, which have happened in this neighbourhood, and if the same person has not committed this crime, it is clearly an imitation of the other cases.” The conclusion was the all too familiar ‘murder by a person or persons unknown.’

Aftermath

The Scotland Yard Files pertaining to the McKenzie murder detail an interesting sidebar concerning an individual named William Wallace Brodie, who confessed to murdering the woman. It was earlier printed in the Kimberley Advertiser of June 29th, 1889 that Brodie had confessed to all the Whitechapel murders while in a drunken stupor. His statement was forwarded by Chief Inspector Henry Moore, but Superintendent Thomas Arnold gave instructions to dismiss Brodie as of unsound mind. Scotland Yard gave the same prognosis: “Let him be charged as a lunatic.” It was soon discovered that Brodie had a conviction for larceny, and just to be sure, enquiries were made into his character and location during the Whitechapel Murders. It was found that he was in South Africa between September 6th, 1888 and July 15th, 1889. Ultimately, Brodie was released from custody, but was almost immediately rearrested for fraud.

Alice was buried in Plaistow Cemetery (East London) on Wednesday 24th July, 1889.

***

To know more:

Wikipedia

Casebook website – Casebook Forum – Casebook Wiki

Jack The Ripper.org

Jack The Ripper Tour

JTR Forums (where all her family and early years information comes from!)

Jack The Ripper Map

Historic Mysteries

BEGG, Paul (2013): Jack The Ripper. The Facts.

BEGG, Paul & BENNETT, John (2014): The forgotten victims.

BEGG, Paul; FIDO, Martin & SKINNER, Keith (1996): The Jack The Ripper A – Z.

EDDLESTON, John J. (2001): Jack the Ripper: An Encyclopedia.

EVANS, Stewart P. & RUMBELOW, Donald (2006): Jack the Ripper: Scotland Yard Investigates.

EVANS, Stewart P. & SKINNER, Keith (2001): Jack the Ripper: Letters from Hell.

GRAY, Drew D. (2010): London’s Shadows. The Dark Side of the Victorian City

JAKUBOWSKI, Maxim & BRAUND, Nathan (1999): The Mammoth Book of Jack The Ripper.

MARRIOTT, Trevor (2005): Jack the Ripper: The 21st Century Investigation.

PRIESTLEY, Mick P. (2018): One Autumn in Whitechapel.

RUMBELOW, Donald (2004): The Complete Jack the Ripper: Fully Revised and Updated.

1860 – Aged 15, Alice works for Mrs Strickland in her refreshment rooms in St. John Street, Peterborough.

1861 – Aged 17, she no longer lives with her family, but in the household of a master brazier named Edward Miller in High Cross Street, Leicester where she is employed as a house servant.

1863 – Alice marries chair and cabinet maker Joseph Kinsey or McKenzie at All Saints Church, Leicester, Leicestershire, East Midlands (October 11).

1866 – Alice and Joseph are parents of Joseph James, born at Freeman’s Common, St Mary, Leicester (July 21).

1866 – Baby Joseph James dies of ‘marasmus’ (a form of malnutrition) at 4 Joseph Street, St. Mary, Leicester (October 12).

1867 – Joseph Kinsey dies aged 25 of tuberculosis(February 18).

1873 – 27 year-old laundress Alice is convicted of ’D & R’ at Southwark police court, central London. She is fined 10s and sentenced to 7 days imprisonment with hard labour, which she serves in Wandsworth Prison, South West London (October 31 to November 6).

1875 – She is admitted to the Whitechapel Infirmary from Leman Street police station because she was ‘Ill and destitute’ (August 13 to 20).

1877 – She is admitted to the Whitechapel Infirmary due to an ulcer (June 14 to 23).

1877 –  Alice is admitted to the St George Workhouse, Mint Street, Southwark having been charged with being drunk, but is discharged the same day (August 1).

1878 – Her father dies aged 74 in Peterborough (March).

1878 – Alice is convicted at Southwark police court of being ‘drunk in a thoro'fare’. She is fined 5s and sentenced to 7 days imprisonment with hard labour, which she serves in Wandsworth Prison (June 26 to July 2).

1883 – Alice lives, on and off, with Irish porter John McCormark or Bryant at various East End common lodging and doss-houses.

1883 – She is admitted to the Whitechapel Infirmary due to an ulcer (August 11 to 24).

1883 – Alice is admitted to the workhouse infirmary by a policeman who found her drunk in Dorset Street (November 5 to 16).

1883 – Alice is admitted to the Whitechapel Infirmary for alcoholism and fits (December 20 to 23).

1885 – Her mother Martha dies in Peterborough aged 74 (December).

1889 – Alice is arrested for causing a disturbance in a butcher’s shop in Long Causeway, Peterborough (January).

1889 – Alice resides with John McCormack mainly at Mr. Tenpenny’s common lodging house, 52 Gun Street, Spitalfields while working for her Jewish neighbours as a washerwoman and charwoman (April).

1889 – Alice spends the day at the common lodging house but the evening possibly at the Cambridge Music Hall with a blind boy (July 16).

1889 – Alice chats with three women, Margaret Franklin, Catherine Hughes and Sarah Marney in Flower and Dean Street, and then leaves alone toward Whitechapel (July 16).

1889 – P.C. Walter Andrews discovers the murdered body of Alice at Castle Alley, a dark and dismal snickleway that led off Whitechapel High Street. She was 44 (July 17).

Valentine’s Day

Valentine’s Day, also called Saint Valentine’s Day or the Feast of Saint Valentine, is celebrated annually on February 14. It originated as a Western Christian feast day honouring one or two early Christian martyrs named Saint Valentine and is recognized as a significant cultural, religious, and commercial celebration of romance and love in many regions of the world.

As it is still widely but wrongly believed that the Whitechapel murder victims of the late Victorian era were prostitutes, we want to list all the men who loved them and who were loved by them. Some of these relationships, specially the later ones, were casual or marked by abuse. Nonetheless, they defined these women, so we will list all the known facts here:

• Margaret Hames: m. John Hames (his death).

• Annie Chapman: m. John Chapman (1869 - 1884), r. John Sivvey (1886 - 1887), r. Edward Stanley (1888).

• Catherine Eddowes: r. Thomas Conway (1862 - 1881), r. John Kelly (1881 - 1888, her murder).

• Elizabeth Stride: r. Unknown policeman (late 1860s), m. John Thomas Stride (1869 - 1881), r. Michael Kidney (1885 - 1888).

• Emily Horsnell: m. Alfred Horsnell (1880 ~ 1886).

• Alice McKenzie: m. Joseph Kinsey (1863 - 1867, his death), r. John McCormack (1883 - 1889, her murder).

• Mary Ann Nichols: m. William Nichols (1861 - 1881), r. George Crawshaw (1881 - 1882), Thomas Stuart Dew (1884 - 1887).

• Martha Tabram: m. Henry Samuel Tabram (1865 - 1875), r. Henry Turner (1876 - 1888).

• Annie Millwood: m. Richard Millwood (his death).

• Frances Coles: r. James Murray (1883 ~ 1886), r. James Thomas Sadler (1889 - 1891, her murder).

• Rose Mylett: m. Thomas Davis (1880 ~ 1888), r. Benjamin Goodson (1888, her murder).

• Mary Kelly: m. Unknown name Davies (1879 ~ 1881, his death), r. Joseph Fleming (1886 - 1887), Joe Barnett (1887 - 1888).

• Ada Wilson: m. Samuel Wilson (1888 ~ 1891).

• Elizabeth Jackson: r. Charlie Uknown surname (unknown), r. John Fairclough (1888 - 1889).

Frances Coles

Part 1

Frances Coles was 5" (152 cm), slender, with dark brown hair, brown eyes and fair complexion. She was wearing a second-hand black diagonal jacket, a black dress given by her sister that reached to her ankles, and a black velvet ribbon around her neck. Gloves were a luxury she couldn’t afford, but she also wore a black bonnet trimmed with beads. It would have been unladylike to step outside without any kind of hat, specially after dark.

Last hours and murder

Thursday February 12, 1891:

4:00 PM:  Around 4:00 Frances and James Thomas Sadler went into a pub called The Bell, at Middlesex Street, at the City. He ordered 2 glasses of gin and gave one to Frances, who told him she needed a new bonnet. After some words, finally Sadler told her that she could look for one later, that he would pay it. They were there for about an hour, and when they left, they went on separate ways. 

5:00 PM: Frances walked around the corner to Shuttleworth’s Coffee House on Wentworth Street, Whitechapel, and ordered a cup of tea. 20 minutes later Sadler came and joined her. Anne Shuttleworth, the owner’s wife, later testified at the coroner’s inquest that both were perfectly sober. They left about quarter to six. Sadler gave her a penny to buy a pair of cheap earrings made from vulcanite (a hard ebony-coloured rubber) as they had passed a peddler’s shop in Brick Lane. Their next stop was a pub called The Marlborough Head on Brick Lane. Sadler bought drinks for some of the customers and bought some lottery tickets. There is some question as to exactly what he and Frances had to drink as the witnesses at the inquest didn’t agree, but Sadler himself testified he was becoming quite drunk.

7:00 PM: Sometime around 7:00~7:30PM, Frances went to a ladies’ hat shop at 25 Nottingham Street, Bethnal Green, and purchased a new black crépe hat with the 2s. 6d. Sadler had given her some hours before. Peter Hawkes, the owner’s son and the man who sold the hat to Frances, later commented to police that she was “three sheets in the wind.” She looked at several hats before deciding which one to choose, and when he told her the price, she stepped outside and spoke to Sadler and then payed for the hat. For the price of the hat she could have gotten almost 6 nights lodging in a doss house. She took her old hat with her. Sadler told her to throw the old one, but she wanted to keep it so she pinned it under her long skirt. 

8:00 PM - 9:00 PM: At some point in this interval, Sadler told her he was going to meet a friend on Spital Street and gave her a Schilling and told her to pick some drinks and go back to Spitalfields Chambers and get a double bed. She went with him part on the way, but when he turned to start walking on Thrawl Street she tugged on his arm. It was a very dangerous Street and she knew it because she had lived there for almost 8 years. “Don’t go that way,” she said. “ The street is full of thieves. They wouldn’t think anything about robbing a sailor.” to which Sadler replied: “I’ve travelled all over the world, and in all kinds of company, and I’ve never yet turned back on anything. I ain’t going to fence this street.” and kept on walking. He should have listened to her. He hadn’t gone 50 yards before a woman in a red shawl came up behind him and hit him over the head with a folded umbrella. He fell on the ground and two men came from the shadows and began to kick him in the ribs. They took his wallet and his swatch. When Sadler got up he suddenly became extremely angry at Frances. “You’re a pretty pal, to see me knocked about like this and not do anything for me,” he said. She was stunned. “How could I, Jim? You know if I’d lifted a finger for you I would have been marked by those people, and they’d pay me out when they got the opportunity”. “I was then penniless,” he said, “and I had a row with Frances for I thought she might have helped me when I was down.” They went separate ways.

10:00 PM: Frances is drunk when returns to their lodgings at Spitalfields Chambers in White’s Row, according to the 34 year-old night Watchman Charles Guiver. She sits at a bench in the kitchen, rests her head on her arms, and quickly falls asleep.  

11:30 PM: Sadler soon returns, face bloodied and bruised, and in a belligerent mood. “I have been robbed,” he says, “and if I knew who had done it I would do for them.” He asked Frances if she had the money he gave her for their bed, but she replied she didn’t have it, and drifted back to sleep on the table. Sadler thought they may would trust her for one night. Although Sadler had no money, he was also owed four pounds and fifteen Schillings for the seven weeks he worked since the S. S. Fez sailed on December 24, but he planned on collecting the money the following morning.  Guiver helped Sadler wash up in the back yard but was forced to ask him to leave as he hadn’t the money for a room.

Friday February 13, 1891:

12:00 AM: James Sadler leaves the Spitalfields Chambers. Frances remains on the bench at the table, fast asleep.

12:30 AM: Frances wakes up, according to lodger Samuel Harris, and leaves White’s Row since she also lacks her doss money. Sarah Fleming, the lodging house deputy wathed her leave too and said it was just after midnight. According to watchman Guiver, however, Frances wasn’t to leave until around 1:30 or 1:45 AM.

1:30 AM: Joseph Haswell, an employee in Shuttleworth’s eating house in Wentworth Street, is asked by Frances Coles for three halfpenceworth of mutton and some bread. She eats her meal alone in the corner, remaining there for some fifteen minutes. Hassell asks her to leave three times, but Frances refuses, telling Haswell, ‘Mind your own business!“ She finally leaves about 1:45 AM and headed toward the direction of Brick Lane through Commercial Street.

1:45 AM: Frances bumps into fellow prostitute Ellen Callana (also Calana, Colanna, Callaran, Callaron, Callagher, Callaghan, O’Connor) on Commercial Street. Soon afterward a short “violent man in a cheesecutter hat”, with a dark moustache approached Calana, took her to one side and and solicited her. He was wearing a pea jacket, a cheese cutter hat, dark blue trousers and “shiny boots” according to Callana. Calana decided to refuse his offer. The man punched her in the face, giving her a black eye, then walked over to Frances, who was standing about ten or twelve feet away. Ignoring Calana’s advice, Frances walks away with the stranger, headed in the direction of the Minories.

1:50 AM: James Sadler got into his third brawl of the night with some dockworkers at St. Katharine Dock as he tried to force his way back onto the S.S. Fez, from which he had been discharged two days before. He was left bleeding from a rather sizable wound in the scalp after calling his attackers “dock rats.” He then made two attempts to enter a lodging house in East Smithfield, but was refused. Around ten minutes later, Sadler was seen drunken and bloodied on the pavement outside the Mint by a Sergeant Edwards. He was ’decidedly drunk’ at the time.

2:00 AM - 2:12 AM: Carmen William Friday (also known as ‘Jumbo’) and two brothers named Knapton walked through Swallow Gardens, a railway arch. They saw nothing out of the ordinary, only a man and a woman at the Royal Mint Street corner of Swallow Gardens. One of the Knapton brothers shouted “Good night” to the couple but received no response. 'Jumbo’ Friday was later to say that the man looked like a ship’s fireman, and that the woman was wearing a round bonnet.

2:15 AM: P.C. Ernest Thompson 240H was on his beat along Chamber Street, only minutes away from Leman Street Police Station. He had been on the police force less than two months, and this was his first night on the beat alone. Thomspon heard the retreating footsteps of a man in the distance, apparently heading toward Mansell Street. Only a few seconds later he turned his vision to the darkest corner of Swallow Gardens and shined his lamp upon the body of Frances Coles. Blood was flowing profusely from her throat, and to Thompson’s horror, he saw her open and shut one eye. Since the then unidentified woman was still alive, police procedure dictated that Thompson remain with the body – his inability to follow the retreating footsteps of the man he believed to have been her killer would haunt him for the rest of his days. Thompson was later stabbed to death in 1900 when trying to clear a brawl at a coffeehouse by a man named Barnett Abrahams.

2:25 AM: PC Frederick Hyde 161H was the first to come to Thompson’s assistance, followed by plain-clothesman George Elliott. They found a local doctor, Dr. Frederick Oxley and rushed him to the scene. Chief Inspectors Donald Swanson and Henry Moore would later arrive around 5:00 AM, with Robert Anderson and Melville Macnaghten following later that morning.

3:00 AM: Sadler returned to the lodging house at 8 White’s Row, heavily bloodstained from being robbed in Ratcliff Highway. The deputy, Sarah Fleming, turned him out, noticing he was so drunk he could barely stand or speak. He protested. “You are a very hard-hearted woman. I have been robbed of my money, of my tackle and half a chain.”

5:00 AM: Sadler’s injuries from his many fights the previous night finally catch up to him and he admitted himself into the London Hospital for brief treatment.

10:15 AM: Duncan Campbell, a seaman at the Sailor’s Home in Wells Street, allegedly purchased a knife from Sadler for the price of a shilling and a piece of tobacco. The knife was blunt. In fact, Thomas Robinson, a marine stores dealer who later purchased the knife from Campbell, testified that the knife was so blunt that he had to sharpen it before he could use it at dinner.

February 27, 1891:

The jury returned a verdict of “Willful Murder against some person or persons unknown” on February 27, and four days later the Thames Magistrate’s Court dropped all charges against Sadler. As he left the court, crowds of people cheered his release.

Many people at Scotland Yard, and even Sir Melville Macnaghten continued to press the belief that Sadler was guilty of the murder of Frances Coles, and the sides are split among contemporary researchers whether or not Sadler was the killer.

Photos from Escrito con Sangre blog.

Source: Casebook

BEGG, Paul (2013): Jack The Ripper. The Facts.

BEGG, Paul & BENNETT, John (2014): The forgotten victims.

BEGG, Paul; FIDO, Martin & SKINNER, Keith (1996): The Jack The Ripper A – Z.

BROWN, Bernie: My funny Valentine, in Ripperologist No. 27, February 2000.

COOK, Andrew (2009). Jack the Ripper.

EDDLESTON, John J. (2001): Jack the Ripper: An Encyclopedia.

EVANS, Stewart P. & RUMBELOW, Donald (2006). Jack the Ripper: Scotland Yard Investigates.  

EVANS, Stewart P. & SKINNER, Keith (2000). The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Sourcebook: An Illustrated Encyclopedia.

FIDO, Martin (1987). The Crimes, Death and Detection of Jack the Ripper.

JAKUBOWSKI, Maxim & BRAUND, Nathan (1999): The Mammoth Book of Jack The Ripper.

KEEFE, John. E. (2010, revisited 2012): Carroty Nell. The last victim of Jack the Ripper.

MAGELLAN, Karyo (2005): By Ear and Eyes: The Witechapel Murders, Jack the Ripper and the Murder of Mary Kelly.

NELSON, Scott: Coles, Kosminski and Levi – Was There a Victim/Suspect/Witness connection?, in Ripperologist, 2001.

PRIESTLEY, Mick P. (2018): One Autumn in Whitechapel.

- A second-hand black diagonal jacket.

- A black dress given by her sister that reached to her ankles.

- A black velvet ribbon around her neck.

- A new black bonnet trimmed with black velvet beads.

She also had:

Her old bonnet pinned beneath her dress.

2s were later found hidden behind a gutterpipe, presumably Frances’s earnings from her final client.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences established Global Movie Day, a day for film fans around the world to celebrate their favorite movies and engage with Academy members and filmmakers across social media. The inaugural holiday was held last year (the day before the 92nd Oscars).

The second annual Global Movie Day was held on Saturday, February 13, 2021.

On Victorian times movies were in their infancy, but there are some movies and films that portrayed the Whitechapel Murder Victims. As away of tributing these women, we decided to celebrate Global Movie Day by posting films that featured them.

A Study in Terror (1965)

In this story about Sherlock Holmes against Jack The Ripper, Kay Walsh played the role of Catherine Eddowes:

Mary Ann Nichols was played by Christiane Maybach:

Barbara Windsor played Annie Chapman, Edina Ronay played Mary Kelly and Norma Foster played Elizabeth Stride:

Murder By Decree (1979)

In this new Sherlock Holmes against Jack the Ripper film, Susan Clark was Mary Kelly:

Other actresses in this short are: June Brown as Annie Chapman, Hilary Sesta as Catherine Eddowes, and Iris Fry as Elizabeth Stride.

From Hell (2001)

In this film based on Alan Moore's graphic novel of the same name, Annabelle Apsion was Mary Ann 'Polly' Nichols, Lesley Sharp was Catherine Eddowes, Katrin Cartlidge was Annie Chapman, Heather Graham was Mary Jane Kelly, Samantha Spiro was Martha Tabram, and Susan Lynch was Elizabeth "Long Liz" Stride

Ginger (2016)

In the 2016 short "Ginger", Katie Jarvis plays the role of Mary Kelly:

Ada Wilson

Ada Wilson (b. Zoa Ada Bisdey Elbury)

Birth date: 1863 Attacked: March, 1888 (ca. 25, survived) & 25th June 1891 (ca. 28, survived) Death (age): August 24th 1952 (aged 89)

Complexion: ? Eyes colour: ? Hair colour: ? Height: ? Ocupation: Seamstress, tailoress, waterproof hand clothes making.

Resting place: ?

***

Early life

Zoa Ada Bisdey Elbury was born in 1863 in Bristol, to Henry Edwin Elbury and Emma Fry. They married shortly before she was born. He had been born and bred in Bristol, and she was from Somerset. Henry’s father and elder brother were both stoneware potters – he followed them into this occupation, and seemed to do reasonably well. By 1871, Henry and Emma had been married for eight years, and had three children – Ada, Charles and Henry – and a servant. They lived in what seems to have been reasonable comfort on Clarence Square, in Bedminster, Bristol.

In the circumstances, it is hard to know whether the family’s next appearance in the census – at 39 Stratfield Road, in Bromley St Leonard, signified a reversal of fortunes. If guests and auxiliaries were anything to go by, then they had a lodger in 1881, rather than a servant. There were more mouths to feed (Rose, Emma and Thomas) and Ada, now 17, was earning her living – as a tailoress.

1888 Attack

Ada Wilson lived at 9 Maidman Street, Burdett road, a small thoroughfare lying midway between the East India Dock and Bow roads in Bow, a district in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets in East London. On March 28, 1888, at 12:30am while she was at home she was attacked by a man of about 30 years of age, 5ft 6ins in height, with a sunburnt face and a fair moustache. He was wearing a dark coat, light trousers and a wide awake hat. According to Ada, the man was a completely unknown, and forced his way into the room and demanded money, and when she refused he stabbed her twice in the throat with a clasp knife and ran, leaving her for dead. It is reported that nearby neighbours almost captured the man, but he found his escape.

Witness and neighbour Rose Bierman, a young Jewess who lived upstairs with her mother at the same building as Ada, explained that she knew Ada was married but didn’t know her husband, and that she was always getting visitors. About the man who attacked her she said that “whether he was her husband or not I could not say.(…) Well, I don’t know who the young man was, but about midnight I heard the most terrible screams one can imagine. Running downstairs I saw Mrs. Wilson, partially dressed, wringing her hands and crying, ‘Stop that man for cutting my throat! He has stabbed me!’ She then fell fainting in the passage. I saw all that as I was coming downstairs, but as soon as I commenced to descend I noticed a young fair man rush to the front door and let himself out. He did not seem somehow to unfasten the catch as if he had been accustomed to do so before. He had a light coat on, I believe. I don’t know what kind of wound Mrs. Wilson has received, but it must have been deep, I should say, from the quantity of blood in the passage. I do not know what I shall do myself. I am now ‘keeping the feast,’ and how can I do so with what has occurred here? I am now going to remove to other lodgings.“

A couple of young women rushed up to two police-constables on duty outside the Royal Hotel, and said that a woman was being murdered. The two constables, Ronald  Saw  and  Thomas  Longhurst, immediately ran to the house indicated, and there found  Ada Wilson lying in the passage, bleeding profusely from a fearful wound in the throat. Doctor Wheeler, from the Mile End road, was instantly sent for, who, after binding up the woman’s wounds, sent her to the London Hospital (Sophia Ward), Whitechapel, where Dr William Rawes ascertained that she was in a very critical condition.

Detective-Inspectors Wildey and Dillworth had charge of the case, and looked for the attacker. Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper, April 1, 1888 issue reports that “subsequent enquiries … revealed the fact that a dispute arose between the woman and a man who she states is her husband … He was pursued for some distance by a neighbour … But the would-be murderer sharply turned a corner, and was soon lost in the labyrinth of streets.” No conviction was ever obtained. By the time Ada Wilson returned home from the hospital, on April 27 1888, all hope of finding her attacker – or of proving anything in a court of law – seemed to have disappeared.

Authorities at the time of the 1888 Whitechapel murders made no link between her attack and those murders and she never was questioned again.

Mrs Wilson

On 2 January 1889, a little over eight months after returning from the hospital, she married Samuel Wilson (she was already using his surname as many women did when lived with their common-law husband but weren’t legally married) at the registry office in Bristol. Samuel was older than Ada: he said that he was thirty-three on his marriage certificate. He described himself as an engine fitter. He abandoned Ada in or around February 1891; she returned to her parents’ house in time for the 1891 census, at which point the family resided at 78 Rounton Road, Bromley St Leonard. According to the enumerator’s records, Ada was married, twenty-seven years of age, and a “waterproof hand” – making waterproof clothing from India rubber. This profession – lightly skilled, but perhaps quick to be picked up once one had the job – perhaps suggested a degree of specialisation, but Ada was still firmly in the clothing-manufacturing trade.

Ada was attacked by her husband again on June 25 1891. He was drunk and asked her money, which she didn’t have, and he asked to live with Ada again, but the proposition failed to appeal to her. “Go to work,” she said, “and be different”. He was arrested. According to the Daily News, July 8, 1891 issue, “Samuel Wilson, 40, was indicted for maliciously wounding Ada Wilson, his wife” who was also injured with a knife on her neck. Her parents were also assaulted. When the case came to the Quarter Sessions at Clerkenwell on 7 July 1891, Samuel Wilson defended himself. The chairman Mr. Richard Loveland-Loveland, said that “the prisoner was a very dangerous character, and therefore he would be sentenced to six months’ imprisonment with hard labour.” She asked for a separation.

Little  more is seen  of Samuel,  or  Ada.  Whether  they  ever  took out  their separation  order is  not  known. In December 1898 Ada’s brother Henry had a daughter and named her Zoa Lavinia  Elbury.

Later life

Zoa Ada Wilson died on August 24th 1952, aged 89 of a pneumonia, at the Whipps Cross Hospital in Leytonstone, London; she was the widow of engineer Samuel Wilson.

Aftermath

Authorities at the time of the murders made no link between her attacks and the Whitechapel murders. Samuel Wilson was never arrested for those crimes.

***

To know more:

Casebook website - Casebook Message Boards - Press report (from Casebook) - Press report (from Casebook) - Press report (from Casebook) - Biographic details from Casebook website - Wiki Casebook - Casebook Forums

JTR Forums

Jack The Ripper.org - Press reports (from Jack The Ripper.org)

Jack The Ripper Tour

The Jack The Ripper Tour

Jack The Ripper Map

Crimenes de Whitechapel (Spanish)

Jack El Destripador (Spanish)

Red Jack (Italian)

BEGG, Paul (2013): Jack The Ripper. The Facts.

BEGG, Paul & BENNETT, John (2014): The forgotten victims.

BEGG, Paul; FIDO, Martin & SKINNER, Keith (1996): The Jack The Ripper A – Z.

EDDLESTON, John J. (2001): Jack the Ripper: An Encyclopedia.

FIDO, Martin (1987, 1993): The Crimes, Detection and Death of Jack The Ripper.

HINTON, Bob (1998): From Hell… The Jack The Ripper Mystery.

JAKUBOWSKI, Maxim & BRAUND, Nathan (1999): The Mammoth Book of Jack The Ripper.

MATTHEWS, Rupert (2013): Jack the Ripper’s Street of Terror: Life during the reign of Victorian London’s most brutal killer.

RIPPER, Mark: Ada Wilson. Doubly Unfortunate, in Ripperologist no. 125, April 2012.

SCOTT, Christopher (2004): Jack the Ripper: A Cast of Thousands.

1871 – Zoa Ada, her parents, two younger brothers Charles and Henry, and a servant live in Clarence Square, in Bedminster, Bristol.

1881 – Ada, her family with three more younger siblings (Rose, Emma and Thomas) and a lodger live in Bromley St Leonard, London Borough of Tower Hamlets in East London. She works as a tailoress.

1888 – Ada works as a seamstress and is stabbed by her common-law husband Samuel Wilson at their home at 9 Maidman Street, Bow, London (March 28).

1888 – Ada stays at the London Hospital and she mades a full recovery (March 28 to April 27).

1889 – Ada marries Samuel Wilson at the registry office in Bristol (January 2).

1891 – Ada is living with her parents in Bromley St Leonard, suggesting that she and Samuel are separated, she works as a “waterproof hand”, making waterproof clothing from India rubber (February).

1891 – Ada is stabbed again by estranged husband Samuel, who also stabs her parents (June 25).

1891 – In the court case against Ada’s assault, she asks for her separation to Samuel (July 7).

1952 – Ada dies of a pneumonia at the Whipps Cross Hospital in Leytonstone, London. She was 89.

Annie Millwood or Millward

Birth date: Ca. 1850 Attacked: February 25, 1888 Died (age): March 31, 1888 (38)

Complexion: ? Eyes colour: ? Hair colour: ? Height: ? Ocupation: ?

Clothes at the time of murder/discovery: ?

Resting place: ?

***

~ LIFE ~

Annie Millwood, or Millward, was 38 and the widow of a soldier named Richard Millwood in 1888. She was living in a doss at Spitalfields Chambers, 8 White’s Row, a narrow, dingy thoroughfare that ran parallel to Dorset Street. Frances Coles, who would be murdered in 1891, had been “an occasional lodger staying there a night at a time”, and “would sometimes (stay at the house) twice a week, then not come for a time.”

~ ASSAULT ~

At five o'clock in the afternoon of February 25th, 1888 Annie was attacked by a man who whipped a clasp knife from his pocket and stabbed her.

The attack on Annie Millwood was part of the endemic violence of the East End. Her case would have been regarded by the authorities as an everyday event.

She was admitted into the Whitechapel Workhouse Infirmary on Saturday, February 25, 1888 from 8 White’s Row, Spitalfields. Records report the cause of admission simply as ‘stabs’ to the legs and lower torso with a knife. An article in the ‘Eastern Post’ sheds a bit more light on the subject:

“It appears the deceased was admitted to the Whitechapel Infirmary suffering from numerous stabs in the legs and lower part of the body. She stated that she had been attacked by a man who she did not know, and who stabbed her with a clasp knife which he took from his pocket. No one appears to have seen the attack, and as far as at present ascertained there is only the woman’s statement to bear out the allegations of an attack, though that she had been stabbed cannot be denied.”

In her own words, the man was a stranger. The exact number of wounds is unknown. Today it hasn’t arrived the information about who treated her or who called the police, but the Medical Superintendent at the time was Dr. Herbert Larder.

Regardless, Annie made a complete recovery and was released a little less than a month later, on March 21, being sent to the South Grove Workhouse, Mile End Road, instead than her home.

~ DEATH ~ 

Strangely, ten days later on the 31st of March, she collapsed and passed away in the back yard of the building while ’engaged in some occupation.’

The inquest was held on 5 April before Coroner Wynne Edwin Baxter, and after various medical witnesses testified, a veridict was returned that Annie had died from “a sudden effusion into the pericardium from the rupture of the left pulmonary artery through ulceration.” The death was from natural causes, unrelated to her attack over a month before.

~ AFTERMATH ~

Although rarely mentioned in connection with the Whitechapel murders, it may be interesting to note that there are many similarities between this murder and that of Martha Tabram:

Age (38) — Martha Tabram was 39.

Location (White’s Row) — only minutes away from George Yard, site of Tabram’s murder.

Injuries (Repeated Stab Wounds in Lower Torso) — similar to 39 stabbings that Martha Tabram suffered.

***

To know more:

Casebook website – Casebook Message Boards - Casebook Forums – Wiki Casebook – Press report (from Casebook website) – Press report (from Casebook, including Emma Elizabeth Smith)

JTR forums

Jack The Ripper.org

Jack the Ripper tour

The Jack The Ripper Tour (with Ripper Vision)

Jack the Ripper Map

Crime Hub

Historical Events

BEGG, Paul (2013): Jack The Ripper. The Facts.

BEGG, Paul & BENNETT, John (2014): The forgotten victims. 

BEGG, Paul; FIDO, Martin & SKINNER, Keith (1996): The Jack The Ripper A – Z

EDDLESTON, John J. (2001): Jack the Ripper: An Encyclopedia.

HINTON, Bob (1998): From Hell. Jack the Ripper Misery.

JAKUBOWSKI, Maxim & BRAUND, Nathan (1999): The Mammoth Book of Jack The Ripper.

MATTHEWS, Rupert (2013): Jack the Ripper’s Street of Terror: Life during the reign of Victorian London’s most brutal killer.

RIPPER, Mark (2008): Who Was Annie Millwood? in The Whitechapel Society Journal, num. 22. (Also reprinted in the book 21 Years of Jack the Ripper and the Whitechapel Society).

SUDGEN, Philip (2002): The Complete History of Jack the Ripper.

Timeline

Ca. 1850 – Annie is born.

1888 – Annie is stabbed by a man, and is admitted into the Whitechapel Workhouse Infirmary from her doss house at ‘Spitalfields Chambers’ at 8 White’s Row, Spitalfields (February 25).

1888 – Annie Millwood makes a full recovery and is sent to the South Grove Workhouse, Mile End Road, instead than her home (March 21).

Emma Elizabeth Smith

Emma Elizabeth Smith (aka Emma Eliza Smith, Emma E. Smith)

Birth date: c. 1843 Attacked: April 3, 1888 Died (age): April 4, 1888 (45)

Complexion: Fair Eyes colour: ? Hair colour: Light brown Height: 5’ 2" (157 cm) Ocupation: ?

Clothes at the time of murder/discovery: ?

Resting place: City of London Cemetery & Crematorium.

***

Early Life

Emma Elizabeth Smith was born around 1843 in Margate, Thanet, Kent (South East England). She married a soldier and had two children, a son and a daughter.

Smith's life prior to her murder in 1888 remains mysterious. Police files were gathered during the investigation, but most of these are missing, apparently taken, mislaid or discarded from the Metropolitan Police archive before the transfer of papers to the Public Record Office. In the surviving records, Inspector Edmund Reid notes a “son and daughter living in Finsbury Park area”. Detective Walter Dew later wrote:

Her past was a closed book even to her intimate friends. All she had ever told anyone about herself was that she was a widow who more than ten years before had left her husband and broken away from all her early associations.

There was something about Emma Smith which suggested that there had been a time when the comforts of life had not been denied her. There was a touch of culture in her speech, unusual in her class.

Once when Emma was asked why she had broken away so completely from her old life she replied, a little wistfully: “They would not understand now any more than they understood then. I must live somehow.”

Emma was 5'2" high (157 cm), complexion fair, hair light brown and had a scar on her right temple.

Last years and Murder

At the time of her murder on Tuesday 3 April 1888, the day after the Easter Monday bank holiday, she was living in a lodging-house at 18 George Street (since renamed Lolesworth Street, where victim Rose Mylett would live later in the year), Spitalfields, in the East End of London for about 18 months. She was seen by fellow lodger Margaret Hames (or Hayes/Haymes) at around 12:15am talking to a man dressed in dark clothes and a white scarf in Fairance Street, Limehouse (a district in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets in East London, on the northern bank of the River Thames).

As Emma was returning home that night, at least three, maybe four youngsters began following her from Whitechapel Church. They would stop her on the corner of Brick Lane and Wentworth Street, where they beat, and raped her. The boys emptied her purse before leaving her to die on the street. 

Having just been beaten and raped, and having sustained a sizeable and painful injury, Emma Smith stood up and walked back 300 yards (274.32 meters) to her lodgings at 18 George Street with her face bloodied and her ear cut. She had apparently removed her shoulder wrap and placed it between her thighs to soak up the blood. It took her 4 hours to get there and encountered no police officer on her way. She told the deputy keeper, Mary Russell, that she was attacked by two or three men, one of whom was a teenager. 

Mrs Russell and one of the other lodgers, Annie Lee, took Smith to the London Hospital, half a mile away (800 m), apparently against Emma’s will, where she was treated by house surgeon George Haslip. She fought unconsciousness long enough to describe the details of her assault. Finally, Emma could no longer stave off the severity of her injuries and succumbed to a coma, in which she would die on April 4th at 9:00am.

Medical investigation by the duty surgeon, Dr G. H. Hillier, revealed that a blunt object had been inserted into her vagina, rupturing her peritoneum.

Inquest

The police were not informed of the incident until 6 April when they were told an inquest was to be held the next day. The inquest at the hospital, which was conducted by the coroner for East Middlesex, Wynne Edwin Baxter, was attended by Russell, Hillier, and the local chief inspector of the Metropolitan Police Service, H Division Whitechapel: John West. Margaret Hames testified as a witness. The inquest jury returned a verdict of murder by person or persons unknown. Baxter concluded that Emma Elizabeth Smith had been “barbarously” murdered, adding that he had never heard of such a dastardly murder and that “it was impossible to imagine a more brutal case”. Baxter had no idea of what was yet to come.

Chief Inspector West placed the investigation in the hands of Inspector Edmund Reid of H Division. Reid noted in his report that her clothing was “in such dirty ragged condition that it was impossible to tell if any part of it had been fresh torn”. Detective constable Dew, later described the investigation:

“As in every case of murder in this country, however poor and friendless the victims might be, the police made every effort to track down Emma Smith’s assailant. Unlikely as well as likely places were searched for clues. Hundreds of people were interrogated. Scores of statements were taken. Soldiers from the Tower of London [which stood within H Division] were questioned as to their movements. Ships in docks were searched and sailors questioned”.

Smith had not provided descriptions of the men who had attacked her and no witnesses came forward or were found. The investigation proved fruitless and the murderer or murderers were never caught. The police couldn’t contact any of her relatives either.

Aftermath

The case was listed as the first of eleven Whitechapel murders in Metropolitan Police files. Elements of the press linked her death to the later murders, which were blamed on a single unidentified serial killer known as “Jack the Ripper”. With the exception of Walter Dew, who said he thought that Smith was the first victim of the Ripper, the police suspected it was the unrelated work of a criminal gang. Smith either refused to or could not describe her attackers, possibly because she feared reprisal. 

Four months before Smith’s murder, witness Margaret Hames had also been attacked on Friday 8 December 1887.

At the adjacent 19 George Street common lodging house, victims Emily Horsnell and Martha Tabram also lived, and were murdered in November 1887 and Monday 7 August 1888 respectively.

Fellow 18 George Street lodger Rose Mylett would die on strange circumpstances on December 20, 1888.

Photos from: printerest, www.jack-the-ripper.co.uk and www.jack-the-ripper-tour.com  

* * *

To know more:

Wikipedia

Casebook - Casebook Wiki - Casebook Message boards - Casebook Forums

Jack The Ripper.org - Jack The Ripper.org (newspapers reports)

JTR Forums

The Jack The Ripper Tour

Jack The Ripper

Rippervision

Sisters of the Abyss Forums

Jack The Ripper Map

Revolvy

BEGG, Paul (2013): Jack The Ripper. The Facts.

BEGG, Paul & BENNETT, John (2014): The forgotten victims.

BEGG, Paul; FIDO, Martin & SKINNER, Keith (1996): The Jack The Ripper A – Z.

BELL, Neil R. A. (2014): Capturing Jack The Ripper: In the Boots of a Bobby in Victorian England.

EDDLESTON, John J. (2001): Jack the Ripper: An Encyclopedia.

HINTON, Bob (1998): From Hell… The Jack The Ripper Mystery.

JAKUBOWSKI, Maxim & BRAUND, Nathan (1999): The Mammoth Book of Jack The Ripper.

MATTHEWS, Rupert (2013): Jack the Ripper’s Street of Terror: Life during the reign of Victorian London’s most brutal killer.

SUDGEN, Phillip (1994): The Complete History of Jack The Ripper.

Timeline

Ca. 1843 – Emma Elizabeth is born in Margate, Thanet, Kent (South East England).

1888 – Emma is in Limehouse (London Borough of Tower Hamlets) and fellow lodger Margaret Hames sees her talking to a man (April 3).

1888 – Emma is followed by four youngsters at Whitechapel Church, they beat and rape her, and steal all her money at Brick Lane with Wentworth St. (April 3).

1888 – Emma gets at her 18 George St lodging house, and deputy Mary Russell and one of the lodgers, Annie Lee, take her to the London Hospital (April 3).

Mary Jane “Jeannette” Kelly

Mary Jane Kelly (aka Marie Jeanette Kelly, Marie Jeannette Davies, Mary Jane Davis or Davies, Mary Ann Kelly, Black Mary, Dark Mary, Ginger, Fair Emma, Mary McCarthy, Elizabeth Fisher)

Birth date: c.1863 Attacked and killed (age): November 9, 1888 (25)

Complexion: Fair Eyes colour: Blue Hair colour: Blonde Height: 5’ 7″ (170 cm) Ocupation: prostitute.

Clothes at the time of murder/discovery: Last seen wearing a linsey frock and a red shawl pulled around her shoulders; she always wore a spotlessly clean white apron.

Resting place: St Patrick’s Roman Catholic Cemetery, Leytonstone.

***

Early life

Compared with other Ripper victims, Kelly’s origins are obscure and undocumented, and much of it is possibly embellished. Kelly may have herself fabricated many details of her early life as there is no corroborating documentary evidence, but there is no evidence to the contrary either. According to Joseph “Joe” Barnett, the man she had most recently lived with prior to her murder, Kelly had told him she was born in Limerick, Ireland, in around 1863—although whether she referred to the city or the county is not known—and that her family moved to Wales when she was young.

Barnett reported that Kelly had told him her father was named John Kelly and that he worked in an iron works in either Caernarfonshire or Carmarthenshire. Barnett also recalled Kelly mentioning having seven brothers and at least one sister. One brother, named Henry, supposedly served in the 2nd Battalion Scots Guards. She once stated to her personal friend Lizzie Albrook that a family member was employed at the London theatrical stage. Her landlord, John McCarthy, claimed that Kelly received infrequent correspondence from Ireland.

Both Barnett and Mrs. Carthy (a reported former roommate) claimed that Kelly came from a family of “well-to-do people”. Carthy reported Kelly being “an excellent scholar and an artist of no mean degree”—but at the inquest, Barnett informed the coroner that she often asked him to read the newspaper reports of the murders to her, suggesting that she was illiterate.

Around 1879, when she was just 16, Kelly was reportedly married to a coal miner named Davies, who was killed two or three years later in a mine explosion. Around ca. 1882/83 Kelly claimed to have stayed for eight months in an infirmary in Cardiff, before moving in with a cousin. Although there are no contemporary records of Kelly’s presence in Cardiff, it is at this stage in her life that Kelly is considered to have begun her career as a prostitute. 

In 1884, Kelly apparently left Cardiff for London and found work in a brothel in the more affluent West End of London. Reportedly, she was invited by a client to France, but returned to England within two weeks, having disliked her life there. Nonetheless, it is believed to be at this stage in her life that Kelly chose to adopt the French name “Marie Jeanette”.

Around 1884/86, and gravitating toward the poorer East End of London, she reportedly lived with a man named Morganstone (possibly Morgan Stone) near the Commercial Gas Works in Stepney. She  lived with and possibly worked for Mrs Buki, St George’s St. She helped Kelly retrieve belongings from a French lady’s residence in Knightsbridge. Kelly also resided at Mrs Carthy’s, Breezer Hill, Ratcliff Highway. At the end of 1886 Kelly left her and went to live with a stonemason’s plasterer named Joseph “Joe” Flemming/Fleming (aka James Evans) near Bethnal Green, but by April of the following year she had left him and moved into either Cooney’s or a lodging-house in Thrawl St.

Appeareance and habits

Kelly has been variously reported as being a blonde or redhead, whereas her nickname, “Black Mary”, suggests a dark brunette. Her reported eye colour was blue. Reports of the time estimated her height at 5 feet and 7 inches (1.70 metres) and her build was stout. Detective Walter Dew, in his autobiography, claimed to have known Kelly well by sight and described her as “quite attractive” and “a pretty, buxom girl”. He said she always wore a clean white apron but never a hat. Sir Melville Macnaghten of the Metropolitan Police Force, who never saw her in the flesh, reported that she was known to have “considerable personal attractions” by the standards of the time. The Daily Telegraph of 10 November 1888 described her as “tall, slim, fair, of fresh complexion, and of attractive appearance”. By some, Kelly had been known as “Fair Emma”, although it is unclear whether this reference applied to her hair colour, her skin colour, her beauty, or whatever other qualities that she possessed. Some newspaper reports claim she was nicknamed “Ginger” after her allegedly ginger-coloured hair (though sources disagree even on this point, thus leaving a large range from ash blonde to dark chestnut). Another paper claimed she was known as “Mary McCarthy”, which may have been a mix up with the surname of her landlord at the time of her murder. 

When drunk, Kelly would be heard singing Irish songs; in this state, she would often become quarrelsome and even abusive to those around her, which earned her the nickname “Dark Mary.” McCarthy said “she was a very quiet woman when sober but noisy when in drink.” 

Relationship with Joe Barnett

Barnett first met Kelly in April 1887. They agreed to live together on their second meeting the following day. In early 1888 they both moved into 13 Miller’s Court, a furnished single room at the back of 26 Dorset Street, Spitalfields. It was a single twelve-foot square room, with a bed, three tables and a chair. Above the fireplace hung a print of “The Fisherman’s Widow”. Kelly’s door key was lost, so she bolted and unbolted the door from outside by putting a hand through a broken window beside the door. A German neighbour, Julia Venturney, claimed Kelly had broken the window when drunk. Barnett worked as a fish porter at Billingsgate Fish Market, but when he fell out of regular employment and tried to earn money as a market porter, Kelly turned to prostitution again. A quarrel ensued over Kelly’s sharing of the room with another prostitute whom Barnett knew only as “Julia” and he left on 30 October 1888, more than a week before her murder, while continuing to visit Kelly. Barnett then took lodgings at Mrs Buller’s boarding house, 24-25 New St, Bishopsgate.

[Next post]

Portrayed in Films:

Edina Ronay in A Study in Terror (1965)

Susan Clark in Murder By Decree (1979)

Lysette Anthony in Jack the Ripper TV series (1988)

Karen Davitt in The Ripper (1997)

Heather Graham in From Hell (2001)

Rachel Blakely in Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World TV series, episode “The Knife” aired on November 17th 2001.

Katie Jarvis in the sort Ginger (2016).

Photos from: Escrito en Sangre, Express.co.uk, ebay

***

To know more:

Wikipedia

Casebook Website - Casebook Wiki - Casebook Timeline - Casebook Message Boards- Casebook Forum

JTR Forums

East End Women’s Museum

Find a Grave Memorial website

Jack The Ripper Tour

Jack The Ripper Experience

Jack The Ripper.org

Whitechapel Jack

Mysterious Britain

English History Authors

Ten Weeks in Whitechapel

Saucy Jack

All That’s Interesting Website

Jack Ripper

Jack The Ripper Map

BEGG, Paul (1988, 2006, 2013): Jack The Ripper. The Facts.

BEGG, Paul; FIDO, Martin & SKINNER, Keith (1996): The Jack The Ripper A – Z.

CHAUVET, Didier (2002): Mary Jane Kelly: La dernière victime.

CULLEN, Tom (1965): Autumn of Terror.

EDDLESTON, John J. (2001): Jack the Ripper: An Encyclopedia.

EVANS, Stewart P. & RUMBELOW, Donald (2006): Jack the Ripper: Scotland Yard Investigates.

EVANS, Stewart P. & SKINNER, Keith (2000): The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Sourcebook: An Illustrated Encyclopedia.

FIDO, Martin (1987): The Crimes, Detection and Death of Jack the Ripper.

FROST, Rebecca (2018): The Ripper’s Victims in Print. The Rethoric Portrayals Since 1929.

HINTON, Bob (1998): From Hell… The Jack The Ripper Mystery.

HUME, Robert (2019): The hidden lives of Jack the Ripper’s victims.

JAKUBOWSKI, Maxim & BRAUND, Nathan (1999): The Mammoth Book of Jack The Ripper.

MARRIOTT, Trevor (2005): Jack the Ripper: The 21st Century Investigation.

RANDALL, Anthony J. (2013): Jack the Ripper. Blood lines.

RUBENHOLD, Hallie (2019): The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women killed by Jack the Ripper / The Five: The Lives of Jack the Ripper’s Women.

RUMBELOW, Donald (2004): The Complete Jack the Ripper: Fully Revised and Updated.

SCOTT, Chris (2005): Will the real Mary Kelly…?.

SHELDEN, Neal E. (2013): Mary Jane Kelly and the Victims of Jack the Ripper: The 125th Anniversary.

SHELDEN STUBBINGS, Neal (2007): The Victims of Jack the Ripper.

SUDGEN, Phillip (1994): The Complete History of Jack The Ripper.

TROW, M. J. (2009): Jack The Ripper: Quest for a Killer.

WHITEHEAD, Mark & RIVETT, Miriam (2006): Jack the Ripper.

Rose Mylett

Rose Mylett (b. Catherine Mylett; aka Catherine Millett or Mellett, Kate Mylett, Kate Davis, ‘Drunken Lizzie’ Davis, ‘Fair Alice’ Downey, ‘Fair Clara’, Alice Downey (or Downe), Elizabeth Davis, Elizabeth Myllett (death certificate).

Birth date: December 8,1859 Attacked and killed (age): December 20, 1888 (29)

Complexion: ? Eyes colour: ? Hair colour: ? Height: 5'2" (157 cm) Ocupation: prostitute

Clothes at the time of murder/discovery: brown and black ‘outer clothes’; a dark tweed jacket; a lilac apron; a red flannel petticoat; a red and blue striped stockings.

Resting place: Bow Cemetery.

***

Early life

She was born Catherine Mylett in London on 8 December 1859 to Margaret Mylett (nee Haley) and Henry Mylett of no. 13, Thomas Street, Whitechapel, labourer in a starch works. This explains why she was alternatively known as ‘Catherine Millett’. Both of Catherine’s parents were originated from Ireland, Margaret from Ballinclaugh and Henry from Loughton. Catherine had two older siblings, Mary (5 years older) and William (3 years older), and one younger brother, John (3 years younger). Sadly, her father died on February 1882 at this home.

Rose Mylett was (according to her mother) once married to upholsterer and commercial traveller Thomas Davis, without her parents knowledge, but for some reason unknown they had split up by 1888. She had one daughter by him, Florence Beatrice “Florrie” or “Flossie”, born 12 September 1880 at 6 Maidman Street (Mile End), and one son, Henry, born in the Whitechapel Union Infirmary on the 29 June 1883. She was not discharged from there until 2 weeks after the birth, on 13th July 1883.

Daughter Florence went to live with her grandmother, Margaret in Thomas Street in 1883 and stayed for about 4 years, and she was attending school in Sutton at the time of her mother’s death. Son Henry unfortunately may have died a year after his birth, in 1884.

Later months and death 

The name ‘Rose’, hitherto given to her by crime historians, is easily explained, as it was the alias which she used at the Bromley Infirmary, a fact verified on Christmas Day 1888 by the head nurse there. The Infirmary records show that she had been in and out of it at various times during the 1880s, the last between 20th January and 14th March 1888, always for the same and unspecified malady.

Rose had lived in various lodging houses over the years, ranging from the Limehouse/Poplar district and 18 George Street, to her mother’s lodgings in Pelham Street (north of Hanbury Street), Baker’s Row, Spitalfields.

Catherine Mylett seems to have had a different alias for every part of the East End. ‘Rose’ in Bromley-by-Bow, ‘Elizabeth Davis’ in Whitechapel, and Alice Downey/Downe in Poplar. Because of her proclivity to drink, friends and acquaintances in Whitechapel and Spitalfields knew Rose by the name of ‘Drunken Lizzie’ Davis, as well as Millett or Mellett. In Poplar she was known as ‘Fair Alice’ Downey. Again, according to her mother (who identified the body), her true name was Catherine Mylett.

The mother had frequently remonstrated with her daughter upon her model life, but without avail. During the last few months of her life, Catherine lived at a lodging house, no. 18 George Street, Spitalfields (the same place where Emma Elizabeth Smith lived), and seems to have been cohabiting with carman and ex-convict Benjamin Goodson.

On December 19th 1888, at 7:55pm Rose Mylett is seen by Charles Ptolomey, an infirmary night-attendant, speaking with two sailors in Poplar High Street, near Clarke’s Yard. She appeared to have been sober, and was heard by Ptolomay to have said “No, no, no!” to one of them. Their manner of conduct was suspicious enough so as to bring attention to themselves.

At 2:30am of December 20th 1888, Alice Graves spots Mylett outside of The George in Commercial Road with two men. Rose Mylett appeared to have been drunk.

One hour and three quarters later, at 4:15am, Police Sergeant Robert Golding and Constable Thomas Costello, on patrol at the time, came across the lifeless body of an unidentified woman (Rose Mylett) in the yard between 184 and 186 Poplar High Street, in Clarke’s Yard (so called because of owner George Clarke, a builder’s merchant). The body was still warm, and lying on its left side. It appeared to P.S. Golding as if the attitude of the body was somewhat reminiscent of that of a Ripper victims, with the left leg drawn up and right leg stretched out. The clothes were not torn or disarranged in any manner, and there was no obvious sign of injury. Golding did not himself attribute the death to the Ripper.

Still, Rose Mylett was a known prostitute and her body was found only two miles from the center of the Whitechapel murders. Public suspicion grew concerning the case, and the hush that had befallen the public since the dreadful Kelly murder a month and a week before was quickly disrupted. Once again, the Ripper’s name was spoken aloud.

Death was confirmed by divisional surgeon Dr. Matthew Brownfield’s assistant, Mr. Harris, but at first doctors were at a loss as to what had caused the death. It did not seem like a Ripper murder, as the throat was not cut and there were no easily visible wounds anywhere on the body. It wasn’t until a faint mark resembling the imprint of a string was found around her neck that strangulation was first suggested.

Dr. Brownfield prepared the post mortem repost. Dr. Robert Anderson was also involved in the case, and his findings seemed to contradict those of Dr. Brownfield. He observed that there was no trace of a struggle around the yard – no items strewn about, no clothing torn or ripped, no scratches on the body, and no second set of footprints anywhere among the soft ground of the yard. Also according to Anderson, the body “lay naturally.”

Anderson, along with the backing of his police force, insisted that Mylett’s death was not attributable to murder, and demanded that Dr. Thomas Bond of Westminster be sent to re-examine the body. Bond’s personal assistant, and then the Senior Police Surgeon both intercepted Anderson’s request, and both went down of their own accord to see the body for themselves. Both returned with a diagnosis of 'willful murder by strangulation.’ Dr. Bond had already examinated the Thames Mysteries of 1873 and 1874, the Rainham Mystery of 1887 and the Whitehall Mystery of 1888, and later would examine Elizabeth Jackson’s and Alice McKenzie’s cases.

Finally, Dr. Bond received Anderson’s request and examined the body of Rose Mylett, in the hopes of studying the faint marks he had been told about by his colleagues before him, and was surprised to find that they had disappeared! Furthermore, there were no secondary signs of strangulation, such as a protruding tongue or clenched fists. This, he believed, was sufficient evidence to rebut the theory that she was strangled. In fact, he put forth the idea that Mylett had fallen down while drunk and was choked to death by her stiff, velvet collar.

The medical reports also created two major conflicts with witness testimony. First, there was found no alcohol in Mylett’s stomach, which conflicts with Alice Graves’ testimony that said she saw the deceased quite drunk with two men outside The George at 2:30 A.M.. Second, the medical report revealed evidence purporting that Mylett had never given birth, this time contradicting the statement made by her mother.

Inquest

The inquest into the death of Rose Mylett was held under Wynne Baxter at Poplar Town Hall on December 21st, 1888 and again on January 2nd 1889 and finally on January 9th 1889. The report prepared by Brownfield was not generally accepted among police, who cited that there was no string or ligature discarded on the premises, and that the mark on the neck encircled only one-quarter the circumference of the neck.

Mr. Wynne Baxter, however, wanted nothing to do with this “nonsense” of “death by natural causes.” In his summing up at the inquest, he told the jury:

After Dr. Bromfield and his assistant, duly qualified men, came to the conclusion that this was a case of homicidal strangulation, someone had a suspicion that the evidence was not satisfactory. At all events, you’ve heard that doctor after doctor went down to view the body without my knowledge or sanction as coroner. I did not wish to make that a personal matter, but I had never received such treatment before. Of the five doctors who saw the body, Dr. Bond was the only one who considered the case was not one of murder. Dr. Bond did not see the body until five days after her death and he was, therefore, at a disadvantage. Dr. Bond stated that if this was a case of strangulation he should have expected to find the skin broken, but it was clearly shown, on reference being made to the records of the Indian doctors in the cases of Thug murders, that there were no marks whatever left. Other eminent authorities agreed with that view.

Dr. George Bagster Phillips agreed with Baxter. According to Phillips, the murderer 'had studied the theory of strangulation, for he evidently knew where to place the cord so as to immediately bring his victim under control.’

The jury chose to side with the coroner and came up with the ever popular verdict of 'willful murder by person or person unknown’ being guided to that conclusion by the evidence of Doctors Brownfield, Harris, Charles A. Hibberd (who would examine the Pinchin Street Torso of 1889) and M'Kenna, each of whom was of opinion that the woman was murdered by means of something of the nature of a cord drawn tightly around her neck. 

Aftermath

Anderson and the C.I.D., dismayed that their reports and findings were ignored by Baxter, refused to set their men upon the case, deeming the murderer to be non-existent and such an attempt a blatant waste of time and man-power.

Later on in life, Anderson, in The Lighter Side of My Official Life (1910), wrote that “the Poplar case of December, 1888, was death from natural causes, and but for the 'Jack the Ripper’ scare, no one would have thought of suggesting that it was a homicide.”

Photos showing Rose Mylett with two sailors, and her funeral from: Escrito con Sangre

***

To know more:

Wikipedia

Casebook – Casebook Message Boards – Casebook forums – Wiki Casebook –

Jack The Ripper.org

Jack the Ripper Tour

JTR Forums

Jack the Ripper Map

The Quester Files

Victorian Ripper forums

BEADLE, William: The Real ‘Rose’ Mylett, in Ripperologist No. 28, April 2000.

BEADLE, William (2009): Jack the Ripper: Unmasked.

BEGG, Paul & BENNETT, John (2014): The forgotten victims.

BEGG, Paul; FIDO, Martin & SKINNER, Keith (1996): The Jack The Ripper A – Z.

EDDLESTON, John J. (2001): Jack the Ripper: An Encyclopedia.

EVANS, Stewart P. & RUMBELOW, Donald (2006): Jack the Ripper: Scotland Yard Investigates.

EVANS, Stewart P. & SKINNER, Keith (2000). The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Sourcebook: An Illustrated Encyclopedia.

- Brown and black ‘outer clothes’.

- A dark tweed jacket.

- A lilac apron.

- A red flannel petticoat.

- Red and blue striped stockings.

She also had:

Cash: 1/2d [6p].

International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers is observed annually on December 17 by sex workers, their advocates, friends, families and allies. Originally conceived as a memorial and vigil for the victims of the Green River Killer in Seattle Washington, United States (US), it has evolved into an annual international event. The day calls attention to hate crimes committed against sex workers worldwide, as well as the need to remove the social stigma and discrimination that have contributed to violence against sex workers and indifference from the communities they are part of. Sex worker activists also state that custom and prohibitionist laws perpetuate such violence.

First observed in 2003, the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers was founded by Dr. Annie Sprinkle and the Sex Workers Outreach Project USA (SWOP-USA), an American sex worker rights organization. In a public letter, Sprinkle states:

“Violent crimes against sex workers go underreported, unaddressed and unpunished. There really are people who don’t care when prostitutes are victims of hate crimes, beaten, raped, and murdered. No matter what you think about sex workers and the politics surrounding them, sex workers are a part of our neighborhoods, communities and families.”

Between 1873 and 1891 eleven poor and working class women (pictured, Ada Wilson, Emma Elizabeth Smith, Martha Tabram, Annie Chapman, Mary Ann Nichols, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, Mary Jane Kelly, Rose Mylett, Alice McKenzie and Frances Coles) were attacked and murdered in London’s East End by a killer(s) who was never caught, and other 7 (including Annie Millwood and Elizabeth Jackson, and 5 unidentified ones) suffered a similar fate. They were murdered just because they were women and their murderer(s) was a misogynistic psycho.

While the killer(s) went onto have a large amount of tours and walks, studies and published works (regarding who he might was, different theories as why he did it), the victims were divided in categories and some of them completely forgotten. So here you find a list of research/non-fiction books about these women if you are interested to know more about them (the list is going to be updated when new books are published, thanks).

·         BEGG, Paul & BENNETT, John (2014): The forgotten victims.

·         CHAUVET, Didier (2002): Mary Jane Kelly: La dernière victime.

·         FROST, Rebecca (2018): The Ripper’s Victims in Print. The Rethoric Portrayals Since 1929.

·         HUME, Robert (2019): The hidden lives of Jack the Ripper’s victims.

·         KEEFE, John. E. (2010, revisited 2012): Carroty Nell. The last victim of Jack the Ripper.

·         RANDALL, Anthony J. (2013): Jack the Ripper. Blood lines.

·         RUBENHOLD, Hallie (2019): The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women killed by Jack the Ripper / The Five: The Lives of Jack the Ripper’s Women.

·         SCOTT, Chris (2005): Will the real Mary Kelly…?.

·         SHELDEN, Neal E. (2013): Mary Jane Kelly and the Victims of Jack the Ripper: The 125th Anniversary.

·         SHELDEN STUBBINGS, Neal (2007): The Victims of Jack the Ripper.

·         WHITTINGTON-EGAN, Richard (2015): Mr Atherstone Leaves the Stage. The Battersea Murder Mystery: A Twisting and Tragic Tale of Love, Jealousy and Violence in the age of Vaudeville.

·         YOST, Dave (2008): Elizabeth Stride and Jack The Ripper.

**

You may be interested in the “A Hidden History of Women in the East End: The Alternative Jack the Ripper tour” to know how these women lived in Victorian Whitechapel.

May they never be forgotten.

**

NOTE: It is still widely but wrongly believed that all the Whitechapel murder victims were prostitutes. Only 4 of them (Elizabeth Stride, Frances Coles, Rose Mylett and Mary Kelly) have been documented as prostitutes at some stages of their lives, usually for a short time and a very casual and occasional way to support themselves. Nevertheless, we include them all if anyone wants to find out more about all of them - including their documented professions. Saying that all of them were prostitutes was a common thing in Victorian times, a way to justify why poor and single women were out alone on the streets at those times in the evening/night, even why they were even murdered.

**

Margaret Hames (aka Margaret Haymes, Margaret Hayes)

Birth date: 1833 Attacked: December 8, 1887

Complexion: ?  Eyes colour: ?  Hair colour: ? Height: ? Occupation: ?

Resting place: ?

***

~ EARLY LIFE ~

Margaret Hames (or Hayes, Haynes), was once married to John, a ship cook, until he died. She was Anglican (Church of England).

On the morning of Monday March 7th 1887, Margaret, who was 54 and living at the 18 George Street lodging house in Spitalfields (since renamed Lolesworth Street, where victim Rose Mylett would live in 1888; adjacent to the 19 George St common lodging house were Emily Horsnell and Martha Tabram lived), was admitted at the Whitechapel Infirmary due to a contusion in one or both hips. Margaret was in the Infirmary for over 2 weeks and was discharged on 23 March 1887.

~ ASSAULTS ~

On the morning of December 8 1887, Margaret was attacked in Osborne street/Brick Lane vicinity (Whitechapel), receiving face and chest injuries that kept her in Whitechapel Infirmary until 28 December. It is possible that a misrecollection of her assault as fatal may have lain behind references to the Fairy Fay murder at Christmas 1887.

On the evening of the Easter Monday bank holiday, April 3, 1888, both Margaret and fellow lodger Emma Elizabeth Smith went to Limehouse, a district in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets in East London two miles away from Whitechapel, but they did not necessarily go together.

The midnight hour found Margaret walking alone when two young men approached her. While one distracted her by asking the time, the other hit her in her face and then bit runaway. Margaret then decided to return back to the 18 George Street lodging house.

While rushing along Burdett Street in Limehouse, Margaret saw Emma Elizabeth Smith at 12:15 AM standing at the corner of Farrance Street talking to a man dressed in black and wearing a white scarf. Margaret didn’t stop to let Emma know she was leaving nor asked if she’d like to join her.

Approximately four to five hours after, Emma would be beaten and raped by a gang of three or four young men whom she didn’t know, on the corner of Brick Lane and Wentworth Street, Whitechapel. Upon her arrival at the 18 George Street lodging house, the deputy keeper, Mary Russell and one of the other lodgers, Annie Lee, took Smith to the London Hospital, where she would die on April 4th 1888 at 9:00am. Medical investigation by the duty surgeon, Dr G. H. Hillier, revealed that a blunt object had been inserted into her vagina, rupturing her peritoneum.

~ INQUEST ~

The police were not informed of Emma’s assault until 6 April when they were told an inquest was to be held the next day, Saturday 7th April. The inquest was held at the London Hospital, which was conducted by the coroner for East Middlesex, Wynne Edwin Baxter, and was attended by Russell, Hillier, and the local chief inspector of the Metropolitan Police Service, H Division Whitechapel, John West.

Margaret would testify at Emma’s inquest as a witness.

The inquest jury returned a verdict of murder by person or persons unknown. Baxter concluded that Emma Elizabeth Smith had been “barbarously” murdered, adding that he had never heard of such a dastardly murder and that “it was impossible to imagine a more brutal case”. Baxter had no idea of what was yet to come.

Nothing else is known about Margaret, nor when she died and what age she was.

***

TO KNOW MORE

Casebook The Importance of Fairy Fay dissertation and message boards

Casebook dissertation - Street Gang

Casebook mesage boards - Margaret Hames

Casebook forums - New solution

The Ripperologist

JTRForums

Red Jack (Italian site)

BEGG, Paul; FIDO, Martin & SKINNER, Keith (1996): The Jack The Ripper A – Z. The Ultimate Guide to the Ripper Mystery.

1887 – Margaret is admitted at the Whitechapel Infirmary due to a contusion in one or both hips (March 7 to 23).

1887 – She is attacked in Osborne street/Brick Lane vicinity (Whitechapel), receiving face and chest injuries, she goes at the Whitechapel Infirmary (December 8 to 28).

1888 – While she is at Limehouse, Margaret is punched in her face and decides to go home, the 18 George Street lodging house in Spitafields. While going home she sees fellow Lodger Emma Elizabeth Smith talking to a man (April 3 to 4).

1888 – Margaret testifies as a witness in the case of Emma Elizabeth Smith’s murder (April 7).

Rose Mylett

Rose Mylett (b. Catherine Mylett; aka Catherine Millett or Mellett, Kate Mylett, Kate Davis, ‘Drunken Lizzie’ Davis, ‘Fair Alice’ Downey, ‘Fair Clara’, Alice Downey (or Downe), Elizabeth Davis, Elizabeth Myllett (death certificate).

Birth date: December 8,1859 Attacked and killed (age): December 20, 1888 (29)

Complexion: ? Eyes colour: ? Hair colour: ? Height: 5'2" (157 cm) Ocupation: prostitute

Clothes at the time of murder/discovery: brown and black ‘outer clothes’; a dark tweed jacket; a lilac apron; a red flannel petticoat; a red and blue striped stockings.

Resting place: Bow Cemetery.

***

Early life

She was born Catherine Mylett in London on 8 December 1859 to Margaret Mylett (nee Haley) and Henry Mylett of no. 13, Thomas Street, Whitechapel, labourer in a starch works. This explains why she was alternatively known as ‘Catherine Millett’. Both of Catherine’s parents were originated from Ireland, Margaret from Ballinclaugh and Henry from Loughton. Catherine had two older siblings, Mary (5 years older) and William (3 years older), and one younger brother, John (3 years younger). Sadly, her father died on February 1882 at this home.

Rose Mylett was (according to her mother) once married to upholsterer and commercial traveller Thomas Davis, without her parents knowledge, but for some reason unknown they had split up by 1888. She had one daughter by him, Florence Beatrice “Florrie” or “Flossie”, born 12 September 1880 at 6 Maidman Street (Mile End), and one son, Henry, born in the Whitechapel Union Infirmary on the 29 June 1883. She was not discharged from there until 2 weeks after the birth, on 13th July 1883.

Daughter Florence went to live with her grandmother, Margaret in Thomas Street in 1883 and stayed for about 4 years, and she was attending school in Sutton at the time of her mother’s death. Son Henry unfortunately may have died a year after his birth, in 1884.

Later months and death 

The name ‘Rose’, hitherto given to her by crime historians, is easily explained, as it was the alias which she used at the Bromley Infirmary, a fact verified on Christmas Day 1888 by the head nurse there. The Infirmary records show that she had been in and out of it at various times during the 1880s, the last between 20th January and 14th March 1888, always for the same and unspecified malady.

Rose had lived in various lodging houses over the years, ranging from the Limehouse/Poplar district and 18 George Street, to her mother’s lodgings in Pelham Street (north of Hanbury Street), Baker’s Row, Spitalfields.

Catherine Mylett seems to have had a different alias for every part of the East End. ‘Rose’ in Bromley-by-Bow, ‘Elizabeth Davis’ in Whitechapel, and Alice Downey/Downe in Poplar. Because of her proclivity to drink, friends and acquaintances in Whitechapel and Spitalfields knew Rose by the name of ‘Drunken Lizzie’ Davis, as well as Millett or Mellett. In Poplar she was known as ‘Fair Alice’ Downey. Again, according to her mother (who identified the body), her true name was Catherine Mylett.

The mother had frequently remonstrated with her daughter upon her model life, but without avail. During the last few months of her life, Catherine lived at a lodging house, no. 18 George Street, Spitalfields (the same place where Emma Elizabeth Smith lived), and seems to have been cohabiting with carman and ex-convict Benjamin Goodson.

On December 19th 1888, at 7:55pm Rose Mylett is seen by Charles Ptolomey, an infirmary night-attendant, speaking with two sailors in Poplar High Street, near Clarke’s Yard. She appeared to have been sober, and was heard by Ptolomay to have said “No, no, no!” to one of them. Their manner of conduct was suspicious enough so as to bring attention to themselves.

At 2:30am of December 20th 1888, Alice Graves spots Mylett outside of The George in Commercial Road with two men. Rose Mylett appeared to have been drunk.

One hour and three quarters later, at 4:15am, Police Sergeant Robert Golding and Constable Thomas Costello, on patrol at the time, came across the lifeless body of an unidentified woman (Rose Mylett) in the yard between 184 and 186 Poplar High Street, in Clarke’s Yard (so called because of owner George Clarke, a builder’s merchant). The body was still warm, and lying on its left side. It appeared to P.S. Golding as if the attitude of the body was somewhat reminiscent of that of a Ripper victims, with the left leg drawn up and right leg stretched out. The clothes were not torn or disarranged in any manner, and there was no obvious sign of injury. Golding did not himself attribute the death to the Ripper.

Still, Rose Mylett was a known prostitute and her body was found only two miles from the center of the Whitechapel murders. Public suspicion grew concerning the case, and the hush that had befallen the public since the dreadful Kelly murder a month and a week before was quickly disrupted. Once again, the Ripper’s name was spoken aloud.

Death was confirmed by divisional surgeon Dr. Matthew Brownfield’s assistant, Mr. Harris, but at first doctors were at a loss as to what had caused the death. It did not seem like a Ripper murder, as the throat was not cut and there were no easily visible wounds anywhere on the body. It wasn’t until a faint mark resembling the imprint of a string was found around her neck that strangulation was first suggested.

Dr. Brownfield prepared the post mortem repost. Dr. Robert Anderson was also involved in the case, and his findings seemed to contradict those of Dr. Brownfield. He observed that there was no trace of a struggle around the yard – no items strewn about, no clothing torn or ripped, no scratches on the body, and no second set of footprints anywhere among the soft ground of the yard. Also according to Anderson, the body “lay naturally.”

Anderson, along with the backing of his police force, insisted that Mylett’s death was not attributable to murder, and demanded that Dr. Thomas Bond of Westminster be sent to re-examine the body. Bond’s personal assistant, and then the Senior Police Surgeon both intercepted Anderson’s request, and both went down of their own accord to see the body for themselves. Both returned with a diagnosis of 'willful murder by strangulation.’ Dr. Bond had already examinated the Thames Mysteries of 1873 and 1874, the Rainham Mystery of 1887 and the Whitehall Mystery of 1888, and later would examine Elizabeth Jackson’s and Alice McKenzie’s cases.

Finally, Dr. Bond received Anderson’s request and examined the body of Rose Mylett, in the hopes of studying the faint marks he had been told about by his colleagues before him, and was surprised to find that they had disappeared! Furthermore, there were no secondary signs of strangulation, such as a protruding tongue or clenched fists. This, he believed, was sufficient evidence to rebut the theory that she was strangled. In fact, he put forth the idea that Mylett had fallen down while drunk and was choked to death by her stiff, velvet collar.

The medical reports also created two major conflicts with witness testimony. First, there was found no alcohol in Mylett’s stomach, which conflicts with Alice Graves’ testimony that said she saw the deceased quite drunk with two men outside The George at 2:30 A.M.. Second, the medical report revealed evidence purporting that Mylett had never given birth, this time contradicting the statement made by her mother.

Inquest

The inquest into the death of Rose Mylett was held under Wynne Baxter at Poplar Town Hall on December 21st, 1888 and again on January 2nd 1889 and finally on January 9th 1889. The report prepared by Brownfield was not generally accepted among police, who cited that there was no string or ligature discarded on the premises, and that the mark on the neck encircled only one-quarter the circumference of the neck.

Mr. Wynne Baxter, however, wanted nothing to do with this “nonsense” of “death by natural causes.” In his summing up at the inquest, he told the jury:

After Dr. Bromfield and his assistant, duly qualified men, came to the conclusion that this was a case of homicidal strangulation, someone had a suspicion that the evidence was not satisfactory. At all events, you’ve heard that doctor after doctor went down to view the body without my knowledge or sanction as coroner. I did not wish to make that a personal matter, but I had never received such treatment before. Of the five doctors who saw the body, Dr. Bond was the only one who considered the case was not one of murder. Dr. Bond did not see the body until five days after her death and he was, therefore, at a disadvantage. Dr. Bond stated that if this was a case of strangulation he should have expected to find the skin broken, but it was clearly shown, on reference being made to the records of the Indian doctors in the cases of Thug murders, that there were no marks whatever left. Other eminent authorities agreed with that view.

Dr. George Bagster Phillips agreed with Baxter. According to Phillips, the murderer 'had studied the theory of strangulation, for he evidently knew where to place the cord so as to immediately bring his victim under control.’

The jury chose to side with the coroner and came up with the ever popular verdict of 'willful murder by person or person unknown’ being guided to that conclusion by the evidence of Doctors Brownfield, Harris, Charles A. Hibberd (who would examine the Pinchin Street Torso of 1889) and M'Kenna, each of whom was of opinion that the woman was murdered by means of something of the nature of a cord drawn tightly around her neck. 

Aftermath

Anderson and the C.I.D., dismayed that their reports and findings were ignored by Baxter, refused to set their men upon the case, deeming the murderer to be non-existent and such an attempt a blatant waste of time and man-power.

Later on in life, Anderson, in The Lighter Side of My Official Life (1910), wrote that “the Poplar case of December, 1888, was death from natural causes, and but for the 'Jack the Ripper’ scare, no one would have thought of suggesting that it was a homicide.”

Photos showing Rose Mylett with two sailors, and her funeral from: Escrito con Sangre

***

To know more:

Wikipedia

Casebook – Casebook Message Boards – Casebook forums – Wiki Casebook –

Jack The Ripper.org

Jack the Ripper Tour

JTR Forums

Jack the Ripper Map

The Quester Files

Victorian Ripper forums

BEADLE, William: The Real ‘Rose’ Mylett, in Ripperologist No. 28, April 2000.

BEADLE, William (2009): Jack the Ripper: Unmasked.

BEGG, Paul & BENNETT, John (2014): The forgotten victims.

BEGG, Paul; FIDO, Martin & SKINNER, Keith (1996): The Jack The Ripper A – Z.

EDDLESTON, John J. (2001): Jack the Ripper: An Encyclopedia.

EVANS, Stewart P. & RUMBELOW, Donald (2006): Jack the Ripper: Scotland Yard Investigates.

EVANS, Stewart P. & SKINNER, Keith (2000). The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Sourcebook: An Illustrated Encyclopedia.

1880 – Catherine and her common law husband Thomas Davis become parents of daughter Florence “Flossie” or “Florrie” Beatrice at 6 Maidman Street, Mile End, East London (September 12).

1881 – Catherine and her daughter Florence live at 40 Lincoln Street, Mile End Old Town, with lodger Blanche Solmonde, a French needlewoman.

1882 – Catherine’s father Henry dies at his home at 46 Thomas Street (February).

1883 – Daughter Florence goes to live with Catherine’s mother Margaret in Thomas Street, Whitechapel.

1883 – Catherine gives birth to son Henry at the Whitechapel Union Infirmary (June 29).

1884 – Son Henry may have died.

Ca. 1886/87– Daughter Florence attends a Sutton school for children whose parents were in the workhouse or Infirmary on a regular basis.

Before 1888 – Catherine and husband Thomas split.

1888 – Catherine is admitted at Bromley Infirmary because of an unspecified malady, she is registered under the name Rose (January 20 to March 14).

1888 – Rose lives at 18 George Street lodging house in Spitalfields with carman and ex-convict Benjamin Goodson.

1888 – Her daughter Florence is removed from Stepney Union to Mile End (August 3).

1888 – Rose is seen  by Charles Ptolomey in Poplar High Street, East London, rejecting two sailors (December 19).

1888 –  Alice Graves spots Mylett outside of The George public house in Commercial Road, East End, with two men (December 20).

1888 – Police Sergeant Robert Golding and Constable Thomas Costello come across Rose’s lifeless body in the yard between 184 and 186 Poplar High Street, Clarke’s Yard. She was 29 (December 20).

Elizabeth Stride

Elizabeth Stride (b. Elisabeth Gustafsdotter; aka Liz Stride, Long Liz, Anne Fitzgerald)

Birth date: November 27, 1843 Attacked and killed (age): September 30, 1888 (44)

Complexion: Pale Eyes colour: Light grey Hair colour: Brown dark Height: 5’ 5" (165 cm) Ocupation: Maid, coffee shop keeper, cleaner, sewing and charring, occasional prostitute

Clothes at the time of murder/discovery: A long black cloth jacket, fur trimmed around the bottom with a red rose and white maiden hair fern pinned to it; a black skirt; a black crepe bonnet; a checked neck scarf knotted on left side; a dark brown velveteen bodice; 2 light serge petticoats; 1 white chemise; white stockings; spring sided boots.

Resting place: East London Crematorium & Cemetery, Plaistow.

***

Early life

Elisabeth Gustafsdotter was born on November 27, 1843 in Stora Tumlehed, a rural village within the parish of Torslanda, west of Gothenburg, Sweden. Her father was farmer Gustaf Ericsson and her mother Beatta Carlsdotter. She had an older sister, Anna Christin (b. 1840), and two younger brothers, Carl Bernard (b. 1848) and Svante (b. 1851). Elisabeth was baptized on December 5, 1843 and confirmed on August 14, 1859 at the Torslanda Curch. The family was Lutheran and little Elisabeth participated in the catechetical meeting for the first time in 1854 and continued until 1859.

On October 14, 1860 when she had left school, aged 16, and was old enough to start working, she moved to the Gothenburg parish of Carl Johan to stay with her sister Anna Christin, who was married to a cobbler. It was her sister who found work for Elisabeth as a domestic for Lars Frederick Olofsson, a workman with 4 children. February 2nd of 1864 finds her moving to Cathedral parish, Gothenburg, still working as a domestic servant. On August 25 of the same year, her mother Beata died of a pulmonary disease.

In March 1865 Elisabeth was a single pregnant woman thus she was registered by the Gothenburg police as ‘Female Prostitute number 97’. On April 21 she gave birth to a stillborn baby girl result of her seven-month pregnancy. At this time, being a single woman in this condition was regarded with bringing great shame and scandal. She moved to Philgaten in Ostra Haga, a suburb of Gothenburg, in October 1865 to support herself as a prostitute. During October and November she was treated at the special hospital Kurhuset for venereal diseases. The October 17 entry stated that she was treated for a venereal chancre. She was reported as healthy in the November 3, 7, 10, 14 entries and after the last entry she was told she no longer had to report to the police. 

Elisabeth worked as a maid from November 10, 1865 to around July 1866 with Mrs Maria Wijsner who was married to a theatre musician and lived in Husargaten, another suburb from Gothenburg. In the contract, signed on November 13rd, Maria Wijsner says that she is responsible of Elisabeth’s good conduct as long as she stays in her service.

On February 7th of 1866 Elisabeth applied to move to the Swedish parish in London, England, to avoid even more social stigma. In the spring of that year, Elisabeth’s father Gustaf sold the farm where she and her siblings, and their mother before them, were born.

Moving to London

She entered the London register as an unmarried 23 year-old woman on July 10, 1866 at the Swedish Church in Prince’s Square, St. George in the East (London Borough of Tower Hamlets, east London), changing her name into its English version, Elizabeth. It is likely she funded this trip with the 65 krona she inherited following the death of her mother in August 1864, and which she had received in late 1865. On a Certificate of Change notice filed in Sweden at the time that Liz moved to London it is stated that she could read tolerably well but had little understanding of the Bible or catechism. She lived in Gower Street, Bloomsbury, Central London, and worked as a servant. Upon her arrival in London, Gusdafsdotter learned to speak both English and Yiddish in addition to her native language. She is also known to have briefly dated a policeman in the late 1860s.

On Sunday March 7, 1869 she married ship’s carpenter John Thomas William Stride, from Sheerness (Kent) at the parish church, St. Giles in the Fields, in the London Borough of Camden, in the West End. John was born on February 8, 1821 (being 22 years older than her), son of William and Elenor Monk, and was one of nine children. The Service was conducted by Rev. Will Powell and witnessed by Daniel H. Wyatt and N. Taylor. She gave her name as Elizabeth Gustafson and her address as 67 Gower Street. Soon after the marriage John and Liz were living in East India Dock road in Poplar, Tower and Hamlets, London. They kept a coffee shop at Chrisp Street, Poplar and in 1870 in Upper North Street, Poplar. Their income was also supplemented by John Stride continuing his trade as a carpenter. They moved themselves and the business to 178 Poplar High Street on April 2, 1871, and remained there until the business was taken over by John Dale in 1875. In March 1877, Liz Stride was admitted to the Poplar Workhouse, suggesting that the couple may had separated. 

In 1878 the Princess Alice, a saloon steam ship collides with the steamer Bywell Castle in the Thames. There is a loss of 600-700 lives. Liz will claim that her husband and children were killed in this disaster and that her palate was injured by being kicked in the mouth while climbing the mast to escape. The post mortem report on her specifically states that there was no damage to either her hard or soft palate. It was less demeaning to lose her husband and two children in a tragedy than a failed marriage brought on by alcohol and financial failure; and it served to gain sympathy and charity from others, including the Swedish Church.

Census records from 1881 indicate that John and Elizabeth had reunited and lived together at 69 Usher Road, Old Ford Road, Bow (London borough of Tower Hamlets), but separated permanently by the end of that year. From December 28, 1881 through January 4, 1882 she was treated at the Whitechapel Infirmary for bronchitis. From the Infirmary she moved directly into the Whitechapel Workhouse. From 1882 onwards she lodged on and off at the common lodging house at 32 Flower and Dean Street. Lodgers described her as a quiet woman who would do a “good turn for anyone.” However she had frequently appeared before the Thames Magistrate Court on charges of being drunk and disorderly, sometimes with obscene language. According to testimony by barber Charles Preston, who lived at the same lodging house, she came to London in the service of a “foreign gentleman.” On October 24, 1884, her former husband John Stride died of heart disease caused by tuberculosis aged 63, at Poplar and Stepney sick asylum in Bromley. He is buried in a public grave in the City of London Cemetery.

Later life

In 1885 Elizabeth was living with waterside labourer Michael Kidney (b. 1852). They lived together for three years at 35 Devonshire Street, Marylebone, City of Westminster, moving to 36 Devonshire Street five months prior to her murder, although she often left him for periods of time to go off on the town. Their relationship was stormy. He said that she was frequently absent when she was drinking and he even tried, unsuccessfully, to padlock her in. He also said she told him that she worked for a family in Hyde Park and that she “came to see the country.” He also believed that she had family in London.

She made money by sewing and charring, housecleaning work, received money from Michael Kidney. Elizabeth frequently visited the Swedish Church off of the Ratcliff Highway, where she begged for money or food. On May 20 and again on the 23rd of 1886, she received alms from the Swedish Church. Sven Olsson, Clerk of the Church remembered her as “very poor.” He ran a reading room for Swedish seamen, knew her and had provided her with refuge and financial support. She gave her address as Devonshire Street off Commercial Road.

Her relationship with Kidney continued in an on-and-off fashion. On March 21, 1887 she was registered as an inmate at the Poplar Workhouse. An acquaintance described her as having a calm temperament, though she appeared numerous times for being drunk and disorderly at Thames Magistrates Court, where once she gave her name as Anne Fitzgerald. It is possible that Kidney’s relationship with Elizabeth occasionally spilled over into violence, for on 6th April 1887 she accused him of assault, but failed to turn up at the hearing against him at Thames Magistrate’s Court. In July 1888, Kidney was sent down for three days for being drunk and disorderly and using obscene language. 

Elizabeth received alms from the Swedish church on Saturday September 15 and Thursday September 20, 1888.

She left Kidney again a few days before her murder. Kidney last saw Stride on Tuesday 25th September 1888 in Commercial Street as he went to work and he was expecting to see her at home when he got back. They had not quarreled and she was perfectly sober when they parted. He did not believe she was seeing anybody else because in his own words, “she liked me better than any one else”. He was not unduly concerned about her absence in the five days prior to her murder.

Dr Thomas Barnardo, a leading social reformer, claimed to have met Stride at the lodging house kitchen at 32 Flower and Dean Street on Wednesday 26 September 1888. Elizabeth had not been there in the last three months. According to Elizabeth Tanner, the lodging house deputy, she arrived at the house after a quarrel with Kidney. She told Catherine Lane that she had words with the man she was living with. Dr Barnardo in a letter to the Times newspaper wrote, ‘I found the women and girls thoroughly frightened by the recent murders [Martha’s, Polly’s, and Annie’s], one poor creature, who had apparently been drinking, cried bitterly, we’re all up to no good and no one cares what becomes of us, perhaps some of us will be killed next’. 

[Next post]

***

Portrayed in films:

Norma Foster in A Study in Terror (1965)

Iris Fry in Murder by Decree (1979) (no picture)

Angela Crow in Jack the Ripper TV series (1988)

Josephine Keen in The Ripper (1997)

Susan Lynch in From Hell (2001)

Lena Margareta in Ginger (2016) (no picture)

Photos: Jack the Ripper blogspot, aveleyman.com

***

To know more:

Casebook website - Casebook wiki - Casebook timeline - Casebook message boards - Casebook Forums

Wikipedia

Find a Grave

JTR Forums

Elisabeth Gustafsdotters’ last Stride - Casebook

Jack the Ripper map

The Jack the ripper tour (.co.uk)

Jack the Ripper 1888 - The final Sighting - The murder of Elizabeth Stride

Elizabeth Stride - ripper vision

Ripper Tour

The Jack the Ripper tour (.com)

Whitechapel Society

Whitechapel Jack - Whitechapel Jack (Double Event)

Jack Ripper

Jack the Ripper time Blogspot

All things Crime Blog

Saucy Jacky

Kent Online

BEGG, Paul (2003): Jack the Ripper: The Definitive History.

BEGG, Paul (2013): Jack The Ripper. The Facts.

COOK, Andrew (2009): Jack the Ripper.

EVANS, Stewart P. & RUMBELOW, Donald (2006): Jack the Ripper: Scotland Yard Investigates.

EVANS, Stewart P. & SKINNER, Keith (2000): The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Sourcebook: An Illustrated Encyclopedia.

EVANS, Stewart P. & SKINNER, Keith (2001): Jack the Ripper: Letters from Hell.

FIDO, Martin (1987): The Crimes, Death and Detection of Jack the Ripper.

FROST, Rebecca (2018): The Ripper’s Victims in Print. The Rethoric Portrayals Since 1929.

HUME, Robert (2019): The hidden lives of Jack the Ripper’s victims.

LEUFSTADIUS, Birgitta (1994): Jack the Rippers tredje offer. (In Swedish)

MARRIOT, Trevor (2005): Jack the Ripper: The 21st Century Investigation.

OLSSON, Daniel (2004): Elisabeth’s Story: A Documentary Narrative of Long Liz Stride’s Early Life in Sweden in Ripperologist, No. 52, March 2004.

PRIESTLEY, Mick P. (2018): One Autumn in Whitechapel. 

RANDALL, Anthony J. (2013): Jack the Ripper. Blood lines.

RUBENHOLD, Hallie (2019): The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women killed by Jack the Ripper / The Five: The Lives of Jack the Ripper’s Women.

RUMBELOW, Donald (2004): The Complete Jack the Ripper: Fully Revised and Updated.

SHELDEN, Neal E. (2013): Mary Jane Kelly and the Victims of Jack the Ripper: The 125th Anniversary.

SHELDEN STUBBINGS, Neal (2007): The Victims of Jack the Ripper.

SUDGEN, Philip (2002): The Complete History of Jack the Ripper.

TROW, M. J. (2009): Jack The Ripper: Quest for a Killer.

WHITE, Jerry (2007): London in the Nineteenth Century.

WOODS, Paul; & BADDELEY, Gavin (2009): Saucy Jack: The Elusive Ripper.

1860 – Elisabeth moves to the Gothenburg parish of Carl Johan to stay with her sister Anna Christin, who found work for Elisabeth as a domestic for Lars Frederick Olofsson (October 14). 1862 – Elisabeth moves to the Cathedral parish in Gothenburg, still working as a domestic servant. 1864 – Elisabeth’s mother dies (August 25). 1865 – Because she is a pregnant single woman, she is registered by the Gothenburg police as “Female Prostitute #97” (March). 1865 – Elisabeth gives birth to a stillborn daughter result of her 7 month pregnancy (April 21). 1865 – She moves to Philgaten in Ostra Haga, a suburb of Gothenburg, and supports herself through prostitution (October). 1865 – Elisabeth is treated for venereal disease at the Kuuset hospital (October 17 to November 3). 1865 – She is registered healthy in the following visits at the hospital and doesn't have to report to the police after her last visit (November 7, 10 and 14). 1865 – Elisabeth works as a maid for Mrs Maria Wijsner in Husargatan, another suburb of Gothenburg (November 10, to July 1866). 1866 – She applies to move to London, England (February 7). 1866 – Elisabeth Gustafsdotter arrives to London to work as a domestic. She is 23 (July 10). 1869 – Elizabeth marries carpenter John Thomas Stride at St. Giles in the Fields, in the London Borough of Camden (March 7).

Ca. 1869 – Elizabeth and John keep a coffee shop at Chrisp Street, Poplar (Tower and Hamlets). 1870 – Elizabeth and John keep a coffee shop at Upper North Street, Poplar. 1871 – Elizabeth and John move themselves and the coffee shop at 178 Poplar High Street (April 2). 1875 – John Dale buys Elizabeth and John’s coffee shop. 1877 – Elizabeth is admitted to the Poplar workhouse, suggesting that she and John may have separated (March). 1881 – Elizabeth and John had reunited by 1881, but separated permanently at the end of the year.

1881 – Elizabeth is treated at the Whitechapel Infirmary for bronchitis (December 28 to January 4, 1882).

1882 – She lodges on and of at the common lodging house at 32 Flower and Dean Street (January 4 to 1885).

1885 – Elizabeth lives on and of with waterside laborer Michael Kidney at Devonshire Street, Marylebone, City of Westminster. 1886 – She begs for money and food at the Swedish Church (May 20 and May 23). 1887 – Elizabeth is admitted to the Poplar workhouse suggesting that she and Michael may have split (March 21). 1887 – She accused him of assault, but failed to turn up at the hearing against him at Thames Magistrate’s Court (April 6).

1888 – Elizabeth Stride receives again financial assistance from the Swedish Church (September 15 and 20). 1888 – Elizabeth leaves Michael for the last time. She goes to stay in a lodging house after a quarrel with him (September 25). 1888 – Dr Michael Barnado, a leading social reformer, meets Elizabeth at the lodging house at 32 Flower and Dean Street (September 26). 1888 – Elizabeth still lodges at 32 Flower and Dean Street lodging house (September 27 and 28). 1888 – Elizabeth spends the evening cleaning 2 rooms at the lodging house and she is paid 6d for that (September 29).

1888 – She and Elizabeth Tanner have some drinks at the Queen’s Head public house and go back to the lodging house together (September 29). 1888 – Elizabeth leaves the lodging house, but before she gives a piece of green velvet to fellow lodger Catherine Lane, and asks her to keep it until her return. Watchman Thomas Bates says she showed him the 6d she had earned before (September 29). 1888 – Liz is seen with a short young man by two labourers at Berner Street, later another labourer sees her with the man too (September 29). 1888 – Matthew Packer claims he has sold some grapes to Liz and the man (September 30). 1888 – PC William Smith sees Elizabeth and the man at Berner Street, opposite the International Working Men’s Educational Club (September 30).