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By Root 202 0

this and the previous murders which even now leave Elizabeth Stride’s inclusion as a Ripper murder debatable but irresolvable. There were no abdominal mutilations (although the arrival of Diemschütz and his carriage probably interfered with the Ripper’s plans). There was no evidence that Stride had been strangled prior to having her throat cut. Plus, if Schwartz did see Stride’s killer, his aggressive and vocal behaviour seems to bear no relation to the silent, solitary murderer of Nichols and Chapman. However, like Nichols and Chapman, it appeared that the killer cut Stride’s throat while she was down on her back. Lack of evidence of a struggle suggests that she was unconscious before the fatal knife strokes. This brings us back to the possibility that it was the Ripper who killed her and only the arrival of Louis Diemschütz dissuaded him from continuing his work on Elizabeth Stride.

It has been argued that Stride was murdered by Michael Kidney, that Schwartz witnessed the start of it and that the third man was possibly Stride’s lover, who fled rather than be exposed by the investigation. Theorists’ reasoning rests on Kidney’s violent nature and his drunken appearance at Leman Street police station on 1 October, accusing the police of being unable to catch Stride’s killer. At that point, the police were supposedly still struggling to identify Stride, hindered by Mrs Malcolm, so (the theory goes) Kidney could have only known of her death by committing it. However, The Times’ coverage of the first day of the inquest (1 October), names the victim as Elizabeth Stride. It seems likely that, by the night of 1 October, when Kidney drunkenly upbraided the police, he could have known Stride was dead by sources other than first-hand experience. All the same...

Needless to say, the jury returned a verdict of ‘Wilful murder by person or persons unknown’.

Catharine Eddowes

The Eddowes inquest, which opened on 4 October, was reconvened and concluded exactly a week later. It was presided over by the City Coroner, Mr Samuel Langham at the Golden Lane Mortuary. In one of several boundary disputes, protests were raised that Wynne Baxter should preside over the inquest as he had over the others. Langham would have none of this, stating that, as the body had been brought to a City mortuary, it was up to the City of London to hold the inquest. The brevity of the inquest aside (compared to those presided over by Baxter), witness testimony still helps us piece together Eddowes’ life and last movements before she fell to the Ripper.

Catharine Eddowes was born in 1842 in Wolverhampton. She was the fifth of eleven children born to George and Catharine Eddowes. George worked in the then-prosperous tin plate industry. Despite this, the family moved to London, settling in Bermondsey. In 1855, tragedy struck when Catharine senior died of phthisis. The family then dispersed. Catharine, or Kate as she was to be known in later life, was sent to live with an aunt in Wolverhampton. She ran away to Birmingham after supposedly robbing her employer.There she briefly lived with an uncle before falling in love, at the age of sixteen, with Thomas Conway. Little is known about him, although he was apparently drawing a pension from the 18th Royal Irish Regiment. During the time they lived together as a common-law couple, he worked as a hawker. They had three children, Annie (1865), George (1868) and another son in 1873. Conway also tattooed his initials ‘T C’ on Kate’s left forearm. Friends from this time remembered her as an intelligent woman with a fiery temper.

In 1880, the couple separated. As usual, different parties gave different reasons. Annie blamed Kate’s habitual drinking and absences. Kate’s sister, Elizabeth, attributed the split to Conway’s drinking and violent behaviour. By 1881, Kate was back in London and living with an Irish porter, John Kelly, at Cooney’s Lodging House, 55, Flower and Dean Street. During this time, she went under the name of Kate Conway. The time that they were together seems to have been happy but poverty-stricken. Kate