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The Five Victims of Jack the Ripper - Part 2

© Brenda Gambrell

Amazingly enough, another woman was murdered by Jack the Ripper on the same night as Elizabeth Stride. Her name was Catherine Eddowes, a friendly woman known for her good spirits. Called “Kate” by her friends and family, she had a problem with drinking and was believed to prostitute herself when under the influence of alcohol. She was born in England in 1842. She met Thomas Conway when she was only sixteen years old and even though they never married, she lived with him for twenty years and produced three children. They eventually separated in 1880 after years of abuse. On the night of the double murder, she told John Kelly, the man she had been living with for the last seven years, that she was off to borrow money from her daughter. Kelly warned her about the Whitechapel killer and asked her to come home early. Kate assured him "Don't you fear for me. I'll take care of myself and I shan't fall into his hands." Kate never arrived at her daughter’s house but instead was arrested by the police for drunkenness. After sleeping it off, she was released at approximately 1:00 am, joking with the sergeant “I shall get a damned fine hiding when I get home them.” Kate never made it home. The woman’s body in Mitre Square was identified as the drunk they had released a few hours earlier.

Nerves were starting to settle in Whitechapel. There had not been a murder for over a month and the streets began to fill again after dark. Mary Kelly was one of the streetwalkers resuming her trade, desperate to make the rent she had fallen several weeks behind on. An Irish girl born in Limerick, she married a collier when she was sixteen but a mine explosion killed him after a mere three years together. In 1884 she came to London and found work at a brothel. Being an attractive woman, she did not have to rely solely on prostitution, for her various lovers often supported her. On the evening of November 8, 1888, Mary’s lover Joe Barnett came to apologize for being out of work and unable to give her any money. When they parted at 8:00 that night, he didn’t realize it would be the last time he would see her alive. The next morning, the landlord’s assistant knocked on the door to Mary’s room at 13 Miller’s Court, planning to ask for the past due rent. When there was no answer, he reached inside a broken window and peered through the curtains. What he saw inside was Mary’s mutilated corpse lying on the bed, her body so viscously mangled that Joe Barnett would only be able to identify her by her hair and eyes.

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