In Kate’s absence, her four elder sisters’ lives continued to grow and twist closer together like the roots of trees. Throughout the 1860s, the women who had guided and mothered her had all managed to relocate from Bermondsey, south of the river, to Clerkenwell, a working-class district set around the meat market at Smithfields. They each married in the same church, St. Barnabas, and three of them lived no more than a few streets apart. Eliza had wed a local butcher, James Gold, in 1859, and Harriet and Robert Garrett at last had solemnized their union in 1867, after a period of cohabitation that produced no children. Only Elizabeth lived on the opposite side of the Thames, in Greenwich, where she had settled with her husband, Thomas Fisher. In spite of the cares that accompanied a constantly growing family and the responsibilities of housekeeping, the sisters remained in regular contact, sharing gossip and news. One day, the news was that Kate had returned to London.
The fifteen-year-old motherless girl whom Emma had dispatched like a package to unknown recipients had come back a full-fledged woman, with a child of her own and a man she called her husband. Kate was, however, careful about revealing to her sisters many details about her life. Initially, she told Emma that she and Thomas Conway had been settled in Birmingham, choosing to omit the stories of her vagrant’s existence. Her marital status and the lack of a wedding ring were likely to have raised questions as well, as would have the tattoo of Thomas Conway’s initials, which was inked crudely onto her forearm.
Although they would become fashionable briefly in the late nineteenth century, in the middle of the Victorian era, few symbols were more associated with society’s lowest element than the tattoo. Traditionally, body art had been the preserve of sailors who had traveled to parts of Asia and Oceania where it was common to decorate the body with ink. The practice of tattooing followed the seafarers back to Britain, as did their reputation for poverty, vice, and criminality. Soldiers too were known to have initials, regimental insignias, and other designs permanently drawn on the limbs and torso. Thomas Conway would have been no stranger to the sight of inky snakes, hearts, crosses, and sweethearts’ names etched on the biceps of his army companions. However, while men might be forgiven for defacing their bodies as a mark of their manliness and spirit of adventure, tattooing among women was not regarded with such lenience: a tattoo on a woman’s body not only flouted conventions of feminine purity and beauty, but also rendered her masculine. Getting a tattoo was dirty and painful; in the nineteenth century it involved a needle, a pot of ink, and a sustained succession of pricks. Any woman who would have sought out such an experience was seeking to challenge her “natural delicacy” and to permanently alter her God-given appearance. Much like many of Kate’s decisions—to cohabit with a man, to bear a child out of wedlock, and to lead a nomadic life—acquiring a tattoo was deeply subversive. It is likely that the suggestion had come from Thomas Conway, who may have had her initials marked on his arm too. Perhaps by these means the couple solemnized their commitment to one another on their own terms, without wedding bands and a church service.
Whatever Harriet, Emma, Eliza, and Elizabeth whispered among themselves about their sister, Kate’s appearance in London seemed to signify a desire to make alterations to her life. By 1868 she and Thomas were settled in what was described as a “clean and comfortable” small house at 13 Cottage Place, in an area off Bell Street in Westminster. This house was a significant distance from Clerkenwell, a choice that may reflect Kate’s complex relationship with her family, which regularly swung between intimacy and antagonism. Whether her siblings were present that same year to assist her with the birth of her second child, Thomas Lawrence Conway, is unknown, but by March 1869, Kate was content to name a newborn daughter after her eldest sister, Harriet.
If Conway had brought his wife and child to London in order to further his ambitions, within three years, his hopes had stalled. Though the capital offered a wide market for the sale of ballads and chapbooks, Thomas never seemed to establish himself securely there. By the late nineteenth century, London was home to hundreds, if not thousands of individuals singing and selling their songs on the street. Worse still, Westminster, where they lived, was cited as one of the primary haunts of such peddlers, who had earned a reputation for doing as much begging as they did singing.1 In the past, such a setback would not have hindered Conway and Kate; they would simply have cut their moorings and drifted north or south, in the direction of prospective work. Now, however, young children anchored them in a single place. In spite of his heart condition, Thomas returned to physical labor in order to make ends meet. For a time, he worked as an assistant to a bricklayer; this succeeded in making the rent and paying for meager meals. But these comforts were short-lived. The job and money did not last, and neither did food. Soon the infant, Harriet Conway, suckling at her mother’s empty breast, began to wither. Within three weeks, Kate reported the infant’s death from malnutrition; she felt the child’s final convulsions as she held her in her arms.
It may have been this incident that, by the end of the year, prompted Thomas to leave London in search of work. That winter he headed north, toward Yorkshire, to look for employment. In his absence, Kate took seven-year-old Annie and two-year-old Thomas to Abbey Wood, near Greenwich, possibly to live with her sister Elizabeth and her family. As the Fishers were eight in number by 1870, this arrangement could only have been temporary, and inevitably, by January 20, Kate, Annie, and little Thomas found themselves standing before the gates of Greenwich Union Workhouse.
What initially began as an expedient method of contending with a problem rapidly evolved into a way of life for Kate. Over the next ten years, whenever faced with misfortune, Kate placed herself in the care of a board of guardians. On August 15, 1873, she gave birth to another son, George Alfred Conway, in the maternity ward of Southwark Workhouse. Records suggest that the length of her sojourns varied, in some instances lasting for weeks and others for several months. On each occasion, Kate was accompanied by one or more of her children.
For a destitute woman, entering the workhouse with her children presented a number of complications. According to the Poor Law, single mothers with illegitimate children were not entitled to receive “outdoor relief,” or parish handouts designed to assist poor families who lived in their own lodgings. Authorities feared that providing financial support to immoral women in their own homes was tantamount to a state subsidy of prostitution. Although they were aware that many poorer women like Kate cohabited with monogamous common-law partners, no real distinction was made between this type of “fallen woman” and acknowledged prostitutes. As far as “respectable society” was concerned, a mother had borne her child through either a legal union or a sinful coupling. Once the woman and her children were inside the workhouse, the board of guardians was at liberty to discriminate between the decent and the damned, to separate the so-called fallen women from impressionable young girls or to feed mothers who had borne an illegitimate child on a punishment diet of watered skilly.
After they had passed through what was known as “the archway of tears,” the admission routine for families would have been the same for all, regardless of the mother’s marital status. Everyone was separated by gender and age, stripped of clothes and possessions, ordered into the bath, and handed a workhouse uniform. According to the stipulations of the Poor Law, children under the age of seven were allowed to remain with their mother, sleeping in her filthy, hard bed and playing beside her on the bench as she picked oakum. Children between seven and fourteen years of age were removed from their parents, or the one parent who had brought them to the workhouse, to live in separate school facilities. Though families were strictly segregated, parental “interviews” were permitted with children in the dining hall once a week, so long as the sons and daughters remained on site. In November 1876, when Kate arrived at Greenwich Union Workhouse in anticipation of the birth of her fourth child, Frederick, two-year-old George Alfred was allowed to remain at her side, but Annie, who was then thir
teen, and Thomas, age eight, were dispatched to the Industrial School in Sutton.*
In spite of its terrifying reputation, the workhouse was often able to effect some good, especially for destitute children. The Poor Law Union insisted that workhouses provide girls and boys with lessons in reading and arithmetic for a minimum of three hours daily, helping many children to acquire at least a semblance of education. Authorities hoped to give children born into poverty an opportunity to step out of the trap that had caught their parents and grandparents. To further this aim, the government made provisions in 1857 for the expansion of what were called Industrial Schools. Removing young paupers from both the corrupting influence of the workhouse and the unwholesome environment of urban centers, these establishments were intended to offer a practical education to poor children. Boys were taught trades such as shoemaking, tailoring, carpentry, and music; girls were educated in the domestic arts, such as needlework and knitting, to prepare for life in service.
The school that Annie and her brother Thomas attended at Sutton absorbed most of the workhouse children from the southeastern London parishes and boasted a capacity of up to a thousand pauper scholars. In the 1870s, its facilities, considered state-of-the-art, included expansive kitchens, a laundry, washrooms, a boiler room, and a steam engine to pump fresh water into the school’s tanks. In addition to open, spacious stairwells, dormitories, and classrooms, there were workshops for learning trades as well as a farm where students were educated in agriculture. Compared to Dowgate, the small charity school that Kate had attended, the facilities offered far greater scope for a child to improve his or her prospects. According to the memoirs of the otherwise anonymous “W.H.R.,” a former pupil at Sutton, the compassionate encouragement offered by some teachers was matched by the brutal violence of others. However, as a whole, Sutton offered cleaner beds, more plentiful food, and a cheerier environment than Greenwich Union Workhouse. There were also opportunities for song and musical performances on the harmonium. The regimen had an overwhelmingly positive impact on W.H.R. “At Sutton,” he concluded, “I was thoroughly de-pauperised, for come what would in a fair way, I was determined never again to enter the workhouse as a pauper.”2
The success of the Industrial School at Sutton can also be measured in terms of its impact on Kate’s younger brothers and sister—Thomas, George, and Mary—who were sent there from Bermondsey Workhouse after the death of their father. Within several years, George Eddowes had been trained as a shoemaker, while Thomas Eddowes had been taught music and was sent to join the band of the 45th Nottinghamshire Regiment of Infantry in Preston. Mary too succeeded well enough in her “domestic studies” to warrant placement as a servant.* Had Kate been a year or so younger in 1857, she too may have benefited from a Sutton education and the course of her life may have taken a very different turn.
By the late 1870s, Kate’s problems appear to have become twofold. Like many working-class women, she was caught in a vicious circle: Conway had to leave London to find work, but in doing so, he left his common-law partner and their children without support. No amount of women’s labor in a factory, a sweatshop, or a laundry, selling items on the street or doing piecework from home, would ever bring in an amount adequate to cover a family’s needs and keep it from the workhouse. Worse still, when Thomas Conway did return, he was violent.
Conway’s absences and the extreme hardship the family faced in attempting to feed themselves and maintain a home had begun to lead to physical altercations when the couple was together. Kate’s sisters and her daughter noticed a dark pattern emerging. Although Emma claimed that “on a whole, they lived happily together,” the “quarrels between them” became difficult to ignore. According to both Annie and Emma, the pair’s disagreements were exacerbated by Kate’s “habit of excessive drinking,” while Thomas was committed to abstinence. It appears that the couple “could never agree” on this point, and both Annie and her aunts eventually came to believe that where her drinking and her relationship with Conway were concerned, Kate was the author of her own misfortunes.
This attitude was not out of step with Victorian working-class sentiments about domestic violence; frequently the woman was blamed for the beatings she received. A certain degree of violence within the home was thought to serve a disciplinary function. Husbands felt no remorse for administering a chastising slap, while wives were often made to feel that they had “asked for it.”3 The catalogue of offenses that might cause a husband to raise his hand against his wife was extensive: the use of foul language, the rejection of his sexual advances, disobedience, impertinence, or simply challenging his superior role within the family. However, nothing figured more prominently in cases of domestic violence than alcohol. A drunken man was just as likely to beat his wife as was a sober husband who disapproved of his wife’s intoxication. A wife’s perpetual drunkenness was often used successfully by a spouse as a defense in trials against a claim of assault.4 In 1877, the very year that Kate and Thomas Conway’s union began to fracture under similar circumstances, a legal textbook, Principles of Punishment,described wife beating as a crime that “varies infinitely in degree of criminality.” Whereas some serious cases might warrant imprisonment, most incidents of physical abuse were, according to the author, so “trifling as almost to permit of justification.”
There were, however, limits to this attitude, and not everyone in a community or a family was prepared to turn a blind eye. While neighbors and friends might tactfully avoid direct physical intervention during a domestic dispute, communities closely monitored warring couples by checking up on the woman or by reminding the man that they could hear what he was doing. Most action was taken indirectly, usually by offering the woman shelter when she needed to avoid her husband’s wrath. The Eddowes sisters chose to deal with Kate’s deteriorating domestic situation in this manner.
In the year between November 1876 and December 1877, Kate was in and out of workhouses and casual wards on at least seven separate occasions. On August 6, she was arrested for drunk and disorderly behavior and sent to Wandsworth Prison for fourteen days.* In every instance, including her incarceration, she brought some or all of her children with her. As Kate’s life fell to pieces, Emma was there to help gather them. According to an interview in the London Daily News, in the worst of times, Kate had fallen into the habit of appearing at her sister’s door and begging her for help. Emma recalled that her sibling’s face appeared “frightfully disfigured” from Conway’s beatings. Kate, with her emotions loosed by drink, often gave way to sobs. “I wish I was like you,” she would cry.5 Although Emma’s life, contained in a few shabby rooms in Bridgewater Gardens, might not have appeared worthy of envy, to her younger sister it would have represented everything Kate had failed to become.
The situation only worsened. In December 1877, she was arguing furiously with Conway again. Shortly before Christmas, she left him and took ten-month old Frederick with her to the casual ward for the night.* Some form of temporary reconciliation had been reached by Christmas Day, which Kate and her family spent with her sisters and their families. Unfortunately, the festive celebration did not go well. The Eddowes women were shocked by Kate’s battered appearance. Emma recalled that “Both her eyes had been blackened” and that she bore “a dreadful face.” She was equally horrified by Thomas’s attitude. “The man, Conway,” as she referred to him disdainfully, “appeared to be attached to her,” though Emma found it difficult to fathom how any affection could exist between the two, especially when Kate so obviously “suffered from his brutality.” Much to Emma’s disgust, Thomas exhibited no shame for his actions and remarked openly and with a sigh of exasperation, “Kate, I shall be hung for you one of these days.”6 Whatever occurred during that gathering—Kate’s excessive drinking, or something else—the sisters came to the conclusion that Kate was no better than Thomas Conway. Shortly thereafter, a rift developed, and Emma and Harriet broke off relations with their sibling altogether.
Like many women caught i
n the cycle of domestic violence, Kate always returned to Conway. The couple experienced periods of peace and discord, chaos and harmony, and their children suffered the consequences. Their perpetual financial distress made it necessary for the family to move frequently, from Westminster to Southwark and Deptford, occupying single rooms and lodging houses as necessity demanded. Annie had, however, grown old enough to look after her younger siblings and mind the home, so Kate was able to work. Sometimes this included laboring at a laundry or a bit of charring for her better-off neighbors, but toward the end of the 1870s, it appears that she and Thomas returned to hawking ballads together.
In 1879, their regular patch was Mill Lane, a small commercial street near the army barracks at Woolwich, frequented by an assortment of vendors and peddlers catering to residents and soldiers. On October 4, eleven-year-old Thomas and his six-year-old brother, George, accompanied their parents as they pattered and sang out their wares. Eventually, both parents wandered off and instructed the boys to wait where they had been left, outside 8 Mill Lane. When it began to grow dark and no one returned for the children, questions were asked and the boys were escorted to Greenwich Union Workhouse, a place they had come to know well over the years. Nearly a week would pass before Kate could be located and made to reclaim her progeny.* This incident was followed by a similar one, on November 11. This time, the boys were escorted to the workhouse by police officer 251, who had found them “deserted by their mother” on the street.7 On this occasion, Kate could not be found. Nearly a month later, the boys’ sixteen-year-old sister was called upon to collect them. Where Kate had disappeared to during that time is anyone’s guess. Certainly, her behavior begs many questions about her state of mind and her use of alcohol. Earlier that year, Kate had suffered the loss of her infant, Frederick, a circumstance that may have only exacerbated her existing problems.
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