Complete History of Jack the Ripper

by Philip Sudgen

  The inspector found nothing among the victim’s belongings that offered any clue to her identity. Her jacket pocket contained but two pocket handkerchiefs, a thimble and a piece of wool on a card. The description, however, was communicated by wire to all police stations.1

  Identifying the dead woman and unravelling something of her history proved no straightforward task. Almost immediately police inquiries were bedevilled by the intrusion of Mrs Mary Malcolm. Mrs Malcolm was the wife of a tailor and lived at 50 Eagle Street, Red Lion Square, Holborn. On Monday, 1 October, she identified the body as that of her sister, Mrs Elizabeth Watts.

  Mrs Malcolm had a very strange story to tell. She said that her sister, who lived in East End lodging houses, had been in the habit of coming to her for assistance for the past five years. They met every Saturday afternoon at four, at the corner of Chancery Lane, and Mrs Malcolm always gave her sister two shillings for her lodgings. But on Saturday, 29 September, the day before the murder, Mrs Watts did not come. Mary, who waited in vain from half past three to five, was troubled. Her sister had not missed a meeting for nearly three years. At twenty minutes past one the next morning Mrs Malcolm was lying in bed. It was then that she had a presentiment that some disaster had befallen her sister: ‘About 1.20 on Sunday morning I was lying on my bed when I felt a kind of pressure on my breast, and then I felt three kisses on my cheek. I also heard the kisses, and they were quite distinct.’ When, later in the day, she heard that another murder had been committed about that time, it seemed to Mrs Malcolm that her worst fears had been confirmed. She walked into Whitechapel, made inquiries at a police station and was directed to St George’s Mortuary.

  On Tuesday, 2 October, Mrs Malcolm assured the inquest that the deceased was undoubtedly Elizabeth Watts. She also gave her sister a very dubious character indeed. Her husband had sent her back to her mother because he had caught her misbehaving with a porter. She had once left a naked baby, the product of an illicit affair with a policeman, on Mrs Malcolm’s doorstep. And she had been several times taken into custody for being drunk and disorderly. The coroner asked Mrs Malcolm what her sister did for a livelihood. She replied curtly: ‘I had my doubts.’ Notwithstanding all this, Mary was apparently genuinely distressed by the loss of her sister. One newspaper commented that she seemed ‘deeply affected’ as she gave her evidence. Upon several occasions during the examination she burst into tears.

  The police can hardly have been impressed by Mary Malcolm’s fanciful tale of a presentiment. The credibility of her evidence, furthermore, was seriously undermined by her vacillation at the mortuary. When she first saw the body on the Sunday she could not identify it. Before the coroner, she gave various explanations of her failure. At one point she ascribed it to the fact that she saw the body in gaslight, between nine and ten at night. At another she said that she had been unsure because the body did not exhibit a crippled foot. Mrs Watts, she stated, had ‘a hollowness in her right foot, caused by its being run over.’ Whatever, on Monday she came back to the mortuary, twice, and this time she made a positive identification. Not, be it noted, because she recognized her sister in the dead woman’s face but from a small black mark on one of her legs. It was, she explained, an adder bite. As children they had been rolling down a hill when an adder had bitten Mary on the left hand and her sister on the leg.

  Neither the police nor the coroner were happy with Mary Malcolm’s identification. And their misgivings were eventually vindicated when the real Elizabeth Watts, now Mrs Elizabeth Stokes, turned up, with an appropriately crippled foot, alive if not well. Married to a brickmaker and living at 5 Charles Street, Tottenham, Mrs Stokes said that she had not seen her sister Mary for years. On 23 October she inveighed bitterly against Mrs Malcolm at the inquest. ‘Her evidence was infamy and lies,’ she cried heatedly, ‘and I am sorry that I have a sister who can tell such dreadful falsehoods.’ By then, of course, Mary Malcolm had wasted a great deal of police time.2

  Despite such distractions the detectives did succeed in establishing the true identity of the victim. She was a Swedish woman named Elizabeth Stride and her last address had been a common lodging house at 32 Flower and Dean Street. But no one, not even Michael Kidney, with whom she had lived for three years, seemed to know much of her past beyond what she herself had told them. And therein the police encountered another difficulty – for Elizabeth Stride had been gifted with an imagination every bit as lively as that of Mrs Malcolm.

  Her principal fantasy was inspired by the loss of the Princess Alice in 1878. This tragedy, described by The Times as ‘one of the most fearful disasters of modern times’, has now been almost entirely forgotten. On 3 September 1878 a pleasure steamer, Princess Alice, collided in the Thames with a steam collier, Bywell Castle, and sank with the loss of between 600 and 700 lives. Elizabeth Stride gave out that her husband and two of her children had been drowned in the Princess Alice. She had saved herself by climbing a rope. But during that frantic scramble for life a man clambering up the rope ahead of her had slipped and accidentally kicked her in the face, knocking out her front teeth and stoving in the whole or part of the roof of her mouth. Elizabeth seems to have told this story to anyone who would listen – to Sven Olsson, clerk of the Swedish Church in Prince’s Square, to Michael Kidney, the waterside labourer who lived with her, to Elizabeth Tanner and Thomas Bates, the deputy and watchman respectively of the lodging house at 32 Flower and Dean Street, to Charles Preston, a fellow lodger there, and doubtless to many another lost to record. Yet there was not a word of truth in it.

  The story was dismissed by a Greenwich correspondent of the Daily News:

  Mr C. J. Carttar, late coroner for West Kent, held an inquiry, extending over six weeks, on the bodies of 527 persons drowned by the disaster, at the Town Hall, Woolwich, the majority of whom were identified, and caused an alphabetical list of those identified, above 500, to be made by his clerk. An inspection of the list, which is in the possession of Mr E. A. Carttar, the present coroner, and son of the late coroner, does not disclose the name of Stride. Whole families were drowned, but the only instance of a father and two children being drowned where the children were under the age of 12 years was in the case of an accountant named Bell, aged 38, his two sons being aged respectively 10 and 7 years. It is true that Mr Lewis, the Essex coroner, held inquests on a few of the bodies cast ashore in Essex, but it is extremely improbable that the three bodies of Mr Stride and his two children were cast ashore on that side of the river, or that they were all driven out to sea and lost.3

  Wynne Baxter, the coroner at the Stride inquest, also pointed out that although a subscription had been raised to assist the bereaved relatives of the Princess Alice dead no person by the name of Stride ever applied for relief from the fund. Elizabeth’s upper front teeth were missing. But as for her assertion that the roof of her mouth had been injured during the disaster, that was easily disproved. On 5 October Dr Phillips, who had examined the mouth of the dead woman specifically to verify this point, reported to the inquest that he could not find ‘any injury to or absence of any part of either the hard or the soft palate.’4

  The truth, when Inspector Reid unearthed it, turned out to be a dull substitute for Elizabeth’s colourful tale. John Thomas Stride, her husband, survived the Princess Alice disaster by six years. He died of heart disease in 1884. It is probable, although we cannot know, that Elizabeth concocted her story to conceal a failed marriage and to elicit sympathy from the Swedish Church or such others as she dared approach for assistance.

  Disregarding the red herrings and piecing together what the police discovered in 1888 and what subsequent researchers have been able to learn since, we can now reconstruct the broad outline of Elizabeth Stride’s life accurately.5

  Her maiden name was Elisabeth Gustafsdotter. The daughter of Gustaf Ericsson, a farmer, and his wife Beata Carlsdotter, she was born on 27 November 1843 in the parish of Torslanda, north of Gothenburg. Their farm was called Stora (meaning Big) Tumlehed. On 14 October
1860, when Elizabeth was nearly seventeen, she took out a certificate of altered residence from the parish of Torslanda and moved to that of Carl Johan in Gothenburg. She found work there as a domestic in the service of Lars Fredrik Olofsson, a workman, but soon moved on, taking out a new certificate to the Cathedral parish in Gothenburg on 2 February 1862. Elizabeth still gave her occupation as that of a domestic but this time her place of work is not known.

  In March 1865 the police of Gothenburg registered her as a prostitute. Subsequent register entries tell us that she was a girl of slight build with brown hair, blue eyes, a straight nose and an oval face, that in October 1865 she was living in Philgaten in Östra Haga, a suburb of Gothenburg, and that she was twice treated in the special hospital, Kurhuset, for venereal diseases. On 21 April 1865 Elizabeth gave birth to a still-born girl. Nearly a year later, on 7 February 1866, she took out a new certificate of altered residence from the Cathedral parish to the Swedish parish in London. The certificate states that she could read tolerably well but possessed only a poor understanding of the Bible and catechism.6

  Why did Elizabeth come to England? According to Michael Kidney’s inquest deposition, she told him at one time that she first came to see the country and at another that she had come in the service of a family. This is not good evidence but it is the best we have and there is possibly some truth in both of Elizabeth’s explanations. Certainly they are not incompatible. Kidney understood, moreover, that at one time she was in domestic service with a gentleman living near Hyde Park.

  On 10 July 1866 she was registered as an unmarried woman at the Swedish Church in Prince’s Square, St George-in-the East. Three years later she married. The bridegroom was a carpenter named John Thomas Stride and the service was performed by William Powell in the parish church of St Giles-in-the Fields on 7 March 1869. Elizabeth is described on the marriage certificate as Elizabeth Gustifson, spinster, the daughter of Augustus Gustifson, labourer. At the time of the marriage Stride was living at 21 Munster Street, Regent’s Park, and Elizabeth at 67 Gower Street.

  Almost nothing is known about their marriage. Elizabeth later told Michael Kidney that she had borne nine children but this statement has never been corroborated. However, we do know that when Walter Stride, John’s nephew, last saw the couple, soon after the marriage, they were ensconced in East India Dock Road, Poplar. And Kelly’s trade directory for 1870 lists John Thomas Stride as the keeper of a coffee room in Upper North Street, Poplar. In 1871 his business moved to 178 Poplar High Street and there it remained until taken over by John Dale in 1875.

  By the late 1870s Elizabeth’s marriage was in difficulties. On 21 March 1877 she was admitted to the Poplar Workhouse. Then, soon after the Princess Alice went down, she told Sven Olsson, clerk of the Swedish Church, that her husband had been drowned in the tragedy. She was, Olsson recalled ten years later, then in ‘very poor’ circumstances and receiving occasional assistance from the Church. In 1878, of course, John Stride was very much alive. The fact that Elizabeth was accepting charity and giving out that he was dead, however, suggests strongly that the couple had separated. There was a reunion. The 1881 census records the Strides at 69 Usher Road, Old Ford Road, Bow. But it was temporary. From 28 December 1881 to 4 January 1882 Elizabeth was treated in the Whitechapel Workhouse Infirmary for bronchitis and she was discharged from there into the workhouse. She does not seem to have lived with Stride again. From 1882 she lodged on and off at a common lodging house at 32 Flower and Dean Street. John Stride died in the Poplar and Stepney Sick Asylum at Bromley on 24 October 1884.

  Elizabeth spent her last three years with a waterside labourer named Michael Kidney. Their address is of some import. For press versions of Kidney’s inquest testimony give it as 38 Dorset Street and this has led some writers, most notably Stephen Knight, to suppose a connection between Elizabeth Stride and two other victims, Annie Chapman and Mary Jane Kelly, who lived in Dorset Street. But Kidney was misreported. In a statement to the Central News he explained that he lived with Elizabeth ‘at 35 Devonshire Street down to five months ago, when they moved to No. 36 in the same street.’ That Devonshire Street, close to the river where Kidney worked, was the correct address is substantiated by other evidence. In May 1886, when applying for relief from the Swedish Church, Elizabeth gave her address as Devonshire Street, Commercial Road, and Catherine Lane, who lodged with Elizabeth at 32 Flower and Dean Street in 1888, also heard her say that she had once lived in Devonshire Street.7 On Elizabeth herself Kidney’s inquest testimony cannot be said to be very revealing, but he did say that she was in the habit of occasionally going away on her own: ‘During the three years I have known her she has been away from me about five months altogether . . . It was drink that made her go . . . She always came back again. I think she liked me better than any other man.’

  From 1882 Elizabeth was an occasional lodger at 32 Flower and Dean Street. She seems to have been generally well-liked there and was known affectionately as ‘Long Liz’. Elizabeth Tanner, the deputy, remembered her as a quiet, sober woman. And a Central News reporter, after interviewing her lodging house cronies, gave her a similar character: ‘According to her associates, she was of calm temperament, rarely quarrelling with anyone; in fact, she was so good-natured that she would ‘do a good turn for anyone’. Her occupation was that of a charwoman.’8 Notwithstanding such golden opinions Elizabeth was well known at Thames Magistrates’ Court. In the last few years of her life she appeared there frequently for being drunk and disorderly.

  Unless her funds were being squandered on drink Long Liz may only have been an occasional prostitute. This was certainly the view of Thomas Bates, the watchman at No. 32. ‘Lor’ bless you,’ he told one reporter, ‘when she could get no work she had to do the best she could for her living, but a neater and a cleaner woman never lived!’ Kidney gave her money and she sometimes earned a little by sewing or charring. Elizabeth Tanner saw her frequently during the last three months. ‘She told me,’ Mrs Tanner deposed at the inquest, ‘that she was at work among the Jews.’ If all else failed Elizabeth could and did throw herself upon the charity of the Swedish Church. We know from its records that she applied for and received financial assistance from them on 20 and 23 May 1886 and on 15 and 20 September 1888.

  The movements of Elizabeth Stride during the week before her death are obscure. Catherine Lane said that she turned up at 32 Flower and Dean Street on Thursday, 27 September, saying that she had had words with the man she had been living with. The man, Michael Kidney, told a different story. He said that he had last seen Elizabeth in Commercial Street on the Tuesday. At that time they were on friendly terms and when he got home after work he fully expected her to be there. But although she had been home she had gone out again and returned but once – in his absence the next day – to collect a few belongings. This story of a sudden and unexplained departure does not ring true. It is very likely that there was a quarrel. There had been others. In April 1887 Elizabeth had charged Kidney with assault but had then failed to appear at Thames Magistrates’ Court to prosecute.9 Kidney was obviously anxious to deny a new argument with his paramour lest he be suspected of her murder but there is little reason to doubt his statement that he did not see her after Tuesday. Mrs Tanner and Catherine Lane testified that Elizabeth arrived at their lodging house on Thursday. They seem, however, to have been mistaken. Thomas Bates, the watchman, said she arrived on the Tuesday and, besides, we have evidence from a most unexpected witness that Elizabeth was at No. 32 at least as early as Wednesday, 26 September.

  Dr Thomas Barnardo, in a letter to the Times, said that on that day he had visited No. 32 in order to elicit from the residents their opinions upon a scheme he had devised ‘by which children at all events could be saved from the contamination of the common lodging houses and the streets.’ Talking to them in the kitchen, he found the women and girls ‘thoroughly frightened’ by the recent murders. One poor creature, who had apparently been drinking, cried bitterly: ‘We’re all up to no goo
d, and no one cares what becomes of us. Perhaps some of us will be killed next!’ They were prophetic words indeed, for Barnardo later viewed the remains of Elizabeth Stride at the mortuary. ‘I at once recognized her,’ he wrote, ‘as one of those who stood around me in the kitchen of the common lodging house on the occasion of my visit last Wednesday week.’10

  According to Mrs Tanner, the deputy, Elizabeth spent the nights of Thursday and Friday at her house. On Saturday morning she cleaned two rooms and Mrs Tanner paid her sixpence. The last time the deputy saw her alive was at about 6.30 on Saturday evening. They drank together at the Queen’s Head in Commercial Street and then walked back to the lodging house. Elizabeth went into the kitchen. Mrs Tanner, who went to another part of the house, did not see her again until she was called upon to identify her body.

  At least two lodgers saw Elizabeth in the kitchen between six and seven. Charles Preston, a barber, noticed that she was dressed to go out. She asked him to lend her his clothes brush but he had mislaid it. At that time there was no flower in her jacket. The charwoman Catherine Lane saw Elizabeth leave the kitchen. She remembered that Elizabeth had given her a large piece of green velvet to keep for her until she came back. ‘I know deceased had sixpence when she left,’ said Mrs Lane. ‘She showed it to me, stating that the deputy had given it to her.’

  Elizabeth did not say where she was going. Nor did she intimate when she might be back. It is possible that she intended to return to the lodging house for the night. Admittedly she had not paid Mrs Tanner for a bed on Saturday night but, as Charles Preston pointed out, the lodgers sometimes did not pay their money until just before going to bed.