Catherine Eddowes
Encyclopedia
Catherine Eddowes (14 April 1842 – 30 September 1888) was one of the victims in the Whitechapel murders. She was the second person killed on the night of Sunday 30 September 1888, a night which already had seen the murder of Elizabeth Stride
less than an hour earlier. These two murders are commonly referred to as the "double event" and have been attributed to the mysterious serial killer known as Jack the Ripper
.
on 14 April 1842. Her parents, tinplate worker George Eddowes and his wife Catherine née Evans, had ten other children. The year after her birth, she and her family moved to London, but she later returned to Wolverhampton to gain employment as a tin plate stamper. Losing this job she took up with an ex-soldier called Thomas Conway in Birmingham
and moved with him to London. By him she had three children: a girl and two boys. Taking to drink, she split from the family in 1880 and a year later was living with a new partner named John Kelly at Cooney's common lodging-house
at 55 Flower and Dean Street
, Spitalfields
, at the centre of London's most notorious criminal rookery
. Here she took to casual prostitution
to pay the rent. To avoid contact with his former partner, Conway drew his army pension under the assumed name of Quinn, and kept their sons' addresses secret from her.
At the time of her death she was described as being five feet tall, with dark auburn hair, hazel eyes, and a tattoo that read "TC", for Tom Conway, in blue ink on her left forearm. Friends of Eddowes described her as "intelligent and scholarly, but possessed of a fierce temper". and "a very jolly woman, always singing".
In the summer of 1888, Eddowes, Kelly and a friend of theirs called Emily Birrell took casual work hop-picking in Kent
. On returning to London at the end of the harvest, their money was soon exhausted. Eddowes and Kelly split their last sixpence between them; he took fourpence to pay for a bed in the common lodging-house, and she took twopence, which was just enough for her to stay a night at Mile End
Casual Ward in the neighbouring parish. They met up again the following morning, 29 September, and in the early afternoon Eddowes told Kelly she would go to Bermondsey
to try to get some money from her daughter, Mrs Annie Phillips, who was married to a gun-maker in Southwark
. With money from pawning his boots, a bare-footed Kelly took a bed at the lodging-house just after 8:00 p.m., and according to the deputy keeper remained there all night.
by PC Louis Robinson. She was taken into custody and then to Bishopsgate
police station, where she was detained, giving the name "Nothing", until she was sober enough to leave at 1 a.m. on the morning of 30 September. On her release, she gave her name and address as "Mary Ann Kelly of 6 Fashion Street". When leaving the station, instead of turning right to take the shortest route to her home in Flower and Dean Street, she turned left towards Aldgate. She was last seen alive at 1.35 a.m. by three witnesses, Joseph Lawende
, Joseph Hyam Levy and Harry Harris, who had just left a club on Duke Street. She was standing talking with a man at the entrance to Church Passage, which led south-west from Duke Street to Mitre Square
along the south wall of the Great Synagogue of London
. Only Lawende could furnish a description of the man, whom he described as a fair-moustached man wearing a navy jacket, peaked cloth cap, and red scarf. Chief Inspector Donald Swanson
intimated in his report that Lawende's identification of the woman as Eddowes was doubtful. He wrote that Lawende had said that some clothing of the deceased's that he was shown resembled that of the woman he saw—"which was black ... that was the extent of his identity [sic]". A patrolling policeman, PC James Harvey, walked down Church Passage from Duke Street very shortly afterwards but his beat took him back down Church Passage to Duke Street, without entering the square.
At 1.45 a.m., Eddowes's mutilated body was found in the south-west corner of Mitre Square by the square's beat policeman PC Edward Watkins. Watkins said that he entered the square at 1.44 a.m, having previously been there at 1.30 a.m. He called for assistance at a tea warehouse in the square, where night watchman George James Morris, who was an ex-policeman, had noticed nothing unusual. Neither had another watchman (George Clapp) at 5 Mitre Square or an off-duty policeman (Richard Pearse) at 3 Mitre Square.
Eddowes was killed and mutilated in the square between 1.35 and 1.45 a.m. Police surgeon Dr. Frederick Gordon Brown, who arrived after 2:00 a.m., said of the scene:
Brown conducted a post-mortem that afternoon, noting:
Police physician Thomas Bond
, disagreed with Brown's assessment of the killer's skill level. Bond's report to police stated: "In each case the mutilation was inflicted by a person who had no scientific nor anatomical knowledge. In my opinion he does not even possess the technical knowledge of a butcher or horse slaughterer or any person accustomed to cut up dead animals." Local surgeon Dr George William Sequeira, who was the first doctor at the scene, and City medical officer William Sedgwick Saunders, who was also present at the autopsy, also thought that the killer lacked anatomical skill and did not seek particular organs. In addition to the abdominal wounds, the murderer had cut Eddowes's face: across the bridge of the nose, on both cheeks, and through the eyelids of both eyes. The tip of her nose and part of one ear had been cut off. The Royal London Hospital
on Whitechapel Road
preserves some crime scene drawings and plans of the Mitre Square murder by the City Surveyor Frederick Foster; they were first brought to public attention in 1966 by Francis Camps, Professor of Forensic Medicine at London University. Based on his analysis of the surviving documents, Camps concluded that "the cuts shown on the body could not have been done by an expert."
The Eddowes inquest was opened on 4 October by Samuel F. Langham, coroner for the City of London
. A house-to-house search was conducted but nothing suspicious was discovered. Brown stated his belief that Eddowes was killed by a slash to the throat as she lay on the ground, and then mutilated.
, it was close to the boundary of Whitechapel
where the previous Whitechapel murders had occurred. The mutilation of Eddowes's body and the abstraction of her left kidney and part of her womb by her murderer bore the signature of Jack the Ripper
and was very similar in nature to that of earlier victim Annie Chapman
.
Due to the location of Mitre Square, the City of London Police
under Detective Inspector James McWilliam joined the murder enquiry alongside the Metropolitan Police
who had been engaged in the previous murders. At about 3 a.m. on the same day as Eddowes was murdered, a blood-stained fragment of her apron contaminated with feculent matter was found lying in the passage of the doorway leading to Flats 108 and 119, Model Dwellings, Goulston Street, Whitechapel. Above it on the wall was a graffito in chalk
commonly held to have read: "The Juwes are the men that Will not be Blamed for nothing". The writing may or may not have been related to the murder, but either way it was washed away before dawn on the orders of Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Charles Warren
, who feared that it would spark anti-Jewish riots. Mitre Square had three connecting streets: Church Passage to the north-east, Mitre Street to the south-west, and St James's Place to the north-west. As PC Harvey saw no-one from Church Passage, and PC Watkins saw no-one from Mitre Street, the murderer must have left the square northwards through St James's Place towards Goulston Street. Goulston Street was within a quarter of an hour's walk from Mitre Square, on a direct route to Flower and Dean Street, where Eddowes lived, hinting that her murderer also resided nearby and headed back there after the killing.
Major Henry Smith, acting Commissioner of the City Police, claimed in his memoirs to have discovered bloodied water in a public sink in a court off Dorset Street, and as the water was slowly running out of the basin, he calculated that the Ripper had been there only moments before. Ripper author Martin Fido
thought it unlikely that the culprit would wait to wash his hands in a semi-public place about forty minutes after the crime, and Smith's memoirs are both unreliable and embellished for dramatic effect. There is no mention of the sink in the official police reports.
. It claimed responsibility for Stride's and Eddowes's murders, and described the killing of the two women as the "double event", a designation which has endured. It has been argued that the postcard was mailed before the murders were publicised, making it unlikely that a crank would have such knowledge of the crime, but it was postmarked more than 24 hours after the killings took place, long after details were known by journalists and residents of the area. Police officials later claimed to have identified a journalist as the author of the postcard, and dismissed it as a hoax, an assessment shared by most Ripper historians.
On 16 October 1888 a parcel containing half a human kidney accompanied by a note was received by George Lusk
, Chairman of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee
. The note has become known as the "Lusk letter" or the "From hell" letter, because of a phrase "from hell" used by the writer, who claimed to have "fried and ate" the missing kidney half. The handwriting and style were unlike that of the "Saucy Jacky" postcard. The kidney was taken to Dr Thomas Horrocks Openshaw
at the nearby London Hospital
. He believed that the kidney was human, from the left side, and preserved in spirit. The Daily Telegraph reported on 19 October that he said it was a recent "ginny kidney" from a 45-year-old female, but in the Star newspaper the same day Openshaw denied the report strongly, saying it was impossible to tell its age or gender, or how long it had been preserved in spirits. Major Smith claimed in his memoirs that the sent kidney matched the one missing from Eddowes, because the length of renal artery attached to the kidney matched the missing length from the body, and both the body and kidney showed signs of Bright's disease
. Smith's later recollection does not match the medical reports submitted by the examining pathologists or the police records. Police surgeon Dr Brown said that the kidney had been trimmed up, and that the renal artery was entirely absent. Metropolitan police memos state that the kidney could have come from any body, such as those found in a hospital morgue. Smith's story is thought by historians to be dramatic licence on his part, and the kidney could have been a medical student's prank. Dr Saunders, who attended the post-mortem, told the press, "the right kidney of the woman Eddowes was perfectly normal in its structure and healthy ... my opinion is that it was a student's antic." Chief Inspector Donald Swanson
, who co-ordinated the inquiry, wrote, "similar kidneys might and could be obtained from any dead person upon whom a post mortem had been made for any cause, by students or dissecting room porter."
, in an unmarked (public) grave 49336, square 318. Kelly and Eddowes's sister attended. Today, square 318 has been re-used for part of the Memorial Gardens for cremated remains. Eddowes lies beside the Garden Way in front of Memorial Bed 1849. In late 1996, the cemetery authorities decided to mark her grave with a plaque.
Elizabeth Stride
Elizabeth "Long Liz" Stride is believed to be the third victim of the notorious unidentified serial killer called Jack the Ripper, who killed and mutilated prostitutes in the Whitechapel area of London from late August to early November 1888.She was nicknamed "Long Liz"...
less than an hour earlier. These two murders are commonly referred to as the "double event" and have been attributed to the mysterious serial killer known as Jack the Ripper
Jack the Ripper
"Jack the Ripper" is the best-known name given to an unidentified serial killer who was active in the largely impoverished areas in and around the Whitechapel district of London in 1888. The name originated in a letter, written by someone claiming to be the murderer, that was disseminated in the...
.
Life and background
Eddowes, also known as "Kate Conway" and "Kate Kelly", after her two successive common-law husbands, was born in Graisley Green, WolverhamptonWolverhampton
Wolverhampton is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands, England. For Eurostat purposes Walsall and Wolverhampton is a NUTS 3 region and is one of five boroughs or unitary districts that comprise the "West Midlands" NUTS 2 region...
on 14 April 1842. Her parents, tinplate worker George Eddowes and his wife Catherine née Evans, had ten other children. The year after her birth, she and her family moved to London, but she later returned to Wolverhampton to gain employment as a tin plate stamper. Losing this job she took up with an ex-soldier called Thomas Conway in Birmingham
Birmingham
Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...
and moved with him to London. By him she had three children: a girl and two boys. Taking to drink, she split from the family in 1880 and a year later was living with a new partner named John Kelly at Cooney's common lodging-house
Common lodging-house
A Common lodging-house is Victorian term for a form of cheap accommodation in which inhabitants are lodged together in one or more rooms in common with the rest of the inmates, who are not members of one family, whether for eating or sleeping. The slang term flophouse is roughly the equivalent of...
at 55 Flower and Dean Street
Flower and Dean Street
Flower and Dean Street was a road situated at the heart of the Spitalfields rookery in the East End of London. It was one of the most notorious slum areas of the Victorian era and was closely associated with the victims of Jack the Ripper...
, Spitalfields
Spitalfields
Spitalfields is a former parish in the borough of Tower Hamlets, in the East End of London, near to Liverpool Street station and Brick Lane. The area straddles Commercial Street and is home to many markets, including the historic Old Spitalfields Market, founded in the 17th century, Sunday...
, at the centre of London's most notorious criminal rookery
Rookery (slum)
A rookery was the colloquial British English term given in the 18th and 19th centuries to a city slum occupied by poor people...
. Here she took to casual prostitution
Prostitution
Prostitution is the act or practice of providing sexual services to another person in return for payment. The person who receives payment for sexual services is called a prostitute and the person who receives such services is known by a multitude of terms, including a "john". Prostitution is one of...
to pay the rent. To avoid contact with his former partner, Conway drew his army pension under the assumed name of Quinn, and kept their sons' addresses secret from her.
At the time of her death she was described as being five feet tall, with dark auburn hair, hazel eyes, and a tattoo that read "TC", for Tom Conway, in blue ink on her left forearm. Friends of Eddowes described her as "intelligent and scholarly, but possessed of a fierce temper". and "a very jolly woman, always singing".
In the summer of 1888, Eddowes, Kelly and a friend of theirs called Emily Birrell took casual work hop-picking in Kent
Kent
Kent is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames Estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent and the unitary borough of...
. On returning to London at the end of the harvest, their money was soon exhausted. Eddowes and Kelly split their last sixpence between them; he took fourpence to pay for a bed in the common lodging-house, and she took twopence, which was just enough for her to stay a night at Mile End
Mile End
Mile End is an area within the East End of London, England, and part of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It is located east-northeast of Charing Cross...
Casual Ward in the neighbouring parish. They met up again the following morning, 29 September, and in the early afternoon Eddowes told Kelly she would go to Bermondsey
Bermondsey
Bermondsey is an area in London on the south bank of the river Thames, and is part of the London Borough of Southwark. To the west lies Southwark, to the east Rotherhithe, and to the south, Walworth and Peckham.-Toponomy:...
to try to get some money from her daughter, Mrs Annie Phillips, who was married to a gun-maker in Southwark
Southwark
Southwark is a district of south London, England, and the administrative headquarters of the London Borough of Southwark. Situated east of Charing Cross, it forms one of the oldest parts of London and fronts the River Thames to the north...
. With money from pawning his boots, a bare-footed Kelly took a bed at the lodging-house just after 8:00 p.m., and according to the deputy keeper remained there all night.
Last hours and death
At 8.30 p.m. on Saturday 29 September, Eddowes was found lying drunk in the road on Aldgate High StreetAldgate
Aldgate was the eastern most gateway through London Wall leading from the City of London to Whitechapel and the east end of London. Aldgate gives its name to a ward of the City...
by PC Louis Robinson. She was taken into custody and then to Bishopsgate
Bishopsgate
Bishopsgate is a road and ward in the northeast part of the City of London, extending north from Gracechurch Street to Norton Folgate. It is named after one of the original seven gates in London Wall...
police station, where she was detained, giving the name "Nothing", until she was sober enough to leave at 1 a.m. on the morning of 30 September. On her release, she gave her name and address as "Mary Ann Kelly of 6 Fashion Street". When leaving the station, instead of turning right to take the shortest route to her home in Flower and Dean Street, she turned left towards Aldgate. She was last seen alive at 1.35 a.m. by three witnesses, Joseph Lawende
Joseph Lawende
Joseph Lawende born in Warsaw, Poland, a cigarette salesman, is, with Israel Schwartz, among the most discussed of witnesses in the series of murders committed by the notorious Jack the Ripper in Whitechapel in London in 1888....
, Joseph Hyam Levy and Harry Harris, who had just left a club on Duke Street. She was standing talking with a man at the entrance to Church Passage, which led south-west from Duke Street to Mitre Square
Mitre Square
Mitre Square is a small square in the City of London. It measures about by and is connected via three passages with Mitre Street to the SW, to Creechurch Place to the NW and, via St James's Passage , to Duke's Place to the NE....
along the south wall of the Great Synagogue of London
Great Synagogue of London
The Great Synagogue of London was, for centuries, the centre of Ashkenazi synagogue and Jewish life in London. It was destroyed during World War II, in the Blitz.-History:...
. Only Lawende could furnish a description of the man, whom he described as a fair-moustached man wearing a navy jacket, peaked cloth cap, and red scarf. Chief Inspector Donald Swanson
Donald Swanson
Chief Inspector Donald Sutherland Swanson was born in Thurso in Scotland, and was a senior police officer in the Metropolitan Police in London during the notorious Jack the Ripper murders of 1888.-Early life:...
intimated in his report that Lawende's identification of the woman as Eddowes was doubtful. He wrote that Lawende had said that some clothing of the deceased's that he was shown resembled that of the woman he saw—"which was black ... that was the extent of his identity [sic]". A patrolling policeman, PC James Harvey, walked down Church Passage from Duke Street very shortly afterwards but his beat took him back down Church Passage to Duke Street, without entering the square.
At 1.45 a.m., Eddowes's mutilated body was found in the south-west corner of Mitre Square by the square's beat policeman PC Edward Watkins. Watkins said that he entered the square at 1.44 a.m, having previously been there at 1.30 a.m. He called for assistance at a tea warehouse in the square, where night watchman George James Morris, who was an ex-policeman, had noticed nothing unusual. Neither had another watchman (George Clapp) at 5 Mitre Square or an off-duty policeman (Richard Pearse) at 3 Mitre Square.
Brown conducted a post-mortem that afternoon, noting:
Police physician Thomas Bond
Thomas Bond (British physician)
Dr Thomas Bond FRCS, MB BS , was a British surgeon considered by some to be the first offender profiler, and best known for his association with the notorious Jack the Ripper murders of 1888.-Early life:...
, disagreed with Brown's assessment of the killer's skill level. Bond's report to police stated: "In each case the mutilation was inflicted by a person who had no scientific nor anatomical knowledge. In my opinion he does not even possess the technical knowledge of a butcher or horse slaughterer or any person accustomed to cut up dead animals." Local surgeon Dr George William Sequeira, who was the first doctor at the scene, and City medical officer William Sedgwick Saunders, who was also present at the autopsy, also thought that the killer lacked anatomical skill and did not seek particular organs. In addition to the abdominal wounds, the murderer had cut Eddowes's face: across the bridge of the nose, on both cheeks, and through the eyelids of both eyes. The tip of her nose and part of one ear had been cut off. The Royal London Hospital
Royal London Hospital
The Royal London Hospital was founded in September 1740 and was originally named The London Infirmary. The name changed to The London Hospital in 1748 and then to The Royal London Hospital on its 250th anniversary in 1990. The first patients were treated at a house in Featherstone Street,...
on Whitechapel Road
Whitechapel Road
Whitechapel Road is a major arterial road in the East End of London, England. It connects Whitechapel High Street to the west with Mile End Road to the east and forms part of the A11 road. It is a main shopping street in the Whitechapel area of Tower Hamlets and has a street market...
preserves some crime scene drawings and plans of the Mitre Square murder by the City Surveyor Frederick Foster; they were first brought to public attention in 1966 by Francis Camps, Professor of Forensic Medicine at London University. Based on his analysis of the surviving documents, Camps concluded that "the cuts shown on the body could not have been done by an expert."
The Eddowes inquest was opened on 4 October by Samuel F. Langham, coroner for the City of London
City of London
The City of London is a small area within Greater London, England. It is the historic core of London around which the modern conurbation grew and has held city status since time immemorial. The City’s boundaries have remained almost unchanged since the Middle Ages, and it is now only a tiny part of...
. A house-to-house search was conducted but nothing suspicious was discovered. Brown stated his belief that Eddowes was killed by a slash to the throat as she lay on the ground, and then mutilated.
Investigation
A mustard tin containing two pawn tickets issued to Emily Birrell and Anne Kelly was discovered on Eddowes's body. These eventually led to her identification by John Kelly as his common-law wife, after he read about the tickets in the newspapers. His identification was confirmed by Catherine Eddowes' sister, Eliza Gold. No money was found on her. Though the murder occurred within the City of LondonCity of London
The City of London is a small area within Greater London, England. It is the historic core of London around which the modern conurbation grew and has held city status since time immemorial. The City’s boundaries have remained almost unchanged since the Middle Ages, and it is now only a tiny part of...
, it was close to the boundary of Whitechapel
Whitechapel
Whitechapel is a built-up inner city district in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, London, England. It is located east of Charing Cross and roughly bounded by the Bishopsgate thoroughfare on the west, Fashion Street on the north, Brady Street and Cavell Street on the east and The Highway on the...
where the previous Whitechapel murders had occurred. The mutilation of Eddowes's body and the abstraction of her left kidney and part of her womb by her murderer bore the signature of Jack the Ripper
Jack the Ripper
"Jack the Ripper" is the best-known name given to an unidentified serial killer who was active in the largely impoverished areas in and around the Whitechapel district of London in 1888. The name originated in a letter, written by someone claiming to be the murderer, that was disseminated in the...
and was very similar in nature to that of earlier victim Annie Chapman
Annie Chapman
Annie Chapman , born Eliza Ann Smith, was a victim of the notorious unidentified serial killer Jack the Ripper, who killed and mutilated five women in the Whitechapel area of London from late August to early November 1888.-Life and background:Annie Chapman was born Eliza Ann Smith...
.
Due to the location of Mitre Square, the City of London Police
City of London Police
The City of London Police is the territorial police force responsible for law enforcement within the City of London, England, including the Middle and Inner Temple. The service responsible for law enforcement within the rest of Greater London is the Metropolitan Police Service, a separate...
under Detective Inspector James McWilliam joined the murder enquiry alongside the Metropolitan Police
Metropolitan police
Metropolitan Police is a generic title for the municipal police force for a major metropolitan area, and it may be part of the official title of the force...
who had been engaged in the previous murders. At about 3 a.m. on the same day as Eddowes was murdered, a blood-stained fragment of her apron contaminated with feculent matter was found lying in the passage of the doorway leading to Flats 108 and 119, Model Dwellings, Goulston Street, Whitechapel. Above it on the wall was a graffito in chalk
Goulston Street graffito
The Goulston Street graffito was some writing on a wall that was found beside a clue in the Whitechapel murders investigation. The Whitechapel murders were a series of brutal attacks on women in the Whitechapel district in the East End of London that occurred between 1888 and 1891...
commonly held to have read: "The Juwes are the men that Will not be Blamed for nothing". The writing may or may not have been related to the murder, but either way it was washed away before dawn on the orders of Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Charles Warren
Charles Warren
General Sir Charles Warren, GCMG, KCB, FRS was an officer in the British Royal Engineers. He was one of the earliest European archaeologists of Biblical Holy Land, and particularly of Temple Mount...
, who feared that it would spark anti-Jewish riots. Mitre Square had three connecting streets: Church Passage to the north-east, Mitre Street to the south-west, and St James's Place to the north-west. As PC Harvey saw no-one from Church Passage, and PC Watkins saw no-one from Mitre Street, the murderer must have left the square northwards through St James's Place towards Goulston Street. Goulston Street was within a quarter of an hour's walk from Mitre Square, on a direct route to Flower and Dean Street, where Eddowes lived, hinting that her murderer also resided nearby and headed back there after the killing.
Major Henry Smith, acting Commissioner of the City Police, claimed in his memoirs to have discovered bloodied water in a public sink in a court off Dorset Street, and as the water was slowly running out of the basin, he calculated that the Ripper had been there only moments before. Ripper author Martin Fido
Martin Fido
Martin Austin Fido is a university teacher, true crime writer and broadcaster. His many books include The Crimes, Detection and Death of Jack the Ripper, The Official Encyclopedia of Scotland Yard, and The Murder Guide to London.After leaving Balliol College, Oxford in 1966 where he had been a...
thought it unlikely that the culprit would wait to wash his hands in a semi-public place about forty minutes after the crime, and Smith's memoirs are both unreliable and embellished for dramatic effect. There is no mention of the sink in the official police reports.
Letter "from hell"
On 1 October, a postcard, dubbed the "Saucy Jacky" postcard and signed "Jack the Ripper", was received by the Central News AgencyCentral News Agency (London)
The Central News Agency was a news distribution service founded as Central Press in 1863 by William Saunders and his brother-in-law, Edward Spender...
. It claimed responsibility for Stride's and Eddowes's murders, and described the killing of the two women as the "double event", a designation which has endured. It has been argued that the postcard was mailed before the murders were publicised, making it unlikely that a crank would have such knowledge of the crime, but it was postmarked more than 24 hours after the killings took place, long after details were known by journalists and residents of the area. Police officials later claimed to have identified a journalist as the author of the postcard, and dismissed it as a hoax, an assessment shared by most Ripper historians.
George Lusk
George Akin Lusk was a builder and decorator who specialised in music hall restoration, and was the Chairman of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee during the 'Whitechapel Murders' of Jack the Ripper in 1888. Lusk was a Freemason, having been initiated into the Doric Lodge on 14 April 1882, but he...
, Chairman of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee
Whitechapel Vigilance Committee
The Whitechapel Vigilance Committee was a group of local volunteers who patrolled the streets of London's Whitechapel District during the period of the Whitechapel murders of 1888. The volunteers patrolled mainly at night in the search for the murderer. The committee was set up by local businessmen...
. The note has become known as the "Lusk letter" or the "From hell" letter, because of a phrase "from hell" used by the writer, who claimed to have "fried and ate" the missing kidney half. The handwriting and style were unlike that of the "Saucy Jacky" postcard. The kidney was taken to Dr Thomas Horrocks Openshaw
Thomas Horrocks Openshaw
Thomas Horrocks Openshaw CB CMG FRCS LSA TD , was an English Victorian and Edwardian era surgeon perhaps best known for his brief involvement in the notorious Jack the Ripper murders of 1888....
at the nearby London Hospital
Royal London Hospital
The Royal London Hospital was founded in September 1740 and was originally named The London Infirmary. The name changed to The London Hospital in 1748 and then to The Royal London Hospital on its 250th anniversary in 1990. The first patients were treated at a house in Featherstone Street,...
. He believed that the kidney was human, from the left side, and preserved in spirit. The Daily Telegraph reported on 19 October that he said it was a recent "ginny kidney" from a 45-year-old female, but in the Star newspaper the same day Openshaw denied the report strongly, saying it was impossible to tell its age or gender, or how long it had been preserved in spirits. Major Smith claimed in his memoirs that the sent kidney matched the one missing from Eddowes, because the length of renal artery attached to the kidney matched the missing length from the body, and both the body and kidney showed signs of Bright's disease
Bright's disease
Bright's disease is a historical classification of kidney diseases that would be described in modern medicine as acute or chronic nephritis. The term is no longer used, as diseases are now classified according to their more fully understood causes....
. Smith's later recollection does not match the medical reports submitted by the examining pathologists or the police records. Police surgeon Dr Brown said that the kidney had been trimmed up, and that the renal artery was entirely absent. Metropolitan police memos state that the kidney could have come from any body, such as those found in a hospital morgue. Smith's story is thought by historians to be dramatic licence on his part, and the kidney could have been a medical student's prank. Dr Saunders, who attended the post-mortem, told the press, "the right kidney of the woman Eddowes was perfectly normal in its structure and healthy ... my opinion is that it was a student's antic." Chief Inspector Donald Swanson
Donald Swanson
Chief Inspector Donald Sutherland Swanson was born in Thurso in Scotland, and was a senior police officer in the Metropolitan Police in London during the notorious Jack the Ripper murders of 1888.-Early life:...
, who co-ordinated the inquiry, wrote, "similar kidneys might and could be obtained from any dead person upon whom a post mortem had been made for any cause, by students or dissecting room porter."
Funeral and aftermath
Catherine Eddowes was buried on Monday, 8 October 1888 in an elm coffin in the City of London CemeteryCity of London Cemetery and Crematorium
The City of London Cemetery and Crematorium is a cemetery and crematorium in the north east of London. It is the largest such municipal facility in the UK and probably in Europe . It is owned and operated by the City of London Corporation.-Location:...
, in an unmarked (public) grave 49336, square 318. Kelly and Eddowes's sister attended. Today, square 318 has been re-used for part of the Memorial Gardens for cremated remains. Eddowes lies beside the Garden Way in front of Memorial Bed 1849. In late 1996, the cemetery authorities decided to mark her grave with a plaque.