The Double Event

On September 30, 1888, Jack the Ripper emerged once again from the shadows of London’s East End. He was preying on his favorite target – female prostitutes.

Five murder victims—Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, and Mary Jane Kelly are referred to as the “canonical five.” These women, killed between August 31 and November 9, 1888, were most likely killed by the same man. There’s plenty of other possible murders that could also be related, but these five women are officially recognized as Jack the Ripper’s victims.

The “Double Event” cemented the Ripper’s infamy.

Efforts to apprehend this sicko were accelerated in the aftermath, to no avail.

Jack really outdid himself on this outing. Two women, Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes, were brutally attacked and murdered within an hour. This “Double Event,” as it became known, sent an already jittery East End of London into a panic.

The first victim that night was the Swedish-born Elizabeth “Long Liz” Stride. After Liz’s marriage ended in 1881, she developed a drinking problem and turned to prostitution to survive. Liz told prospective clients that her husband and children died in 1878 when the Princess Alice sank on the Thames, a lie she hoped would earn her some extra sympathy money.

Liz spent her final day cleaning rooms in the lodging house on Flower and Dean Street, where she lived on and off for six years. She got a sixpence for services rendered and, by 6:30 p.m., was pounding down a few at a nearby watering hole, the Queen’s Head pub.

Around 7 p.m. Liz returned to the lodging house. She borrowed a clothes brush from a fellow lodger and dressed for a night on the town. Liz bumped into another lodger, and they talked briefly as she was leaving the house around 7.30 p.m.

Later, Liz Stride was spotted around the area with various men. She was last seen alive, a flower pinned to her jacket, at 12:30 a.m. by Constable William Smith. She was talking to a young man in a dark overcoat wearing a deerstalker hat. Nothing seemed amiss, so Smith continued on his beat.

Thirty minutes later at 1 a.m., International Working Men’s Educational Club steward, Louis Diemshutz, found Stride’s body outside the building. Diemshutz and other club members immediately set out to locate the police. He told reporters later that day:

“I could see that her throat was fearfully cut. There was a great gash in it over two inches wide.”

Police Constable Lamb arrived at the scene and felt Stride’s still-warm face, but couldn’t find a pulse. When he was asked at the Coroner’s Inquest if the victim’s clothing had been disturbed, he testified, “No. I could scarcely see her boots. She looked like she had been quietly laid down.”

At almost the exact time Liz Stride’s dead body was discovered, Catherine “Kate” Eddowes was released from the Bishopsgate Police Station in London. She’d been in protective custody since 8:30 p.m. when she was found in a drunken stupor and couldn’t be roused.

Kate Eddowes’ story was like so many other women of her acquaintance. Failed relationships, hard-scramble existence, the almost inevitable descent into alcoholism, and ultimately resorting to prostitution to keep a roof over her head.

When she came around and assured the officers she could take care of herself, they allowed her to go. At 12:55 a.m. on September 30, they sent her back to the streets of London.

She was last spotted at 1:35 a.m. by three men who saw her at the entrance to Church Passage which led to Mitre Square. Just 10 minutes later, PC Edward Watkins, who had passed the area recently on his beat, found her butchered body.

The Ripper released more fury on Eddowes than any of his other victims to date. Her throat was cut in his signature style. She was disemboweled like Ripper victims Mary Ann Nichols and Annie Chapman before her. But in Eddowes’s case, her intestines had been placed over her right shoulder. About two feet of her bowels were completely removed and positioned between her body and left arm. The killer also slashed her face, removed most of her uterus, and took one of her kidneys.

Expert and amateur sleuths (called Ripperologists)maintain the only authentic letter from Jack the Ripper to the London Police contained half of Eddowes’ kidney.

While the other victims were cut in a careful and precise manner, Kate’s wounds were erratic and jagged, suggesting the Ripper was in a frenzy. Liz Stride “only” had her throat slit, perhaps because the Ripper was interrupted.

There was one more murder after the “Double Event” and it was the most gruesome of all. On November 9, Mary Jane Kelly was mutilated beyond recognition. She was killed in her room, unlike the others who died on the street. The Ripper had more time and privacy, which may explain the horrific hack job on Mary.

Then, the murders just … stopped. Did Jack die? Was he murdered, a victim of vigilante justice? Did he decide to retire and move to the Bahamas?

More things we’ll never know.