Elizabeth Stride
Encyclopedia
Elizabeth "Long Liz" Stride (née Gustafsdotter) (27 November 1843 – 30 September 1888) 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". Several explanations have been given for this pseudonym; some believe it came from her married surname "Stride" because a stride is a long step, while others believe it was because of her height, or the shape of her face. At the time of her death she was living in a common lodging-house
at 32 Flower and Dean Street
, Spitalfields
, within what was then a notorious criminal rookery
.
, west of Gothenburg
, Sweden
, on 27 November 1843. In 1860, she took work as a domestic in the Gothenburg parish of Carl Johan, moving again in the next few years to other Gothenburg districts. Unlike most other victims of the Whitechapel murders, who fell into prostitution due to poverty after a failed marriage, Stride took it up earlier. By March 1865 she was registered by the Gothenburg police as a prostitute, was treated twice for a sexually transmitted disease
and gave birth to a stillborn girl on 21 April 1865.
The following year she moved to London, possibly in domestic service with a family. On 7 March 1869 she married John Thomas Stride, a ship's carpenter from Sheerness
13 years her senior, and the couple for a time kept a coffee room in Poplar
, east London. In March 1877, Liz Stride was admitted to the Poplar Workhouse
, suggesting that the couple had separated. They had apparently reunited by 1881 but separated permanently by the end of that year.
She told acquaintances that her husband and two of her nine children had drowned in the sinking of the Princess Alice in the River Thames
in 1878. In the accident, according to her story, she had supposedly been kicked in the mouth by another of the victims as they both swam to safety, which had caused her to stutter ever since. In fact, John Stride died of tuberculosis
in Poplar and Stepney Sick Asylum on 24 October 1884, more than five years after the Princess Alice disaster, and they had no children.
After separating from her husband, she lived in a common lodging-house
in Whitechapel, with charitable assistance once or twice from the Church of Sweden
in London, and from 1885 until her death lived much of the time with a local dock labourer, Michael Kidney, in Devonshire Street. She earned some income from sewing and housecleaning work. An acquaintance described her as having a calm temperament, though she appeared numerous times for being drunk and disorderly at Thames Magistrates Court, where she gave her name as Anne Fitzgerald. She learned to speak Yiddish, as well as English and Swedish. Her relationship with Kidney continued in an on-and-off fashion. In April 1887, she laid an assault charge against him but failed to pursue it in court. She left Kidney again a few days before her death. Dr Thomas Barnardo, a leading social reformer, claimed to have met Stride at the lodging house at 32 Flower and Dean Street on Wednesday 26 September.
On the night of her murder, 30 September, Stride was wearing a black jacket and skirt, with a posy of a red rose in a spray of maidenhair fern or asparagus leaves. Her outfit was complemented by a black crêpe bonnet. She may have been seen with a client, a short man with a dark moustache wearing a morning suit and bowler hat, at around 11:00 p.m. near Berner Street, and again at about 11:45 p.m. with a man wearing a peaked cap. At 12:35 a.m., PC William Smith saw her with a man wearing a hard felt hat opposite the International Working Men's Educational Club, a socialist and predominantly Jewish social club, at 40 Berner Street (since renamed Henriques Street
) in Whitechapel. The man was carrying a package about 18 inches (45 cm) in length.
Stride's body was discovered close to 1 a.m. on Sunday 30 September 1888 by Louis Diemschutz, the steward of the Workers' Club, in the adjacent Dutfield's Yard. Diemshutz drove into the yard with a pony and two-wheeled cart, when his horse shied. The yard was so dark that he was unable to see her body without lighting a match. With blood still flowing from a wound in her neck, it appeared that she was killed just moments before he arrived. Between 12:30 and 12:50 a.m., departing club members, who had attended a debate on "The Necessity of Socialism amongst Jews" followed by community singing, had seen nothing amiss in the yard Mrs Mortimer, who lived two doors away from the club, had stood in Berner Street to listen to the singing at about the same time, and had not seen anyone enter the yard. Mortimer did report seeing a man with a shiny black bag race past, which was reported widely in the press, but one of the club's members, Leon Goldstein, identified himself as the man Mortimer had seen and he was eliminated from the inquiry.
The police searched the remaining members of the club, and the adjacent properties, and interviewed the residents of the area. A witness named Israel Schwartz reported seeing Stride being attacked and thrown to the ground outside Dutfield's Yard at around 12:45 a.m. Her attacker may have called out "Lipski" to a second man standing nearby, which was thought to be an antisemitic taunt derived from the name of a notorious poisoner, Israel Lipski. Schwartz did not testify at the inquest on Stride, possibly because he was Hungarian and spoke very little if any English. Ripper investigator Stephen Knight found Schwartz's statement in case files in the 1970s. At about the same time, Stride, or someone matching her description, was seen by James Brown rejecting the advances of a stoutish man slightly taller than her in the adjacent street to Berner Street (Fairclough Street). A note in the margin of the Home Office
files on the case points out that there was time for Stride to meet another man between her death and the latest sightings of her. The steward Diemshutz later said that he believed that the killer was still in the yard as he drove into it.
No money was found on Stride's body, so it is possible that her night's takings were stolen from her, either in the attack seen by Schwartz, or by her murderer. Either way she seems to have gone into the yard with her murderer alive, presumably on the basis that he was a client.
Stride's murder occurred in the midst of the Jack the Ripper
scare, when a series of brutal attacks against prostitutes were blamed on a single attacker, known as Jack the Ripper. However, unlike at least six other victims, who had abdominal injuries in addition to a slash across the neck, she had no mutilations beyond her slit throat. The murder of Stride shares similarities to the pattern of Ripper killings, such as date, time, type of site, characteristics of the victim and the method of murder. It is possible that the killer was interrupted before he had the opportunity to mutilate the body. Catharine Eddowes was murdered within walking distance less than an hour later, and both Stride and Eddowes lived in Flower and Dean Street. The deaths of Eddowes and Stride sent London into a panic, as it was the first time that two murders ascribed to the Ripper had occurred in one night.
, who had handled the case of a previous Whitechapel murder victim, Annie Chapman
and would also handle the later Mary Jane Kelly
case. Phillips reported:
Blackwell thought that Stride might have been pulled backwards on to the ground by her neckerchief before her throat was cut. Phillips concurred that Stride was likely to be on the ground when she was killed by a swift slash left to right across the neck. Bruising on her chest might also suggest that she was pinned to the ground during the attack by her assailant.
. The following day conflicting testimony as to Stride's identity was heard. The police seemed certain that Stride was the Swede Elisabeth Gustafsdotter, but Mrs Mary Malcolm swore the body was that of her sister, Elizabeth Watts. Over the course of the inquest, other witnesses identified the dead woman as Stride, including the clerk of the Swedish Church in Prince's Square, Sven Ollsen. Malcolm's story was only finally dismissed on 24 October when Elizabeth Watts disproved her sister's story by appearing personally at the inquest as living proof that she was not dead and PC Walter Stride (Stride's nephew-by-marriage) confirmed her identity.
Coroner Baxter believed that Stride had been attacked with a swift, sudden action. The murderer could have taken advantage of a checked scarf she was wearing to grab her from behind before slitting her throat, as was suggested by Blackwell. Baxter, however, thought the absence of a shout for assistance and the lack of obvious marks of a struggle indicated that she lay down willingly. She was still holding a packet of cachous (breath freshening sweets) in her left hand when she was discovered, indicating that she had not had time to defend herself. A grocer, Matthew Packer, implied to two private detectives employed by the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee
, Le Grand and Batchelor, that he had sold some grapes to Stride and the murderer; however, he had told police sergeant Stephen White that he had shut his shop without seeing anything suspicious. At the inquest, the pathologists stated emphatically that Stride had not held, swallowed or consumed grapes. They described her stomach contents as "cheese, potatoes and farinaceous powder". Nevertheless, Packer's story appeared in the press, and private detectives did discover a grape stalk in the yard. When re-interviewed by the police, Packer described the man as aged between 25 and 30, slightly taller than her and wearing a soft felt hat, but he had told the private detectives that the man was middle-aged and heavy set. Neither of his descriptions matched the statements by other witnesses who may have seen Stride with clients shortly before her murder, but all the descriptions differed.
In his book Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution, Stephen Knight linked the prominent physician Sir William Gull to Stride on the basis that both were reported to carry grapes, which another Ripper author, Martin Fido
, dismissed as a "wild allegation". Further doubt is cast on the story by the character of Le Grand, also known as Charles Grand, Charles Grandy, Charles Grant, Christian Neilson, and Christian Nelson, one of the men hired by the Vigilance Committee to investigate the crimes. He had an extensive criminal record, which included assault on a prostitute and conviction for theft. In 1889, he was convicted of conspiracy to defraud and served two years' imprisonment. After his release, he was arrested in possession of a revolver and charged with demanding money with menace, a crime for which he was sentenced to twenty years' imprisonment. The overall commander of the Ripper investigation, Donald Swanson
, noted "any statement [made by Packer] would be rendered almost valueless as evidence".
in June, lumbago in August and dyspepsia
in October. Kidney has come under suspicion for the murder, because of their turbulent relationship, and there is no record of his alibi. Police, however, appear to have eliminated him from the inquiry, and his decline in health and distress at the police station indicate that he took her death badly.
Elizabeth Stride was buried on Saturday 6 October 1888 in the East London Cemetery
Plaistow, London, in grave #15509, square 37. The sparse funeral was provided at the expense of the parish by the undertaker, Mr Hawkes.
On 19 October, Chief Inspector Swanson wrote a report detailing that 80,000 leaflets requesting information had been distributed to the neighbourhood and 2000 lodgers had been examined, among other lines of inquiry.
and Annie Chapman
, involving a cut throat nearby, Stride's murder was added to the Whitechapel murders investigation, and was widely believed to have been perpetrated by the same killer. However, some commentators on the case conclude that Stride's murder was unconnected to the others on the basis that the body was unmutilated, that it was the only murder to occur south of Whitechapel Road
, and the blade used might have been shorter and of a different design. Most experts, however, consider the similarities in the case distinctive enough to connect Stride's murder with the two earlier ones, as well as that of Catherine Eddowes
on the same night.
On 1 October, a postcard, dubbed the "Saucy Jacky" postcard and also signed "Jack the Ripper", was received by the Central News Agency
. 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.
Serial killer
A serial killer, as typically defined, is an individual who has murdered three or more people over a period of more than a month, with down time between the murders, and whose motivation for killing is usually based on psychological gratification...
called 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...
, who killed and mutilated prostitutes in the 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...
area of London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
from late August to early November 1888.
She was nicknamed "Long Liz". Several explanations have been given for this pseudonym; some believe it came from her married surname "Stride" because a stride is a long step, while others believe it was because of her height, or the shape of her face. At the time of her death she was living in a 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 32 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...
, within what was then a 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...
.
Life and background
Stride was the daughter of a Swedish farmer, Gustaf Ericsson, and his wife Beata Carlsdotter, and was born Elisabeth Gustafsdotter in the parish of TorslandaTorslanda
Torslanda is an urban district and a locality situated in Göteborg Municipality, Västra Götaland County, Sweden. It had 10,129 inhabitants in 2005.-The Volvo Torslanda Plant:...
, west of Gothenburg
Gothenburg
Gothenburg is the second-largest city in Sweden and the fifth-largest in the Nordic countries. Situated on the west coast of Sweden, the city proper has a population of 519,399, with 549,839 in the urban area and total of 937,015 inhabitants in the metropolitan area...
, Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
, on 27 November 1843. In 1860, she took work as a domestic in the Gothenburg parish of Carl Johan, moving again in the next few years to other Gothenburg districts. Unlike most other victims of the Whitechapel murders, who fell into prostitution due to poverty after a failed marriage, Stride took it up earlier. By March 1865 she was registered by the Gothenburg police as a prostitute, was treated twice for a sexually transmitted disease
Sexually transmitted disease
Sexually transmitted disease , also known as a sexually transmitted infection or venereal disease , is an illness that has a significant probability of transmission between humans by means of human sexual behavior, including vaginal intercourse, oral sex, and anal sex...
and gave birth to a stillborn girl on 21 April 1865.
The following year she moved to London, possibly in domestic service with a family. On 7 March 1869 she married John Thomas Stride, a ship's carpenter from Sheerness
Sheerness
Sheerness is a town located beside the mouth of the River Medway on the northwest corner of the Isle of Sheppey in north Kent, England. With a population of 12,000 it is the largest town on the island....
13 years her senior, and the couple for a time kept a coffee room in Poplar
Poplar, London
Poplar is a historic, mainly residential area of the East End of London in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It is about east of Charing Cross. Historically a hamlet in the parish of Stepney, Middlesex, in 1817 Poplar became a civil parish. In 1855 the Poplar District of the Metropolis was...
, east London. In March 1877, Liz Stride was admitted to the Poplar Workhouse
Workhouse
In England and Wales a workhouse, colloquially known as a spike, was a place where those unable to support themselves were offered accommodation and employment...
, suggesting that the couple had separated. They had apparently reunited by 1881 but separated permanently by the end of that year.
She told acquaintances that her husband and two of her nine children had drowned in the sinking of the Princess Alice in the River Thames
River Thames
The River Thames flows through southern England. It is the longest river entirely in England and the second longest in the United Kingdom. While it is best known because its lower reaches flow through central London, the river flows alongside several other towns and cities, including Oxford,...
in 1878. In the accident, according to her story, she had supposedly been kicked in the mouth by another of the victims as they both swam to safety, which had caused her to stutter ever since. In fact, John Stride died of tuberculosis
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...
in Poplar and Stepney Sick Asylum on 24 October 1884, more than five years after the Princess Alice disaster, and they had no children.
After separating from her husband, she lived in a 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...
in Whitechapel, with charitable assistance once or twice from the Church of Sweden
Church of Sweden
The Church of Sweden is the largest Christian church in Sweden. The church professes the Lutheran faith and is a member of the Porvoo Communion. With 6,589,769 baptized members, it is the largest Lutheran church in the world, although combined, there are more Lutherans in the member churches of...
in London, and from 1885 until her death lived much of the time with a local dock labourer, Michael Kidney, in Devonshire Street. She earned some income from sewing and housecleaning work. An acquaintance described her as having a calm temperament, though she appeared numerous times for being drunk and disorderly at Thames Magistrates Court, where she gave her name as Anne Fitzgerald. She learned to speak Yiddish, as well as English and Swedish. Her relationship with Kidney continued in an on-and-off fashion. In April 1887, she laid an assault charge against him but failed to pursue it in court. She left Kidney again a few days before her death. Dr Thomas Barnardo, a leading social reformer, claimed to have met Stride at the lodging house at 32 Flower and Dean Street on Wednesday 26 September.
Last hours and death
Henriques Street
Henriques Street, formerly known as Berner Street, is a narrow East End street off Commercial Road in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets.-Landmarks:...
) in Whitechapel. The man was carrying a package about 18 inches (45 cm) in length.
Stride's body was discovered close to 1 a.m. on Sunday 30 September 1888 by Louis Diemschutz, the steward of the Workers' Club, in the adjacent Dutfield's Yard. Diemshutz drove into the yard with a pony and two-wheeled cart, when his horse shied. The yard was so dark that he was unable to see her body without lighting a match. With blood still flowing from a wound in her neck, it appeared that she was killed just moments before he arrived. Between 12:30 and 12:50 a.m., departing club members, who had attended a debate on "The Necessity of Socialism amongst Jews" followed by community singing, had seen nothing amiss in the yard Mrs Mortimer, who lived two doors away from the club, had stood in Berner Street to listen to the singing at about the same time, and had not seen anyone enter the yard. Mortimer did report seeing a man with a shiny black bag race past, which was reported widely in the press, but one of the club's members, Leon Goldstein, identified himself as the man Mortimer had seen and he was eliminated from the inquiry.
The police searched the remaining members of the club, and the adjacent properties, and interviewed the residents of the area. A witness named Israel Schwartz reported seeing Stride being attacked and thrown to the ground outside Dutfield's Yard at around 12:45 a.m. Her attacker may have called out "Lipski" to a second man standing nearby, which was thought to be an antisemitic taunt derived from the name of a notorious poisoner, Israel Lipski. Schwartz did not testify at the inquest on Stride, possibly because he was Hungarian and spoke very little if any English. Ripper investigator Stephen Knight found Schwartz's statement in case files in the 1970s. At about the same time, Stride, or someone matching her description, was seen by James Brown rejecting the advances of a stoutish man slightly taller than her in the adjacent street to Berner Street (Fairclough Street). A note in the margin of the Home Office
Home Office
The Home Office is the United Kingdom government department responsible for immigration control, security, and order. As such it is responsible for the police, UK Border Agency, and the Security Service . It is also in charge of government policy on security-related issues such as drugs,...
files on the case points out that there was time for Stride to meet another man between her death and the latest sightings of her. The steward Diemshutz later said that he believed that the killer was still in the yard as he drove into it.
No money was found on Stride's body, so it is possible that her night's takings were stolen from her, either in the attack seen by Schwartz, or by her murderer. Either way she seems to have gone into the yard with her murderer alive, presumably on the basis that he was a client.
Stride's murder occurred in the midst of the 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...
scare, when a series of brutal attacks against prostitutes were blamed on a single attacker, known as Jack the Ripper. However, unlike at least six other victims, who had abdominal injuries in addition to a slash across the neck, she had no mutilations beyond her slit throat. The murder of Stride shares similarities to the pattern of Ripper killings, such as date, time, type of site, characteristics of the victim and the method of murder. It is possible that the killer was interrupted before he had the opportunity to mutilate the body. Catharine Eddowes was murdered within walking distance less than an hour later, and both Stride and Eddowes lived in Flower and Dean Street. The deaths of Eddowes and Stride sent London into a panic, as it was the first time that two murders ascribed to the Ripper had occurred in one night.
Post-mortem
Local doctor Frederick William Blackwell attended the scene, shortly before the arrival of Dr George Bagster PhillipsGeorge Bagster Phillips
Dr George Bagster Phillips MBBS, MRCS Eng, L.M., LSA , was, from 1865, the Police Surgeon for the Metropolitan Police's 'H' Division, which covered London's Whitechapel district...
, who had handled the case of a previous Whitechapel murder 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...
and would also handle the later Mary Jane Kelly
Mary Jane Kelly
Mary Jane Kelly , also known as "Marie Jeanette" Kelly, "Fair Emma", "Ginger" and "Black Mary", is widely believed to be the fifth and final victim of the notorious unidentified serial killer Jack the Ripper, who killed and mutilated prostitutes in the Whitechapel area of London from late August to...
case. Phillips reported:
Blackwell thought that Stride might have been pulled backwards on to the ground by her neckerchief before her throat was cut. Phillips concurred that Stride was likely to be on the ground when she was killed by a swift slash left to right across the neck. Bruising on her chest might also suggest that she was pinned to the ground during the attack by her assailant.
Inquest
The inquest was opened on 1 October, at the Vestry Hall, Cable Street, St George's in the East, by the Middlesex coroner, Wynne Edwin BaxterWynne Edwin Baxter
Wynne Edwin Baxter FRMS, FGS LL.B was an English lawyer, translator, antiquarian and botanist, but is best known as the Coroner who conducted the inquests on most of the victims of the Whitechapel Murders of 1888 to 1891 including three of the victims of Jack the Ripper in 1888, as well as on...
. The following day conflicting testimony as to Stride's identity was heard. The police seemed certain that Stride was the Swede Elisabeth Gustafsdotter, but Mrs Mary Malcolm swore the body was that of her sister, Elizabeth Watts. Over the course of the inquest, other witnesses identified the dead woman as Stride, including the clerk of the Swedish Church in Prince's Square, Sven Ollsen. Malcolm's story was only finally dismissed on 24 October when Elizabeth Watts disproved her sister's story by appearing personally at the inquest as living proof that she was not dead and PC Walter Stride (Stride's nephew-by-marriage) confirmed her identity.
Coroner Baxter believed that Stride had been attacked with a swift, sudden action. The murderer could have taken advantage of a checked scarf she was wearing to grab her from behind before slitting her throat, as was suggested by Blackwell. Baxter, however, thought the absence of a shout for assistance and the lack of obvious marks of a struggle indicated that she lay down willingly. She was still holding a packet of cachous (breath freshening sweets) in her left hand when she was discovered, indicating that she had not had time to defend herself. A grocer, Matthew Packer, implied to two private detectives employed by 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...
, Le Grand and Batchelor, that he had sold some grapes to Stride and the murderer; however, he had told police sergeant Stephen White that he had shut his shop without seeing anything suspicious. At the inquest, the pathologists stated emphatically that Stride had not held, swallowed or consumed grapes. They described her stomach contents as "cheese, potatoes and farinaceous powder". Nevertheless, Packer's story appeared in the press, and private detectives did discover a grape stalk in the yard. When re-interviewed by the police, Packer described the man as aged between 25 and 30, slightly taller than her and wearing a soft felt hat, but he had told the private detectives that the man was middle-aged and heavy set. Neither of his descriptions matched the statements by other witnesses who may have seen Stride with clients shortly before her murder, but all the descriptions differed.
In his book Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution, Stephen Knight linked the prominent physician Sir William Gull to Stride on the basis that both were reported to carry grapes, which another 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...
, dismissed as a "wild allegation". Further doubt is cast on the story by the character of Le Grand, also known as Charles Grand, Charles Grandy, Charles Grant, Christian Neilson, and Christian Nelson, one of the men hired by the Vigilance Committee to investigate the crimes. He had an extensive criminal record, which included assault on a prostitute and conviction for theft. In 1889, he was convicted of conspiracy to defraud and served two years' imprisonment. After his release, he was arrested in possession of a revolver and charged with demanding money with menace, a crime for which he was sentenced to twenty years' imprisonment. The overall commander of the Ripper investigation, 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:...
, noted "any statement [made by Packer] would be rendered almost valueless as evidence".
Funeral and aftermath
On 1 October, Michael Kidney walked drunk into Leman Street police station and decried police incompetence. If he were the policeman on duty in Berner Street that night, he said, he would have shot himself. The following year he appears in the records of Whitechapel Workhouse Infirmary three times: for syphilisSyphilis
Syphilis is a sexually transmitted infection caused by the spirochete bacterium Treponema pallidum subspecies pallidum. The primary route of transmission is through sexual contact; however, it may also be transmitted from mother to fetus during pregnancy or at birth, resulting in congenital syphilis...
in June, lumbago in August and dyspepsia
Dyspepsia
Dyspepsia , also known as upset stomach or indigestion, refers to a condition of impaired digestion. It is a medical condition characterized by chronic or recurrent pain in the upper abdomen, upper abdominal fullness and feeling full earlier than expected when eating...
in October. Kidney has come under suspicion for the murder, because of their turbulent relationship, and there is no record of his alibi. Police, however, appear to have eliminated him from the inquiry, and his decline in health and distress at the police station indicate that he took her death badly.
Elizabeth Stride was buried on Saturday 6 October 1888 in the East London Cemetery
East London Cemetery
The East London Cemetery and Crematorium are located in Plaistow in the London Borough of Newham. It is owned and operated by the East London Cemetery Company.-History:...
Plaistow, London, in grave #15509, square 37. The sparse funeral was provided at the expense of the parish by the undertaker, Mr Hawkes.
On 19 October, Chief Inspector Swanson wrote a report detailing that 80,000 leaflets requesting information had been distributed to the neighbourhood and 2000 lodgers had been examined, among other lines of inquiry.
Connection to Jack the Ripper
Since there had been two other murders, those of Mary Ann NicholsMary Ann Nichols
Mary Ann "Polly" Nichols was one of the Whitechapel murder victims. Her death has been attributed to the notorious unidentified serial killer Jack the Ripper, who is believed to have killed and mutilated five women in the Whitechapel area of London from late August to early November 1888.- Life...
and 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...
, involving a cut throat nearby, Stride's murder was added to the Whitechapel murders investigation, and was widely believed to have been perpetrated by the same killer. However, some commentators on the case conclude that Stride's murder was unconnected to the others on the basis that the body was unmutilated, that it was the only murder to occur south of 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...
, and the blade used might have been shorter and of a different design. Most experts, however, consider the similarities in the case distinctive enough to connect Stride's murder with the two earlier ones, as well as that of Catherine Eddowes
Catherine Eddowes
Catherine Eddowes 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...
on the same night.
On 1 October, a postcard, dubbed the "Saucy Jacky" postcard and also signed "Jack the Ripper", was received by the Central News Agency
Central 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.