From Respectability to Ruin to Ripper Victim: The Whitechapel Murders and the Precarity of Poverty in Victorian London

In 1850, a bright-eyed eight-year-old girl walked across London Bridge in her carefully maintained school uniform. Her teachers called her promising; her siblings found her delightful. No one could have predicted that decades later, she would die violently in Mitre Square, known to history only as one of Jack the Ripper’s victims. But this isn’t another story about Victorian London’s most notorious killer. Instead, we’re exploring the lives of five women – Polly, Annie, Elisabeth, Kate, and Mary Jane – before they became infamous crime statistics. Their stories reveal a London where respectability and ruin balanced on a knife’s edge, where one misfortune could send a family spiraling into poverty. Join us as we peel back the sensational headlines to discover the real women of Victorian London’s East End, their dreams, their struggles, and the system that failed them. This isn’t a story about how these women died – it’s a story about how they lived. This episode is based on Hallie Rubenhold’s The Five which you can buy at your local bookstore today!

Transcript for: From Respectability to Ruin to Ripper Victim: The Whitechapel Murders and the Precarity of Poverty in Victorian London

Written by Marissa Rhodes, PhD

Recorded by Marissa Rhodes, PhD and Averill Earls, PhD

Marissa: Let’s pretend it’s 1850, late autumn in London. There’s a sweet little girl, about 8 years old, trekking across London bridge in the early morning cold with her slightly older sister Emma. This dark-haired, little 8-year-old shares a name with her mother but her family calls her Chick. Chick’s large family struggles, and she notices it. Her mother is constantly pregnant and pinching pennies, and her father is stressed and working hard. In her early years, she and her many siblings were often left to run around the block, often barefoot and filthy, with the neighbor boys while their parents coped with the strains of life. 

Averill: But not anymore. For two years now, Chick and her sister have been two of dozens of lucky children admitted to the Dowgate school. In the mornings they must wash their hands and faces, comb their hair, and don the uniform she had made herself and was laundered by the school. Since attending Dowgate, Chick and her sister were monitored to ensure that they both had haircuts every 6 weeks. Both girls were required to attend two church services every Sunday. But, most importantly, they were expected to study reading, writing, math, the Bible, and music, as well as needlepoint. 

Chick knew that she was lucky. Out of all of her siblings, she and Emma were the only two who were privileged enough to attend Dowgate. This meant she was smart and capable and she had a promising future. Her older siblings delighted in her, calling her “lively, warm hearted, and entertaining,” and she was known for  “possessing an unusual degree of intelligence.” Chick loved to dance and sing and play with her siblings and she missed them. But she knew that her sacrifices would be worth it. She was determined to make good on this investment of her parents’. If anyone could pull the family out of poverty, it was Chick. 

Marissa: This bright little girl, full of hopes and dreams, was born Catherine Eddowes. One day she’d be known as Kate. Despite her determination, Kate’s life didn’t go as she’d planned. But still, no one had any way of knowing that her life would end tragically as it did. As she slept rough in Mitre square, her throat was slashed and body mutilated in the grubby London dark. Kate Eddowes was destined to become the fourth of five White Chapel murder victims perpetrated by Jack the Ripper.

While you’d be forgiven for thinking this podcast would be about the Whitechapel murder, or Jack the Ripper, you’d be wrong. We’re taking Hallie Rubenhold’s lead and dedicating our Jack the Ripper episode to the women who lost their lives on those chilly autumn nights in London’s East End in 1888. We won’t be recounting the horrors that were done to their bodies (which was extensive) or reinforcing the indignities they suffered in death (also extensive- their autopsy photos were published in the 1970s for example). We’ll take a look into these women’s lives to explore what they can tell us about poverty in late Victorian London. Join us for a prosopography (that’s a collection of biographies) of The Five. 

I’m Marissa. 

And I’m Averill

Marissa: and we are your historians for this episode of Dig. 

Averill: As you hopefully already know, we have a co-authored book that hit the shelves last October! We have a lot of people to thank for helping us get to the point of publishing a beautiful, magenta-jacketed book about Spiritualism – and top of that list are all of our Patreon supporters. Our patrons funded research trips to Lily Dale, the purchase of rare and weird books we needed, subscriptions to digital newspaper archives, and writing retreats to get this beauty done. We couldn’t have done any of this without yall – especially our Auger and Excavator level patrons: Lisa, Karl, Karen, Jessy, Maria, Denise, Edward, Lauren, Colin, Alyssa, and Susan! We can’t thank you enough. Listener, if you enjoy what we do here but aren’t yet a patron of this show, it’s easy: just go to patreon.com/digpodcast to learn more. 

Marissa: While there are hundreds (if not thousands) of published volumes about Jack the Ripper, an entire genre of Ripperature, and a field of amateur specialists called “Ripperologists,” the Whitechapel murders remain sorely neglected by academic historians. Part of the reason is that the body of source material is so gargantuan that few historians have wanted to take it on. Criminal investigation was in its infancy, leaving fragmentary and sometimes contradictory legal documents. Many of the records have been lost, leaving a vacuum that has been filled by speculation and legend. 

Averill: The murders also happened at a time when murder journalism was falling into its stride. A horrified yet fascinated British public read gruesome coroner reports, pored over shocking crime scene illustrations, reveled in descriptions of shocking gore, and devoured sensational conjecture rolling off the presses of every daily and weekly in England. The sheer volume of information about these crimes delights ripperologists. But academic historians have strict standards for verifiability and are more concerned with using these documents to illuminate past worlds and current realities. Ripperologists, though their knowledge can be encyclopedic, are motivated by solving the crime. Since we’re historians and not Ripperologists, our aims today are historical, not forensic or investigative or journalistic and sensational. Still, there will be some graphic descriptions that we’ve deemed historically meaningful so if sexual violence or gore are not for you, skip this episode. 

Marissa: We are indebted to the brave few academic historians who HAVE taken on this momentous event: Hallie Rubenhold for her meticulous research into the lives of the Ripper’s neglected and dehumanized victims: Polly Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elisabeth Stride, Kate Eddowes, and Mary Jane Kelly. Rubenhold’s book The Five is one of my favorite history books of all time and much of this episode will be spent honoring Rubenhold and the women for whom she did a service.

Also included in this episode is the work of L. Perry Curtis, an incredible historian of media who wrote Jack the Ripper and the Victorian Press. Paul Begg and John Bennet’s book Jack the Ripper: The Forgotten Victims was also an incredible read. Lastly, deserving of an honorable mention is the historian Drew Gray whose article about the academic neglect of the Whitechapel murders was crucial to my research for this. 

Averill: We’re highlighting the victims, whose dignity and legacy have been damaged first by the police and journalists who lived beside them, and then, by the ripperologists who came later but used those misleading documents as inviolable truth. Hallie Rubenhold rejects this state of affairs, choosing to write a book wherein these five women are the stars, with no mention of their violent deaths or the posthumous indignities they and their families suffered. You’ll find that their humble lives are interesting enough on their own. So let’s get started…

Marissa: Mary Ann “Polly” Nichols was born to Edward and Caroline Walker on August 26, 1845, in Dawes Court, off Shoe Lane in London. She grew up in a working-class family during the Victorian era, when London was experiencing rapid industrialization and significant social changes. We’re talking about some real, Dickensian shit here. In fact, Shoe Lane was where Dickens worked as a shoe black before becoming the author of Oliver Twist. 

Polly’s entire family shared one room measuring 8×10 feet with bad ventilation, a sooty interior in disrepair, and few bathroom facilities shared by many. She and her siblings went to charity schools for some time but were forced to direct their labors toward wage-making early on. In 1864, at the age of 18 or 19, she married William Nichols, a printer’s machinist. Together they had six children. For several years, they lived what appeared to be a relatively stable working-class life in London. They were admitted into the Peabody buildings, which were low-rent flats meant to provide the poor with quality housing. For the first time in her life, Polly would have lived in relative comfort but, like many families of their social status, they faced ongoing financial challenges.

Averill: The marriage began to deteriorate in the 1870s. Both Polly and William reportedly struggled with alcohol, which contributed to their marital problems. William’s dalliances with their divorced neighbor, Rosetta, didn’t help either. The couple separated several times before their final separation in 1880 or 1881. Initially, William paid her a weekly allowance of five shillings, but he stopped these payments when he learned that she was cohabiting with another man. Many sources say that William had learned she was working as a prostitute but Rubenhold uncovered that this was untrue. Polly was cohabiting with another man, which was a strategy that many homeless women pursued to make lodgings cheaper. This was the reason William gave for discontinuing his allowance. (Of course he was allowed to “cohabit” all he wanted.)

Marissa: After the separation, and the subsequent end to William’s allowance, Polly’s life became increasingly precarious. She moved between workhouses and low-cost lodging houses, taking various jobs to survive. She worked for a time as a domestic servant in Wandsworth for a wealthy family, the Cowdrys, but left after a few months. Some reports suggest she had stolen clothing from her employer, though this has never been supported by evidence. Rubenhold points out that the clothing she “stole” was the clothing provided FOR Polly when she took up employment. They were the only clothes she had. All we know for sure is that Polly absconded and never returned. Rubenhold points out that there are many reasons why Polly could have disliked living and working for the Cowdrys, including loneliness, perhaps strict rules, and a lack of access to alcohol. She preferred to take her chances on the streets of Whitechapel. 

Averill: Between 1881 and 1888, Polly lived in various workhouses and lodging houses across London, including Lambeth Workhouse and Mitcham Workhouse. She also spent time living with her father and brother in Bermondsey, though this arrangement didn’t last long. Despite the harsh conditions of workhouses, she would sometimes seek them out as a refuge, particularly during winter months.

Marissa: In the years leading up to her death, Polly lived primarily in the Whitechapel area, staying in various doss houses (cheap lodging houses) and supporting herself through casual labor, begging, and whatever means she could. Police (and almost every author since 1888) has labeled Polly as a prostitute. And to be sure, casual prostitution was common among the poor. Destitute women often earned some extra change doing sexual favors for punters without  making it a profession. But Rubenhold points out that neither the police nor journalists have ever found someone who witnessed her engaging in sex work. There is not one shred of evidence this ever happened. In fact, all evidence points to the opposite. Polly was known to frequent the White House lodging house on Flower and Dean Street, as well as other similar establishments in the area. Here she met a friend, Ellen, who was interviewed after her death. The transcript reads: “the witness said she did not think the deceased was leading a fast life; in fact [Polly] seemed very afraid of it.”

Averill: Those who knew her in her final years described her as an intelligent woman who had fallen on hard times. Despite her circumstances, she maintained a certain dignity and was known to keep herself as neat and clean as her situation allowed. In the last weeks of her life, she had been living at a lodging house at 18 Thrawl Street, where the rent was fourpence a night.

On the night of August 30, 1888, Polly was turned away from her lodging house because she lacked the fourpence needed for a bed. She admitted to a friend that she’d had the fourpence several times that day but that each time she’d drank it away.

Her last known words to the deputy of the lodging house were, “I’ll soon get my doss money. See what a jolly bonnet I’ve got now.” Rubenhold suspects she planned to pawn her nicest bonnet for the doss money. Rubenhold’s narrative stops here and for good reason. By not describing the violence done to these women, Rubenhold refrains from injuring them yet again. Sociologists argue that when we indulge in reliving the horrors done to murder victims, we are ourselves complicit in the violence against them. For this reason, we will mostly refrain from lurid descriptions of their injuries except when it adds significant meaning to our historical interpretation of what happened here. 

Marissa: Polly was found dead in Buck’s Row (now Durward Street) in the early hours of August 31, 1888 by a pair of workmen who thought they’d stumbled upon some discarded tarps. As their eyes adjusted to the poor lighting, they realized they had found a murdered woman with her throat slit. Her dress was pulled up and her genitals mutilated. To preserve her modesty, they pulled the dress down and went to look for a copper. Before they could find one, a different cop found Polly’s body. But because her dress had been pulled down, the full extent of her mutilation was unclear. It wasn’t until she was undressed by workhouse inmates for the coroner that the brutality was realized. So there was a bit of a delay between the discovery of her body and the realization that the police had a “lustmurder” on their hands unlike anything they’d ever seen before. 

One thing that Rubenhold does that I find profoundly meaningful is to offer the list of the personal effects recorded for each victim. As a lover of material culture and an avid consumer of true crime, I found this touching. I spend a lot of time trying to match up unidentified remains with missing persons and one thing that always gets me is the description of the personal effects found on people’s remains. It’s almost like a person’s life recorded through objects. According to the inventory of her personal effects, this is what Polly left behind: black straw bonnet trimmed with black velvet, brown ulster [overcoat] with seven large buttons bearing the pattern of a man standing beside a horse, a linsey frock, a white flannel chest cloth, blue ribbed wool stockings, two petticoats, one gray wool, one flannel. Both stenciled on bands “Lambeth Workhouse,” brown [corset] stays (short), flannel drawers, men’s elastic (spring) sided boots with uppers cut and steel tips on the heels, a comb, a white pocket handkerchief, and a piece of looking glass. 

Averill: Annie Chapman (born Eliza Ann Smith) was born in September 1841 in Paddington, London  to George Smith, a soldier, and his partner Ruth. She was an illegitimate child. Her father’s military career meant that young Annie likely experienced the particular challenges of being a soldier’s daughter during peacetime Victorian England. Annie spent part of her childhood in Windsor, as her father was attached to the 2nd Regiment of Life Guards. 

Unfortunately, several of George and Ruth’s children died of infectious diseases which devastated the family. Nearly half of all children born in the 1800s did not make it to age five. But the fact that child mortality was common did not make bearing this loss any easier. As is common after the loss of children, the Smiths struggled. George started drinking more heavily. Eventually, George transitioned into work as a valet for one of his commanding officers, Roger Henry William Palmer, a Crimean War hero. After two years on the job, he was found dead by suicide in his room. He had slit his own throat. George’s boss, Commander Palmer, and his household staff were beside themselves and wrote of being terribly effected for a long time after finding George’s body. But during a time with no social safety net, George’s suicide was not only emotionally devastating to the family but financially devastating as well. They immediately lost their only income. 

Marissa: Fortunately, the Smiths had someone looking out for them, perhaps to honor George’s memory. Rubenhold suspects that Commander Palmer helped to sustain George’s family after his suicide because they did not fall into immediate, dire poverty like most families did at the loss of their patriarch. They were somehow able to afford lodgings off base. By 1869, Annie’s mother Ruth was renting out rooms to lodgers in their modest home and this is how Annie met her husband-to-be. 

That year, at the age of 28, Annie married John Chapman, a coachman. This marriage initially provided her with a degree of stability that was relatively rare for working-class women of the period. Annie and John were able to afford a wedding photograph, for example, and portraits of their children. John’s salary as a coachman to the West End’s elites earned them a livable wage and a certain amount of prestige. They lived in relative comfort but Annie had her demons. The trauma of losing several siblings and her father so tragically haunted Annie. 

Averill: Unfortunately, the horrors got worse from there. Annie and John produced 8 children, only 3 of whom survived infancy. (I want to note that as far as I can tell, Rubenhold is the only source who has gotten this correct. Most sources ignore the excessive infant mortality and say the couple had three children.) Rubenhold suspects that Annie’s alcohol abuse had a negative impact on her pregnancies. Their firstborn, Emily Ruth, was born healthy but was eventually plagued by epileptic seizures. Emily was later placed in a hospital where she remained throughout her life. Annie’s second daughter, Ellen, died the day she was born. Annie, her third daughter, was born with what is now known as fetal alcohol syndrome. Another, Georgina, lived for only 10 days. Two more, George and Miriam, were born sickly as well and died as newborns. Her last child, John Alfred, was born paralyzed. An eighth child went undocumented and was likely stillborn or miscarried late in the pregnancy. The impact of maternal drinking was only beginning to be understood. As you can imagine, Annie’s and John’s experiences with infant mortality pushed them into even deeper despair. 

Marissa: The Chapman family lived in various places around London, following John’s work opportunities. For a time, they lived in affluent Market Harborough, Leicestershire, where John worked as a domestic coachman for a wealthy family. This position would have provided them with relatively comfortable living conditions compared to many of their working-class contemporaries. However, tragedy struck the family when their eldest, Emily, died of meningitis at 12 years old in 1882. While losing any child is devastating, losing their eldest, whom they had watched grow up and nurtured her through her epilepsy, this was shattering. 

Averill: In response, Annie’s alcoholism became so bad that her sisters checked her into a Sanatorium. Despite Annie’s alcoholism (or perhaps because of it), her siblings became devoted temperance women. They had taken pledges of abstinence and were keen to transform Annie’s life with their teetotaling ways. WIth her sisters’ support, Annie worked to become sober at the sanatorium, being discharged the next year. For a few subsequent months, Annie was a “changed woman.” Everyone, including Annie, was thrilled with her sobriety. But she eventually fell off the wagon. According to her sisters, John had contracted a cold and took a shot of medicinal whisky. He kissed his wife before going out and that kiss reignited her craving for alcohol. She never again tried to get sober.

Marissa: Annie’s drinking habit eventually led to their separation in 1884. John had two disabled children to care for and Annie’s drinking made her incapable of caring for them. Rubenhold believes that John Chapman expected his wife to lodge with her mother while she was receiving her allowance but, instead, Annie chose to live on the streets so she could indulge in alcohol without the hindrance of her temperate family members. After the separation, John Chapman continued to send Annie a weekly allowance of ten shillings. This arrangement lasted until his death from cirrhosis of the liver (a hint that John also struggled with alcoholism) in 1886. Annie’s situation deteriorated significantly after losing this source of income. Like many women of her time who found themselves without support, she turned to various means of survival in London’s East End. To contemporary journalists and the police, this meant prostitution but, once again, there is no evidence Annie ever did any sex work.

Averill: Annie took to selling flowers and crocheting antimacassars (decorative cloths used to protect furniture), but these endeavors didn’t provide enough income to sustain her. She had to, as Polly had, attach herself to men in similar circumstances. At least male paupers could command a higher rate for day labor and the two could split the cost of a bed. This cohabitation has been construed as prostitution by the police and by journalists but this is more owing to Victorian sexual morality than to any hard evidence that Annie exchanged sex for money. To be fair.. A lot of things were deemed to be tantamount to prostitution in late Victorian England. For example, consider outdoor relief, which was essentially welfare payments made to single mothers of illegitimate children to help sustain them. Workhouses were preferred to outdoor relief because, critics argues, outdoor relief just enables women to have extramarital sex and birth illegitimate children. This, many argued, is a form of prostitution. So, as you can see… it wasn’t hard to be labeled a prostitute in Victorian England. 

Marissa: But one thing about Hallie Rubenhold’s book is that I think she might be trying TOO HARD to prove these women weren’t sex workers. Her writing almost conveys an outrage that these women would be labeled as such, as if it’s the worst thing that could be said about them. I think she’s correct that most of them weren’t and that the police (and then the press) just assumed that all destitute women who took up space in public life resorted to prostitution. They were definitely too easily dismissed as “common prostitutes” by the police and by journalists of their time. And this tells us a lot about the patriarchal societies they inhabited. But I also don’t think that it should matter whether they were professional sex workers, casual and occasional sex workers, or not sex workers at all. It doesn’t make them any more or less vulnerable, the story any more or less sad, or them any more or less tragic figures. 

Averill: Back to the story.. In her final years, Annie suffered from several health issues, including tuberculosis and bronchitis. Despite these challenges, those who knew her described her as an intelligent and educated woman who had fallen on hard times. She was known locally as “Dark Annie” due to her dark brown hair, and was described as a quiet woman who kept to herself but was well-liked by those who knew her. In her last days, she was living at Crossingham’s lodging house, struggling to maintain even this basic accommodation.

On September 8, 1888, Annie Chapman was found dead in the backyard of 29 Hanbury Street. Annie’s injuries were equally horrifying to Polly Nichols’s though the police encountered the added horror of realizing that her uterus had been removed and taken from the scene. Her last known movements included being turned away from her lodging house early that morning because she lacked the required fourpence for her bed. The papers suggested that she had plans to prostitute herself for the required sum when she met her fate. But Rubenhold argues, convincingly, that Annie was sleeping rough (and that Polly might have been as well) when the Ripper’s knife slashed her throat. Both women were without indoor accommodations that night and both women were found in areas where “tramps” were known to sleep rough. It’s for this reason that Rubenhold argues that Jack the Ripper, whoever he was, did not target prostitutes but rather women who were sleeping rough. This argument holds up for most of his canonical victims, except the last one.

Marissa: The local coroner, and the journalists reporting on his findings, found Annie’s case very difficult to convey to the public. While ideas about Victorian sexual squeamishness is sometimes overblown, there were some hard and fast rules of propriety that no longer apply. For example, despite publishing graphic illustrations and descriptions of the sharp force injuries incurred by the White Chapel victims, not one reporter could bring themselves to write about Annie’s removed and missing uterus and not one report uses the word pelvis. Instead, they wrote that a “portion” of Annie’s “stomach” had been removed. They also wrote of vague “abdominal” wounds. Describing any part of the female anatomy that men did NOT have was untenable. But it was considered acceptable to detail vicious wounds on other parts of their bodies. 

Averill: We won’t be recounting the rest of those injuries here but, again, we’d like to read the list of Annie’s personal effects. Annie’s inventory reads like this: long black figured coat that came down to her knees, black skirt, brown bodice, another bodice, two petticoats, a large pocket worn under the skirt and tied about the waist with strings, lace-up boots, red-and-white-striped woolen stockings, neckerchief, white with a wide red border, scrap of muslin, one small-tooth comb, one comb in a paper case, scrap of envelope containing two pills, bearing the seal of the Sussex Regiment and post-stamped “London, 28, Aug., 1888”

Averill: Sometime around 1864 Elisabeth was either assaulted or took up a lover. We don’t know who and their relationship is clouded in mystery but by March 1865 she was 6 months pregnant, unmarried, and the baby’s father had absconded. This got her in trouble with the law. She was marked a “public woman” by the municipal authorities, added to the “register of shame,” and ordered to undergo all of the regulatory routines endured by Sweden’s prostitutes. She had to surrender to frequent physical exams of her genitalia to ensure she was not carrying venereal disease. It’s unclear whether she was actually doing sex work– she referred to herself as a servant in all legal documents– but she was certainly treated like one. It was relatively common for single mothers of illegitimate children to be labeled as prostitutes whether they did sex work or not. Sometimes this stemmed from the baby’s father providing financial support to the woman and child while still not marrying her. To the authorities, this was close enough to warrant the label prostitute. Contemporaneous journalists and later Ripperologists rarely questioned this label, assuming that Elisabeth was, by the time of her death, a hardened street walker. 

Marissa: Unfortunately, at one of these inspections, she was found to have syphilis and was admitted to a venereal hospital. In the venereal hospital, she gave birth to a stillborn girl. It’s unclear if the syphilis itself or the toxic treatments for syphilis, contributed to the baby’s death. It’s also often assumed that Elisabeth contracted venereal disease because she was a prostitute. But this is a dangerous assumption to make. We don’t have reliable statistics from the Victorian era but in the 18th century, 20% of Londoners had syphilis by the time they reached 30. This was not a disease for only rakes, rogues, and prostitutes. Rubenhold thinks it’s most likely that she fell pregnant during a dalliance with another servant or that she was sexually assaulted during her period in service which got her pregnant and gave her syphilis. There is no evidence she was a prostitute until after her ordeal in the venereal hospital and after the loss of her baby. Only then did she pursue sex work in earnest. This period is when she became estranged from her family and she knew she could never go back home. 

Averill: She didn’t do sex work for long because she was taken in by a respectable family of musicians, the Wiesners, who employed her as a servant and helped her get her name struck off the “register of shame.” Elisabeth came into some money in 1866 from an unknown source. Rubenhold argues it was common for women who had become pregnant outside of marriage to be cared for by their former lovers so perhaps her child’s father provided her with the sum. She used it to apply to emigrate to London and for her ship fare. 

Marissa: In London she initially worked as a domestic servant in Hyde Park. She left that Hyde Park job under a cloud of suspicion, suggesting there may have been a scandal of some sort. Perhaps this was another illicit affair. Twenty years later, Elisabeth was still receiving occasional support and favors from her Hyde Park employer’s brother. This was highly unusual unless she had a liaison with him when she was their servant. That would make sense. While still working as a servant, Elisabeth met and married John Stride, a carpenter. The pair opened a coffeehouse in Upper North Street but the business struggled. The London public’s appetite for alcohol was bottomless but coffeehouses had smaller markets– mainly teetotalers and intellectuals. Their finances were troubled further by a family falling out that deprived John of an expected inheritance. They were forced to shut down the coffee shop. This misfortune strained the relationship beyond repair and they separated around 1877. Sadly, John died in 1884.

Averill: The newly single Elisabeth made a modest living as a charwoman which is a casual temp cleaner hired out by the day.  But charring was extremely low-paying so Elisabeth appears to have made ends meet as a conwoman, and an occasional sex worker. One big con that Elisabeth executed was convincing an old woman with poor vision that she was her long lost sister. Elisabeth may have extracted money and favors from her marks. She lived in various lodging houses in Whitechapel and was known to fellow residents as “Long Liz” due to her height. Unlike the popular image of Victorian London’s destitute, Elisabeth maintained a relatively neat appearance and was known to do fine needlework. The descriptions of these women in life really underline how thin the line is between respectability and unrelenting poverty. Most Londoners were just one tragedy away from the workhouse. 

Marissa: Elisabeth developed a relationship with Michael Kidney, a laborer, and lived with him on and off for several years, though their relationship was marked by domestic violence. She occasionally sought refuge in workhouses and shelters when times were particularly tough. Elisabeth was known to tell dramatic stories about her past, including a tale about losing her husband and children in the sinking of the Princess Alice steamship in 1878. While these stories weren’t true, they suggest someone trying to craft a more sympathetic narrative of their life circumstances. They were also in line with her side hustle as a conwoman. 

Through the 1880s, her behavior became more erratic and her dependence on alcohol increased. Rubenhold postulates that, by this time, neurosyphilis has started to damage her brain and nervous system. Elisabeth was documented as suffering from fits, or seizures, during this time. Her judgment and decision-making may have been impaired. 

Averill: In the early hours of September 30, 1888, Elisabeth Stride was murdered in Dutfield’s Yard, off Berner Street in Whitechapel. Her death was attributed to the serial killer known as Jack the Ripper, though some researchers debate this connection since her injuries were less extensive than other victims’. It appears as if the killer may have been interrupted before he could carry out the mutilations he had perpetrated on Nichols and Chapman. Elisabeth’s remains were discovered by Louis Diemschutz, the steward of a nearby working men’s club, who may have interrupted the killer.

In addition to the damaging effects of neurosyphilis, Elisabeth’s story is a testament to the vulnerability of the young servant girls who filled the households of almost all Londoners. Having reached sexual maturity, these young women were on their own for the first time, escaping the authority of their fathers and childhood home. They were not dissimilar to college girls leaving home for the first time. Many women’s lives were ruined by sexual assaults, coercive relationships, or unwise romances during this time. (Marissa’s research is full of them). Elisabeth’s story is also an example of the vulnerability of immigrants. Perhaps her fanciful stories filled a hole left by the estrangement of her family and lonesomeness in a new city. 

Marissa: Elisabeth’s personal effects were as follows: Long black cloth jacket, fur trimmed around the bottom, with a red rose and white maidenhair fern pinned to it, black skirt, black crepe bonnet (the back stuffed with newspaper), checked neck scarf knotted on left side, dark brown velveteen bodice, two light serge petticoats, one white chemise, white stockings, spring sided boots, two handkerchiefs, a thimble, a piece of wool wound around a card, a key (as of a padlock), a small piece of lead pencil, six large buttons and one small one, a comb, a broken piece of comb, a metal spoon, a hook (as from a dress), a piece of muslin, one or two small pieces of paper. 

Averill: Now let’s get to that bright, young girl we described at the top of the show. Catherine Eddowes, Kate or “Chick”, was born in Wolverhampton on April 14, 1842, as the sixth of 12 children born to George Eddowes, a tinplate worker, and Catherine Evans. Her early years were marked by hardship. Kate’s father was a staunch union man who was pushed out of the Wolverhampton tinplate factory after agitating for workers’ rights. He lost his job and was sentenced to 2 months hard labor by a judge who was sympathetic to the factory owner. The Eddoweses moved to London after he lost his livelihood in Wolverhampton. 

Marissa: George’s income was respectable and would have been enough for a small family to live comfortably but since the Eddowes clan numbered 9 at the time of the move and increased nearly each year, the family struggled to make ends meet in London. Still, the family was able to obtain a spot in a fancy school called Dowgate and they chose, of all their children, to send Kate there. They also probably sent Emma too but that is less clear. Kate’s mother died in 1855 at the age of 42, weak with consumption, malnutrition, and the physical burden of annual pregnancies. 

Shortly after her mother’s death, Kate’s father began to sicken. Her older sisters quickly arranged marriages for themselves to secure their futures. Kate kind of dithered and her siblings worried for her. Kate’s father died in short order and the four youngest Eddowes children were sent to the workhouse as orphans. Kate was shipped back to Wolverhampton because her siblings worried what would become of her, a single and directionless woman in a city like London. Kate was miserable in Wolverhampton with her extended family. She was caught stealing from a store room at the factory where she worked and spent much of her time trying to avoid marriage and the hardscrabble life she’d witnessed her mother live. 

Averill: In the 1860s, she entered into a relationship with an Irishman, Thomas Conway, a soldier who had recently returned from a tour in India. To her family’s dismay, Kate was attracted to this romantic, bohemian figure. Though they never legally married, Kate took his name and lived with him for over 20 years. They had several children together and continued Conway’s bohemian existence. The family moved between London and Birmingham, with Conway working as a chapman (traveling salesman) while Catherine helped sell his goods. They slept on their carts in open fields most summers, traveling to different villages every day to hawk their wares. 

Marissa: Their relationship deteriorated in the late 1870s. The pair attempted a sedentary lifestyle in London but struggled with money as a result. Catherine lost her third child, Harriet, as an infant from malnutrition. The devastation and guilt of not being able to provide for their child drove Thomas to leave London for his typical salesman circuit again. This left Kate destitute, pregnant, and with two young children to care for. Like most women in her situation, Kate resorted to routine entries into the parish workhouse to keep her children and herself alive. This miserable existence led to Kate relying on alcohol to cope. When Conway was in town, he and Kate fought terribly, a situation that devolved into Conway’s serious physical abuse of Kate. But when Conway left, Kate was safe but destitute again. It was a vicious cycle. 

Averill: By 1880, Catherine left him. As was typical in the 19th century, the father automatically was awarded custody of the children. This marked a significant turning point in her life, leading to increased instability. After separating from Conway, Kate formed a relationship with John Kelly, a casual laborer. They lived together in various lodging houses in London’s East End, surviving through a combination of casual work and begging. Despite her circumstances, contemporaries described Kate as an intelligent woman who could read and write, and was known for her quick wit. These are clues that when Kate was little, she was meant for bigger and better things than her parents had been able to achieve. But a few cruel twists of fate later, and Kate was worse off than her parents. 

Marissa: Kate struggled with alcohol throughout her adult life. It’s unclear when her drinking became a problem but by the 1880s, Kate was on the outs with all of her family members and constantly on the radar of East End police. While it’s plausible that Kate resorted to casual prostitution, there’s actually no evidence of that. Other than the assumptions of the police. On September 29, 1888, she was arrested for public drunkenness and held at Bishopsgate Police Station. She was released shortly after midnight on September 30. Less than an hour later, she was seen alive but preparing to sleep rough in Mitre Square.

Averill: Within another hour, Kate’s murdered body was found in Mitre Square at 1:45 AM. Kate was 46 years old at the time of her death. Kate was particularly known for her sense of humor and ability to sing. Even in difficult circumstances, she maintained a reputation for being cheerful and witty. She was described as being about five feet tall, with dark auburn hair, and having a small scar on her forehead from a childhood injury. One of the saddest aspects of Kate’s story is that she had enough money in her pocket when she died to pay for a bed at a lodging house. Notably, Kate’s murder occurred on the same night as Elisabeth Stride’s, leading to their murders becoming known as the “double event.” Ripperologists theorize that the murderer was interrupted killing Elisabeth Stride and went in search of another victim to satisfy his violent urges. 

Marissa: Kate’s personal effects list is on the longer side but I just love reading these. (If you don’t, fast forward the next couple minutes.) These lists give you such a good idea of what their lives were like: black straw bonnet trimmed in green and black velvet with black beads. Black strings, worn tied to the head, black cloth jacket trimmed around the collar and cuffs with imitation fur and around the pockets in black silk braid and fur. Large metal buttons, dark green chintz skirt, three flounces, brown button on waistband. The skirt is patterned with Michaelmas daisies and golden lilies, Man’s white vest, matching buttons down front, brown linsey bodice, black velvet collar, with brown buttons down front, gray stuff petticoat with white waistband, very old green alpaca skirt (worn as an undergarment), very old ragged blue skirt with red flounces, light twill lining (worn as undergarment), white calico chemise, no drawers or stays, pair of men’s lace-up boots, mohair laces, Right boot repaired with red thread, one piece of red gauze silk worn as a neckerchief, one large white pocket handkerchief, one large white cotton handkerchief with red and white bird’s eye border, two unbleached calico pockets, tape strings, one blue stripe bed ticking pocket, brown ribbed knee stockings, darned at the feet with white cotton, two small blue bags made of bed ticking, two short black clay pipes, one tin box containing tea, one tin box containing sugar, one tin matchbox, empty, twelve pieces white rag, some slightly bloodstained (menstrual rags), one piece coarse linen, white, one piece of blue and white shirting, three cornered, one piece red flannel with pins and needles, six pieces soap, one small tooth comb, one white handle table knife, one metal teaspoon, one red-leather cigarette case with white metal fittings, one ball hemp, one piece of old white apron with repair, several buttons and a thimble, mustard tin containing two pawn tickets, portion of a pair of spectacles, one red mitten. 

Averill: Now we’ll turn to the last of the five canonical victims. As historians, our standards for documentation are high and we prefer not to perpetuate unsubstantiated claims. But we can tell you what we do know (thanks to Hallie Rubenhold’s dogged research). Mary Jane Kelly, also known as “Marie Jeanette Kelly” or simply “Black Mary,” was the youngest of the canonical five and she was also the hardest for Rubenhold to research. Kelly told multiple stories about her past but Rubenhold was unable to verify any of them. This means that Mary Jane Kelly or Marie Jeanette Kelly were most likely aliases. 

What we do know is that she arrived on the high end escort scene in London’s West End around 1883. Rubenhold also found a lot of evidence that she was well-educated. She could read and write, was multilingual, a capable artist and musician, and appeared to those who knew her to be well-versed in high culture. It’s possible she was well-born but it’s also possible that she was just a masterful performer of gentility. 

Marissa: For a brief time she arranged to live as a high end escort or “kept woman” in France but this situation was a trap. Mary Jane’s French landlady promised to send her wardrobe to France after Mary Jane departed. When she arrived in France, she slowly realized that she’d been swindled out of all of her possessions. The landlady sold them off instead of sending them. The deception got worse when her experience in the maison close (high end French brothel) was not what was promised. These were dens of human trafficking where procuresses lured naive girls into sex slavery. Shockingly, Mary Jane was able to escape the maison close and return to London. Very few women escaped a maison close outside of a pine box and her ability to escape suggests she was quite wiley. 

Averill: When she returned to London, she had nothing. She relocated to Whitechapel and practiced sex work a rung or two below the escort services she’d provided to fancy men in the West End. Mary Jane lived with a man named Joseph Barnett, a fish porter, for about two years. Remember, cohabitation was sometimes about love but it could also be a strategy by poor women to maintain more stable housing. The pair shared a single room at 13 Miller’s Court, Dorset Street. Their relationship ended shortly before her death, reportedly due to Barnett’s jealousy of Mary Jane’s johns.

Marissa: Mary Jane was last seen alive in the early hours of November 9, 1888. Into the early morning, she was singing “A Violet from Mother’s Grave” according to witnesses – one of the last documented moments of her life. Another neighbor heard a yelp some time later but was used to many night time sounds so she went back to sleep. Mary Jane’s body was discovered later that morning in her room at Miller’s Court. She was 25 years old. Her death was the most brutal of the canonical five murders. The murderer had essentially all the time in the world to mutilate and pose Mary Jane’s body. The trauma inflicted on all involved is evident in the cutting short of Mary Jane’s coroner’s inquest. Polly’s inquest took four days, Chapman’s and Stride’s took five, Eddowes’s took two and Kelly’s only one. Though Londoners could not have known it at the time, Mary Jane’s murder marked the end of the series of killings attributed to Jack the Ripper. 

We don’t have a list of Mary Jane Kelly’s personal effects because she was the only victim found indoors. 

Averill: The stories of Polly Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elisabeth Stride, Kate Eddowes, and Mary Jane Kelly reveal far more than just the final chapters of their lives in 1888. Their biographies illuminate the broader struggles of working-class women in Victorian London, particularly those who found themselves without the period’s traditional supports of marriage and family.

These women’s lives followed strikingly similar patterns: early marriages that dissolved, the struggle to find stable work in an economy that offered few opportunities for women, and the constant search for safe housing in London’s overcrowded East End. Some of them turned to sex work as part of an “economy of makeshift” – combining irregular work, charitable assistance, and temporary relationships to survive.

Marissa: Their stories also highlight the precarious nature of Victorian working-class life, where a single misfortune – the death of a spouse, the loss of employment, or a battle with illness or alcohol – could set off a chain of events leading to destitution. The workhouse loomed as a dreaded last resort, forcing many to risk dangerous nighttime work on the streets rather than submit to its harsh regime. The murders drew public attention to the desperate conditions in Whitechapel, leading to some reforms in housing and public safety. Yet the deeper issues these women faced – economic insecurity, limited women’s rights, and rigid social expectations – would persist well into the next century.

Rather than remember these women solely as victims of an infamous killer, their lives deserve to be understood in their full context – as mothers, workers, and survivors who navigated the harsh realities of Victorian urban life with remarkable resilience. Their stories remind us that behind every crime statistic or sensational headline lies a complex human life shaped by both personal choices and broader social forces. The true legacy of these five women lies not in their connection to their killer, but in how their stories help us understand the real human cost of inequality, poverty, and limited opportunities in one of history’s greatest cities during its most dramatic period of growth and change.

Buy Hallie Rubenhold’s The Five at your local bookstore today!

Show Notes

Begg, Paul, and John Bennett. 2014. Jack the Ripper: The Forgotten Victims. New Haven, CT: Yale University. https://doi.org/10.12987/9780300207071.

Begg, Paul. 2006. Jack the Ripper : The Facts. [Updated ed.]. London: Robson.

Curtis, L. Perry. 2001. Jack the Ripper and the London Press. New Haven: Yale University Press. http://site.ebrary.com/id/10167948.

Gray, Drew. 2018. “Exorcising a Demon?: Why History Needs to Engage with the Whitechapel Murders and Dispel the Myth of ‘Jack the Ripper.’” Humanities 7 (2): 52. https://doi.org/10.3390/h7020052.

Rubenhold, Hallie. 2020. The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper. Boston, Massachusetts: Mariner Books Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Rumbelow, Donald. 2013. The Complete Jack the Ripper : Fully Revised & Updated. Virgin Books.

Sugden, Philip. 2006. The Complete History of Jack the Ripper. Rev. pbk. ed. London: Robinson.