Shadows of Whitechapel: Catherine Eddowes, From Wolverhampton to Mitre Square

Catherine Eddowes © public domain

Everyone knows the terror that ripped through the East End, in 1888, but many forget the victims and who they were: Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, and Mary Jane Kelly. Each of these women was a living, breathing person with a unique history and story.

Here I have tried to piece together the lives of the women who would go on to become known as 'The Canonical Five', resulting in a small glimpse into their lives. There is much that I have left out, but what I believe to be the important pieces of their lives are here.

Obviously, with census records, online records, books, newspaper articles, archives and much more, there are discrepancies and contradictory accounts, resulting in confusing timelines.

So, where there has been contradictory information, I have left that out, or bracketed the information, so that I could create the most accurate account of their lives.

If you do spot an error, please do get in contact.

Catherine Eddowes (April 14, 1842 – September 30, 1888)

The Tin Worker's Daughter

Catherine Eddowes was born on Monday, April 14, 1842, in the industrial heartland of Wolverhampton. Her father, George Eddowes, was a highly skilled tinplate worker, and her mother, Catherine, raised a large, boisterous family. Seeking better wages during the industrial boom, the Eddowes family walked the long miles to London when Catherine was just a toddler, settling into the crowded, soot-stained streets of Bermondsey.

Catherine was an intelligent, lively child who attended the local charity school and learned to read and write fluently, a notable achievement for a working-class girl of the era. However, the family's stability shattered in the mid-1850s when her mother died, followed closely by her father. Left orphaned and vulnerable, Catherine was sent back to Wolverhampton to live with her aunt. Possessing a fierce, independent streak and an infectious vivacity, Catherine found the strict confines of her aunt's house intolerable. By her late teens, she struck out on her own.

She soon met Thomas Conway, an ex-soldier who made a living writing, printing, and singing cheap street ballads. Catherine joined him on the road, embracing the precarious, nomadic lifestyle of a travelling balladeer. She possessed a beautiful singing voice and would walk the streets selling Conway’s broadsides. Together, they had three children. 

Though they lived entirely hand-to-mouth, Catherine's intelligence and quick wit kept the family afloat for over a decade as they moved between Birmingham, Wolverhampton, and the cheap lodging houses of London.

The Hop Fields and the Green Apron

By 1881, the volatile relationship with Conway ended. Catherine took her children and moved into Cooney’s Lodging House at 55 Flower and Dean Street. It was here that she met John Kelly, a quiet, industrious fruit porter who worked the stalls at the Spitalfields Market. The two fell deeply in love and formed a remarkably stable, affectionate partnership that lasted for the rest of her life. The deputy of the lodging house noted that the couple rarely argued and were highly respected by the other residents.

Every autumn, like thousands of other poor London families, Catherine and John would escape the claustrophobic filth of the East End to participate in the annual hop-picking season in the fresh air of Kent. The late September of 1888 was no different. The couple spent several weeks working the fields, earning enough money to buy decent clothes and shoes. However, by the time they walked back into London on Friday, September 28, their earnings were entirely exhausted.

To survive the weekend, Catherine was forced to pawn John’s boots and her own green shawl. On Saturday, September 29, with John too bare-footed to go to the market for work, Catherine set out into the city, promising him she would find some money to get their belongings back out of the pawnshop.

A Twist of Fate in the City

At around 8:30 p.m. on Saturday night, Catherine was found severely intoxicated and slumped on the pavement of High Street, Aldgate. City of London police officers took her into custody for her own safety, lodging her in a cell at the Bishopsgate Police Station. She slept off the alcohol for several hours, singing quietly to herself as she sobered up. By 1:00 a.m. on Sunday, September 30, she was deemed fully sober. When asked her name, she gave the pseudonym "Nothing," exchanged a few witty remarks with the gaoler, and walked out into the night, turning right toward Houndsditch.

Had she been detained for just thirty minutes longer, she would have missed her killer completely. Instead, her path intersected with the night's dark horrors.

At 1:45 a.m., less than three-quarters of an hour after her release from the police station, her terribly mutilated body was discovered by PC Edward Watkins in the pitch-black corner of Mitre Square, just inside the boundary of the City of London. 

Catherine Eddowes was laid to rest in a handsome elm coffin funded entirely by her grieving family at the City of London Cemetery on Monday, October 8, 1888.