128 years ago

[richardh]

Writing this at pretty much the exact time (128 years ago) between Liz Stride and Catherine Eddowes murders on 30th Sept - (it's now 01:24am as I type this)

In remembrance of both at this time.
RIP

[kjab3112]

Alas his knife was not yet to be sheathed

[drstrange169]

Damn! Due to some current day dramas I missed thinking of these two ladies.

Extra whiskies tonight in their honour.

[DirectorDave]

It's all too easy to get caught up in the chase and forget the victims...especially Liz Stride and here she is tucked away under Cathy's name a footnote to her own murder.

We are here, on this website gaining enjoyment from but not because of their murders and claim we do it for justice, to find their killer but in truth we are here for the glory to solve the puzzle that no one actually can.

We the hunters of the murderer give these women immortality by remembrance, us...not him and his murderous butchery. We hold them up as the poster girls for their time, location and situation and in remembering them we remember all the victims of the time.

RIP. Elizabeth.

RIP. Catherine.

[Pcdunn]

Whitechapel Eulogy: Berner Street

EULOGY FOR ELIZABETH STRIDE

Gustaf's daughter,
Child of Torslandia,
As wild as Sweden's northern seas.
You were a prostitute by twenty-one,
And an emigrant by twenty-five,
You left your homeland to come to
London's eastern streets, where they called
you Long Liz.
Did you come to see the country, or
merely hope to start anew?

You married John Stride, worked in his
coffee-house, but something went bad between you,
You chose widowhood while your husband yet lived,
Lying for alms (for you'd say anything but your prayers),
You became familiar with the infirmaries, workhouses,
jails and courts.

Michael Kidney claimed you liked him best,
for you'd always return after a quarrel,
but one day you had words, and it was over.
Down in the lodging house, while the benefactor spoke,
did you watch and listen? Did you fear the Ripper?

One drizzly night at the end of September, you wandered the streets
with-- one man? More?
Was your killer the one to throw you to the ground?
Did you scream and resist?

Liz, you were forty-five
When he cut your throat
in the shadows of Dutfield's Yard--
And did no one hear, nor see, nor care?
We remember you, Long Liz Stride,
dying while all around you
Life went on.

[Pcdunn]

Whitechapel Eulogy: Mitre Square

EULOGY FOR CATHERINE EDDOWES

Catherine of Wolverhampton,
Your people were tin smiths,
They sent you to charity schools,
And you learned your lessons well.

When you were twenty-one,
Thomas Conway enticed you away
Into a wanderer's life, wearing all you owned,
Selling books and gallows ballads,
Bearing him three children--
And though he gave you no ring,
Perhaps the tattooed TC on your
Arm was meant to play the role.

After twenty years or so, you broke apart
From Thomas, took your daughter Annie
and in a lodging house on Flower and Dean,
Soon met John Kelly.
Every year you both went to harvest the hops,
But 1888 wasn't the best year, and you came back
As poor as before.

That September 30th, you were drunk in public
(Yet people knew you to drink rarely),
Taken to the jail cells at the station,
Released as sober, and turned the wrong way,
Passing the gloom of Mitre Square...

Oh, Catherine, how he left you in the shadows!
(And did you truly know his name?)
It horrifies us still today.
We remember you now, with sorrow.

[Barnaby]

RIP. It is also dark and stormy here as I write this.