Eddowes and Great Yarmouth

[swagman]

Just been reading another thread ('How strange....' within the Witnesses section) and there is mention that one of Eddowes children was born in Great Yarmouth.

Does anyone have further info on that ?


Cheers

[John Savage]

Hi Swagman.

In 1863 The first child of Catherine Eddowes was Catherine Ann Conway, born 1863 at Yarmouth Workhouse, Norfolk.

This from "Catherine Eddowes Jack the Ripper Victim" by Neal Sheldon. Published 2003 by the author.


Rgds
John

[Rosella]

I think Debra A. has done quite a lot of research on Kate Eddowes and her comings and goings. She joined up with Thomas Conway in the early 1860's and the couple seem to have travelled around the countryside making a living hawking and writing and selling chapbooks at fairs, markets etc. and at towns where there were public executions.

These were the days of public hangings and the selling of ballads about the murderer, death cell confessions etc., which would be sold to the people gathered to see the hanging.

Kate gave birth to Catherine Ann Conway on 18th April 1863 at Great Yarmouth Workhouse. She registered her daughter on the 18th May, giving the Workhouse as her address.
I don't think any marriage certificate has ever been found for Catherine Eddowes marriage to Thomas Conway.
Her daughter, later Annie Phillips, testified at her mother's inquest that 'I have never seen the marriage lines, though she always told me she was married..'

[Mayerling]

I think Debra A. has done quite a lot of research on Kate Eddowes and her comings and goings. She joined up with Thomas Conway in the early 1860's and the couple seem to have travelled around the countryside making a living hawking and writing and selling chapbooks at fairs, markets etc. and at towns where there were public executions.

These were the days of public hangings and the selling of ballads about the murderer, death cell confessions etc., which would be sold to the people gathered to see the hanging.

Kate gave birth to Catherine Ann Conway on 18th April 1863 at Great Yarmouth Workhouse. She registered her daughter on the 18th May, giving the Workhouse as her address.
I don't think any marriage certificate has ever been found for Catherine Eddowes marriage to Thomas Conway.
Her daughter, later Annie Phillips, testified at her mother's inquest that 'I have never seen the marriage lines, though she always told me she was married..'

Sort of ironic that Eddowes, who may have been hawking books and "death cell confessions" about murderers would end up being the victim of the most notorious murderer of the 19th Century.

[Rosella]

^ Yes indeed, Mayerling. I have read that quite a lot of money could be made on these occasions! I believe ballads were written about several of Jack's victims.

Of course these public executions were treated as 'a nice day out' by much of the 'audience'. Windows over the gallows scene going for premium prices if the killer was notorious, pies and buns and ginger beer being sold by stall holders, charted trains to the town, etc. It was probabably as good as a night at the theatre!

[swagman]

Thanks. I'll look up the book on Eddowes. In the meantime do we know how/why she came to be in Yarmouth ? - most of what I have read seems to only detail her movements between the Midlands and London.

[Mayerling]

^ Yes indeed, Mayerling. I have read that quite a lot of money could be made on these occasions! I believe ballads were written about several of Jack's victims.

Of course these public executions were treated as 'a nice day out' by much of the 'audience'. Windows over the gallows scene going for premium prices if the killer was notorious, pies and buns and ginger beer being sold by stall holders, charted trains to the town, etc. It was probabably as good as a night at the theatre!

Actually if you can build up a collection of such broadsides they'd be very valuable collectibles, especially the ones by Jeremy Catnatch, who did many for the doomed criminals in the London area. The poetry in these works is horrible (they make poor William Topaz McGonigall sound really pleasing!!).

The "festive" element under the guise of watching the execution in public as a moral lesson to the public was attacked from the start. Hogarth did a series about the industrious servant (who rises to being Lord Mayor) and the lazy servant (who kills his girlfriend and ends up on the gallows), and the final picture showed the viewers of the execution include prostitutes, pick pockets, and other undesireables (including people hawking the dying words of the lazy servant, who has not been executed yet!!). That series was from the 1750s. In 1840 Thackeray would write his memorable essay, "On Going to See a Man Hanged" (about the execution of Francois Benjamin Courvoisier, for the murder of Lord William Russell) and attack the "murder he saw committed" which sickened him. Dickens, after the execution of the Mannings in 1849, pushed for private executions. The last public execution was that of Michael Barrett, the Fenian who may have caused the explosion of the gunpowder at Clerkenwell Prison, in 1868.

Jeff