Elizabeth Stride
Encyclopedia : E : EL : ELI : Elizabeth Stride
|
The canonical five Jack the Ripper victims |
|---|
| Mary Ann Nichols |
| Annie Chapman |
| Elizabeth Stride |
| Catherine Eddowes |
| Mary Jane Kelly |
Elizabeth Stride is believed to be the third victim of the notorious unidentified serial killer Jack the Ripper, who killed and mutilated prostitutes in the Whitechapel area of London during the late summer and autumn of 1888. She was forty-four at the time of her death, killed on the night of the "Double Event" that saw the murder of Catherine Eddowes less than an hour later. She was nicknamed "Long Liz"; multiple explanations have been given for this pseudonym. Some believe it was related to her married surname "Stride," while others believe it was because of her height1 or the shape of her face.
Stride's body was discovered close to 01:00 in the early morning of Sunday, September 30, 1888, lying on the ground in Dutfield's Yard, off Berner Street (since renamed Henriques Street) in Whitechapel. Her throat had been slashed, but no other mutilations were inflicted. The yard was so dark that the steward of an adjoining club, who discovered her body on driving into the yard with a pony and cart, was hardly able to see it without lighting a match. It appeared that she was killed just before he arrived; the steward told officials that he believed that the killer was still in the yard.
Stride was the daughter of a Swedish farmer, Gustaf Ericsson, and his wife Beata Carlsdotter. She was born Elisabeth Gustafsdotter in the parish of Torslanda, west of Gothenburg, Sweden, on November 27, 1843. In 1860, at the age of nearly seventeen, 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 these crimes, who fell into prostitution due to poverty after a failed marriage, Stride took it up earlier. By 1865 she was registered by the Gothenburg police as a prostitute, was treated twice for sexually transmitted disease and gave birth to a stillborn girl on April 21, 1865.
The following year she moved to London, possibly in domestic service with a family. On March 7, 1869 she married John Thomas Stride, a carpenter, 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. Her husband died on October 24, 1884.
After separating from her husband she lived in common lodging houses 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 dock labourer, Michael Kidney. Friends described her as having a calm temperament, though she appeared numerous times in court for being drunk and disorderly. 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 earned some income with sewing and housecleaning work. She left Kidney again a few days prior to her death, and several witnesses claimed to have seen her in Berner Street shortly before she was found dead.
Some students of the Ripper murders believe that Stride was not a victim of the same killer, but killed by her lover, Michael Kidney (who had a history of inflicting abuse on Liz, and visited a police station ranting about Liz's murder, despite the fact she had erroneously been identified as Lizzie Stokes, and the public had not been made aware that Liz Stride was the name of the victim). Unlike others, she had no mutilations beyond a cut throat, and some have expressed doubt about the way it was inflicted. Additionally, Israel Schwartz saw Stride being attacked and thrown to the ground on the street outside Dutfield's Yard around 12:45am while another man, whose connection (if any) with the assault is unclear, watched from across the street. This public assault is unlike from the Ripper's usual modus operandi.
The murder of Stride shares some strong similarities to the pattern of Ripper killings, such as date, time, type of site, characteristics of the victim and the method of murder. Those who support her canonical status argue that no mutilations were inflicted on Stride because the killer was interrupted by the club steward's arrival and that the coincidence of Catherine Eddowes' murder within walking distance less than an hour later was the consummation of the earlier "unconsummated" Ripper killing of Stride.
Further reading
- The Complete History of Jack the Ripper by Philip Sugden, ISBN 0786702761, is widely held to be one of the best on the topic.
External links
- [Casebook: Jack the Ripper] has numerous articles covering many aspects of the case, and reproduces many original source texts relevant to the case.
Note 1: At 5 ft 5 in (165 cm), Stride was around 4 to 5 inches (10 to 12.5 cm) taller than the average for Whitechapel women of the era— although Mary Jane Kelly was even taller.
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.