The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper

by Hallie Rubenhold

Emma recalled her sister’s youthful personality as being “. . . lively . . . , warm hearted and entertaining,”10 while other acquaintances remarked that Kate “possessed an unusual degree of intelligence.”

The question of who would look after Alfred became “a constant source of trouble” for the elder sisters, but for some unspecified reason, Emma claimed they were most concerned about Kate. “We wished especially to get her away,” she recalled.

Whatever the case, Harriet had a letter sent to her uncle and aunt, William and Elizabeth Eddowes, in Wolverhampton, “to see if she could get Kate a situation away from London.”

“My mistress,” she recalled thirty-one years later, “upon learning our unfortunate position, paid Kate’s fare to Wolverhampton.”

As for Kate, alone on a Wolverhampton-bound train, December 1857 marked the end of her childhood. She would leave behind all she had ever known for a place she did not remember, to live among strangers with whom she shared nothing but a surname.

According to members of her family, the turning point came when Kate was caught stealing from the Old Hall Works.

According to Sarah, this incident would come to define Kate’s future life, and the Wolverhampton Eddoweses would neither forget it nor forgive her for it.

At nineteen, Kate once again packed her belongings to make a new start. On this occasion, she herself determined her destination and set out for Birmingham, a fourteen-mile walk to the south. There she hoped to find refuge with a more sympathetic member of the family.

It is likely that here too Tom Eddowes, also known as “The Snob,” fought his way into his niece’s heart.

Tom Eddowes was one of these. A shoemaker, or “snob,” by trade, Eddowes supplemented his income through the exercise of brute strength.

Kate’s hours would have been the same: rising at dawn or in early darkness, home for supper, and then to sleep, in a bed shared with her cousin Mary, in a room divided by a curtain from the snores of John, or Kate’s uncle and aunt. It did not matter where she fled—to Wolverhampton or Birmingham, to the household of a pugilist or a tinplate worker. She could expect that this routine would command her life until she married. Then it would be her own mother’s life; the pain of childbearing, the weariness of child rearing, worry, hunger and exhaustion, and eventually, sickness and death.

at twenty years of age, she was “a nice looking girl with a very warm heart.” He was a gray-eyed Irishman with light brown hair and a talent for telling tales.

Judged medically unfit by the army and with no real occupation, as well as no home, no family, and no reliable income beyond a paltry pension of six or seven pence per day, this Irish drifter was like a figure in a Victorian cautionary tale about whom young women were warned.

if Conway had offered to marry Kate, he demonstrated no real hurry to exchange vows.

she was, according to an account of events in the Black Country Bugle, completely “infatuated with the handsome, poetical Irishman.” Aunt Elizabeth eventually gave her an ultimatum: end the affair with the penny-ballad salesman, or leave the house.* Kate chose the latter and moved into a lodging house with Thomas. The timing of this rupture was important; by July of that year, 1862, she was pregnant.

Among the more privileged classes, chastity was considered a measure of a young woman’s character and her worth on the marriage market, but virginity did not hold the same significance for the working classes. Their lives were governed by practical concerns. The innocent femininity cultivated in middle- and upper-class girls was not expected of their working-class sisters.

Commentators of the period expressed concern that sexualization of the laboring classes occurred at a very young age on account of cramped domestic arrangements. With living space in short supply, and family members, other relatives, and even visitors sharing bedrooms and beds, bodily privacy and modesty were luxuries they simply could not afford.

At a time when sexual relationships tended to result in pregnancy, many couples waited until conception or even birth to marry. However, others among the laboring class might reject marriage altogether and instead choose to cohabit.

Landlords and employers, who in many cases belonged to the same social class, could be quick to evict or dismiss those discovered not to be legally wed, and women naturally bore the brunt of any social persecution, especially if illegitimate children were involved. Whereas a man might walk away from cohabitation and suffer no ill consequences, a dependent woman, with reduced earning potential and mouths to feed, might find herself instantly plunged into penury.

As an extrovert who had been taught music at school and loved singing, street performance would have suited Kate’s inclinations far better than factory work.*

It is said that Thomas rewarded Kate “with the price of a flowered-hat.” “Such was their lifestyle,” continued the piece, “that they lived for a spell in lodgings at Moxley,” a village outside Wednesbury.

Initially, she told Emma that she and Thomas Conway had been settled in Birmingham, choosing to omit the stories of her vagrant’s existence.

Her marital status and the lack of a wedding ring were likely to have raised questions as well, as would have the tattoo of Thomas Conway’s initials, which was inked crudely onto her forearm.

Although they would become fashionable briefly in the late nineteenth century, in the middle of the Victorian era, few symbols were more associated with...

a tattoo on a woman’s body not only flouted conventions of feminine purity and beauty, but also rendered her masculine.

Much like many of Kate’s decisions—to cohabit with a man, to bear a child out of wedlock, and to lead a nomadic life—acquiring a tattoo was deeply subversive.

According to the Poor Law, single mothers with illegitimate children were not entitled to receive “outdoor relief,” or parish handouts designed to assist poor families who lived in their own lodgings. Authorities feared that providing financial support to immoral women in their own homes was tantamount to a state subsidy of prostitution.

Although they were aware that many poorer women like Kate cohabited with monogamous common-law partners, no real distinction was made between this type of “fallen woman” and acknowledged prostitutes.

According to both Annie and Emma, the pair’s disagreements were exacerbated by Kate’s “habit of excessive drinking,” while Thomas was committed to abstinence.

This attitude was not out of step with Victorian working-class sentiments about domestic violence; frequently the woman was blamed for the beatings she received.

On August 6, she was arrested for drunk and disorderly behavior and sent to Wandsworth Prison for fourteen days.* In every instance, including her incarceration, she brought some or all of her children with her.

Unfortunately, the festive celebration did not go well. The Eddowes women were shocked by Kate’s battered appearance. Emma recalled that “Both her eyes had been blackened” and that she bore “a dreadful face.” She was equally horrified by Thomas’s attitude.

Emma found it difficult to fathom how any affection could exist between the two, especially when Kate so obviously “suffered from his brutality.”

Like many women caught in the cycle of domestic violence, Kate always returned to Conway.

On October 4, eleven-year-old Thomas and his six-year-old brother, George, accompanied their parents as they pattered and sang out their wares. Eventually, both parents wandered off and instructed the boys to wait where they had been left, outside 8 Mill Lane. When it began to grow dark and no one returned for the children, questions were asked and the boys were escorted to Greenwich Union Workhouse, a place they had come to know well over the years. Nearly a week would pass before Kate could be located and made to reclaim her progeny.* This incident was followed by a similar one, on November 11. This time, the boys were escorted to the workhouse by police officer 251, who had found them “deserted by their mother” on the street.

In September 1881, Kate was once again charged with drunken disorderliness and dragged off the streets as she spewed obscenities at passersby. On this occasion, the magistrate spared her a prison sentence.

In John’s words, which bear all the hallmarks of journalistic embellishment, he “first laid eyes” on Kate while she was staying there. After “being throwed together a good bit,” the two took a liking to each other “and decided to make it a regular bargain.”†

As far as Emma was concerned, Kate’s life “went from bad to worse” when she left Thomas Conway; at least when she lived with her abuser “her home was clean and comfortable.”11 After taking up with John, she had no home, only a vile temporary bed at a doss house.

Annie, who blamed her mother for tearing apart the family, was unequivocal about her feelings for John Kelly: “I’ve never spoken to him and I don’t like him.”

She and John shared a love of the bottle, and their conviviality made them popular with fellow lodgers at Cooney’s.*

Kate was always ready with a song and didn’t hesitate to spare her last four pence for someone who hadn’t made their doss money.

Kate, like Elisabeth Stride, took on charring for Jewish families in the area, while John l...

Kate, who had spent much of her life slumbering with the night sky as her blanket, was well known among the rough sleepers in Spitalfields. In the wake of her murder, a handful of homeless women were among the first to come forward to identify her. She was cited as one of “10 to 20 houseless creatures who are without the means of paying for their beds” who regularly curled up in a shed off Dorset Street.*

from 1883, the couple made regular excursions to Kent in order to find work,

Annie complained that so long as her mother drank, it was impossible to maintain a normal relationship with her.

Kate agreed to be present with her daughter in her “period of confinement” but insisted on receiving pay for it. Annie grudgingly obliged, only to discover that her mother had taken the money and gone out “to get too much to drink.” “The result,” Annie commented, “caused unpleasantness . . . we did not part on very good terms.”13 Little more than a week after giving birth, Annie had thrown Kate out and decided she would have no more to do with her.

Perhaps what Kate liked best about John Kelly was that, unlike members of her family, he demanded little of her.

Kate used John’s name only when it proved convenient.

By the time that Kate had found John, she had known the violence of Thomas Conway’s fists, the scorn of her children and sisters, the deaths of at least two infants, and the trauma of her own parents’ demise. She had experienced the degradation of the workhouse, the general disgust of society, and had grown acquainted with starvation and illness.*

Kate and John had set out toward the end of August, to work in the orchards and berry fields where hands were needed to bring in the fruit harvest. This was part of their usual circuit through Kent, and the two would have been hawking as well as picking up odd jobs until the hops were ready for picking.