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- Elizabeth Stride was born Elisabeth Gustafsdotter on a farm called Stora Tumlehed in Torslanda parish, north of Gothenburg, Sweden. Her father was Gustaf Ericsson and her mother Beatta Carlsdotter. She had an older sister, Anna Christin (b. 1840), and two younger brothers, Carl Bernard (b. 1848) and Svante (b. 1851).
On October 14, 1860 she moved to the parish of Carl Johan in Gothenburg to stay with her sister Anna Christin, who was married to a cobbler. It was her sister that found work for Elizabeth as a domestic. February 2nd of 1862 finds her moving to Cathedral parish in the Ostra Haga area in Gothenburg: in Pilgatan, where in March 1865 she was registered by the police as 'Female Prostitute number 97', and on April 21 of that year she gave birth to a stillborn baby girl result of her seven-month pregnancy. The October 17 entry stated that she was treated for a venereal chancre. In Husargatan, another suburb from Gothenburg, she worked as a maid from November 1865 to February 1866.
On February 7th of 1866 she applied to move to the Swedish parish in London, England, to avoid even more social stigma. She entered the London register as an unmarried woman on July 10, 1866 at the Swedish Church in Prince's Square, St. George in the East. On March 7, 1869 she married John Thomas Stride, from Sheerness (Kent) at the parish church, St. Giles in the Fields. Soon after the marriage John and Liz were living in East India Dock road in Poplar. They kept a coffee shop at Chrisp Street, Poplar and in 1870 in Upper North Street, Poplar. They moved themselves and the business to 178 Poplar High Street and remained there until the business was taken over by John Dale in 1875. The marriage of John and Elizabeth ended in 1881.
From 1882 on-wards she lodged on and off at the common lodging house at 32 Flower and Dean Street. Lodgers described her as a quiet woman who would do a "good turn for anyone." However she had frequently appeared before the Thames Magistrate Court on charges of being drunk and disorderly, sometimes with obscene language. In 1885 she was living with Michael Kidney. They lived together for three years although she often left him for periods of time to go off on the town.
She made money by sewing and charring, received money from Michael Kidney and was forced to occasional prostitution to survive. Elizabeth frequently visited the Swedish Church where she begged for money or food.
She was murdered on the night of 30th September 1888 around 12:45/1 AM by the unidentified serial killer nicknamed Jack The Ripper. - Catherine Eddowes was born in Graisley Green, Wolverhampton (West Midlands) on 14 April 1842. Her parents, tinplate worker George Eddowes and his wife Catherine (née Evans), had been married since 1832, and had 11 other children, 5 older that Catherine (Alfred, Harriet, Emma, Eliza and Elizabeth), and 6 younger than her (Thomas, George, John, Sarah, Mary and William). In 1855, when Catherine was around 13, her mother Catherine died. The same year, Catherine's education at St John's Charity School, Patters Field, Tooley Street, ended. Most of her siblings entered Bermondsey Workhouse and Industrial School. In the early 1860s Catherine eventually returned to finish her education at Dowgate Charity School and to care for her aunt in Biston Street, Wolverhampton and to work as a tinplate stamper.
Around 1861, when she was 19, Catherine left home to be with ex-soldier Thomas Conway. She was known as Kate Conway by that time, using her common-law husband's surname even if they weren't legally married. On 1864 they lived together in Wolverhampton and earned a living by selling chapbooks, written by Conway, in Birmingham and in the Midlands. They also wrote and sold gallows ballads. Catherine claimed that they were legally married and she had his initials 'TC' tattooed in blue ink on her arm. Around 1865, Annie, Catherine and Conway's first child and only daughter, was born. Three years later, they had their second child, a son named George. On February 3rd 1877 their son Frederick William was born.
In 1880 Conway and Catherine separated. Catherine took Annie and Conway had custody of the boys. The following year, 1881, Catherine met John Kelly, an Irish jobbing market porter, frequently working for a fruit salesman, Lander. They eventually moved in together at Cooney's common lodging-house at 55 Flower and Dean Street, Spitalfields. By that time Catherine took her common-law husband's surname as was known as Kate Kelly. Every year, during the season, Kelly and Eddowes went hop picking. In the summer of 1888, Catherine and John, with their friend Emily Birrell, a vagrant, and her common-law husband, went hop-picking to Hunton-near-Maidstone, in Kent. At harvest's end they returned to London and quickly went through their pay, although it wasn't a good season, having poor crops. Birrell gave Catherine a London pawn broker's ticket for a man's shirt, because Catherine and John were going to London while she and her man were going to Cheltenham. On Thursday September 27th, Catherine and John arrived to London and split their last sixpence between them; he took four-pence to pay for a bed in the Cooney's common lodging-house, and she took twopence, just enough for her to stay a night at Mile End Casual Ward in the neighboring parish.