Was Elizabeth Stride Really a Jack the Ripper Victim?

DATED: 30.03.17

Those familiar with the tale of the Ripper will probably be well aware of the identities of the canonical five Jack the Ripper victims. It is widely accepted that Elizabeth Stride was the third murder of the canonical five, leaving little doubt in the minds of experts and amateurs alike that she was killed by Jack himself. 

However, when analysing all the evidence from the night of Elizabeth Stride’s murder, you could quite easily doubt that she was in fact murdered by Jack the Ripper.

After she left her job, where she worked as a cleaner at a lodging house, there were so many sightings of Elizabeth that it isn’t hard to throw the events of that entire night into question. Elizabeth Stride left the lodging house at approximately 8pm; the first sighting happened at around 11pm. Her whereabouts between these times are not known.

In order to paint an accurate portrait of her movements, it is possible to piece together a rough timeline of the night of 29th September 1888 based on the known sightings of Elizabeth Stride.

It was quickly presumed that Elizabeth was one of Jack the Ripper’s victims. As there were no other injuries to her body, it was thought that the killer had been interrupted, possibly by the arrival of Diemshutz, and had fled the scene only to go on to kill Catherine Eddowes later that morning.

Due to the brutal murder of Catherine Eddowes and the single cut to Elizabeth Stride, her death was believed to be the work of Jack the Ripper. But could Elizabeth have been killed by another of the many men she met that night? Was she even a Ripper victim at all?

Book your place on the Jack the Ripper tour to learn more about the victims of this mysterious serial killer.


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