As mentioned in yesterday’s post, it seems that Jack the Ripper was interrupted in the course of the murder of “Long Liz Stride” and, having escaped from the scene of that crime, he headed over in to the City of London where he met with his next victim on what had passed into history as the night of the “double murder” or the “double event.”
Catherine Eddowes had been arrested the previous evening for being drunk and disorderly on Aldgate High Street. She had been taken into police custody and was held in a cell at Bishopsgate Police Station where she sobered up at around midnight and was, consequently, released at around 1am.
At 1.45am, PC Watkins of the City Police, walked his beat into Mitre Square. It is important to remember that Watkin’s had walked that very same beat just 15 minutes earlier and had found the square to be quite deserted.
Little now seemed to have changed when he returned at 1.45am. But as Watkins shone his lantern into the south-west corner of Mitre Square, he noticed something on the ground and approached it.
He found it was the horrifically mutilated body of Catherine Eddowes and the sight that he beheld sent him staggering back in horror.
Within moments he had raised the alarm and police were converging on the little square from all over the district.
But, yet again, the ripper had, either by luck or cunning, managed to carry out a savage killing almost right under the noses of the police, and had then melted away in to the night.
This video looks at the events of that morning and shows you Mitre Square before the recent demolition of its buildings began.
You can still see the square on our nightly Jack the Ripper Tour.