page_title: Elizabeth Stride
section_title: Post-mortem
hierarchical_section_title: Elizabeth Stride / Post-mortem
caption_attribution_description: English: Dutfield's Yard (Berner Street, Whitechapel)
context_page_description: Elizabeth "Long Liz" Stride is believed to have been the third victim of the unidentified serial killer known as Jack the Ripper, who killed and mutilated a minimum of five women in the Whitechapel and Spitalfields districts of London from late August to early November 1888.
  Unlike the other four canonical Ripper victims, Stride had not been mutilated following her murder, leading some historians to suspect Stride had not actually been murdered by Jack the Ripper. However, Stride's murder occurred less than one hour before the murder of the Ripper's fourth canonical victim, Catherine Eddowes, within walking distance, and her act of murder is suspected to have been disturbed by an individual entering the crime scene upon a two-wheeled cart. In addition, both women had been murdered by slash wounds to the throat, leading most authors and researchers to consider Stride to be the third of the Ripper's canonical five victims.
  Stride was nicknamed "Long Liz". Several explanations have been given for this pseudonym; some believe it sources from her married surname, while others believe this is a reference to either her height, or her general facial structure.
context_section_description: A local doctor named Frederick William Blackwell was the first individual with medical knowledge to attend the scene. Police surgeon Dr George Bagster Phillips, who had examined the body of previous Whitechapel murder victim Annie Chapman, also arrived at the crime scene approximately ten minutes later. Phillips's official documents pertaining to his examination of the decedent, the crime scene, and subsequent post-mortem state:
  The body was lying on the near side, with the face turned toward the wall, the head up the yard and the feet toward the street. The left arm was extended and there was a packet of cachous in the left hand. ... The right arm was over the belly; the back of the hand and wrist had on it clotted blood. The legs were drawn up with the feet close to the wall. The body and face were warm and the hand cold. The legs were quite warm.
  The deceased had a silk handkerchief round her neck, and it appeared to be slightly torn. I have since ascertained it was cut. This corresponded with the right angle of the jaw. The throat was deeply gashed, and there was an abrasion of the skin about one and a quarter inches in diameter, apparently stained with blood, under her right brow.
  At 3 p.m. on Monday at St. George's Mortuary, Dr Blackwell and I made a post-mortem examination. Rigor mortis was still thoroughly marked. There was mud on the left side of the face and it was matted in the head. ... The body was fairly nourished. Over both shoulders, especially the right, and under the collarbone and in front of the chest there was a blueish discolouration, which I have watched and have seen on two occasions since.
  There was a clear-cut incision on the neck. It was six inches in length and commenced two and a half inches in a straight line below the angle of the jaw, three quarters of an inch over an undivided muscle, and then, becoming deeper, dividing the sheath. The cut was very clean and deviated a little downwards. The arteries and other vessels contained in the sheath were all cut through. The cut through the tissues on the right side was more superficial, and tailed off to about two inches below the right angle of the jaw. The deep vessels on that side were uninjured. From this it was evident that the haemorrhage was caused through the partial severance of the left carotid artery and a small bladed knife could have been used.
  Decomposition had commenced in the skin. Dark brown spots were on the anterior surface of the left chin. There was a deformity in the bones of the right leg, which was not straight, but bowed forwards. There was no recent external injury save to the neck.
  The body being washed more thoroughly, I could see some healing sores. The lobe of the left ear was torn as if from the removal or wearing through of an earring, but it was thoroughly healed. On removing the scalp there was no sign of bruising or extravasation of blood. ... The heart was small, the left ventricle firmly contracted, and the right slightly so. There was no clot in the pulmonary artery, but the right ventricle was full of dark clot. The left was firmly contracted as to be absolutely empty. The stomach was large and the mucous membrane only congested. It contained partly digested food, apparently consisting of cheese, potato, and farinaceous powder [flour or milled grain]. All the teeth on the lower left jaw were absent.
  Blackwell opined his belief that Stride's murderer may have pulled her backwards on to the ground by her neckerchief (the bow of which was observed to be markedly tight) before cutting her throat. Phillips concurred with this opinion, stating that Stride had most likely been lying supine upon the ground when she was killed by a single, swift slash wound inflicted left to right across her neck, strongly indicating her murderer had been right-handed. Bruising on her chest also supports the forensic deduction that Stride's torso had been pinned to the ground prior to the wound to her neck being inflicted by her assailant.
caption: The entrance to Dutfield's Yard. Louis Diemschutz discovered Stride's body at this location at 1:00 a.m. on 30 September 1888
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