page_title: Catherine Eddowes
section_title: Investigation
hierarchical_section_title: Catherine Eddowes / Investigation
caption_attribution_description: English: The "From Hell" Letter postmarked 15 October 1888. Español: Carta "From Hell" franqueada el 15 de octubre de 1888 (hoy día desaparecida).
context_page_description: Catherine Eddowes is the fourth of the canonical five victims of the notorious unidentified serial killer known as Jack the Ripper, who is believed to have killed and mutilated a minimum of five women in the Whitechapel and Spitalfields districts of London from late August to early November 1888. Eddowes was the second person murdered in the early hours of Sunday 30 September; a night which already had seen the murder of Elizabeth Stride less than an hour earlier. These two murders are commonly referred to as the "double event".
  Part of a left kidney was later sent to the leader of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee accompanied by a letter addressed From Hell. The author of this letter claimed the section of kidney was from Eddowes, whose left kidney had been removed. Most experts, however, do not believe this kidney actually originated from Eddowes's body.
context_section_description: A mustard tin containing two pawn tickets issued to Emily Birrell and Anne Kelly was discovered among Eddowes's personal possessions. These eventually led to her identification by John Kelly as his common-law wife, after he read about the tickets in the newspapers. His identification was confirmed by Catherine Eddowes's sister, Eliza Gold. No money was found on her. Though the murder occurred within the City of London, it was close to the boundary of Whitechapel where the previous Whitechapel murders had occurred. The mutilation of Eddowes's body and the abstraction of her left kidney and part of her womb by her murderer bore the signature of Jack the Ripper and was very similar in nature to that of earlier victim Annie Chapman.
  Due to the location of Mitre Square, the City of London Police under Detective Inspector James McWilliam joined the murder enquiry alongside the Metropolitan Police who had been engaged in the previous murders. At about 3 a.m. on the same day as Eddowes was murdered, a blood-stained fragment of her apron contaminated with fecal matter was found lying in the passage of the doorway leading to Flats 108 and 119, Model Dwellings, Goulston Street, Whitechapel. Above it on the wall was a graffito in chalk commonly held to have read: "The Juwes are the men that Will not be Blamed for nothing". The writing may or may not have been related to the murder, but either way it was washed away before dawn on the orders of Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Charles Warren, who feared that it would spark anti-Jewish riots. Mitre Square had three connecting streets: Church Passage to the north-east, Mitre Street to the south-west, and St James's Place to the north-west. As PC Harvey saw no-one from Church Passage, and PC Watkins saw no-one from Mitre Street, the murderer must have left the square northwards through St James's Place towards Goulston Street. Goulston Street was within a quarter of an hour's walk from Mitre Square, on a direct route to Flower and Dean Street where Eddowes lived, hinting that her murderer also resided nearby and headed back there after the killing.
  Major Henry Smith, acting Commissioner of the City Police, claimed in his memoirs to have discovered bloodied water in a public sink in a court off Dorset Street, and as the water was slowly running out of the basin, he calculated that the Ripper had been there only moments before. Ripper author Martin Fido thought it unlikely that the culprit would wait to wash his hands in a semi-public place about forty minutes after the crime, and Smith's memoirs are both unreliable and embellished for dramatic effect. There is no mention of the sink in the official police reports.
caption: The "From Hell" letter, received by George Lusk of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee on 16 October 1888
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