As the church bells rang in the New Year across central London, the first homicide victim of 1888 lay dying at St George’s Hospital in Hyde Park. Elizabeth Gibbs, 68, was a respectable married woman living in the wealthy area of Belgravia. She had been enjoying a pleasant walk along… You must be a paid …
Category archives: 1888
Year of the Ripper: Elizabeth Gorman
On 14 February 1888, a 27 year-old chimneysweep’s widow named Elizabeth Gorman died in suspicious circumstances at her home at 4 Callow Street, Fulham Road, Chelsea. According to witnesses, Mrs Gorman had called a series of medical men to see her in the days before her death. But when asked… You must be a paid …
Year of the Ripper: Eliza Schumacher
Eliza Schumacher was convinced she was pregnant. She was a 39 year old married dressmaker who had lived apart from her husband for several years and already had two children. So in early June 1888 she decided she did not want to have a third child and decided to seek… You must be a paid …
Year of the Ripper: Emily Roberts
On Saturday, October 16, 1888, twelve year-old Emily Roberts saw her mother and father quarrelling in the street outside 4 Essex Place in Hackney Road. They were both drunk. First her mother knocked her father to the ground with her hand, and father returned the favour by knocking mother to… You must be a paid …
Year of the Ripper: Frances Wright
The suburb of Canonbury in Islington seemed an ideal place for a 69 year-old bank clerk like Charles Cole Wright. Once a land of open fields, grazing cows, a 14th century manor house and a tranquil pond, by the 19th Century it was a well-to-do part of London comprising villas,… You must be a paid …