The last moments of Liz Stride are shrouded in mystery and confusion, but we know a great deal about her life. She was born in Torsland, Sweden in November 1843 when the man who would kill her was an eight-year-old boy in Whitechapel. Elizabeth Gustafsdottir was a domestic servant by the age of seventeen, but the Swedish police knew her as a prostitute (Sweden, even then, had a system of registering prostitutes) and she gave birth to a stillborn child in April 1865. She came to London the following February and married John Stride three and a half years later. The pair ran a coffee house in Poplar, but the marriage broke down. Stride’s business must have collapsed and he died in the Poplar Workhouse in October 1884.

The problem with Liz Stride, as with many women of the Abyss, is their propensity for lies. This no doubt explains why friends and even relatives who gave evidence at inquests give confusing and often contradictory testimony. ‘Long Liz’ as she was known, perhaps because of her height (at 5 foot 7 inches the tallest of Mann’s victims) or because of her married name, Stride, had a missing roof to her mouth.² This may have been congenital but Liz’s version was that it was the result of an accident when she was on board the pleasure steamer Princess Alice that sank in the Thames on 3 September 1877 with an astonishing loss of 527 lives. She claimed that her husband and two children were among them.

The ‘real’ Liz Stride was an inmate of Poplar Workhouse in March 1877 and by 1882 was living in a doss in Flower and Dean Street. It was where she was for six days in December–January 1881–2 that most interests us. She was admitted with bronchitis to the Whitechapel Workhouse Infirmary where she may have met Robert Mann. From 1885 onwards, Long Liz had been living with a short-tempered waterside labourer and frequent drunk named Michael Kidney. The pair lived at 35 Devonshire Street and their relationship was rocky. She complained to the police about his violence towards her in April 1887 and two years later he spent three days in gaol for being drunk and disorderly.

It is inconceivable that Mann would have remembered the woman from a brief period six years before he killed her and still more inconceivable that he would have deliberately sought her out. But once again, as with Annie Chapman, who had also been to the Infirmary, there had to be some reason for the choice of victim. Liz was not quite Mann’s usual physical type, although her age was right. She was tall and slim with a mass of curly hair. This time there were difficulties in the wooing phase, as we shall see.

One man who was not called to the subsequent inquest on Stride, but should have been, turned into Berner Street from Commercial Road at 12.45 on that Sunday morning. He was the Hungarian Jew Israel Schwartz. As he reached the open gates that led to Dutfield’s Yard, he saw a man and a woman standing there, talking. They were clearly arguing, but as Schwartz’s English was not good, he could not make any of it out. The actions were clear enough, however. The man spun the woman round and threw her to the pavement. She screamed three times not very loudly and Schwartz crossed the road to avoid involvement in what today might be called a ‘domestic’. On that side of Berner Street stood another man, appreciably taller than the first, lighting a pipe. The assailant shouted ‘Lipski’ and Schwartz started running, convinced he was being followed by ‘pipe-man’.

This sequence of events has caused Ripperologists considerable grief because it is open to so many interpretations. What we can certainly establish is that the woman was Liz Stride because Schwartz identified her corpse in the mortuary later. One possible explanation is that her assailant was the Ripper and the pipe-smoker an accomplice. The name Lipski almost certainly refers to Israel Lipski or Lobulsk, a Polish-Jewish immigrant who was hanged in the previous year for poisoning fellow-lodger Miriam Angel with nitric acid in Batty Street. Feelings ran high against the poisoner at a time of a huge influx of Eastern European Jews and it is likely that the name was used as a generic anti-Semitic term, rather like ‘Yid’.

The most likely interpretation of the scene, all of it probably witnessed by Robert Mann, skulking in the shadows, is that Liz Stride was attacked by a client, perhaps over money, perhaps because she refused to lie down for sex on the now wet ground.³ It is even possible that what Schwartz saw was literally a ‘domestic’ and that the assailant, described by Schwartz as about thirty, with a moustache, fair hair, dark jacket, trousers and a peaked cap was Michael Kidney, Liz’s lover with whom she had quarrelled days earlier. At the inquest, Kidney denied any such separation, but if he had really knocked her down in Berner Street, this testimony would not be too surprising. The second man, ‘pipe-man’, may well have been the client’s friend, whether it was Kidney or not and the assailant’s shout to him was simply to let him know there was a nosy Jew crossing over to him with the implication to get rid of him, which of course worked.

In essence, the exact meaning of the street altercation is irrelevant. There is little doubt that Berner Street was Liz Stride’s patch, although various locals at her inquest denied that the area was used for immoral purposes. She was definitely the woman seen by William Marshall, a bootmaker of 64 Berner Street, in conversation with a stout, peaked-capped individual dressed rather like a clerk, in the street at about 11.45 pm. The pair were kissing and Marshall heard the man say, ‘You would say anything but your prayers.’ They walked off in the direction of Dutfield’s Yard. An hour later, James Brown, of 35 Fairclough Street, passed a woman and a man standing by the school wall opposite Dutfield’s Yard. ‘No, not tonight,’ he heard her say. ‘Perhaps some other night.’ Yet a third sighting was reported by Constable 425H William Smith whose beat included Berner Street. At around 12.30 am, Smith saw Liz Stride, who he correctly remembered wore a flower pinned to her jacket, talking to a man opposite Dutfield’s Yard. He was 5 foot 7 inches tall, with dark clothes, was clean-shaven and about twenty-eight years old. He wore a dark deerstalker hat. Most interestingly of all, he was carrying a newspaper-wrapped parcel about 18 inches long and 6 or 8 inches wide. The next time Smith reached Berner Street, half an hour later, a woman was dead and yet another East End hue and cry was under way.

If all these sightings and timings are correct, and bearing in mind the gloom of a wet night and the notoriously faulty observational powers of the average witness, the sequence runs something like this. Liz kissed and cuddled with a client who made a crack about her prayers at 11.45. Forty-five minutes later, Constable Smith saw her with the parcel-carrying man. Fifteen minutes after that, Israel Schwartz saw the quarrel and heard the shout ‘Lipski’ at exactly the same time that James Brown heard Liz apparently turning down a client with ‘No, not tonight, some other night.’

The man with the parcel can be bracketed with the shiny black bag we have met already in Ripper folklore. No actual murderer stalks the streets with a weapon so prominently displayed (assuming the parcel to contain a knife). Either Brown was wrong about the time of his sighting or Schwartz was. I am inclined to opt for Schwartz. His English was poor and it must have been easy for mistakes to have been made in translation.

What I believe happened in Berner Street was this. Liz had sex with the ‘prayers’ clerk and possibly others (she does seem to have been very busy) before meeting the parcel carrier. If he was a client, the business was over quickly and Liz was then accosted by a second man, with his tall, pipe-smoking friend, who rowed with her and threw her to the ground. The bruises subsequently found on the dead woman’s shoulders were almost certainly caused by this. Robert Mann saw all this and once again, saw his chance. This was his wooing equivalent; Martha Tabram had staggered towards him, hurt and he had taken advantage of that. Now, he did the same thing to Liz Stride. She was not badly hurt, but obviously shaken and he went over to her, helping her up. Perhaps he asked her for sex, the only way to get her off the street where there were too many witnesses. ‘No,’ said Liz. Up close, Robert Mann may have shown all the signs of the workhouse, even the mortuary with its distinctive smell. ‘Not tonight, some other night.’ James Brown saw him – Jack the Ripper. And all he could remember was he was about 5 foot 7 inches tall (Liz’s height), stout and wore a long coat.

As Brown moved on to eat his supper at home, Mann would not take ‘no’ for an answer. He grabbed her and pushed her through the open gates of Dutfield’s Yard where she had probably already been several times that night. He seized her throat in what was now the fully formed MO of a serial killer and forced her to the ground on her back by yanking hard on the silk scarf she wore around her neck. The spot was far from ideal. Behind him as he cut Liz Stride’s throat, there was music and laughter coming from the lighted windows of the International Working Men’s Club at No 40, the side of which overlooked the Yard. He may have pondered that he should have gone further into the darkness of the Yard, where there were water-closets and more seclusion. But in fact it was actually darker where he was and his knife was already slicing along the Swedish woman’s neck and it was too late. Blood spurted away from him as he cut through the left carotid artery. He hacked again, this time less deep. Now he would go for what he really came for. And in his mind he was in the mortuary again, his lair, the place that gave him his purpose.

Like a lightning bolt, he realized the danger. His ears caught the rattle of the trap, slowing as it took the corner. This was no passing vehicle. It was turning into the Yard, coming right towards him. His heart thumping in his chest, Mann darted behind the left-hand gate, the knife still glistening in his hand.

He could see nothing now but the rough bricks of the wall to his left and the back of the gate to his right. He heard the whinny as a horse shied, its hoofs clattering and scraping on the cobbles. He heard a voice, harsh, snarling in a language Mann could not understand. He heard hobnailed boots crunch on the ground and the whisper of a Lucifer that lit up the ghastly scene. A silence followed when two men’s hearts – and no woman’s – thudded in respective breasts. The owner of one had just stumbled over a body. The owner of the other was Jack the Ripper.

Mann heard cries of murder and mayhem. He had been interrupted, certainly, but not caught. The cries died away with the footsteps. Whoever had come across his handiwork had crossed the Yard and rattled up some stairs, almost certainly to get help. Mann popped his head cautiously around the gate. All was clear in those few seconds. He jumped over the body of Liz Stride and ran for his life.

The body of Elizabeth Stride had been found by Louis Diemschutz, a hawker of jewellery who was just returning from a hard day’s selling in the market at Weston Hill, Crystal Palace. When his horse had shied at the entrance to the Yard, Diemschutz had prodded the dark bundle on the ground with his whip, then dismounted and struck a match. Oddly, he assumed the woman lying there was his wife and rather than looking more clearly at the face went into the International Club in search of her. He went back to the body, armed with a candle and accompanied by a friend and fellow Club member, Isaac Kozebrodsky. Mrs Diemschutz had gone with them and began screaming hysterically at the sight of so much blood.

Diemschutz and Kozebrodsky went off in a fruitless search for a policeman and a large crowd now gathered in and around Dutfield’s Yard. Morris Eagle, who had turned left out of the gates when the other two turned right, bumped into Constable 252H Henry Lamb and reserve Constable 426H Edward Collins in Christian Street and they returned to the scene. Lamb sent Collins in search of a doctor and Eagle to Leman Street Police Station. Lamb felt some warmth still in the dead woman’s cheek, but there was no sign of a pulse.

In the event it was not Dr Frederick Blackwell who arrived with Collins, but his assistant, Edward Johnston, who reached the Yard soon after ten past one. Johnston noted the slashed throat and that the body, with the exception of the hands, was warm. He unfastened the woman’s blouse, checking for body warmth and saw her bonnet lying near her head. It was only minutes later that Dr Blackwell arrived – he timed his arrival at 1.16 by his watch – and made very careful observations, bearing in mind that Blackwell does not seem to have been a Police Surgeon.

The dead woman was lying on her left, facing the Club wall. Her feet were nearest to the gates and her right hand rested on her chest, covered in blood. Her left hand lay on the ground beside her with a small packet of cachous – perfumed sweets often used as breath fresheners – wrapped in tissue paper and partially held by the fingers. Her face looked calm, indicating that the attack was incredibly fast. Her mouth was slightly open. Blackwell put the time of death at between 12.46 and 12.56. When Police Surgeon George Phillips arrived half an hour later, he estimated that the woman would have taken up to a minute and a half to die and pushed the time frame earlier to the assault being delivered between 12.44 and 12.54.

By the time Phillips came to this conclusion, Robert Mann was already killing another woman, in Mitre Square.