Catherine Eddowes

Catherine Eddowes was born in Graisley Green, Wolverhampton (West Midlands) on 14 April 1842. Her parents, tinplate worker George Eddowes and his wife Catherine (née Evans), had been married since 1832, and had 11 other children, 5 older that Catherine (Alfred, Harriet, Emma, Eliza and Elizabeth), and 6 younger than her (Thomas, George, John, Sarah, Mary and William). In 1855, when Catherine was around 13, her mother Catherine died. The same year, Catherine's education at St John's Charity School, Patters Field, Tooley Street, ended. Most of her siblings entered Bermondsey Workhouse and Industrial School. In the early 1860s Catherine eventually returned to finish her education at Dowgate Charity School and to care for her aunt in Biston Street, Wolverhampton and to work as a tinplate stamper. Around 1861, when she was 19, Catherine left home to be with ex-soldier Thomas Conway. She was known as Kate Conway by that time, using her common-law husband's surname even if they weren't legally married. On 1864 they lived together in Wolverhampton and earned a living by selling chapbooks, written by Conway, in Birmingham and in the Midlands. They also wrote and sold gallows ballads. Catherine claimed that they were legally married and she had his initials 'TC' tattooed in blue ink on her arm. Around 1865, Annie, Catherine and Conway's first child and only daughter, was born. Three years later, they had their second child, a son named George. On February 3rd 1877 their son Frederick William was born. In 1880 Conway and Catherine separated. Catherine took Annie and Conway had custody of the boys. The following year, 1881, Catherine met John Kelly, an Irish jobbing market porter, frequently working for a fruit salesman, Lander. They eventually moved in together at Cooney's common lodging-house at 55 Flower and Dean Street, Spitalfields. By that time Catherine took her common-law husband's surname as was known as Kate Kelly. Every year, during the season, Kelly and Eddowes went hop picking. In the summer of 1888, Catherine and John, with their friend Emily Birrell, a vagrant, and her common-law husband, went hop-picking to Hunton-near-Maidstone, in Kent. At harvest's end they returned to London and quickly went through their pay, although it wasn't a good season, having poor crops. Birrell gave Catherine a London pawn broker's ticket for a man's shirt, because Catherine and John were going to London while she and her man were going to Cheltenham. On Thursday September 27th, Catherine and John arrived to London and split their last sixpence between them; he took four-pence to pay for a bed in the Cooney's common lodging-house, and she took twopence, just enough for her to stay a night at Mile End Casual Ward in the neighboring parish.