Elizabeth Stride was born Elisabeth Gustafsdotter on November 27, 1843, and was killed on September 30, 1888. She married John Thomas Stride in 1869, but by the beginning of 1882 she had moved to a workhouse, so the assumption is that the marriage fell apart. John died two years later of heart disease. She then began living on and off with Michael Kidney until her death. Both Stride and Kidney appeared many times before the court on charges of being drunk and disorderly. Five days before her death she left Kidney for the last time and ended up at a lodging house on Flower and Dean Street. Stride was only an occasional prostitute, and frequently had jobs cleaning houses with more or less respectable families.

The witnesses who saw Stride on the night of her murder create one of the greatest controversies in the study of Jack the Ripper, because most testimony is credible, but there are possible inconsistencies. Also, the testimonies seem to indicate some kind of greater conspiracy, a possibility which some historians feel hesitant to believe. Many witnesses claim to have seen Stride and the man who accompanied her "kissing and carrying on" along Berner Street, where Stride was found murdered. The encounter Israel Schwartz had at approximately 12:40 AM was described by Chief Inspector Donald Swanson in the Home Office file:

"Israel Schwartz of 22 Helen Street, Backchurch Lane, stated that at this hour, turning into Berner Street from Commercial Road, and having gotten as far as the gateway where the murder was committed, he saw a man stop and speak to a woman, who was standing in the gateway. He tried to pull the woman into the street, but he turned her round and threw her down on the footway and the woman screamed three times, but not very loudly. On crossing to the opposite side of the street, he saw a second man lighting his pipe. The man who threw the woman down called out, apparently to the man on the opposite side of the road, "Lipski", and then Schwartz walked away, but finding that he was followed by the second man, he ran as far as the railway arch, but the man did not follow so far.
Schwartz cannot say whether the two men were together or known to each other. Upon being taken to the mortuary Schwartz identified the body as that of the woman he had seen."

Just a few minutes earlier, Police Constable William Smith saw Stride with a man, approximately 28 years old, who carried a parcel 6 in. high and 18 in. long wrapped in newspaper. They were standing on Berner Street opposite the International Worker’s Club. However, this description of the man does not match up with Schwartz’ description, so it is unlikely that they describe the same person. It could be that this discrepancy only supports the idea that two men may have perpetrated the Ripper crimes together; this idea remains consistent with Schwartz’ testimony (this testimony aids the formation of the Freemason conspiracy).

Stride was however not the only victim on the night of September 30, and her murder occurred under strange circumstances, which could explain the occurrence of a second murder; Stride’s discovery by Louis Diemschutz at 1:00 AM may have actually been an interruption of the Ripper at work. Diemschutz does in fact claim that his pony reared up when entering Dutfield’s Yard, as though scared by something.(1) The yard was too dark for Diemschutz to see what had happened to Stride, but he called for help and discovered she had been murdered. This interruption would explain why Stride was the only Ripper victim to undergo none of the standard mutilations, although their absence renders some historians suspicious and hesitant to mark her as a true Ripper victim. According to current analysis, a serial murder like the Ripper has a certain blood lust and ritualism that must be satisfied through his killings. If the killer couldn’t complete his ritualistic mutilations, he might consider that work a "failure," and would seek out another victim. That is why another Ripper killer appeared a few hours later.

Click here for a description the state of the body of Elizabeth Stride, as reported by Dr. George Baxter Phillips, who performed the post mortem.

 

(1) http://www.casebook.org/victims/stride.html?show=4