[4] In addition, both women had been murdered by slash wounds to the throat,[5] leading most authors and researchers to consider Stride to be the third of the Ripper's canonical five victims.

Stride was born Elisabeth Gustafsdotter on 27 November 1843 in Stora Tumlehed,[9] a rural village within the parish of Torslanda, west of Gothenburg, Sweden.

[14] Whatever the truth regarding Gustafsdotter's decision to relocate to London, it is likely she funded this trip with the 65 kronor she inherited following the death of her mother in August 1864, and which she had received in late 1865.

[10] However, census records from 1881 indicate the two had reunited[27] and lived together in the district of Bow,[28] although the couple had permanently separated by the end of that year, with Stride being admitted to a Whitechapel workhouse infirmary suffering from bronchitis in December 1881.

According to Stride, she and her husband had been employed upon this steamer,[32] although she had survived the accident by climbing the ship's mast,[33] but as she had done so, she had been kicked in the mouth by another survivor of the sinking, and this injury to her palate had caused a permanent stutter.

The first of these individuals is described as a short man with a dark moustache, wearing a morning suit and bowler hat, with whom she was seen at approximately 11:00 p.m. at a location close to Berner Street.

A second eyewitness account by labourer William Marshall places Stride in the company of a man wearing a peaked cap, black coat and dark trousers standing on the pavement opposite number 58 Berner Street at approximately 11:45 p.m.

[49] Between 12:35 a.m. and 12:45 a.m., dockworker James Brown saw a woman he believed to be Stride standing with her back against a wall at the corner of Berner Street speaking with a man of average build in a long black coat.

"[50] Stride's body was discovered at approximately 1:00 a.m. on Sunday 30 September 1888 in the adjacent Dutfield's Yard[n 5] by Louis Diemschutz, the steward of the International Working Men's Educational Club.

[55] Blood was still flowing from a single knife wound inflicted to Stride's neck and, although her hands were cold to the touch, other sections of her body were either slightly or "quite" warm.

Police surgeon Dr George Bagster Phillips, who had examined the body of previous Whitechapel murder victim Annie Chapman,[60] arrived about 10 minutes later.

[n 7] Phillips's official post-mortem documents state: The body was lying on the near side, with the face turned toward the wall, the head up the yard and the feet toward the street.

The throat was deeply gashed, and there was an abrasion of the skin about one and a quarter inches in diameter, apparently stained with blood, under her right brow.At 3 p.m. on Monday at St. George's Mortuary, Dr Blackwell and I made a post-mortem examination.

[61]Blackwell opined his belief that Stride's murderer may have pulled her backwards onto the ground by her neckerchief (the bow of which was observed to be markedly tight[62]) before cutting her throat.

[63] Phillips concurred with this opinion, stating that Stride had probably been lying on her back[64] when she was killed by a single, swift slash wound from left to right across her neck,[65] strongly indicating her murderer had been right-handed.

[73] A note in the margin of the Home Office files on the case points out that there was sufficient time for Stride to meet another individual between her death and the latest sightings of her.

[76] Mrs Fanny Mortimer, who lived two doors away from the club, had stood in Berner Street to listen to the communal singing at about the time Stride had been murdered, but had not seen anyone entering the yard or heard anything amiss.

[78] On 19 October, Chief Inspector Swanson reported that 80,000 leaflets appealing for information about the murder had been distributed around Whitechapel, noting that, among other lines of enquiry, some 2,000 lodgers had been interrogated or investigated in relation to her death.

The following year, Whitechapel Workhouse Infirmary records show Kidney visited three times: for syphilis in June 1889; for lumbago that August; and for dyspepsia in October.

[82] Kidney's declining health and general distress in the year after Stride's murder indicates a detrimental psychological and emotional reaction to her death.

The first day of the inquest heard testimony from three witnesses: two patrons of the International Working Men's Educational Club who had been in the premises on the night of Stride's murder, and Louis Diemschutz.

[n 10] Physician and surgeon Frederick Blackwell said he had been summoned to the crime scene at precisely 1:16 a.m. on 30 September by a policeman, being joined by Dr Phillips approximately 20 minutes later.

[88] Blackwell testified blood was still flowing from Stride's neck wound into a gutter and down a drain close to her feet, and that he estimated death had occurred "from twenty minutes to half an hour" prior to his arrival.

[97] At the conclusion of this final day of hearings, coroner Baxter stated his belief that Stride had been attacked in a swift, sudden manner,[98] with her death undoubtedly being a homicide, and no known circumstances being available which could reduce the crime to one of manslaughter.

Baxter, however, thought the absence of a shout for assistance and the lack of obvious marks of a struggle indicated that Stride had willingly lain down on the ground before the wound had been inflicted.

Baxter further noted the windows of the International Working Men's Educational Club had been open, and that both Stride and her assailant would undoubtedly have heard the patrons' singing and dancing.

[116] Police officials later claimed to have identified a journalist as the author of the postcard,[117] leading this letter to be dismissed as a hoax,[118] an assessment shared by most Ripper historians.

[119] Two weeks later, on 16 October, a parcel containing half a preserved[120] human kidney, accompanied by a note, was received by the Chairman of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee, George Lusk.

[125] Moreover, Packer is known to have also informed a police sergeant named Stephen White that he had closed his shop on the date of the murder without seeing any suspicious characters or activity.

[128] Despite Packer's self-contradictory statements, investigators did discover a single grape stalk in Dutfield's Yard,[129] and his story was reported in the London Evening News on 3 October.