H.H. Holmes: The Devil / Season 1, Episode 2
The Double Event
EPISODE 2: THE DOUBLE EVENT
PART ONE: ELIZABETH STRIDE
CHAPTER 1: LONG LIZ
Her name was Elizabeth Stride, but everyone called her Long Liz.
At forty-four years old, she had constructed an elaborate mythology about her life. She claimed to be Swedish, the widow of a ship's captain who had died in the Princess Alice disaster of 1878. She said she'd lost nine teeth when that ship sank, knocked out by a kick to the face as she struggled in the water.
None of it was true.
Elizabeth was indeed Swedish—born Elisabeth Gustafsdotter in a parish near Gothenburg. But she'd never married a captain, never been on the Princess Alice, never survived any disaster except the slow catastrophe of her own life. The missing teeth came from other causes, and the stories were simply ways of making her existence seem more interesting, more tragic, more worthy of sympathy.
By September 1888, she was living at 32 Flower and Dean Street, one of the most notorious streets in Whitechapel. She earned money through prostitution and charwork, supplemented by occasional allowances from a man named Michael Kidney, who served as an unofficial partner.
On the afternoon of September 29, 1888, Elizabeth Stride cleaned rooms at the lodging house where she stayed.
It was the last day of her life.
CHAPTER 2: THE CLUB
The International Working Men's Educational Club occupied a building on Berner Street, just off Commercial Road.
The club was a meeting place for socialist and anarchist groups, primarily Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. On Saturday nights, they held discussions and debates, followed by singing and socializing. The meetings often ran late, with members departing well after midnight.
Adjacent to the club was Dutfield's Yard—a narrow passageway leading to a small court surrounded by workshops and cottages. The yard was dark, even by Whitechapel standards, with no gas lamps and high walls blocking any ambient light.
On the night of September 29, the club's meeting ran particularly late. Members were still singing Russian songs at one in the morning, their voices carrying through the thin walls.
Outside, in the fog and the darkness, Elizabeth Stride met her killer.
CHAPTER 3: THE WITNESS
Israel Schwartz was walking home along Berner Street at approximately twelve forty-five in the morning.
He'd been at a friend's house, staying late, and was hurrying through the fog toward his lodgings. As he passed the entrance to Dutfield's Yard, he witnessed something that would make him a key figure in the investigation.
A man was standing with a woman near the gates. As Schwartz approached, the man grabbed the woman and threw her to the ground. She screamed—once, not loudly—as she fell.
Schwartz didn't intervene. A Jewish immigrant in Victorian London learned quickly that involvement with strangers, especially at night, rarely ended well. He crossed to the opposite side of the street and walked faster.
But as he passed, he noticed something else. A second man was standing nearby, lighting a pipe. When the first man saw Schwartz watching, he called out something—perhaps "Lipski," an antisemitic slur commonly used against Jews in Whitechapel.
Schwartz ran.
When he looked back, the second man was following him. He ran faster, turning corners until he lost his pursuer in the fog.
Fifteen minutes later, Elizabeth Stride's body was discovered in Dutfield's Yard.
CHAPTER 4: DISCOVERY
Louis Diemschutz was the steward of the Working Men's Club.
At approximately one in the morning, he returned from a day of selling cheap jewelry at the market in Crystal Palace. His horse and cart approached the gates of Dutfield's Yard, the entrance to the club's premises.
The horse shied.
Something was blocking the gateway—a dark shape that Diemschutz couldn't identify in the fog. He prodded it with his whip, thinking it might be a pile of rubbish or a drunk. When it didn't move, he climbed down from the cart, struck a match, and saw what his horse had sensed.
A woman's body, lying on its side near the wall. Blood was pooling beneath her, still spreading across the cobblestones.
Diemschutz ran into the club, shouting for help. Within minutes, the yard was full of men from the socialist meeting, their singing silenced by horror.
Someone found a constable. The police arrived. And the investigation began.
CHAPTER 5: THE SCENE
Inspector Edmund Reid of H Division took charge of the Berner Street scene.
The body was identified quickly—several witnesses recognized Elizabeth Stride from the local lodging houses. She lay on her left side, her left arm extended, her right arm across her chest. Her throat had been cut, a single deep wound that had severed the windpipe.
But something was different this time.
Unlike Polly Nichols and Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride had not been mutilated. Her clothing was undisturbed. There were no wounds to her abdomen, no removed organs, no ritual arrangement of possessions.
"He was interrupted," Reid concluded. "Someone disturbed him before he could finish."
"The man with the cart?"
"Almost certainly. Diemschutz arrived only minutes after death—the blood was still fresh. The killer must have heard the horse approaching and fled."
"Which means he didn't get what he came for."
Reid looked at the blood spreading across the cobblestones, at the body of a woman who'd been alive an hour before.
"No. He didn't."
PART TWO: CATHERINE EDDOWES
CHAPTER 6: THE ARREST
Catherine Eddowes was singing.
At eight-thirty on the evening of September 29, she was found lying drunk on the pavement of Aldgate High Street. A small crowd had gathered to watch her, and when City Police Constable Louis Robinson arrived, she was too intoxicated to stand.
Robinson arrested her for drunkenness and took her to Bishopsgate Police Station, just inside the City of London boundary. It was a common occurrence—drunk arrests happened dozens of times each night in this part of London.
Catherine was placed in a cell to sober up. She gave her name as "Nothing," then later admitted to being Mary Ann Kelly of Spitalfields. Neither name was her own.
Her real name was Catherine Eddowes, and she was forty-six years old—another casualty of Victorian poverty, another woman who'd slipped from respectability into desperation. She'd been living with a man named John Kelly in a common lodging house at Cooney's, and earlier that day they'd returned from hop-picking in Kent.
At twelve-thirty in the morning, the custody sergeant checked on her. She was awake and sober.
"When can I go?" she asked.
"When you're capable of taking care of yourself."
At one in the morning, PC George Hutt released her. Catherine was cheerful, asking what time it was and humming to herself as she walked out the door.
"Good night, old cock," she said to the jailer.
She turned left out of the station, toward Whitechapel, toward the fog, toward the killer who was already hunting for another victim.
CHAPTER 7: MITRE SQUARE
Catherine Eddowes was last seen alive at approximately one thirty-five in the morning.
Three witnesses—Joseph Lawende, Joseph Hyam Levy, and Harry Harris—saw a woman standing with a man near the entrance to Church Passage, a narrow alley leading to Mitre Square. The witnesses were leaving the Imperial Club, heading home after a late evening.
Lawende was the only one who got a good look at the man. He described him as about thirty years old, medium height, with a fair complexion and a small fair mustache. He wore a cloth cap and a gray coat.
"She was standing with her hand on his chest," Lawende later testified. "Like they were having an intimate conversation."
The witnesses walked on, thinking nothing of what they'd seen. A woman talking to a man near Mitre Square at one in the morning—what could be more ordinary in this part of London?
Ten minutes later, Catherine Eddowes was dead.
CHAPTER 8: THE CONSTABLE
Police Constable Edward Watkins patrolled Mitre Square as part of his regular beat.
The square was small—a paved area surrounded by warehouses, with three exits. Watkins passed through it every twelve to fourteen minutes, checking the premises and ensuring nothing was amiss.
At one thirty, he walked through the square and found nothing.
At one forty-four, he entered the square from the opposite direction and discovered the body.
Catherine Eddowes lay in the southwest corner of the square, near the entrance to a vacant house. Her throat had been cut, and her face had been mutilated almost beyond recognition. Her abdomen had been opened, her intestines removed and placed over her shoulder—identical to what had been done to Annie Chapman.
And more.
The killer had taken her kidney.
CHAPTER 9: TWO JURISDICTIONS
The murder in Mitre Square created a jurisdictional complication.
Berner Street was in the Metropolitan Police territory—H Division's area. But Mitre Square was inside the City of London, a separate jurisdiction with its own police force. The two forces would have to work together, sharing information and coordinating their investigations.
In practice, this created friction.
The City Police, under Acting Commissioner Major Henry Smith, considered themselves superior to their Metropolitan counterparts. They had better resources, higher pay, and a smaller territory to patrol. The idea of cooperating with H Division, the worst posting in London, rankled.
But the murders transcended petty rivalries. Two women, killed within an hour, in adjacent jurisdictions—it was clearly the same killer. Whether the police liked it or not, they would have to work together.
PART THREE: THE INVESTIGATION
CHAPTER 10: THE EVIDENCE
Dr. Frederick Brown conducted the postmortem on Catherine Eddowes.
His report was clinical, detailed, and horrifying. The throat had been cut with two deep wounds, severing major blood vessels. The face had been mutilated—cuts across the eyelids, nose, and cheeks; a triangular piece of flesh removed from each cheek; the tip of the nose cut off.
The abdomen had been opened with a single long cut, running from the breastbone to the pubic area. The intestines had been removed and placed over the right shoulder. The left kidney had been excised and taken away.
"The killer has significant anatomical knowledge," Dr. Brown concluded. "The kidney was removed with precision, the renal artery properly severed. This was not random cutting—it was deliberate extraction."
"A doctor?"
"Someone with medical training, or at least medical knowledge. A surgeon, perhaps. Or someone who's spent time in an anatomical theater."
CHAPTER 11: THE GRAFFITO
At two fifty-five in the morning, PC Alfred Long discovered a piece of evidence that would become one of the most controversial elements of the case.
In the doorway of Wentworth Model Dwellings, on Goulston Street, Long found a bloodstained piece of apron. It matched exactly with a piece missing from Catherine Eddowes's clothing—the killer had apparently cut away part of her apron and used it to wipe his hands.
But above the apron, written in chalk on the black fascia of the doorway, was a message:
"The Juwes are The men That Will not be Blamed for nothing"
The message was cryptic, its meaning unclear. Did "Juwes" refer to Jews, suggesting an antisemitic motive? Or was it a reference to something else—perhaps Masonic mythology, which included three "Juwes" who had murdered Hiram Abiff?
Whatever its meaning, the message presented the police with a difficult decision. Goulston Street was in the heart of the Jewish quarter, and tensions were already running high. If the message remained visible when morning came, it could spark anti-Jewish riots.
Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Charles Warren made the decision personally. At approximately five-thirty in the morning, before the scene could be photographed, he ordered the message wiped away.
It remains one of the most controversial decisions in the case's history.
CHAPTER 12: THE THEORIES
The double event generated new theories about the killer's identity.
Some investigators believed the interruption at Berner Street had prevented the killer from completing his ritual, driving him to seek a second victim the same night. This suggested a compulsion, an overwhelming need that couldn't be denied.
Others focused on the thirty-five-minute gap between murders. How had the killer traveled from Berner Street to Mitre Square without being noticed? Had he walked the streets covered in blood, or had he cleaned himself somewhere along the way?
The geography was significant. Mitre Square was inside the City boundary—a different jurisdiction, different patrols, different routines. Had the killer chosen it deliberately, knowing the City Police were less familiar with him than H Division?
And there were the messages. The "Dear Boss" letter had promised to "clip the lady's ears off." Catherine Eddowes's ear had been partially severed, as if the killer had intended to fulfill his promise but been interrupted.
Was the letter genuine? Or had the killer read it in the newspapers and decided to match its predictions?
CHAPTER 13: THE FEAR
By October 1, 1888, London was gripped by panic.
Four women murdered in a month. Two in a single night. A killer who could strike without warning, disappear without trace, and evade the combined forces of two police departments.
The newspapers fed the hysteria with daily coverage, each edition more sensational than the last. Sketches of the victims, maps of the murder sites, lurid speculation about the killer's identity and motives—all of it sold papers while terrifying the population.
In Whitechapel, women refused to go out at night. Lodging houses that usually turned away those without fourpence began letting women sleep in hallways and kitchens, recognizing that sending them to the streets could mean sending them to their deaths.
Men carrying bags were stopped and questioned. Doctors leaving late-night house calls were followed and harassed. Anyone who looked suspicious—and in the fevered atmosphere, everyone looked suspicious—faced the possibility of being attacked by vigilantes.
The Whitechapel Vigilance Committee increased their patrols. George Lusk, their chairman, received threatening letters and packages that kept him awake at night.
But nothing seemed to help. Nothing seemed to stop the killer.
And everyone knew, with terrible certainty, that he would strike again.
PART FOUR: THE AFTERMATH
CHAPTER 14: THE INQUESTS
The inquests into both murders were conducted in early October.
Coroner Wynne Baxter presided over Elizabeth Stride's inquest, his meticulous questioning revealing the confusion and contradictions in witness testimony. Israel Schwartz's account of seeing a woman thrown to the ground was examined carefully—was the man he'd seen the killer, or an unrelated assault?
The jury returned a verdict of "willful murder against some person or persons unknown."
For Catherine Eddowes, the inquest was conducted by City Coroner Samuel Frederick Langham. The medical evidence was extensive, detailing every wound, every incision, every piece of missing tissue. The jury listened in horrified silence as Dr. Brown described the state of the body.
Again, the verdict was the same: "willful murder by person or persons unknown."
Two murders, two inquests, and the police were no closer to catching the killer.
CHAPTER 15: THE LETTERS
In the wake of the double event, the police received hundreds of letters claiming to be from the killer.
Most were obvious hoaxes—badly spelled, inconsistent with the evidence, clearly written by attention-seekers or the mentally ill. But two letters stood out.
The first was a postcard, received by the Central News Agency on October 1:
"I was not codding dear old Boss when I gave you the tip, you'll hear about Saucy Jacky's work tomorrow double event this time number one squealed a bit couldn't finish straight off. ha not the time to get ears for police. thanks for keeping last letter back till I got to work again."
The "Saucy Jack" postcard referenced details that hadn't been published—the double event, the interrupted first murder, the failed attempt to take the ears. Either the writer had inside knowledge, or he was the killer himself.
The second communication wouldn't arrive for another two weeks. And when it did, it would come not as a letter but as a package.
Addressed to George Lusk of the Vigilance Committee.
Containing half a human kidney.
CHAPTER 16: THE KIDNEY
On October 16, George Lusk received a small cardboard box in the mail.
Inside was a piece of organ, preserved in ethanol, accompanied by a letter:
"From hell. Mr Lusk, Sor I send you half the Kidne I took from one woman prasarved it for you tother piece I fried and ate it was very nise. I may send you the bloody knif that took it out if you only wate a whil longer signed Catch me when you can Mishter Lusk"
Lusk initially believed it was a hoax—a medical student's prank or a butcher's attempt at humor. But when he showed it to Dr. Thomas Openshaw at the London Hospital, the examination revealed disturbing details.
The kidney was human, from an adult, and showed signs of Bright's disease—a kidney condition that Catherine Eddowes had suffered from. It had been preserved within two weeks of its removal.
Was this Catherine Eddowes's missing kidney? The evidence was suggestive but not conclusive. It could have been obtained from a mortuary or a medical school. But the possibility that it was genuine—that the killer had sent a piece of his victim to the head of the Vigilance Committee—added a new dimension of horror to an already terrifying case.
CHAPTER 17: THE INVESTIGATION STALLS
By mid-October, the investigation had reached an impasse.
Hundreds of suspects had been interviewed, eliminated, and forgotten. Thousands of tips had been followed up, each one leading nowhere. The police had posted bills, conducted house-to-house searches, and interviewed virtually every prostitute in Whitechapel—and still the killer remained at large.
Inspector Abberline worked himself to exhaustion, spending nights walking the streets of Whitechapel in plainclothes, hoping to catch the killer in the act. Other officers did the same, creating a dense network of surveillance that should have made further murders impossible.
But they all knew the truth.
The killer was smarter than they were. More patient. More careful. He could wait until the patrols relaxed, until the vigilance faded, until the perfect opportunity presented itself.
And when that opportunity came, he would strike again.
The only question was when.
To be continued...