Jack the Ripper Victims Series: The Double Event (16 page)

~ ~ ~

Elizabeth received a package sent from the address to which she’d written to her father. In the parcel, she found a Swedish hymn book and a letter from her sister, Kristina, telling of her father’s death. Elizabeth didn’t know how she felt about the news. She cherished the book. Although none within her family were devout members of the Swedish Church, they had all sung songs from the book together, and having a copy of the hymnal gave her a nostalgia for the security of her early life. She wrote to Kristina to thank her. The letter was the first of what became a monthly effort to communicate by post with her sister. She never heard back from Kristina, though, and wasn’t certain her messages were being received.

Elizabeth continued to see her twin once a week to share the two shillings collected from Mary Malcolms. “How are you and Jon faring?” Lettie asked, but because she appeared distracted by her own problems of finding work, paying her rent, and feeding herself, Elizabeth didn’t tell her a sad tale.

~ ~ ~

With few carpentry jobs to be had, and difficulty doing the work when it did come, Jon offered furniture mending and found a few customers. He repaired weak joints in legs, rungs, rails, backs, and panels of various types of furnishings and he wove chair seats. His income didn’t amount to much. Hours of sitting further deteriorated his back and by 1880, he could work but half the hours he’d been able to work a year earlier.

Elizabeth applied for medical assistance for Jon at the Poplar Workhouse and another relief officer came to look in on the Strides’ home life.

After an interview with Jon and Elizabeth, the officer, a gentleman named Edwards, said to Elizabeth, “With back pain and rheumatism, your husband isn’t presently in danger and so out-relief medical assistance in your home is not prescribed. Inmate relief is not justified since you are able-bodied.”

“He suffers such that he
cannot
work most of the time,” Elizabeth said, “and I can’t find enough work to keep him.”

“I’m sorry,” Mr. Edwards said, “There is the labor test for a subsistence allowance. You are certainly fit for—“

“No!” Elizabeth said, cutting him off. A shudder ran through her with the memory of her days in the workhouse. “It’s not enough.”

“I’m sorry I can’t help you,” Mr. Edwards said. He made his way out through the living quarters of the Burkins and Levine families.

“We will get by, Elizabeth,” Jon said. “I’m not done just yet.”

Elizabeth feared that wasn’t true. Her worries for Jon’s wellbeing followed her everywhere.

~ ~ ~

In the winter of 1881, Elizabeth went to see the clerk at the Swedish Church, a gentleman named Olsson, to appeal for alms. He provided her with four shillings on two occasions.

“I cannot help you further at this time,” he said the third time she asked for help. “We have many unfortunates within our parish, particularly those with children, who need the help more. I’m sorry.”

When Elizabeth complained about the clerk’s decision, Jon shook his head slowly. Elizabeth had brought him his supper: A slice of bread. He could no longer work and had taken to bed several weeks earlier. Propped up on their mattress, he ate, while she sat in a chair beside him, having her own slice.

“You spend all your time trying to keep me,” he said. “Daily, I take your life away from you.”

“No,” Elizabeth said, “that’s
not
true.”

“If you didn’t have to struggle for my sake,” he said, “you wouldn’t go hungry, you would have an easier time finding and keeping work, and you could begin your life anew.”

“I will
not
leave you,” Elizabeth said. “You are my husband!”

“They will take care of me at the workhouse infirmary if you leave me. As long as you’re here, they won’t.”

“No,” Elizabeth said, “You cannot
live
in the workhouse.”

“I cannot
live
out here,” he said sadly. He became quiet for a time as if thinking something through.

“I’m doing the best I can,” Elizabeth said.

“Well—” he paused as if a regret had taken hold of him, but then he blundered forward. “—it’s not enough. You’re doing a poor job of it and I can’t take it anymore. Leave me, so I can get the care I need.”

Elizabeth looked at him in horror. Had he ceased to love her?

“You’re not a good wife,” he shouted hoarsely. “I’ve suffered at your hands, and now I would have out of this cruel marriage.” His trembling lips and the tears that slid from his eyes gave him away.

Elizabeth knelt beside the bed and touched his face. “I know you don’t mean it,” she said.

He gathered her into his arms and wept, his frail body shuddering with the effort. “I’m sorry, sweet woman. I must do what I have to. I
am
suffering and so are
you
.”

Elizabeth sobbed against his shoulder. She knew he spoke the truth.

~ ~ ~

Elizabeth left Jon within the week, and on his behalf applied for invalid relief from the Poplar workhouse. Again, the relief officer came to the house in Usher Road. Elizabeth wasn’t there to hear the interview.

She took a room in a nearby doss house in Bow Road, where she shared a bed with six to eight strangers. By the time she arrived each night one or more of her bedmates had already stripped the bedclothes and nearly worthless mattress off the bed frame to avoid contact with vermin. Elizabeth slept in her clothing on the hard bed boards. Fearing robbery from her bedmates, invariably strangers, she slept with a knife tucked into her bodice.

Again, Elizabeth fended for herself within the gut of the London beast. The hardship was worthwhile, she decided, as long as Jon received the care he needed. She would improve her own situation as soon as she could.

She saw Jon in the evening, two days after his admittance to the infirm male ward of the Poplar Workhouse. The room housed at least thirty men, the beds separated by curtains. The place reeked of human excrement, the odor seeming to come from a small alcove in one corner of the ward. No doubt the privy was backed up.

Although bedridden, Jon appeared in good spirits. His scalp gruesomely shown white as bone through the terrier crop they’d given his hair.

At least he’s being well fed,
Bess said, distracting Elizabeth from thoughts of skulls and death.

“Once again, your sweet face brightens my day, Elizabeth,” he said.

She smiled crookedly, and sat on the edge of his bed.

“What will you do?” he asked. “Where will you go?”

They had been over the subject several times, but his memory wasn’t what it had been.

“I’ve gone to a four-penny hotel.”

He had the same reaction as before. “No, I don’t want you in a common lodging.”

She tried something new. “I’ll beg Lettie to take me in.”

“Who?"

“Lettie,” Elizabeth said, thinking he hadn’t heard. He shook his head slowly, and she tried again. “Elizabeth—Elizabeth Sneller.”

Still the name seemed to mean nothing to him. Elizabeth realized that Lettie had rarely, if ever, been around when Jon was home. When her twin had married Mr. Sneller, Jon had been away on a carpentry job. She decided that his memory had simply failed him again.

“Lettie—I mean Elizabeth—introduced us in Hyde Park.”

“Nobody introduced us. Was the wind that brought us together. A breeze blew your bonnet off. I retrieved it and we struck up a conversation.”

Of little importance, Elizabeth let the matter go. Over the next few hours, she had such a pleasant time, talking with Jon and exchanging news, that she lost track of the time. A nurse noticed her at ten o’clock in the evening.

“How did we not see you there?” the woman said with a frown. “Visiting hours were over at eight o’clock. I locked the doors at nine. Up and out or you’ll have to spend the night in the foul ward.”

Jon made a look of mock fear. “Oh, they’ve got pox of all sorts in there.”

“That’s right,” the nurse said, maintaining her stern expression.

“You’ve done your time in the spike, my dear,” Jon said. “Now, go!”

Elizabeth knew he teased her, but the urgency of his last words left her uneasy. She didn’t want to leave him. Even so, she got up quickly, made her goodbyes, and fled, a fear of becoming trapped in the workhouse snapping at her heels. Relief came when the large wooden door banged shut behind her and she heard a key turn in the lock.

The infirmary allowed her to visit Jon each day. Having to earn a crust, though, kept her away much of the time.

On the evening of October 23, 1884, she tried to visit Jon at the Poplar Workhouse, only to be informed that he had been taken to the sick asylum, Bromley, a short walk away. Elizabeth arrived to find Jon fading in and out of consciousness. He gave no indication that he noticed her presence. The nurses tried to go about their business as usual, yet when they saw Elizabeth sitting beside Jon’s bed, holding his hand, they either turned away quickly or tried to give her a sympathetic smile. She knew they had no hope for Jon.

Elizabeth couldn’t avoid thinking about the inevitable. She imagined losing Jon in the days to come, and she wondered what life might be like without her love.

“You’re young,” Jon said, startling Elizabeth from her dark thoughts. “Find another man to love you. Allow that sweet face to brighten another fellow’s day. You’ve been a good wife to me and I love you for it.”

Elizabeth hugged his hand to her face and held back her tears. Jon wasn’t gone just yet.

“We’re closing for the night,” the attending nurse said. “You can come back tomorrow.”

Although Elizabeth would have endured an overnight stay in the workhouse, the nurse clearly wasn’t in a mood to argue. She stood with her arms crossed over her chest.

Elizabeth turned to her husband. “I love you, Jon.”

“That’s made all the difference in my life,” he said.

Elizabeth looked into his tired eyes and smiled the best she could.

He is not long for this world,
Liza said.
You had better start looking for another—

Shut up!
Elizabeth thought. In that moment she hated her cynical voice.

If you hurry,
Bess said,
he will still be here tomorrow.

Distraught and unsteady, but not wanting to upset Jon, Elizabeth released him and walked away as quickly as she dared.

Following Jon’s death, Elizabeth found temporary work scouring pots and pans at the Beehive Tavern in Whitechapel. She went to live with her twin in Brick Lane. Lettie lived in a bright yellow room with a small window about a foot across that looked west toward the street. Being a high window in a second floor room, a curtain wasn’t needed to ensure privacy. Late in the afternoon, the sunlight streaming through the rectangle of dirty glass seemed to set the yellow room on fire.

Until Elizabeth came, Lettie had trouble paying the rent. Between the two of them, Elizabeth begging on the street, collecting the two shillings per week from Mary Malcolms, and working at the Beehive, and Lettie working at Peterkin’s Laundry, they scrounged up the funds for November’s rent.

At the beginning of December, Elizabeth’s luck ran out. Her work at the Beehive was given to someone else, and she started looking elsewhere for employment. She spent days searching for work, and found no way to acquire the needed funds in time. One afternoon, following hours on the hunt, she sat in a pub eating bread and cheese. The yeasty smell of the place got into her nose and made her thirst for ale. Frightened, she tried to reason with the yearning. She was no good when she drank. A glass of ale would cost one of her precious pennies. She wouldn’t be able to look for work with the smell on her breath. Still, she wouldn’t have to eat as much if she got the ale in her, and her troubles would evaporate for a time. Elizabeth decided she could have one glass and no more.

After the first glass, negotiations with the urge for the second and third got progressively easier. Then, she stumbled out into the street, resolved to find a client to pay her for sex.

“Fancy a bit of wagtail,” she said to a young fellow in a new suit, standing out front of the pub. She did a little dance to wiggle her backside. The man turned and walked away.

Elizabeth had never done solicitation on the street before. After so long without alcohol, the intoxication had a greater effect than she expected. She had little sense of how loud she became or how obvious her actions appeared to others. Most of the men she approached responded with disgust or simple amusement.

One fellow grabbed roughly for her breasts. “Sure, I’ll have your bubbies,” he said, laughing. When he gripped her arm painfully, she broke away and ran. He didn’t follow.

Eventually, a constable appeared and took her to the Commercial Road police station. Since she had no record of arrests, the police allowed her to sleep off the drunkenness in a cell. She received a warning, and was release that evening.

Shame for her behavior emerged as the effect of the alcohol wore off. Elizabeth was mortified as she spoke to her twin about the events of the day late that night.

Having clearly become upset as she listen to the account, Lettie remained quiet for some time after the end of the tale.

Finally, she took a deep breath, and said, “Mr. Snopes has asked me to marry him.” She had been courting the man for over a month, yet Elizabeth didn’t think Lettie took the relationship very seriously. “He wants us to live here because it’s better than his room. I didn’t know what to say to you about it, and I’ve been putting him off because I know you have nowhere else to go.”

Again, she became quiet for a time, and Elizabeth dreaded what might come next.

“But I’ve decided I want to accept his proposal, and I have to ask you to find another place to live.”

“I have no work,” Elizabeth protested. “You would not have been able to pay this month if I hadn’t provided so much help.”

“Yes, and that’s the point, isn’t it?” Lettie said. “I can’t make the nethers by myself, and you currently haven’t the income to help.”

“I could make a pallet on the floor,” Elizabeth said quickly, “and Mr. Snopes can have my place in the bed.”

“You know he won’t want you here, especially since…” She paused, obviously unwilling to say that he wouldn’t want a prostitute in his home. “Surely, you understand.”

The woman has merely used you all these years,
Liza said.
Since you no longer have work she can share, you are merely in her way. When—

“No, I don’t understand,” Elizabeth said, cutting off the hateful voice. She would not have such things said about her twin, even though she suspected there was some truth to them. “I thought we were sisters, that we shared everything.”

Lettie’s face turned dark. “You don’t expect me to
share
my husband, do you?”

“No, but I don’t know where I’ll go.” Elizabeth winced at the desperation in her voice.

“You’ve slept in the four-penny hotel before.”

“I stayed in a doss house as a last resort. Do you know what it’s like?”

Lettie didn’t answer. Her face became expressionless, her eyes impenetrable.

Elizabeth stared at her for a time, as she strained toward understanding.

“I’m sorry,” Lettie said, finally. “If you were in my place, you’d do the same to get by.” She got up, wrapped a shawl around her shoulders and walked out the door. Elizabeth heard Lettie’s footsteps moving down the tenement stairs, and the door that led to the outside opening and closing.

And Elizabeth
did
understand. Survival took priority over all other considerations. Still, the two women had helped each other for so long, she couldn’t help seeing her twin’s choice as betrayal.

As she had done numerous times before, Elizabeth sat and watched the afternoon sunlight that came through the small window creep across the wall. Although the light and color in the yellow room were beautiful, the lateness of the hour and the melancholy of another day ending always conspired to give Elizabeth the sense that her chance at life had passed away with Jon. For a few days following his death, she’d felt something akin to hunger pangs, but of the heart, not the stomach. If she could hold him, kiss him, tell him that he was loved one more time, she would become full again. Unsatisfied, however, her heart seemed to wither and she felt hollow inside. At present, she feared that if she didn’t act, all that remained for her was the temporary warm sunset of memory, to be followed by a long night of regret. She had no time for such foolishness. She must do as Jon asked and find another man. Again, she must find something better.

She got up, packed her things, including her Swedish hymnal, and left.

~ ~ ~

Elizabeth stayed at a common lodging house at 32 Flower and Dean Street. She paid to have a few of her possessions, including the Swedish hymnal, stored under lock and key in the doss house.

On the Saturday evening after leaving the yellow room for the last time, she went to collect two shillings from Mary Malcolms. Afterward, as Elizabeth walked to the place where she would meet Lettie and split the take, she wondered if her twin would show up. She preferred not to see her twin and would be happy to have an excuse to keep the two shillings all to herself.

Since coming to Whitechapel, Elizabeth had met with Lettie at the corner of Commercial and Quaker Streets. Lettie was usually late, yet she stood waiting on the corner when Elizabeth got there.

“You should continue to see my sister each Saturday,” Lettie said, “if you would.”

“Yes,” Elizabeth said. Unwilling to offer anything more to the conversation, she turned and walked away.

At their subsequent meetings, Elizabeth often remained silent as she handed her estranged twin a shilling. With time, a sadness appeared in Lettie’s eyes. Elizabeth liked to believe she saw regret in the woman’s expression. She missed her friend, but pride kept her from speaking.

~ ~ ~

In her ongoing search for employment, Elizabeth found only sporadic, temporary work.

Out of necessity, she became much better at soliciting. For all her reasonable dread, she also found an unreasonable excitement in the pursuit.

You foolishly felt excitement over the risks of begging too,
Liza said.

There are no opportunities without risk,
Bess said.

Elizabeth considered the statement uncharacteristically mature for her innocent voice.

Perhaps,
Liza said,
but it’s unhealthy to seek danger.

Since Elizabeth intended to find a stable relationship with a man, one that would provide her with something better than nights in a doss house and days on the street, her approach to soliciting became more subtle. She offered sex for a price only if she thought a gentleman would not be offering anything better. Using that tactic, she found Mr. Kidney, a dockside laborer, and ended up in his bed in the summer of 1885. Since he seemed to have a bit of money, buying her drinks at a pub and a good meal at a tavern, she hadn’t proposed a fee for her services with the hope that becoming his lover might prove a more effective way of opening his wallet. They got drunk together, and he invited her to stay for several days in his room in a tenement in Dorset Street. The lodging seemed much nicer than what she might have expected a dockside laborer to have.

The chamber, accessed through a hallway entrance at the front of the tenement, had two windows that faced the street front of the building. Wall paper, incorporating burgundy-colored silk ribbons in its design, decorated the walls. A fine armoire and five-drawer set rested against the southwest wall and a bedside cupboard and small vanity sat against the northeast wall. The iron bed, painted blue, had a feather mattress. Elizabeth thought the room more suited for a woman. Mr. Kidney went away to work each day. When he returned from his labors in the evenings, their romps in bed continued. They seemed to get along together quite naturally.

“Do you think you’d like to stay here?” he asked on their fourth evening together.

“I am already here,” she said happily, hoping he would offer more.

“I’m asking you to come here to live. I’ll keep you comfortable and well-fed.”

Elizabeth could not believe her luck. Strong, tall, handsome, ten years her junior, with a great curling mustache, and a head full of thick, wavy hair, Mr. Kidney cut a dashing figure. She’d told him she was thirty-five years old, six year younger than her true age, and he’d seemed to accept that.

He’s a cash
— Liza began.

Resentfully, Elizabeth cut her off. “Yes,” she said quickly, throwing her arms around him and laughing as they rolled together in bed.

When her expression of delight had subsided, he propped himself up on a pillow and lit a cigarette. “My last twist,” he said, “she died rather sudden, run down in the road by a toff in his landau.”

Elizabeth didn’t know what to make of his statement.

“Working at the docks, I meet all sorts of men, fresh off their ships, asking for girls. I’m a good judge of character, no matter where they come from, and will provide you with only the best clients.”

All that she thought she’d known about the man fled in an instant as she looked at him. With a sudden disquieting sense that she faced Klaudio, she recoiled in shock, falling backwards out of the bed and striking her head on the floor.

Mr. Kidney helped her up. She wasn’t so addled by the blow that she didn’t know him and what had happened. He was not Klaudio, but perhaps he might as well be. While she was working on turning him into a lover, he’d been grooming her to become an employee.

Mr. Kidney had seen through her from the start, or at least had an intuition that she’d be receptive to engaging in prostitution.
Is it that obvious?
Elizabeth shrank inside from the knowledge that one could read her character so easily.

You don’t want to regret not hearing from me,
Liza said.

Elizabeth begrudgingly accepted the truth presented by her cynical voice. Mr. Kidney was indeed a cash carrier.

Question him
, Liza said.

“That was quite a tumble,” Mr. Kidney said, gently touching the back of her head. “Did you crack your tuppenny loaf?”

Elizabeth struggled not to recoil from his touch and relax. She shook her head slowly, trying to think. She had a decision to make. Once she’d composed herself, she asked, “How many girls do you have?”

“I keep one at a time,” he said. “Since she’s my Judy as well, I keep her safe. Clients come here only when I’m out.”

Elizabeth looked him in the eye and saw a vulnerability there, something she couldn’t quite name—a need, perhaps. No, he wasn’t the cold, scheming hector Klaudio had been.

For a ponce, Mr. Kidney wasn’t a bad sort, Elizabeth decided. He would introduce her to a lot of men over time. Possibly, the man who would provide for her in years to come would be aboard one of the ships he met at the docks.

When you meet that man in the future,
Bess said,
he’ll carry you away from London to his home abroad, perhaps to something better in a new place, like America.

“I can see that you didn’t understand,” Mr. Kidney said.

Elizabeth turned to him, looked him in the eyes, and shook her head dismissively. “Not at all,” she lied. “Yes, I would like to stay.”

Elizabeth assumed Liza would have something more to say, yet she remained strangely quiet.

~ ~ ~

Elizabeth moved her few possessions from the doss house in Flower and Dean Street to Mr. Kidney’s room. While with him, Elizabeth saw no more than one client per day. She required them to wear vulcanized rubber sheaths when having sexual intercourse with her. Preferring the “buttered bun,” as he referred to it, Mr. Kidney most often mounted her within an hour after she’d finished with a client. In lieu of payment for her services, she ate well and enjoyed the comfort of Mr. Kidney’s room. She did, however, occasionally receive a small gratuity from a client, which she hid away for future use. The days and weeks bled together.