Sometimes the inspiration to look through a different lens at the information on hand comes when I am not actively researching. This time I was reading the book, The Cowkeeper's Wish. At one point in the story one of the women moved to her own apartment in Whitechapel just before Jack the Ripper started his activities in the area. Her apartment was in College Buildings, a new building on Wentworth Street, and the authors pointed out how close this was to Jack's hunting area.
Until I read that, I hadn't clued in to the fact that Henry Cavanagh, my great grandfather, was living in the Ripper's hunting grounds. Henry lived on the same short street as the woman in the book. Both the 1881 and 1891 censuses show Henry Cavanagh living with his family at 82 Wentworth Street, which was adjacent to George Yard and the George Yard Buildings where the mutilated body of Martha Tabram was found on a landing inside the building.
By some accounts, Martha's killing was the first of a series of seemingly motiveless murders of women in London's Whitechapel. The deaths gradually came to be seen as the work of one killer. As the summer and fall of 1888 advanced towards winter the killings continued. The fears of those who lived in the East End were stoked by the press who, with little concrete news to relay, printed rumours which plunged many into panic and despair.
Women were particularly affected, after all, they were the target of this insane killer who seemed to claim his victims at random. Polly Nichol was the next victim (by some accounts the first Ripper victim) and she was almost the same age as Henry's wife, Charlotte. Did Charlotte dare to go out by herself after dark? What of Henry and Charlotte's two daughters, Charlotte and Ellen, both young women, both listed as paper bag makers in the 1891 census? Did they make sure to go to work together, if their work took them outside the home?
It was an uneasy time that shone a spotlight on life in the East End. Because of all that has been written about this series of murders as well as numerous movie and television renderings of this area of London in the time period, there is much information to be gleaned about the life and culture of the inhabitants of the area which my family called home. Fortunately for those who lived in Whitechapel, with the close of the year 1888 this particular series of murders appears to have come to an end but the accounts and speculation continue to this day.
Sources:
Kasaboski,
Tracy & Kristen Den Hartog. The
Cowkeepers’ Wish: A Genealogical Journey. Douglas & McIntyre, Madeira
Park, BC, 2018
Sugden,
Philip. The Complete History of Jack the
Ripper. Robinson Publishing Ltd, London, 1995.
Image:
By
Unknown -
http://www.bbc.co.uk/london/content/image_galleries/jack_the_ripper_gallery.shtml?5,
Public Domain
