Friday, September 28th, Kelly returned to the lodging house at 55 Flower and Dean Street in Spitalfields, and Catherine stayed without him in a free bed at a casual ward. It is not known what she did that night. Kelly later stated at her inquest that she was not a woman of the streets, nor was he the sort to tolerate her being with another man. Catherine never brought him money in the morning, he added, perhaps to forestall any intimations that she might have picked up a pittance here and there through prostitution. He was adamant that she did not have an addiction to alcohol and was only occasionally “in the habit of slightly drinking to excess.”
Catherine and Kelly considered themselves man and wife and were fairly regular in paying the nightly rate of eightpence for their double bed at Flower and Dean Street. It was true they might have a word or two now and then. Some months earlier she had left him for “a few hours,” but Kelly swore under oath that he and Catherine had been getting along just fine of late. He said that on Saturday morning she offered to pawn some of her clothing so they could buy food, but he insisted that she pawn his boots instead. She did, for half a crown. That pawn ticket and
another one they had bought from a woman while hopping were safely tucked inside one of Catherine’s pockets, in hopes she might be able to reclaim Kelly’s boots and other valuables someday soon.
Saturday morning, September 29th, Catherine met up with Kelly between ten and eleven in the old clothing market at Houndsditch, a healed gash in the earth that in Roman days had been a moat protecting the city wall. Houndsditch ran between Aldgate High Street and Bishopsgate Within, and bordered the northeast side of the City of London. As Catherine and Kelly spent most of his boot money on food and enjoyed what for them was a hearty breakfast, she moved into the outer limits of her life. Within less than fifteen hours, Catherine Eddows would be bloodless and cold.
By early afternoon, she was dressed in what must have been everything she owned: a black jacket with imitation fur around the collar and the sleeves, two outer jackets brimmed in black silk braid and imitation fur, a chintz shirt with a Michaelmas daisy pattern and three flounces, a brown linsey dress bodice with a black velvet collar and brown metal buttons down the front, a gray petticoat, a very old green Alpaca skirt, a very old ragged blue skirt with a red flounce and light twill lining, a white calico chemise, a man’s white vest with buttons down the front and two outer pockets, brown ribbed stockings mended at the feet with white thread, a pair of men’s lace-up boots (the right boot repaired with red thread), a black straw bonnet trimmed with black beads and green and black velvet, a white apron, and “red gauze silk” and a large white handkerchief tied around her neck.
In her many layers and pockets were another handkerchief, bits and pieces of soap, string, white rag, white coarse linen, blue and white skirting, blue ticking and flannel, two black clay pipes, a red leather cigarette case, a comb, pins and needles, a ball of hemp, a thimble, a table knife, a teaspoon, and two old mustard tins safely securing a precious stash of sugar and tea she had bought with Kelly’s boot money. He did not have money for their bed that night, and at 2:00 P.M., Catherine told him she was going to Bermondsey in the southeast part of the city. Maybe she could find her daughter, Annie.
Annie used to have a house on King Street, and apparently Catherine didn’t know that her daughter had not lived in that house or in Bermondsey for years. Kelly said he wished Catherine wouldn’t go anywhere. “Stay here,” he said to her. She was insistent, and when Kelly called out to her to be careful of the “Knife” – the street name for the East End murderer – Catherine laughed. Of course she would be careful. She was always careful. She promised to be back in two hours.