Mother and daughter never saw each other that day, and no one seems to know where Catherine went. Perhaps she walked to Bermondsey and was dismayed to find that Annie had moved. Perhaps the neighbors told Catherine that Annie and her husband had left the neighborhood at least two years ago. Perhaps no one knew who Catherine was talking about when she said she was looking for her daughter. It’s possible Catherine didn’t intend to go to Bermondsey at all and just wanted an excuse to earn pennies for gin. She may have been all too aware that no one in her family wanted anything to do with her. Catherine was a drunken, immoral woman who belonged in the dustbin. She was an Unfortunate and a disgrace to her children. She did not return to Kelly by four o’clock, as she had said she would, but got herself locked up at Bishopsgate Police Station for being drunk.
The police station was just north of Houndsditch, where Kelly had seen Catherine last when they were eating and drinking away his boot money. When word reached him that she was in jail for being drunk, he figured she was safe enough and went to bed. At the inquest, he would admit that she had been locked up before. But as was said of the other Ripper victims, Catherine was a “sober, quiet” woman who got jolly and liked to sing when she had one drink too many, which, of course, was rare. None of the Ripper’s victims were addicted to alcohol, friends swore from the witness stand.
In Catherine Eddows’s time, alcoholism was not considered a disease. “Habitual drunkenness” afflicted someone “of a weak mind” or “weak intellect” who was destined for the lunatic asylum or jail. Drunkenness was a clear indication that a person was of thin moral fiber, a sinner given to vice, an imbecile in the making. Denial was just as persistent then as it is now and euphemisms were plentiful. People got into the drink. They had a drop to drink. They were known to drink. They were the worse for drink. Catherine Eddows was the worse for drink Saturday night. By eight thirty, she had passed out on a footway on Aldgate High Street, and Police Constable George Simmons picked her up and moved her off to the side. He leaned her against shutters, but she could not stay on her feet.
Simmons called for another constable and they got on either side of her to help her to the Bishopsgate Police Station. Catherine was too drunk to say where she lived or whether she knew anyone who might come for her, and when she was asked her name, she mumbled, “Nothing.” At close to 9:00 P.M., she was in jail. At quarter past midnight, she was awake and singing to herself. Constable George Hutt testified at the inquest that he had been checking on her the past three or four hours, and when he stopped by her cell at approximately 1:00 A.M., she asked him when he was going to let her go. When she was capable of taking care of herself, he replied.
She told him she was capable of that now, and wanted to know what time it was. Too late for her to get “any more drink,” he said. “Well, what time is it?” she persisted. He told her “just on one,” and she retorted, “I shall get a damned fine hiding when I get home.” Constable Hutt unlocked her cell and warned her, “And serves you right; you have no right to get drunk.” He brought her inside the office for questioning by the station sergeant, and she gave a false name and address: “Mary Ann Kelly” of “Fashion Street.”
Constable Hutt pushed open swinging doors that led to a passageway, showing her out. “This way, Missus,” he said, and told her to make sure to pull the outer door shut behind her. “Good night, ol’ Cock,” she said, leaving the door open and turning left toward Houndsditch, where she had promised to meet John Kelly nine hours earlier. Probably no one will ever know why Catherine headed that way first and then set out to the City, to Mitre Square, which was an eight- or ten-minute walk from Bishopsgate Police Station. Perhaps she planned to earn a few more pennies, and trouble wasn’t likely in the City, at least not the kind of trouble Catherine was considering. The wealthy City of London was crowded and thriving during the workday, but most people whose jobs brought them into the Square Mile did not live there. Catherine and John Kelly didn’t live there, either.