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.
Their common lodging house at Flower and Dean Street was outside the City, and since Kelly was unaware of her after-hours entrepreneurial activities (or so he claimed after her death), perhaps she concluded that it was wise to stay in the City for a while, and not wander home and get into a row. Perhaps Catherine simply didn't know what she was doing. She had been in jail less than four hours. The average person metabolizes approximately one ounce of alcohol - or about one beer - per hour. Catherine must have had quite a lot of alcohol on board to have been "falling down drunk," and it is possible that when Constable Hutt bade her good night, she was still intoxicated.
At the very least, she was hung over and bleary headed, maybe suffering from tremors and blank spots in her memory, too. The best cure was a little hair of the dog that bit her. She needed another drink and a bed, and could have neither without money. If her man was going to give her hell, maybe it was best if she earned her pennies and slept somewhere else the rest of the night. Whatever she was thinking, it doesn't appear that reconnecting with Kelly was foremost on her mind when she left the police station. Heading to Mitre Square meant walking in the opposite direction from where Kelly was staying on Flower and Dean Street.
Some thirty minutes after Catherine left her jail cell, Joseph Lawende, a commercial traveler, and his friends Joseph Levy and Harry Harris left the Imperial Club at 16 and 17 Duke Street, in the City. It was raining and Lawende was walking at a slightly faster pace than his companions. At the corner of Duke Street and Church Passage, the street that led to Mitre Square, he noticed a man and a woman together. Lawende would state at the inquest that the man's back was to him, and all he could tell was that the man was taller than the woman and wearing a cap that might have had a peak.
The woman was dressed in a black jacket and a black bonnet, Lawende recalled, and as bad as the lighting conditions were at the time, he was later able to identify these items of clothing at the police station as having belonged to the woman he saw at 1:30 A.M., an exact time he based on the clubhouse clock and his own watch. "I doubt whether I should know him again," Lawende said of the man. "I did not hear a word said. They did not either of them appear to be quarreling. They appeared conversing very quietly - I did not look back to see where they went."
Joseph Levy, a butcher, did not get a good look at the couple, either, but he estimated that the man was perhaps three inches taller than the woman. As he passed down Duke Street, he commented to his friend Harris, "I don't like going home by myself when I see these characters about." When questioned closely by the coroner at the inquest, Levy amended his statement a bit. "There was nothing I saw about the man and woman which caused me to fear them," he said.
City of London officials would assure journalists that Mitre Square was not the sort of place where prostitutes prowled, and that City Police routinely were on the lookout for men and women together at late hours. If constables were instructed to take note of men and women in the Square at late hours, perhaps this suggested that questionable activity did go on there. Mitre Square was poorly lit. It was accessible by three long, dark passageways. It was filled with empty buildings, and a policeman's leather heels striking the pavement could be heard from far away and allowed plenty of time to hide.
Because Catherine Eddows was seen with a man just before her murder, it was theorized that before she was locked up, she had made an appointment to meet a client in Mitre Square. Such a suggestion seems unlikely if not absurd. She was with Kelly until 2:00 P.M. She was drunk and in jail until 1:00 A.M. It is hard to believe she promised a customer a late-night rendezvous when quick sex could be bought during day hours, too. There were plenty of stairways, tumbledown buildings, and other deserted shambles where hidden activities could go on. Even if Catherine had made the "appointment" while she was drunk, there is a good chance she would not have remembered it later. It is simpler to assume that while she may have headed toward the City in search of business, she had no particular client in mind but was looking for the luck of the draw.