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View Full Version : Liz Stride: Reasons For Her Presence On Berner Street


Howard Brown
02-23-2010, 04:44 PM
To compliment the ongoing threads related to Liz Stride, I thought it might be good to compile a list of potential reasons Stride was in front of the IWMEC on the night she was murdered. Any additional reasons you may have to share are greatly encouraged.

1. Stride was on the make that evening and actively pursuing a client. Any client.
---There happens to be a reference in the literature... which I would appreciate someone mentioning on the thread at some point, where a police constable stated that couples seldom were found traipsing Berner Street at the time of her murder---.

2. Stride was being used to conduct surveillence on someone at the IWMEC.
----This notion is currently being hashed out on another thread.

3. Stride was waiting for someone who she knew went down Berner Street at that time of evening for whatever reason.
---This explains her reluctance ( according to James Brown's statement ) to engage with one man's possible approach for sex.

4. Stride was waiting for someone she knew at that spot for a liason.
---As with the above, her rejection of one man that evening could mean she was waiting for someone special.

5. Stride was waiting in front of the IWMEC building for the security she may have felt it provided and for whatever reason you may suggest.
---Stride, for whatever reason, waited there at 40 Berner Street because the club may have given her a sense of security. Men going in and out of the club, noise from within, all this might have given Stride a feeling that she was safe at that spot to solicit or to wait for a particular man. With the atmosphere the way it was at the time on the street, no prostitute or woman could feel safe on their own. Perhaps this is why she chose to make her presence at the front of the club.

6. Stride was ill and sober and simply waiting for someone whom she met up with before..maybe at or outside the Queens Head earlier that day...or somewhere else she frequented...and a mutually arranged rendezvous was chosen. Bad choice.

7. Stride was waiting for anyone she knew to pass by for whatever reason.

8. Stride was not soliciting,period. Why she was there is anyone's guess.

Mike Richards
02-24-2010, 05:59 PM
Good list of options Howard....and I just want to point out that the vast majority of the reasons you or anyone could think of for her being there begin with "Liz was waiting for.....".

When coupled with her "good evening wear", her request to lint brush her skirt before leaving the lodging house, the flowers that appear on her jacket, the cachous she has gripped in death, and the fact that she expressly tells her lodgemate that she will not be staying there that night and did not know when she might return suggests that she had a social engagement that she expected would last at least that entire night.

From what I can see of other Unfortunates out earning for food and shelter, or booze,... they either end up drunk with no money for the bed, or they end up without clients. Polly Nichols and Mary Ann Cox are the examples.

But Liz did not have alcohol in her system, and she had already declared that she wouldnt be staying in her normal bed. So she doesnt fit the circumstances that we see in other Unfortunates...she didnt need clients for drink because she hadnt been drinking...and she didnt need clients to raise money for her bed, as she had already stated she didnt plan to have to spend money on that, at least for that one night.

So...since Unfortunates are not career prostitutes as such but are single women who are forced to resort to selling themselves to eat, drink and sleep indoors...and since Liz was found to have some traces of food in her stomach and no alcohol in her system and she had already declared she wouldnt need to have money to pay for her usual digs....it would seem the usual drivers for an Unfortunate to solicit at 1am are not present here.

My best regards HB