I have an article in Issue 173 of Ripperologist, out this month, looking at the life and crimes of Lizzie Halliday, a woman accused of being Jack the Ripper. I first wrote about Halliday in my book about the Jack the Ripper suspects, published in 2018 which, coincidentally, is the last time I contributed to Ripperologist. Seven years later I continue to research and document the individuals that history may have forgotten if someone had not suggested that they were responsible for Jack the Ripper’s murders in Whitechapel in1888.

We know now that Lizzie was in jail in Pennsylvania at the time of the murders. Five years later she was back in jail, awaiting trial for the murder of her husband and two women. The Sherrif responsible for her care, told the media that she was involved in the Whitechapel murders. It is just one of many false claims about her, some of which came from her own mouth.

Lizzie was twice interviewed in her cell by pioneering journalist Nellie Bly, who became famous after feigning insanity to enter an asylum and expose the cruel treatment of inmates. Shortly before killing her husband Lizzie was released from Matteawan State Hospital for the Criminally Insane but Bly decided that she was sane. Much of what we know about Lizzie comes from these interviews. At best, it is contradictory, revealing a desperate, poorly educated and unstable person. Bly often used her articles to give voices to people who would not otherwise be heard. Here she chose to chastise and condemn Lizzie.

The New York Government overruled the jury and spared Lizzie the death penalty. She spent the rest of her life back in Matteawan, killing a warden called Nellie with a pair of scissors in 1906.