In the early hours, the killer known as Jack the Ripper struck twice within the same hour. His third victim, Elizabeth Stride, was found with her throat cut and still bleeding, her killer likely interrupted before he could mutilate her further. Denied his ritual, he found a fourth victim within the hour: Catherine Eddowes, whose body was left with her intestines arranged over her shoulder and part of her womb removed.

Weeks later, a Londoner opened a parcel addressed simply “From Hell” to find half a preserved kidney inside, accompanied by a taunting letter. Tests suggested it may have belonged to Eddowes herself, though the claim was never proven and the killer was never caught.

Murders of Liz Stride and Catherine Eddowes
Murders of Liz Stride and Catherine Eddowes

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Timothy Sullivan lived with an elderly shepherd named Daniel Harrington at King’s Plains, near Carcoar in the Bathurst district. On the night of 4 June 1852, neighbours were woken by Sullivan himself shouting “robbers, robbers” from his hut. When a neighbour, Daniel Healy, ran to help, he found no robber, only Sullivan raining blows on the old man with a heavy weapon he then hurled onto the roof. Harrington, barely alive, managed to whisper his own name before he died.

At the Bathurst Assizes the judge dismissed the robbery story as invention, noting that nothing had actually been stolen and that the wounds showed deliberate, prolonged violence. Convicted of wilful murder, Sullivan was hanged on 30 September 1852; the drop was so severe it very nearly tore his head from his body.

On the scaffold a priest read a statement on Sullivan’s behalf: he claimed he had rushed out in the dark with a flesh fork believing a robber was near, striking blindly, and insisted “he did not know it was Harrington he was wounding.”

Sandstone building in Carcoar
Sandstone building in Carcoar

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In October 1851, at a shearers’ hut on a station on the Castlereagh, a Chinese labourer named John Newing burst in armed with a shear blade lashed to a pole and stabbed a fellow countryman, Hing, in the groin. Bystanders wrenched the weapon from him, but he returned with two knives before he could be disarmed again, and Hing bled out within minutes.

At his trial at Bathurst in August 1852, defence counsel argued there had been no intent to kill, telling the court that Newing himself had said he aimed only for the knees. The jury was unmoved and returned a verdict of guilty, and Newing was sentenced to death without hope of mercy. He went to the gallows the following month alongside an unrelated condemned man, Timothy Sullivan, in an execution remembered chiefly for how badly it was botched.

Unable to speak or understand English, and with no interpreter willing to attend him at the end, Newing left no final statement and died in silence.

Sheep shearer scissors.
Sheep shearer scissors.

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William Miller, a labourer at Hawkesbury near Sydney, attacked Bridget Horan (also recorded as Kean) with a hoe on the afternoon of 18 September 1805. Minutes later he ran to a neighbour and blurted out the truth: “Yes: I have killed Biddy, and am going to deliver myself up.” He then led the chief constable straight to her body himself, the hoe still lying beside it.

At his trial before the Court of Criminal Jurisdiction in Sydney, Miller pleaded not guilty to acting with malice, insisting the killing had come from unbridled momentary rage rather than intent. The court was unconvinced. He was convicted and hanged on 30 September 1805, his body afterwards handed over for dissection.

Witnesses said Miller never wavered from his confession, going to the gallows with what observers called sincere repentance, seemingly resigned that only his own death could answer for hers.

Rustic garden hoe in dirt.
Rustic garden hoe in dirt.

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On This Day in True Crime History

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