History
The square occupies the site of the cloister of Holy Trinity Priory, Aldgate which was demolished under Henry VIII at the time of the Dissolution of the Monasteries. The south corner of the square was the site of the murder of Catherine Eddowes by "Jack the Ripper". Her mutilated body was found there at 1:45 in the morning on 30 September 1888. This was the westernmost of the Whitechapel Murders and the only one located within the City.
Eddowes' murder on the site of the old monastery is ascribed to an ancient curse in a contemporary penny dreadful entitled The Curse Upon Mitre Square A.D. 1530-1888 by J.F. Brewer.
Read more about this topic: Mitre Square
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“The reverence for the Scriptures is an element of civilization, for thus has the history of the world been preserved, and is preserved.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“... that there is no other way,
That the history of creation proceeds according to
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—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
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—John Ashbery (b. 1927)