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
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“It’s not the sentiments of men which make history but their actions.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)
“Only the history of free peoples is worth our attention; the history of men under a despotism is merely a collection of anecdotes.”
—Sébastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort (1741–1794)
“When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand—a center of gravity.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)