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:
“In the history of the human mind, these glowing and ruddy fables precede the noonday thoughts of men, as Aurora the sun’s rays. The matutine intellect of the poet, keeping in advance of the glare of philosophy, always dwells in this auroral atmosphere.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The steps toward the emancipation of women are first intellectual, then industrial, lastly legal and political. Great strides in the first two of these stages already have been made of millions of women who do not yet perceive that it is surely carrying them towards the last.”
—Ellen Battelle Dietrick, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 13, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“The history of a soldier’s wound beguiles the pain of it.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)