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Ada Wilson

Ada Wilson (b. Zoa Ada Bisdey Elbury)

Birth date: 1863 Attacked: March, 1888 (ca. 25, survived) & 25th June 1891 (ca. 28, survived) Death (age): August 24th 1952 (aged 89)

Complexion: ? Eyes colour: ? Hair colour: ? Height: ? Ocupation: Seamstress, tailoress, waterproof hand clothes making.

Resting place: ?

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Early life

Zoa Ada Bisdey Elbury was born in 1863 in Bristol, to Henry Edwin Elbury and Emma Fry. They married shortly before she was born. He had been born and bred in Bristol, and she was from Somerset. Henry’s father and elder brother were both stoneware potters – he followed them into this occupation, and seemed to do reasonably well. By 1871, Henry and Emma had been married for eight years, and had three children – Ada, Charles and Henry – and a servant. They lived in what seems to have been reasonable comfort on Clarence Square, in Bedminster, Bristol.

In the circumstances, it is hard to know whether the family’s next appearance in the census – at 39 Stratfield Road, in Bromley St Leonard, signified a reversal of fortunes. If guests and auxiliaries were anything to go by, then they had a lodger in 1881, rather than a servant. There were more mouths to feed (Rose, Emma and Thomas) and Ada, now 17, was earning her living – as a tailoress.

1888 Attack

Ada Wilson lived at 9 Maidman Street, Burdett road, a small thoroughfare lying midway between the East India Dock and Bow roads in Bow, a district in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets in East London. On March 28, 1888, at 12:30am while she was at home she was attacked by a man of about 30 years of age, 5ft 6ins in height, with a sunburnt face and a fair moustache. He was wearing a dark coat, light trousers and a wide awake hat. According to Ada, the man was a completely unknown, and forced his way into the room and demanded money, and when she refused he stabbed her twice in the throat with a clasp knife and ran, leaving her for dead. It is reported that nearby neighbours almost captured the man, but he found his escape.

Witness and neighbour Rose Bierman, a young Jewess who lived upstairs with her mother at the same building as Ada, explained that she knew Ada was married but didn’t know her husband, and that she was always getting visitors. About the man who attacked her she said that “whether he was her husband or not I could not say.(…) Well, I don’t know who the young man was, but about midnight I heard the most terrible screams one can imagine. Running downstairs I saw Mrs. Wilson, partially dressed, wringing her hands and crying, ‘Stop that man for cutting my throat! He has stabbed me!’ She then fell fainting in the passage. I saw all that as I was coming downstairs, but as soon as I commenced to descend I noticed a young fair man rush to the front door and let himself out. He did not seem somehow to unfasten the catch as if he had been accustomed to do so before. He had a light coat on, I believe. I don’t know what kind of wound Mrs. Wilson has received, but it must have been deep, I should say, from the quantity of blood in the passage. I do not know what I shall do myself. I am now ‘keeping the feast,’ and how can I do so with what has occurred here? I am now going to remove to other lodgings.“

A couple of young women rushed up to two police-constables on duty outside the Royal Hotel, and said that a woman was being murdered. The two constables, Ronald Saw and Thomas Longhurst, immediately ran to the house indicated, and there found Ada Wilson lying in the passage, bleeding profusely from a fearful wound in the throat. Doctor Wheeler, from the Mile End road, was instantly sent for, who, after binding up the woman’s wounds, sent her to the London Hospital (Sophia Ward), Whitechapel, where Dr William Rawes ascertained that she was in a very critical condition.

Detective-Inspectors Wildey and Dillworth had charge of the case, and looked for the attacker. Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper, April 1, 1888 issue reports that “subsequent enquiries … revealed the fact that a dispute arose between the woman and a man who she states is her husband … He was pursued for some distance by a neighbour … But the would-be murderer sharply turned a corner, and was soon lost in the labyrinth of streets.” No conviction was ever obtained. By the time Ada Wilson returned home from the hospital, on April 27 1888, all hope of finding her attacker – or of proving anything in a court of law – seemed to have disappeared.

Authorities at the time of the 1888 Whitechapel murders made no link between her attack and those murders and she never was questioned again.

Mrs Wilson

On 2 January 1889, a little over eight months after returning from the hospital, she married Samuel Wilson (she was already using his surname as many women did when lived with their common-law husband but weren’t legally married) at the registry office in Bristol. Samuel was older than Ada: he said that he was thirty-three on his marriage certificate. He described himself as an engine fitter. He abandoned Ada in or around February 1891; she returned to her parents’ house in time for the 1891 census, at which point the family resided at 78 Rounton Road, Bromley St Leonard. According to the enumerator’s records, Ada was married, twenty-seven years of age, and a “waterproof hand” – making waterproof clothing from India rubber. This profession – lightly skilled, but perhaps quick to be picked up once one had the job – perhaps suggested a degree of specialisation, but Ada was still firmly in the clothing-manufacturing trade.

Ada was attacked by her husband again on June 25 1891. He was drunk and asked her money, which she didn’t have, and he asked to live with Ada again, but the proposition failed to appeal to her. “Go to work,” she said, “and be different”. He was arrested. According to the Daily News, July 8, 1891 issue, “Samuel Wilson, 40, was indicted for maliciously wounding Ada Wilson, his wife” who was also injured with a knife on her neck. Her parents were also assaulted. When the case came to the Quarter Sessions at Clerkenwell on 7 July 1891, Samuel Wilson defended himself. The chairman Mr. Richard Loveland-Loveland, said that “the prisoner was a very dangerous character, and therefore he would be sentenced to six months’ imprisonment with hard labour.” She asked for a separation.

Little more is seen of Samuel, or Ada. Whether they ever took out their separation order is not known. In December 1898 Ada’s brother Henry had a daughter and named her Zoa Lavinia Elbury.

Later life

Zoa Ada Wilson died on August 24th 1952, aged 89 of a pneumonia, at the Whipps Cross Hospital in Leytonstone, London; she was the widow of engineer Samuel Wilson.

Aftermath

Authorities at the time of the murders made no link between her attacks and the Whitechapel murders. Samuel Wilson was never arrested for those crimes.

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To know more:

Casebook website - Casebook Message Boards - Press report (from Casebook) - Press report (from Casebook) - Press report (from Casebook) - Biographic details from Casebook website - Wiki Casebook - Casebook Forums

JTR Forums

Jack The Ripper.org - Press reports (from Jack The Ripper.org)

Jack The Ripper Tour

The Jack The Ripper Tour

Jack The Ripper Map

Crimenes de Whitechapel (Spanish)

Jack El Destripador (Spanish)

Red Jack (Italian)

BEGG, Paul (2013): Jack The Ripper. The Facts.

BEGG, Paul & BENNETT, John (2014): The forgotten victims.

BEGG, Paul; FIDO, Martin & SKINNER, Keith (1996): The Jack The Ripper A – Z.

EDDLESTON, John J. (2001): Jack the Ripper: An Encyclopedia.

FIDO, Martin (1987, 1993): The Crimes, Detection and Death of Jack The Ripper.

HINTON, Bob (1998): From Hell… The Jack The Ripper Mystery.

JAKUBOWSKI, Maxim & BRAUND, Nathan (1999): The Mammoth Book of Jack The Ripper.

MATTHEWS, Rupert (2013): Jack the Ripper’s Street of Terror: Life during the reign of Victorian London’s most brutal killer.

RIPPER, Mark: Ada Wilson. Doubly Unfortunate, in Ripperologist no. 125, April 2012.

SCOTT, Christopher (2004): Jack the Ripper: A Cast of Thousands.

SUDGEN, Phillip (1994): The Complete History of Jack The Ripper.

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