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Mitre Square is in the City of London. It measures no more than about 450 square metres and is connected via three passages with Mitre Street to the SW, to Creechurch Place to the NW and, via St James's Passage (formerly Church Passage), to Duke's Place to the NE.

The south corner of the square was the site of the murder of Catherine Eddowes. She was the fourth victim of Jack the Ripper. Her mutilated body was found there at 1.45 in the morning of the 30 September 1888.

Eddowes, also known as "Kate Conway", "Kate Kelly", and "Mary Ann Kelly", after her two successive common-law husbands, was born in Graisley Green, Wolverhampton on 14 April 1842. One year later she moved with her family to London, but later returned to Wolverhampton to gain employment as a tin plate stamper. Losing this job she took up with a man called Thomas Conway in Birmingham and moved with him to Windsor. She had three children, a girl and two boys. Taking to drink, she split from the family in 1880 and a year later was living with a new partner named John Kelly at Cooney's common lodging-house at 55 Flower and Dean Street, Spitalfields, at the centre of London's most notorious criminal rookery.

At the time of their separation, Conway agreed to pay her ten shillings per month, even though he had custody of the children. Four years later this stopped and when Kate investigated why she found that he was dead. She had already turned to drink and prostitution in Spitalfields and this made her completely destitute.

At 8.30 pm on Saturday 29 September, Eddowes was found lying drunk in the road on Aldgate High Street by PC Louis Robinson. She was taken into custody at Bishopsgate police station and detained until 1am on the morning of the 30th. When leaving the station, instead of turning right to take the shortest route to her home in Flower and Dean Street, she turned left towards Aldgate. She was last seen alive by three witnesses, Joseph Lawende, Joseph Hyam Levy and Harry Harris, standing talking with a man (presumably her killer) at the entrance to Church Passage (which leads west to Mitre Square) at 1.35am. Only ten minutes later (1.45 am) her mutilated body was found in the south corner of Mitre Square by PC Edward Watkins on his beat. Watkins said that he entered the square at 1.44 a.m, having previously been there at 1.30 a.m. Experts agreed that this left only ten minutes for Eddowes to have been killed and mutilated in the square. This estimate was revised in 1987, when the Coroner's papers were released and it was revealed that another Constable, James Harvey, went to the square between Watkins' two visits, approaching it by a different entrance. This, it was agreed, left only five minutes for the killing and subsequent mutilation to have taken place there. Martin Fido, in his book "The Crimes, Detection and Death of Jack the Ripper" was certain enough of that to query the evidence of the police surgeon Dr George Bagster Phillips who thought that the injuries to the earlier victim Annie Chapman would have taken well over 15 minutes - "Here was a woman more savagely mutilated in five minutes." Interestingly, in his post mortem report on Eddowes Dr Frederick Gordon Brown wrote, "I think the perpetrator of this act had sufficient time or he would not have nicked the lower eyelids. It would take at least five minutes." The identification of the woman seen by Joseph Lawende at 1.35 is doubtful, as Chief Inspector Donald Swanson intimated in his report. He wrote that Lawende had said that some clothing of the deceased's that he was shown resembled that of the woman he saw - "which was black. That was the extent of his identification."

Though this murder occurred within the City of London, it was close to the boundary of Whitechapel where the previous murders in the series had occurred. The mutilation of Eddowes' body and the abstraction of her left kidney and part of her womb by her murderer bore the signature of 'Jack the Ripper' and was very similar in nature to that of earlier victim Annie Chapman.

Due to the location of Mitre Square, the City Police under Detective Inspector James McWilliam joined the murder enquiry alongisde the Metropolitan Police who had been engaged in the previous Whitechapel murders. At 3am on the same day as she was murdered, a blood-stained fragment of Eddowes' apron was found lying in the passage of the doorway leading to Flats 108 and 119, Model Dwellings, Goulston Street, Whitechapel. Above it on the wall was a graffito commonly held to have been inscribed: "The Juwes are the men that Will not be Blamed for nothing". This Goulston Street graffito was washed away on the order of Superintendent Thomas Arnold before photographs could be taken, possibly due to concerns about racial tensions although the writing could also refer to the inability of the police force to catch the Ripper.

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