Mitre Square is a small

square In Euclidean geometry, a square is a regular quadrilateral, which means that it has four equal sides and four equal angles (90-degree angles, π/2 radian angles, or right angles). It can also be defined as a rectangle with two equal-length adj ...

in the

City of London The City of London is a city, ceremonial county and local government district that contains the historic centre and constitutes, alongside Canary Wharf, the primary central business district (CBD) of London. It constituted most of London fr ...

. It measures about by and is connected via three passages with

Mitre Street The mitre (Commonwealth English) (; Greek: μίτρα, "headband" or "turban") or miter (American English; American and British English spelling differences#-re, -er, see spelling differences), is a type of headgear now known as the tradition ...

to the south west, to Creechurch Place to the north west and, via St James's Passage (formerly Church Passage), to Duke's Place to the north east.

History

The square occupies the site of the cloister of

Holy Trinity Priory The Holy Trinity Priory, also known as Christchurch Aldgate, was a priory of Austin canons ( Black Canons) founded around 1108 by the English queen Matilda of Scotland near Aldgate in London.Henry VIII Henry VIII (28 June 149128 January 1547) was King of England from 22 April 1509 until his death in 1547. Henry is best known for his six marriages, and for his efforts to have his first marriage (to Catherine of Aragon) annulled. His disa ...

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 Jack the Ripper was an unidentified serial killer active in and around the impoverished Whitechapel district of London, England, in the autumn of 1888. In both criminal case files and the contemporaneous journalistic accounts, the killer wa ...

. Her mutilated body was found there at 1:44 in the morning on 30 September 1888. This was the westernmost of the

Whitechapel murders The Whitechapel murders were committed in or near the largely impoverished Whitechapel district in the East End of London between 3 April 1888 and 13 February 1891. At various points some or all of these eleven unsolved murders of women have ...

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 Penny dreadfuls were cheap popular serial literature produced during the nineteenth century in the United Kingdom. The pejorative term is roughly interchangeable with penny horrible, penny awful, and penny blood. The term typically referred to ...

entitled ''The Curse Upon Mitre Square A.D. 1530–1888'' by J.F. Brewer.

One Mitre Square

A 19-storey, 79m-high office development is proposed for the square, known as One Mitre Square.Skyscrapernews.com
Mitre Square

Image gallery

File:Mitre Square Corner.jpg, 1938 photograph of Mitre Square.The body of Catherine Eddowes was discovered close to the fence seen at the centre of this image on 30 September 1888 File:Rippers-corner.jpg, 'Ripper's Corner' in Mitre Square, scene of Eddowes' murder. File:Whitechapel Spitalfields 7 murders.JPG, The Whitechapel murders – Mitre Square is the red dot to the bottom left corner. File:Mitre-Square.jpg, Mitre Square, viewed from near the site of the Eddowes murder. File:Mitre-Square-2.jpg, Mitre Square, 2006.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mitre Square Jack the Ripper Squares in the City of London