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Elizabeth Stride was Swedish and was born Elisabeth Gustafsdotter on 27th November, 1843, in Torslanda, near Gothenburg.
== Family Life ==
At the age of almost 17 Elizabeth entered domestic service, but by March 1865 she had been registered by the police as a prostitute. She moved to London in February 1866, having previously given birth to a stillborn daughter in April 1865. On 7th March, 1869, she married John Thomas Stride. Her name was given on the marriage certificate as Elizabeth Gustifson.
By the following year John Stride was running a coffee house at Upper North Street, Poplar, but in due course the marriage broke down and Elizabeth Stride began to invent a new past for herself.
Elizabeth lied to most people saying that she had lost her husband and two of her children in the Princess Alice disaster. The Princess Alice was a pleasure steamer that collided with a steam collier on the river Thames on 3rd September, 1878. The pleasure boat went down, with the loss of 527 lives.