While in London, Eddowes took to drinking. She left her family in 1880. By the following year, she was living with a new partner, 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. Here she took to casual sex work to pay the rent. To avoid contact with his former partner, Conway drew his army pension under the assumed name of Quinn, and kept their sons' addresses secret from her.