Like other East End prostitutes, Mary Ann Nichols, better known as Polly, had known happier times. She had married when she was 22 and given birth to 5 children, but the marriage proved to be an unhappy one. Her husband had an affair, and Polly turned to drink. After the marriage failed, her husband kept the children and supported Polly with a small allowance for a couple of years. He ended the allowance in 1882 when he found out that Polly had become a prostitute. Without the allowance, her circumstances deteriorated steadily until she was living homeless in Trafalgar Square at the end of 1887. Her life improved in the spring of 1888, just months before her death. She managed to get a job working as a servant in the home of a police clerk. Unfortunately, she could not resist the lure of alcohol. She stole some clothes from her employers and returned to living as a prostitute in the East End.

Polly was last seen alive by a friend of hers named Ellen Holland at the corner of Whitehall Road and Osborn Street. Polly and her friend spoke for a few minutes in front of the now-destroyed Church of St. Mary Matfellon until the bells chimed at 2:30 AM. Ellen tried to talk her friend off the streets for the night, but Polly wasn’t worried. The alcohol and her pretty new bonnet had put her into a good mood. She bragged that she had already earned and spent her rent three times that day. She just needed to find one more client willing to pay for sex. The last that Ellen saw of her friend was Polly stumbling drunkenly east along Whitechapel Road.

Now we shift ahead about an hour to the present location, which is several blocks east of where Polly was last seen alive. Back in Polly’s time, this small street was known as Buck’s Row. To the west was a five-storey school building, the same that you see now. To the east, on the south side of this street, were a series of small two-storey cottages. To the north were warehouses and the Essex Wharf. The only streetlight was a small gas lamp at the end of the block that cast very little light over the cobblestones that once paved this narrow road.

At 3:40 AM, a man named Charles Cross was walking to work along Buck’s Row and saw what he initially thought was a bundle of clothes lying on the ground in the shadows. At that same time, another man named Robert Paul was walking along Buck’s Row on his way to work. He and Cross looked down at the woman at their feet. She was lying flat on her back on the ground on the south side of the street. At the time, this area was just outside of the gates to a local stable. Her head was pointed to the east while her left hand was touching the gate. Both men could see that her skirts were pulled up to her stomach. She was warm to the touch, but they could not determine if she had passed out drunk or was dead. The street was too dark for them to see the deep gashes in her throat that had almost completely cut off her head. They were both running late for their jobs and didn’t want to waste any more time. They pulled her skirts down and reported the matter to the first police constable that they saw on their way to work.

Minutes after Cross and Paul left, a police constable walking his regular beat happened upon the body. He had walked this area just 30 minutes before and noticed nothing out of the ordinary. By the light of his lantern, he saw that the woman’s throat had been cut. She was lying on her back with her eyes open and her hands lying open at her sides. Her precious straw bonnet trimmed with black velvet lay close to her left hand on the ground. A doctor was sent for while the police began to question the people who lived in the area.

The victim’s hands and wrists were cold, but her legs and body were still warm. He believed that she had been dead for half an hour or less.
The body was removed quickly to the mortuary for closer examination. When the clothes were removed, the doctor realized that the cuts on the throat were just the start of the mutilations.

…her throat had been cut left to right, two distinct cuts being on the left side, the windpipe, gullet and spinal cord being cut through; a bruise apparently of a thumb … [was] on [the] right lower jaw, [and] also on [the] left cheek; the abdomen had been cut open from [the] center of the bottom ribs along [the] right side, under [the] pelvis to [the] left of the stomach, there the wound was jagged; the … coating of the stomach, was also cut in several places, and two small stabs on [her] private parts; apparently done with a strong bladed knife;

The doctor believed that all of the wounds had been made by the same knife. He estimated that the murder and mutilations could have been done within 4 to 5 minutes. The small amount of blood at the scene and on the victim’s clothes from the huge wounds suggested Polly was dead before her throat and abdomen were slashed.

Polly Nichols’ death convinced the police that they had a new type of murderer on their hands, one that did not kill for money or anger or jealousy. This killer brutally stabbed random strangers to death, seemingly for entertainment. The police were convinced that more deaths would follow. And they were right.

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