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.

Follow the case of Jack the Ripper

A woman’s survival in the East End was almost totally dependent on a man sharing his wages and home with her. Without a provider or a job of her own, she would likely become a prostitute to survive. An East End prostitute would sell herself for the price of a drink or a few crusts of stale bread. She would have sex on any dark street corner. Her clients were often drunk and could be violent. Her danger increased after she received her few pennies of payment. Gangs of thugs regularly beat prostitutes for their meager earnings, sometimes killing them in the process. Many prostitutes ended their days as unidentified murder victims. Most of these women were quickly forgotten.

A handful of these women have been given a strange dose of fame and immortality thanks to the blade of Jack the Ripper. The first of these unlucky women that we shall meet is Martha Tabram. She was murdered here in the early morning hours of Tuesday, August 7, 1888.

The story begins with the evening’s accounts from Mary Ann Connelly, better known on the streets as Pearly Poll. Mary Ann Connelly and Martha Tabram had been drinking late on Monday with two soldiers, a corporal and a private. Poll and her soldier went off on their own shortly before midnight while Martha and her soldier walked in the direction of the George Yard Buildings. About 30 minutes later, Poll and her soldier separated with the soldier heading in the direction of the George Yard Buildings. This is the last time Mary Connelly would see Martha Tabram.

Later in the night, two residents would walk past Martha’s body on the landing of the George Yard Buildings. The second resident, John Reeves would take notice of the pool of blood surrounding Martha, and reported the murder to the Police Constable, PC Barret.

When PC Barrett examined the body, he saw the remains of a plump middle-aged woman, 5 feet 3 inches or 1.6 meters tall with dark hair and complexion. She wore a black bonnet, a brown petticoat covered by a dark green skirt and a long dark jacket and boots. Her old and ragged clothes were torn open at the front, and she had been stabbed. She was lying on her back with her legs open and her skirts pulled up. The condition of her skirts and legs led Barrett to believe that she had recently had sexual intercourse.

There was no blood outside the immediate area where the body was found, suggesting that the woman had been murdered in this location. Her clenched hands suggested that she tried to fight back, but the lack of blood around her mouth indicated that she had died quickly from the stab wounds. Neighbors in this crowded building heard no sounds of a struggle mere steps away from their flats.

PC Barrett followed procedure and sent for a doctor to examine the body. Dr. Timothy Killeen examined the body around 5:30 AM and estimated that the woman had died about 3 hours earlier, around 2:30 AM. The body was moved to the mortuary where Killeen performed an autopsy. With the clothes removed from the body, he could see that the woman had been stabbed, not once or twice, but 39 times. Altogether there were 22 stab wounds to the woman’s trunk, 5 punctures to the left lung, 2 punctures to the right lung, 1 to the heart, 5 to the liver, 2 to the spleen, and 6 to the stomach. He also found blood between the skull and the scalp, which suggests that the woman’s head had been impacted shortly before her death. Contradicting Police Constable Barrett, the doctor did not see any evidence of sexual intercourse.

Perhaps Martha was murdered by one of the soldiers three hours after she and Pearly Poll separated. Or maybe she split off from the soldier and picked up another client in the same area, and this new client murdered her. Or maybe she was murdered by Jack the Ripper.

The overkill of 39 stab wounds suggests the murderer felt a great deal of passion, perhaps even anger. Could Martha have teased her client with a joking remark that drove him into a fit of rage? Or was this the first murder of a serial killer who was excited by thrusting his knife into a body over and over again?

To learn more about Martha Tabram, listen to Geogad’s Jack The Ripper Tour

Stayed tuned for more on the case……