Mid-Month Murderer - Jack The Ripper Mary Ann Nichols

I have always had a little bit of an obsession with serial killers. I like to try and understand why they do what they do and how someone can take another persons life. So I am starting a little series called Mid-Month Murderer. 

Each month I will focus on a different murderer from across history, I will look into their life and back story and also into their victims’ lives. I wanted to start with one of the most famous murderers of the Victorian era, Jack The Ripper. With this being my first instalment of the series, I will be doing it a little bit different, because there is a lot of information to take on. Therefore, each victim will get her own day, then on Saturday I will look into different possibilities as to who Jack The Ripper actually was. I hope you enjoy reading these blogs as much as I have enjoyed researching them. 

Mary Ann 'Polly' Nichols

From August 31st till November 9th 1888, Whitechapel London was a very scary place to live, a mysterious figure known only as 'Jack The Ripper' was stalking the streets killing women. Even now 132 years later we still have no idea who he/she was. 

At this time in London there was a very big divide between the rich and the poor but the divide was not always a  geographic one. Some places we would consider 'posh' now like Chelsea still had a fair share of poor and working class families living there. The East End of London had a high poverty stricken population. Whitechapel in particular had a high influx of Irish Immigrants, from 1846 onwards, caused by the potato famine. There were also Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe escaping persecution. By the time 'Jack The Ripper' struck in 1881, the population of Whitechapel alone was 50,000 people. 

Antisemitism was rife at this time, Jewish people were treated like second class citizens and in a future blog I will show how the hatred made its way into the Ripper investigation. The Ripper Murders are said to have started with Mary Ann Nichols (known as ''Polly'' to her friends) on the 31st August. I think that ''Jack'' began the murder spree earlier. I will tell you all about Polly's injuries later but from the multitude of book's I have read and show's I have watched about murderers those kind of attacks are hardly ever done by a first timer. They would have worked up to it.

In the months leading up to the Ripper killings two women were murdered in a similar method, Emma Elizabeth Smith was found to have had an instrument inserted into her vagina and Martha Taburn was stabbed 39 times all over her body. With the over kill on the other five women, consisting of stabbing and genital mutilation I think that these two could have been the beginning of the Ripper, sadly I cannot say for certain that they were both killed by 'Jack' but I think the evidence points to it. 

Mary Ann Nichols was born 26th August 1845 in Dean Street, she got married to a man called William in 1866, he was a printer machinist and the couple went on to have 5 children. During this time alcoholism was everywhere in Victorian London and Polly Nichols was no different, her excessive drinking was what caused William to end the marriage in 1881, but Polly would say it ended because he was having an affair with a midwife, said to have been the midwife that helped Polly during one of her labours.

William paid Polly an allowance of 5 shillings a week for about a year, this wasn't enough for Polly to live on and be able to drink so she turned to prostitution to top up her money. When William found out he stopped paying the allowance. In April of 1888 Polly sent a letter to her father telling him she had become a maid in the household of the Cowdry family. They were a religious family and did not drink, Polly worked there for a while but her love of alcohol took over and in July she left, but not before stealing clothing from them. 

Polly had gone back to prostitution, she began lodging with her friend Emily Holland. On the 31st August she had spent most of her day in the Frying Pan Pub on Brick Lane in Whitechapel, Emily and Polly would use lodgings on Thrawl Street, but earlier in the night Polly had been turned away as she didn't have the money to pay for it. At about 2:30 in the morning Emily saw Polly on the corner of Osborn Street and Polly told her 

''I've had my dose money 3 times over and spent it''

Polly had had a new bonnet and was sure it would help her to get more money for lodgings so off she went, Emily later explained how Polly was

''so drunk she was clinging to the walls for steadiness''

That was the last time Polly was seen alive. At 3.40am Charles Cross (aka Charles Lechmere) found Polly's body on Bucks Row, he was joined by Robert Paul. Polly was laid on the ground with her skirt pulled up, the men couldn't agree if she was dead or unconscious so they left her where she was and went to inform a policeman, pulling her skirt down as they left to preserve her dignity. 

A few moments later PC John Neale stumbled across her body, he was later joined by PC Jonas Mizen who was informed of Polly's whereabouts by Cross and Paul. After examining Polly they agreed that she was dead and sent for Dr Henry Llewellyn, a surgeon who would preform Polly's post-morterm. He arrived at 4.00am and he was the one who discovered the full extent of Polly's injuries. A later inquest by Wynne Edwin Baxter would find the police at fault for not finding Polly's injuries earlier. He also spoke about how there wasn't a lot of a blood at the scene, which might mean that she had been killed somewhere else and then her body had been dumped there, this was later found to be wrong as the blood had soaked into her clothing and hair. Her body was then removed and Llewellyn went to do the post-morterm.

There was a bruise to Polly's face that looked like it had been made by a thumb and another on the left side of her neck, Llewellyn stated that this could be proof the murderer held her head down. She received 2 cuts to the neck, both starting on the left side just underneath her ear, one cut was 4'' the other was 8'', both wounds were so deep they reached Polly's vertebrae. There were two 3'' wide cuts in a jagged pattern along with several more wounds all to the abdomen. Finally a few more cuts ran down her left side. After examining Polly, Llewellyn deduced that the killer had been in front of her when he cut her throat, doing this so that she could not scream and with the direction they were in, the killer would have been left handed, the killer would also have to have some basic knowledge of anatomy because of the jagged cuts, the whole thing would have taken no more them 4-5 minutes.

Her clothing had been checked and had labels for a workhouse in Lambeth, where the police managed to track down one of Polly's friends, Mary Ann Monk, she was able to identify her body. William was found and he also went to identify her, when he saw her her said

''Seeing you as you are now, I forgive you for what you have done to me''. 

Polly was eventually buried on the 6th September at the City of London Crematory, William and their eldest son Edward were present at the funeral.

Polly was only 5ft 2, with her height and being very intoxicated she must have seemed like an easy target for ''Jack'', as I said earlier, to me, her wounds do not seem to have been made by a first timer. The attack was quick and the killer knew what they were doing, they only had a brief time between police patrols in the area, not to mention that any any point someone could have walked past. This was done by someone who wasn't scared and didn't second guess what they were doing, to me that was an experienced person. 

In my next post I will look into Annie Chapman, but for now if you would like to learn more I have put a list together of my sources, so please feel free to have a read, listen and watch : 

- 'The Mammoth Book of Jack the Ripper' By Maxim Jakubowski and Nathan Braund 
- Rippercast: The Whitechapel Murders Podcast by Karl Coppack 
- Histfest The Five - Hallie Rubenhold and Rebecca Rideal
- BBC iplayer - Jack The Ripper - The Case Reopened
- The Five - Hallie Rubenhold


Thank you
The History Chronicle