WHEN Mary Ann Nichols was kicked out of Willmott’s lodging house in the early hours of Friday morning, August 31, 1888, she was undaunted.
Nichols, known as Polly to friends and family, had spent her last penny on alcohol, but was confident she would soon find a man who would pay for her services or let her share his bed.
“Never mind,” she said. “I’ll soon get my doss money. See what a jolly bonnet I’ve got now.”
She staggered out the door and walked the streets of Whitechapel.
At the corner of Whitechapel Rd and Osborn St she met a lodging house friend, Emily (or Ellen) Holland, who pointed out that it was 2.30am and urged Nichols to go back to Willmott’s.
There had been two women murdered in Whitechapel that year and it was dangerous to be out on the streets. But Nichols refused and headed off to look for a client.
It was the last time anyone saw her alive. At 3.40am, 130 years ago today, Charles Cross was walking to work and saw something on the ground outside a stable.
It was Nichols’ body.
He called over a friend Robert Paul. Cross assumed she was dead but Paul thought she was still breathing. They pulled her skirt down over her knees to preserve her dignity and left the scene to find a police officer.
An etching from Le Journal Illustre on February 13, 1891, depicting the Jack the Ripper murders in Whitechapel.A newspaper sketch of Insp Frederick George Abberline from about 1888.
Meanwhile, PC John Neil also stumbled across the body and alerted other constables.
Nobody knew it at the time, but this was the first in a series of killings by a man who would come to be known as Jack the Ripper.
It sparked an intense police investigation under the command of Insp Frederick Georbge Abberline. However, the case has never officially been solved.
Nichols was born Mary Ann Walker in London in 1845, the daughter of a locksmith turned blacksmith.
Click full story: The Daily Telegraph
