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Authors: Philip Sudgen
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violence.’
And there were further severe cuts in the lower part of the abdomen. Two or three inches from the left side was a long, very deep and jagged wound which had cut through the tissues. Several incisions ran across the abdomen. On the right side were three or four similar cuts running downwards. The abdominal injuries had been inflicted with a knife used violently and downwards.
On the murderer himself Llewellyn offered very few clues. He had inflicted all the wounds with the same weapon and might have been left-handed. Replying to questions, the doctor added that the murderer ‘must have had some rough anatomical knowledge, for he seemed to have attacked all the vital parts. The murder could have been executed in just four or five minutes. 4
At first the identification of the woman promised to be difficult. Apart from a small scar on the forehead and three missing teeth, one at the front of the upper jaw and two in the left side of the lower, there were no distinguishing marks on the body itself. She was small – not more than five feet two or three inches tall – and middle-aged. Her dark-brown hair had been in the process of turning grey, her eyes were brown and her complexion dark. Her face was bruised and very much discoloured. The woman’s few belongings – a comb, a piece of looking glass and a white pocket handkerchief – afforded no clue to her identity. And most of her clothing was equally anonymous. The main items were a reddish-brown ulster, somewhat the worse for wear, with seven large brass buttons; a brown linsey frock, apparently new; a white chest flannel; two petticoats, one of grey wool, the other flannel; a pair of brown stays; a pair of black ribbed woollen stockings; a pair of men’s side spring boots, cut onthe uppers and with steel tips on the heels; and a black straw bonnet trimmed in black velvet.
Yet within twenty-four hours of the murder the victim had been named. As news of the crime spread throughout the East End various women came forward to identify the deceased and it soon transpired that a woman of her appearance had been living in a common lodging house at 18 Thrawl Street. Ellen Holland, fetched from there, identified the body as that of ‘Polly’, a woman who had once shared her room at Thrawl Street. But the real breakthrough occurred when the police examined the dead woman’s petticoats and found the mark ‘Lambeth Workhouse, P.R. [i.e. Prince’s Road]’ upon them. At 7.30 on the evening of 31 August Mary Ann Monk, an inmate of the Lambeth Workhouse, was taken to Old Montague Street and she gave the deceased a name. The victim was Mary Ann Nichols and she had been a resident of the workhouse as late as May 1888. With this information the police soon traced the relatives. Edward Walker, Mary’s father, and William Nichols, her husband, both identified her body the next day.
Mary Nichols, or Polly as she was known to her friends, is conventionally regarded as the first victim of Jack the Ripper. Perhaps for this reason her sad career of drunkenness and decline has been documented more thoroughly than that of any other victim in the Whitechapel murder series. 5 The daughter of Edward Walker, a locksmith, and his wife Caroline, Polly was born in Dawes Court, off Shoe Lane, on 26 August 1845. She married William Nichols, a printer’s machinist, at St Bride’s, Fleet Street, on 16 January 1864.
By the summer of 1868 the couple were living at 131 Trafalgar Street, Walworth. They stayed there for several years. Then, in 1874, they set up home for themselves at 6D Block, Peabody Square, Duke Street, in Lambeth. There were five children: Edward John (1866), Percy George (1868), Alice Esther (1870), Eliza Sarah (1876) and Henry Alfred (1878). Notwithstanding all of which the marriage ended acrimoniously in 1880.
The pain of that break-up seems to have permanently embittered relations between Nichols and his father-in-law. Walker told the inquest that the cause of the
And there were further severe cuts in the lower part of the abdomen. Two or three inches from the left side was a long, very deep and jagged wound which had cut through the tissues. Several incisions ran across the abdomen. On the right side were three or four similar cuts running downwards. The abdominal injuries had been inflicted with a knife used violently and downwards.
On the murderer himself Llewellyn offered very few clues. He had inflicted all the wounds with the same weapon and might have been left-handed. Replying to questions, the doctor added that the murderer ‘must have had some rough anatomical knowledge, for he seemed to have attacked all the vital parts. The murder could have been executed in just four or five minutes. 4
At first the identification of the woman promised to be difficult. Apart from a small scar on the forehead and three missing teeth, one at the front of the upper jaw and two in the left side of the lower, there were no distinguishing marks on the body itself. She was small – not more than five feet two or three inches tall – and middle-aged. Her dark-brown hair had been in the process of turning grey, her eyes were brown and her complexion dark. Her face was bruised and very much discoloured. The woman’s few belongings – a comb, a piece of looking glass and a white pocket handkerchief – afforded no clue to her identity. And most of her clothing was equally anonymous. The main items were a reddish-brown ulster, somewhat the worse for wear, with seven large brass buttons; a brown linsey frock, apparently new; a white chest flannel; two petticoats, one of grey wool, the other flannel; a pair of brown stays; a pair of black ribbed woollen stockings; a pair of men’s side spring boots, cut onthe uppers and with steel tips on the heels; and a black straw bonnet trimmed in black velvet.
Yet within twenty-four hours of the murder the victim had been named. As news of the crime spread throughout the East End various women came forward to identify the deceased and it soon transpired that a woman of her appearance had been living in a common lodging house at 18 Thrawl Street. Ellen Holland, fetched from there, identified the body as that of ‘Polly’, a woman who had once shared her room at Thrawl Street. But the real breakthrough occurred when the police examined the dead woman’s petticoats and found the mark ‘Lambeth Workhouse, P.R. [i.e. Prince’s Road]’ upon them. At 7.30 on the evening of 31 August Mary Ann Monk, an inmate of the Lambeth Workhouse, was taken to Old Montague Street and she gave the deceased a name. The victim was Mary Ann Nichols and she had been a resident of the workhouse as late as May 1888. With this information the police soon traced the relatives. Edward Walker, Mary’s father, and William Nichols, her husband, both identified her body the next day.
Mary Nichols, or Polly as she was known to her friends, is conventionally regarded as the first victim of Jack the Ripper. Perhaps for this reason her sad career of drunkenness and decline has been documented more thoroughly than that of any other victim in the Whitechapel murder series. 5 The daughter of Edward Walker, a locksmith, and his wife Caroline, Polly was born in Dawes Court, off Shoe Lane, on 26 August 1845. She married William Nichols, a printer’s machinist, at St Bride’s, Fleet Street, on 16 January 1864.
By the summer of 1868 the couple were living at 131 Trafalgar Street, Walworth. They stayed there for several years. Then, in 1874, they set up home for themselves at 6D Block, Peabody Square, Duke Street, in Lambeth. There were five children: Edward John (1866), Percy George (1868), Alice Esther (1870), Eliza Sarah (1876) and Henry Alfred (1878). Notwithstanding all of which the marriage ended acrimoniously in 1880.
The pain of that break-up seems to have permanently embittered relations between Nichols and his father-in-law. Walker told the inquest that the cause of the
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