Jack The Ripper’s Victims

                       The Victims

The East End

It is all well and good writing about and discussing Jack the Ripper, but we all too readily forget that his victims were people who lived lives, had dreams, and endured pain. To balance up my previous article on the subject these are the women who fell victim to the notorious Victorian serial killer:

Mary Anne Walker aka Polly, was born in Whitechapel on 26 August, 1845. She came from a respectable working class family and her father was a locksmith. When she was aged 19, she married a printer, William Nichols, by whom she was to have 5 children. For the best part of 16 years she would have appeared to have been happily married. However, sometime in 1880 her marriage broke down and they separated. For a time William voluntarily paid Polly a small weekly allowance but this was withdrawn once he learned that Polly had been living with another man. Once the allowance was withdrawn the other man didn’t stay long and Polly was left destitute, she very soon turned to drink. The rest of her life would be spent moving from one doss house to another. For a time she did return home to live with her father but her heavy drinking made her impossible to live with. Ejected from the family home she was reduced to selling her body to make ends meet. A body that was by now bloated by drink and prematurely aged. In the Summer of 1888, she procured a job as a domestic servant, she wrote to her father saying that she was at last getting her life together. It was to be her last chance, but in July she was dismissed after being accused of theft. In the Autumn of 1888, she was living in the Thrawl Street Lodging House, but she did not have the money to pay the rent. Her last known words were spoken to the Lodging House Keeper, “I’II soon get my doss money, see what a pretty bonnet I have.” On 31 August, her mutilated body was found in Bucks Row, Whitechapel, Jack the Ripper’s first victim.