Mary Ann Nichols, known as Polly, was 43 when she was murdered in a narrow, cobbled street called Buck’s Row (now Durward Street) on Friday, 31 August 1888. The prostitute was last seen alive around 2.30am and was found in the street at 3.45am. Witnesses who found her suggest she may have been clinging to life. If that was so, the killer was very lucky not to have been seen either committing the killing or making his escape.
The inquest into the death of ‘a woman supposed to be Mary Ann Nichols’ was presided over by Mr Wynne E Baxter, the Coroner for South East Middlesex. Material from the inquest report follows.
Day One: Saturday, 1 September 1888
… Edward Walker: I live at 15, Maidwell Street, Albany Road, Camberwell, and have no occupation. I was a smith when I was at work, but I am not now. I have seen the body in the mortuary, and to the best of my belief it is my daughter; but I have not seen her for three years. I recognise her by her general appearance and by a little mark she has had on her forehead since she was a child. She also had either one or two teeth out, the same as the woman I have just seen. My daughter’s name was Mary Ann Nichols, and she had been married twenty-two years. Her husband’s name is William Nichols, and he is alive. He is a machinist. They have been living apart about seven or eight years. I last heard of her before Easter. She was forty-two years of age. …
Coroner: Have you any reasonable doubt that this is your daughter?
Walker: No, I have not. …
Constable John Neil (J Division): Yesterday morning I was proceeding down Buck’s Row, Whitechapel, going towards Brady Street. There was not a soul about. I had been round there half an hour previously, and I saw no one then. I was on the right-hand side of the street, when I noticed a figure lying in the street. … Deceased was lying lengthways along the street, her left hand touching the gate. I examined the body by the aid of my lamp, and noticed blood oozing from a wound in the throat. She was lying on her back, with her clothes disarranged. I felt her arm, which was quite warm from the joints upwards. Her eyes were wide open. Her bonnet was off and lying at her side, close to the left hand. … [Dr Henry Llewellyn] arrived in a very short time. … The doctor looked at the woman and then said, ‘Move her to the mortuary [at Whitechapel Workhouse Infirmary]. She is dead, and I will make a further examination of her.’ We placed her on the ambulance, and moved her there. Inspector Spratling came to the mortuary, and while taking a description of the deceased turned up her clothes, and found that she was disembowelled. This had not been noticed by any of them before. On the body was found a piece of comb and a bit of looking glass. No money was found, but an unmarked white handkerchief was found in her pocket.
Coroner: Did you notice any blood where she was found?
Constable Neil: There was a pool of blood just where her neck was lying. It was running from the wound in her neck.
Coroner: Did you hear any noise that night?
Constable Neil: No; I heard nothing. The farthest I had been that night was just through the Whitechapel Road and up Baker’s Row. I was never far away from the spot.
Coroner: Whitechapel Road is busy in the early morning, I believe. Could anybody have escaped that way?
Constable Neil: Oh yes, sir. I saw a number of women in the main road going home. At that time anyone could have got away. …
Dr Henry Llewellyn: On Friday morning I was called to Buck’s Row about 4am. The constable told me what I was wanted for. On reaching Buck’s Row I found the deceased woman laying flat on her back in the pathway, her legs extended. I found she was dead, and that she had severe injuries to her throat. Her hands and wrists were cold, but the body and lower extremities were warm. I examined her chest and felt the heart. It was dark at the time. I believe she had not been dead more than half-an-hour. I am quite certain that the injuries to her neck were not self-inflicted. There was very little blood round the neck. There were no marks of any struggle or of blood, as if the body had been dragged. … [In the mortuary I] saw that the abdomen was cut very extensively. I have this morning made a post-mortem examination of the body. I found it to be that of a female about forty or forty-five years. Five of the teeth are missing, and there is a slight laceration of the tongue. On the right side of the face there is a bruise running along the lower part of the jaw. It might have been caused by a blow with the fist, or pressure by the thumb. On the left side of the face there was a circular bruise, which also might have been done by the pressure of the fingers. On the left side of the neck, about an inch below the jaw, there was an incision about four inches long and running from a point immediately below the ear. An inch below on the same side, and commencing about an inch in front of it, was a circular incision terminating at a point about three inches below the right jaw. This incision completely severs all the tissues down to the vertebrae. The large vessels of the neck on both sides were severed. The incision is about eight inches long. These cuts must have been caused with a long- bladed knife, moderately sharp, and used with great violence. No blood at all was found on the breast [area] either of the body or clothes. There were no injuries about the body till just about the lower part of the abdomen. Two or three inches from the left side was a wound running in a jagged manner. It was a very deep wound, and the tissues were cut through. There were several incisions running across the abdomen. On the right side there were also three or four similar cuts running downwards. All these had been caused by a knife, which had been used violently and been used downwards. The wounds were from left to right, and might have been done by a left-handed person. The same instrument had done all the injuries. …
Day Two: Monday, 3 September 1888
[Detective Sergeant Enright of ScotlandYard, after telling the coroner that two workhouse officials had stripped the body] said the clothes, which were lying in a heap in the [mortuary] yard, consisted of a reddish-brown ulster, with seven large brass buttons, and a brown dress, which looked new. There were also a woollen and a flannel petticoat, belonging to the workhouse. Inspector Helson had cut out pieces marked ‘P. R., Princes-road,’ with a view to tracing the body. There was also a pair of stays, in fairly good condition, but witness did not notice how they were adjusted. …
The Foreman of the jury asked whether the stays were fastened on the body.
Inspector [John] Spratling [J Division, Metropolitan Police] replied that he could not say for certain. There was blood on the upper part of the dress body, and also on the ulster, but he only saw a little on the under linen, and that might have happened after the removal of the body from Buck’s Row. The clothes were fastened when he first saw the body. The stays did not fit very tightly, for he was able to see the wounds without unfastening them. About six o’clock that day he made an examination at Buck’s Row and Brady Street, which ran across Baker’s Row, but he failed to trace any marks of blood. …
Witness also visited half a dozen persons living in the same neighbourhood, none of whom had noticed anything at all suspicious. …
Inspector Jos. Helson deposed that he first received information about the murder at 6.45am on Friday morning. He afterwards went to the mortuary, where he saw the body with the clothes still on it. The dress was fastened in front, with the exception of a few buttons, the stays, which were attached with clasps, were also fastened. He noticed blood on the hair, and on the collars of the dress and ulster, but not on the back of the skirts. There were no cuts in the clothes, and no indications of any struggle having taken place. The only suspicious mark discovered in the neighbourhood of Buck’s Row was in Broad Street, where there was a stain which might have been blood.
Witness was of opinion that the body had not been carried to Buck’s Row, but that the murder was committed on the spot. …
Emily Holland, a married woman, living at 18, Thrawl Street, said deceased had stayed at her lodgings for about six weeks, but had not been there during the last ten days or so. About half-past two on Friday morning witness saw deceased walking down Osborn Street, Whitechapel Road. …
Day Three: 17 September 1888
Dr Llewellyn, recalled, said he had re-examined the body and there was no part of the viscera missing. …
Robert Mann, the keeper of the mortuary, said the police came to the workhouse, of which he was an inmate. He went, in consequence, to the mortuary at 5 am He saw the body placed there, and then locked the place up and kept the keys. After breakfast witness and Hatfield, another inmate of the workhouse, undressed the woman.
Day Four: Saturday, 22 September 1888
… The Coroner then summed up. Having reviewed the career of the deceased from the time she left her husband, and reminded the jury of the irregular life she had led for the last two years, Mr Baxter proceeded to point out that the unfortunate woman was last seen alive at half-past two o’clock on Saturday morning, Sept 1, by Mrs Holland, who knew her well. Deceased was at that time much the worse for drink, and was endeavouring to walk eastward down Whitechapel. What her exact movements were after this it was impossible to say; but in less than an hour and a quarter her dead body was discovered at a spot rather under three-quarters of a mile distant. The time at which the body was found cannot have been far from 3.45 am, as it is fixed by so many independent data. The condition of the body appeared to prove conclusively that the deceased was killed on the exact spot in which she was found. There was not a trace of blood anywhere, except at the spot where her neck was lying, this circumstance being sufficient to justify the assumption that the injuries to the throat were committed when the woman was on the ground, whilst the state of her clothing and the absence of any blood about her legs suggested that the abdominal injuries were inflicted whilst she was still in the same position.
Coroner: It seems astonishing at first thought that the culprit should have escaped detection, for there must surely have been marks of blood about his person. If, however, blood was principally on his hands, the presence of so many slaughter houses in the neighbourhood would make the frequenters of this spot familiar with blood stained clothes and hands, and his appearance might in that way have failed to attract attention while he passed from Buck’s Row in the twilight into Whitechapel Road, and was lost sight of in the morning’s market traffic. We cannot altogether leave unnoticed the fact that the death that you have been investigating is one of four presenting many points of similarity, all of which have occurred within the space of about five months, and all within a very short distance of the place where we are sitting. All four victims were women of middle age, all were married, and had lived apart from their husbands in consequence of intemperate habits, and were at the time of their death leading an irregular life, and eking out a miserable and precarious existence in common lodging-houses. In each case there were abdominal as well as other injuries. In each case the injuries were inflicted after midnight, and in places of public resort, where it would appear impossible but that almost immediate detection should follow the crime, and in each case the inhuman and dastardly criminals are at large in society. Emma Elizabeth Smith, who received her injuries in Osborn Street on the early morning of Easter Tuesday, April 3rd, survived in the London Hospital for upwards of twenty-four hours, and was able to state that she had been followed by some men, robbed and mutilated, and even to describe imperfectly one of them. Martha Tabram was found at 3 am on Tuesday, August 7th, on the first floor landing of GeorgeYard buildings, Wentworth Street, with thirty-nine puncture wounds on her body. In addition to these, and the case under your consideration, there is the case of Annie Chapman, still in the hands of another jury. The instruments used in the two earlier cases are dissimilar. In the first it was a blunt instrument, such as a walking stick; in the second, some of the wounds, were thought to have been made by a dagger, but in the two recent cases the instruments suggested by the medical witnesses are not so different. Dr Llewellyn says the injuries on Nichols could have been produced by a strong bladed instrument, moderately sharp. Dr Phillips is of opinion that those on Chapman were by a very sharp knife, probably with a thin, narrow blade, at least six to eight inches in length, probably longer. The similarity of the injuries in the two cases is considerable. There are bruises about the face in both cases; the head is nearly severed from the body in both cases; there are other dreadful injuries in both cases; and those injuries, again, have in each case been performed with anatomical knowledge. Dr Llewellyn seems to incline to the opinion that the abdominal injuries were first, and caused instantaneous death; but, if so, it seems difficult to understand the object of such desperate injuries to the throat, or how it comes about that there was so little bleeding from the several arteries, that the clothing on the upper surface was not stained, and, indeed, very much less bleeding from the abdomen than from the neck. Surely it may well be that, as in the case of Chapman, the dreadful wounds to the throat were inflicted first and the others afterwards. This is a matter of some importance when we come to consider what possible motive there can be for all this ferocity. Robbery is out of the question; and there is nothing to suggest jealousy; there could not have been any quarrel, or it would have been heard. I suggest to you as a possibility that these two women may have been murdered by the same man with the same object, and that in the case of Nichols the wretch was disturbed before he had accomplished his object, and having failed in the open street he tries again, within a week of his failure, in a more secluded place. …
The jury, after a short consultation, returned a verdict of wilful murder against some person or persons unknown. …
The murder of Mary Ann Nichols was certainly the first in a series of savage and brutal murders, which it is suggested were the work of the same killer. It is obvious that a long-bladed knife was used to inflict the wounds, making the murder different from that of Martha Tabram.
Nichols’s throat had been slashed so deeply that the head was nearly severed. She appeared to have been either knocked or throttled unconscious. This would account for the lack of blood on her clothes and, perhaps, a distinct lack of blood on her attacker. If she was already dead before her throat was cut and her body mutilated, this would explain the lack of blood, as the heart would have already stopped, causing minimal blood loss. In addition, it was a cold night and blood loss is reduced when the heart slows down because of the body being cold.
Like Dr Killeen in the case of Martha Tabram, Dr Llewellyn went out on a limb in suggesting that Nichols’s attacker was left-handed since some of the wounds ran from left to right. I disagree. I am right-handed and it is much easier for a right-handed man to strike from left to right than it is for a left-handed man to do so.
There is no doubting that Nichols was subjected to a violent attack, but was her throat cut before the other wounds were inflicted? One of the police officers at the inquest, Inspector Helson, gave evidence that there were no cuts to her clothing. To me this suggests that the murderer lifted the victim’s clothes in order to mutilate the body – a sign of a very organised killer. Another indication of a calculated approach is that, even though engaged in a frenzied attack, the murderer clearly remained alert to sight and sound of passers-by, so that he would have time to escape if necessary.
There were no witnesses and no descriptions of anyone seen with Nichols before her death or at the spot where she was murdered. Her killer vanished unseen into the darkness and the mist.