Topic: Mary Nichols

Mary Ann "Polly" Nichols (26 August 1845 - 31 August 1888) was one of the Whitechapel murder victims. Her death has been attibuted to the notorious unidentified serial killer named Jack the Ripper who killed and mutilated several women in the Whitechapel area of London from late August to early November 1888.

About 11 p.m. 30 August Mary Ann "Polly" Nichols was seen walking the Whitechapel Road, at 1.30 a.m. she was seen to leave a pub in Brick Lane, Spitalfields. An hour later she left a common lodging-house in Thrawl Street as she was lacking fourpence for a bed, implying by her last words that she would soon earn the money on the street with the help of a new bonnet she had acquired. She was last seen at the corner of Osborn Street and Whitechapel Road, at 5.30 a.m., an hour before her death. At about 6:40 in the early morning she was found dead in front of a gated stable entrance in Buck's Row (since renamed Durward Street), a back street in Whitechapel about 150 yards from the London Hospital and 100 yards from Blackwall Buildings. Neither the police officers patrolling nearby streets nor the residents in houses alongside Buck's Row reported hearing or seeing anything suspicious.

While her death certificate stated she was forty-two at the time of her murder (an apparent error reflected on her coffin plate and gravestone), birth records indicate she was forty-three, a fact confirmed at her inquest by her father, who described her as looking "ten years younger" than her age. She was born Mary Ann Walker in Dawes Court, off Shoe Lane in London on 26 August 1845. On 16 January 1864 she married a printer's machinist, and the couple had five children: the names were