Mary Ann "Polly" Nichols is widely believed to be the first victim of the notorious unidentified serial killer "Jack the Ripper," who killed and mutilated prostitutes in the Whitechapel area of London during the late summer and autumn of 1888. As with other Ripper victims, there is some confusion about her personal details. She was aged forty-three and was destitute at the time of her death.

Nichols' body was discovered at about 3:40 in the early morning of Friday, August 31, 1888, on the ground in front of a gated stable entrance in Buck's Row (since renamed Durward Street), a back street in Whitechapel two hundred yards from the London Hospital. Her throat had been slashed and her abdomen cut open, exposing her intestines, with two small stabs in the groin area. The street where her body was found was narrow and so dimly lit that the two men who made the discovery while walking to work were unable to realize a body lying there until they crossed the street to approach it. Neither the police officers patrolling nearby streets nor the residents in houses alongside Buck's Row heard or saw anything suspicious; Nichols was probably killed about 3:30am.

Nichols was the daughter of Edward Walker, a locksmith and his wife Caroline. 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 August 26, 1845. On January 16, 1864 she married William Nichols, a printer's machinist, and the couple had five children before their marriage broke up in 1880 for disputed causes. Polly Nichols was reported by her father and others to be a heavy drinker. William Nichols in turn was accused at her inquest of leaving her for an affair with a nurse, though he claimed to have proof that their marriage had continued for at least three years after the date alleged for the affair. He also maintained that his wife had repeatedly deserted him.

Legally required to support his estranged wife, William Nichols paid her an allowance of five shillings a week for a year or two but terminated it when he reported hearing she was living with another man. Nichols spent most of her remaining years in workhouses and boarding houses, often living off her meagre earnings as a prostitute. Later she lived for a short time with her father but left after a quarrel; her father stated she subsequently lived with a blacksmith for a while. In May of 1888, the year of her death, she was living in the Lambeth workhouse but left to take a job as a domestic servant. Dissatisfied with the position, she left her employers a month later, stealing clothing worth three pounds ten shillings. At the time of her death she was living in a Whitechapel lodging house. Lacking fourpence for a bed that night, she went out, implying that she would soon earn the money on the street with the help of a new bonnet she had acquired. She was last seen in the area, drunk, an hour before her death by a friend. Her body was later identified by clothing from the Lambeth workhouse.

Further reading

• The Complete History of Jack the Ripper by Philip Sugden, ISBN 0786702761.

External links

• Casebook: Jack the Ripper has numerous articles covering many aspects of the case and reproduces many original source texts relevant to the case.

1845 births | 1888 deaths | Jack the Ripper victims | Londoners

Mary Ann Nichols | Mary Ann Nichols