General Information

It was in Buck’s Row (which is now called Durward Street) that Mary Ann Nichols (‘Polly’), the first of the victims of Jack the Ripper, was found dead in the early morning of 31 August 1888. As the case had attracted much unwanted attention to the street, local residents became so ashamed that they petitioned the council and had the name changed from Buck’s Row to Durward Street.

Mary Ann Nichols

Mary Ann Nichols was one of the Whitechapel murder victims. Her death in August 1888 has been attributed to the notorious unidentified serial killer Jack the Ripper. She was born to locksmith Edward Walker and his wife Caroline on 26 August 1845, in Dean Street in London. On 16 January 1864 she married William Nichols, a printer’s machinist, and between 1866 and 1879, the couple had five children. Their marriage broke up from disputed causes.

Additional Information

Her father accused William of leaving her after he had an affair with the nurse who had attended the birth of their final child, though Nichols claimed to have proof that their marriage had continued for at least three years after the date alleged for the affair. He maintained that his wife had deserted him and was practising prostitution. Police reports say they separated because of her drunken habits.
Legally required to support his estranged wife, William Nichols paid her an allowance of five shillings a week until 1882, when he heard that she was working as a prostitute; he was not required to support her if she was earning money through illicit means. Nichols spent most of her remaining years in workhouses and boarding houses, living off charitable handouts and her meagre earnings as a prostitute.
In early 1888, she was placed in the Lambeth workhouse which she left few months later to take a job as a domestic servant in Wandsworth. Unhappy in that position—she was an alcoholic and her employers were teetotallers—she left two months later, stealing some clothing. At the time of her death she was living in a Whitechapel common lodging house in Spitalfields.

Murder: Highlights

She was found with her skirt raised, lying on the ground in front of a gated stable entrance in Buck’s Row (since renamed Durward Street), Whitechapel, nearby the London Hospital and Blackwall Buildings. Her throat had been slit twice from left to right and her abdomen mutilated with one deep jagged wound, several incisions across the abdomen, and three or four similar cuts on the right side caused by the same knife at least 15-20 cm long, used violently and downwards.

Murder: Explained

At about 23:00 on 30 August, Nichols was seen walking the Whitechapel Road; at 00:30 she was seen to leave a pub in Brick Lane, Spitalfields. An hour later she was turned out of 18 Thrawl Street as she was lacking fourpence for a bed, implying by her last recorded 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 02:30, an hour before her death, by Nelly Holland. Nichols claimed she had made enough money to pay for her bed three times over, but had drunk it all away.
At about 3:40, she was found lying on the street by cart driver Charles Cross. Her skirt was raised. Another passing cart driver on his way to work, Robert Paul, approached, and Cross pointed out the body. Cross believed her to be dead, but Paul was uncertain and thought she might be unconscious. They pulled her skirt down to cover her lower body, and went in search of a policeman.
They informed PC Jonas Mizen and continued on their way to work. As Mizen was approaching the body, PC John Neil came from the opposite direction on his beat and by flashing his lantern, called a third policeman to the scene. As news of the murder spread, three horse slaughterers from a neighbouring knacker’s yard in Winthrop Street, who had been working overnight, came to look at the body. None of the slaughterers, the police officers patrolling nearby streets, or the residents of houses alongside Buck’s Row reported hearing or seeing anything suspicious before the discovery of the body.