Mary Ann Nichols

Mary Ann Nichols in laying out

Mary Ann Nichols (born August 26, 1845 in Dawes Court , London , † August 31, 1888 in Whitechapel , London) is probably the first victim of the serial killer " Jack the Ripper ", who in the late summer and autumn of 1888 in London's East End several Prostitutes killed and then mutilated.

General

As with other victims of the Ripper, there are some inconsistencies regarding their personal information. She was 43 years old and penniless at the time of her death. While her death certificate showed an age of 42 years at the time of death, she was 43 years old according to the birth records. This obvious flaw was also reflected in her coffin tablet and gravestone. Her father confirmed she was 43 years old during the investigation and described her as someone who looked ten years younger than her real age.

Mary Ann Nichols was nicknamed "Polly".

Earlier life

Mary Ann Nichols was the daughter of locksmith Edward Walker and his wife Caroline. Nichols was born Mary Ann Walker on August 26, 1845 in Dawes Court , London.

Marriage and children

On January 16, 1864, she married the printing machine manufacturer William Nichols. The couple had five children before the marriage broke up for controversial reasons in 1880. Nichols has been described by her father and others as a heavy drinker . William Nichols was charged with abandoning his wife because of an affair with a nurse. He claimed, however, to be able to prove that his marriage to Mary Nichols continued for three years after the alleged affair and that she had repeatedly left him alone.

William Nichols dutifully paid Mary five shillings a week for a year or two . However, when he was told that she was living with another man, he stopped paying.

Your life in Whitechapel

Mary Nichols has spent most of the past few years in workhouses and boarding houses. She lived on her meager income as a prostitute . She later lived with her father for a short time, but left him because of an argument. Her father stated that afterwards she lived with a blacksmith for a while. In May 1888, the year of her death, she first lived in the Lambeth workhouse. She left this to work as a domestic servant. There she was dissatisfied with her position and left her employer a month later. On that occasion she stole three pounds and ten shillings worth of clothing .

The murder of Mary Ann Nichols

At about 11 p.m. on August 30, 1888, Mary Ann Nichols was seen walking down Whitechapel Road and about an hour later she was leaving the Frying Pan Pub on Brick Lane . At 12:20 am on August 31, she asked for a room on Thrawl Street but was turned down by the landlord because she could not pay the rent. She gave the landlord to understand that she would soon have her money together and referred to her "beautiful hood", which the landlord had never seen before.

A little over an hour later, at 2:30 a.m., Ellen Holland met Nichols on the corner of Osborne Street and Whitechapel High Street. She was completely drunk and complained that she had already earned the rent for the night three times, but had drunk all the money immediately. Holland, who could clearly remember the time since she heard the chiming of a nearby church, offered Nichols to accompany her to Thrawl Street, which she refused.

At around 3:15 a.m., Constable John Thain and Sergeant Kerby passed Buck's Row (today: Durward Street), but could not find anything unusual. Between 3:40 a.m. and 3:45 a.m., Charles Cross (alias Charles Lechmere) and Robert Paul walked one after the other down Buck's Row and noticed an object that was initially invisible in the dark. As they got closer, they found the body of a woman with her skirt pulled up, which they straightened to cover her abdomen and set out to look for a constable as they weren't sure if she was Woman was dead or just passed out from drinking alcohol. They met the police officer Jonas Mizen, notified him and went to work. When Mizen reached the place where the body was found, Constables John Neil and Thain joined them. When they examined the body with their lamp, they found that the throat was cut.

At 4 a.m., surgeon Henry Llewellyn, who lived near the crime scene, found Mary Ann Nichols dead, which he said had occurred about 30 minutes earlier. In a brief inspection, he noticed blood in the gutter, the amount of which corresponded to the content of 1.5 wine glasses. There was no doubt in his mind that she had been murdered on site. Nichols was later identified by her clothing.

In the later coronary examination, several bruises were found on her body, and the carotid arteries were severed with an approximately 20 cm long cut. Several cuts were spread across the abdomen. All cuts were inflicted with the same instrument, a moderately sharp knife with a long blade, and the perpetrator must have acted with great force.

literature

• Philip Sugden: The Complete History of Jack the Ripper. Carroll & Graf Publishing, New York NY 1995, ISBN 0-7867-0276-1 , is widely regarded as one of the best books on the subject.
• Hendrik Püstow, Thomas Schachner: Jack the Ripper. Anatomy of a legend. Militzke Verlag, Leipzig 2006, ISBN 3-86189-753-9 .
• Hallie Rubenhold : The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper. Doubleday, 2019, ISBN 978-0857524485 .

Web links

Commons : Mary Ann Nichols  - Collection of Images

• Mary Ann Nichols . In: jacktheripper.de
• Mary Ann Nichols . In: casebook.org (contains numerous English-language articles on the case and reproduces many original sources)