Jack the Ripper's First: Mary Ann Nichols Murdered

The body of Mary Ann Nichols was found at 3:40 AM on August 31, 1888, lying on her back on Buck's Row in the Whitechapel district of London's East End. Her throat had been cut twice, nearly severing her head, and her abdomen had been slashed open. She was the first confirmed victim of the serial killer who would become known as Jack the Ripper, and her murder launched the most famous unsolved criminal investigation in history. Nichols was 43 years old, an alcoholic who had been in and out of workhouses for years after separating from her husband. On the night of her death, she had been turned away from a doss house at 18 Thrawl Street because she lacked the fourpence for a bed. She told a friend she would earn the money quickly, a reference to prostitution that was common survival for destitute women in Whitechapel. She was last seen alive at 2:30 AM on Osborn Street, walking east. The mutilations distinguished the killing from the routine violence of the East End. Police surgeon Dr. Rees Llewellyn noted that the abdominal wounds were inflicted with some anatomical knowledge, though the extent of the killer's medical expertise would be debated for decades. Over the next ten weeks, at least four more women were murdered in similar fashion, with increasing brutality: Annie Chapman on September 8, Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes on September 30 (the "double event"), and Mary Jane Kelly on November 9. The investigation consumed the Metropolitan Police and Scotland Yard. Over 2,000 people were interviewed, 300 investigated, and 80 detained. The case generated a media frenzy, with newspapers competing to publish lurid details and speculative theories. Letters sent to police and newspapers, purportedly from the killer, coined the name "Jack the Ripper." The murders exposed the desperate poverty and overcrowding of London's East End to a Victorian public that had largely ignored it, prompting social reform campaigns and increased policing. The killer was never identified. Over 130 years later, more than a hundred suspects have been proposed, from Polish immigrants to members of the royal family. The case remains open.