Jack the Ripper's victims: who were the women of Whitechapel?

How did the women of Whitechapel live in 1888?

It begins with a bed. Lodging houses charged by the night: a single bed was fourpence and a double eightpence, which bought you a corner of a packed dormitory and the use of a shared kitchen. Anyone who couldn't scrape that together slept rough or went to the casual ward, which made you pay for the night in labour. Kate and Liz lodged in Flower and Dean Street, the worst slum in Spitalfields; Annie and Mary Jane round the corner in Dorset Street. It was a district of newcomers, many of them Jewish refugees from persecution in Eastern Europe, and Charles Booth's survey of those years put 35 per cent of the people of East London in poverty.

Polly Nichols: a letter about trees and a garden

Mary Ann Nichols, Polly to everyone, was past forty and the mother of five. She and her father, a blacksmith, had barely been in touch. In the spring of 1888 she left the Lambeth workhouse to work as a servant in Wandsworth, and sent him a letter. In the version of it that's known, she mentions trees and a garden and employers who never touched a drop, and asks him to reply.

In the small hours of the last day of August, Emily Holland, who had lodged in the same house, bumped into her on a corner of Whitechapel Road. Polly had no money for a bed, though she said she'd made three times the price that day and spent it. She promised she wouldn't be long. Just after half past three, a constable came across her in Buck's Row. Emily described her as quiet, as if something was weighing on her. Her father identified her by a small mark on her forehead from when she was a girl.

Annie Chapman: crochet, flowers and eightpence

At forty-seven, Annie Chapman had been married to a coachman from Windsor, and her two children had been placed in a school. When the money her husband used to send stopped coming, she learned he had died; her friend Amelia Palmer said she went to pieces after that. She earned a few pennies with her crochet and by selling flowers. That week she was ill, and admitted to Amelia that she hadn't had so much as a cup of tea all day. She had a plan, though: as soon as her sister sent her some boots, she'd be off hop-picking.

Early one Saturday in September, the deputy of her lodging house found her eating potatoes in the kitchen and asked for the eightpence for the night. She didn't have it. She begged him to keep her usual bed, number 29, and went out promising to be back shortly. Just before six, a carman who lived with his family in a house in Hanbury Street found her in the yard.

Liz Stride: the shipwreck she never survived

Elizabeth Stride, a Swedish farm girl by birth, had come to London to work in service. Being tall, she was nicknamed Long Liz. She liked to tell people that her husband and children had drowned when the Princess Alice went down in the Thames in 1878, and that she'd escaped with an injured mouth. It was untrue: according to the records collected in a modern compilation, John Stride died of heart disease in 1884. Why did she tell it? Nobody knows. The Swedish church in London helped her out several times, and a shipwreck widow drew more pity. That's only a hypothesis.

In the early hours of 30 September, at about one, she was found in a yard next to a socialist club in Berner Street, open to working men of any nationality. Upstairs, after the evening's debate, people were still singing, some of it in Russian.

Kate Eddowes: the pawned boots

Kate died the same night. Catherine Eddowes and her partner, John Kelly, came home from hop-picking in Kent at the end of that summer with empty pockets. To buy food, tea and sugar they pawned his boots, and Kelly waited at the door barefoot. When he earned sixpence and offered her four of it for the lodging house, Kate gave him the bed and went to the casual ward instead.

On the Saturday she set off to find her daughter, promising to be back at four. That evening an officer picked her up, very drunk, from a pavement in Aldgate. At the station, asked her name, she replied "Nothing". They let her go at around one, sober by then, and she bade the gaoler farewell with a cheery "Good night, old cock." Within the hour she was found in Mitre Square. To the deputy of her lodging house, she was "a very jolly woman, always singing".

Mary Jane Kelly: the one we know least about

Nearly all we know about Mary Jane Kelly comes from Joseph Barnett, a fish-market porter who lived with her for twenty months. She told him she came from Limerick, grew up in Wales, was widowed by a miner and spent a fortnight in France with a gentleman. She went by Marie Jeanette. Not a single independent record backs any of it up: it's the account she gave of herself. What Barnett did witness was something else. That autumn he bought the papers and read her every report of the murders, which she kept asking him about. She was frightened.

She rented a room in Miller's Court, a yard off Dorset Street, and by November she was twenty-nine shillings behind with the rent. On her last night, a neighbour heard her singing a sentimental song about a violet and a mother's grave, and after one o'clock she was still at it. The next morning the landlord sent someone to ask for what she owed.

Were Jack the Ripper's victims prostitutes?

The press of 1888 pinned that label on all five, but the inquest evidence doesn't bear it out for every one of them. Emily Holland said she had no idea how Polly earned a living; John Kelly swore he "never knew she went out for any immoral purpose". Of at least one of the women, people who knew her did say she'd done it at certain times; about the others, the evidence is silent. What all five shared was the daily struggle to find a few pennies for a roof over their heads.

Why is he called Jack the Ripper?

The nickname was born in a letter. In late September a London news agency received a note in red ink that opened "Dear Boss" and introduced, for the first time, the signature "Jack the Ripper". The day after Liz and Kate died, it appeared in the press. Years later, two senior police officers claimed a journalist had written it; that was never proved, though nearly everyone who has studied the letter believes it was a fake. The murderer was never identified. He left behind a nickname. They left behind five stories.

Fact or legend.

• Fact: the names, lodging houses, trades and last hours of all five, from sworn evidence published in 1888.
• Their own accounts: Liz's shipwreck, which didn't happen the way she told it, and Mary Jane's life story, which no record confirms.
• Probable hoax, never proven: the "Dear Boss" letter that gave the killer his nickname.
• Not supported by the evidence: that all five were prostitutes, as a blanket statement.
• Unanswered: who the killer was.

Where to hear it

Podtour tells this story on the route "Whitechapel, 1888: the victims of Jack the Ripper", thirteen stops from Mitre Square to Hanbury Street, told without sensationalism. Kate and Liz are remembered in Mitre Square, at "Kate's return from hop-picking" and "The shipwreck in Elizabeth Stride's story"; Polly at "Polly's letter from Wandsworth"; Mary Jane at "The song in Miller's Court"; and Annie at "Annie's crochet, flowers and the church clock". If you're planning your trip, our London guide has the practical side covered.

Further reading

• Daily Telegraph, reports of the inquests into Mary Ann Nichols (3 and 4 September 1888), Annie Chapman (11 and 13 September), Elizabeth Stride (2 and 4 October), Catherine Eddowes (5 and 12 October) and Mary Jane Kelly (13 November), transcribed by Casebook. https://www.casebook.org/press_reports/daily_telegraph/dt880903/
• Casebook, "Dear Boss Letter" (transcription and how the letter was received). https://www.casebook.org/ripper_letters/dear_boss_letter/
• F. H. W. Sheppard (ed.), Survey of London, vol. 27: Spitalfields and Mile End New Town, "General introduction", London County Council, 1957. https://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vol27/pp1-13
• Charles Booth (ed.), Labour and Life of the People, vol. I: East London, 2nd edn, London, Williams and Norgate, 1889. https://archive.org/details/b24764486_0001
• LSE Library, "Who was Charles Booth?", Charles Booth's London. https://booth.lse.ac.uk/learn-more/who-was-charles-booth