Free Complete History of Jack the Ripper by Philip Sudgen

death in the explosion of a paraffin lamp and Polly attended the funeral. The quarrel still rankled too much for either of them to attempt a crossing of the gulf that had opened up between them and they did not speak to each other. It was nevertheless apparent from her respectable dress that her circumstances had improved.
    Her movements during the last year of her life are rather better documented. For one day – 25 October 1887 – she stayed in St Giles Workhouse, Endell Street. Then, from 26 October to 2 December 1887, she found refuge at the Strand Workhouse, Edmonton. On 19 December she reappeared at the Lambeth Workhouse but was turned out ten days later. The Mitcham Workhouse, run by the Holborn Board of Guardians, admitted her on 4 January 1888. She was sheltered there for more than three months but on 16 April was transferred to Lambeth, her place of settlement. Polly remained at the Lambeth Workhouse until 12 May. She then made a last attempt to pull the threads of her life together.
    Polly left the workhouse to take up a position as domestic servant with Samuel and Sarah Cowdry, Ingleside, Rose Hill Road, Wandsworth. And she tried to reforge the broken links with her kinsfolk by writing a letter to her father:
    I just write to say you will be glad to know that I am settled in my new place, and going on all right up to now. My people went out yesterday, and have not returned, so I am left in charge. It is a grand place inside, with trees and gardens back and front. All has been newly done up. They are teetotallers and religious, so I ought to get on. They are very nice people, and I have not too much to do. I hope you are all right and the boy has work. So good-bye for the present. – From yours truly,
    POLLY
    Answer soon, please, and let me know how you are. 6
     
    Walker sent a kind reply but heard nothing more. He did not learn, for instance, that on 12 July Polly absconded from her employer stealing clothing worth £3 10s. A few days later she took lodgings at 18 Thrawl Street. Apart from a day in the Grays Inn Road temporary Workhouse at the beginning of August Polly shared a room with Ellen Holland at Thrawl Street for something like six weeks. Mrs Holland liked Polly. She told the inquest that she had seen her the worse for drink on two or three occasions but had otherwise found her clean, quiet and inoffensive.
    Polly left Thrawl Street about a week before her death. Her last few days are extremely mysterious. When Mrs Holland saw her in the early hours of 31 August, however, she gathered that Polly had been staying at the ‘White House’, a common lodging house in Flower and Dean Street. 7 We do know that on the night of her murder she tried to return to 18 Thrawl Street and was turned out because she did not have her lodging money. Ellen Holland was the last person apart from the killer who is known to have seen her alive. That was at the corner of Osborn Street and Whitechapel Road at 2.30 on the morning of 31 August. Mrs Holland wanted Polly to come home with her but she was then still sanguine about raising the money and reeled drunkenly off along the Whitechapel Road. Just over an hour later and less than three-quarters of a mile away her dead and mutilated body was found in Buck’s Row. It was just a few days after her forty-third birthday.
    Inadequate, impoverished, a prostitute, probably an alcoholic – Polly Nichols was all of these but she inspired affection in those who came to know her best. Despite his differences with his daughter Edward Walker waived away her faults at the inquest on 1 September. ‘I don’t think she had any enemies,’ he said, ‘she was too good forthat.’ On the same day William Nichols, Polly’s estranged husband, was taken to Old Montague Street to identify her body by Inspector Abberline. Nichols was a pale man with a full, light-brown beard and moustache. Wearing a long black coat, dark trousers, a black tie and a tall silk hat, and carrying an umbrella, he