by Wayne Leon Learmond

Created on: December 13, 2008   Last Updated: April 20, 2011

Indeed, the name of 'Jack', summons up images of fog-filled dark alleyways, gas lamps, cobbled streets, and a Victorian serial killer stalking his prey. With the publication of the letter and, his subsequent name, his infamy had now been born.  Mary Ann Nichols [or 'Polly', as she was fondly known as] was a woman who would be fated, it seemed, to meet the 'Ripper' one night.

Mary Ann Nichols was an ordinary lady who was loved by her father and children and, she was special to them. The Ripper's victims were not merely statistics that had been written into the dark annals of history. They were not merely names to be forgotten for all time.
They were human beings, who had their own lives.

Whitechapel.

Whitechapel, in the year 1888, was a heaving mass of poverty, situated in the East End of Victorian London. Indeed, it was a stain upon the conscience of a nation. Overcrowding was common, the smell, was putrid, the streets overrun with rats and also with people with festering sores.

The poverty and depredation in this area, in the late 19th century was as close as anyone could come, to Hell on earth. There was no welfare state to fall back on, and the only means for people to get by, was through crime - which was rife.  Young children would form their own gangs, {many seeing the gangs as the only family they would have or trust}. Aside from drunkenness, stealing, `was one of the main crimes within the city.

Of course, this went on out of sight of the general public and, many a man was beaten to a pulp. It stands to reason then that murder would soon follow too. The prostitutes themselves were in great danger and, there are no official figures as to how many were strangled or butchered in a bloodlust of frenzy.

Indeed, if you were a respectable woman you would not have dared to step out of your home after dark. Many times a policeman who happened to pass by a crime being committed would have had acid {nitric} aimed at his face by the robbers, he would have soon been driven off. And as all this went on, it acted as a backdrop for Jack. For this was the world he inhabited and roamed in. This was his world. A savage world, where the law of the jungle was just that...there was NO law.

Known as 'Polly' to her friends, Mary Ann Nichols {or Mary Ann Walker, as she was previously known} was born on the 26th August 1845, in Shoe Lane not far from Fleet Street and, she was christened around the year 1851.  Although she looked like a woman between the ages

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