In the early morning hours of August 31, 1888, Mary Ann “Polly” Nichols was found dead in the Whitechapel district of London’s East End.

She was a small and delicate woman, barely 5’2”. She had turned 43 just days before. A friend described her as a clean woman who kept to herself. She was a mother of five, separated from her husband, and struggled with alcoholism and poverty.

Whitechapel was bustling, crowded, and poor, a place where vulnerable women might be found.

Polly had spent years moving between workhouses and infirmaries, sometimes returning to her father’s house. But they fought about her drinking, and she never stayed long.

In 1887 she was found to be “sleeping rough,” a Victorian euphemism for “homeless.” She was briefly employed as a domestic servant, stealing some clothing when she left.

The summer of 1888 was cool and wet. Polly was sharing a room with four other women at a Whitechapel lodging house.

On the night of Thursday, August 30, the skies of London slashed with lightning, while two dock fires cast a red glow over the city.

Polly met one of her roommates on the street at 2:30 AM on August 31. She told her that she was off to find a customer, that she needed money for her room for the night.

She was drunk.

Little more than an hour later, Polly’s mutilated body was found by two men on their way to work. Her body was still warm.

Polly had become the first of five women believed with certainty to have been murdered by the same man, a killer who would soon acquire his enduring appellation: Jack the Ripper. The victims were linked by the particulars of their gruesome deaths, their gender, and their location: All were found within a quarter-mile of each other. They were all also alleged to have been prostitutes, though recent scholarship has challenged that assertion.

Polly’s funeral was held on September 6. The next victim, Annie Chapman, was found on September 8. London’s “Autumn of Terror” had begun.