page_title: Whitechapel murders
section_title: Mary Ann Nichols
hierarchical_section_title: Whitechapel murders / Victims and investigation / Mary Ann Nichols
caption_attribution_description: English: Frederick George Abberline (January 8, 1843 Blandford Forum, Dorset – December 10, 1929) attending "Dynamitards" trial (1885). Abberline was an inspector for the London Metropolitan Police and was a prominent police figure in the investigation into the Jack the Ripper murders. Français&#160;: Portrait de profil de l'inspecteur Frederick George Abberline en 1885, lors du procès des féniens James Gilbert Cunningham et Harry Burton, auteurs d'attentats terroristes commis à Londres. Español: Retrato del inspector Frederick George Abberline, quien cumplió un rol significativo en la búsqueda del asesino serial conocido como "Jack el Destripador".
context_page_description: The Whitechapel murders were committed in or near the largely impoverished Whitechapel district in the East End of London between 3 April 1888 and 13 February 1891. At various points some or all of these eleven unsolved murders of women have been ascribed to the notorious unidentified serial killer known as Jack the Ripper.
  Most, if not all, of the victims—Emma Elizabeth Smith, Martha Tabram, Mary Ann "Polly" Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, Mary Jane Kelly, Rose Mylett, Alice McKenzie, Frances Coles, and an unidentified woman—were prostitutes. Smith was sexually assaulted and robbed by a gang. Tabram was stabbed 39 times. Nichols, Chapman, Stride, Eddowes, Kelly, McKenzie and Coles had their throats cut. Eddowes and Stride were murdered on the same night, within approximately an hour and less than a mile apart; their murders are known as the "double event", after a phrase in a postcard sent to the press by an individual claiming to be the Ripper. The bodies of Nichols, Chapman, Eddowes and Kelly had abdominal mutilations. Mylett was strangled. The body of the unidentified woman was dismembered, but the exact cause of her death is unclear.
context_section_description: On Friday 31 August, Mary Ann Nichols was murdered in Buck's Row (since renamed Durward Street), a back street in Whitechapel. Her body was discovered by cart driver Charles Cross at 3:45 am on the ground in front of a gated stable entrance. Her throat had been slit twice from left to right and her abdomen was mutilated by a deep jagged wound. Several shallower incisions across the abdomen, and three or four similar cuts on the right side were caused by the same knife used violently and downwards. As the murder occurred in the territory of the J or Bethnal Green Division of the Metropolitan Police, it was at first investigated by the local detectives. On the same day, James Monro resigned as the head of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) over differences with Chief Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Sir Charles Warren. Initial investigations into the murder had little success, although elements of the press linked it to the two previous murders and suggested the killing might have been perpetrated by a gang, as in the case of Smith. The Star newspaper suggested instead that a single killer was responsible and other newspapers took up their storyline. Suspicions of a serial killer at large in London led to the secondment of Detective Inspectors Frederick Abberline, Henry Moore and Walter Andrews from the Central Office at Scotland Yard. On the available evidence, Coroner Baxter concluded that Nichols was murdered at just after 3 am where she was found. In his summing up, he dismissed the possibility that her murder was connected with those of Smith and Tabram, as the lethal weapons were different in those cases, and neither of the earlier cases involved a slash to the throat. However, by the time the inquest into Nichols's death had concluded, a fourth woman had been murdered, and Baxter noted "The similarity of the injuries in the two cases is considerable."
caption: Inspector Frederick Abberline led the police investigation.
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