by David Waine
*
Friday, August 31st, 1888
Polly Nichols tied her new bonnet securely under her chin in a neat bow, leaving Dark Annie, Long Liz and Mary Jane huddled together in the snug, staring into their gins.
“There! Ain’t I as pretty as a picture?” she remarked gaily over her shoulder in a voice hoarse from too much mother’s ruin. Her cheeks were ruddy with the combined effects of sunshine, wind and gin and the bonnet contrasted sharply with the tattered, stained frills of her dress. Two of the other three shrugged dispiritedly while the youngest, Mary Jane, made no response at all, but stared into her drink, lost in her own wretched world.
‘Miserable slut!’ thought Polly to herself. “What’s she got to be so down about? With her hair and eyes, she don’t need no bonnet.’
The snug of the Frying Pan pub was dingy and smoke-filled, much of it leaking through from the saloon bar next door. With her new finery, she thought she might just have time to lure her fourth punter of the day. With luck, she might pick up one so pissed that he coughed up without her having to do much at all. Quick fumble in a dark alley and fourpence in her purse. Lovely.
She elbowed her way through the throng of men trying to make their way into the bar, laughing off each passing grope of her breast or bottom with a promise to see the groper later. She would have hoisted her skirt there and then had the landlord allowed it. He could have been charged with keeping a disorderly house, however, if he had, so it was out into the sudden sooty darkness of Brick Lane that she went in search of prey.
Quiet had fallen on Whitechapel. Even the many taverns would soon empty as their last customers straggled home to their beds through the squalid, smoky labyrinth that made up the East End of the great piled city. She had an hour, two at the most, before the streets were finally deserted and she could drag her weary legs back to Malkin’s doss house for some rest of her own.
Brick Lane was long and narrow, lit at intervals by flickering gas lamps, sporadic refuges of misty light in a ravine of murk, for the houses on either side were high and few of the windows showed lights. It was different by day, when the street boasted its own market, but at night it was an endless, empty black chasm. Heading towards the river, she failed to notice when Brick Lane became Osborn Street because it remained unaltered otherwise: narrow, long, straight and dark.
She stumbled on until she reached Whitechapel Road where she paused for a moment beneath a solitary gas lamp. Unlike most of the neighbourhood, the district’s main thoroughfare was broad, well-paved and even moderately lit. She felt relieved not to have to grope from lamp to lamp with one eye on her back lest she were set upon from the shadows.
Whitechapel Road was also empty. Turning left, she made her way towards the Black Bull, a large pub with a half-timbered frontage. She didn’t like it because the landlord had barred her six months previously for soliciting on his premises, miserable bastard. It wasn’t a real pub with tiles on the wall, like the Ten Bells or the Princess Alice. Their landlords were good sorts who didn’t mind her and her friends.
Raucous laughter suddenly erupted as the door slammed open and a grubby drunk was ejected heavily into the street.
“And stay out!” bellowed the landlord, dusting his hands off on his apron and returning to his customers.
Polly was no more than three yards away when the wretched man rose drunkenly and pulled his cap down over his eyes. “Hello, dear,” she said in her most winning voice, taking him by the arm and helping him to straighten up. “D’yer like my new bonnet?”
The man looked at her and wrenched his arm away in disgust. He muttered something throaty and foreign before shambling off in the opposite direction.
“Tight pig!” she cried after him. “That cost me coin, that did!”
Electing to go hurriedly the other way lest he should come back and hit her, she dodged quickly round the first corner and flattened herself against the wall.
There she waited until she judged it safe to venture a look. Whitechapel Road was as empty as it had been when she arrived. She stood at the corner with Court Street, a seedy narrow alley that gave onto Bucks Row, which was her preferred quiet spot and a good place to do business. Tightening her shawl about her shoulders, she listened. Minutes passed as the encroaching chill of the small hours sapped what little remained of the day’s earlier warmth from the air. No, there it was again, she had not been mistaken: the steady clop, clop of an approaching carriage. Screwing up her eyes, she peered along the road in time to see a black horse emerge from Osborn Street, pulling an equally black cab. The vehicle approached slowly and rumbled past her at walking pace, the springs creaking as a wheel jolted on the uneven cobbles. She could see the driver hunched over his reins, his collar pulled up about his ears and his hat low over his eyes, studiously avoiding her gaze.
A disillusioned Polly shook her head. If he could afford a cab, he could afford the younger, fresher girls and would pass her by. At her age, there was little that she could offer someone like him. Disappointed, she pulled her shawl about her shoulders and turned to move on.
But what was this? The clopping had stopped and the cab stood in the shadows beyond the cone of dim, yellowish light from the lamp. A door opened, spilling a pale, amber shaft onto the cobbles. A sudden spark of hope flaring within her breast, she saw a hand, clad in a spotless white glove, beckon her to approach.