A Brutal Chill in August: A Novel of Polly Nichols, The First Victim of Jack the Ripper

by Alan M. Clark

  While they looked into jobs at the Jessup cotton spinning mill, Polly spoke to her brother about the possibility. “Eddie told me the boss there pushes his workers to move fast to meet quotas,” she told Bernice, “and the steam-powered machinery snatches a limb or a life at least once a month.”

  Bernice took a job at the white-lead works for a short time. One day she returned home with a haunted look about her. “I quit. I found out the girl I replaced wasted away and went mad. Then I learned that happens to most of the girls as works there—five already this year.”

  The rate of accidents, poisoning, and disease, and the stress upon the body of the different types of work available had all become discouraging factors. Polly imagined industry as a hungry giant that preferred to feed on the young and tender, chewing or biting off a limb, crushing a head or chest, setting a poisoned trap to catch the inexperienced off guard, leaving many unfortunates ill, maimed, or dead.

  They stuck with the devil they knew: fur pulling. The task involved pulling the loose undercoat from rabbit pelts so that the furs would not shed the down once they were used to line garments. The action created a myriad of tiny broken hair fibers that floated freely in the air. The girls could not avoid breathing the particles into their lungs. The undercoat that didn’t float away, they saved in bags to sell for a small sum per pound.

  Polly’s father and Bernice’s mother each paid the deputy of the lodging house, Mrs. Fortuna, a little extra to allow their daughters to perform their labors at home. The girls worked together so they could talk, sing songs, and keep each other company through the hours of toil. They alternated the use of their families’ respective rooms with the idea that an open window on the off days would allow some airing out. The strategy seemed to do little good. The casements faced west, and a golden beam of sunlight slanting in through the open sashes in late afternoon always revealed thick motes of the tiny fibers still floating freely within the chambers.

  By 1861, most of the inhabitants of the lodging house, those who’d been living there for any length of time, had wheezing, labored breath. When Old Mrs. Fletcher died in a coughing fit, Mrs. Fortuna had had enough. She forbade the girls to do their work within the lodging house.

  Polly and Bernice looked for another windless spot to do their work, but couldn’t find a good situation.

  One evening, as she sat with her father and brother to eat, Polly complained. “Because nobody wants fur pulling where they live or work, the nethers, even for the smallest room, are greater than what you’re willing to pay.”

  Papa swallowed the food in his mouth, set down his fork, and took a deep breath as he turned his dark brown eyes on her. He didn’t like to be disturbed while eating. “You’re expected to work it out,” he said. Papa wiped sweat from his broad brow and pushed dark locks out of his eyes. “I have my work and you have yours. Get it done.”

  “My work shall never be done,” she grumbled.

  Papa slapped her. “We work too hard to listen to your whingeing. If you cannot pull fur, you’ll have to hawk wares on the street. If you don’t, we’ll go hungry to pay the nethers on the lodging house, and you’ll see whose helping goes first.”

  He reached with his large hand to snatch some of the buttered bread from her plate. He tore the bread into two portions, gave one to Eddie and the other he placed on his own plate.

  Polly glared at him until he raised his hand in threat. She lowered her gaze. The altercation seemed to have little effect on Eddie. He continued to eat in silence, scooping up Polly’s bread and making short work of it. Eddie looked and acted much like her father. He wasn’t quite as tall, and had their mother’s plump nose instead of their father’s long, thin one. That didn’t give Eddie a much friendlier face.

  “Can you get me brush work, Papa?” she asked.

  “Mr. Carr has passed away, and his son took the business to South Bermondsey.”

  Polly wanted to suggest he could find another source for the work, but he’d clearly had a bad day and wasn’t in a mood to consider her wishes.

  * * *

  “What shall we do?” Polly asked Bernice. Their search for a fur-pulling spot seemed to be at an end.

  “You won’t like my answer.”

  Polly knew the answer. She’d tried not to believe they had only the one option. “The privies?”

  “Yes.”

  The two young women did their piece work in the privies that stood in the fenced court at the eastern end of the lodging house, where Papa left his barrow when it wasn’t in use. Six days a week, they carried into the stalls their rabbit pelts, and the cloth bags in which they placed the undercoat they collected. The privies were close enough to one another that, though the girls each occupied a separate one and the doors were closed, Polly easily heard Bernice’s voice coming through the splintery walls. They kept each other company with conversation as they worked.

  Polly found the reek discouraging, especially in the morning, yet by midday, she no longer smelled the odor. As she and Bernice made their conversations and singing loud enough to hear one another, all the tenants of the lodging house became aware that the girls did their work inside the privies. Interruption of the labor occurred periodically as the lodgers came and went. Largely, they showed tolerance. They knocked and politely waited for a reply. If a knock came at her door, Polly covered her work, exited, and waited until the lodger had finished before resuming her toil. Few complained about the fibers Polly and Bernice left behind. Mrs. Fortuna turned a blind eye to their activities.

  In the spring of 1861, when both of the young women were fifteen years old, Bernice broke the news that she’d found a job at a bag maker.

  Polly tried to be happy for her friend. “You’ll do well, I’m certain of it. Must be better wages than what we earn at present.”

  “Yes,” Bernice said, nodding sadly and hanging her head.

  Without conversation, fur pulling would become all but unbearable. Apparently, Bernice had thought about that.

  “I’ll ask after a position for you right away,” Bernice said. “Perhaps we’ll be working side by side again very soon.”

  “That should be nice.”

  * * *

  As happened, even with good friends, once Polly and Bernice no longer worked together, their rendezvous slowed to a trickle. Polly ceased to see Bernice entirely when she and her mother moved into another lodging house about a mile away. No doubt, the girl had new companions with whom she worked. Polly didn’t hold bitterness toward Bernice.

  Working most of each day in the lodging house privy stall with no one to talk to, lonely and bored, Polly did battle with herself. A restlessness that demanded satisfaction settled into her bones. Her mind wandered through several scenarios in which she found a companion—sometimes male, sometimes female—with whom to drink. With a certain amount of reckless glee that she found disturbing, she imagined taking up exciting and risky pursuits with her companion. She fancied herself capable of becoming a topnotch pickpocket, a palmer, or a highwayman. Yes, she and her companion might find pistols, and stop coaches along the roads on the outskirts of London. As a dragsman, she would become rich. Several times, she visited a daydream in which she simply became drunk and ran naked through the streets.

  Polly knew that if she did any of those things, she would be caught and locked away in prison. When she began to think that perhaps prison would not be so bad, she feared for her sanity. She dreaded her flights of fancy, yet she couldn’t stop them.

  My wants are a torment, but the boredom pushes my thoughts away from the here and now to seek excitement. This must be how criminals are made.

  Her restless discontent with life left her sulking through the long, dull days of work, the lifeless meals in the evenings with her father and brother, and the sleepless hours before dawn when she awoke too early and could not find sleep. She thought a lot about the euphoric feeling and the giddiness she’d had at first when she’d drunk the gin on her thirteenth birthday, and decided tha
t the next time she drank, she’d be careful not to have too much. Polly knew boys in the neighborhood who found a drink from time to time. George Prescott had made eyes at her. She might persuade him to share his gin.

  Polly felt particularly disagreeable one day in July of 1861. “Papa,” she cried, “I am miserable with my work.”

  “Everyone is miserable with their work,” he said. “Don’t be selfish.”

  His reaction surprised her, and she became silent. The idea that she was selfish troubled her since she had difficulty recognizing the trait within. Polly did her part and resented the suggestion that she didn’t. Still, the accusation stung and she didn’t know why. She felt as if she’d been carrying a terrible secret and forgotten about it until someone found her out.

  “Should you be a good girl,” Papa said, “you’ll rest in Heaven.”

  4

  Selfish Prayers

  August 31, 1861

  The notion that she was particularly selfish continued to trouble Polly for some weeks. She didn’t want such a terrible trait. Selfish people had few friends and suffered unhappiness. Yet Polly couldn’t seem to step back from herself and assess the truth until the day she met up with trouble from an official of her church on her false birthday.

  “I’ll have to tell your father about this,” the man said, “unless you’re willing to tell me why you do these things. I should know if you lie.”

  Polly tried not to show her fear. She believed him to be a churchwarden for St. Bride’s Parish. If that were true, he was young for that role. He’d caught her drinking gin with George Prescott and two of his pals behind a tool shed in the churchyard. The three boys had fled. Too drunk to move fast, Polly stumbled. The man had batted the bottle of gin out of her hand and the vessel had fallen and spilled its contents into the dirt.

  He took her forcefully by the arm in a powerful grip, and drew her away from the shed. The bright afternoon sky, charged with white haze, blinded Polly as she emerged from the shade.

  He led her along the flagstone walk and through a door into the back of the church. Although her family belonged to the parish and she’d been in the church many times, she’d never seen these rooms. As they moved down a hall, she heard activity in a couple of rooms, but didn’t see anyone else. At the end of the hall, they entered a rectory office. The room smelled of polished wood and old men and had furniture made of lathe-turned and hand-carved fine hardwoods. Needlepoint upholstery covered the chair cushions. The desk, also hand-carved, and larger than the bed in which her father and brother slept, stood in front of a tall leaded window with fine drapery.

  The man took a simple wooden chair from one corner of the room, placed it before the desk and gestured for her to sit. Polly complied, fighting off her slight intoxication in order to sit upright in the chair. She glanced at the exit several times, trying to decide if she’d get away with making a run for it.

  He shut the door.

  “I am Mr. Martin Shaw, Churchwarden,” he said, standing over her with a stern look. “This is the second time I’ve caught you profaning Church property.”

  She’d seen Mr. Shaw in church on a Sunday, sitting in the pews with the middle class parishioners. He had indeed surprised Polly and her friends once before, about two weeks earlier. She and her young men had got away that time.

  “As long as I do my work,” Polly lied, “my Papa toils too hard to care what I do.”

  His expression remained unchanged. He was an earnest man, of average height and a thin build. His dark clothes, his long, sober face, framed by the rectangles of side whiskers, spoke of a man who believed the world should be orderly. Although he looked the part, he seemed somewhat awkward in the ornate rectory office. Since he made no effort to move around to sit at the desk, she knew that the grand bureau, indeed, the chamber itself, didn’t belong to him. He’d brought her to the office because he believed the room would lend him more authority.

  At least he wasn’t a vicar. She’d heard stories from friends of what they did to punish girls. Some of them liked doing it to boys as well. Polly walked the other way whenever she saw a priest.

  She feared only that Mr. Shaw would tell her father about her activities. If Papa found out, he’d watch her more carefully.

  “Why do you do it, a pretty girl like you? How old are you now?”

  “Sixteen,” Polly said with a bit of defiance. “Today is my birthday and I wanted to celebrate.” Of course her true birthday was not the 31st, but the 26th. He didn’t have to know that.

  “Too young to be drinking. And don’t think your young gentlemen friends won’t suffer. I know their names.”

  At least he’d found them before she’d opened her chemise to reveal her breasts—the price she’d bargained with George Prescott for the gin.

  Polly considered the first words Mr. Shaw had said to her: “I’ll have to tell your father about this, unless you’re willing to tell me why you do these things.” Would he be true to his word? She had little to lose by telling him something of her life.

  “Please, sir, you needn’t blame my friends. I offered the gin. Young men, being what they are, could not resist.”

  He nodded his head. “Why do you tempt them so?” he asked.

  “They should drink whether I offered it or not,” she said. “If I offer it, they drink with me.”

  More lies. Becoming impatient, Mr. Shaw narrowed his eyes.

  Polly believed that he asked her to explain her actions in the hope that, as she did so, she’d see the error of her ways. No doubt, he believed that girls drinking with boys led to one thing alone. Those of Mr. Shaw’s class concerned themselves with impropriety among the lower class only when the misconduct seemed to threaten their world. She should settle his fears on that score easily.

  “You mustn’t worry about that.” She emphasized the last word to express what he couldn’t speak to her about openly: Sex. “I would not have allowed them to take advantage of me.”

  “If the gin didn’t leave your judgment wanting.” He shook his head slowly.

  So, Polly thought, he chooses to see me as a good girl headed down a dark path because of the drink.

  “I work too hard, sir,” she said. “My papa and brother are street locksmiths. They work a barrow in Fleet Street most of each day. I’ve toiled at home since my mother died nine years ago. My papa brings me work so I don’t have to labor in a mill. Still, my work is endless, dull, and lonely, and I want to have fun when I can. I used to make brushes of different sorts. Now, I’m a fur puller.”

  “What’s that?”

  Polly looked at him curiously. Who didn’t know about fur pulling? Then she realized that a man of his station had no reason to know of such a thing.

  “Piece work,” she said bitterly. “My papa gets paid per piece for each pelt I finish. I pull the downy undercoat from rabbit pelts used to line garments. He’s paid a small sum per pound for the down I collect as well. In the Crimean war, many pelts were needed for coats to keep our soldiers warm.”

  “That ended five years ago.”

  “There’s still a demand.”

  “Yes, I have a fur-lined hat.” He seemed to think for a moment. “That doesn’t sound like hard work.”

  “The down gets everywhere,” she said. “No matter how often I clean, it finds me.”

  Polly held up her arms and shook them. A cloud of tiny white fluff billowed out from the sleeves of her shift, and Mr. Shaw’s eyes went wide.

  “It chokes me in my sleep. I become breathless even when walking a short way. It’s not as harmful and pays better than many other kinds of piece work. I’m fortunate to have it, and still we barely get by.”

  “Can you do the work outside?”

  “The down will blow away on the slightest breeze.”

  “Hmm…my hatter charged me next to nothing to add the fur lining,” Mr. Shaw said, seemingly to himself.

  “We need the income, but the work makes me miserable.”

  He bowed his head
for a moment, then said sadly, “You ought to go to school instead of spending your young life working.”

  Polly smiled. “Yes, I wished for that. Without my mother…”

  She knew she didn’t have to continue. He had a sympathetic smile. He was a good man, after all. He meant her no real harm.

  “So many have so little,” he said. “You don’t deserve to grow up like that, and I’m certain that when I tell your father about this, it will not help, yet as Churchwarden, I have a duty.”

  Polly had to think fast. She had to give him what he wanted; a contrite young woman who trusted God to mete out just punishment.

  “Pray with me,” she said. Polly quickly took to her knees on the polished hardwood floor.

  Mr. Shaw hesitated only a moment before joining her. He cleared his throat before beginning. “When the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness that he hath committed,” he said, “and…um…doeth that which is right, he shall save his soul….”

  Polly recognized his words as the opening to the Order for the Evening Prayer, something from Ezekiel, if she remembered correctly. He didn’t recite the words perfectly. She helped him with the next line, from Psalms, she thought. “I acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.…”

  Polly opened one eye and glanced at him, and found him glancing back. He looked a bit sheepish, perhaps because a young sinner had shown him up. As a lay official of the Church, Mr. Shaw wasn’t required to lead prayer. He nodded in approval, clearly relieved that she’d carried on. Polly closed her eyes as she continued. Her memory of the corporate prayer gave out, and she struggled to fill the gap with an individual expression. “O Lord, please help me to be satisfied as I toil at home. Make my fingers stronger so they don’t ache so much after a long day of work. Help me find a husband to provide me with a good life. Please keep illness away. Make Papa a happier man so he should treat me better than he has done.”

  Polly thought she did well. She opened one eye to see Mr. Shaw’s reaction. Again, he glanced at her. He had a troubled look.