A Brutal Chill in August: A Novel of Polly Nichols, The First Victim of Jack the Ripper (23 page)

“Something about my thinking during my escape from Bill troubles me,” Polly told Tom as they sat to eat a fish dinner one evening. “I can’t decide whether I truly believed the nurse threatened my marriage and my life or if I’d merely needed that to be true to leave my children behind.”

“Estell said they plotted to send you to Bedlam.”

“Yes, but how can I be certain of that? Perhaps she said that to encourage me to leave.”

Tom frowned. “Estell is not given to lying.”

Polly nodded. “Most of all, I hate to think my children might believe they aren’t lovable, that I did not care for them.” Polly bowed her head and covered her face with her hands.

Tom reached across the table to caress her. “I would go with you if you wanted to see them.”

“No, Bill mustn’t know about you. Should he prove adultery, the maintenance would cease.”

“Should you return to him? Would you feel better if you did?”

“No, I would suffer a worse marriage than what I had.” Polly knew her husband would never forget what she’d done.

* * *

With Estell’s departure, Tom’s consumption of alcohol steadily increased until Polly became uncomfortable with the amount he drank each night. After all the contentiousness with her father and Bill concerning her drinking, she didn’t think she had any right to criticize. Tom asked her to drink with him and she refused.

She remembered her father talking about Mr. Macklin haunting those who drank too much. Even before that, on her own, she’d thought Papa’s statements about a demon chasing her had something to do with alcohol. Although the Bonehill Ghost was linked in her mind with her own alcoholic overindulgence, and she got a chill every time she thought about it, she told herself she no longer believed in the demon. Still, Polly didn’t look too closely at her reasons for abstinence for fear that they might evaporate.

At first, Tom got to work at the Burlington smithy with consistency, but as the year progressed he more frequently tested his employer’s patience. If he had not been such a good blacksmith, he would not have lasted at the job as long as he did.

* * *

In December of 1881, Tom had stayed home on a Tuesday to sleep off a bad hangover, despite threats from his employer that he’d be let go. Polly was sweeping the room when a knock came at the door. She answered the call to find a man in a bowler hat, a long mustache, and dark clothes standing on the doorstep.

“Mrs. Nichols?” he asked. “Mrs. Polly Nichols?”

“Yes,” she said.

He smiled, said, “Thank you,” and walked away.

Nothing about the man or his words made a memorable impression, and though an odd occurrence she didn’t think to tell Tom about the incident.

Several days later another man called at their room in the early evening while Polly and Tom were both in. Polly answered the door and Tom stood behind her. The man wore a brown suit, a long topcoat, and felt hat.

“I am a census enumerator from the Office of National Statistics,” he said. “Our records for several homes in this neighborhood from the census taken in April were lost. If you please, take this schedule and fill out all the questions and I’ll return tomorrow evening to collect it.” He handed Polly a sheet of paper.

“Yes, sir,” Polly said. “I will.”

Once the man had gone and Polly shut the door, Tom said drunkenly, “We shouldn’t have to do that.”

“We do it so those in Parliament think about us.”

“I’m not certain that’s a good thing.”

As she had in April, Polly noted that the census schedule had been printed by the company that employed Bill Nichols, Messrs. Pellanddor and Company. Among many other queries, the document asked for the names, ages, occupations, and relationships of all those living within the household.

* * *

The afternoon of the next day, a letter came for Polly from Bill Nichols.

My Polly,

I will not waste my time or yours on sentiment or condemnation. Your children will provide that with time.

I am writing to say that the census schedule you returned to my man has proved your undoing, written in your own hand. Since you have been found to be living with a man as a common prostitute, I am no longer legally bound to provide maintenance. You will not see a farthing more from me.

Good riddance, I say,

Bill Nichols

Polly foresaw future clashes with her children. They would only know their father’s side of the story, and have nothing but scorn for her. As saddening as her thoughts were, anger pushed them aside. Polly tore the letter to small pieces.

Later, as she cleaned the pieces up off the floor, she felt foolish for having fallen for Bill’s trap.

Without her maintenance to contribute, she and Tom would have to find lesser lodgings. Polly feared that when he found out, he’d drink heavier still. She also worried that she wasn’t up to the coming struggle to survive.

31

A Precipitous Decline

Upon hearing the news of the letter and the loss of the maintenance funds, Tom fell into a binge that by mid-January of 1882 had cost him his job.

Polly looked for a position of employment, but found nothing. They sold and pawned what possessions they could, and earned enough to pay for the room for another month. Polly spoke to her father about where to find piece work.

“I’ve not looked for such in many years,” he said. “Go where goods are manufactured and ask what work they might send you home with.”

Polly found work finishing shirts for a penny, ha’penny each for the Ellis Shirt Manufacturers in Clandon Street. She finished the collar, cuffs, button holes, hemmed the shirt tail, and applied the buttons to complete a shirt. Each one took her over an hour. She needed to make thirteen shillings a week.

“I work fifteen hours a day,” she told Tom, “and you drink it away. You must find work!”

“I’ll go out to look every day,” he said.

Each afternoon, he left the room for several hours, yet he always returned drunk and without a job. Polly assumed that he either drank the time away or that he looked for work while intoxicated and, of course, got no good results.

“We cannot keep spending what little we have on gin,” Polly said.

Promising to spend less on drink, he merely bought the worst available gin at a lower price and drank just as much.

Polly’s hands began to shake from fatigue after the first week of finishing shirts. At the end of the third week, with trepidation, she started drinking the horrible gin to steady her hands. The quality of her labor suffered for her slight intoxication and fatigue, and the shirt manufacturer stopped giving her work.

Polly fussed and fumed with worry and pleaded with Tom for a change in his ways. She made demands and gave him ultimatums. He made more empty promises, and continually stepped around her demands. Tom had become an immoveable object. Nothing Polly said or did motivated him to act in his own best interest.

Knowing they could not continue to afford their lodging, she looked for other rooms. “I found two common lodging houses what allow a husband and wife to sleep in the same bed for sixpence per night,” she told Tom.

He didn’t respond. On the day the landlord came to turn them out into the streets, she thought that, finally, Tom would be forced to act. She’d packed a few of their belongings and loaded them into a carpet bag and the homemade pram once used to carry Eliza and Nancy. On the street, Tom turned from her, and quickly walked away.

Carrying the carpet bag and pulling the pram, Polly tried to keep up. “Burns common lodging is just north on Brandon Street,” she called out to him.

Tom turned south beside the Congregational Church on York Street. He fled down the side passage that led to an old graveyard.

Polly abandoned the pram and hurried after Tom, but lost him amidst the broken cogs of tombstones behind the church. “Tom,” she cried, “please, I need you.” An old woman and a child, standing before a small marker, and a man hauling a stained sack of something into a tool house watched Polly warily as she made her way through the graveyard. Though she peeked behind every standing stone, she didn’t find Tom. Her lover had vanished. Weeping, she made her way back to collect the pram, only to discover that it, too, was gone, along with all her possession but the few articles of clothing she carried in the carpet bag.

Polly went to Papa. He struggled to lift the front of his barrow to head out for the day as she arrived.

“Papa,” she said, helping him lift. “Tom and I were turned out into the street. He’s left me, and I have no money. Will you take me in?”

He looked at her for a moment. “I’m sorry, Polly girl, but I’m coming off a bout with grippe. Haven’t earned a farthing in two weeks. As I’m just getting back on my feet, I haven’t enough for us both.”

“Isn’t John here to help?”

“He has his own barrow now, and found lodgings in Whitechapel. You can go to him or come back in a month when I’ve had time to earn a little.”

Polly shook her head. She couldn’t beg from her own child.

“Then you’ll have to stay in a four penny hotel,” Papa said coldly. “Surely you can do without drink long enough each day to earn that.”

Despite his tone, perhaps because of the edge of desperation in it, Polly understood. He didn’t need the extra burden while recovering from illness. Papa looked worn down, his eyes sunken and dark, his features pale. He’d become thin and stooped in a way that told her the years weighed on him.

She placed a hand on his rough, whisker-stubbled cheek, and then walked away.

Polly stayed nights at Wiltings common lodging in Emily Street, sleeping in her clothes with strangers, six to a bed. By day, she begged along South Street. Some days, she went hungry in order to have the funds to sleep indoors, safe from the cold winter nights. She had few opportunities for washing, and became increasingly filthy. All the clothing she had, including two extra chemises, one extra skirt, and changes of undergarments which she carried in her carpet bag, had become ragged.

Seeing prostitutes plying themselves outside of pubs, she considered the trade. One evening, she watched a young flaxen-haired woman outside a pub on East Street. Since the young woman wasn’t dressed in a particularly alluring manner, she didn’t look like a prostitute. Her effort to catch the eye of each man who walked past eventually gave her away, yet she didn’t seem so different from Polly. When the woman took a break to smoke her pipe, Polly approached.

The prostitute looked her up and down.

“I’m Polly. If you please, ma’am, I have questions.”

“Yes?” the woman said. She wasn’t unfriendly.

“What do you earn, and what do you offer?”

“I’m no
Tom
.”

Polly thought that somehow the prostitute compared herself to Tom Dews, but then realized she meant that she didn’t provide her service to women.

“No, not for me,” Polly said. “I want to know what price
I
should ask.”

The prostitute raised her eyebrows and nodded. “The going rate is four pence for Miss Laycock.”

Just enough to pay doss for one night at Wiltings.
She knew that Miss Laycock meant vagina, so she assumed the woman meant full sexual intercourse.

“Dressed like that,” the prostitute said, “and smelling as you do, you’ll be lucky to get tuppence.”

Discouraged, Polly thanked the woman and moved on.

* * *

On a day when her fellow beggars warned that the night would become severely cold, she’d had nothing to eat, and knew she wouldn’t find her doss for the evening, Polly weighed the dangers of sleeping rough against the chances of coming to harm from a client paying her for sex.

Surely a woman’s first time could not be so terrible or there wouldn’t be so many women who stay in prostitution.

Feeling alone and vulnerable, Polly saw herself as the little girl she’d been shortly after her mother died. She realized that a sense of that innocent girl within had never left her, despite all that Polly had done. Though battered and bruised, the girl wore the last shreds of her dignity, and stood in the way of what must be done. Polly shoved the weakened girl aside and took action.

She found a pub with plenty of customers coming and going, and stood outside the establishment beside a group of men who were talking and enjoying themselves. She didn’t know how to broach the subject of sex for sale. Hoping her glance would convey the message of her willingness, she tried to catch an eye or two.

Finally, one of the men, a drunken fellow in a checked suit turned to her. “You’re a raggedy guttersnipe, you are. Be gone before the lot of us
take
what we want.”

She hurried away across the lane to the footway on the other side, carrying the frightened girl within her to safety.

Polly had run out of options, and considered prayer, but since she couldn’t pray for herself, the idea seemed laughable.

In the late afternoon, she headed to the Lambeth Workhouse in Renfrew Road. Polly paced up and down the lane, her stomach aching with hunger pangs, and her weariness demanding a warm place to rest. She tried to persuade herself that all she’d heard over the years of the evils of the institution—the tales of abusive staff, of the food being not fit for man or beast, the enfeebling hard labor, and discipline that included torture for even the smallest offense—were merely tall tales. Although she wasn’t successful, she finally entered.