Polly Nichols is to walk the streets of London’s East End for the last time tonight, August 30—before she is murdered in the early hours of the next morning.

Polly, her real name Mary Ann Nichols, is the third prostitute to be butchered in what is to become known as the Whitechapel Murders of 1888, but the first known victim of Jack the Ripper.

She was found dead at 3.30am on August 31, exactly 125 years ago, in the gas-lit streets of Victorian east London.

Two men on their way to work come across her mutilated body, shocked and horrified, who then go in search of a constable.

The East London Advertiser will reveal over the coming weeks Jack the Ripper’s horrifying trail of terror through the East End, as they happen.

We are telling the story of the five main victims, as well as other murdered prostitutes who many historians believe were also the work of the Ripper.

We also look at the suspects at the time, from Scotland Yard archives of 1888—and the ideas emerging over the next century-and-a-quarter putting other names in the frame, rightly or wrongly, including Queen Victoria’s grandson and heir to the thrown, a theory now largely discredited.

Who was the killer? We still don’t know. Why did he stop that year? Some believe he didn’t. The killings continue into the early 20th century.

These questions still remain as fresh today as they did in 1888 when the Whitechapel Murders shocked the world.

The Advertiser, which first appeared in the 1860s, reported on the killings at the time. We will tell it like it was. Like it is—murder unsolved.

This special ‘Jack the Ripper’ section over the coming weeks will add more incidents, arrests, theories and press reports of the day, as they unwind, in the story of Jack the Ripper and the Whitechapel Murders.