The first victim of Jack the Ripper, Mary Ann ‘Polly’ Nichols, the third of the Whitechapel Murders of 1888, is buried at the City of London cemetery in Manor Park today, September 6, 1888.
Her body had been collected from the mortuary in Old Montague-street, Whitechapel, at 7am and transported by an undertaker in Hanbury-street, Henry Smith.
The cortege consists of the horse-drawn hearse and two mourning coaches carrying Polly’s ex-husband William Nichols and their eldest son Edward who was 22.
It is a small, private funeral. Only her immediate family are at the grave-side.
Her grave is left unmarked, forgotten, for the next 108 years. It is finally marked with a plaque in 1996.
Polly Nichols was played by Christiane Maybach in the 1965 film ‘A Study in Terror’, and by Annabelle Apsion in the 2001 film ‘From Hell’.
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