The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper

Most workhouses had a casual ward, an area where people in need would receive lodging for several nights in exchange for labor. People like Polly Nichols and Kate Eddowes often alternated between living on the streets and staying in a casual ward.

Dolly-wop was a slang term for a woman who was in a romantic or sexual relationship with a soldier in the British army. Since men in the British military were discouraged from marrying, these relationships were usually not sanctioned marriages, which often left women in precarious positions. Annie Chapman’s mother Ruth was one such woman who had a relationship with Annie’s father, George, a soldier. The couple were later allowed to marry.

A doss house was one slang term for lodging house, which rented rooms out night by night. The term “doss” meant the money paid to rent a room in the lodging house. Polly Nichols and Annie Chapman were seeking money for doss when they were murdered.

Although the East End does not have definite boundaries, it does refer to a number of districts in the central and eastern parts of London. In the 19th century, the neighborhoods of the East End tended to be working-class or impoverished. The five victims of Jack the Ripper all ended up in the Whitechapel area of the East End, which was an area especially known for poverty and crime.

Grub Street was an actual street in London, although more generally it referred to an area of London known for hack journalists, poor writers, and low-end publishers and bookstores.