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

The wealthy American owner of an import-and-export business, Peabody & Co., planned to dedicate his fortune to support new social housing in London, the city he had made his home. He laid down a number of stipulations for anyone admitted for his social housing, such as having “moral character” and “be[ing] a good member of society” (28). However, no one would be excluded from the apartments he founded because of religious or political beliefs.

Hygiene and similar concerns caused the Peabody Buildings to offer relative luxuries for the time, such as larger rooms than were normally available for low-income renters, and features like indoor toilets and gas-heated water. All prospective residents had to “produce a letter of character from their employers” (30), be inoculated against smallpox, not have too large an income or too many children, and they had to submit to regular visits from building supervisors to show that they did not have an alcohol dependency. Still, some of the rules at the Peabody Buildings were “very loosely applied” (32).

Polly, William, and their children moved into an apartment in one of the Peabody Buildings. Polly hired one of her neighbors, Rosetta Vidler, whose husband was a ship cook who had separated from her, to help her tend her newborn son. Polly and William’s relationship then became rocky. William blamed this marital deterioration on Polly’s alleged growing dependency on alcohol, although Rubenhold makes the point that such a development would have likely made it into the building superintendent’s records, which do not mention Polly’s drinking habits.

Instead, testimony from Polly’s father Edward after her death suggested that William started an affair with Rosetta. However, even though Edward claimed that William “had turned nasty,” neither he nor Polly’s brother would allow her to stay with them because of “her duty to her five children” (36). On March 29, 1880, Polly left her family.

William and Rosetta continued their relationship. However, this extramarital relationship violated the rules at Peabody Buildings, since their relationship counted under the category of “[i]rregular unions” (39), a term referring to any romantic couple that lived together without being married. Nonetheless, the couple remained together even while at risk of being kicked out of the Peabody Building.

Meanwhile, Polly, after possibly staying with her father and brother, went to Lambeth Union Workhouse. In 1834, the Poor Law Amendment Act required most of the poor who received government welfare to live and work in workhouses. Such measures were called “indoor relief” in contrast to “outdoor relief,” welfare given to the poor while they still lived independent lives. Rubenhold writes that workhouses were designed to “regulate” the lives of the poor and “to frighten them into leading upstanding, industrious lives outside, in the community” (40).

Regardless of their circumstances and health, all workhouse inmates had to surrender their clothing and personal belongings and wear a uniform. The food rations and living conditions were poor. Regardless, it was necessary for Polly since “a working-class wife who wished to ‘officially’ separate from her husband had to first demonstrate her desperation and destitution” (41). In Victorian society, women who left their husbands were villainized, and the traditional work available to women, such as laundry work or sewing, did not pay a living wage. Divorce was only allowed under certain circumstances. Men could attempt to get a divorce on the basis of the wife’s adultery, but women could only divorce their husbands for adultery if they could prove another cause, such as cruelty or incest. This left Polly with just the option of exploiting a clause in the Poor Law, which allowed women in workhouses to become separated (but not divorced) by claiming they had been deserted by their husbands. The Poor Law Board of Guardians decided in Polly’s favor despite William’s likely false claims that Polly had become dependent on alcohol. William was ordered to pay Polly five shillings every week.

For unknown reasons, Polly did not, or was not allowed to, move in with her father and brother. Her options for work with a living wage were limited to factories, industrial laundries, or assembly work, all of which would involve 70 to 80 hours of work a week, 10-hour shifts, and low pay (44-45). In addition, as a woman not attached to a man in Victorian Britain, Polly would have been viewed as “an aberration, a failure” (46).

Census notes suggest that, by 1881, Polly was working at a laundry while living with a “scavenger” (47) named George Crawshaw. William hired one of the so-called “private investigation agents” (60) available and collected evidence that Polly was committing adultery by living with George. This alleged adultery allowed William to get a court order that ended her allowance. After that, on April 24, 1882, Polly had to return to Lambeth Union Workhouse. She lived there for 11 months and later had to return for several weeks. Rubenhold notes that, instead of gaining legal employment as the authorities intended, many people who left workhouses ended up in sex work, begging, or crime (48). Luckily, Polly was able to move in with her father, brother, and brother’s family.

However, while Polly was probably not dependent upon alcohol when she was married to William, her experiences and possibly her “sense of shame” (49), as well as losing contact with her children, likely made her turn increasingly to alcohol. She began fighting with her family more frequently. By 1884, Polly left or was kicked out; she moved in with a widowed blacksmith, Thomas Stuart Drew.

Things started to go even worse for Polly after that. Her brother Edward died, killed when a kerosene lamp exploded. Thomas soon left Polly—who was still married to William—for a woman he could actually marry.

At Trafalgar Square in October of 1887, hundreds of homeless people could be found sleeping. Socialist speakers giving demonstrations and speeches would also appear, along with volunteers and charity workers giving out Bibles, bread, coffee, and tickets to lodging houses (54). The police eventually cleared the square of all loiterers, including Polly. She was taken drunk and “very disorderly” (54) into prison.

The last year, on November 15, 1886, she had to return to Lambeth Union Workhouse. Like many other middle-aged women there, Polly received training to become a domestic servant. She did leave the workhouse to accept a job, although the details are not recorded in any surviving records. By May of 1887, Polly somehow lost her job or quit and resorted to “tramping” (56), living as an unhoused person. This was risky because the Vagrancy Laws allowed the police to arrest anyone suspected of vagrancy or living unhoused without a stable income.

Many vagrants alternated between living on the streets and temporarily living in workhouses, lodging houses, and public houses (bars that also offered temporary lodging). Often, they would stay in the “casual ward” or “the spike” (57), a part of a workhouse where people could spend one night in exchange for several hours of work. Investigators like J. H. Stallard and the writer Jack London found such wards to have extremely poor conditions, especially because of “vermin” (58). Laws prevented anyone from returning to the same casual ward within a 30-day period, which further forced vagrants to have to stay on the move.

Many people who tramped “slept rough” (59) for at least several nights a week, meaning they had to sleep on the streets. Women were especially vulnerable. Since women without a man watching after them “were considered outcasts,” “defective women,” and “morally corrupt and sexually impure” (60), vagrant women were often targeted for sexual assault. Based on interviews with vagrant women, J. H. Stallard discovered that authorities would treat vagrant women who were assaulted with contempt. Older vagrant women did not turn to sex work to survive, instead relying on begging. After six months of begging, Polly was arrested in Trafalgar Square. By then, “the formerly respectable, well-behaved tenant of the Peabody Buildings had evolved into a disorderly, foul-mouthed menace” (62).

After being sent from the Holborn Union Workhouse back to Lambeth Union, Polly became a servant of Mrs. Sarah and Samuel Cowdry, who lived with their young, unmarried niece. During this time, she wrote a letter to her father (64-65). For reasons that are not known but possibly related to her alcohol dependency, Polly left the Cowdrys, taking with her “clothing and goods worth three pounds and ten shillings” (65). Apparently, she used her money to stay at a series of lodging houses.

At the coroner’s inquest, her friend Ellen Holland later described Polly as “melancholy” and a heavy drinker (67). She ran out of money and was kicked out of Wilmott’s, a lodging house. When she tried to get a room at Wilmott’s again on August 31, 1888, after drinking heavily at a pub, she was turned away because of a lack of money.

After Polly was murdered by Jack the Ripper, authorities and investigators assumed she was a sex worker. Even the investigation into her last days and death made moral judgments about her behavior. For example, one newspaper, the Daily News, misquoted Polly’s father in a way that implied she was a sex worker (70). After her murder, her body was identified by William.