Martha Tabram
Killed 7th August 1888
Gunthorpe Street
Stabbed 39 Times
Alright my lovelies! Ere, let me tell ya about the murders that went on right ere in Whitechapel in 1888. A lot of my ol mates were butchered by the killer that we all called Jack The Ripper. Right ‘orrible state of affairs it was. We were so scared, none of us would go out looking for punters. My mates that did, fell at the ‘ands of that dreadful man who scarred Whitechapel forever.
My first mate to fall at ‘is ‘ands was my old lovely Martha Tabram. She was ‘oribbly murdered in the early hours of the 7th of August 1888. Terrible it was, Martha was a good girl but she had fallen on ‘ard times and took to the Gin.
She ‘ad to live like the rest of us which was finding a bob or two where we could find it. We were called unfortunates which meant we had to live a life of prostitution, we were all down on our luck. Whitechapel became ‘ome to us all. Do you know, at the time of the murders, there were 1600 of us all cramped together in this little part of the east End?
Martha joined us after she separated from her husband, Henry and took up with another bloke called Henry Turner.
Martha’s Husband used to take of ‘er moneywise but when he found out she had taken up with another man, he stopped her money straight away. Well, she was ‘eartbroken I can tell ya. She was dossin at 19 George Street in Spitalfields at the time, she was in a terrible state, looking for money anywhere she could find it. At the time of her murder, she was 37 years old, and you would describe her as, standing 5’3”, normal in complexion with dark hair, and a little bit on the chubby side.
At about 4.50am on the 7th August 1888, she was found by a gentleman by the name of John Reeves, who was a labourer. She was lying on her back in a pool of her own blood.
She was laying on the first floor landing of a tenement block in George Yard called George Yard buildings. Which is only a few yards away from Whitechapel High Street.
He was proper shocked I can tell ya. When he copped eyes on her, he ran an told the nearest copper. His name was P.C Thomas Barrett.
P.C. Barrett sent John Reeves to go and get Dr.Timothy Killeen who lived at 68 Brick Lane. He pronounced poor old Martha dead at the scene. She was then taken to the mortuary where the coroner performed a full examination of her lifeless body.
In his report he wrote that Martha had 39 separate stab wounds to various areas of her body. The lungs were pierced multiple times, as well as her heart, liver, spleen and stomach.
The coroner also saw that Martha had been stabbed by two different weapons. One was a small pen knife, no bigger than a few inches, the other a large knife thought to be similar to a bayonet, around 6 inches or more which had penetrated her sternum.
After all reasonable enquiries into the murder of Martha Tabram were exhausted, a jury delivered a verdict of willful murder, by person or persons unknown.
We all thought at the time of the murders that this ere killing hadn’t anything to do with the main Ripper murders. This connection was later made by the press at the time as a way of sellin more newspapers.
The police didn’t believe that there was any real evidence to link poor ‘ol Martha with the Jack the Ripper murders which started only weeks after her murder.
Many people think that Martha Tabram’s murder could have been a first go by the killer we now know as Jack the Ripper.