WHITECHAPEL: SCENE OF DESPAIRMurders were common in 19th century Whitechapel. Pubs and prostitutes existed side-by-side with churches and commercial establishments. It was a place of poverty and despair.This part of town was not just Horrible London for adults. Children had to endure its hardships. It was a place for human outcasts, like John (Joseph) Merrick, more famously known as the tumor-faced Elephant Man. Merrick was hospitalized in Whitechapel during the fall of 1888.Morrison writes of Whitechapel, and its residents, with a patronizing sense of hopelessness:Some years ago, it was fashionable to “slum” - to walk gingerly about in dirty streets, with great heroism, and go back West to Londons West End again, with a firm conviction that “something must be done.” And something must. Children must not be left in these unscoured corners. Their fathers and mothers are hopeless. And must not be allowed to rear a numerous and equally hopeless race. Light the streets better, certainly; but what use in building better houses for these poor creatures to render as foul as those that stand? The inmates may ruin the character of a house, but no house can alter the character of its inmates.Whitechapel. A terrible place to live. A terrible place to die.THE TERROR BEGINSHow did Whitechapel get its name? According to 19th century accounts, the place owes its description to a small chapel whose white exterior made it a land mark on the way out of the City of London. Not everything in this part of town was evil.Most streets in Whitechapel were narrow. People often lived in cellar rooms with little light and ventilation. The area was filled with pubs where the Rippers victims found their customers. Some of the popular hangouts of 1888, like The Ten Bells, are still open and are still famous.This pub, an important place in the story of Jack the Ripper, stands at the corner of Commercial and Fournier Streets in Spitalfields. Its been there since at least 1752. Although the exterior has gone through changes, the pubs interior is much the same as it was in 1888.On August 31, 1888 the Rippers terror first struck Whitechapel. Mary Ann (Polly) Nichols, a 42-year-old mother of five who lived on Flower and Dean Street, was brutally murdered.Her father, testifying at the inquest, said his daughter was “too good” to have enemies. No one in the area heard any screams. By the time a constable found her, Mary Ann Nichols had been dead about 30 minutes.People werent shocked that a murder occurred in Whitechapel. They were upset about the way the deed was done. A HORRIBLE DEATHNot only was her throat slit, Mary Ann Nichols had been disemboweled with a murder weapon Dr. Henry Llewellyn (the surgeon who examined her after death) described as.a long-bladed knife, moderately sharp,and used with great violence.Near the end of the Inquest, the coroner was still surprised that the murderer got away without notice:It seems astonishing at first thought that the culprit should have escaped detection, for there must surely have been marks of blood about his person. If, however, blood was principally on his hands, the presence of so many slaughter-houses in the neighbourhood would make the frequenters of this spot familiar with blood-stained clothes and hands, and his appearance might in that way have failed to attract attention while he passed from Bucks row in the twilight into Whitechapel Road, and was lost sight of in the mornings market traffic.Inspector Frederick Abberline, from the Metropolitan Police, attended the coroners inquest regarding Mary Ann Nichols death. As lead investigator for the Rippers murders, Abberline had no idea what was in store for him.DARK ANNIEAt the end of the 19th century, many poor people rented beds for the night at communal lodging establishments called doss houses. Rent payments for the bed (the doss) were usually owed in advance. Whitechapel had more than its share of such places. Annie Chapman (called Dark Annie by her friends) was 47 years old on September 8, 1888. Homeless and ill, she had little means of support after her estranged husbands death two years earlier. What little money she had came from selling matches, flowers and her body.Turned out of her lodging house during the early hours of September 8th, Annie took to the streets to earn enough money to buy a doss for the night. She never made it back to her straw bed, however. Jack the Ripper ended her life several hundred yards away.Dark Annies body was found the next morning in the backyard of 29 Hanbury Street, Spitalfields. Once again, no one heard any sounds of a struggle. The coroner convened a hearing into the cause of death.The jury viewed the corpse at the mortuary in Montague-street, but all evidences of the outrage to which the deceased had been subjected were concealed.Even though the second murder occurred in a different jurisdiction (Spitalfields), Inspector Abberline was assigned