Martha Tabram

Martha Tabram (née White) (10 May 1849 – 7 August 1888) was an English prostitute killed in a spate of violent murders in Whitechapel, in the East End of London. She may have been the first victim of the still-unidentified Jack the Ripper. Although not one of the ‘canonical five’ Ripper victims that historians have broadly acknowledged, she is considered the next most likely candidate.

Tabram was born Martha White in Southwark, London, the daughter of Charles Samuel White, a warehouseman, and his wife Elisabeth Dowsett. Martha was the youngest of five children. Her older siblings (in order of birth) included Henry White, Stephen White, Esther White and Mary Ann White.

In May 1865, her parents separated; six months later her father died suddenly. Later she went to live with Henry Samuel Tabram, a foreman packer at a furniture warehouse, and married him on 25 December 1869. In 1871 the couple moved to a house close to Martha's childhood home. She and Henry had two sons: Frederick John Tabram (born February 1871) and Charles Henry Tabram (born December 1872).

The marriage was troubled, due to Martha's drinking, which was heavy enough to cause alcoholic fits, and her husband left her in 1875. For about three years he paid her an allowance of 12 shillings a week, then reduced this to two shillings and sixpence when he heard she was living with another man.

Tabram lived on and off with Henry Turner, a carpenter, from about 1876 until three weeks before her death. This relationship was also troubled by Martha's drinking and occasionally staying out all night. She, and her sons, were listed as being overnight inmates at the Whitechapel Union workhouse's casual ward at Thomas Street on the census night of 1881. By 1888 Turner was out of regular employment and the couple earned income by selling trinkets and other small articles on the streets, while lodging for about four months at 4 Star Place, off Commercial Road in Whitechapel. Around the beginning of July they left abruptly, owing rent, and separated for the last time about the middle of that month. Tabram moved to a common lodging house at 19 George Street, Spitalfields.

The night before her murder, Tabram was drinking with another prostitute, Mary Ann Connelly, known as "Pearly Poll", and two soldiers in a public house, the Angel and Crown, close to George Yard Buildings. The four of them paired off, left the public house and separated at about 11:45 p.m., each woman with her own client. Martha and her client went to George Yard, a narrow north-south alley connecting Wentworth Street and Whitechapel High Street, entered from Whitechapel High Street by a covered archway next to The White Hart Inn. George Yard Buildings were on the eastern side of the alley, near the northern end to the back of Toynbee Hall. The Buildings were a former weaving factory that had been converted into tenements. Today, the location is called Gunthorpe Street and residential flats stand on the site of George Yard Buildings. Pearly Poll and her client went to the parallel Angel Alley.

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