View source for Martha Tabram

{{short description|Whitechapel murder victim (1849–1888)}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}
{{Infobox person
| name               = Martha Tabram
| image              = Marthatabram.jpg
| caption            = Mortuary photograph of Martha Tabram
| parents            = Charles Samuel White<br />Elisabeth White (née Dowsett)
| spouse             = {{marriage|Henry Tabram|25 December 1869}}
| children           = 2
| birth_name         = Martha White
| birth_date         = {{birth date|1849|5|10|df=y}}
| birth_place        = [[Southwark]], [[London]], England
| death_date         = {{death date and age|1888|8|7|1849|5|10|df=y}}
| death_place        = [[Whitechapel]], London, England 
| death_cause        = Multiple stab wounds to the body, including vital organs such as the heart<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.casebook.org/official_documents/inquests/inquest_tabram.html |title=Inquest: Martha Tabram: Day 1 |publisher=casebook.org |date=2 April 2004 |accessdate=24 September 2020}}</ref>
| body_discovered    = George Yard, Whitechapel<br />{{Coord|51.51617|-0.07092|region:GB_type:landmark|display=inline}}
| resting_place      =
| resting_place_coordinates =
| occupation         = [[prostitution|Prostitute]]
| known_for          = Victim of the [[Whitechapel murders]]
}}
{{Jack the Ripper series}}
'''Martha Tabram'''<ref>Her name is sometimes misspelt in the press as "Martha Tabran" (e.g. ''[[The Times]]'', 24 August 1888, quoted in Evans and Skinner, p. 18) and she was at other times known as "Emma" or "Martha Turner", taking the last name of the man with whom she had most recently lived.</ref> ([[née]] '''White'''; 10 May 1849 – 7 August 1888) was an English woman killed in a [[Whitechapel murders|spate of violent murders]] in and around the [[Whitechapel]] district of [[East End of London|East London]] between 1888 and 1891. She may have been the first victim of the unidentified [[serial killer]] [[Jack the Ripper]].

Although not one of the [[Jack the Ripper#Canonical five|canonical five]] Ripper victims whom historians have broadly acknowledged, she is considered the next most likely candidate.

==Early life==
Tabram was born Martha White in [[Southwark]], London, on 10 May 1849.<ref>Begg, ''Jack the Ripper: The Facts'', p. 34</ref> She was the youngest of five children born to Charles Samuel White, a warehouseman, and his wife, Elisabeth Dowsett. In order of birth, her four older siblings were Henry, Stephen, Esther and Mary Ann. She was 5 feet 3 inches (160&nbsp;cm) tall and had dark hair.<ref>Evans and Skinner, pp. 9, 18</ref>

In May 1865, Tabram's parents separated; six months later, her father died of natural causes at the age of 59. According to his daughter Mary Ann, her father had been unable to work for several months prior to his death.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.casebook.org/victims/tabram.html |title=Casebook: Martha Tabram |publisher=casebook.org |date=2 April 2004 |access-date=9 June 2023}}</ref>

==Marriage==
On Christmas Day 1869, Martha married a foreman furniture packer named Henry Samuel Tabram. The service was conducted at Trinity Church in St. Mary's Parish, [[Newington, London|Newington]]. 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).

Because of Martha's drinking, which was heavy enough to cause alcoholic fits, the Tabrams' marriage was troubled. Martha's husband left her in 1875. For about three years he paid her an allowance of 12 [[shilling]]s a week, then reduced this to two shillings and [[Sixpence (British coin)|sixpence]] when he heard she was living with another man.<ref>Evans and Skinner, pp. 18–19</ref>

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<ref>{{cite web|author=Peter Higginbotham |url=http://www.workhouses.org.uk/ |title=The Workhouse |publisher=www.workhouses.org.uk |date= |accessdate=10 August 2010}}</ref> on the [[census]] night of 1881.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documentsonline/workhouse.asp |title=DocumentsOnline &#124; Poor Law Union and Workhouse records |publisher=The National Archives |date= |accessdate=10 August 2010}}</ref> 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.<ref>Evans and Rumbelow, p. 53</ref> Tabram moved to a common lodging house at 19 George Street, Spitalfields.<ref>Evans and Skinner, p. 11</ref> By the time of her death, Tabram's economic situation had become so desperate that she was forced to trade sex for money on the streets.<ref>Gray, Drew. ''Jack and the Thames Torso Murders''</ref>

==6 August 1888==
[[File:George-yard-buildings.jpg|160px|thumb|left|George Yard. The body of Martha Tabram was discovered at this location on 7 August 1888]]
On 6 August 1888, the night before her murder, Tabram was drinking ale and rum with another woman, and some-time prostitute, Mary Ann Connelly, known as "Pearly Poll", and two soldiers in a [[public house]], the Angel and Crown, close to George Yard Buildings.<ref>{{cite news|title=Locality of the Whitechapel Women-Murders|url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/23570055/map_of_whitechapel_murders_body_of_mary/|access-date=4 June 2023|work=Reynold's News|date=11 November 1888}}</ref> The four of them paired off, left the public house and separated at approximately 11:45&nbsp;p.m., each woman with her own client. Martha and her client went to George Yard,<ref>Evans and Rumbelow, p. 53; Fido, p. 16; Marriott, p. 11</ref> 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, a block of tenement flats built in 1876, were on the western side of the alley, near the northern end to the back of [[Toynbee Hall]].{{refn|group=n|This location is now named Gunthorpe Street. Residential flats stand on the site of George Yard Buildings}} Pearly Poll and her client went to the parallel Angel Alley.

===Murder===
[[File:The Illustrated Police News - August 18, 1889 - Martha Tabram.jpg|thumb|230px|''[[Illustrated Police News]]'' sketch of the discovery of the body of Martha Tabram in George Yard]]
In the early hours of the following morning, a resident of the Buildings, one Mrs. Hewitt, was awoken by cries of "Murder!", but domestic violence and shouts of that nature were common in the area and she ignored the noise.<ref name=f17>Fido, p. 17</ref> At 2:00&nbsp;a.m., two other residents, husband and wife Joseph and Elizabeth Mahoney, returned to the Buildings and saw no one on the stairs. At the same time, the patrolling beat officer, PC Thomas Barrett, questioned a [[grenadier]] loitering nearby, who replied that he was waiting for a friend.<ref>Evans and Skinner, pp. 16–17</ref> At 3:30&nbsp;a.m., resident Albert George Crow returned home after a night's work as a cab driver and noticed Tabram's body lying on a landing above the first flight of stairs. The landing was so dimly lit that he mistook her for a sleeping vagrant and it was not until just before 5:00&nbsp;a.m. that a resident coming down the stairs on his way to work, dock labourer John Saunders Reeves, realised she was dead.<ref>Evans and Rumbelow, pp. 51–52; Fido, p. 17</ref>

Reeves fetched Barrett, who sent for Dr. Timothy Robert Killeen to examine the body. Killeen arrived at about 5:30&nbsp;a.m. and estimated that Tabram had been dead for around 3 hours.<ref name="Evans and Rumbelow, p. 51">Evans and Rumbelow, p. 51</ref> Her killer had stabbed her 39 times in the body and neck, including nine times in the throat, five in the left lung, two in the right lung, one in the heart, five in the liver, two in the spleen, and six in the stomach, also wounding her lower abdomen and genitals.<ref>{{cite news|title=The Whitechapel Murder|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/25810535/the-whitechapel-murder/|access-date=22 October 2021|work=The Huddersfield Chronicle|date=10 August 1888}}</ref> She was lying on her back and her clothing was raised to her middle, exposing her lower half, which indicated the body lay in a sexual position. Killeen, however, could supply no evidence of intercourse.<ref name="Evans and Rumbelow, p. 51"/> The testimony of the residents and Dr Killeen indicated that Tabram was killed between 2:00&nbsp;a.m. and 3:30&nbsp;a.m.{{refn|group=n|The time of Tabram's murder, at least two hours after leaving the public house with her soldier client, would have allowed sufficient time for Tabram to solicit another client}} Residents had seen and heard nothing amiss between these times.

==Investigation==
The local inspector of the [[Metropolitan Police Force]], [[Edmund Reid]] of H Division Whitechapel, was in charge of the investigation. He arranged for PC Barrett to visit the [[Tower of London]] on 7 August in the hope that Barrett could identify the man he had seen standing in the street. Barrett did not recognise any of the men. A parade of all the soldiers on leave on the night of the murder was arranged at the Tower on 8 August, and this time PC Barrett picked out a man. On being asked to re-examine his choice, Barrett picked out another man, and the first was allowed to leave. Barrett explained his change of heart by stating that the man he had seen in George Yard had no medals, whereas the man he had selected at first did. Barrett's second choice, John Leary, claimed that on the night of the murder he had gone drinking in [[Brixton]] with a buddy, Private Law. According to Leary, they had missed each other at closing time and he had gone for a walk before meeting up with Law in [[Strand, London|the Strand]] at about 4:30&nbsp;a.m., whereupon they had another drink in [[Billingsgate]] before returning to the Tower. Law was interviewed, separately from Leary, and his version of the night's events corresponded exactly with Leary's. On the strength of their corroborating statements and because of Barrett's uncertain identification, Leary and Law were dismissed from the inquiry.<ref>Evans and Rumbelow, p. 54; Evans and Skinner, pp. 13–14</ref> Another soldier from the Tower, Corporal Benjamin, who was absent without leave, was also dismissed from the investigation after it transpired that he had been visiting his father in [[Kingston-upon-Thames]].<ref>Evans and Rumbelow, p. 54; Evans and Skinner, pp. 11, 17</ref>

Connelly was not wholly cooperative with police and hid with a cousin for a while near [[Drury Lane]],<ref>Evans and Rumbelow, p. 55; Fido, p. 18</ref> not coming forward until 9 August.<ref name="Evans and Rumbelow, p. 52">Evans and Rumbelow, p. 52</ref> She missed an identity parade arranged at the Tower for 10 August, but attended the rescheduled one on the 13th.<ref>Evans and Skinner, p. 15</ref> Connelly failed to recognise the clients and claimed that the men that night had worn white cap-bands. As such bands were worn only by the [[Coldstream Guards]], rather than the [[Grenadier Guards]] at the Tower, Connelly was taken to another identity parade at [[Wellington Barracks]] on the 15th, where she picked out two soldiers, but both had solid alibis.<ref>Evans and Rumbelow, p. 54; Evans and Skinner, pp. 15–17; Fido, p. 18</ref> One had been at home with his wife, while the other had been in the barracks.<ref>Evans and Skinner, pp. 15–18; Marriott, p. 12</ref>

Tabram's body was formally identified by her estranged husband on 14 August. At the time of her death, she was wearing a black bonnet, a long black jacket, a dark green skirt, a brown petticoat and stockings, and spring-sided boots showing considerable wear. She was {{convert|5|ft|3|in}} tall and had dark hair.<ref name="Evans and Rumbelow, p. 52"/> The inquest into her death was concluded by deputy coroner for South-East Middlesex George Collier on 23 August at the Working Lad's Institute, Whitechapel Road, with a verdict of murder by person or persons unknown. No suspect was ever arrested for Tabram's murder.<ref>Evans and Rumbelow, pp. 54–55</ref>

==Jack the Ripper==
Contemporary newspaper reports published at the beginning of September linked Tabram's murder to those of [[Emma Elizabeth Smith]] on 3 April and [[Mary Ann Nichols]] on 31 August, though before she died, Smith had told the police that a gang had attacked her.<ref>Evans and Skinner, pp. 4–7</ref> The later killings of [[Annie Chapman]] on 8 September, of both [[Elizabeth Stride]] and [[Catherine Eddowes]] on 30 September and of [[Mary Jane Kelly]] on 9 November were also linked at the time to Tabram's. The last five murders mentioned are now generally referred to as the "canonical five" victims of Jack the Ripper. All were knife murders of impoverished women in the Whitechapel and Spitalfields districts, generally perpetrated in darkness in the small hours of the morning, in a secluded site to which the public could gain access, and which occurred on or close to a weekend or holiday.{{refn|group=n| Tabram's murder occurred in the early hours of 7 August. 6 August was a [[bank holiday]]}}

The police did not connect the murder with Smith's, but they did connect her death with the later five murders.<ref>In an interview reported in the ''[[Pall Mall Gazette]]'', 24 March 1903, Inspector [[Frederick Abberline]] referred to "George-yard, Whitechapel-road, where the first murder was committed" (quoted in Begg, p. 56). [[Walter Dew]] wrote in his memoirs, that "there can be no doubt that the August Bank Holiday murder&nbsp;... was the handiwork of the Ripper" (''I Caught Crippen'', p. 97, quoted in Begg, p. 56). In his memoirs, Assistant Commissioner [[Robert Anderson (police official)|Robert Anderson]] said the second murder occurred on 31 August (quoted in Evans and Skinner, p. 632).</ref> Later students of the Ripper murders have largely excluded Tabram from the list of Ripper victims, chiefly because her throat was not cut in the manner of later victims, nor was she eviscerated.<ref name="Marriott, p. 13">Marriott, p. 13</ref> This view was advanced by Sir [[Melville Macnaghten]], Assistant Chief Constable of the [[Metropolitan Police Service]] [[Criminal Investigation Department]], who implied that Tabram was murdered by an unidentified soldier or soldiers in an 1894 memorandum on the murders.<ref>Fido, p. 152</ref> Dr Killeen, who performed the post mortem on Tabram, strengthened this belief with his opinion that two weapons were used—one of Tabram's wounds, which penetrated the chest bone, was inflicted with a weapon longer and stouter than the others, a dagger or possibly a bayonet, while the others were inflicted with a shorter, slimmer knife.<ref>Cook, p. 218</ref>

Several 20th-century psychological reports have assumed Mary Ann Nichols to have been Jack the Ripper's first victim, but add that her murder was unlikely to have been his first attack. Some have suggested the Ripper may have murdered Tabram before perfecting his ''modus operandi'' of overpowering and cutting the throats of his victims.<ref>Eddleston, p. 12</ref> Other researchers, however, such as [[Philip Sugden (historian)|Philip Sugden]] in ''The Complete History of Jack the Ripper'', and Sean Day in [[Peter Underwood]]'s ''Jack the Ripper: One Hundred Years of Mystery'', do view Tabram as a probable Ripper victim.

Sir Melville Macnaghten was only actively involved in the [[Whitechapel murders]] investigation between 1889 and 1891; thus, his notes reflect only the opinions of some police officers at the time and include several factual errors in the information presented pertaining to possible suspects. Serial killers have been known to have changed their murder weapons, but especially to develop their ''[[modus operandi]]'' over time, as the Ripper did with increasingly severe mutilations. While the five canonical Ripper murders were located roughly north, south, east and west of Whitechapel, Tabram's murder occurred close to their geographic centre. It is possible that her murder was one of the first committed by the Ripper before he had chosen his later ''modus operandi''.<ref name="Marriott, p. 13"/>

In 1998 an Australian researcher, Ted Linn, produced his findings in a booklet called ''The Case of the Redhanded Copycat'', in which he outlines his case that Martha's husband, Henry Samuel Tabram, was the real Ripper. He bases this on cryptographic clues he claims to have found in letters written by the Ripper and other evidence.<ref>Robert Hefner, "Victim's husband 'the real Ripper'", ''[[The Canberra Times|Sunday Times]]'', 15 March 1998, p. 1</ref><ref>Hefner, "Cracking the Ripper's code", ''Sunday Times'', 15 March 1998, p. 19</ref>

==See also==
* [[Cold case]]
* [[List of serial killers before 1900]]
* [[Unsolved murders in the United Kingdom]]
{{Portal bar|Biography|England|Law|London|United Kingdom}}

==Notes==
{{reflist|group=n}}

==References==
{{Reflist|colwidth=35em}}

===Bibliography===
*Begg, Paul (2003). ''Jack the Ripper: The Definitive History''. London: Pearson Education. {{ISBN|0-582-50631-X}}
* Begg, Paul (2004). ''Jack the Ripper: The Facts''. New York City: Barnes & Noble Books. {{ISBN|978-0-760-77121-1}}
*Evans, Stewart P.; [[Donald Rumbelow|Rumbelow, Donald]] (2006). ''Jack the Ripper: Scotland Yard Investigates''. Stroud, Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing. {{ISBN|0-7509-4228-2}}
*Evans, Stewart P.; Skinner, Keith (2000). ''The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Sourcebook: An Illustrated Encyclopedia''. London: Constable and Robinson. {{ISBN|1-84119-225-2}}
*[[Martin Fido|Fido, Martin]] (1987). ''The Crimes, Death and Detection of Jack the Ripper''. Vermont: Trafalgar Square. {{ISBN|978-0-297-79136-2}}
* [[Gordon Honeycombe|Honeycombe, Gordon]] (1982). ''The Murders of the Black Museum: 1870-1970'', London: Bloomsbury Books, {{ISBN|978-0-863-79040-9}}
* Marriott, Trevor (2005). ''Jack the Ripper: The 21st Century Investigation''. London: John Blake. {{ISBN|1-84454-103-7}}

==External links==
* 12 November 1888 ''[[The Washington Star|Evening Star]]'' [https://www.newspapers.com/clip/23569824/nine-victims-of-the-whitechapel-monster/ news article] pertaining to the murder of Martha Tabram
* 2009 ''[[The Daily Telegraph]]'' article [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/6191250/Census-records-shed-new-light-on-victims-of-Jack-the-Ripper.html detailing the victims of Jack the Ripper]
* [http://www.casebook.org/index.html Casebook: Jack the Ripper]
* The Whitechapel Murder Victims: Martha Tabram at [https://whitechapeljack.com/martha-tabram/ whitechapeljack.com]
{{Jack the Ripper}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tabram, Martha}}
[[Category:1849 births]]
[[Category:English murder victims]]
[[Category:Jack the Ripper victims]]
[[Category:People from Southwark]]