“Saucy Jacky” Strikes!

Here’s a grim anniversary for you: Today marks the 118th year since London, England’s notorious Jack the Ripper reportedly claimed his first victim, Mary Ann “Polly” Nichols, a 43-year-old prostitute. Her mutilated body was found in Buck’s Row, now called Durward Street, a small thoroughfare in the city’s Whitechapel district. “Jack,” never caught or even identified without doubt, went on to murder and eviscerate four additional poor women in the East End (though there are more than a dozen others who, it’s been suggested since, were attacked by the same hand), before suddenly ceasing his homicidal spree three months later, in November 1888.

In 2005, Jack the Ripper was selected by a group of 10 English historians as the “worst Briton” of the 19th century. Hardly a surprise, don’t you think?