She had been in and out of the Lambeth Workhouse several times between the previous Christmas and April 1888. In May she vowed to change her ways and took a coveted job as a domestic servant in a respectable family home. Her vows did not last, and in July she left in shame after stealing clothing valued at £3 10 shillings. Mary Ann sank deeper into her drunken ways and returned to the life of an Unfortunate. For a while she and another prostitute named Nelly Holland shared a bed in a doss-house in the maze of decaying buildings on Thrawl Street, which ran from east to west for several blocks between Commercial Street and Brick Lane in Whitechapel.
After a while, Mary Ann moved on to White House on nearby Flower and Dean Street and stayed there until she ran out of money and was evicted on August 29th. The following night, she walked the streets wearing everything she owned: a brown ulster fastened with big brass buttons engraved with the figures of a man and a horse; a brown linsey frock; two gray woolen petticoats with the stenciled marks of the Lambeth Workhouse; two brown stays (stiff bodices made of whalebone); flannel underclothing; ribbed black woolen stockings; men’s sidespring boots that had been cut on the uppers, tips, and heels for a better fit; and a black straw bonnet trimmed in black velvet. In a pocket she had tucked a white handkerchief, a comb, and a bit of broken looking glass.
Mary Ann was spotted several times between 11:00 P.M. and 2:30 the following morning, and in each instance, she was alone. She was seen on Whitechapel Road, and then at the Frying Pan Public House. At around 1:40 A.M., she was in the kitchen of her former lodging house at 18 Thrawl Street, where she said she was penniless and asked that her bed be kept for her, promising to return soon with money for payment. She was intoxicated, witnesses said, and on her way out the door she promised to be back soon and bragged about her “jolly” bonnet, which appeared to have been recently acquired.
Mary Ann was last seen alive at 2:30 A.M. when her friend Nelly Holland came upon her at the corner of Osborn Street and Whitechapel Road, across from the parish church. Mary Ann was drunk and staggering along a wall. She told Nelly that so far this night she had earned three times what she needed for her bed at the lodging house but had spent it. Despite her friend’s pleas that she come with her and go to bed, Mary Ann insisted on trying one last time to earn a few pennies. The parish church clock chimed as Mary Ann wove her way along the un-lighted Whitechapel Road, dissolving into darkness.
Approximately an hour and fifteen minutes later and half a mile away on a street called Buck’s Row that bordered the Jews’ Cemetery in Whitechapel, Charles Cross, a carman, was walking along Buck’s Row on his way to work and passed a dark shape against some gates on a footpath near a stableyard. At first he thought the shape was a tarpaulin, but he realized it was a woman lying motionless, her head to the east, her bonnet on the ground by her right side, her left hand up against the closed gateway. As Cross was trying to get a better look to see what was wrong with her, he heard footsteps and turned around as another carman named Robert Paul appeared in the street.
“Take a look,” Cross called out as he touched the woman’s hand. “I believe she is dead.” Robert Paul crouched down and put a hand on her breast. He thought he felt a slight movement and said, “I believe she is still breathing.”
Her clothing was disarrayed, and her skirt was raised above her hips, so the men decided she had been “outraged” or raped. They chastely rearranged her clothing to cover her, not noticing any blood because it was too dark. Paul and Cross rushed off to find the nearest constable and happened upon G. Mizen 55 Division H, who was making his rounds at the nearby corner of Hanbury and Old Montague streets, on the west side of the Jews’ Cemetery. The men informed the constable that there was a woman on the pavement either dead or “dead drunk.”