Of the many tragedies which befell Annie Chapman in the final years of her life, perhaps one of the most poignant was that she needn’t have been on the streets on that night, or on any other. Instead, she might have lain in a bed in her mother’s house, or rested in her sisters’ care, on the other side of London. She might have been treated for tuberculosis; she might have been comforted by the embraces of her children. At every turn there had been a hand reaching to pull her from the abyss, but the counter-tug of addiction was more forceful, and the grip of shame just as strong. It was this
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