committed the murder; the second, which later gained more traction, posited a lone “prostitute killer.” Whichever scenario a person might favor, everyone was certain, without so much as a single shred of actual evidence to reinforce their convictions, that Polly Nichols was a prostitute. These assumptions subsequently had a hand in crafting the direction of the entire investigation, the coroner’s inquest, and the way that the story was reported in the newspapers, even though virtually everything in the testimonies of the three witnesses who knew Polly most intimately—Ellen Holland, Edward
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