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Mary and William ended their marriage on bad terms in 1880.
== 31st August 1888 ==
Mary Ann Nichols is reported to have left Thrawl Street about a week before her murder. Mrs Holland saw Mary in the early hours of 31st August. Mary had tried to return to 18, Thrawl Street and was turned away because she did not have the required lodging money. Ellen Holland was the last person apart from the killer who is known to have seen her alive. Mrs Holland saw Ann at the corner of Osborn Street and Whitechapel Road at 2.30am on the morning of 31st August.
Just over an hour later and less than three-quarters of a mile away her dead and mutilated body was found in Buck’s Row. It was just a few days after her forty-third birthday.
== The Police Investigation ==
Inspector Joseph Helson from the newly created J, or Bethnal Green Division, took control of the investigation.
As Ann's murder took the East End prostitute murder count to 3 Inspector Frederick George Abberline from Scotland Yard also played a role. Abberline had served twenty-five years in the Metropolitan Police, fourteen of them in the slums of Whitechapel. During his years as H Division’s ‘Local Inspector’ (1878–1887) he had built up an unrivalled knowledge of the East End and its villains.