Tramcars were free - at least those running to Whitechapel, the city's crowded clothing district where costermongers, merchants, and money changers loudly hawked their goods and services seven days a week while ragged children prowled the fetid streets for food and a chance to trick a stranger out of a coin. Whitechapel was home to "the people of the dustbin," as many good Victorians called the desperate wretches who lived there. For a few farthings, a visitor could watch street acrobatics, performing dogs, and freak shows, or get drunk. Or he could solicit sex from a prostitute - or "unfortunate" - of whom there were thousands.

One of them was Martha Tabran. She was about forty and separated from a furniture warehouse packer named Henry Samuel Tabran, who had walked out of her life because of her heavy drinking. He was decent enough to give her a weekly allowance of twelve shillings until he heard she was living with another man, a carpenter named Henry Turner. But Turner eventually lost patience with Martha's drinking habits and had left her two or three weeks ago. The last time he saw her alive was two nights earlier, on Saturday, August 4th - the same night Sickert was making sketches at Gatti's music hall near the Strand. Turner handed Martha a few coins, which she wasted on drink.

For centuries, many people believed women turned to prostitution because they suffered from a genetic defect that caused them to enjoy sex for the sake of sex. There were several types of immoral or wanton women, some worse than others. Although concubines, mistresses, and good wenches were not to be praised, the greatest sinner was the whore. A whore was a whore by choice and was not about to retire from her "wicked and abominable course of life," Thomas Heywoode lamented in his 1624 history of women. "I am altogether discouraged when I remember the position of one of the most notorious in the trade," who said, " 'For once a whore and ever a whore, I know it by my self.' "