Alcohol was the easiest way to not be present, and a disproportionate number of people of "The Abyss," as writer Jack London called the East End, were alcoholics. Probably all Unfortunates were. They were diseased and old beyond their years, cast out by husbands and children, and unable to accept Christian charity because it did not include drink. These pitiful women frequented public houses - pubs - and asked men to treat them to drinks. Business usually followed.

No matter the weather, Unfortunates haunted the night like nocturnal animals, in wait for any man, no matter how rough or disgusting, who might be enticed into parting with pennies for pleasure. Preferably, sex was performed standing up, with the prostitute gathering her many layers of clothing and lifting them out of the way, her back to her client. If she was lucky, he was too drunk to know that his penis was being inserted between her thighs and not into any orifice.

Martha Tabran fell behind in her rent after Henry Turner walked out on her. Her whereabouts since aren't clear, but one might guess she was in and out of common lodging houses, or if she had a choice between a bed and a drink, she most likely took the drink and dozed in doorways, in parks, and on the street, continually chased off by the police. Martha spent the nights of August 4th and 5th in a common lodging house on Dorset Street, just south of a music hall on Commercial Street.

At eleven o'clock this bank holiday night of August 6th, Martha met up with Mary Ann Connolly, who went by the alias of Pearly Poll. The weather had been unpleasant all day, overcast and unsettled as the temperature continued to drop to an unseasonable fifty-two degrees. Afternoon fog was followed by a thick mist that obscured the new moon and was forecast to last until seven o'clock the next morning. But the two women were used to unpleasant conditions and might have been miserably uncomfortable but rarely vulnerable to hypothermia. It was the habit of Unfortunates to walk about in everything they owned. If one did not have a permanent residence, to leave belongings in a lodging house was to lose them to a thief.