Martha Tabram[2] (née White; 10 May 1849 – 7 August 1888) was an English woman killed in a spate of violent murders in and around the Whitechapel district of East London between 1888 and 1891.

She, and her sons, were listed as being overnight inmates at the Whitechapel Union workhouse's casual ward at Thomas Street[7] on the census night of 1881.

[8] By 1888 Turner was out of regular employment and the couple earned income by selling trinkets and other small articles on the streets, while lodging for about four months at 4 Star Place, off Commercial Road in Whitechapel.

[11] On 6 August 1888, the night before her murder, Tabram was drinking ale and rum with another woman, and some-time prostitute, Mary Ann Connelly, known as "Pearly Poll", and two soldiers in a public house, the Angel and Crown, close to George Yard Buildings.

George Yard Buildings, a block of tenement flats built in 1876, were on the western side of the alley, near the northern end to the back of Toynbee Hall.

At the same time, the patrolling beat officer, PC Thomas Barrett, questioned a grenadier loitering nearby, who replied that he was waiting for a friend.

[15] At 3:30 a.m., resident Albert George Crow returned home after a night's work as a cab driver and noticed Tabram's body lying on a landing above the first flight of stairs.

The landing was so dimly lit that he mistook her for a sleeping vagrant and it was not until just before 5:00 a.m. that a resident coming down the stairs on his way to work, dock labourer John Saunders Reeves, realised she was dead.

[18] She was lying on her back and her clothing was raised to her middle, exposing her lower half, which indicated the body lay in a sexual position.

A parade of all the soldiers on leave on the night of the murder was arranged at the Tower on 8 August, and this time PC Barrett picked out a man.

Barrett's second choice, John Leary, claimed that on the night of the murder he had gone drinking in Brixton with a buddy, Private Law.

All were knife murders of impoverished prostitutes in the Whitechapel and Spitalfields districts, generally perpetrated in darkness in the small hours of the morning, in a secluded site to which the public could gain access, and which occurred on or close to a weekend or holiday.

[31] Several 20th-century psychological reports have assumed Mary Ann Nichols to have been Jack the Ripper's first victim, but add that her murder was unlikely to have been his first attack.

Sir Melville Macnaghten was only actively involved in the Whitechapel murders investigation between 1889 and 1891; thus, his notes reflect only the opinions of some police officers at the time and include several factual errors in the information presented pertaining to possible suspects.

Serial killers have been known to have changed their murder weapons, but especially to develop their modus operandi over time, as the Ripper did with increasingly severe mutilations.