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= Frances Coles = Frances Coles (17 September 1859-13 February 1891) was a British murder victim who was notably one of the many Whitechapel Murder victims. Born to a boot-maker father and an Irish mother in Bermondsey, Coles spent much of her early life in poverty. In 1880 Coles was living by herself and worked in a wholesale chemist shop 'stoppering bottles'. Several years after that, Coles became involved in prostitution, working specifically in the Bow, Shoreditch and Whitechapel areas of the East End of London. In the early hours of 13 February 1891, Coles was found dead in Swallows-garden, Whitechapel with cuts to her throat and wounds to the back of her head. It is alleged she was murdered by the notorious unidentified serial killer Jack the Ripper, who was responsible for murdering many other woman in the Whitechapel murders.

Murder
On the evening of 12 February 1891, Coles had brought a new black hat in Bethanl Green with money given to her by her companion, James Sadler, whom she had met earlier in the month. Coles and Sadler later had an argument and went their separate ways. Sadler claims that he was robbed not long after in Thawl Street. Coles then went to the Spitalfields Chambers to return to her lodgings when she fell asleep at a bench near the kitchen. Coles was then later asked to leave as she did not have her doss money. She left at 1:45AM on the morning of 13 February, after eating a requested meal of mutton and bread. After she left she bumped into fellow prostitute Ellen Calana, and a 'violent man in a cheese cutter hat' approached Calana and punched her in the face, leaving her with a black eye. The man then approached Coles and walked away with her. Meanwhile Salder gets into another brawl, ending up with wounds in his scalp. He attempted to enter a losing house in East Smithfield but was refused entry. At 2:15AM, PC Ernest Thompson later discovered her body, which had been left to lay on the ground at Swallows-garden, in an archway passing through the Great Eastern Railway. She had been left laying in a pool of blood, flowing from a wound in her throat. Thompson later blew his whistle and neighbouring police officers arrived at the scene. PC Hyde then fetched Dr Oxley, the local medic, who pronounced Coles dead on the scene. Inspector Flanagan later ordered that the body to remain the way it had been discovered, in order to carry out in an in-depth investigation. He later ruled, after finding two cuts to the throat, that these were "sufficient to amount for death".