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A Kathleen Watkins: Canadian journalist investigates Jack in 1891

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  • A Kathleen Watkins: Canadian journalist investigates Jack in 1891

    Hi all,

    While perusing the press articles here, I came across the sole transcript of Toronto's Globe and Mail from 1988...obviously the anniversary interest spawned the article. Its about a trip Kathleen Watkins made to the East End in 1891 to investigate the Ripper crimes....she might be better known to some as Kit Coleman. Many of the "facts" regarding the cases are as accurate as can be expected by someone who had investigated the crimes.

    I found some things in there Id never heard before, including a nickname for Mary Kelly of "Black Mark" Kelly, and interviews with Elizabeth Prater and a woman named "Lottie", who claims she lived "further up the court" at the time of the murders, and to have known Mary.

    I think the article itself, written by Robin Rowland, suggests some interesting conversations with the court ladies during her visit to the site in 1892.

    Heres a bit of the article....

    "Globe and Mail
    Toronto, Canada
    30 August 1988

    "The room in which Jack the Ripper killed and then butchered Black Mark Kelly hadn't changed much in four years. "In that room, the plaster was torn from the walls, the cheap mantel was dragged from its place and every sign of an awful struggle was apparent."

    So wrote Kathleen Blake Watkins - the top staff writer of Toronto's The Mail and known to readers simply as "Kit" - when she visited the scene of the crime in February, 1892.

    One hundred years ago, in the late summer of 1888, five women died brutally in the Whitechapel district of London's East End and their killer came to be known as Jack the Ripper. Four of the women were middle aged streetwalkers. The mutilated body of the first, Mary Ann (Polly) Nichols, 42, was found on Buck's Row (now Durward Street) at 4 a.m. on Aug. 31. The last victim was Mary Kelly, who was 24 when the Ripper cut her throat on the morning of Nov. 9.

    The Mail sent Watkins to England late in 1891 to write a series on the disappearing London of Charles Dickens. In one way, the Ripper was responsible. Immediately after the murders, London authorities and private charities began a program of urban renewal aimed at replacing the slum conditions believed to have contributed to the murders.

    Watkins was 36, and had joined The Mail in the fall of 1890 to write and edit The Woman's Kingdom. She quickly broke with the practice of recipes, fashion and gossip to write on social issues and what she called "women's rights and wrongs." After she had finished following the trail of David Copperfield, Pip, Mr. Pickwick and Scrooge through London, she went in search of the Ripper in Whitechapel, a district crammed with 80,000 people, many of them homeless or living in fourpenny a night doss houses. Watkins spent little time on the sensation of the murders. It was the victims and the homeless she wrote about.

    After crossing Buck's Row, she visited 29 Hanbury Street, where Annie Chapman, 47, had met the Ripper at 5.30 a.m. on Sept. 8, 1888. It was a "foul, stinking neighborhood where the children are stunted little creatures with vicious faces, old features, and where the women's faces would frighten one... Here we go through a cat's meat shop, into a narrow yard, in one corner of which another wretched victim was found murdered."

    From there she walked to Dorset Street (now Duval Street) in Spitalfields to 13 Miller's Court, where the Ripper had killed Mary Kelly and taken the time to cut up the corpse and place body parts around the blood soaked room before disappearing forever into the London night.

    Miller's Court is reached by a narrow passage under an arch reeking with filth and crowded with women and Eliza Prater, who lived above Mary Kelly on the night of the murder, was still there. She told Watkins how she had heard Mary crooning to herself through the night. Then there was silence, until the body was found in the morning.

    (At the inquest Prater testified that she was awakened at about 3.45 a.m. by a faint cry of "Oh, murder." Asked about it, she said, "It's not unusual in the street. I took no notice of it.")

    Prater then took Watkins downstairs to the room where Kelly had died - "a dark, narrow room with no communication with the upstairs part of the tenement." Its current occupant was a woman named Lottie. "I was her friend," Lottie said, speaking with difficulty because of a broken and battered nose given her by a kick from her husband's heavy boot. "I was living further up the court then."

    "'Lottie,' she (Mary Kelly said), 'I'm afraid to go out alone at night because of a dream I had that a man was murdering me. Maybe I'll be next. They say Jack's been busy down in this quarter.'"

    "She said it with such a laugh, ma'am, that it just made me creep."

    "And sure enough, ma'am, she was next. I heard her through the night singin' - she had a nice voice - 'The violets grow on my mother's grave' - but that was all we 'urd!"

    "The women seemed to have no repugnance to sleeping in the room," Watkins wrote, "although black stains on the walls and the mask of a man's head near the window were gruesome sights.

    "Other women began to gather presently, and they grew voluble and seemed to gloat over the hideous details, like birds of prey. They had hard, hard faces, with an evil look on them - the demands for money for beer, the curses, the profane language, jests about the awful fiend who did his deadly work here; the miserable, shrew faced children listened eagerly; it was horrible beyond expression. There was a sort of apathetic, matter of fact wickedness about the women... The only sign of feeling was shown when beer appeared and they all clustered around to drink it. Gladly we made our way up the street past the crowded gin shop at the corner which was filled with 'gay' women and vicious men and awful child faces."


    First off sounds like a very grim place, the environment and the people....but secondly, who might this "Lottie" have been, and since she says she heard singing and was Marys friend, why wasnt she at the Inquest? Julia lived almost across from Marys door....so it cant be another name for her, if the woman lived further up the court. And whats this "Black Mark Mary" all about.

    Any comments?

    Best regards all.
    Last edited by Guest; 03-25-2009, 08:46 PM.

  • #2
    Hi Michael

    I know the people who transcribe the articles for the Press Reports section are extra careful in trying to get the spelling of the contemporary articles right but it would appear there may be a typo. A number of references here and elsewhere might indicate that the nickname for MJK should be "Black Mary" Kelly.

    All the best

    Chris
    Christopher T. George
    Organizer, RipperCon #JacktheRipper-#True Crime Conference
    just held in Baltimore, April 7-8, 2018.
    For information about RipperCon, go to http://rippercon.com/
    RipperCon 2018 talks can now be heard at http://www.casebook.org/podcast/

    Comment


    • #3
      Originally posted by ChrisGeorge View Post
      Hi Michael

      I know the people who transcribe the articles for the Press Reports section are extra careful in trying to get the spelling of the contemporary articles right but it would appear there may be a typo. A number of references here and elsewhere might indicate that the nickname for MJK should be "Black Mary" Kelly.

      All the best

      Chris
      Of course that makes sense Chris, I should have seen that as a possibility myself. Although Black Mary isnt used often either.

      Cheers Chris

      Comment


      • #4
        For a transcription of Kit Watkins' article http://forum.casebook.org/showthread.php?t=1760

        The date should be 1892, not 1891. Kit visited the East End in late 1891. At the time she was married to her second husband, Edward Watkins, the same name as the policeman (but obviously a different man) who found Catherine Eddowes body.

        There are several problems with Robin F. Rowland's article of 1988. Prater is never mentioned by Kit in her original article. Rowland, at the end of his article, said that Kit wrote about the Ripper in 1892, 1893, 1896, and 1909. This information is repeated by the A - Z, and Andy Aliffe in "Kit, Kitty, Kitten." Rowland was a little off, as is everyone who uses his info. I have tried contacting Mr. Rowland several times but has not responded to my inquiries regarding his mistakes.

        The main article Kit wrote about the Ripper murder was published on February 27, 1892. Ironically, she was in England in late 1891 to visit the sites of Dickens' disappearing London. Now and then (in 1892/3) she would bring up the Ripper murders in her columns. Saying things like, "I wonder what Whitechapel Lottie would think of that." She did not write about the Ripper in 1896. She was in London in 1897 for Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee and may have brought it up then. I haven't gone through her columns for 1897. Canada has only one lending microfiche copy of the Toronto Daily Mail, which became the Mail & Empire in 1895.

        Kit, in another piece, also described the inside of Chicago's Whitechapel Club (yes, of the R.J. Lees story). She was reputedly their only female member. She mentioned other famous crimes of the day, such as the Maybrick case. If I have the time I'll scan and upload. Everything

        What I find most interesting about her is that she was hired on to write about "women's issues" - like most female journalists of the day, but her column "Woman's Kingdom" became so popular it allowed her the freedom to write about issues previously reserved for men: crime, politics, poverty, war etc. Kit covered it all. One of her biggest fans was Prime Minister Wilfred Laurier.

        Here's a picture of her from around 1890.

        Click image for larger version

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        Click image for larger version

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        Cheers,

        Robert

        Comment


        • #5
          Originally posted by perrymason View Post
          ....but secondly, who might this "Lottie" have been,
          Hi Michael

          I believe Lottie was Lottie Owen, according to the 1891 census she was married to Dock labourer Henry Owen and they lived at 26 Dorset St, possibly the same Harry Owen who was living with Julia Venturney at 1 Millers Court in 1888. Venturney had moved on by 1891.

          26 Dorset Street in 1891

          Head: Henry Owen aged 49 born St Pancras - Dock labourer
          Wife: Lottie Owen aged 43 born Kennington
          Last edited by Jon Guy; 03-25-2009, 10:32 PM.

          Comment


          • #6
            Thanks to both of you RJ and Jon.

            Seems like you have delved into this story and gal a bit RJ, thanks for fleshing out the story.

            Jon your bit on Lottie seems reasonable, I wonder why... if she was interviewed at all, that they didnt see fit to use her supposed friendship with Mary and her hearing the singing that night at the Inquest?

            Ive always considered that odd....that we only hear from Elizabeth, Julia and Mary Ann from #26 or the court. Sarah also, but not as a resident.

            Thanks again gents.

            Comment


            • #7
              Originally posted by ChrisGeorge View Post
              Hi Michael

              I know the people who transcribe the articles for the Press Reports section are extra careful in trying to get the spelling of the contemporary articles right but it would appear there may be a typo. A number of references here and elsewhere might indicate that the nickname for MJK should be "Black Mary" Kelly.

              All the best

              Chris
              Given that Kelly had red/strawberry blonde hair, I've always wondered why her nickname was Black Mary. From what I can gather, such a nickname would in those days generally have applied to her appearance. Annie Chapman was 'Dark Annie' if I recall correctly. I've heard it explained that 'black' referred to 'black Irish'. But black Irish is a description of those Irish citizens who have very dark hair, pale skin and blue eyes. Which Kelly didn't as far as I know...

              Comment


              • #8
                Hi Chava

                I`ve always understood the nickname "Black Mary" to be a reference to her temperament.

                Comment


                • #9
                  To clarify some of the questions

                  1. Apart from a few contacts after the Globe and Mail article appeared in 1988, no one has ever attempted to contact me about the article. I am easy to find since I have had robinrowland.com as my website since the late 1990s and I am frequently contacted about my crime books, King of the Mob, Undercover and A River Kwai Story The Sonkrai Tribunal. A Google search would have found me quite easily both at my personal website or through my work as the photo editor for CBC News. It was through a Google alert I found out about this thread.

                  2. I collected 95 % of Kit Coleman's columns in hard copy for a book project in the early 1980s. Unfortunately, an academic book on Kit appeared and that made it impossible to find a publisher for a more popular and narrative version of her work, even though commercial publishers were enthusiastic about it at the time.

                  3. The dates of Kit's time in London in the early 1890s are not that clear. She only filed a couple of breaking stories by telegraph in her entire career. (Journalistic managers were beancounters a century ago just like today). The stories were called "Kit's letters" for a specific reason, they were handwritten and mailed. So her dispatches from London would be mailed from London, cross the Atlantic by steamship, then get to Toronto from Halifax or Montreal and only then go through the editorial and typesetting process at the Mail and Empire. Like weekend features for newspapers today, her material would be sometimes typeset a week or two in advance. Or if the editors considered it relevant, pushed ahead of other stories.

                  4. Kit never typed, all her stories were hand written and her writing was so bad that a couple of typesetters were permanently assigned to the "Woman's Kingdom" page because only they could read her handwriting. That may account for any dispute over spelling. The newspapers of that era were notorious for bad spelling, In another story I wrote about, of a Texas desperado hanged in London Ontario, the local papers managed to wrongly spell the name of every Texas town the man had been in.

                  5. The 1988 article was a composite of all of the material that Kit wrote over her career on her visit to Whitechapel, it was not based solely on the original dispatch from London. Sometimes she would mention the case in just a paragraph in a column about other subjects.

                  6. The story is an accurate account of what Kit said about her visit to the area of the Ripper murders. Since this site is obviously the home for experts on the case, I am sure you all know more about the case than I do or Kit did.
                  The 1988 article was never intended to be a definitive look at the Ripper case, it was a report on what Kit reported.

                  Robin Rowland

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    If its true that Mary was in fact known as Black Mary perhaps some of these victims were rather fierce when they took to drink. They might be unpleasant to have around. Maybe these women were more like the dominant women in the crowd. Sort of snoots who put the other women down and butted in on other chats. Like they were bullies in their own social circles.

                    If Polly didnt have that sort of mean spirit maybe she said or did something to set him off. Then he figured he might as well weed out the troublemakers.

                    Thats alot of maybes but if I had lots of prossies to choose from I might wanna keep the nice ones. Maybe they ripped off the ripper at one time and now he has decided to rip them off! But they have no money to repay him so he takes their organs and sells them just like Phillips said happened!

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Julia Venturney

                      Hi Jon, I found that Lottie Owen was Julia Venturney. I dont know if this was discovered before?
                      She took her mothers name Charlotte for some reason when she lived with Owen in Millers court..
                      She had two girls. One was backward and in an asylum all her life and the other died young. Sad ...

                      Pat.....

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Lottie Owen.

                        I found that her daughter Charlotte Venturney died in Whitechapel Infirmary of Phthisis (TB ? in 1885, aged 16. She was a servant in Gun Street on her admission..
                        Julia lived in Flower and Dean Street and another time Brick Lane according to Workhouse records c1912 -1915.

                        The other daughter Rosina Antonet Julia Venteney b1864 Kensington, was in Metro Imbecile Asylum and Schools Darenth in 1881 and District London County Asylum Dartford in 1901.

                        Pat...

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