Does anything rule Bury out?

[curious]

Curious post has made me think and I have a question.

Why did bury if not the ripper leave London?

Hi, Abby,
Good question, and others have wondered that.

So far as I know there is only speculation why Bury left not just London, but the country.

Plus, remember, he went to the trouble of forging a letter(s) to prove he had a job in Dundee. Why in the world do such a thing?

Some have suggested that Bury relocated to get Ellen away from her family in order to kill her, using the size of the boxes as proof he intended to murder her and stuff her in one even before he left London.

Now, if he wanted rid of Ellen, why not just leave? Even if he wanted the few trinkets she had left, he could have beaten her (as he seemed to have done), grabbed the box and moved simply to another section of London -- or made the trip to Dundee alone. No apparent reason to take her at all.

As for the large trunks he ordered made, I can think of a couple of reasons:

1. Perhaps he had no idea how much room their things would need and he would rather have too much room than too little. That way, they could always add things along their journey.

2. Bury seems to me to have always liked to be thought more than he was. Perhaps the extra large cases were to impress fellow travelers. (It is this trait that has made me consider his almost confession as JtR in line with his character.)

Or a combination of the two.

Why leave London if he were not the Ripper?

I don’t have an answer.

If he were the Ripper, I think his own terror of being caught could certainly have fueled his departure. Perhaps he had been seen with one of the victims, perhaps one of the descriptions was too close.

He was becoming paranoid.

His own guilt could have caused him to think people were looking at him, knowingly. He left the country to get away from Jack the Ripper, but learned that the Dundee papers had Jack the Ripper stories and Scottish folks were too interested in JtR.

Living in the port, it’s likely he encountered sailors who traveled all over and he learned that JtR was known about all over the world. There seemed to be no escaping.

It seems to me that had Bury intended to kill Ellen, he would never have taken an apartment and settled in -- under his own name. That fact alone suggests to me that he had no intention of killing Ellen. His intention appears to have been to get out of London, out of England.

Another thought is that William Henry Bury had been “SOMEONE” all his life. He was the child whose arrival appeared to have brought disaster to his family. His sister died of seizures, his father was killed in a horrific cart accident and his mother died in an insane asylum, all within months of his birth.

Don’t you think that from before he could remember, people were looking at him, stopped talking when he came into a room or started whispering? He saw either horror from the superstitious or sympathy from the kind hearted.

How would those years of being known have affected his seeming belief following Ellen’s murder that there was no where he could go to hide?

I don't have the answer to your question or hundreds of others . . . hope others will comment here.

curious

[Errata]

My books are in the other room, but wasn't Bury essentially a deadbeat? He was a drunk, he was violent, he had been fired for theft a couple times, he was an occasional peddler, and the money they were living on was his wife's. I mean, in no one's view is this a stable guy. And he had picked up and moved like, four times by the time he hit London. He'd been sort of on the run since about 1885. So I'm not sure the move out of the country was significant, given that he had lived in like, five other English cities at that point. Which is a little unusual.

If the original plan was to move to Brisbane, then the crates made sense. Easier to ship crates ahead than travel with luggage, and people tend to over pack since they don't know what will be available of a different continent. Since they instead moved to Dundee, the crates made less sense, but they had been bought and paid for.

But this is a guy who packs up and leaves when things get tough. That's his thing. Of course he forges papers to get his wife to go with him. He doesn't care what she thinks or what she wants. He wants her to go with him. He will do what is necessary to make that happen.

And this is a guy with legitimate abandonment issues. And he is a classic abuser. So that means that once someone is tied to him, they aren't allowed to leave. Ellen is his to do with what he likes. If he wants to beat her, he can. Lie to her, cheat on her, trick her, even kill her. She belongs to him. He decides when things are over. Not her. And this is, as we all know, pretty typical in abusive relationships. It's not surprising that he killed her. I think that was inevitable. I think the murder was triggered. My guess is she told him she was leaving him. That was not allowed. And people who view another person as a possession as opposed to a human have a different emotional response to the loss. He lost his favorite punching bag. Not Ellen the woman who was his companion. I think he was pretty detached after the murder.

If the question is why he left London, I think the answer is "because that's what he does when things get hard". Right before he left, he had been fired again, he was having blow up fights with his wife, and she had cashed out an investment. When they left the money was gone. He was frustrated, self absorbed, entitled, broke, angry and emasculated. That's enough reason for anyone to decide to just chuck it and start over somewhere else. Especially if you've done it a few times before. I don't think it's odd that he left. And I don't think it's odd that he didn't think twice about conning his wife into joining him. And I don't think it's odd that he ended up killing her three weeks later. That's a lot of crap flung her way, and it was inevitable that she would confront him. I think he genuinely meant to make it right when they got to Dundee. But as usually happens to people desperate to control people, it got away from him, and he couldn't recover.

[Abby Normal]

Hi, Abby,
Good question, and others have wondered that.

So far as I know there is only speculation why Bury left not just London, but the country.

Plus, remember, he went to the trouble of forging a letter(s) to prove he had a job in Dundee. Why in the world do such a thing?

Some have suggested that Bury relocated to get Ellen away from her family in order to kill her, using the size of the boxes as proof he intended to murder her and stuff her in one even before he left London.

Now, if he wanted rid of Ellen, why not just leave? Even if he wanted the few trinkets she had left, he could have beaten her (as he seemed to have done), grabbed the box and moved simply to another section of London -- or made the trip to Dundee alone. No apparent reason to take her at all.

As for the large trunks he ordered made, I can think of a couple of reasons:

1. Perhaps he had no idea how much room their things would need and he would rather have too much room than too little. That way, they could always add things along their journey.

2. Bury seems to me to have always liked to be thought more than he was. Perhaps the extra large cases were to impress fellow travelers. (It is this trait that has made me consider his almost confession as JtR in line with his character.)

Or a combination of the two.

Why leave London if he were not the Ripper?

I don’t have an answer.

If he were the Ripper, I think his own terror of being caught could certainly have fueled his departure. Perhaps he had been seen with one of the victims, perhaps one of the descriptions was too close.

He was becoming paranoid.

His own guilt could have caused him to think people were looking at him, knowingly. He left the country to get away from Jack the Ripper, but learned that the Dundee papers had Jack the Ripper stories and Scottish folks were too interested in JtR.

Living in the port, it’s likely he encountered sailors who traveled all over and he learned that JtR was known about all over the world. There seemed to be no escaping.

It seems to me that had Bury intended to kill Ellen, he would never have taken an apartment and settled in -- under his own name. That fact alone suggests to me that he had no intention of killing Ellen. His intention appears to have been to get out of London, out of England.

Another thought is that William Henry Bury had been “SOMEONE” all his life. He was the child whose arrival appeared to have brought disaster to his family. His sister died of seizures, his father was killed in a horrific cart accident and his mother died in an insane asylum, all within months of his birth.

Don’t you think that from before he could remember, people were looking at him, stopped talking when he came into a room or started whispering? He saw either horror from the superstitious or sympathy from the kind hearted.

How would those years of being known have affected his seeming belief following Ellen’s murder that there was no where he could go to hide?

I don't have the answer to your question or hundreds of others . . . hope others will comment here.

curious

Thanks Curious
a lot of good points and great questions.
One of the things that has always confused me about Bury is that for the life of me, I just cant reconcile this thuggish brute a drunk and loser with his letters. Well written, fluent, the handwriting almost feminine like. And forging letters of employment.

something more than meets the eye is going on with this cat.


Also, it doesn't seem like he planned to murder his wife, or left London in order to. I honestly believe it was not planned, but happened in a drunken rage.

But why the abdominal injuries? why???
and the lame attempt at innocence? I think he was at the end of his rope and unraveling mentally. And/Or he might have been on a prolonged drinking binge and was still on it when he went to the police. I mean here is a guy who had the foresight and cunning to forge employment letters and con his wife on moving out of the country-pretty sophisticated planning and lying.
Only to basically turn himself in. its not only unripperlike. its un bury like.

But then the coherent confession letter. Bewildering.

[Abby Normal]

My books are in the other room, but wasn't Bury essentially a deadbeat? He was a drunk, he was violent, he had been fired for theft a couple times, he was an occasional peddler, and the money they were living on was his wife's. I mean, in no one's view is this a stable guy. And he had picked up and moved like, four times by the time he hit London. He'd been sort of on the run since about 1885. So I'm not sure the move out of the country was significant, given that he had lived in like, five other English cities at that point. Which is a little unusual.

If the original plan was to move to Brisbane, then the crates made sense. Easier to ship crates ahead than travel with luggage, and people tend to over pack since they don't know what will be available of a different continent. Since they instead moved to Dundee, the crates made less sense, but they had been bought and paid for.

But this is a guy who packs up and leaves when things get tough. That's his thing. Of course he forges papers to get his wife to go with him. He doesn't care what she thinks or what she wants. He wants her to go with him. He will do what is necessary to make that happen.

And this is a guy with legitimate abandonment issues. And he is a classic abuser. So that means that once someone is tied to him, they aren't allowed to leave. Ellen is his to do with what he likes. If he wants to beat her, he can. Lie to her, cheat on her, trick her, even kill her. She belongs to him. He decides when things are over. Not her. And this is, as we all know, pretty typical in abusive relationships. It's not surprising that he killed her. I think that was inevitable. I think the murder was triggered. My guess is she told him she was leaving him. That was not allowed. And people who view another person as a possession as opposed to a human have a different emotional response to the loss. He lost his favorite punching bag. Not Ellen the woman who was his companion. I think he was pretty detached after the murder.

If the question is why he left London, I think the answer is "because that's what he does when things get hard". Right before he left, he had been fired again, he was having blow up fights with his wife, and she had cashed out an investment. When they left the money was gone. He was frustrated, self absorbed, entitled, broke, angry and emasculated. That's enough reason for anyone to decide to just chuck it and start over somewhere else. Especially if you've done it a few times before. I don't think it's odd that he left. And I don't think it's odd that he didn't think twice about conning his wife into joining him. And I don't think it's odd that he ended up killing her three weeks later. That's a lot of crap flung her way, and it was inevitable that she would confront him. I think he genuinely meant to make it right when they got to Dundee. But as usually happens to people desperate to control people, it got away from him, and he couldn't recover.

Good post. Don't necessarily agree with you on your previous posts and why you rule Bury out-but this is a good explanation for his behavior if he wasn't the ripper.

[curious]

I mean here is a guy who had the foresight and cunning to forge employment letters and con his wife on moving out of the country-pretty sophisticated planning and lying.
Only to basically turn himself in. its not only unripperlike. its un bury like.

Exactly! What was going on with him?

I must confess I don't know, and I have difficulty reconciling his ending with how I think JtR would have acted, but then . . . there is that cunning, capable-of-planning side of him that could have been JtR -- indeed, almost screams that he's perfectly capable of all JtR is thought to have done.

Very strange.

Could killing his own wife have just broken something inside him? was he still in shock? Is that a possible explanation?

Did he have a split personality -- a for-real one?

curious

[Errata]

Good post. Don't necessarily agree with you on your previous posts and why you rule Bury out-but this is a good explanation for his behavior if he wasn't the ripper.

Heh. I don't require agreement, I just enjoy the argument.

I think that we should limit our imaginations because of how little information we have. We don't have a lot of reasons anywhere in this case, but when we have a perfectly normal reason and a nefarious reason we need to err on the side of normal. Like doctors say, "If you hear hoof beats, think horses. Not zebras."

Now I love a good zebra. Nothing makes me happier. As far as I know there has never been a nun serial killer, but if I had the slightest clue that the Ripper was a bride of Christ, I would run with it like a bat out of hell. Love zebras.

But we know so very little about the events of the late 1880s, and we know even less about the personalities involved. It seems logical to assume that past is prologue, for anyone involved in the case.

If I'm dating an alcoholic and he doesn't come home from work and won't answer his phone, I'm going to assume he's drinking. Sure, he MIGHT be a spy, but he's probably drinking. I'll call a bar to find him. I'm not calling the CIA to have them activate his homing chip or whatever.

And as outrageous as the comparison to a spy seems, there are more spies that serial killers.

[Wyatt Earp]

If the question is why he left London, I think the answer is "because that's what he does when things get hard". Right before he left, he had been fired again, he was having blow up fights with his wife, and she had cashed out an investment. When they left the money was gone. He was frustrated, self absorbed, entitled, broke, angry and emasculated. That's enough reason for anyone to decide to just chuck it and start over somewhere else. Especially if you've done it a few times before. I don't think it's odd that he left. And I don't think it's odd that he didn't think twice about conning his wife into joining him. And I don't think it's odd that he ended up killing her three weeks later. That's a lot of crap flung her way, and it was inevitable that she would confront him. I think he genuinely meant to make it right when they got to Dundee. But as usually happens to people desperate to control people, it got away from him, and he couldn't recover.

I’m afraid we have to dismiss this imaginative account, as Bury was a self-employed sawdust merchant at that time—he hadn’t been fired from anything.

Beadle writes, “Margaret Corney says in her statement to the Forfar Procurator Fiscal (15 February 1889) that the pony and cart were sold six weeks before the Burys left London on 19 January, i.e. circa 8 December” (2009, p.224).

At Bury’s trial Margaret testified, “Before January she [Ellen] told me that he was always speaking of going away—that he would like to go abroad.”

While we don’t know why Bury decided to sell his horse and cart, his behavior is consistent with a scenario in which he had gotten spooked by something in Whitechapel and had decided to get out of Dodge.

[Errata]

I’m afraid we have to dismiss this imaginative account, as Bury was a self-employed sawdust merchant at that time—he hadn’t been fired from anything.

Beadle writes, “Margaret Corney says in her statement to the Forfar Procurator Fiscal (15 February 1889) that the pony and cart were sold six weeks before the Burys left London on 19 January, i.e. circa 8 December” (2009, p.224).

At Bury’s trial Margaret testified, “Before January she [Ellen] told me that he was always speaking of going away—that he would like to go abroad.”

While we don’t know why Bury decided to sell his horse and cart, his behavior is consistent with a scenario in which he had gotten spooked by something in Whitechapel and had decided to get out of Dodge.

It's not an imaginary account.

Bury got fired for technically stealing. For debts owed, which Ellen solved by cashing out a stock. They moved out, got married, then paid the debt. After it was paid Bury was rehired by Martin. Which I think brings us past the midpoint of of 1888. After that Ellen continued to cash out her remaining stocks, which they blew on a vacation and jewelry and stuff. By December the money was gone. The stocks were gone. That's when he sold his horse and cart. Now theoretically he had been able to afford stabling his horse, rent, etc. when he was working for Martin previously. If by December they could no longer afford the horse, and had no additions to the family, that means he lost his job. Or quit. And he had been thrown out of lodgings before, it's not a stretch to imagine that happened again and he needed the money.

If a guy blows through all of his money, and then sells something of value, the logical conclusion was that he made the sale because he needed the money. The entire institution of Pawn Shops is based on this very truth.

[John Wheat]

To Wyatt Earp/Errata

Bury was a self-employed sand and sawdust merchant up until the point he sold his pony and cart. Although I suspect Bury spent most of the time he was allegedly working drinking in various pubs. Bury was fired by Martin however this was much earlier in 1888. I don't believe Bury being fired had much impact on his decision to leave London as this happened months before he decided to leave.

Cheers John

[Wyatt Earp]

Bury was a self-employed sand and sawdust merchant up until the point he sold his pony and cart. Although I suspect Bury spent most of the time he was allegedly working drinking in various pubs. Bury was fired by Martin however this was much earlier in 1888.

That’s right, John—Macpherson dates the Martin firing to “the first week of March 1888” (p.45) and we are talking about events in December 1888. Errata’s assertion was this: “Right before he left, he had been fired again.” Clearly, she is wrong, and should admit her mistake.

While it’s true that Bury was blowing through Ellen’s money, if Bury needed money, all he had to do was continue his work as a sawdust merchant in London, and make a real effort at it. Something else appears to have motivated his decision to sell his horse and cart and get out of the area.

Bury had moved around in the past, but this time he was talking about going abroad. He did end up going to Dundee, but the talk about going abroad reflects his state of mind at the time he sold his horse and cart—this time, for some reason, he wanted to go far, far away.

[Wyatt Earp]

Something worth mentioning, too, is the timing of the events. Bury sold his horse and cart six weeks before they actually moved. If this was a money-based move, he would have worked up until the time of the move, and then sold his horse and cart. Something else seems to have been involved here.

[curious]

Something worth mentioning, too, is the timing of the events. Bury sold his horse and cart six weeks before they actually moved. If this was a money-based move, he would have worked up until the time of the move, and then sold his horse and cart. Something else seems to have been involved here.

Then, perhaps Rose Mylett is the key . . .

[Abby Normal]

Something worth mentioning, too, is the timing of the events. Bury sold his horse and cart six weeks before they actually moved. If this was a money-based move, he would have worked up until the time of the move, and then sold his horse and cart. Something else seems to have been involved here.

When did Bury sell his horse and cart in relation to the Mary Kelly Murder and what date did they move?

[Abby Normal]

I’m afraid we have to dismiss this imaginative account, as Bury was a self-employed sawdust merchant at that time—he hadn’t been fired from anything.

Beadle writes, “Margaret Corney says in her statement to the Forfar Procurator Fiscal (15 February 1889) that the pony and cart were sold six weeks before the Burys left London on 19 January, i.e. circa 8 December” (2009, p.224).

At Bury’s trial Margaret testified, “Before January she [Ellen] told me that he was always speaking of going away—that he would like to go abroad.”

While we don’t know why Bury decided to sell his horse and cart, his behavior is consistent with a scenario in which he had gotten spooked by something in Whitechapel and had decided to get out of Dodge.

Hi Wyatt
Just an interesting note-so the three confirmed murderers of women suspects-Bury, Chapman and Kelly all seemingly restless souls who like to travel/move. Interesting. I guess sociopaths don't get emotionally tied down
to one place.

[John Wheat]

When did Bury sell his horse and cart in relation to the Mary Kelly Murder and what date did they move?

To Abby Normal

Bury sold his horse and cart around the end of the first week in December according to Ellen Bury's sister Margaret Corney, roughly a month after Mary Jane Kelly was murdered. William Henry and Ellen Bury departed on the SS Cambria for Dundee on Saturday the 19th of January 1889, arriving in Dundee on the evening of Sunday 20th of January 1889.

Cheers John