Mary Jane Wilson

[MayBea]

Does anyone else find it interesting that at least three victims are reported as attending mission meetings.

The Salvation Army started in the East End in 1865 so their presence in Whitechapel was strong in 1888. Attending meetings was probably a part of receiving charity so I'm not surprised that three of the five went.

I, of course, found it a coincidence that Jack Wilson says the Salvation Army saved his neck.

[MayBea]

Thanks mm5 for briefing everyone on the original Royal Conspiracy. The latest spinoff, post Cornwall, is that Mary had a son with Sir Arthur Sullivan who married the goddaughter of the Earl of Carnarvon. Now it's the same son, new father.

Re: Mary Kelly

The City Missionary didn't actually see the letters. He says he "heard a good deal" about them.

He even says he thinks the letters came from Limerick.

But he's definite about Mary not being Welsh, i.e. not being 'from' Wales.

[markmorey5]

The Limerick and moved to Carmarthen would have come from Joe Barnett from what Mary Kelly told him. Mary Kelly probably spoke Welsh although it may have been Gaeilge. I read that she spoke with a speech impediment although I can't remember in which newspaper, but the impediment struck me as possibly her underlying accent.

Mary Kelly showed a missionary one of the letters from her mother. This explains the quote about Irish parentage and Limerick.

The Royal Conspiracy Theory. In brief Walter Sickert knew Annie Crook who had a child which was sometimes looked after by Mary Kelly (a different Mary Kelly). Crooks and Kelly both worked in the shop across the road from the Cleveland Street brothel, both were probably prostitutes and both probably posed nude for Sickert (a prostitute would work as an artist's model but a respectable woman was unlikely to disrobe). The parentage of Crook's child is not known for certain and it may have been Sickert, although he didn't father any children in his own marriage. It may have been a client of Crook's. The Royal Conspiracy comes about through Albert Victor's association with prostitutes and fathering Crook's child and then marrying Crook, and Kelly knowing all of this (but a different Mary Kelly to the one who was murdered).

The Mary Kelly of Sickert's and Florence Pash's recollection was average height with dark, bushy hair, so she is almost certain to be a different Mary Kelly to 5 foot 7 with long, red or blonde hair.

A spin-off of this theory is that Walter Sickert was Jack the Ripper because he painted pictures loosely based upon the murder victims when the pictures of these scenes were not available. Wrong. Sickert lived in France for many years and the autopsy pictures and pictures of Kelly's crime scene were published in France during those years. If Sickert sought inspiration from murder for his art, then these pictures gave him the means to recreate murders of some years previously. Of course he knew Mary Kelly but almost certainly a different Mary Kelly.

[MayBea]

These are the only two articles, from November 10th, that I found reporting that Mary was Welsh (pls. use Google Find, Control/F, to find the word Welsh). They are both, word for word, the same:

http://www.casebook.org/press_reports/morning_advertiser/18881110.html

http://www.casebook.org/press_reports/daily_news/18881110.html

The Star, which had the largest circulation in the evening, says Mary was born in Limerick and moved to Carmarthen. I agree that the Missionary wasn't denying this but he must have been denying the other two reports.

http://www.casebook.org/press_reports/star/s881110.html

I can find no reports for Sunday, the 11th. So there was not much else that the Missionary could have read.

[GUT]

G'day MayBea

Do you know where that report was? I've simply missed it obviously. Though she may well have spoken Welsh if Joe's story is even close.

[MayBea]

... Does anyone know where it was stated that she was Welsh, I've not come across that before...

On November 10th, two days before the Missionary story, it was being reported that she was "a Welsh woman and could speak Welsh fluently".

I think this is what the Missionary was denying.

So how could someone raised in Wales, and only four years removed to London, not be able to pass for Welsh with the one person you would think could tell the difference, if anyone in Whitechapel could?

[GUT]

I think it was the letter to the foreign office that got me wondering about Missions:

The letter was received at the Foreign Office on Dec 14, 1888, and the next day receipted at the Home Office by C.M. (whom I assume to be Charles Murdoch, Assistant Under-Secretary) and also forwarded to Police.

Dresden
11 December 1888

My Lord,

Regarding American German, Julius I. Lowenheim, came here this morning with a statement respecting the Whitehapel murders. He said that shortly before the occurence of the first crime he became acquainted in a “Christian Home” in Finsbury Square, with a Polish Jew one Julius Wirtkofksky, who, after consult[ting] him on a special pathological con[dition] told him that he was determined to kill the person conc[erned and] all the rest of her cl[ass] informant added, that he had recently addressed the London Police Authorities on the subject, without having received an answer.

He further said that he could throw no light on the subsequent movements of Wirtkofsky but that he could identify him without fail.

Lowenheim stated that his address, after the next few days would be, Poste Restante Nuremburg. It of course struck me that I had heard a similar [ ] before, and that the youth’s object was to accomplish a journey to London, gratis.

However, he showed no anxiety in that respect, and the impression which he made upon me was not unfavourable.

[signature &c. illegible.]

[GUT]

G'day Miss Marple

Not significant, interesting. I simply wonder if they could have met each other, or even Jacky at such an event.

I think we can be certain that Mary was an Irish girl, who's family moved to Wales to find work in the mines,
There is no evidence to contradict this, from any of her contemporaries. That is all we have to go on.
This scenario fits in with the contemporary movement of the Irish to Wales in the 19th century.

I can't argue with any of this. It seems to me that in all probability she was born in Ireland, moved to Wales and then to England, everything we know points towards that being so.

[miss marple]

Why is that significant? So three victims attended mission meetings, I bet five victims bought stuff off market stalls too,
The Salvation Army and other missions were very important in easing the lives of the poor. At a mission meeting you could get a cup of tea, maybe some food at their soup kitchens and probably stay warm for a bit. Also the missions could help find work for some people,for instance a cleaning job.

I think we can be certain that Mary was an Irish girl, who's family moved to Wales to find work in the mines,
There is no evidence to contradict this, from any of her contemporaries. That is all we have to go on.
This scenario fits in with the contemporary movement of the Irish to Wales in the 19th century.

Miss Marple

[GUT]

Does anyone else find it interesting that at least three victims are reported as attending mission meetings.

[GUT]

G'day MayBea

Sorry I wasn't saying that he said she went to Wales, just that he supported Joe's version that she was born in Ireland and then went to Wales,

My "From Ireland, moved to Wales, Married" was meant as a summary of what Joe said about her.


I'm not sure why he says, "It is not true, as it has been stated, that she is a Welshwoman." Does anyone know where it was stated that she was Welsh, I've not come across that before.

What he does say supports rather than refutes what Joe had reported.

[MayBea]

You have to show me where he actually said that or meant that [she went to Wales], Gut.

This is the quote from three days after the murder:

It is not true, as it has been stated, that she is a Welshwoman. She is of Irish parentage, and her mother, I believe, lives in Limerick. I used to hear a good deal about the letters from her mother there. Daily News 12 Nov 1888

Did he believe that the previous reports were saying that she was born and bred in Wales of parents also born in Wales?

[GUT]

In fact the City Missionary's account closely tallies with Joe's retelling of MJK's story.

From Ireland, moved to Wales and married.

[MayBea]

Both sides are also cherry picking information on MJK to make their candidate fit a little better and poor old Barnett is being made out to be a total clueless moron.

What about the "poor old" Street Missionary? Isn't he being made out to be a moron by those who are still looking for Mary in Wales?

When he says she is not a Welshwoman, does it not mean she's not from Wales? Everyone would know Kelly is an Irish name.

http://forum.casebook.org/archive/index.php/t-4187.html

[curious]

Thanks for the kind words, Velma. I think it would be much more interesting if the people suggesting both these scenarios would debate each other.

I see both as interesting . . .

but would prefer to see your take.