MJK inside room

[j.r-ahde]

Hello you all!

I personally think, that closest to the accurate interior of Miller's Court Nr.13 was made by Jane Coram. That one was presented on the crashed boards in the Photo Archive's arts section.

I hope she could present that here and explain, how she did it!

Of course the "Fisherman's Widow" is a guess, since there is no accurate description of it. Just some fishy guesses...

All the best
Jukka

[thehood]

Hi j.r-ahde do you know where I can find this illustration? I'll be glad to go further and learn more things about this room. Somebody could draw a sketch from up and upload it on the forum (and please can you stop to argue between each other, it's not really interesting for the rest of us).

[Debra A]

Illustrators often copied from other published illustrations or used artistic license based upon stock concepts and sometimes scattered witness reports (some of which were phony) instead of doing their own illustrations on the scene.

To be fair, newspaper illustrators sometimes based their work on sketches and diagrams made by police too.
From as early as 1890 (and possibly before) Detective George Sutton's (J division) skills as an artist were being used to draw scenes connected to murder and manslaughter cases. Lloyd's newspaper claimed that sketches like his were often utilised in their own newspaper sketches. Sutton was known for his accuracy when depicting crime scenes and drawings like his were used because they could emphasise particular points that would be lost in the general view given by photography.
"The police artist" Sutton was still being used up until 1896 when he resigned from the force.

[mariag]

Are we absolutely sure that the bed had a footboard? I can't see it in the picture and I wonder if the washtub was under the bed to prop it up?

The reason this matters is that I always have trouble picturing the exact nature of the original atack on Kelly and knowing whether or not there was a big piece of wood sticking up over the bottom of the matress would help to determine it.

[j.r-ahde]

Hello the hood!

Hi j.r-ahde do you know where I can find this illustration? I'll be glad to go further and learn more things about this room. Somebody could draw a sketch from up and upload it on the forum (and please can you stop to argue between each other, it's not really interesting for the rest of us).

I don't know if the work of art by Jane Coram can be found somewhere.

Hopefully she follows this thread and notices our posts...

All the best
Jukka

[Dan Norder]

To be fair, newspaper illustrators sometimes based their work on sketches and diagrams made by police too.

Certainly, very rarely that was true, yes. But if that were true in this case the illustration would better match the size of the room and the known positioning of objects inside of it. We know, for example, that the door of the room hit the bedside table when it was opened. The illustration has the table pushed way up into the room and away from the bed, completely different from what the testimony, the prepared diagrams and the photos tell us.

Newspaper illustrations are about the most unreliable pieces of evidence out there, perhaps even below the newspaper articles themselves. This particular illustration has been singled out in the past as an example of one at odds with the evidence. I'm surprised to see it get so much attention this time around.

[Sam Flynn]

You'll note, in the Reynolds sketch, that the body has either been removed or covered up by the sheet. It's not inconceivable that this had happened, and that the bedside table had been moved to one side to allow Phillips et al to inspect the corpse, long before the press artists were allowed in.