MJK--A Complete Artefact?

[Chava]

Having been away from the boards for a while, I returned to find new posts on my old thread about Welsh mining disasters and it got me to thinking about our preoccupation with finding MJK. Which I don't think we ever will. Not just because she may have lied about her name.

MJK's history as told to Joseph Barnett was detailed and precise. She was born in Ireland. She came to Wales as a child. Her father worked in an iron works in North Wales. She had a lot of siblings, mainly brothers. When she was 16 she married a miner called Davis who died in a mine explosion a couple of years later. She went to Cardiff where she either or both stayed with her cousin who introduced her to prostitution and spent time in an infirmary. She then went to London where she was in a West End house before coming to the East End and living with a couple of men before meeting Barnett. A Mrs Phoenix also says she had MJK as a lodger and that she had come from Cardiff where her parents, who had abandoned her, still lived.

Now the issue is clear. Is any of MJK's account true and if so how can we use if to find her? I think the whole thing is completely made up, including the husband and the name, and we'll never find her. Here's why. The Kelly parents may have been sober, upright people who abandoned their wayward daughter. Her siblings may have done the same. But the Kelly family does not live in a vacuum. They have extended family--clearly they've got people in Cardiff which is where MJK herself said she'd 'gone to the bad' via her cousin. They have friends and neighbours. They have in-laws. They have co-workers. There are lots and lots of people who will come forward even if the Kellys don't. The MJK murder was written about extensively and in fine detail everywhere on the planet where there was a newspaper. Someone somewhere would have recognized her and said something either in Wales or up in London.

So, ok, she changed her name and she wasn't 'Mary Jane Kelly'. That's why no one came forward. But that doesn't work either. For the same reason. If the rest of her story is anything like true, people will recognize it and make themselves known. If poor young Mr Davis's family see that, they make make the connection between MJK and his widow Alice--who left town and went to Cardiff after he died and then seemed to disappear. She was also tall and had a striking head of hair, and she's the right age for MJK. Maybe that's her living in the East End. Maybe someone else in Carmarthen or Caernarven or Cardiff or wherever remembers a tall striking young girl who was widowed young and left town never to return. Her name wasn't Mary Jane Kelly but maybe she changed it. No one comes forward and says 'that sounds like our Annie or whoever. We haven't heard from her since she left town...'

No, we don't get anyone coming forward to say they knew MJK until she gets to London. Which is where, I humbly suggest, she made up the complete story including the name and crafted it for maximum effect and pathos.

[SarahLee]

Hello Chava.
I'm new here and as yet I haven't read enough to form a definitive opinion as to whether I think some, all or none of MJK's story was a web of fiction.

A few questions pop into my head regarding your theory though :

- Although widely reported, did any of the stories allude to the fact that MJK may be an assumed name . . . or did they simply report that a woman by the name of MJK had been killed?

I haven't read all of the press reports by any means, but those that I've seen simply state that a Mary Jane Kelly had been murdered.
Assuming that MJK was not her real name, I can't see many people making the link to a person that they may have known by a different name. OK her height and hair may be distinctive, but they're certainly not unique and the couple of contemporary sketches I've seen of MJK vary so much that I doubt they'd have been of much use in recognising somebody.

- How widely and in how much detail was her back story reported?

Living in Wales, losing a husband to a mining accident and relocating to the more urban South Wales or onto London was probably not a rare occurrence . . . again I can't see it obviously jogging anyone's memory regarding a specific individual unless more specific information was reported.

- Assuming that somebody did make those connections to a person they may have known under a different name, who would they have come forward to?

The police? Would they have been that interested in establishing her past history? I would have thought that the focus was more on establishing her recent movements and acquaintances rather than her dim and distant past.
Even if someone had come forward it would be pure speculation on their part and I wouldn't be surprised if it never made it into the records.

The press? I don't know how newsworthy an account of somebody who, several years ago, lived next door to a woman who may or may not be the murder victim would be. But I'd suggest that the press would only be interested in it if the story contained some particularly juicy details to beef the original story up some more.

To claim the body I find it unlikely that somebody only vaguely connected would want to encumber themselves with the funeral expenses.

I feel that if somebody had made that connection it would most likely be the subject of neighbourhood gossip rather than an official report.


Certainly not doubting your ideas at this stage - these are more the questions that I'm posing to myself in forming my own opinion.

Best Wishes,

Sarah

[Chava]

Thanks Sarah and welcome!

I think anyone who thought they knew the woman would have come forward to the press and I'm amazed that there doesn't seem to be even one spurious claim reported. Then as now, Fleet Street ran on money, and someone who knew MJK back when, or thought they did, might have been able to make a bob or two or even a quid or two. The case was widely reported and highly sensational. Many women in MJK's situation worked under a nom de guerre so it would not be unusual to suspect she might not be living under her own name. But so far as I can find, not one person came forward to talk about her before she got to London and I have to think that is very unusual indeed. So either the Kelly family lived in a well-sealed bubble. Or they didn't exist...

[lynn cates]

good ideas

Hello Chava. You have many good ideas here and it is difficult to disagree with your observations.

I wonder if the explosion "MJK" refers to regarding her husband's death was a colliery explosion or a Fenian dynamite outrage? You recall the London Bridge incident from December 1884? The Fenians blamed Sir Edward's band of spies for tampering with the bomb which exploded prematurely, killing both the Lomasney brothers and Fleming.

Cheers.
LC

[claire]

I think you raise good points, Chava, but I think SarahLee's objections to same are probably relevant too. When you look at the syndicate reports that made it into the regional and international press, there's not an awful lot of preoccupation with the identifying details of the victim. I think it's quite possible that a family living in Wales somewhere may not even have been party to the news in even as much details as was printed, and it may well be that Mary had been gone so long from her family that they had (if they had ever) long since troubled looking.
Still, the only fly in this ointment is the existence of the soldier brother whose regiment Barnett noted, along with its correct location. More than plausible, of course, that this was not a brother at all, but it's something worth bearing in mind.
Then, as now, the focus was always on the identity of the murderer(s) rather than the victims, so more press and public time and attention was set on the descriptions of possible sightings and so on.
Good questions.

[SarahLee]

Thank you for the welcome Chava

Interesting points that you made in your response, although they do raise yet another question for me. If there was indeed a bob or two to be made from stories of MJK's past history, I would have expected a lot of people to come forward with spurious and tentative links to her past or just downright false claims to having known her (either as MJK or under some other name) . . . yet we don't seem to have any reports of them. Perhaps people did come forward but the press weren't that interested in printing that part of her story

I just don't know. I think you've put forward a plausible theory, but with the evidence available it's still not completely convincing me.

[Sally]

As Common as Kellys?

I don't know that Kelly's story has to have been entirely fabricated, although how much of it was real we may never know. One thing notcicable about Kelly's history is her claim to have travelled. She originates from Ireland; she lives in Wales; she travels to the big city; she travels to France. If in reality she was born and bred in London poverty, all of that could have seemed quite exotic. Precisely none of it has been verified.

But, maybe there are couple of reasons as to why that may be - aside from the very real possibility that it was all a fabrication:

Literacy, first of all - I don't know what it was like in Wales at that date - if in a mining community, probably not so good. By way of comparison, the mining areas of County Durham, most people in the mining communities could not read. Illiteracy was still high at the turn of the 20th century.

Perhaps, then, Kelly's people would not have read the news, even if it had been available.

An adjunct to that is that perhaps the family of Kelly, if they did recognise her as their Mary, didn't want to admit to her because of the shame. She had afterall, if her story is to be believed; left her home to pursue a life of vice.

Secondly, the common name of Kelly - would her family have recognised her from the descriptions in the press - especially if she had changed a few of the details of her life along the way.

To illustrate the commonness of Kellys, here are two (Thomas and Ann) living at 13 Miller's Court in 1891:



Note that Ann comes from Ireland and Thomas is local - just like Joe and Mary! Kelly's must have been everywhere. As a Kelly, Mary would have been quite anonymous.

[Chava]

It's not so much the Kelly family that concerns me. They may well have disowned a wayward daughter. But other people would have known about this--friends, neighbours, extended family, neighbours. No one comes forward. No one comes forward from that 'West End brothel' either which I also think is unlikely if that part of the story is true.

I strongly suspect that MJK's dead young husband was buried in the same graveyard as Liz Stride's husband and daughters who drowned on the Princess Alice. I think the West End brothel was next door to that cemetery. I think she's telling the tale to get sympathy and to make herself more interesting. However it's also possible that she did spend time in the West End but lived there under another name. A lot of these women went under multiple names and pseudonyms. I think it's more than likely that MJK did as well. In which case, whatever her real story was, looking for her under the name she was using when she died would be a very unrewarding pursuit.

[claire]

I don't know that the story would have garnered as much sympathy as it would today. It wasn't mediaeval times, but the East End of the LVP probably wouldn't be someone's go to place for getting sympathy. It's not to say that it was all absolutely true, of course, but I think sometimes we get carried away in thinking that Mary's account of herself (as recollected by JB) was so outlandish and romantic that, good God, only a fool would fall for it. I don't personally see much that is implausible in the stories--if you wanted to make up stuff, you could do a lot better than that, I'd say. Also, I'd imagine that turnover in the various brothels she may have worked in was as high as it is now, and that people had a Facebook mentality to wanting to keep up with what people they once met were doing. I suspect that most people who had ever been involved with MJ were more interested, like most people around them, in keeping body and soul together.

And where, for that matter, was Joseph Fleming, contemporary and well-attested to, in the case records? Nowhere we can find. Does that mean that he, too, never existed? You see, not having records doesn't mean something never existed or occurred--that argument is managerialism ad absurdum.

[Chava]

I think you misunderstand me. I believe that MJK's affecting story was put together for the punters and the suckers, not for a general attempt at getting sympathy from everyone around her.

As for the issue of adopted names, I would point you to at least one other victim who used a completely different name on occasion. Catherine Eddowes had a couple of pawn tickets in her possession when she died. One for Emily Birrell and one for Jane Kelly. Both tickets gave spurious addresses and it is likely that Eddowes herself gave those two false names. People may have made some attempts to find Joseph Fleming but those inquiries pale into insignificance compared to the amount of time that has been spent looking for Mary Jane Kelly. The incomparable Chris Scott wrote a book about it and has been looking for her for years and years with no success whatsoever. All the other victims had documented family histories. MJK arrived in the East End fully-fledged and complete. The story she gave as her own has no corroboration whatsoever. None. So quite why we feel we must believe her account of herself is beyond me. She is a woman who left no trace of herself whatsoever in the place she was born, the place she grew up, the place she got married, the place she went to the bad and the place she stayed in as a high-class West End whore. However as soon as she moves to the East End people start to remember her. An ex-landlady turns up. She's known to have lived at this address or at that address. All of a sudden she has a documented life. Before that--nothing. Not a whore or a punter or a landlady or a nun or a priest or a friend or a family member. Nothing. In the East End she's visible. In the West End, and France and Wales and Ireland, she's invisible and unmemorable. And I have to say I think that's very unlikely.

[claire]

In a year and a half, I think she may have let a little more slip to Barnett than an invented sob story, even if he did start out as a punter or sucker. I am unsurprised that her more recent life garnered more responses from people who had known her: temporal and geographical proximity increase the odds of that. I'm not sure I see why a person's preparedness to accept her general account of herself is 'beyond' you. Certainly, it doesn't seem as though anyone stepped forward--or, at least, no one stepped forward that the press followed up on--but you appear to be presupposing that any such candidates for that would have a) read or heard the detailed accounts and b) wanted to get involved (particularly if their suspicions were just speculative).

Carmarthen or Caernarvon or Cwmavon or wherever were full of girls who left town. Cardiff was jammed with fallen women; it was a docks town, full of the transience and indifference of Tiger Bays anywhere. West End brothels were replete with pretty young girls who were tossed out once they couldn't pass as virgins, and there's plenty of documentary evidence that British girls were ferried to France to populate the knocking shops there. Frankly, it doesn't matter how good a genealogical researcher you are, and I have immense respect for the work Chris Scott and others have done, but it remains that there was *no* documentation of most girls and women in these circumstances, and without even a consistent name to go by, it becomes an impossibility. All one can do is gauge the plausibility of the narrative, and I don't think that every element of the account Barnett gave on Kelly's behalf was necessarily false, simply because people didn't seem to go on record to vouch for it (the report of the planned trip to the West End house to collect dresses aside). Sure, I think she fibbed about her name. Most likely lied about being married. But I'm not prepared to dismiss the whole of the narrative just because there persist no records to substantiate that. Otherwise, I suspect most of us would scarcely exist at all--were it not for damned Facebook.

[Chava]

Claire that's my point. If she changed her name--and it looks like she changed it when she moved from West to East, and maybe changed it once or twice before--we'll never find her. Her story may or may not be true. I think it isn't, you think it may be. But it's a moot point anyway. If Mary Jane Kelly wasn't her name then she's lost to us.

And one more thing about her story: She says she married a boy called Davis. In my day we always took our husband's name. I doubt it was different then, in fact I'm sure it wasn't. Keeping your maiden name is something that has come up in the last 35 or so years. So why is she Mary Jane Kelly rather than Mary Jane Davis? I know he died, but that is no reason to revert to a name that would have been formally changed on the day she got married.

[Rubyretro]

Chava -I agree with Claire that elements of MJK's story were probably based on fact, even if her account was laced with fabrications.

We can see from the other people who figure in the case that it was quite common to use different names -so 'Davis' could be MJK's real name..or not.
It wouldn't surprise me if it was.

I don't think that it is impossible that MJK will one day be identified.

I think that McCarthy probably knew something about her identity, as he reportedly received letters for her. There is a very slim chance that Fiona Kendall will turn up something from her half sister's box (see another thread).
Afterall, MJK's murder must have been a major event in McCarthy's life.

Personally, I think that the best way of finding MJK would be to appeal to the general public, through the media in Wales, for anyone having any likely candidates on their Family Trees to come forward. Families were very large then, so there are likely to be relatives, and genealogy is becoming a widespread hobby. Claire pointed out that there is a concrete clue in MJK's soldier brother, and he may have descendants.

It is simply not true that unimportant poor families leave no traces in history
-I know from the research done on my mother's family. Since families had lots of children (particularly irish families), it is often enough that one member denoted him(her)self to find the others (for example in my family there was
a hanging, a transportation, and a death in the navy -all of which left written records mentioning family circumstances).

It is entirely possible that photographs of MJK exist. Again as an example my husband comes from a poor portuguese family of undistinguished peasants, but one cousin became a photographer's assistant and so he photographed the family. Even though photos of the era are rare, particularly
of unimportant people, there are boxes of sepia photos of the Vitorinos. So you can never predict what is there to find on MJK until she is identified.

[ChrisGeorge]

Hello Chava. You have many good ideas here and it is difficult to disagree with your observations.

I wonder if the explosion "MJK" refers to regarding her husband's death was a colliery explosion or a Fenian dynamite outrage? You recall the London Bridge incident from December 1884? The Fenians blamed Sir Edward's band of spies for tampering with the bomb which exploded prematurely, killing both the Lomasney brothers and Fleming.

Cheers.
LC

Hi Lynn, Chava, et al.

That's quite a considerable jump to go from a mining explosion to death in a Fenian bombing. It doesn't sound plausible. Rather, the death of the husband Davies or Davis in the Welsh mine explosion is the story that Barnett related MJK told him and it's probably the real story, whether it was the truth or a fantasy.

It could be that it was just a tale to elicit sympathy much as the untrue story told by Stride about losing her husband and children in the Princess Alice disaster was apparently told by her to get sympathy or to make her background seem more interesting.

The real problem with Mary Jane Kelly is that her name is so common that anyone who might have known her before would not have necessarily linked the woman they had known to the woman who died in Miller's Court in November 1888.

All the best

Chris

[Phil H]

I'm not sure I see why a person's preparedness to accept her general account of herself is 'beyond' you.

I cannot speak for anyone else, but my answer would be, simply that there is no EVIDENCE. Indeed there is no evidence either way! Her story could be absolutely true (as refracted through the memory of another person) but we have no corroboration of any of it - and until we do, I remain open minded.

I do not see how some who question other aspects of the case so strongly are so willing to accept unfounded hearsay as fact in this instance. We simply do not know anything reliable about "MJK".

That's quite a considerable jump to go from a mining explosion to death in a Fenian bombing. It doesn't sound plausible.

Why does it not sound plausible? Evidence that such a fatal explosion took place in a Fenian context is cited. Yet we have NO evidence to support the MJK version either apart from hearsay (Barnett) have we? I'm not saying the bomb explosion is the fact, but can we not keep an open mind and put the known facts through various filters to seek a "best fit"?

It could be that it was just a tale to elicit sympathy much as the untrue story told by Stride about losing her husband and children in the Princess Alice disaster....

Indeed!

So we know beyond doubt that JtR victims DID falsify their histories for various reasons - Stride even seems to have lived double (or even mutilple) lives as a con-woman. So why not Kelly - in which case, without corroboration, it is risky to take any part of her story (as retold by Barnett) as reliable.

Phil