Relatives

[richardnunweek]

Hello Chris,
Thanks for the clarification , and I fully understand your options, it is always somewhat exiting to view a period photograph, when It could relate to a victim of Jack the Ripper, and it must be so frustrating to view, feeling it could well be a fake, but what a privilege if it was authentic.
Best regards
Richard.

[miss marple]

Hi C4,
if course as Chris pointed out, she just needed one lie, her name, but the name is all we have. I still think the general direction of her life is fairly accurate. I think you are over estimating the length of the timescale. I think the most dodgy 'fact' is her marriage to Davies. If she was born about 1864 and did marry at 16,1880, the marriage may have only lasted a few months not years. I thinks its more likely she ran off to Cardiff and became a pro. She may have borrowed the Davies story from someone else or known someone who had been widowed, the story was to create an air of respectability and sympathy. She could have been in a hospital any time 1881/3 in Cardiff.
If she was in London about 1884 working in a gay house, it would not have been roses or living the high life, even in the West End. but relentless Hard work.
France may have been an opportunity, to get out, she may have been lured there by the promise of a better life , [as so many girls were] only to find conditions worse, French whore houses were terrible. So she comes back with no money. It least in the East End she is free, no pimps or madams, stitching her up. She can control her work, work when she wants and most of all because she is young and attractive find men to keep her. I think Mary liked the drink too much. There is no evidence she ever got a job or tried to support herself outside of men.

Miss Marple

[jason_c]

Is it just me, or does that photo of (allegedly) Bridget Kelly look a lot like a young Michael Atherton?

There is a resemblance.


If we find a Druitt/Atherton connection can we consider the case closed?

[Bridewell]

Is it just me, or does that photo of (allegedly) Bridget Kelly look a lot like a young Michael Atherton?

[Bridewell]

¨Hello Robert,

I think that it could refer to old, healed tuberculosis.

Cheers,
C4

Which makes me wonder if "spent some time in an infirmary" in Cardiff might actually be suggestive of time spent in a sanatorium recovering from TB.

[Robert]

Thanks, Curious.

[curious4]

Hello Robert,

You can shake it off even when quite bad - I did as a child, but still have the parts affected showing but healed - incapsulated, I think it´s called. And the lesions were in her lungs.

Cheers,
C4

[Robert]

Hi Curious

Thanks. Well, that would seem ideal, except that Mary was hardly living in a healthy area for an ex-TB sufferer. I don't know whether people can shake off TB for a few years, or whether it's always hovering in the background.

[curious4]

¨Hello Robert,

I think that it could refer to old, healed tuberculosis.

Cheers,
C4

[Robert]

Is there anything in Bond's report that might back up the infirmary story? I seem to remember that "old firm adhesions" meant something a bit out of the ordinary, but I am not a doctor.

[curious4]

I don't think she told as many lies as people think. Because she cant be found, people are obsessed with the idea she was a liar. She may have exaggerated some things, but the story she tells backs up with historical facts.
Firstly her birthplace, most Irish people are sentimental about their roots and several people not just Joe Barnett, mention that she came from Limerick.
I also believe she was in her mid twenties, Elizabeth Prater thought she was 23 and fair as a lily.Not one of her friends or Joe Barnett believed she was older than 25. With the lifestyle she had , had she been 35 it would have showed.
The birth records of Limerick confirm the many Kellys living there. In 1864 there were 5 Mary Kellys born in Limerick, my favourite is Mary Kelly of Castletown parents John Kelly and Mary McCarthy.
Irish immigration to Wales started after the potato famine, by 1861 there were thirty thousand Irish in Wales, six counties including Limerick supplied half the Irish immigrants, who most settled around the South Wales coal and steel towns of Cardiff, Swansea, Newport, and Merthyr.
She may have lived with or married a collior called Davies there were many Davis's killed in mining accidents in the 1870s 80s.
She seemed to have been a prostitute from the age of 16, for a good looking girl to arrive in London and work in a West End brothel was a fate common to many girls, also many British girls were shipped over to France to work in brothels, there is plenty of historical evidence for this. Unlike the other victims I would call her a professional prostitute, apart from when she lived off Barnett.
The incident when she went to collect dresses from a woman in Knightsbridge suggests she had been in hock to a dressmaker who supplied girls in brothels with finery, which they then had to work to pay off, this kept the girls in constant debt. If Mary ran away from a brothel she may have felt she was entitled to the dresses and was feisty enough to go back and have a row about it.
Reading through the lines she was a probably a binge drinker who got a bit argumentative when pissed.
She was still young, strong and attractive, and had got used to the lifestyle of selling her body and boozing. Her family had probably disowned her which is why no one came forward or they may not have known.
It is very hard to tell complete lies unless you are a physcopath, most people have an affection for the truth and would embroider rather than change it.

Miss Marple

Hello Miss M.,

She does seem to have done quite a lot in a very short time if she was the age she claimed. Married at 16 and lived with her husband for two to three years. Say she´s 19ish when she moves to her cousin in Cardiff, embarks upon a "bad" life, say about a year, into infirmary for 8 to 9 months, say she´s about 21 when she comes up to London and moves in to a West End brothel. Is there perhaps a year or two, lives the life of a lady and has time for (perhaps several) trips to France until the madam decides (perhaps) she needs some new faces, so say 23 0r 24, conservatively speaking, at least. Then to Ratcliffe Highway for "some time" - a year or (so?), after collecting her expensive dresses. Now 25 or 26 years old? Then she moved in with Morganstone. How long? At least a year perhaps, to be worth mentioning, but could have been longer. After that she lived with Flemming, again perhaps a year, perhaps two? Finally a year with Barnett. She could have been at least nearing thirty. The discrepancies in the description of her hair colour could perhaps be due to the fact that she dyed it. She was in no way a victim of the white slave trade - they wanted younger and unspoiled girls. All these "facts" from Barnett´s statement at the inquest, and, of course, no way to check them, but the gist of them may be true - apart from her age that is - and she wouldn´t be the first to lie about that!

As for looking younger, some people do, despite a hard life. A journalist viewing Polly Nichol´s body estimated her age as between 30 and 35. Her father at the inquest said that "she was nearly 44 years of age, but it must be owned that she looked ten years younger".

Got my information from "The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Sourcebook", Stewart Evans and Keith Skinner and "Jack the Ripper, The Definitive History", Paul Begg, and as far as I can see are from newspaper reports at the time. Can´t always depend on such, of course, but if more than one agree, I think you are on fairly safe ground.

Best wishes,
C4

[Robert]

Thanks for that, Chris. I'm sure we all understand why you have to draw a line now.

[lynn cates]

wanted, a copy

Hello Chris. That does it. I want my copy.

Cheers.
LC

[Chris Scott]

With permission I am attaching a small section of the family group which shows (ALLEGEDLY) Mary Kelly's younger sister Bridget.
I am not doing this as a tease, but simply because the provider of this image does not wish more of it used for family reasons.
I cannot at this stage answer any of the inevitable questions about the provenance and history of these images but if and when I get more information and permission to disseminate this I will do so
Chris

[Debra A]

Richard
Just to be clear
I have been sent two photographs - one (allegedly) of Mary on her own wearing a broad brimmed hat and another of a family group (minus Mary) allegedly taken in the US after the family had emigrated.
At the moment these are only claims and I am not convinced by the supposed provenance of the person who sent them to me.
I have been informed that there are family objections to this material being distributed publicly and no desire to get involved in the whole Ripper "circus"
As I know there was a similar objection from members of Aaron Kosminsky's family to unpublished pictures being used this may be a similar situation.
I am not in a position to make ANY claims for these pictures and would need more corroboration before I could even contemplate endorsing them.
At no stage has the question of the financial value of such material been mentioned and I have not been asked to provide any payment.
I have broached the subject of whether the material could be used if I thought there would be sufficient grounds to do so, but I have been told that, because of family sentiments, it is currently out of the question.
Chris

That answers my question to Richard then. Thanks.