I Think MJK was Welsh with Irish Ancestry

[John Malcolm]

"A girl by the name of Mary Jane Kelly was baptised in Castleconnell, Co Limerick, on 31 March 1863. Her parents, and eight or nine brothers and sisters, occupied a small house in Mungret Street. The failure of the potato crop had led to riots in Limerick in 1830, and during the Great Famine hundreds of evicted tenants fled into the city to seek work. Discovering there was none, they queued outside the workhouses for a bed, or made for the quays — the departure points for US, Canada and Australia. When Mary Jane was still a child, Mr Kelly moved the family to Carmarthen in Wales to look for work. The girl hawked ribbon and thread around the town."

Sorry if this has been asked before, but where did this come from? Never seen it before. Sounds too good to be true.

[rjpalmer]

Sorry if this has been asked before, but where did this come from? Never seen it before. Sounds too good to be true.

It's from Robert Hume's "The Hidden Lives of Jack the Ripper's Victims."

[John Malcolm]

It's from Robert Hume's "The Hidden Lives of Jack the Ripper's Victims."

Thanks for that. Fiction, I assume.

[rjpalmer]

Thanks for that. Fiction, I assume.

Ha ha. It depends on your definition of fiction!

[mpriestnall]

I agree with MsWeatherMax. The Miller's Court victim true surname wasn't Kelly.

I strongly believe that Jack's identity was known to the authorities and he was protected. I believe "Kelly" was targeted and she had a connection
to JTR and/or Astrakhan. Therefore the authorities would not have allowed her true surname to be published. Looking to identify "Kelly" as Kelly
is, unfortunately, a waste of time and effort.

Martyn

[mpriestnall]

"I Think MJK was Welsh with Irish Ancestry".

I'm believe that MJK's earlier background (Irish birth, move to Wales, marriage to the unlucky miner etc) is fake and her nationality was English.

Martyn

[Losmandris]

As much as it grieves me to say, MJK may as well have come from the moon. There is simply no way we are going to find out who she was or where she came from. I think it is far more likely that we will be able to identify JtR rather than MJK.


Tristan

[mpriestnall]

As much as it grieves me to say, MJK may as well have come from the moon. There is simply no way we are going to find out who she was or where she came from. I think it is far more likely that we will be able to identify JtR rather than MJK.


Tristan

Tristan, agreed pretty much but like the song says "You never can tell..."

I do not believe the murders were completely random, so I at least hold out for the possibility that if JTR/Astrakhan is identified, MJK's might just follow.

Spot the optimist!

Martyn

[Joshua Rogan]

"I Think MJK was Welsh with Irish Ancestry".

I'm believe that MJK's earlier background (Irish birth, move to Wales, marriage to the unlucky miner etc) is fake and her nationality was English.

Martyn

Hi Martin,
Not many English people are fluent in Welsh, as Kelly was said to be.
How do you account for that?

[Al Bundy's Eyes]

Hi Martin,
Not many English people are fluent in Welsh, as Kelly was said to be.
How do you account for that?

Hi Joshua,

Not many Welsh people speak fluent Welsh, and that was particularly the case in the LVP when Welsh was actively repressed in favour of English, to the point that the language nearly died out.
Depending on any particular faith in the belief that MJK spoke Welsh, I would favour any Welsh speaker to be native, likely or not North Wales where the language survived more than elsewhere.

There's a good podcast from the East End conference by John Horlor about MJK in North Wales.

That's if you believe she was Welsh in the first place though...

[Michael W Richards]

Sorry, it's my annual "Ponder MJK Week", apparently.

I know this is flimsy, but one of the few things we know is that Mary used to get letters from her brother, Johnto/Jonto. I just can't get past the possibility that this is a misspelling or Anglicisation of 'Ianto', which is Welsh for John.

An Irish family would surely not name or nickname their child with a very traditional Welsh name?

I feel like perhaps Mary had one Irish parent, or Irish grandparents (or further back!), and has used that heritage as the foundations of the very elaborate backstory we now 'know'.

In short, I think Ireland is a dead end. I feel like it's more likely that Mary was born in Wales to the descendants of an Irish family.

All immaterial, because I honestly doubt that the names Kelly or Davies bear any relation to her real name, and I don't think it'll make her any easier to trace. Just a thought, really.

I believe the Mary Kelly that we'd all like to know more about is likely a composite of some people, rather than one person. Its one of the only reasonable reasons why excellent researchers haven't been able to trace the bread crumbs to the source. Whether Mary created her background, or whether it was provided to her isn't really clear at all, we only have Barnett and some others to go by. For me any chance of finding out who exactly this woman named Mary Kelly was has to be found in her history pre-brothel. How she ended up working there, what happened in Paris to send her running home, and why then this decent into bare bones living when she was accustomed to nice dresses and accoutrements working for Mrs Buki. It seems at a distance that she wanted to disappear into a crowd after Paris.

[SuspectZero]

We will never know her true name.

[Michael W Richards]

We will never know her true name.

I obviously tend to agree with that, but Im curious why some elements of the backstory ring true. They just don't tie together in anything that can be traced to one name so far. I think she created the story that Barnett says she gave, and took things from her knowledge of other people as her own. I don't believe she had the story given to her or Barnett, as in some kind of situation where she is in hiding with a false identity given to her. But I do think she wanted anonymity. To get lost in a crowd. Where better to find a crowd than Dorset Street. Buildings bulged with transients.

[Sunny Delight]

Mary Jane Kelly was most likely born in Ireland as Barnett told the inquest. She would have had no reason to lie about her ancestry. If she was as thought between 23-28 years old it is absolutely no suprise that in the 1860's her and her family moved from Limerick to England. Ireland at this time saw huge amounts of emigration. The joke here in Ireland is that we built half of England but forgot about ourselves. It was also normal for Irishmen to join the British Army at this time. Indeed it was quite normal right up until 1918 after which there was a rise of Republicanism and Seperatism. The 1921 Anglo-Irish treaty gave Ireland its own standing army. Despite that some still join British regiments even today. Her story does not seem out of the ordinary- in fact for someone born in Ireland at the time it was completely normal.

[etenguy]

I obviously tend to agree with that, but Im curious why some elements of the backstory ring true. They just don't tie together in anything that can be traced to one name so far. I think she created the story that Barnett says she gave, and took things from her knowledge of other people as her own. I don't believe she had the story given to her or Barnett, as in some kind of situation where she is in hiding with a false identity given to her. But I do think she wanted anonymity. To get lost in a crowd. Where better to find a crowd than Dorset Street. Buildings bulged with transients.

I agree - it is always more effective when you wrap a lie in the truth.