How close have people gotten

[clark2710]

I know that people have delved into the identity of Mary Kelly nearly as much as the Ripper himself. My question is, how close have people gotten over the years?

[DJA]

28 year old local.

[clark2710]

28 year old local.

so to make sure I am reading this right they've tracked her as far as where she's been and what not but not close enough to get a picture. Is a picture all we don't have?

[DJA]

[clark2710]

wow is that a reconstruction of her face from her murder photo or is it art done based on description?

[DJA]

The former.

[erobitha]

The real answer is no-one can claim they have found her 100%.

It simply cannot be achieved without some kind of DNA proof.

My candidate is Welsh girl Mary Thomas who was born in 1863 in Carmarthen, Wales. Her story I have tracked so far has unearthed very close similarities to the stories MJK herself gave to people including Barnett. It is an ongoing investigation, but I am confident I can answer most of those qestions around the clues to her identity.

My Mary had a few sisters, so I plan to at some point try and trace their lines as close as I can to a living relative for their mDNA. Then,we just need MJK's DNA. Which actually after all this, may yet prove to be the toughest challenge of all. I am not the only searcher, and neither is DJA.

Maybe one of us will get lucky at some point.

[Wickerman]

The real answer is no-one can claim they have found her 100%.

It simply cannot be achieved without some kind of DNA proof.

Ah, but we need DNA from her remains, and from what I recall, her body is in a mass grave of unidentified paupers.
So, I don't see how we can utilize this magic DNA if we don't know which bones belong to Mary Kelly.
Which raises the next obvious hurdle....

My candidate is Welsh girl Mary Thomas who was born in 1863 in Carmarthen, Wales. Her story I have tracked so far has unearthed very close similarities to the stories MJK herself gave to people including Barnett. It is an ongoing investigation, but I am confident I can answer most of those qestions around the clues to her identity.

My Mary had a few sisters, so I plan to at some point try and trace their lines as close as I can to a living relative for their mDNA. Then,we just need MJK's DNA. Which actually after all this, may yet prove to be the toughest challenge of all. I am not the only searcher, and neither is DJA.

Did your Mary die in 1888?

This for me is the next hurdle, how can we be sure Mary Jane Kelly was her real name?
On the very first day of her murder, one of her neighbors told a reporter 'we didn't know her real name, we called her Mary Jane', none of us use our real name, no-one knows mine' (or words to that effect).
So, are we all ignoring this warning?, if we are, is it because we don't want to believe it?

I'm more inclined to believe this quote, so in my book this means the real Mary Kelly, if it is not an entirely made up name, must be still alive in 1888.
This means my candidate must have been among the living, a Mary Kelly, born in Ireland, family moved to Wales, had seven brother's & one sister.

[erobitha]

Ah, but we need DNA from her remains, and from what I recall, her body is in a mass grave of unidentified paupers.
So, I don't see how we can utilize this magic DNA if we don't know which bones belong to Mary Kelly.

I don't disagree. Locating the exact location of her remains is part of that point I was making about being the hardest hurdle to overcome. I just didn't write it

Did your Mary die in 1888?

This for me is the next hurdle, how can we be sure Mary Jane Kelly was her real name?
On the very first day of her murder, one of her neighbors told a reporter 'we didn't know her real name, we called her Mary Jane', none of us use our real name, no-one knows mine' (or words to that effect).
So, are we all ignoring this warning?, if we are, is it because we don't want to believe it?

I'm more inclined to believe this quote, so in my book this means the real Mary Kelly, if it is not an entirely made up name, must be still alive in 1888.
This means my candidate must have been among the living, a Mary Kelly, born in Ireland, family moved to Wales, had seven brother's & one sister.

As I say, I am still working on my candidate. Part of this process is turn over stones that talented researchers far better than I am can pick holes in easily. I can't answer that question of death yet (or least I didn't feel I have thoroughly stressed tested it enough). I'm not quite there yet.

In the end, there is a possibility it could be everything she said is 100% true and could have been validated. If most of the Irish census records of the 19th were not destroyed by a fire in Dublin in 1922, the answers could have been there all along. The answer could just be that. The issue remains that Mary Kelly doesn't appear to fit on the Welsh records side either.

[clark2710]

Well we'd have to go with what we DO have. For instance, the coffin the Mary Kelly was buried in was a polished elm and oak coffin from Shoreditch Church, if you're going to dig in a mass grave, it's possible that her coffin has a mark of that church on it, or not all coffins were made of elm & oak. We could look at various other surviving information. There may be record of those that were buried there more recently and how to id them. If that's the case then that eliminates them. In the page on Mary Jane Kelly's funeral, Casebook says: "John Sears is the current cemetery super-intendent, and through his dedicated research into the cemetery records while comparing them with headstones which are still standing on old graves by the walls, he was able to find the correct location of the old row 67. From there it was relatively simple to pace out the position of Mary Jane's original resting place. During my conversation with John, he told me that the area of this gravesite is just a rough location, with a tolerance factor of approximately 3 feet: left or right of the centre line of the grave now considered by many, including himself, to be Mary Jane Kelly's true burial place." So we know pretty close to where she's buried, that's part of the battle right there. Now it all depends on how many are buried alongside her.
All I'm saying is, it's hard, it'd be tedious, and a huge pain...but it's remotely possible. Hugely remotely possible.

[Wickerman]

One identifying feature could be the two false teeth that protruded, as described by one Mrs Phoenix in the press. Assuming she also had the correct woman.

[Marie Jeanette Davies]

One identifying feature could be the two false teeth that protruded, as described by one Mrs Phoenix in the press. Assuming she also had the correct woman.

It was just Mrs. Phoenix who said that Mary had two protruding false teeth, wasn't it? Neither Barnett nor Elizabeth Prater mentioned that detail. One could argue that Dr. Bond's post mortem examination is incomplete and that the autopsy report didn't survive, which is absolutely true, but I think that, if she really had them, Barnett would have recognized her by them too. Maxwell said that Mary spoke with a bit of a speech impediment, which could have been caused by two false teeth that didn't fit her perfect of course, but, as I've said before, I think that she was wrong about the identity of the woman she believed was Mary Jane Kelly.

[DJA]

The high definition blowup of MJK2 does show two teeth that are likely to be false teeth.

[clark2710]

One identifying feature could be the two false teeth that protruded, as described by one Mrs Phoenix in the press. Assuming she also had the correct woman.

I just think that there may be TINY bits of evidence, especially with Mary Kelly if any of them, because the Ripper spent the most time with her. That was his masterpiece. He got to take his time and frenzy with her. I don't care if it is 100+ years there's still a tiny chance something is there. It may not be dna, hell it may be a bite mark somewhere, it may be anything, any small clue would do. Get enough small clues it'd point right to whomever it is. Or, the RIGHT small clue may do it. it all depends.

[Wickerman]

It was just Mrs. Phoenix who said that Mary had two protruding false teeth, wasn't it? Neither Barnett nor Elizabeth Prater mentioned that detail. One could argue that Dr. Bond's post mortem examination is incomplete and that the autopsy report didn't survive, which is absolutely true, but I think that, if she really had them, Barnett would have recognized her by them too. Maxwell said that Mary spoke with a bit of a speech impediment, which could have been caused by two false teeth that didn't fit her perfect of course, but, as I've said before, I think that she was wrong about the identity of the woman she believed was Mary Jane Kelly.

Dr Bond made his report specifically to address the wounds, which is why he was involved in the first place, at the behest of Anderson. So, as the false teeth were not wounds he may not have thought it necessary to list that detail. Also, given the lacerations around the mouth, they may not have opened the mouth until the formal post-mortem by Dr Phillips on Saturday.

Mrs Pheonix appears to have known Kelly, or at least her brother-in-law must have been acquainted with Kelly for the best part of a year. So, the false teeth must have been common knowledge among those families, and her friends at Breezers Hill.