The Legend Of Mary Jane Kelly

[mpriestnall]

My wife is another example. From an army family, she grew up in Yorkshire, Newcastle, Belfast, London (and Cyprus). Her accent was impossible to pin down when I first knew her. After decades of living in Essex/East London it’s similar to mine now, but she occasionally lapses into a bit of ‘eh up’.

Thanks Gary. When I suggested the idea I didn't actually have any examples myself, so I appreciate you and Ms Diddles providing support for the idea.

Martyn

PS Apparently Hamilton Hall used to be a ballroom which would account for those nice high ceilings! Source: A recent Wetherspoon's magazine.

[MrBarnett]

Thanks Gary. When I suggested the idea I didn't actually have any examples myself, so I appreciate you and Ms Diddles providing support for the idea.

Martyn

PS Apparently Hamilton Hall used to be a ballroom which would account for those nice high ceilings! Source: A recent Wetherspoon's magazine.

I once participated in a company quiz night in the Great Eastern Hotel. I’m talking 40+ years ago, and I’m not sure if it was in HH itself, but it was a very large room with high ceilings and OTT plasterwork.

I’ve been back and forth to Dorset recently. Back there again next week. Hopefully a week or so after that, I can pop up to Liverpool Street. I’ve been wanting to poke my head into Crooked Billet Yard which was ‘Biddy the Chiver’s’ last address for ages.

[mpriestnall]

I once participated in a company quiz night in the Great Eastern Hotel. I’m talking 40+ years ago, and I’m not sure if it was in HH itself, but it was a very large room with high ceilings and OTT plasterwork.

I’ve been back and forth to Dorset recently. Back there again next week. Hopefully a week or so after that, I can pop up to Liverpool Street. I’ve been wanting to poke my head into Crooked Billet Yard which was ‘Biddy the Chiver’s’ last address for ages.

Okey dokey.

[Debra A]

Hi all
Re Alice Carroll: Below is the last bit of research I did on Alice Carroll when I found she apparently married a man named Smith and died in an asylum in Dublin in 1898.
Posted July 9, 2017, 11:15 PM on JTRForums


I think I may have finally discovered what happened to Alice Carroll after the last documented mention of her name in the Dublin newspapers in September 1887.


We know that Alice was born on the 28th April 1866 at 64 Eccles Lane in Dublin to Patrick Carroll and his wife Mary, nee White.

After looking at a few possible marriages for women named Alice Carroll in Dublin, I managed to find a marriage for an Alice Carroll in Dublin whose father was named Patrick:

1887
Marriages solemnized at Register Office City of Dublin
Entry 222
On 8th oct 1887
Groom -Frederick James Smith, full age, batchelor, corpral 4th Dragoons, residence Royal Barracks, father Robert Smith, worker
on stock exchange
Bride -Alice Mary Carroll, full age, spinster, living 28 Barrack St, father Patrick Carroll cabowner.[Alice's father Patrick Carroll did own and run a cab]

Unfortunately the age of the Alice Carroll in this marriage was not given, although she was 21 or over as 'full age' means.
Alice Carroll of Phoenix Park fame would have turned 21 on 28th April 1887, so no dicrepancy so far.

The next record for who I believe is the same woman given her name, age and status as married to a soldier is from the Dublin workhouse records:

Alice Smith, 24, [b 1866] married wife of a soldier, Roman Catholic, resident ECity (?) Brown's Cottages, admitted 9th April 1890, discharged 13th Aug 90
to RL Asylum[ Richmond Lunatic asylum]

Dublin workhouse 1890, South Dublin Union
Workhouse number 4457
Description So Dublin Poor Law Union Admission + Discharge BG 79/G 69
Piece Workhouse admission and discharge records, v. G book 69 (24 December 1889, no. 2201) - v. G book 73 (22 November 1892, no. 4040)



There is also just one other workhouse entry for this same woman the following year in 1891:

Alice Smith, 25. married, no occupation, Roman Catholic, resident Richmond S Asylum, admitted 20 July 1891, died 4th April 1898
[b 1866]

So Dublin Poor Law Union Admission + Discharge BG 79/G 69
Piece Workhouse admission and discharge records, v. G book 69 (24 December 1889, no. 2201) - v. G book 73 (22 November 1892, no. 4040)

I was then able to locate the death certificate for Alice Smith in April 1898 aged 31:

South Dublin
Deaths Registered 1898
44 G April 3rd 1898 workhouse, Alice Smith from Richmond Lunatic Asylum, female, married, 31 years, cause of death pthisis
Dementia Certified. Registered 9th April 1898
The informant was an official who informed on all the deaths on that particular page.

The Oct 1887 marriage would explain why Alice appears to have 'disappeared' after Sept 1887 as some have suggested because her name no longer appeared in the newspapers as Alice Carroll.

I previously found that Alice's sister, Mary Jane emigrated to New York, she married a man also named Fanning in Dublin (Alice Carroll's fiance was supposed to be a policeman named Fanning) shortly before she left and had a child in 1889, baptised in Dublin, there is no church record of the marriage although there is a baptismal record for their son. I passed this information on to the family a few years ago.

[Debra A]

RJ,

There were at least three Alice Carrolls who fell foul of the law in Dublin in the 1880s. Two of them, your Coombe example and one from Eccles Lane, had been born in 1866. The other was younger, so we can ignore her.

The two 1866 candidates were different heights and weights, one (Coombe) was a ‘dealer’ and the other (Eccles Lane) had no occupation. Clearly different women.

The 1887 press report that identified the AC charged with abusive language as the Phoenix Park witness gave her address as 13, Eccles Lane and said she had no occupation. This same woman - same name, age, address and lack of occupation - had been imprisoned in 1886 for the same offence. The Coombe lady had numerous convictions.

Unless there were two AC’s of the same age living in Eccles Lane and the reporter got them muddled up, it seems probable that the 1887 woman was indeed the Phoenix Park witness. The idea that a journalist would play a ‘joke’ by identifying the wrong woman seems highly unlikely.

Gary

That's right Gary, the Eccles Lane link was how I made the connection to the Alice Carroll of Phoenix Park fame:

https://www.jtrforums.com/forum/the-...234#post247234

February 15, 2013, 01:32 PM
description

The description of Alice Carroll from the Grangegorman prison records in 85/86 say she is age 20, 5ft. 4.5in. with blue eyes and fair hair. The address of Lower Eccles lane and birthplace of Eccles Lane tying in to Alice Carroll, witness, known through the Phoenix park related trials.

[Debra A]

Here's the 1901 census that shows Alice's father Patrick living at Eccles Place and listed as a cab owner:

[Debra A]

And finally
Alice's 1866 birth cert showing her father as Patrick Carroll, mother Mary White of Eccles Lane a cab driver and also the birth certificate of Alice's brother Thomas, b 1876 and listed on the 1901 census with the family that I posted earlier to show Patrick's occupation was later a cab owner, as Patrick, the father of Alice Carroll on the marriage cert I posted was.

[Trevor Marriott]

Here's the 1901 census that shows Alice's father Patrick living at Eccles Place and listed as a cab owner:

So we have two different addresses Eccles Place and Eccles Lane two different families with the same name?

Have you read RJ Palmers posts in #34 #44 both seem to conflcit with your posts.

https://www.trevormarriott.co.uk

[Debra A]

So we have two different addresses Eccles Place and Eccles Lane two different families with the same name?

Have you read RJ Palmers posts in #34 #44 both seem to conflcit with your posts.

www.trevormarriott.co.uk

I have reproduced the primary source material that I have used to make my own conclusion that Alice Carroll of Phoenix Park fame married soldier Frederick White and died in an asylum and that she had been in prison and was described as having brown hair. If there is an alternative ID of Alice Carroll of the right age, right place and with a cab man for a father then her records shouldn't be hard to dsicover and can also be posted here for comparison. I know she had a cousin a couple of years older or younger with the same name.

At the time of the Phoenix Park murders, Alice, the witness, said she lived at 13 Lower Eccles Lane and 13 Lower Eccles Lane is given as the address of the Alice Carroll recorded in prison records as having brown hair (ditto maks recorded from previous entry as I recall) in Grangegorman Prison. She also said she was born at 4 Eccles Lane, a different address, showing the family moved around.
The same family can clearly be seen to have moved around the same streets of Upper and Lower Eccles Lane and different addresses so I wouldn't rule out a move to Eccles Place. It's the same area. It was only a couple of streets away from the place William Wallace Brodie's brother lived with his family and I've just been posting about him elsewhere if we are talking coincidence.

I also found an article that said Alice Carroll had become Alice Mooney, that's at least five different marriages given for Alice in the newspapers! RJ's find of her said to have married a soldier named Smith in 83 fits perfectly, perhaps they lived together before marrying in 87?
I think there was some added detail about Alice's family when Meiklejohn barged his way in to her house when she was supposed to be under police protection. I'll have to read that again.
I'm open to any discussion of the ID if someone can show that it is wrong with primary source material.

[Trevor Marriott]

And finally
Alice's 1866 birth cert showing her father as Patrick Carroll, mother Mary White of Eccles Lane a cab driver and also the birth certificate of Alice's brother Thomas, b 1876 and listed on the 1901 census with the family that I posted earlier to show Patrick's occupation was later a cab owner, as Patrick, the father of Alice Carroll on the marriage cert I posted was.

The second entry shows the occupation as a carman not a cab driver!

https://www.trevormarriott.co.uk

[MrBarnett]

So we have two different addresses Eccles Place and Eccles Lane two different families with the same name?

Have you read RJ Palmers posts in #34 #44 both seem to conflcit with your posts.

www.trevormarriott.co.uk

Those two press reports are highly suspect, though. I certainly wouldn’t ignore the clearly documented genealogical story Debs has produced in favour of such press gossip.

Apart from anything else, they contradict each other, claiming 17-year-old Alice had married a cop named Kelly and an informer named Smith.

[MrBarnett]

The second entry shows the occupation as a carman not a cab driver!

www.trevormarriott.co.uk

Yes, Trevor, they are 10 years apart! Carman/Cab Driver/Cab Owner seems a perfectly plausible career progression, especially if you came into a little money through your daughter.

It all stacks up. Unless you want to argue that marriage certs, asylum records etc were falsified to muddy the waters.

[Trevor Marriott]

I have reproduced the primary source material that I have used to make my own conclusion that Alice Carroll of Phoenix Park fame married soldier Frederick White and died in an asylum and that she had been in prison and was described as having brown hair. If there is an alternative ID of Alice Carroll of the right age, right place and with a cab man for a father then her records shouldn't be hard to dsicover and can also be posted here for comparison. I know she had a cousin a couple of years older or younger with the same name.

At the time of the Phoenix Park murders, Alice, the witness, said she lived at 13 Lower Eccles Lane and 13 Lower Eccles Lane is given as the address of the Alice Carroll recorded in prison records as having brown hair (ditto maks recorded from previous entry as I recall) in Grangegorman Prison. She also said she was born at 4 Eccles Lane, a different address, showing the family moved around.
The same family can clearly be seen to have moved around the same streets of Upper and Lower Eccles Lane and different addresses so I wouldn't rule out a move to Eccles Place. It's the same area. It was only a couple of streets away from the place William Wallace Brodie's brother lived with his family and I've just been posting about him elsewhere if we are talking coincidence.

I also found an article that said Alice Carroll had become Alice Mooney, that's at least five different marriages given for Alice in the newspapers! RJ's find of her said to have married a soldier named Smith in 83 fits perfectly, perhaps they lived together before marrying in 87?
I think there was some added detail about Alice's family when Meiklejohn barged his way in to her house when she was supposed to be under police protection. I'll have to read that again.
I'm open to any discussion of the ID if someone can show that it is wrong with primary source material.

There are so many ambiguites that it is a case of no one is going to say you are totally wrong, but in my opinion it falls short of conclusivley saying you are right.

Have you checked to ascertain if the Mcarthys who owned the shop near to Eccles Lane were related to the Millers Court McCarthys? that might be a game changer?

https://www.trevormarriott.co.uk

[Trevor Marriott]

Yes, Trevor, they are 10 years apart! Carman/Cab Driver/Cab Owner seems a perfectly plausible career progression, especially if you came into a little money through your daughter.

Again conjecture on your part

https://www.trevormarriott.co.uk

[rjpalmer]

RJ's find of her said to have married a soldier named Smith in 83 fits perfectly, perhaps they lived together before marrying in 87?

Hi Debs.

This is what I thought, too, but as strange as it may appear, I now think the report I posted is most likely a red-herring, and it's nothing other than a strange coincidence. The report states she married a fellow Phoenix Park informer named Smith and went with him to Australia, and, as you have shown, Alice Carroll did indeed marry a Frederick Smith in 1887

The trouble is, the Phoenix Park informer who was hustled down to Australia was not Frederick Smith, but Joseph Smith. He was a laborer inside Dublin Castle, had joined the Irish Invincibles, played a small role in the assassinations, and then turned state's evidence. Further, it was reported that the informer Joseph Smith eventually returned to the UK and died in London in 1885, so he couldn't be Frederick James Smith. (see below).

There is a long and detailed article on the Phoenix Park informers sailing to Australia in 1883, published in The Flag of Ireland, and, rather suggestively, it states nothing about Alice Carroll being among the passengers on that voyage.

I suppose it is possible that Joseph Smith the informer and Frederick Smith the soldier were somehow related, and Alice Carroll met one through the other, but I haven't looked into it.

Personally, I have no doubt you found the same Alice Smith, and she died in the asylum. I'm more interested in some of the oddities of the news accounts surrounding her, and what they might tell us about misinformation in the press when dealing with anything to do with Irish Nationalism. I wonder if the claims that Alice was married to a policeman was just local gossip, a way of insinuating that she was 'in' with the police. The William Kelly she was supposedly associated with was simply the local beat constable, as far as I can tell.

Here's one report of Joseph Smith's death in 1885



By the way, I noticed that there was another Carroll family living in Eccles Lane in the early 1880s, but it was No. 13 Upper Eccles Lane, and I've found no evidence there was any 'Alice' in the immediate family. Maybe a relative, or just a name coincidence?