Johnto - an idea

[Phil H]

If MJK's brother was serving under an assumed name (nom de guerre), there are surely two possibilities as to how the police identified him which are not available to us today:

a) he came forward voluntarily; perhaps as the representative of the family and to shield the others;

b) Barnett or someone who had seen him (McCarthy?) identified him (and the details were on a now lost file).

Given that all those involved are now deceased, neither of those avenues are open to us. But they would have been in 1888. So maybe we are doing nothing wrong - but "Johnto" is now invisible.

Identifying him would, of course, not be particularly important in regard to the case - it might have given the police some information/insight into MJK's background and life - so retetntion of the file might not have been too vital.

On the other hand, some purloined material has turned up, so i suppose one day old MJK-related files might be found in some attic.

Phil

[The Good Michael]

Richard has mentioned Fiona Kendall's claims that the coppers found him in the regiment-so what are we doing wrong?

Is that Fiona "I know who Jack the Ripper was" Kendall? If so, I think I know where the error is.

Mike

[lynn cates]

Only believe.

Hello Debs.

"Richard has mentioned Fiona Kendall's claims that the coppers found him in the regiment-so what are we doing wrong?"

Believing stories about coppers?

Cheers.
LC

[Wickerman]

Hi Jon,
Thanks for posting those other pics-I'm still not convinced mind!
but just say you were right...what difference would it make in the long run if Henry was known as John too?

I sometimes wonder myself Debs, we engage in these conjectures, which, in many cases can never be proven

We still have Barnett saying he was in the Scots Guards and their records are quite complete and have been searched for any Kellys who's details may fit ( you were there for part of it,you had input?) why didn't we find John too,either?

It is known that soldiers did enlist when under age, and because of this they often used an assumed name. That fact is a matter of record.
I don't have any answers, I can only offer things to consider.

Richard has mentioned Fiona Kendall's claims that the coppers found him in the regiment-so what are we doing wrong?

Well, maybe the police were given his enlisted name?, or maybe it wasn't the Scots Guards, Barnett had the name wrong?
There were only three regiments of Guards in 1888, Coldstream, Grenadier & Scots (as opposed to five regiments today).
I don't know Debs, I'm not denying its a tough nut to crack. Given all the sources who knew Mary Kelly and who we endlessly quote, I wouldn't be at all surprised if some of the details they gave were in error.

[Debra A]

Hi Jon,
Thanks for posting those other pics-I'm still not convinced mind!
but just say you were right...what difference would it make in the long run if Henry was known as John too? We still have Barnett saying he was in the Scots Guards and their records are quite complete and have been searched for any Kellys who's details may fit ( you were there for part of it,you had input?) why didn't we find John too,either?
Richard has mentioned Fiona Kendall's claims that the coppers found him in the regiment-so what are we doing wrong?

[Phil H]

Phil, I'm a little surprised you won't entertain a move for a fresh start after a remarriage after divorce, or something else relatively simple, but that was frowned upon back then,

The only reason I don't buy into it is that there isn't a shred of evidence to support it Rivkah. It's not that its not possible, just that why should we accept that view rather than 1,000 others.

Like Mary went on the game and her family disowned her. That her brothers were in the army and did not want to be associated with someone like her. Or Mary married someone the family disapproved of...

but you go right to something like the Fenians.

I offered a number of options, and specifically said:

"were somehow involved in a cover-up, Fenian or something else, and the mystery enigma relates to that. ..."

The phrase "or something else" surely indicates that I attach no particular importance to it. But it has been one theory about MJK, replacement victims etc. Hence my use of that example.

Phil

[curious4]

TB

Hello Rivkah,

She was treated in Cardiff, before she moved to London.

Best wishes,
C4

[RivkahChaya]

It's also possible Mary didn't even know her exact age.

Phil, I'm a little surprised you won't entertain a move for a fresh start after a remarriage after divorce, or something else relatively simple, but that was frowned upon back then, but you go right to something like the Fenians.

If I were writing a book, I'd write something like Mary being born out of wedlock, while he father was married to someone else, and then divorce and remarriage, and a move from Ireland to Wales, and lying about dates and ages, so her birth would be after the marriage. All of that is perfectly innocent, and it's done so that your kid doesn't get shunned at school, but it ends up making people hard to trace if you wind up wanting to for some unrelated reason.

If MJK were working at a West End brothel, but then started showing symptoms of active pulmonary TB, would they dismiss her for that? I really don't know, but I wouldn't be surprised.

Of all her stories, I'm most skeptical of the one about being married to someone named Davies who was killed in a mine. I don't know why she would go back to her maiden name. On the other hand, if she were going to make up a story, you'd think she'd bolster it with a detail like a married name. I wonder if the story were made up on the spot to get sympathy on a particular occasion, and then she was stuck with it.

[curious4]

Ladies' privilege

Hello all,

I still think that Mary lied about her age. Provided all her stories had some truth in them, it seems to me unlikely that she would have had time for everything within a time-span of only seven or eight years - married, widowed, prostitute in Cardiff, hospitalised for tb (must have been for months, if not a year), spell in a west-end brothel, France and back (although that may only have lasted only a short time) moving from address to address and man to man and finally ending up in Dorset Street.

Women were kept on in high-class brothels until the customers had grown tired of them. Perhaps this is when Mary began her downhill slide, but she could well have spent up to a year there at least, especially if she was popular.

Considering that Polly and Liz at least were said to have looked some years younger than they were, despite child-bearing and much harder lives, I would put Mary's age at nearer 35 than 25.

Speculation, yes - but using what we are told about Mary's history, also considering that she most probably omitted a few facts which were unflattering or uncomfortable.

This would also bring her nearer the age of Jack's other victims.

Best wishes
C4

[Wickerman]

Here's an example of a word squeezed in to the point of bending the word around to make it fit. The 'k' (of o'clock) appears to be almost perpendicular to the edge of the page.

[Wickerman]

This is an example where we see the tendency to string words together, and the "Johnto" squeezed in at the edge of the page.

[Phil H]

We can tie ourselves in knots over Kelly's background.

What you say might be true, Rivkah, but we have no evidence for any of it.

The options seem to me to be:

a) Mary told the truth to Barnett and others and they related it as accurately as possible - we have just not been lucky in picking up mary's tracks;

b) our lack of success indicates she lied or falsfied some or all of her backstory and lied to her associates - in which case we don't know what is true/what made up and our chanes of stumbling on her (without additional evidence) are slim;

c) Mary and some of her associates were somehow involved in a cover-up, Fenian or something else, and the mystery enigma relates to that. So Barnett's and others testimony might not be reliable.

My own view is that parts of the story are true - Flemming (known to visit her), Morgan Stone (however spelled, doesn't some of the right sort of name show up in the street registers?) the brother who may or many not have been seen, the letters from home - seem to point to some reliable/checkable information she gave out. But I think she embroidered her story to add mystique and sophistication to her character.

If some chance survival of an official record turns up one day we might get a lead, assuming the police had success in tracing her family. Johnto/John Too/Ianto seems to be the best lead because the Guards are an organisation that maintains excellent records. If we cannot find him there then -in my view - that may be proof that something odd is going on.

Phil

[RivkahChaya]

Regarding "embarrassment," and the Kellys moving, I wonder if possibly something that may have been a minor scandal at the time, but not so much by today's standards, caused them to move from Ireland to Wales in the first place, and possible change the family name.

There was a bit of a scandal in my family, and I descended from the black sheep, so I know what happened, but the other family members may not actually know what happened to them. It involves some intermarriage, excommunication, conversion, and a couple moving from the South to New York. When I first found out some of my ancestors were Southerners, I asked said to my uncle "Please tell me we're not related to Judah Benjamin (we're not)." Also, my grandmother, albeit Jewish, had the maiden name Fitzpatrick, something her employer didn't know. She used to take a bus to the kosher butcher a couple of miles away, instead of the one on the next block from the place she worked, so her boss wouldn't see her go in.

At any rate, there could be something like divorce and remarriage, or a Catholic/Protestant marriage (which, correct me if I'm wrong, but the RC church would consider living in sin under some circumstances).

Anyway, if something like that were in the background, they may have deliberately made efforts to trace them difficult.

It seems curious that we know so much about the other victims, including Liz Stride, who wasn't even born in England, and seems given to, umm, fictionalizing her story as well. I realize that MJK probably made up a lot of the stories she told about herself, and that complicates things, but since the brother was found, it wasn't too complicated.

So I wonder if maybe the whole family didn't want to be found, for some reason.

[caz]

Hi Caz.

Abberline frequently joins words together, we have numerous examples of this. He also has a tendency to squash a word on the end of a line where clearly there is insufficient room.
Even, to the point of curving a word around and down just to fit all the letters in at the edge of the paper.

What I have no evidence of is the idiosyncrasy of him writing "to" for "too". It is common enough today, we see it all the time. What I need to see are any private letters by Abberline where "too" might appear. We would not expect to see this in a police report but in personal communications, quite possibly.

Fair point, Jon.

I would, however, have expected Abberline to use the word 'also' in a police report. And what are common mistakes today were not necessarily common back then, when a lot more emphasis was placed on correct spelling and grammar at school.

Love,

Caz
X

[lynn cates]

shame

Hello Richard. Thanks.

"As for Barnett's story, I would say it was repeated to the police in good faith."

No reason to believe otherwise.

"Because of the shame, it is quite conceivable that the whole family emigrated"

But surely this could be offered vis-a-vis ANY of the WCM victim's families?

Cheers.
LC