Mary Jane Kelly, From Whitechapel?

[Fleetwood Mac]

FM, I concur that the lack of any reports of an accent (Welsh, Irish or anything else) is quite telling. I would assume that one of the many Whitechapel personages she spoke to or associated with would have mentioned that "she didn't speak the same like us" even if they couldn't identify what her accent was.

Helen x

Someone like Caroline Maxwell trying to prove a point I'd have thought, Helen.

According to Joe Barnett, Mary spent most of her life in Wales and that being the case it's pretty certain she would have spoken with a Welsh accent.

[Fleetwood Mac]

Though, as I speculated, if the victim's real name was not Mary Kelly, maybe she was a close friend or relative of this Mary Ann Kelly, and used her identity?

While many of these women used an alias from time to time, I'm pretty sure they generally went by their christened name. In the event Mary invented a name for herself, that would be unusual, and for what purpose?

I read that the 6 brothers were supposedly in London. It would be highly unusual for a whole family of siblings brought up in Ireland and Wales to move to London. That's not really how it worked then. Providing there was work, people didn't up sticks like that and there would have been plenty of work in the coal mines in Wales, particularly for lads. People were content providing they had work and were near their families.

[MrBarnett]

While many of these women used an alias from time to time, I'm pretty sure they generally went by their christened name. In the event Mary invented a name for herself, that would be unusual, and for what purpose?

I read that the 6 brothers were supposedly in London. It would be highly unusual for a whole family of siblings brought up in Ireland and Wales to move to London. That's not really how it worked then. Providing there was work, people didn't up sticks like that and there would have been plenty of work in the coal mines in Wales, particularly for lads. People were content providing they had work and were near their families.

I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of Bridget Enright (aka Biddy the Chiver)? The Enright family were originally from Kerry, but moved to Tredegar, where the father worked in an iron works. Biddy was born in Tredegar in 1874. From there they moved to Llangattock, the father, Patrick, again working in an iron works and then in 1886 they relocated to the East End.

Shortly after the family moved from Tredegar, there were anti-Irish riots there. There had been long-standing tensions between Welsh workers and the Irish who had emigrated to industrial South Wales in great numbers, starting in the 1840s at the time of the famine and continuing in the form of ‘chain emigration’ for decades.

Biddy was born in Red Lion Square in Tredegar, which seems to have been an Irish enclave. Some houses were burned and others were ransacked, their contents (furniture etc) being dragged out into the square and burned.

I’m not sure to what extent Biddy and her siblings would have mixed with local Welsh children. Quite what her accent would have been is unclear. Probably Irish, perhaps a bit Welsh as well. Arthur Harding wrote about Biddy in his autobiography, her antics were reported in the press on numerous occasions and there are extensive notes covering her time at the Stone Asylum. No one ever mentioned her accent.

[Wickerman]

While many of these women used an alias from time to time, I'm pretty sure they generally went by their christened name. In the event Mary invented a name for herself, that would be unusual, and for what purpose?

This was from one woman, it may have been Prater... who says she didn't know Mary's proper name.


Lanc. Eve. Post, 9 Nov. 1888.

Reason's for changing their names can be as many as your imagination can come up with. Debt, is one popular reason people changed their names. We did receive a story that Kelly was trying to avoid her father, it might have come from Buki, Carthy or Pheonix, I'm not sure.

We are also told Kelly lived in the West End at one point, suddenly fleeing?, to the opposite end of the city - the East End. Few people descend to such an environment by choice. It's up to researchers to find the reason, not dismiss it because we don't have one.

I read that the 6 brothers were supposedly in London. It would be highly unusual for a whole family of siblings brought up in Ireland and Wales to move to London. That's not really how it worked then. Providing there was work, people didn't up sticks like that and there would have been plenty of work in the coal mines in Wales, particularly for lads. People were content providing they had work and were near their families.

The court record only says she had six brothers at home, only the Telegraph said they were living in London. I don't find that in any of the other papers. A few other papers said "at home" too, it's just we don't know where home was for the family, other than Wales.

[MrBarnett]

I’ve collected 17 false surnames (including a few spelling variants) for Alice McKenzie - McKenzie being one of them. She had been born Alice Pitts in Peterbotough and moved to Leicester where she married a man named Kinsey. Shortly after her husband died in Leicester she relocated to the East End and almost immediately assumed the name McKenzie. Fresh from the Midlands, she appeared in a couple of press reports.

I’ve come across numerous examples of people adopting false surnames, it was far less common for them to assume a new forename. So Mary was probably a Mary.

And to return to McKenzie, her family issued several categorical denials of any connection to her in the Peterborough press, but they must have suspected that she could have been their sister. Perhaps Kelly’s family knew all to well that the Miller’s Court victim was their relative, but chose not to acknowledge that she was.

[MrBarnett]

One interesting piece of info divulged by Joe Barnett was that he had been told by Mary that she had a brother in the 2nd Battalion Scots Guards. He seemed to know that they were stationed in Ireland at the time. In that he was correct, the battalion had been stationed in Dublin since the beginning of September. So it seems highly likely that Mary did have a connection to someone in the 2BnSG. But was it her brother? In the autumn of 1886, when Mary was probably working out of a brothel in Pennington Street, the 2BnSG were stationed at the Tower, a few minutes walk away from Pennington Street. Coincidence?

[Wickerman]

Yes, Joseph Isaacs is the last individual I hunted down, and for well over 8 months. I followed him through the press & the courts from Dover to Scotland, and he used three or four different surnames. But, in Mary's case if a name-change wasn't to avoid her father, then perhaps to save her (so-called?) well-to-do family any embarrassment?

[Varqm]

One interesting piece of info divulged by Joe Barnett was that he had been told by Mary that she had a brother in the 2nd Battalion Scots Guards. He seemed to know that they were stationed in Ireland at the time. In that he was correct, the battalion had been stationed in Dublin since the beginning of September. So it seems highly likely that Mary did have a connection to someone in the 2BnSG. But was it her brother? In the autumn of 1886, when Mary was probably working out of a brothel in Pennington Street, the 2BnSG were stationed at the Tower, a few minutes walk away from Pennington Street. Coincidence?

Kelly told Mrs. Phoenix she had a child but she did not see the kid once.

[Fleetwood Mac]

I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of Bridget Enright (aka Biddy the Chiver)? The Enright family were originally from Kerry, but moved to Tredegar, where the father worked in an iron works. Biddy was born in Tredegar in 1874. From there they moved to Llangattock, the father, Patrick, again working in an iron works and then in 1886 they relocated to the East End.

Shortly after the family moved from Tredegar, there were anti-Irish riots there. There had been long-standing tensions between Welsh workers and the Irish who had emigrated to industrial South Wales in great numbers, starting in the 1840s at the time of the famine and continuing in the form of ‘chain emigration’ for decades.

Biddy was born in Red Lion Square in Tredegar, which seems to have been an Irish enclave. Some houses were burned and others were ransacked, their contents (furniture etc) being dragged out into the square and burned.

I’m not sure to what extent Biddy and her siblings would have mixed with local Welsh children. Quite what her accent would have been is unclear. Probably Irish, perhaps a bit Welsh as well. Arthur Harding wrote about Biddy in his autobiography, her antics were reported in the press on numerous occasions and there are extensive notes covering her time at the Stone Asylum. No one ever mentioned her accent.

Most of the anti-Irish riots occurred around the time of the famine, and so by the time Mary moved to Wales relations were much better, e.g. shared goals such as Trade Unionism brought people together. I would imagine your example is unusual. As said, in those days people moved for work and it seems a stretch that 6 brothers could not find work in the industrial areas in Wales.

[Fleetwood Mac]

This was from one woman, it may have been Prater... who says she didn't know Mary's proper name.


Lanc. Eve. Post, 9 Nov. 1888.

Reason's for changing their names can be as many as your imagination can come up with. Debt, is one popular reason people changed their names. We did receive a story that Kelly was trying to avoid her father, it might have come from Buki, Carthy or Pheonix, I'm not sure.

We are also told Kelly lived in the West End at one point, suddenly fleeing?, to the opposite end of the city - the East End. Few people descend to such an environment by choice. It's up to researchers to find the reason, not dismiss it because we don't have one.



The court record only says she had six brothers at home, only the Telegraph said they were living in London. I don't find that in any of the other papers. A few other papers said "at home" too, it's just we don't know where home was for the family, other than Wales.

In the end, no such Mary Jane Kelly has been traced in Wales. It follows something isn't right with Mary's story as relayed to Joe Barnett.

[Wickerman]

Thats right, whether it's due to Barnett's possibly faulty memory, or Mary tweaking the details, or making the whole thing up, is hard to determine.
Which is why we have to start with the basics of her story, the details that are hardly worth bragging about.

[Paddy]

We also had Daniel Kellys' (Halkett street, Llandaff family) daughter Margaret Grace moving to St George in the East around 1881. She stayed in London and died there. She had a younger sister called Mary Kelly who was last found in the Cardiff Union school with her sisters in 1871. Chris Phillips got her birth certificate and it shows she was born in Liverpool c1858 with the corect Daniel and Mary as parents Cant find her after that....

[MrBarnett]

Most of the anti-Irish riots occurred around the time of the famine, and so by the time Mary moved to Wales relations were much better, e.g. shared goals such as Trade Unionism brought people together. I would imagine your example is unusual. As said, in those days people moved for work and it seems a stretch that 6 brothers could not find work in the industrial areas in Wales.

The Tredegar riot, which resulted in Irish families being burned out of their houses and taking refuge on local hillsides, took place in 1882. We don’t know exactly when Mary moved to Wales, perhaps she was there in 1868 when Fenian activity was at its height in South Wales.

People didn’t only move for work, though.

George Eddowes was involved in a trade dispute in Wolverhampton and moved his family to London.

William Tomkins was caught stealing from his employer in Islington and moved his family to Manchester.

Patrick Enright was a labourer in various iron works in South Wales and moved his family to Essex/London.

[MrBarnett]

After the Tredegar riots:

[MrBarnett]

If anyone is interested in the Tredegar riots and the long-standing tensions between Welsh/English and Irish workers in industrial South Wales, this article from the South Wales Daily News of 11th July, 1882 may be useful. It’s rather long, so here are just the headlines.