Mary Jane Kelly found?

[packers stem]

The mention of the lighting is in relation to eye witness testimony not Barnett's identification...although we don't know that anyway it's not relevant, I'm saying that Barnett is unlikely to have done more than glance at her face, I don't think that's an unreasonable assumption,the poor woman had been pretty much skinned... Just can't see him running his hands through her hair looking for hair strands unstained.
All evidence we have, mostly the fire and the undigested fish and potatoes suggests the early hours.... Fish and chips for breakfast?? Got my doubts,I'd go for an evening meal on that personally.
Kelly went to great lengths to inform friends she was ready to 'make away with herself' over the preceeding days. If there was a 'plan' Barnett could well have been in on it away making the body identification completely irrelevant.
She knew she was the hunted,she disappeared....with help...and someone else was set up to take her place.
Mary Kelly had to be seen to be dead for whatever reason... I'm not screaming royals here,I don't claim to know what's behind it but I do know that Mary Kellys were extremely rare in London at that time.. The last 2 victims were both using the name on the day they died, you'd have to be very blind to the obvious not to accept the likelihood that the killer/killers were looking for Mary Kelly.This is why she couldn't just run away,she'd have always been hunted.... Of course she never surfaced to tell people she was alive and well, would have been suicide and people did just 'disappear' who could have not been missed who could have died in her place.Isn't this thread about a woman whose absence went unremarked.. Until now anyway

[c.d.]

[QUOTE=Bridewell;350212]Further to the above, if the argument is pursued that MJK was not the victim, it requires an assumption that:
(1) Someone else died whose absence went unremarked.
(2) MJK never resurfaced to reassure her friends that she was alive and well.

Exactly, Bridewell. We would also have to assume that Mary pulled off this disappearing act without taking any of her clothes or possessions from her apartment and that she also did this with apparently no funds at her disposal.

As for Barnett, I find it hard to believe that even a quick look at the body was not sufficient for him to realize that this was the woman that he had shared his bed with.

c.d.

[Bridewell]

Further to the above, if the argument is pursued that MJK was not the victim, it requires an assumption that:
(1) Someone else died whose absence went unremarked.
(2) MJK never resurfaced to reassure her friends that she was alive and well.

I've seen it argued that another woman was killed to facilitate the voluntary disappearance of MJK herself, but without a credible explanation as to why murder was necessary in order to accomplish that. It was easy enough to disappear in 19th century London without resorting to such extremes.

[Bridewell]

Hi Bridewell
Caroline Maxwell is without doubt reason enough to suspect that the body may not have been Mary Kelly plus Maurice Lewis' sightings.
Best eye witness testimony we have,broad daylight.if we are unwilling to believe them what's the point...you can forget Hutchinson,sightings of blotchy etc.... All considerably weaker than Maxwell or Lewis due to lighting

There was no problem with lighting for Barnett's identification and he knew her better than Maxwell or Lewis.
The two sightings, taken together with Barnett's identification, are reason to believe that the killing took place later than Dr Bond suggested, but not to believe that MJK was not the victim.

[packers stem]

There is no reason whatever to believe that the remains were not those of MJK.

Hi Bridewell
Caroline Maxwell is without doubt reason enough to suspect that the body may not have been Mary Kelly plus Maurice Lewis' sightings.
Best eye witness testimony we have,broad daylight.if we are unwilling to believe them what's the point...you can forget Hutchinson,sightings of blotchy etc.... All considerably weaker than maxwell or Lewis due to lighting

[packers stem]

I don't think anyone expects that Barnet identified the body while at Millers Court. The police will conduct an official identification and bring him to the mortuary to see the body at his leasure - no quick glances through a broken window.

Hi wickerman
Wherever the identification attempt was made, do you not accept there was little to identify? How long would you seriously expect Barnett to stand over the body studying strands of hair or the eyes?

[Bridewell]

We don't know that the remains,disfigured beyond all recognition, found in millers court are Mary Kelly anyway...

There is no reason whatever to believe that the remains were not those of MJK.

[Wickerman]

Rosella, just how long do you realistically think Barnett would have spent examining the body?
I suspect most of us would throw up faced with a few seconds of witnessing the scene...
I couldn't recognise a single strand of my own hair with any certainty so are you saying that you think Barnett stood over her sifting through strands of hair looking for a blood free one??
I'd be surprised if he did anymore than peep round the corner, in fact it wouldn't surprise me if Abberline thought 'forget the ID, we know it's her anyway ' and just wrote down, like he would have to,that she was positively identified

I don't think anyone expects that Barnet identified the body while at Millers Court. The police will conduct an official identification and bring him to the mortuary to see the body at his leasure - no quick glances through a broken window.

[Jonathan H]

It is true that the [competing] theories proposing Aaron Kosminski and Montague Druitt as the likeliest Jack rely, to an extent, on conjecture and speculation because there are still missing pieces of the jigsaw (albeit less so for Druitt now).

On the other hand, this is not on the same level as theories about suspects who have only recently been discovered/proposed, because Druitt and Kosminski (or Cohen) -- and to some extent Tumblety and Chapman -- were believed, to varying degrees, to be Jack by contemporaneous police figures, though none were a solution that could be tested in a courtroom.

Therefore it becomes a question of the reliability of those police figures who were there; of attempting to justify their solutions, and also providing a credible explanation as to why no police consensus formed around a single contemporaneous Scotland Yard suspect.

[Robert]

Hi Wynne

FSC didn't own property, did he? Presumably if anyone from the family owned the house in Andover Rd it was his father, although his death doesn't seem to have improved FSC's financial position.

In 1887 FSC was on the lodgers' register, living with his parents but paying his father six shillings for the rent of a room.

[GUT]

Having stood back from these threads for a week or so now in order for the dust to settle, perhaps I could make a few comments.
The book is not 'made up' as Pinkmoon suggests. Of course all the evidence is, at this stage, circumstantial as almost all other Ripper evidence is. Certain things are verifiable fact and these are all referenced in the book - the birth and marriage of EWD, the divorce petition, affidavit and notes of Francis Craig, the facts regarding Craig's life, where he lived, how he died, what others thought of him - all of these are verifiable facts and the sources are given in the book.
One point which has bee brought up by some people, including at the Ripper Conference in Nottingham yesterday, is about Francis Craig being on the electoral register for Hammersmith between 1885 and 1888. I already knew that but it does not mean that he was resident there at the time. The Representation of the People Act linked the right to vote to property ownership. FSC owned property in Hammersmith and so that was where he was registered to vote. In the event of an election he would have had to travel there to vote if he chose to do so.
On the much vexed question of the exhumation: I am happy to show anyone who asks me privately the email I received from the British Ministry of Justce which gives that permission. I am not going to put it on the public internet as it is a private communication from a government department and it would be a breach of confidence to do so but if Pinkmoon or anyone else would care to email me privately I will share it.
I have said all along that the exhumation may not happen, simply because of the difficulty in actually locating her grave. There are plenty of people who are willing to underwrite the cost - indeed I will myself if necessary - but that is not the point, it is knowing where to look which is. Having said that I am now in communication with the person who, in 1970, placed the present headstone and has all the records of how he and the cemetery authorities worked out the position so that might bring the possibility a little nearer. My main objective from the outset has been to find out what happened to my grandfather's sister. Nothing would please me more than someone tracing EWD after 1888, particularly if she had gone on to have children and for there to be living descendants. However I have spent much of my life trying to do that with no success and I genuinely believe that the body in St Patrick's Cemetery is the nearest I've come.
I am sorry if people think I haven't laid out te tangible evidence well enough; if that is the case I apologise but what actually occurred between Francis Craig and Elizabeth Weston Davies must largely be speculation, a piecing together of the most likely explanation - call it fiction if you like - but then that has been the case with many of the other suspects from Aaron Kosminski to Montague Druitt. At this distance in time and in the absence of letters or diaries we can only conjecture. If there is any specific piece of evidence that anyone wants and cannot find sourced in the book I will do my best to try to provide it.
Prosector

Thank you for posting Prosector.

I wish you all the best in locating your relative.

[Prosector]

I agree that the book is written in an unfortunate way. Wynne Weston Davies presents as "facts" what we now know (if one has listened to the podcast and read about current ongoing research) is the author's pure speculation. And although the book has many end notes, these end notes are entirely unhelpful if one is looking for any real corroboration of the contents. The end notes are not there to cite sources, they are there to add more fluff. It is very frustrating.

BUT, the whole thing is not made up.

If a Chris Scott or Debra Arif or any other Ripperologist researcher seeking to locate the real Mary Kelly were to have discovered:

A woman from Wales named Davies who had a brother named John and whose father was in a similar line of work, was around the right age, who possibly lied about a former marriage, took to drink, according to a court filing engaged in prostitution, spent time in the West End before going to the East End, and who cannot be traced past 1885...
and left it at that, I and many others would have been keenly interested in this discovery.

People reading these boards need to be informed as to what's there as facts and what is not. But I hope no one is turned away from the discovery of Elizabeth Weston Davies by reading such sweeping and incorrect generalizations as I've seen stated on these boards over and over. It is not a complete work of fiction. Even tossing out everything else in the book leaving only what's not made up, a discovery of a potential candidate such as the above would still have created quite a stir around here, and rightly so. The facts that we have about Elizabeth Weston Davies are the closest to MJK that we've yet seen. They are by no means definitive. Far from it. But it is worth looking into and what is there warrants much further examination.

JM

Having stood back from these threads for a week or so now in order for the dust to settle, perhaps I could make a few comments.
The book is not 'made up' as Pinkmoon suggests. Of course all the evidence is, at this stage, circumstantial as almost all other Ripper evidence is. Certain things are verifiable fact and these are all referenced in the book - the birth and marriage of EWD, the divorce petition, affidavit and notes of Francis Craig, the facts regarding Craig's life, where he lived, how he died, what others thought of him - all of these are verifiable facts and the sources are given in the book.
One point which has bee brought up by some people, including at the Ripper Conference in Nottingham yesterday, is about Francis Craig being on the electoral register for Hammersmith between 1885 and 1888. I already knew that but it does not mean that he was resident there at the time. The Representation of the People Act linked the right to vote to property ownership. FSC owned property in Hammersmith and so that was where he was registered to vote. In the event of an election he would have had to travel there to vote if he chose to do so.
On the much vexed question of the exhumation: I am happy to show anyone who asks me privately the email I received from the British Ministry of Justce which gives that permission. I am not going to put it on the public internet as it is a private communication from a government department and it would be a breach of confidence to do so but if Pinkmoon or anyone else would care to email me privately I will share it.
I have said all along that the exhumation may not happen, simply because of the difficulty in actually locating her grave. There are plenty of people who are willing to underwrite the cost - indeed I will myself if necessary - but that is not the point, it is knowing where to look which is. Having said that I am now in communication with the person who, in 1970, placed the present headstone and has all the records of how he and the cemetery authorities worked out the position so that might bring the possibility a little nearer. My main objective from the outset has been to find out what happened to my grandfather's sister. Nothing would please me more than someone tracing EWD after 1888, particularly if she had gone on to have children and for there to be living descendants. However I have spent much of my life trying to do that with no success and I genuinely believe that the body in St Patrick's Cemetery is the nearest I've come.
I am sorry if people think I haven't laid out te tangible evidence well enough; if that is the case I apologise but what actually occurred between Francis Craig and Elizabeth Weston Davies must largely be speculation, a piecing together of the most likely explanation - call it fiction if you like - but then that has been the case with many of the other suspects from Aaron Kosminski to Montague Druitt. At this distance in time and in the absence of letters or diaries we can only conjecture. If there is any specific piece of evidence that anyone wants and cannot find sourced in the book I will do my best to try to provide it.
Prosector

[packers stem]

Rosella, just how long do you realistically think Barnett would have spent examining the body?
I suspect most of us would throw up faced with a few seconds of witnessing the scene...
I couldn't recognise a single strand of my own hair with any certainty so are you saying that you think Barnett stood over her sifting through strands of hair looking for a blood free one??
I'd be surprised if he did anymore than peep round the corner, in fact it wouldn't surprise me if Abberline thought 'forget the ID, we know it's her anyway ' and just wrote down, like he would have to,that she was positively identified

[Rosella]

ALL of Mary's hair, which was very long, wouldn't be matted and/or bloodstained though, would it? There could have been some untouched strands which Joe would have recognised, together with her eyes (or ears!)

[packers stem]

Hair has always looked distinctly matted to me mate...doubt it's sweat
And I dont think identifying Kellys remains can be compared to identifying a body under normal circumstances to be fair