Alice McKenzie - some details not seen before

[MrBarnett]

I believe this was our Alice McKenzie in 1869 and that two years later she was living with Ben Palmer in Wood’s Buildings, between Whitechapel Road and Winthrop Street.

[Losmandris]

All fascinating stuff. Thanks for sharing everyone. Alice has always seemed to have been a bit of an enigma. Great to see this information coming to light.

[MrBarnett]

As an aside, I paid a few visits to the BNL when it was at Colindale, but I haven’t yet ventured to Boston Spa.

If Alice did give evidence as a witness at the Peterborough sessions it would presumably have been before she moved to Leicester in 1861. She was only just 16 then, so how young might she have been when she gave evidence?

I’ve had a look through online press reports of Peterborough Sessions cases between 1855 or so and 1861 and tried to follow up on any where the defendant was acquitted. No luck so far in finding an Alice of any surname providing crucial defence evidence.

[MrBarnett]

As early as July 19th, two days after her murder, it was reported that the Peterborough police were denying that the Castle Alley victim was a native of their city. I think they may have got her confused with the, apparently Scottish, tramp of that name who had been arrested early in 1889.

This is also from JTRForums:


Another red herring was the suggestion that the tramp and/or the Whitechapel victim might have been related to a Scottish-born draper named John Mackenzie who was resident in Peterborough for a number of years. He had died there in 1881, his only daughter, Elizabeth, moved from Peterborough to Liverpool shortly after she married in 1878. In 1889, she too issued a denial of any knowledge of a relationship between her family and Alice McKenzie. It appeared in the Advertiser on August 3rd.

‘Mrs. Elizabeth Egan, 5, Spencer-street, Everton, Liverpool, writes to us: “In your edition of the 20th July I noticed that the unfortunate woman Alice Mackenzie, lately murdered in London, is supposed to have belonged to Peterborough, and my father’s name is mentioned in connection with the affair. As the only child of the late Mr. John Mackenzie, Trinity-street, formerly South-place [Peterborough], I wish to state that as far as my knowledge goes she was in no way connected with the family.”’

I wonder if this Liverpool connection might have given rise to the claim in one report that Alice’s father had been a postman in Liverpool? It certainly seems a lot of effort went into attempting to establish Alice’s Peterborough connections once McCormack’s reference to the city had been publicised.

[MrBarnett]

As early as July 19th, two days after her murder, it was reported that the Peterborough police were denying that the Castle Alley victim was a native of their city. I think they may have got her confused with the, apparently Scottish, tramp of that name who had been arrested early in 1889.

[MrBarnett]

That's definitely the case, Gary. The Peterborough Express was digitized "and first made available on the British Newspaper Archive in Nov 9, 2021. The latest issues were added in Dec 22, 2021 " [BNL site information]
Other Peterborough Newspapers were made available in 2020 at the earliest.
As we are all mainly amateur historians with no research budget and in all corners of the world, getting to the BNL was not a possibility for most of us.
Up to this point, the nearest we had come to Alice was finding her in the Whitechapel Infirmary being picked up by police (and taken out of the workhouse again by them) for being drunk and disorderly in places like Dorset Street and the fact that she was married to a man named Joseph.

The workhouse entries for Alice also recently sparked a discussion about whether or not women in custody were kept overnight in the workhouse, as Alice apparently was and also Elizabeth Stride in Bromley House workhouse in 1881. Research in to the victims seems constant to me!

Thanks Debs. I picked up the Express stuff in mid-November, so it hadn’t been digitised for very long when I came across it. That’s encouraging, I thought I may have somehow overlooked it for a couple of years.

I was referring to the period when we were researching via the Alice McKenzie relatives thread - 2018/19. For several months I was regularly searching for every combination of Alice/Pitts/Peterborough/Kinsey etc I could think of. A lot of info was pieced together then, including some stuff from local newspapers, but not the Peterborough Express.

Yes, research into the victims and the wider context of the case is constant. Mine tends to end up mainly on JTRForums, and so can be overlooked by those who are mainly CB based.

[Debra A]

Hi Dusty,

Yes, I did, but thank you.

This is also from JTRForums:



The Peterborough Express stuff is really quite useful, I’m not sure why we didn’t find it when we were looking into Alice’s background a few years back. Perhaps it’s only recently been digitised?

That's definitely the case, Gary. The Peterborough Express was digitized "and first made available on the British Newspaper Archive in Nov 9, 2021. The latest issues were added in Dec 22, 2021 " [BNL site information]
Other Peterborough Newspapers were made available in 2020 at the earliest.
As we are all mainly amateur historians with no research budget and in all corners of the world, getting to the BNL was not a possibility for most of us.
Up to this point, the nearest we had come to Alice was finding her in the Whitechapel Infirmary being picked up by police (and taken out of the workhouse again by them) for being drunk and disorderly in places like Dorset Street and the fact that she was married to a man named Joseph.

The workhouse entries for Alice also recently sparked a discussion about whether or not women in custody were kept overnight in the workhouse, as Alice apparently was and also Elizabeth Stride in Bromley House workhouse in 1881. Research in to the victims seems constant to me!

[MrBarnett]

There’s a fairly comprehensive Pitts family tree on Ancestry which shows the birth/death dates for all of Alice’s siblings but only shows her birth. Unfortunately the owner of the tree doesn’t accept messages. I’ve also tried approaching the local Peterborough press about her, but they seem uninterested.

Poor Alice, it seems that it’s only Ripperologists who are determined to keep her memory alive.

[drstrange169]

Good to see her being discussed again. I'd love to see a book like "Carroty Nell" on her.

[MrBarnett]

I tend to add any new McKenzie stuff to the ‘Alice McKenzie Relatives’ thread on JTRForums. But in light of Aethelwulf’s recent thread suggesting there should be more research on victims etc, I thought I should update this thread for the benefit of those who don’t frequent the ‘other place’.

[MrBarnett]

Hi Dusty,

Yes, I did, but thank you.

This is also from JTRForums:



The Peterborough Express stuff is really quite useful, I’m not sure why we didn’t find it when we were looking into Alice’s background a few years back. Perhaps it’s only recently been digitised?

The headline in the Express’s Second Edition column of 18th July, 1889 read:


“ANOTHER WHITECHAPEL MURDER

A PETERBOROUGH WOMAN THE UNFORTUNATE VICTIM”


The word ‘unfortunate’ can’t have been chosen without consideration of its usage as a euphemism for ‘prostitute’. After a paragraph describing the discovery of the body, the victim’s wounds and her circumstances, a second paragraph followed:


“THE INQUEST

The inquest was held last evening, when John McCormack with whom deceased had been living, identified Alice Mackenzie, who a few years ago resided at Peterborough and who will probably be known to some of the residents of Boongate and it’s vicinity. The victim is about 44 years of age, and is 5ft 4ins in height. She is of fair complexion, with dark brown hair. One of her teeth had evidently been knocked out lately, and she was very shabbily dressed. She has lost the top part of her thumb. The inquest was adjourned.”


Boongate was a street/area to the northeast of Peterborough cathedral with something of a disreputable reputation*, the location of common lodging houses and the haunt of prostitutes and their customers. So a day into Alice’s inquest, and the Express had not only latched onto where Wynne Baxter was heading - to the conclusion that Alice was operating as an ‘unfortunate’ when she was attacked - but they also assumed that she had been an ‘unfortunate’ while living in her native Peterborough. Little wonder, then, that the Pitts family refused to accept the identification of the Whitechapel victim as their missing sister.

*The cutting below is from the Express of 17th September, 1889.

And the red herring (as it most likely was) of the much younger, apparently Scottish, tramp named Alice McKenzie who had appeared before the local bench a few months previously must have further muddied the waters. It doesn’t surprise me that the Pitts refused to accept that Castle Alley Alice was theirs. In December, 1884, Alice’s 74-year-old mother, Martha, was one of 20 ‘poor persons’ awarded a prize under the terms of Bishop White’s Charity for ‘exactly and distinctly repeat[ing] the Lord’s Prayer, the Apostles’ Creed and the Ten Commandments without missing or changing one word’. The prize amounted to 10 shillings for each successful candidate, the equivalent of several weeks’ ‘doss’ in a Spitalfields lodging house. The Pitts family were resident in the Peterborough Minster Precincts for over 4 decades - presumably under Diocesan patronage. Their perceived ‘respectability’ would have been of enormous value to them - a flimsy barrier between the family and extreme poverty of the type that their errant (?) daughter experienced in the East End abyss. By 1889, both of Alice’s parents were deceased, but two of her siblings were still living in Peterborough: her brother, John, aged 51, a watch jobber; and her sister, Martha, by then Mrs Varney, the wife of Eli, a carpenter. Martha’s and Eli’s social position is indicated by the fact that they had a 16-year-old domestic servant in their household in 1891. John’s is a little less certain, he was boarding at an inn when the census was taken.

All three of the main Peterborough papers in existence in 1889 carried denials by the Pitts family of any connection to Alice McKenzie.


Advertiser:

‘A connection of the Pitts family, still residing in Peterborough, wishes us to state that the murdered woman had no connection with the family of the Peterborough postman of that name, but our readers can form their own conclusions upon the facts above related.’

17th August, 1889


Standard:

‘Nothing has been heard of her [Alice Pitts] for some time, but a relative informs us that he believes she died seven or eight years ago. At any rate he distinctly denies that there is any resemblance between her and Alice Mackenzie.’

17th August, 1889


Express:

‘A near relative of Alice Pitts has called at our office and made a statement contradicting the rumour that she is identical with Alice McKenzie, as reported in our issue of Tuesday last. The rumour has caused the family much pain, and is, he says, quite without foundation and due to vindictive feeling. We are, of course, willing to insert this statement and give it publicity in our columns on his behalf.’

20th August, 1889


As far as I can see, the Standard is the only one of the three that mentions Leicester, saying that Alice ‘left Peterborough some years ago to marry someone in Leicester.’

There weren’t too many Alices born in Peterborough in the mid-1840s. Fewer still (just one I would hazard a guess) whose father was a postman, and there was nothing in the vague physical description of Alice McKenzie that was at odds with what little we know of Alice Pitts. And the Pitts sister had gone missing, so her family had no idea where she ended up. The suggestion that she had died ‘seven or eight years ago’ is interesting. What the Pitts didn’t have access to are prison and workhouse records that plot the name change from Kensey to McKenzie and provide evidence that Alice ‘McKenzie’s’ husband was a deceased carpenter named Joseph. Perhaps they were unaware who the ‘someone’ she had married in Leicester was.


The tramp being supposedly Scottish and in her twenties, and the suggestion that AM had been a frequenter of Boongate were perhaps discrepancies the Pitts clung onto to support their denials. In their heart of hearts, though, they couldn’t have been sure the victim wasn’t their sister. Indeed, they may have believed she was but refused to acknowledge it publicly.

[drstrange169]

Gary, did you see this in the Peterborough Express - Tuesday 20 August 1889

[MrBarnett]

The reference to Alice’s appearance at the Sessions is particularly intriguing. I’ve looked long and hard for info about the case she was involved in, but to no avail.

[MrBarnett]

This was posted a few months back on JTRForums. It was certainly new to me and contains some interesting little nuggets of info:




On the 13th August, 1889, the Peterborough Express carried this report, which provides some interesting new (to me) information about the Pitts family:


“THE RECENT WHITECHAPEL MURDER

THE VICTIM A PETERBOROUGH WOMAN AFTER ALL

“ALICE MACKENZIE” IDENTIFIED

It will be remembered that at the time of the latest Whitechapel murder, some four weeks since, the minds of Peterborough people were much exercised as to the identity of the victim Alice Mackenzie, it having been elicited at the inquest that she described herself as coming from Peterborough and being the daughter of a postman. The Peterborough postmaster was appealed to, but could find no record of any postman of that name; neither could the police throw any light on the matter. The local papers had their own theories as to the woman’s identity, one being of opinion that she was a tramp who had passed through the city early in the year and was brought before the borough bench on a charge of begging. It now appears that Mackenzie was not the woman’s maiden name, and not the name by which she was known in the city.

It is confidently stated on good authority that Alice Mackenzie was none other than Alice Pitts, whose father was a rural postman journeying between Peterborough, Castor and Ailesworth, also holding the position of night watchman in the Minster-yard. This was perhaps 35 years or so ago, and when the watchmen were superseded by the constabulary Mr Pitts, who was widely respected, was employed in sweeping the Minster-yard, being also in receipt of a pension from the Post Office. For many years the family lived in a little house close to the Minster-yard, and even after Pitts’ death his wife, who died two years ago, continued to live there until the house was required for other purposes. Mrs Pitts, it is stated, used to earn her living by fur trimming, at which she was an adept. The family were well-known in the city. A brother was apprenticed to a watchmaker and Alice herself, the youngest of three daughters, went into domestic service, at one time being with Mrs Strickland, who kept a little refreshment house near the parish church. It was not so very long since that Alice left Peterborough to marry Mackenzie, who was supposed to be a grocer. After that, until her sad end by the knife of the mysterious and fiendish murderer, known as “Jack the Ripper”, she was lost sight of.

It may be remembered that Alice appeared as a witness in an important case at the Sessions, her evidence breaking down the prosecution, and establishing the innocence of a young fellow accused of a serious offence. She is described as having had in her early days auburn hair, good complexion and a rather pretty face. Pitts the father was a well-known figure in his postman days. He used to drive a black donkey, which brayed with no uncertain sound, and “Old Pitts’ donkey blowing its horn” was a standing joke among the post office officials when the equipage was driven up to the office doors.”

[Fisherman]

From now on, I suggest that any prolonged discussion of the Ripper/Torso issue is carried over to the thread "Same motive = same killer". This thread belongs to the new findings about Alice MacKenzie.