Caroline Maxwell Alibi ?

[Wickerman]

It's looks like the Press Reports search is all screwed up.

[Joshua Rogan]

True, they could have been standing anywhere down the side of the Britannia pub, it's just the doorway is at the corner so I guess I assumed that would be where they were standing.
Maxwell does say "I saw them in the distance".
The distance given (16 yds or 25 yds) was in the context of from "her door" (14 Dorset St.) to somewhere outside the Britannia (I thought, on the corner).
Oddly enough 16 yds just reaches Millers Court passage from the doorway of No.14.
The 25 yds does not even reach the Britannia building, it falls about 30 ft short of the nearest corner of the Britannia.
Abberline was way out, unless the context is all wrong.

I double checked the distance from the court passage to the corner of the Britannia. It is about 120 ft +/-, the scale on the Goads map is not the most accurate.

Good stuff. Perhaps if Abberline had a third guess he'd have been on the money. Unless of course he knew something we don't, ie where everyone was standing.

I also noticed the address given by Maxwell, "14 Dorset St." is not actually opposite the passage, but one unit west, so even farther away from the Britannia.

Good point. It's always bothered me that she worked at no.15 Dorset St but didn't sleep there. That's like a publican not drinking his own ale. But now I think about it, I seem to recall that Commercial Chambers (no.15) was for men only so that could explain it.

Considering they were practically neighbors, Maxwell does say she had not seen "Kelly" (if that is who it was), for three weeks prior to this Friday morning.

Yes, but not all that surprising if they'd only spoken on two previous occasions. Mary was apparrently a late riser, and I suspect Maxwell was generally asleep by the time she got up

[packers stem]

As carried by most newspapers, the relevant part of Prater's inquest testimony boils down to just one snippet, namely "the room above". Now, "the" ("thuh") is often a mishearing of "a" ("uh"), and indeed some newspapers have her referring to "a room above", which demonstrates that there is ambiguity even among the sources that we have. Many reports stating that she occupied "a room above the deceased" in any case, which would be congruent with her having lived at the front of the property.

The Telegraph gives us more than one snippet of info, in that it preserves specific information that places Prater "at the front" and "above the shed" of 26 Dorset Street. These are not the kind of thing a person mishears or makes up - on the contrary, they are quite unambiguous and, in terms of the "shed", quite unique to 26 Dorset Street. Where did the Telegraph get this information from, if not from Prater herself?

As to "at the front", we have corroborative evidence outside the Telegraph, in that a number of reports have her saying that she didn't pay attention to the cry of "Murder!" because such cries "are often heard at the rear of the lodging-house where the windows look into Miller's Court".

The lodging-house she mentions can't be Crossingham's on the opposite side of Dorset Street because (a) it wasn't the rear of Crossingham's that faced Miller's Court, but the front; and (b) even if that weren't the case, the windows couldn't have looked into Miller's Court unless Crossingham's was a sky-scraper.

The lodging-house she mentions can't be AN Other establishment towering behind Miller's Court, its windows looming over it, as there was no such building at the rear.

Therefore, the lodging-house Prater referred to, in multiple sources, had to be 26 Dorset Street itself, and the windows that "looked into Miller's Court" were those at the back of 26 Dorset Street, including Kelly's and whoever it was rented the room above her. The latter wasn't Prater because, as we've seen, she occupied the "front room over the shed". Anyone living in the room above Kelly would have referred to the cry of "Murder!" as being "in the Court" - not, as Prater puts it, "at the rear of the lodging-house"; similarly, a person living in one of the back rooms would have referred to the cry of "Murder!" as being "outside my window" - not, as Prater put it, "where the windows look into Miller's Court".

When describing the screams, her language is clearly that of someone who lived at some remove from the source of the sound, not someone who was directly over it. And, thanks to the Daily Telegraph, her very words placed her at the front of the property, explicitly and unambiguously so.

You're cherry picking certain news reports and glossing them into 'your' truth there I'm afraid.


Did you hear beds or tables being pulled about ? - None whatever. I went asleep, and was awake again at five a.m. I passed down the stairs, and saw some men harnessing horses. At a quarter to six I was in the Ten Bells

Why on earth would she be asked about tables and chairs being moved around unless she was directly over or next to Kelly ..... and we know she wasn't next to her.

"Oh - murder!" in a faint voice. It seemed to proceed from the court

From the front of the house she would not know if a sound came from the court at all .
If it came from Kelly's room she may have known , and been able to determine a sound coming from the direction of the stairway but no , she said it came from the court , not Kelly's room .


You heard no singing downstairs ? - None whatever. I should have heard the singing distinctly. It was quite quiet at half-past one o'clock.

Even the downstairs there suggests Kelly's room .... not singing coming from the warehouse .
Which is where you believe her "downstairs" was .

I will repeat from said report ....... again

It is supposed that she met the murderer in Commercial-street. The pair would have reached Miller's-court about midnight, but they were not seen to enter the house. The street-door was closed, but the woman had a latchkey.

Do you believe that to be entirely accurate ?
Just requires a yes or no answer really

[packers stem]

It may be 125ft to the end of Dorset Street, but the length of the Briannia itself comprises about a third of that distance, so theoretically they could have been standing a fair bit closer. Sixteen yards, as Abberline estimated. And then added "on consideration I should say the distance was twenty-five yards". They could even have been a little further away if the pavement of Commercial Street was wide.
Whatever the actual distance, it was apparently close enough for Maxwell to recognise Mary. Since Maxwell claimed to know Joe, we can probably assume that she would have recognised him too, if he was the man. But if she had merely told a reporter that the man in the plaid coat looked like a market porter, it would perhaps be easy for the pressman to make the leap to this being market porter Barnett. Hence the caveat in most reports that this sighting was unverified.
Was plaid traditional dress for market porters?

Maxwell's sighting was around an hour before the pub sighting so the man could have been anyone but clearly not Joe as she'd have recognised him .
She put the age as fairly old too .
There was the sighting by the unnamed woman at around 9.45 if memory serves , but certainly before the pub sighting

[Wickerman]

I'll try post the Goads map which includes the 25 ft width of Dorset St., and the 82 ft width of Commercial st. - so anyone can scale the dim's I gave to double check.



You'll notice No.14 is actually opposite 29 Dorset St. not 27.

[Wickerman]

True, they could have been standing anywhere down the side of the Britannia pub, it's just the doorway is at the corner so I guess I assumed that would be where they were standing.
Maxwell does say "I saw them in the distance".
The distance given (16 yds or 25 yds) was in the context of from "her door" (14 Dorset St.) to somewhere outside the Britannia (I thought, on the corner).
Oddly enough 16 yds just reaches Millers Court passage from the doorway of No.14.
The 25 yds does not even reach the Britannia building, it falls about 30 ft short of the nearest corner of the Britannia.
Abberline was way out, unless the context is all wrong.

I double checked the distance from the court passage to the corner of the Britannia. It is about 120 ft +/-, the scale on the Goads map is not the most accurate.
I also noticed the address given by Maxwell, "14 Dorset St." is not actually opposite the passage, but one unit west, so even farther away from the Britannia.

Considering they were practically neighbors, Maxwell does say she had not seen "Kelly" (if that is who it was), for three weeks prior to this Friday morning.

[Joshua Rogan]

The thing about Maxwell is she didn't pass the Britannia. Her route to Bishopsgate means she walked west along Dorset St. away from the Britannia end. And, roughly from the Millers Court passage to the Britannia is about 125 ft.
Maxwell's door (at Crossingham's) was roughly opposite the Court passage. So she rightly said she couldn't identify the man (presumably, due to the distance between them).
No doubt a number of market workers used the Britannia pub.

It may be 125ft to the end of Dorset Street, but the length of the Briannia itself comprises about a third of that distance, so theoretically they could have been standing a fair bit closer. Sixteen yards, as Abberline estimated. And then added "on consideration I should say the distance was twenty-five yards". They could even have been a little further away if the pavement of Commercial Street was wide.
Whatever the actual distance, it was apparently close enough for Maxwell to recognise Mary. Since Maxwell claimed to know Joe, we can probably assume that she would have recognised him too, if he was the man. But if she had merely told a reporter that the man in the plaid coat looked like a market porter, it would perhaps be easy for the pressman to make the leap to this being market porter Barnett. Hence the caveat in most reports that this sighting was unverified.
Was plaid traditional dress for market porters?

[Wickerman]

The thing about Maxwell is she didn't pass the Britannia. Her route to Bishopsgate means she walked west along Dorset St. away from the Britannia end. And, roughly from the Millers Court passage to the Britannia is about 125 ft.
Maxwell's door (at Crossingham's) was roughly opposite the Court passage. So she rightly said she couldn't identify the man (presumably, due to the distance between them).
No doubt a number of market workers used the Britannia pub.

[Joshua Rogan]

Maxwell's police statement says that the man she saw with Mary outside the Britannia in the morning was dressed as a market porter. Is this corroboration for Lewis's sighting, or the source of the tale that Mary met Barnett for a drink at the Ringers?

[Sam Flynn]

I'm not saying some of the report can't be accurate but when we have other evidence to the contrary ,such as Prater's word at the inquest , then that should carry greater strength

As carried by most newspapers, the relevant part of Prater's inquest testimony boils down to just one snippet, namely "the room above". Now, "the" ("thuh") is often a mishearing of "a" ("uh"), and indeed some newspapers have her referring to "a room above", which demonstrates that there is ambiguity even among the sources that we have. Many reports stating that she occupied "a room above the deceased" in any case, which would be congruent with her having lived at the front of the property.

The Telegraph gives us more than one snippet of info, in that it preserves specific information that places Prater "at the front" and "above the shed" of 26 Dorset Street. These are not the kind of thing a person mishears or makes up - on the contrary, they are quite unambiguous and, in terms of the "shed", quite unique to 26 Dorset Street. Where did the Telegraph get this information from, if not from Prater herself?

As to "at the front", we have corroborative evidence outside the Telegraph, in that a number of reports have her saying that she didn't pay attention to the cry of "Murder!" because such cries "are often heard at the rear of the lodging-house where the windows look into Miller's Court".

The lodging-house she mentions can't be Crossingham's on the opposite side of Dorset Street because (a) it wasn't the rear of Crossingham's that faced Miller's Court, but the front; and (b) even if that weren't the case, the windows couldn't have looked into Miller's Court unless Crossingham's was a sky-scraper.

The lodging-house she mentions can't be AN Other establishment towering behind Miller's Court, its windows looming over it, as there was no such building at the rear.

Therefore, the lodging-house Prater referred to, in multiple sources, had to be 26 Dorset Street itself, and the windows that "looked into Miller's Court" were those at the back of 26 Dorset Street, including Kelly's and whoever it was rented the room above her. The latter wasn't Prater because, as we've seen, she occupied the "front room over the shed". Anyone living in the room above Kelly would have referred to the cry of "Murder!" as being "in the Court" - not, as Prater puts it, "at the rear of the lodging-house"; similarly, a person living in one of the back rooms would have referred to the cry of "Murder!" as being "outside my window" - not, as Prater put it, "where the windows look into Miller's Court".

When describing the screams, her language is clearly that of someone who lived at some remove from the source of the sound, not someone who was directly over it. And, thanks to the Daily Telegraph, her very words placed her at the front of the property, explicitly and unambiguously so.

[packers stem]

Reporters don't conjure things like "I live in the first floor front room... above the shed" out of thin air, neither do they mis-hear them.

The same reporter conjured this up ....

It is supposed that she met the murderer in Commercial-street. The pair would have reached Miller's-court about midnight, but they were not seen to enter the house. The street-door was closed, but the woman had a latchkey.

I'm not saying some of the report can't be accurate but when we have other evidence to the contrary ,such as Prater's word at the inquest , then that should carry greater strength

[packers stem]

Not quite...the early papers are full of reports of Harvey saying she last saw Mary at 19:30 in her room but also others that say she last saw her at 22:30 in Commercial Street (as did another unnamed woman). They can't both be right. Harvey seems to have settled for the earlier sighting being the last, according to her inquest evidence and police statement, saying she left after Joe Barnett arrived. But there is also Lizzie Allbrook who claimed in the press that *she* was the woman in Mary's room when Joe arrived. Joe only said there was a female with him and Mary. Is it possible both Maria and Lizzie were there initially, Maria leaving almost immediately (leaving little impression) and Lizzie a bit later, just before Joe?
Julia V does indeed say she went to bed at about 8pm (about the time Joe, Maria and/or Lizzie left no.13) and for what it's worth says her last sighting of Mary was Thursday morning.

Does Barnett specify which brother met Mary Thursday night? I seem to recall he had more than one brother. The Star report doesn't give a name, just saying "He knew nothing about her proceedings since he left her, except that his brother met her on the Thursday evening and spoke to her". Are there any others?

Also, could the reported 10:30 am sighting in the pub simply be a press confusion with the 10:30 pm sighting in the pub the night before?

Any early spurious reports suggesting that Harvey saw Kelly later on can be dismissed with comparison to the overwhelming majority , statement and inquest really .
Not saying she wasn't seen in commercial street at 10.30 , just that it almost certainly wasn't Harvey .

Neither Barnett , Harvey, Allbrook or Elizabeth Foster mentioned a third person being in the room .Either Harvey,Foster and Allbrook were one and the same or two of them were away with the fairies .

I don't believe Barnett did specify which brother , the presumption has been made that it was Dan .
In the 1891 census Dan was living at the same address as Joe gave at the inquest when living with his sister .The whereabouts of Denis are not known .
And no .... different pub , different crowd with Kelly .
No Dan or Julia this time

[Wickerman]

The whole building ,I'm sure , was described as "the shed" , using the one entrance door .
Fact is Prater occupied one of the seven rooms above the shed .
Her room happened to be directly over that of Kelly .
It's of very little importance in the grand scheme of things , I see no reason not to go with the official inquest transcript on this , you will choose whichever route suits you best

You will choose to defend your beliefs anyway you can. That is all this is about.

[Sam Flynn]

The writer of the telegraph report was mistaken .I do hope you can see that now

Reporters don't conjure things like "I live in the first floor front room... above the shed" out of thin air, neither do they mis-hear them.

[Joshua Rogan]

Yep , it's a bit of a muddle but Julia Venturney was tucked up in bed by 8.30
Maria Harvey didn't see Kelly after she left her room so we've a different Julia seen with Kelly and Dan

Not quite...the early papers are full of reports of Harvey saying she last saw Mary at 19:30 in her room but also others that say she last saw her at 22:30 in Commercial Street (as did another unnamed woman). They can't both be right. Harvey seems to have settled for the earlier sighting being the last, according to her inquest evidence and police statement, saying she left after Joe Barnett arrived. But there is also Lizzie Allbrook who claimed in the press that *she* was the woman in Mary's room when Joe arrived. Joe only said there was a female with him and Mary. Is it possible both Maria and Lizzie were there initially, Maria leaving almost immediately (leaving little impression) and Lizzie a bit later, just before Joe?
Julia V does indeed say she went to bed at about 8pm (about the time Joe, Maria and/or Lizzie left no.13) and for what it's worth says her last sighting of Mary was Thursday morning.

Does Barnett specify which brother met Mary Thursday night? I seem to recall he had more than one brother. The Star report doesn't give a name, just saying "He knew nothing about her proceedings since he left her, except that his brother met her on the Thursday evening and spoke to her". Are there any others?

Also, could the reported 10:30 am sighting in the pub simply be a press confusion with the 10:30 pm sighting in the pub the night before?