All Roads Lead to Dorset St.,

[Sam Flynn]

It is not very precise if nobody can find any record of Mary Jane Kelly before her murder.

It is precise in that this was the only information the police had to go on, whether it was her real name or not.

[DJA]

Probably explains why they couldn't catch Jack the Ripper

[Joshua Rogan]

"the first-floor front, facing Dorset-street, being over a shed or warehouse used for the storage of costers' barrows."

Daily Telegraph, 10 Nov;

"Elizabeth Prater, the occupant of the first floor front room, was one of those who saw the body through the window"

[Batman]

Daily Telegraph, 10 Nov;

"Elizabeth Prater, the occupant of the first floor front room, was one of those who saw the body through the window"

That makes sense.

[Sam Flynn]

Daily Telegraph, 10 Nov;

"Elizabeth Prater, the occupant of the first floor front room, was one of those who saw the body through the window"

Reinforced, of course, by her inquest testimony: "I live at 20 Room in Miller's-court, above the shed" (Daily Telegraph, 13th November)

[packers stem]

If she was so attached to the Conway name, why did she revert to her maiden name when in Wandsworth prison?

Legalities I suspect ...... as with her burial
Certainly wasn't named after John Kelly
The mere fact that she chose to use the name Conway many years after hooking up with Kelly suggests to me that she never particularly wanted to use the name .
The real mystery is what changed on her return from Kent .
Which given a little thought may not be a mystery at all

[packers stem]

Reinforced, of course, by her inquest testimony: "I live at 20 Room in Miller's-court, above the shed" (Daily Telegraph, 13th November)

And yet a few posts back you were at pains to point out that stables are more like a shed than a parlour and 26 was a barrow depot rather than a shed .
Fact is eddowes could have slept in either /or neither .... but two reports suggests it to be more probable than possible .
I like 'probable'..... it's about as good as things get with JTR on the whole 😀
Whether 26 or 6 doesn't affect the whole point which is that at all the c5 lived or at times stayed within yards of each other and frequented the same (parlour style ) public houses spending the majority of their time in them .
They knew each other well , of course they did .
Any other notion would be ridiculous

[MrBarnett]

Legalities I suspect ...... as with her burial
Certainly wasn't named after John Kelly
The mere fact that she chose to use the name Conway many years after hooking up with Kelly suggests to me that she never particularly wanted to use the name .
The real mystery is what changed on her return from Kent .
Which given a little thought may not be a mystery at all

On one occasion she used Eddowes on another, later occasion Conway 'or Eddowes'. There was an earlier conviction for which I haven't seen the record, but I suspect that was also on the name of Eddowes. As for her use of Kelly only after her return from Kent, how much information do we have about the time between her hooking up with Kelly and going to Kent?

[Batman]

If JtR was looking for Mary Jane Kelly...

... but Kelly pawned his boots, Eddowes taking them to a broker named Smith, who had premises in Church Street, where she pledged them in the name of ‘Jane Kelly’, giving her address as 6 Dorset Street, - Begg, *Paul. Jack the Ripper: The Facts.

and if this was the first time JtR came in contact with a possible link to her, then Smith would either be JtR, or someone in the shop JtR, or he has been informed to look out for a Mary Jane Kelly, and to inform JtR. After being informed, JtR would do what? Go after Eddowes? No. He would go to 6 Dorset Street and look around for MJK. So pawning alerting JtR to Mary Kelly here doesn't make sense because Eddowes ends up dead.

At Bishopsgate Eddowes gives her name first as 'Nothing' going in and then after as she is going out as ‘Mary Ann Kelly’ and gave her address as 6 Fashion Street.

Now if JtR learned this there and then, the possibility is that this is the woman he has been looking for. So he murders her. He even chalks down the Juwes will not be blamed for 'Nothing'. Strange that word should appear twice in this story.

However later he learns that she is not Mary Kelly at all but Catherine Eddowes. Someone totally else. However, all is not lost. It is very suspicious that she is using those names and later on he finds out that she was carrying a mustard box with pawn tickets for a Jane Kelly at 6 Dorset St. So he has a few places to go on and one of them doesn't exist, Fashion St. So he is off to Dorset St., to go figure out if Mary Jane Kelly really might be there.

Yet what bothers me about this model is that if this person was seeking MJK, then Dorset St., would be where you would go from day#1 if you had any inkling she was an unfortunate.

Another possibility is that Eddowes was known to JtR as well as Mary Jane Kelly and that JtR was seeing Eddowes and getting her to pretend she was Mary Jane Kelly while with him in some sort of sick game he had going to attack her as MJK. Transference I think it is called. The transfer of feelings about one person to another. Upon which they slashed up Eddowes but felt like they were murdering Kelly.

The question arises why not just go murder Kelly?

I think the answer is twofold. First is that they couldn't because she was never alone and wasn't prostituting. The second is that they still loved her somewhat.

Which would make JtR into a jealous ex-type character maybe? Or someone who wanted her but couldn't have her.

[packers stem]

On one occasion she used Eddowes on another, later occasion Conway 'or Eddowes'. There was an earlier conviction for which I haven't seen the record, but I suspect that was also on the name of Eddowes. As for her use of Kelly only after her return from Kent, how much information do we have about the time between her hooking up with Kelly and going to Kent?

All we have is the word of Wilkinson
So any suggestion that she ever used the name Kelly before hand and that either she lied to Wilkinson or he lied under oath would be wildly speculative

[MrBarnett]

All we have is the word of Wilkinson
So any suggestion that she ever used the name Kelly before hand and that either she lied to Wilkinson or he lied under oath would be wildly speculative

Wilkinson tells us they 'passed as man and wife'. Passed, not lived, which suggests to me they they may well have presented themselves as Mr and Mrs Kelly in a situation where it was unlikely that anyone would contradict them - when they were hopping for instance. That is certainly speculation, but is hardly 'wild'. It's what unmarried cohabiting couples often did at the time.

It seems Kate may well have pretended to be Conway's wife. And why would that have been? An attempt to cling to a shred of respectability I'd imagine. The same reason she might have for passing herself off as Mrs Kelly.

I'm not sure if you've seen the list of names used by/attributed to Alice McKenzie:

Anderson
Baxter
Bryant
Kell
Kelly
Kelley
Kinsey
Mackenzie
McCormack
McKensey
McKenzie
M'Kenzie
Murrell
Pits
Pitts
Riley
Taylor

I've cheated by adding McCormack because I've never seen that name used for her in print, but I'm pretty sure that there will have been people who knew her only as Alice, the 'wife' of John McCormack.

[packers stem]

Wilkinson tells us they 'passed as man and wife'. Passed, not lived, which suggests to me they they may well have presented themselves as Mr and Mrs Kelly in a situation where it was unlikely that anyone would contradict them - when they were hopping for instance. That is certainly speculation, but is hardly 'wild'. It's what unmarried cohabiting couples often did at the time.

It seems Kate may well have pretended to be Conway's wife. And why would that have been? An attempt to cling to a shred of respectability I'd imagine. The same reason she might have for passing herself off as Mrs Kelly.

I'm not sure if you've seen the list of names used by/attributed to Alice McKenzie:

Anderson
Baxter
Bryant
Kell
Kelly
Kelley
Kinsey
Mackenzie
McCormack
McKensey
McKenzie
M'Kenzie
Murrell
Pits
Pitts
Riley
Taylor

I've cheated by adding McCormack because I've never seen that name used for her in print, but I'm pretty sure that there will have been people who knew her only as Alice, the 'wife' of John McCormack.

We have to remember that despite her being with Kelly she still told Wilkinson her name was Conway ..... bought and paid for ....
It was clearly Conway she still clung to on the respectability score
If there was one person at all that she would have told her name was Kelly it would have been the lodging house keeper ..... She didn't
Probably as Conway was the father of her kids and still the one she wished she was associated with .

So yes , with nothing to back it up it's still wild .
Using McKenzie as a comparison doesn't cut it at all , can't tar them all with the same brush

[MrBarnett]

We have to remember that despite her being with Kelly she still told Wilkinson her name was Conway ..... bought and paid for ....
It was clearly Conway she still clung to on the respectability score
If there was one person at all that she would have told her name was Kelly it would have been the lodging house keeper ..... She didn't
Probably as Conway was the father of her kids and still the one she wished she was associated with .

So yes , with nothing to back it up it's still wild .
Using McKenzie as a comparison doesn't cut it at all , can't tar them all with the same brush

But there is something to back it up: the fact that unmarried couples of the period frequently 'passed themselves off' as married and used the same surname - not to mention the fact that Kate appears to have actually used the name Kelly on at least two occasions.

No doubt she clung to the fiction that she had married the father of her children among those who didn't know otherwise but knew the reality of her relationship with Kelly, but beyond that? Do you really think that around the hopfield camp fire she would have gone out of her way to insist she wasn't married to the man she was sleeping with?

[MrBarnett]

Incidentally, the reason for listing Alice Kinsey's names was to highlight those other than Kinsey beginning with K...

[Azarna]

Sorry if this is a silly question.

If, when arrested, Eddowes had given her name as "Nothing" and then "Mary Ann Kelly", how do we know the woman in question was actually Eddowes?

Did one of the arresting policemen recognise her body?