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Famous Like Me > Actress > K > Mary Kelly

Profile of Mary Kelly on Famous Like Me

 
Name: Mary Kelly  
   
Also Know As:
   
Date of Birth: 14th January 1894
   
Place of Birth: Chicago, Illinois, USA
   
Profession: Actress
 
 
From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia
Magnifying glassThe canonical five
Jack the Ripper victims
Mary Ann Nichols
Annie Chapman
Elizabeth Stride
Catherine Eddowes
Mary Jane Kelly

Mary Jane Kelly (c. 1863 - November 9, 1888) is widely believed to be the fifth and final victim of the notorious unidentified serial killer Jack the Ripper, who killed and mutilated prostitutes in the Whitechapel area of London during the late summer and autumn of 1888. She was about 25 and in poverty at the time of her death.

Reports of the time estimated her height at 5 feet and 7 inches (1.70 metres). Her hair colour is somewhat uncertain. She has been variously reported as being a blonde or redhead. Her reported eye colour was blue. Sir Melville Macnaghten (1853 - 1921) of the Greater London Metropolitan Police Service reported that she was known to have "considerable personal attractions" by the standards of the time. She was also said to be fluent in the Welsh language.

Early life

Compared with other Ripper victims, Mary Kelly's origins are obscure and undocumented, and much of it is possibly embellished. According to Joseph Barnett, the man she had most recently lived with, Mary had told him she was born in Limerick, Ireland — although whether it was the county or the city is not known — around 1863, and her family moved to Wales when she was young.

Barnett reported that Kelly had told him her father was named John Kelly and worked in iron works. His county of employement was reported as being either Caernarfonshire or Carmarthenshire. Barnett recalled Kelly mentioning having six or seven brothers and at least one sister. A brother named Henry Kelly supposedly served in the 2nd Battalion Scots Guards. She once stated to her personal friend Lizzie Albrook that a family member was employed at the London theatrical stage. Her landlord John McCarthy (1851 - June 16, 1934) claimed that Kelly received infrequent correspondence from her mother in Ireland as late as 1888. Barnett however denied this.

Both Barnett and a reported former roommate named Mrs. Carthy claimed that Kelly came from a family of "well to do people". Carthy reported Kelly being "an excellent scholar and an artist of no mean degree".

Around 1879, Kelly was reportedly married to a collier named Mr. Davies who was killed two or three years later in a mine explosion. No researcher has yet been able to trace the accuracy of this statement.

A report of the 1888 London press of Kelly being a mother has led a minority of Ripperologists to suggest the birth of a younger Davies between 1879 and 1882. Most modern Ripperologists consider the report dubious, as it contained several factual errors, including that she supposedly lived on the second floor, among others.

Kelly reportedly stayed for a while with a cousin in Cardiff. She is considered to have started her career as a prostitute there. There are no contemporary records of her presence in Cardiff. Kelly herself claimed to have spent much of her stay in an infirmary.

Kelly apparently left Cardiff for London in 1884 and found work in a brothel in the more affluent West End of London. She reportedly was invited by a client to France, but quickly returned, not liking her life there. Nevertheless she liked to affect the name of "Marie Jeanette" Kelly after this experience.

Return to London

Some newspaper reports claim she was nicknamed "Ginger" after her allegedly ginger-colored hair (though sources disagree even on this point). Another paper claimed she was known as "Mary McCarthy", which may have been a mix up with the surname of her landlord at the time of her death. Gravitating for unknown reasons toward the poorer East End, she reportedly lived with a man named Morganstone near the Commercial Gas Works in Stepney, and later with a mason's plasterer named Joe Flemming.

When drunk, Kelly would either be heard singing Irish songs or become quarrelsome and even abusive to those around. Barnett had first met Kelly on April 8, 1887. They had agreed to living together since their second meeting on April 9, 1887. At the beginning of 1888 they both moved into 13 Miller's Court. Barnett was a fish porter at the docks, but when he fell out of regular employment and tried to earn money as a market porter, Kelly turned to prostitution again. A quarrel ensued over Kelly's sharing of the room with another prostitute, and Barnett had left on October 30, more than a week before her death, while continuing to visit Kelly.

Witnesses gave various descriptions of Kelly's activities in Dorset Street during the late hours of November 8 and the early hours of November 9:

  • Barnett visited Kelly for the last time on November 8 between 19:30 and 19:45. He found her in the company of another woman. The latter might have been either Lizzie Albrook or Maria Harvey, both friends of hers. Barnett left at about 20:00 to return to his current residence and play whist. He continued playing until going to sleep at about 00:30.
  • Ripperologists are uncertain of Kelly's whereabouts for the following hours. An unconfirmed story of the time places her at the Britannia Public House, drinking in the company of an Elizabeth Foster.
  • Fellow widow and prostitute Mary Ann Cox reported seeing Kelly returning home in the company of a man at about 23:45. Cox wished Kelly goodnight. Kelly replied back and then started singing the song A Violet from Mother's Grave. She was still singing when Cox went searching for customers at midnight. Kelly probably stopped singing to enjoy a meal of fish and potatoes a while later.
  • Her upstair neighbour Catherine Picket was disturbed when Kelly resumed singing at about 00:30. She wanted to complain, but her husband conviced her to leave her alone. Rain begun at about 01:00. Cox returned to get an umbrella. She heard Kelly still singing.
  • A George Hutchinson reported that Kelly met him at about 02.00 and asked him for a loan. He claimed to be broke and then saw Kelly finding a customer in a "Jewish-looking man". Hutchinson later gave the police an extremely detailed description of the man, right down to the color of his eyelashes. Kelly and the man headed for her room. Hutchinson claimed to have followed them (but gave no reason for doing so) and reportedly overheard them discussing outside her door. Kelly complained of losing her handkerchief. Hutchinson claimed the man gave her a red one of his own. Hutchinson's description is suspected to be dubious by many modern experts of the case based on the darkness of that night leaving little room for noticing details and for other reasons.
  • Cox returned home at about 03:00. She reported than no sound or light came from Kelly's room. Cox apparently suffered from insomnia that night. She claimed to have heard people moving in and out of the court throughout the night. She thought she heard someone leaving the residence at about 05:45.
  • Two neighbours by the names of Elizabeth Prater and Sarah Lewis reported hearing a faint cry of "Murder!" at about 04:00. They dismissed the cry as a common remark.

Murder

MaryJaneKelly.jpg (file)

On the morning of Friday, November 9, 1888, the day of the annual Lord Mayor's Day celebrations, Kelly's landlord John McCarthy sent his assistant, Thomas Bowyer, to collect the rent. Kelly was several weeks behind on her payments. Bowyer knocked on her door but received no response. He reached through a crack in a window and pushed aside a coat being used as a curtain aside and peered inside. What he discovered was a horribly mutilated corpse.

Kelly's body was discovered shortly after 10:45. The body was lying on the bed in the single room where she lived at 13 Miller's Court, off Dorset Street, Spitalfields. Her throat was slashed, her face severely mutilated and her chest and abdomen cut open, with many of her internal organs removed and strewn around, along with flesh carved from her limbs and elsewhere. Her heart was not found, and it is believed that it was either taken away by her killer, burned in the fireplace, or perhaps cooked and eaten (though the length of time necessary to do so suggests that it probably would have been done elsewhere if that were the killer's intent). Evidence of neighbours who reported hearing a solitary scream in the night suggested she may have been killed somewhere around 4:00 in the morning.

A woman named Caroline Maxwell claimed to have seen Kelly alive at about 08.30, though she admits to only meeting her once or twice before and her description does not match that of those who knew Kelly more closely. Maurice Lewis, a tailor, reported seing Kelly at about 10.00 in a pub. Both statements were dismissed by the police due to not fitting the accepted time of death and because they could find no one else to confirm them, despite being reported in areas (a busy street and a drinking establishment) where a number of people should have been able to. The two alleged morning sightings have continued to puzzle Ripperologists.

Dr. Thomas Bond and Dr. George Bagster Phillips examined the body. Her death certificate was registered on November 17, naming her "Marie Jeanette Kelly otherwise Davies". Kelly was given a funeral at Saint Patrick's Roman Catholic Cemetery in Leytonstone on November 19, 1888.

The death certificate for Mary "Jeanette" Kelly

A minority of modern authors consider it possible that Kelly was not a victim of the same killer as the other Whitechapel murders. At an assumed age of around 25, she was younger than the other canonical victims, all of whom were in their forties. The mutilations inflicted on her were far more extensive than those on other victims, but she was also the only one killed in the privacy of a room instead of outdoors. Her murder was separated by five weeks from the previous killings. Bruce Paley, in Jack the Ripper: The Simple Truth (ISBN 0747252181) proposed that her lover Joseph Barnett may have been the Ripper.

Kelly's murder does fit the pattern of Ripper killings with respect to time, method of murder, and general class of victim, as well as the trend for mutilations to become more severe as the murders progressed. The increasing public outcry, warnings, and precautions taken after all the previous murders undoubtedly made it more difficult for the killer to operate in public, and securing a victim with a private room would allow more time for the extensive mutilations.

Further reading

  • The Complete History of Jack the Ripper by Philip Sugden, ISBN 0786702761, is widely held to be one of the best on the topic.

This content from Wikipedia is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Mary Kelly