Mary Jane Kelly Disassembled

Mary Jane Kelly was the youngest and, arguably, 

the prettiest of the victims of Jack the Ripper.

She was the only one killed indoors.

Hers was the most brutal and horrific of all the killings.

Canonically, hers is considered the last of the killings attributed to Jack.

Compared to the other victims, little is documented about the past of Mary Jane Kelly.   She was believed to have been born about 1863 in Limerick, Ireland.  Her father was reputed to have been an iron worker and the whole large family to have migrated to Wales when she was a small child.

Her hair color is reported as anything from blonde to red to brown.  By nickname, she was known as Fair Emma, Ginger, and Black Mary.  She may or not have been married at some point.  She may or may not have had a child.  She may have lived briefly in France as the mistress of a well-to-do man.  

By 1887, she was living in Whitechapel, making a living as a prostitute.  She enjoyed her drink, apt to become quarrelsome under the influence and inclined to drunkenly sing Irish songs.  She lived for a time with laborer Joseph Barnett.  They quarreled on October 30th and he moved out of their rented, single, furnished room.

On the night of November 8, 1888, Mary Jane Kelly took a client to her room.  No one ever saw her alive again.

The scene that met the eyes of the agent of her landlord on the morning of the 9th is one of the most gruesome crime scenes of that century and this.  She was completely disassembled, identifiable only by the blue eyes that had been left in what remained of her mutilated face.

Many reported seeing her out and about at various times during the evening and night.  Close neighbors reported hearing her sing one of her Irish songs late in the night, and, later still, some heard a cry of murder and a plea for help, which never came.

Good night, Fair Emma.  

Your stay in this world was far too brief.  

May your welcome in the next have been far kinder.

Kate Kelly the Fourth

Kate Kelly is the fourth in my series about Jack the Ripper.

I was surprised to realize that it has been over a month since my last posting on this series.  I put up my Long Liz piece all the way back on January 19th.

In some ways,  Long Liz and  Kate Kelly are eternally joined in the mind of the public and, especially, to the Ripperologist.

Catherine Eddowes aka Kate Kelly was killed only an hour after Jack the Ripper murdered Long Liz.  The murderous night became popularly known as the double header.

Reading up on Catherine Eddowes, I was fascinated by her character.  If ever a woman lived the life of the mayfly, it would be Catherine.  She was described by friends as always jolly and singing.  The difficulties and poverty of her life seemed almost to be of her own making.

The four other victims of Jack the Ripper all survived their difficult lives, at least in part, through prostitution.  Catherine Eddowes might well have been the exception.  Of course, walking home from jail at one in the morning through the dark streets of Whitechapel, whether she was actively soliciting or not, made her an ideal victim for Jack.

  Catherine Eddowes was born in Graisley Green, Wolverhampton on 14 April 1842. She one among ten children born to her parents, tinplate worker, George Eddowes and his wife Catherine (formerly Evans), The family moved to London a year after she was born.  Growing up, she was known affectionately as "Chick".  Later, she moved back to Wolverhampton to take up work as a tinplate stamper.

She spent twenty years as the common law wife of ex-soldier, Thomas Conway.  The two had a daughter and two sons together before her increasing drinking created too many problems in their relationship.  By 1881, she was living with her new common law husband, John Kelly.  The two lived a hand to mouth existence in the poverty stricken area of Spitalfields, London.  As soon as they earned money, it was spent.

Catherine, John Kelly, and their friend, Emily Birrell, made some money picking hops in the countryside.  Within a day or two of returning to London, the earned money was gone.  Catherine Eddowes and John Kelly were forced to pawn his new boots just to pay for their breakfast.

On Sept 29th, the pair split up, Catherine to see if she could get some money from her daughter while John Kelly  settled into a lodging house.

By 8:30 pm, though, never having made it to the home of her daughter, Catherine Eddowes was well into her cups, arrested for lying drunk in the street. She sobered up in jail and was released at 1 am.   By 1:45 am, she was dead.

Interrupted in his killing of Elizabethe Stride, Jack the Ripper inflicted a far more gruesome and mutilating death on Kate Kelly.

Catherine Eddowes was a woman who danced through her life, taking one moment at a time.  She may have enjoyed her drink a little more than she should, but certainly deserved a better end than the one she was given.

Rest in Peace, Kate Kelly  

(14 April 1842 – 30 September 1888)

Miriam Angel falls down the Rabbit Hole

I fell completely down the Rabbit Hole this week.  

Welcome to Wonderland.  

If you see Alice, give her my best.

Instead of working with my image of Mary Jane Kelly 

(I have been tinkering with it for weeks - 

decided it was best to let it simmer for a while), 

I found that my mind kept coming

 back to Miriam Angel.

I went back to the internet and poked around 

a little more.  I found an in depth article 

from 1887 about the trial which went into more 

of the specifics and particulars of the case.  

I did learn that Miriam Angel was indeed married 

and she was killed in the morning after her husband 

left for work, but that is about all we 

learn about Miriam herself.

The article does a nice job of covering the trial, 

so if  you are interested, just click HERE.

There are several discrepancies between this article 

and some of the other sources that I have found.  

The names of Israel Lipski's employees are 

slightly different in this article and he is 

referred to as a maker of walking sticks 

whereas, elsewhere, he has been called 

an umbrella salesman.

Since Lipski claimed that his two employees were 

really the perpetrators of the horrific crime, 

I would be interested to know what paths 

their lives followed after Lipski was executed. 

 If they were the thieves and rapists that Lipski 

claimed, I would expect that they would 

commit further crimes, but I haven't seen any 

references to this anywhere on the internet.

Of course, it has been 125 years.

Still, I always come back to the nitric acid.  

Why did Lipski buy it?  At different times, 

he said he intended to use it to stain wood.  

Later he said that he intended to drink it 

to take his own life.  It was the method used 

to kill Miriam Angel.  Lipski never satisfactorily 

explains why his two employees would 

have possession of the acid instead.

I keep coming back to that little bottle which brings 

my mind instantly to Alice and Wonderland.  

Add in the questionable umbrellas and there is only one
 direction to go - straight down the rabbit hole!

I had a strange compulsion to make this piece. 

 It felt a little insensitive to the memory of 

Miriam Angel and her child, but it has been 

125 years.  Sorry, Miriam!

Two pieces in and I still cannot get the case out of my head.  

Be warned that more Miriam Angel is to follow.

Long Liz

Long Liz is the third piece in my Jack the Ripper series.

By its very nature, the subject of a mysterious serial killer is overwhelming sensationalist.  

So much of the fascination with Jack is that we just don't know who he was.  Most likely, we never will.  I love a good mystery, and these crimes were committed over 125 years ago so the worst of the horror of the crimes has faded.

At its heart, though, this is still a brutal crime perpetuated against women in the lower class, labeled as the unfortunate.  Tragically, even after so much time, the same attitudes about and against women continue to flourish in the world today.

Elizabeth Stride was killed in what has become popularly known as the double header.

The daughter of farmer Gustaf Ericsson, and his wife Beata Carlsdotter, Elizabeth was born in Sweden on Nov 27, 1843.  She seems to have taken up the career of prostitution early on, giving birth to a stillborn daughter in 1865.

She moved to London in 1866, possibly in domestic service to a family.   She married John Stride, a ship's carpenter in 1869.  The two kept a coffee room for a time, but separated by 1877.

Elizabeth seems to have been fond of dramatic stories about her past, telling acquaintances that she lost her husband and children in the sinking of the Princess Anne in 1878 (her husband died of tuberculous in 1884 and there is no record of her having any children after 1865).

Like the other victims of Jack, Elizabeth seems to have had a drinking problem.  She kept company with a labourer named Michael Kidney but the two had separated a few days before her death.

On the night of September 30th, her body was discovered at about 1 am.  Although her throat had been slit like that of the other Ripper victims, her body sustained none of the mutilation of the other victims.  This has led to the speculation that Jack was interrupted in his kill or even that she was not a Ripper victim at all.

Regardless of your opinion on the identity of her murderer, Elizabeth "Long Liz" bled out on the pavement across the street from a social club.

Less than an hour later, only a short walk away, another woman died in an even more brutal fashion.

Dark Annie

This is the second piece in my Jack the Ripper series.

The brutal murders by Saucy Jack have been debated and remembered, almost glorified, for the 125 years since he killed at least five women in the impoverished section of Victorian London, known as Whitechapel.

His victims are little remembered or, oftentimes, completely altered in the fictionalized world of Jack the Ripper literature.

His victims were all prostitutes.  They were alcoholics.   They were eking out the most tenuous of existences in a time and place that gave little thought or concern for the poor, especially women.   Life had been hard on them, but they were surviving.  

They got up every morning from a pallet rented only for the night and went back out into a world where they had to earn money daily to pay for their food, their drink, and another hard pallet on another crowded floor if they didn't want to sleep on the cold street.  They were struggling against difficult odds.   They did what they had to do to make it through another day.

Jack murdered women that had already been victimized by  their time and their circumstances.  They deserve better from us.  

Dark Annie (aka Eliza Ann Smith) was born in 1841. In 1869, she married coachman John Chapman. They seemed to have gotten along well enough, living in London and having three children together, although their only son John was disabled.  Annie's husband took a post as a coachman in Windsor, and then their 12 year old daughter died shortly thereafter of meningitis.

Both turned to drink, more and more heavily. By 1884, they separated. Her husband died in 1886, leaving her without financial support so Annie took to supporting herself via prostitution.

By 1888, Annie was herself dying of a lung and brain disease but she continued to eke out an existence in the dark world of Whitechapel until her murder on September 8, 1888 in a brutal and horrific style.

Annie Chapman, you were haunted by events in your life.  You loved and lost two of your children.  You were dying of a slow and painful disease.  I know that you deserved a chance to make your peace with this world before you left it.  You deserved better than a brutal death on a dark night.  Good bye, Dark Annie.  Rest in peace.

Polly Nichols buys a New Bonnet

Polly Nichols (aka Mary Ann Walker) was born on August 26, 1845). In 1864, she married William Nichols, a printer's machinist, and had five children.

The marriage broke up over allegations of her husband's philandering and her drinking. Her estranged husband stopped paying her support when he learned she was supplementing her income with prostitution.

On August 30, 1888, Polly earned her doss money but spent it on a jolly new bonnet. She earned it again, and then drank it away. Around 1:30 am, she announced her intention of earning the money quickly so that she could have a bed for the night.

Then, she met Jack. 

Sometimes you find yourself locked in a circular pattern of a strange obsession.  I've always had a streak of ripperologist in me but it recently began a strong resurgence in my psyche.  The best way for me to exorcise an obsession is to work through it.

What has always bothered me most about the obsession with Jack the Ripper is the emphasis on the Jack portion.  What about Polly Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly?  

Their lives were brutally ended by a monster.  There seems to be an implicit thought line that their lives were lesser because they were prostitutes, because they were older (excepting Mary Jane Kelly), because they were alcoholics, and because they spent most of their lives on the street.

I don't like or accept that implication so decided to start to exorcise my Jack demon by exploring each of the lives of these women that lived and died over a century ago.  They were people.  Their lives had value.