Barnett and Kelly moved a couple of times in the early days of their relationship, including a stint on Brick Lane, before settling down in the midst of ‘the worst street in London’ (Dorset Street), making what home they could in No.13 Miller’s Court, a little cul-de-sac that ran off the main thoroughfare. In a room barely big enough to swing a cat – Elizabeth Prater and her kitten, Diddles, residents of the room upstairs, can surely testify to that – they lived in something like domestic bliss for the early part of 1888. By all accounts, Kelly kept off the streets during this period whilst Barnett worked busily in Billingsgate Market, until he had the misfortune to lose his job around the middle of 1888. Bruce Paley put this disastrous turn of events down to theft, one of the few misdemeanours for which a total dismissal was deemed necessary. This could, indeed, have been the case; maybe Mary Kelly was too demanding, even for Barnett’s big wage packet, and he had resorted to stealing as a means to keep her in the ‘style’ to which she had become accustomed. Number 13 Miller’s Court may not have been much to look at, but the landlord, John McCarthy, charged a jaw-dropping 4s 6d per week for the ‘privilege’. This new set of circumstances put a considerable strain on Barnett and Kelly’s somewhat shaky relationship, forcing them to spend much of the day together in their little room, where Barnett could pontificate to his heart’s desire on the perils of prostitution, whilst Kelly imbibed increasingly-large amounts of gin in an effort to drown him out. Such a turn of events served only to hasten the end of their somewhat ill-suited relationship, for as much as Joe Barnett may have been her Superman, Mary Kelly was by no means his Lois Lane. If anything, she comes across as a little hard-boiled where Barnett is concerned, with testimony to the effect that she couldn’t bear to be in the same room with him. She also saw her former lover, Joe Fleming, from time to time, and summoned a series of female ‘friends’ to their room to share the meagre space, in what seems to have been a deliberate exercise in driving him out for good. The fact that Barnett continued to give Kelly what little money he had after he’d lost his job, only brightens the hue on his halo as far as I’m concerned. The more cynical might see it as a crude example of someone so unutterably clingy that they can’t bear to let go, even when they’ve been given the boot. The fact was, that from the middle of 1888, Barnett sought almost any work he could in order to keep giving Kelly money, from days spent as a market porter to the occasional stint on the orange markets. Paley hypothesised that the loss of his job and the subsequent lack of money made Kelly’s return to the streets imminent, and so Barnett supposedly began his periodic slaughter of prostitutes, in the most ghastly fashion possible, in order to point out to her the perils of such a life.
By all accounts, Kelly was indeed seriously spooked by the spate of killings, begging Barnett to read her the papers after each event. However, even the details of various disembowelments couldn’t stop their relationship crumbling, as Barnett’s lack of money made their formerly comfortable lifestyle a long-distant memory. Barnett’s company seems to have been so intolerable to her that she took in fellow prostitutes – the aforementioned ill-suited ‘friends’ – to share their room. Perhaps this was partly out of the kindness of her heart, but it also seems a genuine attempt at driving him out. Now that he was earning little or no money he was of no use to her. The final, violent row between them occurred on 30 October, during which Kelly broke several of the windows of their room. This was in consequence of Maria Harvey, a laundress friend of Kelly’s, moving into the room Barnett himself moved out, but this didn’t deter him from visiting Kelly, on an almost daily basis, and giving her what little money he had. He visited her on the eve of her death, after she’d spent an afternoon mooching around with Maria Harvey. By all accounts, Barnett still loved Kelly so much that he sent his brother Danny to beg her to take him back later that evening, after his own efforts had obviously failed. That she was killed so soon after their split is, of course, the sort of evidence so compelling that it’s impossible not to consider him a suspect (but why not his brother Danny; one imagines it will be but a matter of time before a case is launched against him, on the basis of his having tried to reason with Kelly, and then perhaps killing her out of shock over her disregard toward his brother?!). On the other hand, it seems to be just as obvious that without Barnett’s protection, Mary Kelly was forced to make her way back onto the streets, where she met her killer. If she’d stayed with him she might have lived, and however meagre Miller’s Court might have been, it was still a considerable step up from the succession of common lodging houses or street corners the other canonical victims called home.
Mary Kelly’s horrifically mutilated body was found on the morning of the 9 November; it was Barnett who had to identify her, by her eyes and ears alone. He was questioned by police but no case was ever laid against him, and at the time no suspicion seems to have been there either. Barnett was able to come up with a perfectly good alibi, having been ensconced in Buller’s lodging house in nearby Bishopsgate. However, the theory maintains, the fact that the door to No.13 Miller’s Court was locked and had to be broken down, was proof of Barnett’s having stolen the key; which, apparently, Barnett told Inspector Abberline, had gone missing some time back. Barnett then allegedly contradicts himself by saying that they used the broken windows as a means of gaining access to Miller’s Court, reaching in and jiggling the lock. However, Barnett had, in fact, moved out on the night when such a means of entrance would first have taken effect. Why then would he have known about the broken window if he left the day the damage was done? My theory is that Kelly hid the key from Barnett some time previously, as insurance in case she ever wanted to lock him out when he became – as he obviously was from time to time – too much for her. Also, it seems plausible that he discovered the alternative means of entrance on one of his subsequent visits, either from Kelly’s mouth or one of her friends; gin loosens the lips that way.
I will concede that it could’ve been Joe Barnett; indeed, when one thinks back on some of that circumstantial evidence, you come to the conclusion that it almost should’ve been Joe Barnett. And yet it wasn’t. After Mary Kelly’s death, Barnett moved back into the obscurity from which he came, living for another thirty-eight years, dying in Shadwell with his common-law wife Louisa in 1926. Men who eviscerate innocent women and mutilate them beyond recognition, who take the time to carve the faces of their victims as they lay sprawled in the relative seclusion of Mitre Square, don’t retire to a life of quiet sobriety because the object of their affections fell victim to the culmination of their own crazed desires. To the best of my knowledge, Barnett didn’t put so much as a foot wrong ’til the day he died. In fact, I’d go so far as to maintain he never actually put a foot wrong in the first place, outside of maybe being dismissed for swiping one too many mackerel for Mary Kelly’s supper. Speaking of mackerel, to probe the theory that little bit more, using FBI profiling, Bruce Paley would have us believe that Barnett would ‘…have sought a job where he could vicariously experience his destructive fantasies, such as a butcher, mortician’s helper, medical examiner’s assistant, or hospital attendant; Joseph Barnett’s job boning and gutting fish provided the necessary atmosphere wherein he could indulge his morbid fantasies.’1
Mary Jane Kelly. (Moody/Morris Collection)
One imagines that your average fledgling serial killer would feel very hard done by indeed, if he had to take out all that frustration on a daily catch of cod and kippers. Other research also repudiates some of Paley’s suppositions about Barnett and Kelly’s relationship, including comments by Philip Sugden in his invaluable The Complete History of Jack the Ripper, that ‘…of Joe Barnett she was genuinely fond.’2
The point is, we all want to be the one to catch the Ripper; or do we? If we did, it would probably ‘spoil the game’ for everyone else and pretty much put the kibosh on what is, in some quarters, a massive media industry, not to mention being the bread and butter of many a tour guide. The mystery hasn’t left anyone to avenge, irrespec
tive of any nagging sense of social justice we may experience; and, probably, there’s no ghastly grave where the fiend lies for us to go and deface, should we so desire, waving our fists in righteous indignation. Instead, with Joe Barnett, as with so many other suspects, we not only haven’t caught the Ripper, but have instead hamstrung ourselves by pointing the finger at him in the first place, armed only with a few petty facts and not much else besides. As Paul Begg has said, Barnett has been singled out purely because he was ‘…suspected as far as one can tell simply because he was there.’3
It sometimes seems that the realm of Ripperology has a quota of people it needs to point the finger at on a regular basis, perhaps to soothe its own collective conscience about being so captivated by all this gruesome stuff to begin with. Like the old adage says, you don’t need to blow other people’s candles out just to make your own burn brighter. Perhaps Paley, with all his rigorous research, really believed in Barnett’s guilt. However, he states the obvious without seeming to realise that many of his facts probably fit half the population of the immediate area, before proceeding to use Barnett’s love for Kelly as a stick by which to further beat him: ‘…not in one of the other theories is a direct and indisputable connection actually proven between the suspect and any of the victims. Nor have any other suspects been reliably placed at or near any of the scenes of the crimes.’4
Paley uses frequent bullet points in putting forward his FBI theory. In response, here are a few of my own:
1. Barnett had a direct and indisputable connection to Kelly because he loved her, and they were in as normal a relationship as their strained circumstances would allow.
2. Barnett could be ‘reliably’ placed at, or near, the scenes of the crimes because he lived near them, as did ‘x’ number of other people of considerably more questionable pedigree; in fact one almost envisions a veritable cornucopia of creepy sorts sitting around just waiting to be slandered!
Now, all this isn’t to say that I’m painting Joseph Barnett out to be some sort of saint – we are talking about a man who, along with Kelly, was evicted from their room in Little Paternoster Row for being drunk (one imagines eviction in such an area to be quite a feat). But it is one thing to be in your cups occasionally and quite another to have the placard, proclaiming you to be the most prolific serial killer in history, hung around your neck. We ought really to be feting Barnett, not flogging him; were it not for Barnett Mary Kelly would have been even more of an enigma than she already is. Without Barnett we wouldn’t have been furnished with many of the facts of her life which he later gave at her inquest and to the papers:
…he said she had told him several times that she had been born in Limerick but had been taken when she was quite young to Wales, where her father had been employed at an ironworks in Carmarthenshire. She had also mentioned that she had six brothers and sisters; one of the brothers was in the army. When she was sixteen she had married a collier named Davis but a year or two later he had been killed in an explosion.5
When I first saw the famous picture of Mary Kelly’s crime scene I was left speechless, and I think that sums it up about Barnett, especially with regards to his echolalia. Here I am going along with Christopher Scott, whose view of Barnett in regard to such a condition runs thus:
…we must, for a moment, ponder the psychological condition in which he would have been at the inquest. He was the focus of press attention in the most notorious case of the day, in the formal, imposing setting of an inquest court, giving intimate and unflattering details about the woman with whom he had lived for a year and a half and who only a few days before had been murdered in an appalling and degrading manner. I think a little hesitancy or verbal stumbling on Barnett’s part could be forgiven, and, in my opinion, that is why the coroner commented on the manner in which he had given his evidence, for getting through a harrowing and traumatic experience with a modicum of dignity and lucidity.6
Funny how these horrendous events can just take the words right out of our mouths. Proximity to perhaps the most mysterious Ripper victim of all has bred a sort of journalistic jealousy with regards to Joe Barnett. Whilst Bruce Paley’s book is a cracking good read for anyone who wants a feel of the flavour of Whitechapel of 1888, along with an impressive amount of research, as far as pointing the finger at Joseph Barnett is concerned – well, it simply isn’t true.
Notes
1. Paley, B., Jack the Ripper: The Simple Truth (Headline Book Publishing, 1996), P. 220
2. Sugden, P., The Complete History of Jack the Ripper, (Robinson Publishing Ltd, 1995), p. 308
3. Begg, P., Jack the Ripper: The Facts (Robson Books Ltd, 2006), p. 386
4. Paley, B., ‘The facts speak for themselves’ in Jakubowski, M. ed., The Complete History of Jack the Ripper (Robinson, 2008), P. 266
5. Rumbelow, D., The Complete Jack the Ripper (Penguin Books, 2004), P.96
6. Scott, C., Will the real Mary Kelly…? (Publish and be damned, 2005), P. 128
Bibliography
Begg, P., Jack the Ripper: The Facts (Robson Books Ltd, 2006)
Paley, B., Jack the Ripper: The Simple Truth (Headline Book Publishing, 1996)
Paley, B., ‘The facts speak for themselves’ in Jakubowski, M. ed., The Complete History of Jack the Ripper (Robinson, 2008)
Rumbelow, D., The Complete Jack the Ripper (Penguin Books, 2004)
Scott, C., Will the real Mary Kelly…? (Publish and be damned, 2005)
Sugden, P., The Complete History of Jack the Ripper, (Robinson Publishing Ltd, 1995)
Mickey Mayhew is a regular contributor to The Whitechapel Society journal, as well as a film and theatre reviewer for a London lifestyle magazine. He is currently studying for his fourth degree – a considerable achievement for someone thrown out of school at thirteen and earmarked for rather poor prospects. He is now preparing a PhD proposal on one of his other big passions, Anne Boleyn.
2
William Henry Bury
Christine Warman
Jack the Ripper was a sexually-motivated serial killer, who terrorised London in the second half of 1888. He eluded both the police and the vigilant public, and left a mystery which continues to fascinate and horrify in equal measure. William Henry Bury was that most commonplace of killers; a man who abused his wife and finally murdered her. He died at the hands of James Berry, the public executioner, on 24 April 1889, in Dundee Prison. William Bury was Jack the Ripper.
William Bury was doomed from birth. He was the fourth child of a young married couple who lived in Stourbridge, in the West Midlands. They were not wealthy, but his father, also called William, was in employment with a fishmonger and they could hope for a happy future. But from the 25 May 1859, when young William first drew breath in this cruel world, the family was heading towards destruction.
William’s mother, Mary Jane Bury (née Henley), sank into a state of severe post-natal depression and then, within months, she lost the help and support of her eldest child. Seven-year-old Elizabeth Ann died suddenly at home, after a series of violent epileptic fits. Mary, ill and grieving, was left alone all day with three children under the age of six, while her husband went to work. This involved regular trips to Birmingham with a horse and cart to collect fish. On the 10 April 1850, coming down Muckley’s Hill near Halesowen, William Bury Snr had a problem with the horse and jumped down from the cart. He lost control of the animal and it galloped off, crushing his body lengthways under the wheel of the cart. With horrible irony, the papers gave his name as ‘James Berry’.
William Bury standing in the dock. (The Dundee Advertiser, 19 March, 1889)
Fate had dealt Mary yet another crushing blow, from which she never recovered. She was soon admitted to Powick Asylum, where she died four years later. The three orphaned children were taken in by Mary Bury’s brothers and sisters, and until 1871, William lived with his Uncle Edward’s family. When they moved to Ladywood, in Birmingham, they did not take him with them. While it is known that he was educated at the Bluecoate
School in Old Swinford, near Stourbridge, it is not known who gave him a home.
It is necessary to record the traumatic events of Bury’s early childhood because herein lies the explanation of the man he was to become. His mother was sunken so deeply in her own unhappiness that she could not give him the attention which is vital to the physical and mental health of a growing child. Bereft of love, or subject to abuse, a child cannot develop normally. It is a matter of record that the vast majority of serial killers have had a deprived, or abusive, childhood. The early years of Bury’s life would have been terrible. He was ‘abandoned’ by both parents, and then rejected by his foster family. It is unlikely, but not impossible, that he could remember the horrific death of his sister and the day his mother was told she was a widow. What is certain is that he would have been told about these events, and probably not in the kindest of terms. He would have believed that both his sister and mother were insane, and it is possible that he blamed them for the terrible death of his father. Young children tend to see the loss of a mother as a wilful act of rejection, and Bury would have become very sensitive to further affronts. The anger he felt towards his sister, and mother, led him to regard all women with fear and loathing. Indeed, in adult life he could barely bring himself to be civil to women, under any circumstances. At the same time he longed to bolster his fragile self-esteem by gaining the respect and admiration of other men. However, he was not a homosexual; when he was troubled by sexual desire it was directed towards the female body.
Jack the Ripper Page 2