Much of what Wilson and Odell report about Mary Kelly comes from the man who, in at least on version of the tale, ended up murdering her. Her travels from Limerick to Wales to the West End to France to the East End are mentioned, but not questioned, and there is no speculation about the speed at which she “degenerated.”41 She may have returned from France, asking to be called Marie Jeanette, the day before she met Kelly—the timeline is left unclear. Like Annie, however, Mary Kelly is suggested to have come from a much better situation and landed in the East End as a last resort.
She is still singular among these women, being young, but her attractiveness and magnetic personality are not emphasized as much as they have been by other authors. Her looks are lamented as lost after the mutilations that accompanied her death, but not stressed beforehand. Really, anyone’s looks could have been lamented, considering the fact that Wilson and Odell point out that the body buried in her grave may not even be Mary Kelly, due to the difficulty of identification. They do mention multiple times that Barnett’s reason for leaving may not have been purely because Mary Kelly invited her friend to stay with them, but because Mary Kelly had dropped him for one of her female companions, although this is not the usual level of universal appeal Mary Kelly seems to exert. As much as is said about her, she is still an unexplored mystery.
The task of declaring suspects innocent because of a lack of proof is easier than attempting to link a single specific man to all of the Ripper murders, and Wilson and Odell are thus perhaps not as concerned with details as other authors might have been. As long as they are aware of what these women were doing in the last moments of their lives, they have enough information to draw conclusions about the Ripper. Even though their chapter covering the murders encompasses more pages than some of the other instances of 1987, tidbits of information on the women before they became victims frequently occupies a single page—or a single paragraph. Only Mary Kelly, the darling of so many pet theories, stands out.
“A sort of immortality”
Perhaps not wishing to crowd one more look back into 1987, Paul Begg’s book Jack the Ripper: The Uncensored Facts was published in 1988, 100 years after the canonical murders. It is his observation that, though there have been multiple books about Jack the Ripper, few actually discuss the case itself. As we have seen, many books focus on the identity of the Ripper and proving their own pet theories, or at least disproving the theories of others. Begg therefore sets out to provide such as book as has been missing.
His chapter order includes five titled with the women’s names, interspersed with those devoted to the events between the crimes. Discussions of police reaction, suspect accusations, and the letters and other newspaper coverage, when not related to a specific victim, happen in these dated chapters. Although the chapters on the women cover their murders and inquests, they do open with a biography of that specific woman that covers more than just the last few years of her life.
Before venturing into the crimes and these biographies, Begg observes that “[i]t is little consolation that Jack the Ripper bestowed upon them a sort of immortality, but it is a consolation nevertheless.”42 Who, exactly, is meant to be consoled? Anyone who knew the victims personally would not be alive at the time of Begg’s writing, and it was forty years after the crimes when the first book was written. A single book is hardly proof of immortality, and those who had been reading the newspapers during the crimes themselves would have witnessed a distinct cessation of reports shortly after Mary Jane Kelly’s murder. The women, of course, were dead and past any means of consolation, and no mention is made of whether their children, if they had any, had grandchildren who might have been in need of comfort.
Begg seems to insinuate that part of this comfort comes from the fact that some of the women—not all, but some—were given funerals grander than they could have hoped for, and that their names are known while richer contemporaries have been forgotten. Somehow this consolation seems to be tied in with money and class: how the have-nots, though dint of being murdered and mutilated, were given the chance at a fancy funeral and city-wide mourning without having to pay a penny. The price, of course, was their lives, not just then but in a century of being overlooked and passed by in favor of concentrating on the person who killed them.
Mary Ann’s early life, between her birth and marriage, is still scarce on details, but once she left her husband and two children there is a thorough list of the workhouses where she lived. This includes an interruption during which time she was living with a blacksmith named Drew for a period of four years, a relationship not mentioned in other accounts of her life. At that time Mary Ann Nichols is thought to have been doing quite well, since she was respectably dressed at her brother’s funeral. The couple has parted by October 1887, although Begg only provides a reason for this separation on the next page when he states that “Nichols was almost certainly an alcoholic, two men having let her because of her drinking habits.”43 On her own again, Polly is in and out of workhouses and makes her failed foray into honest work as a servant. Then it is back to working houses and a lodging house that was known to allow men and women to share beds.
But was this Mary Ann a prostitute? This last statement concerning the White House on Flower and Dean Street is the closest Begg comes, since it was one of the few to allow men and women to share a double bed. On her final night, when she is turned out for not having money, she does not make her customary statement of having had her doss money multiple times and spent it already—she simply points to her new bonnet and laughs off the concern of getting the money. Begg does not discuss how Mary Ann earned a living, or how she expected to find the coins so late at night. She simply has nothing and reels out into the darkness, cheerful and perhaps already drunk.
Along with not being a prostitute, this Mary Ann Nichols happens to look almost ten years younger than her given age. Begg points out that, while the movies always make the women younger and more attractive, books have had a tendency to add ten or twenty years to their appearance. East End prostitutes in their forties must have been terrible hags, and the Ripper certainly did not pick them because of any sexual attraction—at least, that is how the books have continually worded it. From derelicts to bad drawings of human beings, the first four women have never had a break. But Begg refers to newspaper reports of the day. His Mary Ann had been attractive, and not just when she was younger.
Annie Chapman’s life is likewise blank between birth and marriage, although this time her husband is a coachman and valet. In a vague statement passed on throughout friend via the deputy at one of Chapman’s lodging houses—Begg at times refers to the women by their last name when other authors reserved the last name for their husbands—we learn that John Chapman lost this valet position “because of his wife’s dishonesty.”44 Perhaps the vagueness is due to the fact that this information comes thirdhand, if not fourth, but even the fact that John Chapman had ever been a valet seems to be in doubt.
Begg covers the couples’ two children and their locations at different homes, although he does indeed place them there before the separation. He then undermines his own statement about how no reason was given for this by providing information from a police report tying their parting to her drinking. It would seem that Annie Chapman managed to get her alcoholism under control, because the deputy of her lodging house thought it was out of character that she had been the worse for drink on the night she was murdered. Begg insists that her drinking was limited to Saturday nights and that she, unlike Mary Ann Nichols, was most certainly not an alcoholic.
During Annie Chapman’s fight to stay off the street after her husband’s death, when she was forced to get on without a weekly allowance, Begg traces her through relationships with two men. One, with a sieve maker, was serious enough that she was known as Annie Sivvey as well as Annie Chapman, while the second was a more recent relationship. This man was present at her inquest, although mostly to give an account of himself so that he would not end up a suspect. Eve
n with this relationship, Annie had to resort to prostitution to survive, so it would seem that he might have been with her more for his benefit than for hers.
Elizabeth Stride is also a prostitute, although Begg has managed to find more information between her birth and marriage. When she first went to work in her home country of Sweden it was as a domestic, although five years later she was registered as a prostitute. A year after this she moved to London, where, according to two slightly conflicting stories, she came to work for a family. Presumably this position ended when she married John Thomas Stride three years later, since she moved and told people the two of them had owned a coffee shop. Begg takes issue with the factual details provided, but not nearly as many issues as he does with the Princess Alice story. Instead of dying as a result of the boat disaster, Begg has come up with a death certificate for John Thomas Stride from 1884. Presumably he and Elizabeth Stride had parted on or around 1878, when the Princess Alice sank.
Her relationship with Michael Kidney began in 1885, and on the Tuesday night before her death “[h]e had expected Stride to be at home when he returned from work, but she was not there. He was not particularly alarmed. Stride had gone off before.”45 Their time together is summed up in this brief description. During their three years as a couple he had been used to finding her waiting for him at the end of the day, although it was not entirely a surprise when she was not. He was accustomed to Elizabeth Stride going off on her own when she went on a drinking binge and then returning to him when she was through. Kidney denied rumors that he and Elizabeth had fought before she left that last time, which is an understandable protest. First, if he allowed that they had parted on bad terms, he might be accused of having murdered her as a result of their argument. Second, if he cared about Elizabeth Stride, he would not want to recall that they had fought the very last time he had seen her. Begg does not provide enough information about Kidney or his relationship with Elizabeth Stride for any firm conclusion to be drawn.
The place where Begg does show consideration and contemplation surrounding Elizabeth Stride’s movements on her final night. Again, this is meant to tally with witness reports in order to determine who, if any of them, may have actually seen her with the Ripper so that Begg may then compare witness descriptions to possible suspects. It would seem from witness statements that Elizabeth Stride was with a number of different men in a surprisingly short amount of time, although Begg proposes that it might be the fault of the witnesses for not being properly observant. He suggests that she may indeed have been with the same man for at least an hour that night even if she had been soliciting and compares this situation to that of Martha Tabram, who spent even longer in the company of a soldier on the night she was murdered. Further, Begg does not believe that Elizabeth Stride was really out that night out of desperation, “for she could always have returned to Michael Kidney and his bed for as long as she wanted to stay.”46 However, Elizabeth had clearly chosen not to go back to him.
If Elizabeth Stride left Michael Kidney so she could go on a drinking binge, it would not be surprising if she had already run through whatever money she had with her from that Tuesday. Surely a couple who lived in lodging house was not well enough off to have gathered a nest egg. If, for whatever reason, Elizabeth Stride was reluctant to return to Michael Kidney, then she may indeed have been looking for money for a bed of her own. Begg seems to assume that Michael Kidney served solely as a source of income for Elizabeth Stride, and this statement also supposes that their last parting was not as the result of an argument. There may have been reasons beyond money for the couple to have stayed together, just as there may have been reasons that drove Elizabeth Stride to both drink and leave him on occasion. She is not allowed to be this complicated.
This same lack of inquiry or analysis is applied to Catherine Eddowes, who ran off with an older man when she was in her early twenties and was thereafter refused entry into her family’s home. This meant in fact her aunt’s house, since she had been orphaned somewhere around the age of ten. Catherine Eddowes thus had no parents, and she had no family to turn to once she had been with Thomas Conway for some time and had already had a child by him. Was she returning simply for a visit, to show off the child, or was she experiencing problems in her relationship and seeking advice and comfort? Thomas Conway was much older than she was, and it seems the couple never married—perhaps more fodder for her family’s locked door. According to her daughter the couple had a relationship along the lines of Elizabeth Stride and Michael Kidney, in that they came together and parted routinely without spending more than a year in each other’s company. Again, drinking was given as the reason for these partings.
Although the effect of Catherine being turned away by her family does not receive scrutiny, the parting of Catherine Eddowes and Thomas Conway is at least allowed two possibilities. Thomas Conway, of course, referenced her drinking, but Catherine Eddowes’ sister accused Thomas Conway of abuse. Begg acknowledges that, although she might just be defending her sister, it was highly unlikely that any man would have admitted that he beat his wife when he was drunk. Now we have a Catherine Eddowes who has lost her family either through death or shunning and has also parted from the man that was the cause of that shunning. She has parted from her children, as well, since they do not move into the lodging houses with her. At this point Catherine Eddowes is completely on her own.
Shortly thereafter she meets John Kelly, whom Begg describes as sickly but dependable. He worked as a day laborer where he could and reported that, to his knowledge, Catherine Eddowes did not work as a prostitute. Granted, since he was working he would have been gone for hours at a time, but Begg paints a favorable picture of John Kelly. He was not stupid and would have known the signs.
In this version the couple indeed goes hop picking, but they leave because they “didn’t get on too well”47 and started walking home. There is no mention of illness on either side, and this Catherine Eddowes is apparently not going back to London to claim the reward for identifying Jack the Ripper. The couple is broke before reaching town and has to walk the entire way, where John Kelly earns enough money for him to have a lodging house bed while Catherine Eddowes goes to the workhouse. Oddly enough it is the casual ward deputy who reports that she spoke of earning this reward. Begg at least considers this claim of identity questionable and says that he cannot find any evidence of John Kelly supporting the superintendent’s statement. Begg is further confused when Catherine Eddowes told John Kelly she was going to see her daughter, naming a town where her daughter no longer lived. Now Begg is the one asking the pertinent questions: if Catherine Eddowes often went begging her daughter for money, wouldn’t she have enough known that her daughter had moved? Did she purposefully lie to John Kelly? And, since her daughter did not see her that day, where did she go? For once these questions are actually in the book and not left for readers to compose on their own.
Although there is no evidence that Catherine Eddowes was a prostitute, she somehow found money after parting from John Kelly on the last day of her life, or at least found someone to buy her drinks, since she is next seen drunk, immobile, and being taken to a police station so she can sober up. Soon after she is released in the wee hours of the next morning, she is murdered.
Begg introduces Mary Jane Kelly with a couple of questions, observing that she is often given the most attention of any victim. This is, he concludes, because she is generally considered to be the last victim, and the questions he asks as an introduction actually center around the Ripper. Did he mean to kill her for a personal reason, and this was why the murders stopped, or was he locked up or otherwise incapacitated after her death? It is really this first question that has led to so much attention being given to her, since the Ripper might then be identifiable through something within her past. The problem, of course, is finding a reliable telling of that past.
He finds more information about Mary Jane Kelly’s childhood than has previously been mentioned, including seven or e
ight siblings, one of them a sister. Instead of having made a clean break, she sometimes received letters from Ireland, from either her mother or one of her brothers. Apparently her childhood was rather privileged, considering her perceived level of education. This is meant to have even included the fact that she was a good artist, although there is no mention of her preferred medium or how anyone in the East End would have seen her, for example, paint. Although other authors have accused Mary Jane Kelly of making much about her past, Begg argues that “[w]hat is said of her life cannot be proved, but neither can it be disproved,”48 much the same way that many Ripper suspects must remain simply probable.
Begg even says that he found supporting evidence for Mary Jane Kelly’s tale that she had once lived in a West End bordello and had been to Paris for two weeks. The evidence is, however, highly circumstantial, starting with the fact that Mary Jane Kelly repeated this story and ending with witnesses who came forward years later, after her death, thinking they recognized her description. It seems that Begg is only leading with this lesser information before bringing up the practice of placeurs who would seek out likely women and entice them into high-end brothels in their home countries before transporting them across the Channel. If Mary Jane Kelly had indeed been seduced by such a woman who first placed her in a high-end bordello before moving her to a far lesser position in France, then she is likely to have escaped that situation. She may also have felt very much the country mouse, having gone to the big city in order to make her way in life and been fooled so easily. It is an explanation that would both allow for Mary Jane Kelly to tell the same tale every time, since the locations were true, and would also explain why she did not seem to give anyone further details.
The Ripper's Victims in Print Page 15