The Five

by Hallie Rubenhold

  According to those who knew her, this distinction seems to have made itself apparent in Mary Jane, who it was said came “from a well-to-do family.” One of her landladies remarked on her high level of “scholarship” while also commenting that she was a capable artist. This statement was made at a time when training in drawing was given to girls at fashionable young ladies’ schools, and did not feature in the average school curriculum.* A girl from a large, impoverished rural family would have had no access to instruction in such skills, or the money to purchase the materials, nor would she have been likely to receive the encouragement necessary for becoming an artist. More interesting still, no one who knew Mary Jane noted any regional accent, and those who inquired about her origins had to be told she was Welsh or Irish. If Wales or Ireland had once flavored her speech, its traces were not readily discernible, possibly owing to elocution lessons. “You would not have supposed if you had met her on the street that she belonged to the miserable class as she did,” remarked a missionary who knew her in Whitechapel; “she was always neatly and decently dressed, and looked quite nice and respectable.”6 Mary Jane may have been telling the truth when she claimed to Joe Barnett that her father was a “gaffer,” one in a position of authority at the ironworks. It is possible that Barnett mistook her meaning and that Mary Jane’s father was in fact the owner of the business or played some role in its management. This certainly would have placed her in an altogether different social class.

  Although Mary Jane insisted that she had been legally married at sixteen to a miner named Davies or Davis, no record has ever been found to confirm this. If she had indeed become romantically entangled with a man, it was more likely as his mistress or common-law wife. This too may accord with the suggestion that Mary Jane bore a child around 1883, roughly at about the time it is said that she spent eight to nine months “in an infirmary” in Cardiff. Like everything in Mary Jane’s narrative, this too is questionable. No trace has been found of the birth of a child, nor is there any indication as to its fate. Such an extended stay at a publicly funded general hospital in the 1880s was highly unusual; it is more probable that Mary Jane stayed at a private institution, perhaps a reformatory for “fallen women” or an asylum. A middle-class family might consider either option appropriate for a daughter who had transgressed social norms by engaging in sex outside marriage.

  At the time, Cardiff had at least two refuges for fallen women: the Protestant House of Mercy and the Catholic Convent of the Good Shepherd. Both took in young women in their teens and twenties from the lower classes. On occasion, middle-class girls participated in their rehabilitation programs, which mainly consisted of religious instruction and training in domestic skills and needlework. However, some middle-class families regarded sexual behavior outside marriage as evidence of a mental disorder, to be dealt with by trained doctors. At this period Cardiff did not have its own mental hospital but instead sent its patients to the United Counties Lunatic Asylum in Carmarthen, a town where Mary Jane also claims to have spent part of her life.

  Although the precise chronology of this period is cloudy, Mary Jane appears to have told Joseph Barnett that it was following her stay in the “infirmary” that she fell in with her badly behaved cousin. Both asylums and refuges for fallen women often failed to rehabilitate their inmates, making Mary Jane’s claim sound feasible. Unfortunately, Joe Barnett never elaborated upon what Mary Jane meant by her cousin’s “bad life.” Was she part of a sporty “fast set”? Was she a prostitute or a man’s mistress? Was she a madam? And was she the connection that facilitated Mary Jane’s move to London?

  Of all of the holes in Mary Jane’s account, none is so gaping as that which explains how or why she left Cardiff for a “gay house” in the West End of London. Travel or a change of residence to another city or town was not something a single woman embarked upon haphazardly in the nineteenth century. London, though linked by rail to Cardiff, was still a considerable distance from Wales, both physically and culturally. Generally, an unmarried young woman came alone to London for only two possible reasons: a job had been arranged for her or someone connected to her through social or family ties lived in the city. Either or both of these possibilities must have guided Mary Jane to the capital; otherwise, as a newcomer, it would have been difficult to negotiate immediate entry into the middle to upper ranks of the sex trade. Personal contacts in a new and confusing city would have been just as essential to women in the higher end of the sex trade as they would be to anyone in “respectable” society wishing to be introduced to the right circle. An acquaintance may have given Mary Jane the name of a “landlady” who offered women introductions to gentlemen. Alternatively, she may have arrived with a lover from Cardiff or with the intention of joining one in London.

  By the last quarter of the nineteenth century, it was no longer common for prostitutes to live where they practiced their trade. Those who walked the pavements of Piccadilly, the Haymarket, and Regent Street tended to make their homes in the outlying parts of the capital. For poorer women this was frequently the East End, while those who catered to the middle classes and above often opted for locations such as Chelsea, Pimlico, St. John’s Wood, and certain streets in Knightsbridge and Brompton, where Mary Jane Kelly took lodgings.

  Since the middle of the century, the little streets extending from Knightsbridge Barracks to Brompton Road, as far west as Brompton Square, had acquired a reputation as a haven for army officers’ mistresses, actresses, and the artistic set—those who indulged in sin discreetly behind shutters and dark velvet drapery. In 1881, the oblong Brompton Square, with its green center, appears to have been the favored address of a number of female heads of household describing themselves as “lodging house keepers.”* Number 15, inhabited by two “actresses,” was a house owned by Mary Jefferies, one of the most formidable madams of the Victorian age; she catered to aristocrats, politicians, wealthy capitalists, and at least one member of the royal family. This was only one of the procuress’s many properties in Brompton and Chelsea; her network of residences and women extended across west and north London. Jefferies operated her business from a safe distance, like a puppet mistress, arranging for her “girls” to meet clients by appointment at various locations, thereby keeping her own hands clean. Although the “French woman” with whom Mary Jane came to reside was unlikely to have possessed such an empire, she probably ran her concern in a similar manner: her “boarders” were offered opportunities to make the acquaintance of gentlemen.

  Procuresses who ran middling to upmarket businesses facilitated introductions to men, but by the latter part of the century, clients did not necessarily come to their premises in search of women. In some cases assignations were arranged through an exchange of letters or a conversation, while others occurred by chance meeting. On one occasion “Walter” gained an introduction to a discreet Marylebone brothel disguised as a shop by exchanging glances with its madam while on a train. After he struck up a conversation, she informed him that she was a dressmaker and employed only the prettiest girls at her place of business. Before disembarking she handed him a card and invited him “to call and try on her gloves.” Walter was certain that she drummed up a good amount of trade by approaching men in railway carriages and other forms of public transportation.7 One of Mrs. Jefferies’s methods of exciting interest in her latest recruits was to drive to the Guards Club in her landau and distribute personal invitations to meet her young ladies. Officers in the most elite regiments, from wealthy and titled families who had money to spend and time to kill while in barracks, were notably good customers. When considering Mary Jane’s proximity to the Knightsbridge barracks and the area’s association with regimental mistresses, a number of such men may have been among her clientele, perhaps including the Henry or “Johnto” she mentioned, who was in the 2nd Battalion of the Scots Guard. “Johnto” may not have been her brother at all, but rather an officer and a former lover with whom she maintained a correspondence when his postings took him abroad
.*

  The men who sought the company of women like Mary Jane through a procuress would expect to commit to an evening of entertainment in addition to receiving sex. Walter’s dressmaker-madam introduced him to a young woman working in her shop called Sophy, whom he met formally in an adjoining house. The madam informed him that he would not be having sex with her on the premises; rather, he was to pay the madam five pounds up front and then take Sophy to dinner the following night. Five or six years earlier, men like Walter might have met someone like Sophy or Mary Jane at the Argyll Rooms before taking them to an accommodation house, but now, evenings often began at venues like St. James’s Restaurant, known as “Jimmy’s,” at 69 Regent Street or at the Café de l’Europe on the Haymarket. Here, women and their male companions sat down to dine in smoke-filled, mirrored, and palm-fronded rooms and were tended by French and Italian waiters known for their discretion. After gorging on oysters, deviled kidneys, and roast beef and washing it all down with bottomless glasses of champagne, Moselle, and hock, the couple would travel by hackney cab or in the gentleman’s carriage to an equally discreet hotel, or back to the woman’s lodgings. Such assignations might not end the next morning, nor did they have to begin at a restaurant. A trip to the theater, the music hall, the races, or any number of other destinations might be involved, until the gentleman exhausted himself sexually, grew tired of the woman’s company, or found that duty called him elsewhere. In exchange for the pleasure of her company, he expected to be billed accordingly. The “price” for her company generally included the purchase of “trinkets” as well as cash. In addition to the “five pounds up front” demanded by Walter’s dressmaker-madam, Sophy also managed to negotiate “three sovereigns and a new dress” as compensation for the night’s activities.

  Arranged meetings were only one method by which those in the sex trade did business. Women of all ranks made themselves accessible to potential clients through public display. This included appearing in the promenades and galleries of certain music halls and theaters, as well as streetwalking. In the years that followed the closure of the Argyll Rooms, the West End’s smartly dressed prostitutes and their louche companions decamped to the Alhambra Theatre in Leicester Square. One social explorer, Daniel Joseph Kirwan, described the scene on a night in 1878, as he moved beyond a group of “young ladies smoking cigarettes” and entered the promenade. This he found “choked with men and women, walking past each other, looking at the stage, drinking at the bars, chafing each other in a rough way, and laughing loudly.”8 He was surprised to discover that the men seemed “of a good class,” while the women were “cheerful, pleasant-looking girls, of quite fair breeding, and of a far better taste in their dress than the honest wives and sweethearts of the mechanics and shopkeepers, who sit in the place of virtue, within the painted railing.”9 However, the Alhambra catered to all ranks of prostitute, and on that night, a police sergeant estimated there to be “at least 1,200 women of the town” present. Upon ascending into the gallery, Kirwan noticed that the mood changed, that “the clamour and the smoke made the place unbearable,” and that there was “not the slightest disguise in the conduct of the females.” Worse still was the gallery above that one, where “the riffraff collected”; encountering this sight prompted him to remark that “when a woman goes to the sixpenny gallery in the Alhambra she is indeed lost beyond all hope of rescue.”10

  When not passing an evening in the Alhambra or venues like it, West End prostitutes of the middle ranks also sought custom through street solicitation. The Haymarket, Regent Street, Piccadilly, and the smaller streets that flowed from them into Leicester Square and Soho formed the parade ground along which women devised their individual circuits. A slow, meandering progress might begin at Piccadilly Circus and proceed up Regent Street, where a woman would take her time gazing at the shop windows, seeming to admire the hats, china, or toys on display while cautiously glancing to either side, to note whether the male passerby who slowed his gait and joined her was a genuine shopper, a potential john, or a police constable. If she had no luck, she might cross the road and proceed southward, perhaps stopping at the Café de l’Europe, where she might meet the eye of a gentleman and his friends. Failing this, her course would perhaps take her eastward down Coventry Street to Leicester Square, to stop in at the Alhambra. Somewhere along this route, at least once that night, a man would step close to her and tip his hat. He may have noticed that she raised the hem of her skirt an inch or so too high as she crossed the road and stepped onto the curb; however, as the busy West End was also filled with respectable shop girls leaving their places of employment for home and maids out on errands for their mistresses, he had to be careful. Even the seasoned philanderer “Walter” commented that he often found it difficult to differentiate between a prostitute and “a virtuous girl.” One he followed all the way from Bond Street to Piccadilly, uncertain of whether to approach her, because “she was so neatly dressed like a superior servant, that I couldn’t conclude if she were gay or not . . . she seemed to look at no one when stopping and looking at shops. When she did, I also stopped and looked, standing by the side of her.”

  In this quarter of London, it was obligatory for a potential client to make the first approach and for the woman to respond, either with flirtatious feigned horror or acceptance. Eventually, Walter leaned in toward the young woman and spoke to her.

  May I go home with you?

  She looked at me as if half astonished, then after hesitation, Yes, but I live three miles off—

  Let us get into a cab—

  Oh no, I can’t take you home.

  The situation was remedied when Walter hailed a cab and then found them “a snug accommodation house” ten minutes away.11

  While the area around Piccadilly and Leicester Square formed the semi-respectable, high-class heart of the city’s sex trade, prostitution was present in most parts of the metropolis, and in other corners of the West End. In the early 1880s, the area between the Strand and Charing Cross station was still a haunt for streetwalkers, as it had been for well over a century; other West End streets, such as Brewer Street and Lisle Street, just to the north of Leicester Square, became noted for older and cheaper women.12 Prostitution had also begun to move nearer to train stations, into areas with transient populations, hotels, and lodging houses, such as Euston and Victoria. However, Mary Jane, a young woman in her early twenties and at the height of her career, would have found no obstacle to making a good living in the center of town, at the top end of the sex trade. With a fashionably stout, five-feet-seven-inch figure, blue eyes, and long luxuriant hair, she possessed physical attractions that allowed her “to drive about in a carriage” and “lead the life of a lady.” She referred to herself as Marie Jeanette and accumulated “numerous dresses of a costly description.” Those who gathered at the Alhambra, at the Café de l’Europe, and at Jimmy’s would have undoubtedly known her well.

  Mary Jane would be accustomed to well-dressed gentlemen making her offers and promises—to entertain her at the races, to buy her gloves and jewelry, to spoil her with fine food and drink. The savviest women in the sex trade understood that their youthful allure was fleeting and that in order to capitalize on their worth it was essential to seize every opportunity put before them. So when “a gentleman” offered to take Mary Jane to Paris, she agreed.

  Like everything that Mary Jane Kelly recounted to Joseph Barnett about her past, the circumstances surrounding this particular proposal, the name of the gentleman involved, or any other detail concerning the trip was not revealed. How she came to know this man and whether he was a client or a serious romantic prospect or an acquaintance or someone who came to her with a business offer are unknown. However, what is certain is that the visit to Paris was not what it appeared to be on the surface. Mary Jane’s French landlady-procuress may have played a role in what transpired. At this time, international travelers sent their luggage separately to their intended destination, so Mary Jane packed most of her expen
sive wardrobe in a trunk; evidently she expected her madam to forward it to her address in Paris. The trunk was never sent, and perhaps its absence was the first thing that alerted Mary Jane to the possibility that she had been deceived.

  By the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the trafficking of women between Britain and continental Europe had become a lucrative enterprise. The expansion of rail networks and shipping made it cheaper and easier for people to travel and goods to be shipped. It also allowed those “goods” to reach a wider range of markets and cater to particular tastes. Just as London became a receiving hub for young women from France, Belgium, and Germany, English girls were procured and shipped out to brothels in these and other countries. A former trafficker, in an interview with the newspaper editor W. T. Stead, estimated at least 250 British women were sent to Belgium and northern France in 1884 alone. Of those, two-thirds were abducted after accepting a position in service abroad or a sham proposal of marriage.13 Often, they were plied with drink or doped, given false travel documents, and bundled onto a train.

  In 1879, Adelene Tanner, a recently unemployed domestic, was horrified to find herself in this position. It had all begun innocently enough when John Sallecartes, a “respectably dressed man” with a foreign accent, struck up a conversation with her in a railway waiting room.14 By chance, Adelene encountered “Sullie” again and on this occasion agreed to join him for a drink at a hotel in Soho. A more experienced young woman, someone like Mary Jane, who knew the sex trade, would have immediately sensed what was happening, but nineteen-year-old Adelene was a virgin, and a sheltered one. Sullie saw to it that the girl’s glass of wine was regularly refilled and soon “she could scarcely remember what [she] said.” He also took the opportunity to introduce her to his business partner, a handsome Belgian called Frederick Schultz, who, like Sallecartes, was a placeur, or recruiter for continental brothels. With the room spinning, Adelene was then presented to the man who would be her pimp. This was Édouard Roger, a Frenchman, who after a short conversation told her that he had “taken a great fancy to [her]; that he would like to take her to Paris, and if after seeing his grand house, carriages &c. [she] would like to be his wife, he would marry [her].”15 The intoxicated, bedazzled servant enthusiastically agreed. Of course, Adelene, along with two other young women tricked by Sullie and Schultz, was not destined for Paris, but for Brussels and the locked rooms of a maison close, a state-sanctioned brothel. Before departing England, all three were issued false identities. Upon arrival in Belgium, they were warned that they had just participated in an illegal activity, and if they ever attempted to flee Roger’s house, they would be arrested immediately.