The Five
Page 37
[back]
* * *
* In fact, John Kelly was at Cooney’s. He had managed to procure four pence for his bed since parting with Kate; when someone told him that Kate had been arrested, he asked Wilkinson for a single bed.
[back]
* * *
* In contrast to these comments, some have questioned whether Mary Jane was even literate. Numerous newspapers paraphrased and misquoted Joseph Barnett’s inquest statement about “reading newspapers to her.” The definitive version of his statement, as it appears in the official Coroner’s Inquest document, reads, “she had on several occasions asked me to read about the murders.”
[back]
* * *
* http://Booth.lse.ac.uk Booth/B/362, Arthur L. Baxter’s notebook: Police District 27, Brompton. In mapping areas of wealth, deprivation, and crime in the 1890s, Arthur Baxter, one of Charles Booth’s inspectors, mentioned that Beauchamp Place, located across the Brompton Road from the square, was noted for its “respectable knocking shops.” Many of the buildings were inhabited by prostitutes who worked in Piccadilly and brought their clients home. Nearby Pelham Place was also noted for its “colony of foreign prostitutes.” Baxter commented that on the whole, the prostitutes in this area were of a higher caliber and mostly solicited in the West End.
[back]
* * *
* Despite extensive research into the names of those serving in the Scots Guards, no one has turned up a Henry or John or Johnto Kelly among the enlisted privates. In spite of inquiries, no one from the Scots Guard came forward in response to the description of Mary Jane Kelly in 1888 either. If Mary Jane’s story as told to Joseph Barnett is to be believed, the likelihood of a poor, working-class boy based in rural Wales joining a London-based Scottish regiment is remote. The 2nd Scots Guard was based at Westminster barracks during the second half of the 1880s, with periods spent abroad in Egypt, the Sudan, and Dublin. It is more likely that Mary Jane met an officer from the regiment through her professional connections, and this man may have acquired a fondness for her. Referring to former lovers with whom one still maintained contact as “brothers” or “cousins,” in order to disguise an intimate history from a new lover, was a ruse commonly employed by women in the sex trade.
[back]
* * *
* The census enumerator in 1891 accidentally indicated that the three female boarders at 1 Breezer’s Hill in their twenties were “unfortunates,” or prostitutes, before crossing out this indiscretion.
[back]
* * *
* In his testimony, Joseph Barnett stated that Mary Jane lived with a man called Morgenstern (a reference to Mrs. Boekü’s husband, Johannes) and also Joe Fleming. His statement is a very confused one. At one point he mentioned that Mary Jane lived near Stepney gasworks, or a gasworks, with one of these two men. As Pennington Street is not near a gasworks and there is no evidence that she lived with Adrianus Morgenstern, it is more likely he was referring to Fleming. The eastern part of Old Bethnal Green Road faces onto what was once Bethnal Green gasworks.
[back]
* * *
* The identity of this first woman is unknown. The name Julia appeared in Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaperon November 11, but the journalist may have mistakenly inserted the name of Julia Venturney, who appeared before Maria Harvey at the inquest into Mary Jane’s death.
[back]
* * *