Jack the Ripper’s Limerick victim
The series is again filmed in the streets of Dublin, rather than London’s East End, where it is set in the spring of 1890, a year and a half after the last of Jack the Ripper’s killings. Tiger Aspect Production’s head of drama, Will Gould, promises “another unforgettable walk on the wild side” of Whitechapel.
So great was the number of Irish immigrants who settled in the East End slums after the Famine that it came to be nicknamed ‘Little Dublin’. Some found casual labour in the docks and markets; many trundled wheelbarrows through the streets, selling nuts and oranges. A few, such as Mary Jane Kelly, became prostitutes.
Kelly was born in Limerick on Mar 31, 1863. When she was a child she moved with her six brothers and one sister to Wales where her father was foreman at an ironworks. At 16 she was married to a coal miner, John Davies, but within two years he was killed in a pit explosion and Kelly had to fend for herself. She went to live in Cardiff where she and her cousin drifted into prostitution.
Attracted by the bright lights and wealthy punters, in 1884 she moved to London’s West End and worked for a French madame in Knightsbridge. A client took her to a brothel in Paris, promising she would earn enough money there to set up a business. Far from her friends and family, she became homesick; and when the fabulous earnings never materialised, she ran back to London.
She settled in the rough East End, and became one of the girls at a house in Breezer’s Hill frequented by sailors. She was described as very quarrelsome and abusive when drunk but “one of the most decent and nicest girls you could meet” when sober.
By early 1887 Kelly (who now called herself ‘Marie Jeanette’) was plying her trade up and down Commercial Street, Whitechapel, servicing the market workers and drinking heavily. There she met the Irish cockney Joseph Barnett, a fish porter at Billingsgate market.
In January 1888 they began renting a dingy room at 13 Miller’s Court, Dorset Street, for four shillings and sixpence a week. The Dublin Evening Mail described it as a “miserable apology for a dwelling”, not more than 12 feet long, with an ancient bed and one chair. Clothing hung at the windows in place of curtains.
Kelly would get Barnett to read aloud from the newspaper about the Whitechapel murders. They frightened her so much that she thought about leaving London.
Early in November they argued when she brought a prostitute back to share their room. A window was broken, and Barnett left her. The Ripper had been inactive for over a month, and Kelly felt safe to return to the streets. At about 11.45pm, on the night of Nov 8, another prostitute who lived in Miller’s Court saw her coming home very drunk with a “livid-faced man with a carroty moustache”. She called out, ‘Goodnight Mary’. Kelly called back ‘Goodnight’ and began to sing an Irish song.
At 2am a labourer saw her in Flower and Dean Street with a man wearing a hat drawn down over his eyes. They went off to Miller’s Court together, laughing.
At 4am another prostitute with a room directly above Kelly’s heard a cry of “Oh murder!” but took no notice because it was such a common cry in the East End. When the collector came for Kelly’s rent at 10.45am he got no answer. What he saw through the broken window made him rush back to fetch the landlord. The crime scene was so hideous that full details were not reported in newspapers at the time.
If you can stomach reading about it, we know the body and the bed were covered with blood. Kelly had been completely disembowelled and her entrails placed on the table. Her nose had been cut off and her face was gashed. Her liver lay between her feet, and one of her breasts had been placed with her uterus and kidneys next to her left foot.
The police cordoned off the area. The windows of No. 13 were boarded up, the door padlocked and at 4pm, Kelly’s body was taken away. When Barnett went to the mortuary he found her body so mutilated that he could only recognise her by her hair and eyes.
News of the latest Ripper murder swept through the courts and alleys of the East End, causing mass hysteria. “A fiend — a second Mr Hyde — must be abroad in the East End,” exclaimed the Cork Examiner. “We are in the midst of a tornado of horrors.”
The newspaper was scathing about the competence of the police to apprehend the perpetrator. These sentiments are echoed today by the writer of Ripper Street, Richard Warlow, who questions how the force could sleep at night, “knowing that they had failed so spectacularly”. The Ripper is still on the loose. Tune in tonight, if you dare.
* Ripper Street is on BBC One tonight at 9pm
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