A Ripper Notes Article

This article originally appeared in Ripper Notes. Ripper Notes is the only American Ripper periodical available on the market, and has quickly grown into one of the more substantial offerings in the genre. For more information, view our Ripper Notes page. Our thanks to the editor of Ripper Notes for permission to reprint this article.

The Whitechapel Dossier: Dorset Street and Miller's Court
as reported by The Viper

OVERVIEW
       Joe Barnett and Mary Kelly's room at 13 Miller's Court, 26 Dorset Street was a single room, (10 ft. x12 ft.). It was actually a partitioned section of the ground floor back room of the main house. The only door was just inside the arched entry to the court. Their rent was 4s. 6d. (22 1/2p) per week, and was 29s. (L1.45) in arrears when Kelly was murdered.
       Dorset St. ran East-West from Commercial Street to Crispin Street. At the Commercial St. end it faced the churchyard of Christ Church, Spitalfields - an area sometimes known as "Itchy Park." Opposite the other end stood the Providence Row Night Refuge and Convent at 50 Crispin St, facing Dorset St. from the West side. It was quite a narrow thoroughfare and was about 130 yards long. It was flanked by old, brick-built properties whose doors opened directly to the Street, these dating from the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century. The surviving photographs of nos. 26 and 27, taken by Leonard Matters, author of The Mystery of Jack the Ripper, appear to show houses built to post 1709 regulations.
       Dorset Street's properties were numbered consecutively along the south side from west to east (1-20) and back along the north side from east to west (21-39). Guarding either end on the north side were two public houses. The three story Britannia (aka Ringer's after its landlady, Matilda Ringer) stood at the Commercial St. end, whilst the similarly imposing Horn Of Plenty, (officially no. 5 Crispin St, landlord Christopher Brown) was at the other.