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** This is an archived, static copy of the Casebook messages boards dating from 1998 to 2003. These threads cannot be replied to here. If you want to participate in our current forums please go to https://forum.casebook.org **
Was it really Mary Kelly?
Casebook Message Boards: Ripper Victims: Specific Victims:
Mary Jane Kelly:
Was it really Mary Kelly?
| | SUBTOPIC | MSGS | Last Updated |
 | Archive through April 21, 1999 | 20 | 04/21/1999 12:14pm |
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| Archive through June 15, 2001 | 40 | 06/15/2001 01:01pm |
| Archive through January 15, 2000 | 20 | 01/15/2000 02:41am |
| Archive through January 24, 2000 | 20 | 01/24/2000 06:36am |
| Archive through March 24, 2000 | 20 | 03/24/2000 04:43am |
| Archive through May 12, 2000 | 20 | 05/12/2000 04:53am |
| Archive through May 7, 1999 | 20 | 05/07/1999 04:46am |
| Archive through May 8, 2000 | 20 | 05/08/2000 01:52pm |
Author: Orchetanna
Friday, 15 June 2001 - 07:08 pm |        | If Jack had a key as some seem to think, could he have locked himself in ? would the key have worked on the inside as well as the outside ?
Anna |
Author: Mark List
Friday, 15 June 2001 - 07:15 pm | | I would think that it would. Many locks today have keys on each side, and I believe that he would lock himself in to ensure privacy.
Mark |
Author: Bob Hinton
Saturday, 16 June 2001 - 09:06 am | | Dear Everyone,
Just a few points about recent postings. I feel there is a tendancy here to say something, accept is as fact then go off in all directions trying to explain these 'facts'. For example:
Posting by Mick Lyden Wednesday June 13th.
'Given the fact that there was not one, but several sightings of Kelly, way after the estimated time of death'
Wrong. I believe only two people are on record as saying they saw someone they believed to be Kelly on that Friday morning. One was Caroline Maxwell, who admitted she didn't really know Kelly and had only spoken to her twice over the last few weeks, and the other was Maurice Lewis who statement is so riddled with inaccuracies it is practically worthless.
So your two conclusions based on this erronous assumption are false.
You then go on to say it was probably Kelly that lit the fire before undressing and climbing into bed. Let me make a guess Mick, you've never been poor have you? If you are going to try and make any sense of this case you are going to try and think and behave the way your principals do. You have to live their life - not yours. Consider this.
1. What are you suggesting MJK used for fuel to start her fire with - a recent consignment of nutty slack from the coal merchant.
2. Poor people don't light fires before getting into bed - poor people go to bed to avoid lighting fires.
You then say Jack threw clothes on the fire to stifle it. Why? 'He had ample light to work by of course' Really. Have you ever been in a slum room, tucked down an alley in November with the windows covered and had 'ample light'. You then say 'the fire may have smouldered for quite a while before flaring up as we know it did' We know absolutely nothing of the sort, and all the evidence points to the fact that there was no roaring fire.
Moving on.
Jon June 14th. What reported blood stains around the glass?
As for the interest in the lock, I have learned today that my quest to obtain the type of lock I believe was fitted to MJK's door is succesful and I shall be bringing same to the conference so that everyone can see how the thing works.
all the best
Bob Hinton |
Author: Simon Owen
Saturday, 16 June 2001 - 09:57 am | | I agree with your point about the fire 100% Bob , it was a cold night but Mary would have put an extra blanket ( or the old clothes left to her ) on the bed before lighting the fire.
Similarly I don't think we can say that the fire would have been used for cooking , it would have been far easier for Mary to have gone to the lodging house across the road if she wanted to cook something. Maybe she wanted to make a cup of tea - possible but we have no evidence Mary was boiling the kettle for tea or even had any tea in the room. She probably spent too much money on drink to be able to afford tea IMHO.
Our conclusion then is surely that Jack lit the fire. |
Author: Jon
Saturday, 16 June 2001 - 12:31 pm | | Bob
Blood on glass...
Daily Telegraph, Saturday Nov. 10th.
(also page 337 of Stewarts "Ultimate")
"Having failed to open the door, he passed round the angle of the house and pulled the blind of the window, one of the pains being broken. Then he noticed blood upon the glass, and it immediately occured to him that another murder had been committed." (Bowyer)
Regards, Jon
(true or false, there you have it) |
Author: Warwick Parminter
Saturday, 16 June 2001 - 01:42 pm | | Bob, there has been quite a lot of talk about the lock that was fitted to Mary's door. I made a few suggestions myself, there are so many variations I don't think it's possible to really say what lock. But like you , it doesn't stop me from wondering. I've thought of another sort, it screws onto door, about 7inx5inx1in thick. It has a recessed place for a thumb to push across a bolt out of the lock into the keep on the door frame. I think there is quite a bit to ponder on regarding that locked door, it could have been locked and bolted, or just locked, but not just "bolted" or "catched". If the door was unlocked at around 4 o'clock by someone reaching through the window, who also had the key to the door,then I would think that person when he left,would lock the door with the key, and reach through the window, and re-catch the door on the in-side. As far as the fire goes, there could have been a roaring fire some time after 04:00, even though Elizabeth Prater didn't hear one. But what does that do to the theory that Mary was killed a number of hours later than four o'clock.
If that had been the case, when the body was found, the fire would still be burning, the room and the body still warm.
Regards Rick. |
Author: Michael Lyden
Saturday, 16 June 2001 - 09:36 pm | | Hello everyone.
Bob Hinton, Are you saying that it is unlikely that Kelly ever used the fireplace in her room and that you belive the Ripper lit the fire,as Abberline suggested, to provide him with light to work by?
I have to disagree.
Years ago I got talking to a neighbour who was in her 80s.she told me that, when she was young and realy quite poor,as they couldn't afford coal,her father used to collect old bits of scrap wood,twigs and even newspapers and use this for fuel.All these things a free of course.I'm sure many poor victorians such as Kelly did the same.
As I stated, I believe that Jack murdered Kelly sometime after 10.am and I am always supprised at how many people dismiss the statements given by Caroline Maxwell and other witnesses(I'm sure I read that there were three-but I must do some re-reading,using primary sources of course) who claimed to have seen Kelly later on that morning.It's always the same story, a theorist will say someting like "She was drunk or confused about the date or he was just trying to get his name in the paper".To me Caroline Maxwell's statement is perfectly clear and honest.I just can't see how she could have been mistaken.Her statement was taken the very same day.She had Known Kelly for months and she had spoken directly to kelly across the street.Why should the number of conversations you have with a person affect your ability to recognise them?I can think of a number people that I pass almost every day,whose name I know and have never even spoken to, but could easily identify if asked.
I suppose you either accept the accuracy of the estimated time of death or you don't.I wont bother to argue here.
I must admit Bob, that I share your interest in MJK's door lock.I am eager to hear about your research in this area.
After much consideration regarding the lock I came to the conclusion that it was the spring type that wasn't actually lockable using the key.
The key was simply used to actuate the bolt,which could be moved manualy from the inside of the room of course.
Any comments would be most welcome.
Regards,
Mick Lyden |
Author: Bob Hinton
Saturday, 16 June 2001 - 10:00 pm | | Dear everyone,
Simon, no you've done exactly what I am talking about. Stated something then drawn a conclusion based on an erronous assumption. You say 'Our conclusion then is surely Jack lit the fire' Why? Let me present a far more likely scenario. MJK returns with carroty man with the intention of partying down. He is carrying what appears to be beer. They enter the room. Both of them are wet and cold. MJK lights a fire with what little fuel she has - old clothes. Now according to the picture in Reynolds Newspaper her shoes were placed before the fireplace, the only person interested in drying MJK shoes is MJK. Now obviously we don't know for certain if the shoes were there, its all down to how accurate the drawing was.
The fire doesn't blaze, clothes don't - it smoulders. That's why the ashes were still warm the following afternoon when Abberline inspected the room.
Jon,
Thanks for the reference, but you must appreciate that is not what Bowyer said - that is what some reporter has him saying. When you read Bowyers actual words in the inquest papers there is no mention of blood on the glass.
Rick,
I think you've got a bit mixed up here. There is no mystery about the lock. It was a spring bolt lock which meant it shot the bolt on being pulled to, just like a Yale type lock does today. It also had a button to hold the bolt back, on the latch, and that is what I believe MJK did. She left the door on the latch, returns with a customer who then leaves and neglects to slip the bolt on leaving. She is fast asleep with the door unfastened. Jack enters, does the deed and then leaves, slipping the catch on the way out. Door locks behind him everything is as found. No reaching through holes in glass, no keys or anything exotic needed.
I do not believe there was a roaring fire in the grate at anytime during this period for several reasons.
1. A roaring fire needs fuel - there wasn't any.
2. A roaring fire consumes fuel at a faster rate, therefore if there was a roaring fire at four or five it would have consumed all the fuel and been cold at noon. The only fire which can be lit one day and still be warm half a day later is one that smoulders. What smoulders? Clothes do. Were clothes or remnants therof found in the grate? Yes they were. Where is the problem with accepting this simple logical conclusion? I would suggest that anyone who had left the vent open on an Aga and come back a few hours later to find the thing out and cold could tell you all you need to know about roaring fires!
all the best
Bob Hinton |
Author: Jon
Saturday, 16 June 2001 - 11:07 pm | | Michael
Your 80 yr old neighbour live in the country when she was small?, there wouldn't be much in the way of twigs to chose from in Dorset St. 
I think many local East Enders collected horse dung as fuel for fires as well as anything else that would burn.
Bob
Yes, the press report appears to be a 'story' at worse or a paraphrase at best. What I see though in surviving inquest testimony is that it has been edited therefore we cannot always know for certain the total of what was actually said.
Regards, Jon |
Author: Warwick Parminter
Sunday, 17 June 2001 - 05:21 am | | Bob,
It's all very well you saying you have the answer to the locked door, you seem to be taking the simplest explanation as the way it was. But why did McCarthy, under the watchful gaze of senior policemen, force the door open, maybe ruining the edge of the door and the frame, when all he need have done was slip a catch on the inside of the door, or Barnett could have been asked to reach through and do it, he was there on the scene before the police entered the room!!
Donald Rumbelow states in his book, "someone had a "KEY" to that room, and used it". Now either Rumbelow is a tale-teller or the door was locked with a key, and who was the most likely character to have the "lost" key?
Regards Rick |
Author: Orchetanna
Sunday, 17 June 2001 - 05:28 am | | Jon
Yes, as a kid in London I well remember the Rag and Bone man, if the horse was good enough to 'perform', it would take about 60 secs, on average, before someone was out with their spade, seen a few fights over ownership too !
We were lucky enough to have coal but still used anything to hand to eke it out including clothes,not much in the way of man made fibres to melt or flare, we used rags on a well made fire to act as a damper as they smoulder for a long time.
Out of interest when was the first synthetics (nylon I believe) in general circulation , anybody know?
Anna |
Author: The Viper
Sunday, 17 June 2001 - 06:02 am | | Jon,
Concerning fuel for the fire, you may be correct that MJK collected dried horse dung to burn. However, drying it was a problem in the winter months and I have a suspicion that Mick is also correct about the use of wood. With Spitalfields Market just one block away there'd have been plenty of combustable rubbish around. Walk through any working market area today at the end of trading and you'll find broken bits of palettes, wooden boxes etc. strewn about. However, in such a poor area as Spitalfields in 1888, the local Board of Works is unlikely to have had to spend much money on clearing it up - there would be keen competition among the locals to retrieve the debris every afternoon! The immediate area also contained packing case manufacturers, as we know from 23A and 29 Hanbury Street. No doubt all their off-cuts found good homes too.
Dorset Street also housed a coal merchant at no. 39. Whilst street plans show no evidence that coal was stored on the site, the occasional coal cart belonging to the coleman doubtless rumbled through the street. When it did the odd bit of coal almost certainly disappeared from the back of it! The crime known as 'van dragging' was a huge problem in those days.
For the Dorset Street residents it was a question of getting what you could from wherever you could find it.
Regards, V. |
Author: Bob Hinton
Sunday, 17 June 2001 - 06:45 am | | Dear Everyone,
Michael
No I certainly don't mean that MJK never lit her fire and therefore it was Jack otherwise I would have said that. What I said was poor people don't light a fire and get into bed - they get into bed to avoid lighting a fire, blankets being cheaper to heat you than fuel! Of course MJK would have filched anything that would burn to use as fuel - even some of the furniture if she had any!
Rick,
You're right I do have a bad habit of taking the mostly likely explanation as being -well- the most likely. Has it occured to you that McCarthy was acting underinstructions to force the door and merely did as he was told. Also doesn't that tend to suggest that the simple method of reaching through the window and slipping the catch back wasn't quite as simple as it has been claimed. I for one do not think that the window method was a viable option. My experiments show that it was practically impossible and carried a great deal of risk of severe injury.
As for Barnett being there I am not aware that he was during the early stages.
I do not agree with your assertion that either Donald Rumbelow ( a person I have the utmost respect for) is a tale teller or that the door was locked with a key. This is just what I have been talking about - jumping to conclusions based on faulty premises. Why don't you accept there might be a simpler answer to this contradiction? Perhaps Mr Rumbelow made a mistake? Abberline says the lock was a spring bolt type and after all he was there.
all the very best
Bob Hinton
PS If anyone can tell me how to do a smiley face it might take an unintended hard edge off my postings! |
Author: Jon
Sunday, 17 June 2001 - 07:59 am | | Bob
Do a smiley face with : ) together (no space between)
On the subject of Kelly's door lock:
I suspect the 'spring-lock' was a seperate mounted fixture installed at chest height at the back of the door. Three circumstantial reasons suggest this to me.
1 - As Rick points out, McCarthy owned the property so if the spring-lock was integral with the key-lock he would have known about it. This then suggests a seperate device installed possibly by Barnett.
2 - From tentative scaling of the property I find the upper broken window pain conveniently located to make a comfortable (horizontal as opposed to diagonal) reach for a back-of-door mounted device installed about chest height, which is the usual location for someone installing a 2nd security lock.
3 - A door lock with an integral spring-lock would have been more expensive than one without and had an integral door lock been the standard on all the doors in Millers Court plenty of residents could have pointed this out to police.
Not strong 'proof' agreed, but points to consider.
Regards, Jon |
Author: Warwick Parminter
Sunday, 17 June 2001 - 09:17 am | | Bob, whatever I say I hope won't be seen by you as having bad manners or feelings at the back of it!, because I'm hoping to see you and others in Sept. I don't know Donald Rumbelow, never met him.
But he's a retired police officer, and an author, how could I feel anything but respect for him. The words he put into print were part of JtR folk-lore.He believes them, why don't you?, why are you right and he, (and me) are mistaken?. Either you believe in your and Abberlines spring lock, which I do up to a point,-- (because no one can be sure)-- then you have to believe in the window to doorcatch entry, no ifs or buts,-- its more JtR folk-lore, these words were written down before you and me were born, and I'm 70. Why do you disagree? I believe them, because it makes sense to me, and I also believe the door was locked with a "key", other-wise the door would never have been commented on again and again, over all these years!
Regards Rick |
Author: Jon
Sunday, 17 June 2001 - 09:45 am | | With all due respect to the icon's of our study....there are mistakes in Rumbelows books, Sugdens, the A-Z, etc.
Authors are constantly learning too.
Regards, Jon |
Author: Michael Lyden
Sunday, 17 June 2001 - 11:00 am | | Hello,
Bob,I realy like this idea of MJK relying on a door catch rather than using the arm through the window trick .However,how can you be sure that there was a catch.
correct me if I am wrong,but in an earlier post you told us that you were on the verge of being able to prove,exactly the type of lock that was fitted to Kelly's door.Don't keep us in suspense Bob,post us the details.
Regards,
Mick Lyden |
Author: Bob Hinton
Sunday, 17 June 2001 - 12:00 pm | | Dear Mick and others,
No certainly not being able to prove what lock was fitted, but able to produce an example of the type of lock used at that time and going under the generic term of spring lock.
These locks were known as night latches and were the Woolworths specials of their day. They were extremely cheap and in wholesale use as they fixed on the surface of the door and did not need to be morticed. I have heard from the Antique lock dealer I have been using and he has confirmed he has found me a specimen (unused believe it or not!) and I will be bringing it to the conference to show anyone who is interested. I'm going to be putting them everywhere from now on. Where do the yellow ones come from?
Bob Hinton |
Author: Simon Owen
Sunday, 17 June 2001 - 12:30 pm | | It doesn't necessarily mean that Mary lit the fire to dry her shoes because they were left in front of it , it may merely have been force of habit that she put them there.
The problem Bob with the ' simple logical conclusion ' that the fire was a smouldering one and not a roaring one , is that the spout and handle of the tin kettle in the grate had melted off. This comes from Inspector Abberline himself. ( Rumbelow p.103 ). Now we could say that this had happened previous to that night , but then that leads us to ask : why had Mary not removed the kettle from the grate or had it mended or bought another kettle ? Plus it would take a pretty big fire to melt the solder , why would Mary have lit such a large fire previously ?
Its possible Mary lit a small fire when the carrot faced man had visited her , but we don't know how long he stayed or the reason for visiting , although we might make a few assumptions ! Since this was the previous evening , it would probably have gone out by the time Mary was killed though. |
Author: Michael Lyden
Sunday, 17 June 2001 - 12:31 pm | | Sounds good to me Bob.
Mick Lyden |
Author: Tee Vee
Friday, 24 January 2003 - 02:57 pm | | (THIS IS A QUESTION POSED BY A DISTANT FRIEND OF MINE.)
At the moment I am especially interested in Mary Kelly's death. It seems that nobody can agree on exactly what time her death did occur. I have no forensic/pathological training so I can't really comment on that. What I found, though, on looking back through some notes was that when Abberline examined the fireplace it was supposedly still warm, which I deduce to be (I hope) 7 hours after her death. So then I get thinking, okay, the fireplace was still warm - could it possibly still be warm? Or is it that Mary Kelly's time of death is in fact later in the morning than the traditional time of 4:00amish?
At one time I actually was thinking that perhaps MK had let some other prostitute use her room and that it was she (MK) that actually lit the fire after the Ripper had left. That way, the doctor's could have been right and time of death was around 4, but the victim was not MK. Picture this -
MK comes home and finds the body
She is promptly sick when she comes outside and is seen by Mrs Cox (after time of death)
She then rushes back in and decides to get rid of the evidence - so it looks like she is the one thats dead.
She starts a fire to burn the other prostitute's clothes
Takes Maria Harvey's clothing to sell (The clothes that were supposedly burnt in the fire)
Leaves her clothes and skips the country.
But there are several things wrong with this. Firstly, I do not believe that MK would burn the other clothes - she'd be far more likely to keep them to sell as she has no money and clothes are expensive. Secondly, I do not think that MK had the means to escape - where would she go? And would she be clearheaded enough to dispose of the evidence.
But then she did have that rent owing to McCarthy
PS Opinions wanted |
Author: Diana
Friday, 24 January 2003 - 07:53 pm | | | Where was she and what was she doing all that time when Jack was doing his thing? |
Author: Dan Norder
Saturday, 25 January 2003 - 03:19 pm | | The main question here is why would MJK try to hide the fact that it wasn't her that was dead? To decide that she'd want to hide it she'd have to know that Jack (or whomever) was after her specifically as a person and not just any prostitute that he could get. Other than wild conspiracy theories that don't hold up, how could this be?
Beyond that, Maxwell's testimony doesn't sound like someone trying to hide and run, it sounds like some female (who doesn't match MJK's description as provided by others) going on with life like normal.
It's a nice story, but doesn't seem to fit.
Dan
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Author: Diana
Saturday, 25 January 2003 - 06:13 pm | | | If I came home and found a mess like that in my bed, I wouldn't stop to wonder whether he was after me specifically or not! I'd get outta there! |
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