November 2020 No. 168 HER BURIAL AND MARY KELLY RESURRECTION LINDSAY SIVITER JONATHAN MENGES UNIVERSITY OF LEICESTER DORSET STREET REVISITED BRUCE COLLIE NINA AND HOWARD BROWN VICTORIAN FICTION • PRESS TRAWL THE LATEST BOOK REVIEWS Ripperologist 118 January 2011 1 RIPPEROLOGIST 168 NOVEMBER 2020 Editorial THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY Adam Wood MARY JANE KELLY’S MORTUARY Lindsay Siviter FLYING BLIND WITH WYNNE WESTON DAVIES Jonathan Menges THE MARY KELLY PROJECT Dr Turi King, Mathew Morris, Professor Kevin Schürer and Carl Vivian, University of Leicester DORSET STREET REVISITED NEVILL SWANSON: A REMEMBRANCE Adam Wood Central News DEATH AT EDMONTON WORKHOUSE Bruce Collie THE RESCUE OF AMEER BEN ALI Nina and Howard Brown Press Trawl A CLUE IN GOULSTON STREET Victorian Fiction MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH Eduardo Zinna BOOK REVIEWS Paul Begg and David Green Ripperologist magazine is published by Mango Books (www.MangoBooks.co.uk). 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Ripperologist 168 November 2020 Editorial THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY ADAM WOOD It’s undeniable, but for many there’s something about Mary Jane Kelly which seems EXECUTIVE EDITOR to set her apart from the rest of the so-called canonical five. She is often named as a Adam Wood commentator’s ‘favourite’ of the victims for want of a better description afforded − − EDITORS ‘special’ status. Gareth Williams Why is that? What is the fascination? Eduardo Zinna Is it because she was younger, at around 25-years of age, than Polly Nichols, Annie EDITOR-AT-LARGE Chapman, Catherine Eddowes and Elisabeth Stride, all in their forties? Yet both Catherine Jonathan Menges Mylett (29-years-old) and Frances Coles (31), non-canonical but very much part of the Met’s official Whitechapel Murder file, could quite rightly point to their own youth. REVIEWS EDITOR Paul Begg Is it because Mary was reportedly the most attractive of the victims? Walter Dew, in 1888 a young Whitechapel constable who claimed to know her ‘quite well’ by sight, wrote in his COLUMNISTS memoir that she was “quite attractive”, and Melville Macnaghten, who took office after her Nina and Howard Brown death, still wrote that she possessed “considerable personal attractions”. But, again, Frances Bruce Collie David Green Coles was widely reported to have been blessed with good looks. But Frances nor Catherine Mylett feature much at all in popular mainstream dramatisations, ARTWORK and as a result we’ve seen producers of films and television treatments of the Ripper story Adam Wood deliberately cast younger, attractive actresses as Mary Kelly to accentuate the point that she was ‘special’; Lysette Anthony (Jack the Ripper, 1988), Heather Graham (From Hell, 2001), Edina Ronay (A Study in Terror, 1965). Most Ripper movies and fiction books (and some nonfiction!) present the murder of Mary as the key to the whole mystery, with her death ending the series. It is probably a combination of all the above, combined with the fact that she was the only victim killed indoors (subsequently suffering horrendous mutilations far beyond anything Ripperologist magazine is the Ripper had carried out before), and that so little of her life story as told to paramour Joe published six times a year and Barnett has been confirmed as fact, lends her an air of mystery and intrigue. 132 years after supplied in digital format. It is her death, we are still in the dark about her true identity. free of charge to subscribers. One man determined to get to the bottom of this last mystery is Wynne Weston-Davies, who Back issues from 62-167 are believes that Mary was in fact his great-aunt Elizabeth Weston Davies, living in Whitechapel available in PDF format on our under a pseudonym. Since his book The Real Mary Kelly was published in 2015, Wynne has website. been campaigning for the exhumation of the remains buried in St Patrick’s Cemetery under the An index to Ripperologist grave marker dedicated to Mary Jane Kelly. The author recently joined Jonathan Menges, Paul magazine can also be Begg and Jon Rees to talk about his efforts, and a report of the discussion appears in this issue downloaded. of Ripperologist. We are also grateful to Dr Turi King and her team at the University of Leicester To be added to the mailing list, for permission to republish their report (commissioned by Patricia Cornwell) on the problems to submit a book for review or facing such as exhumation and identification. to place an advertisement, get in Elsewhere in this issue we have an in-depth article by Lindsay Siviter on the history of the touch at contact@ripperologist. Shoreditch Mortuary, where Mary Kelly’s remains lay before their interment, and rounding co.uk off a collection of Kelly-related features we have a history of Dorset Street and Miller’s Court. We welcome well-researched If that wasn’t enough, also included in this edition are regular columns from Bruce Collie, articles on any aspect of the Eduardo Zinna, and Nina and Howard Brown, a Press Trawl chronicling the reporting of a Whitechapel murders, the East End or the Victorian era in clue at Goulston Street, and the latest book reviews by Paul Begg and David Green. general. Enjoy the issue! www.ripperologist.co.uk 1 Ripperologist 168 November 2020 MARY JANE KELLY’S MORTUARY By LINDSAY SIVITER This is the first of a series of articles exploring various of his career as a Coroner for the part of London which topics connected to Jack the Ripper victim Mary Jane included Shoreditch, wrote a section about jurors, saying Kelly. The main black and white photographs in this ‘It is a very rare event in N.E. London for a juror to object article have not to my knowledge appeared in any to the view of the body; in general the jurors are found article or book before on Jack the Ripper. I believe to take great interest in the view, often more than in the they show the actual mortuary where Mary Jane verbal evidence’.1 Humans are sometimes a macabre Kelly’s mortal remains were taken after her murder. species. On the day of the inquest into her death on Monday I do not propose to go into any more detail regarding the 12th November 1888, after the jurors had arrived at Starchfield murder case as I do not want to spoil Dr Oates’ Shoreditch Town Hall and were duly sworn, they were forthcoming book. However, it was during a conversation taken by Inspector Abberline to view Mary Jane Kelly’s about his research that he made a passing comment about body a few minutes’ walk away at the Shoreditch Public the fact that Willie Starchfield’s body had been taken to Mortuary. This was located at the rear of St Leonard’s the Shoreditch Mortuary, the same mortuary as Ripper Church in Shoreditch. Afterwards they proceeded to victim Mary Jane Kelly. visit the crime scene at 13 Miller’s Court, subsequently returning to the Shoreditch Town Hall to hear witness When I got home I started looking online for any testimony. Presided over by the coroner for North East possible image sources for this story, and to my utter Middlesex, Dr Roderick Macdonald MP, the short inquest surprise I discovered several what appear to be press was duly concluded with a verdict of ‘Wilful murder by images of the mortuary in question on the Ancestry person or persons unknown’. The mortuary thus played website. On the reverse of the photograph showing the its part in the tragic story of Mary Jane Kelly, and many building in most detail, with a group of people standing researchers over the years have looked in vain for a outside, was the note “The Jury go to the mortuary to view photograph of it. the body”. Written on the top right hand corner is the date Where did I then find these amazing images of the the photograph was taken, 15th January 1914. So, at last, mortuary building, I hear you cry! The answer begins it seems we have an image of the mortuary connected to with a conversation with author Dr Jonathan Oates, who Mary Jane Kelly.