Mary Kelly was buried in Leytonstone on 19th November

Questions and answers.

• ·  Mary Kelly was buried in St Patrick's Catholic Cemetery, Leytonstone on 19th November, though not before searching inquiries in England, Ireland and Wales failed to turn up any member of her family. This is curious, especially as the international publicity that attended her demise brought to light no-one from her pre-London existence.
• ·  Yet someone knew Kelly, and of her whereabouts, since according to John McCarthy she occasionally received mail from Ireland. These letters, McCarthy believed, came from her mother.
• ·  He believed they did. Belief isn’t knowing. Bridget Davies lives in Dublin.
• ·  But another source, a Mrs Elizabeth Phoenix, sister-in-law of former landlady Mrs Carthy, insisted that Mary Jane’s parents had “discarded her”, a claim that suggests McCarthy was mistaken over the Irish correspondent’s identity.
• ·  McCarthy needn’t have been mistaken. Mary received letters with an Irish post mark. That he assumed the letters were from her mother, is his error. Mrs Elizabeth Phoenix is therefore correct.
• ·  Joe Barnett said that Kelly kept in touch with only one family member, a brother named Henry and to whom she referred as ‘Johnto’. Barnett also asserted that Johnto had visited Kelly at Miller’s Court on at least one occasion. If so, he must have acquired her address from somewhere. And if he had her address, it appears likely that he was the Irish correspondent.
• ·  The original document doesn’t make this statement. Whoever ‘Johnto’ is, he could have obtained her address from the Irish correspondent, Bridget.
• ·  Nevertheless, even armed with the information that he was currently serving in Ireland with the Scots Guards, police uncovered no evidence to support ‘Johnto’s’ existence, much less his whereabouts.
• ·  Aliases were used in the army, usually because a recruit had committed a crime or misdemeanour in civilian life.
• ·  Similar lines of investigation concentrating on Kelly’s alleged birthplace as well as several other antecedent reference points also drew a blank. Even inquiries at the Cardiff infirmary where she purportedly spent eight or nine months circa 1882 proved futile.
• ·  This suggests a pregnancy to me, although at her autopsy, the coroner found the right lung was minimally adherent by old firm adhesions, which could be a sign of T.B.
• ·  The Star reported: She had a boy, 11 years old, who was begging in the streets while his mother was murdered. The woman has been living with a man who sells oranges on the streets and on whom, as he could not be found, suspicion at once reverted. But he turned up all right tonight and fainted when he was shown the murdered woman’s body.
• ·  Joe Barnett says she had a child of six or seven living with her.
• ·  John Davies died, June 1880. He left a widow and child. So this child would be eight to ten years old at the time of his mother’s death. Course, she could have had a second child . . .
• ·   When living at Breezer’s Hill (1884-1885) she stated to Mrs Phoenix that she had a child aged two years, but Mrs. Phoenix never saw it.’