Mary Jane Kelly

Killed 9th November 1888

13, Millers Court

Butchered, Throat Slashed

 

The fifth and final Ripper victim was Mary Jane Kelly.  Her murder was the dramatic conclusion in the gruesome violence inflicted on the series of prostitutes murdered in Whitechapel by the same killer.  Mary’s body was, without doubt, the most brutally and viciously attached.  Her butchered remains were discovered in her lodgings at 13 Millers Court on the morning of the 9th November 1888.

Mary Jane Kelly was a 24 year old prostitute described as 5’7″, with a fair complexion, a rather stout build, with blue eyes and a very find head of hair.  She originated from Limerck, Ireland, and moved with her family to Carmarthenshire in Wales when she was in her youth.  By the tender age of 16, she married a collier by the name of Davies; however fate was to play a cruel twist on Mary, for her husband died tragically in a mining disaster within two years of her marriage.  This affected Mary in such a way, that by the age of 21, she found herself in London, engulfed in the sordid world of prostitution.

13 Millers Court was located at the end of a small passage way between 26 and 27 Dorset Street.  It was the back room of No. 26 which had been separated using a false partition, by the landlord, John McCarthy, who ran a chandlers shop from no 27 Dorset Street.  Mary took up residence at the address for a sum of 4 shillings a week with her common law husband, Joseph Barnett, between February and March of that year.

At 10.45am on the morning of the 9th November, John McCarthy sent his assistant, Thomas Bowyer, to try and collect some rent from Mary.  Bowyer went through the passageway to No. 13 and knocked on the door.  He received no answer.  Rather than walking away empty handed, he peered through the side window, which had a broken pan, put his hand through the hole in the glass to see if Mary was inside, pulled back the muslin curtain and saw the most horrific site ever to be beheld by a human being.

 

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