0:15

Pushkin. When

0:29

rent collector Thomas Boyer wraps on

0:31

Mary jen Kelly's door, he receives

0:34

no answer. She's

0:37

in arrears and the slum landlord

0:39

who owns this building has sent him

0:41

to settle the matter. Boyer

0:44

spots a smashed window whose

0:47

jagged pane is stuffed with rags. I

0:50

put my end through the broken pane and lifted

0:52

the curtain. I saw

0:54

two pieces of flesh lying on the table.

0:58

Horrified, he flees and returns

1:00

to his boss. Another one, Jack

1:03

the Ripper. When

1:08

police officers break down the door to the

1:10

little room, they are confronted

1:12

by a dreadful scene. Mary

1:16

Jane has been horribly mutilated.

1:20

Every part of her body has been

1:22

defiled. No

1:25

one really knew Mary Jane in life and

1:28

now in death. It's

1:30

almost as though her murderer sought

1:32

to obliterate her completely. But

1:35

what happens next is curious.

1:38

Mary jen Kelly is somehow set

1:40

apart from the other dead women. Her

1:43

youth, her mystery, her

1:45

life as a quartersan, and the grisliness

1:48

of her death are used to fetishize

1:51

and sexualize her. A

1:53

cult of Mary Jane Kelly emerges,

1:56

and its followers would even go as

1:58

far as trying to dig

2:00

up her bones. I'm

2:06

Hallie rubinhold you're listening

2:09

to bad women. The Ripper retold

2:12

a series about the real lives of

2:14

the women killed by Jack the Ripper and

2:16

how we got their stories so

2:19

wrong. One

2:23

side, money plenty

2:27

and friends too by

2:30

the score. Then

2:32

fortune smilder upon

2:36

me. I now

2:38

one pass my dome,

2:45

aloney, and

2:48

not with her, seems

2:54

to loney. I'm

2:57

com fe walk.

3:09

We followed Mary gen Kelly to extravagant

3:12

and decadent parties in London's fashionable

3:14

West End, and traced her route

3:16

to Paris, where she may have been cruelly

3:19

tricked into confinement in a state sanctioned

3:21

brothel. Then we

3:24

shadowed her as she hid from her aggrieved

3:26

traffickers in the heart of London's grim

3:28

East End. We left

3:30

Mary Jane as she escaped a volatile

3:32

love affair with an ordinary working man.

3:36

With each of these moves,

3:38

she was circling closer and closer

3:40

to notorious Whitechapel. And

3:44

then, in March eighteen eighty

3:46

seven, another living arrangement

3:48

presented itself. Mary Jane

3:50

met twenty nine year old Joseph Barnet,

3:53

a blue eyed local man who sported

3:55

a fashionable mustache. Not

3:58

forty eight hours after meeting Mary

4:00

Jane, he was in love. He

4:03

quickly proposed that they move in together,

4:05

and Mary Jane agreed. Joe

4:08

was a quarter at a local fish market and

4:11

earned a good living. Nevertheless,

4:13

the couple still struggled for money. Both

4:17

of them enjoyed a drink, and perhaps

4:19

this is where their troubles began. In

4:22

the roughly eighteen months they were together,

4:25

Mary Jane and Joe Barnet moved

4:27

a dress four times, living

4:29

in a series of cramped, shabby

4:31

dwellings. At one point

4:34

they were evicted for drunkenness and

4:36

for failing to pay their rent.

4:38

Eventually they settled in Miller's Court,

4:41

in a ten by twelve foot room at

4:44

the end of a dark alley. Here

4:47

Mary Jane charmed her neighbors with her

4:49

humor and kindness. They claimed

4:51

that she was a good, quiet, pleasant

4:53

girl who enjoyed singing. She

4:56

would regale them with her stories about

4:58

her time in the West End and rhapsodize

5:01

about returning to her people in

5:03

Ireland. What was true

5:05

and what was invented is now unknowable.

5:09

In a rare moment of openness.

5:11

She spoke candidly to her neighbor, twenty

5:14

year old Lizzie Albrook. Lizzie

5:16

seemed enchanted by her worldliness,

5:19

but Mary Jane warned her off embarking

5:22

down a similar path. She was

5:24

heartily sick of the life she was laid

5:26

in, and then,

5:28

during the late summer of eighteen eighty eight,

5:31

Joe lost his job. The

5:34

couple again fell behind on their rent,

5:36

and their debts began to mount. Perhaps

5:39

it was Mary Jane's landlord, a

5:41

notoriously unscrupulous local

5:43

business man, who had a word with her

5:46

about a return to soliciting. After

5:49

more than a year of sharing a bed with only

5:51

one familiar partner, she

5:54

would hardly have embraced this prospect

5:56

willingly. For over a year,

5:58

she had not needed to inspect a strange

6:00

man for signs of syphilis.

6:03

She had not stood on a corner in

6:05

the rain without a hat or a

6:07

shawl, but having to smile.

6:09

Nonetheless, she had

6:11

not had to consider what she might do

6:14

if the unwashed man she had just pleasured

6:17

refused to pay her or made

6:19

her pregnant. It was Joe

6:21

Barnett who said she needn't solicit while

6:23

they lived together, and that he would

6:25

provide for them. She must have resented

6:28

him for failing on this promise. But

6:31

however hard Joe tried, he

6:33

was unable to find any work beyond

6:35

odd laboring jobs, which did

6:37

not even cover the cost of their rent. The

6:41

couple began to argue frequently

6:43

and furiously. On one occasion,

6:45

while drunk, Mary Jane broke

6:47

a pane of glass in the window beside their

6:49

door. In place of a proper repair,

6:52

she stuffed it full of rags to stop

6:55

the draft. Jack

6:57

the Ripper's Killingsbury was terrorizing

6:59

the district. During those

7:01

tense months, Joe and Mary Jane

7:04

read the newspapers daily, hoping

7:06

to learn that the murderer had been caught.

7:08

For as long as the river remained at

7:10

large, Mary Jane offered sanctuary

7:13

in their little room to friends and acquaintances

7:15

from the sex trade. After

7:18

the fights and recriminations, these

7:20

nocturnal guests were the final

7:23

straw for Joseph Barnet. He

7:25

left Mary Jane on October thirtieth,

7:28

though he said he felt a great deal of

7:30

remorse. Mary

7:33

Jane stayed on at thirteen Millers Court,

7:36

but if she felt its grubby, peeling

7:38

walls would offer a safe haven from a

7:40

killer still on the loose. She

7:43

was awfully, tragically mistaken.

7:49

In spite of their difficulties, Joe

7:52

obviously still cared for Mary Jane

7:54

and hoped they could be reconciled. He

7:57

took a bed at a local boarding house and

7:59

made certain to look in on her as he continued

8:01

to search for work. Early

8:04

on the evening of November eighth,

8:06

he knocked on her door. A candle

8:09

was burning inside, and Barnet

8:11

noted that she was not alone. She'd

8:13

been chatting with her neighbor Lizzie, who

8:15

then excused herself. Mary

8:18

Jane had just returned from drinking in the Ten

8:20

Bells pub, though she seemed perfectly

8:22

sober. The couple were

8:24

together for about an hour. They

8:26

may have conversed softly, or quarreled,

8:29

or given into their desires, but

8:32

whatever occurred failed to shift

8:34

their impasse. In

8:36

the end, Joe rose to

8:38

leave, apologizing to Mary

8:40

Jane as he went. I told her

8:42

that I had no work and

8:45

that had nothing to give her, for

8:47

which I was very sorry.

8:51

One neighbor, Mary Ann Cox,

8:54

believed Mary Jane then went out and

8:56

returned her lodgings later with a

8:59

man a last saw her alive on Thursday

9:01

night at Court to twelve, very

9:04

much intoxicated, yet none

9:06

of the area's publicans claimed to

9:08

have seen or served her. That night. Cox

9:11

stated that Mary Jane and her company disappeared

9:14

into her room, though not before

9:16

she had uttered the words good night.

9:19

I am going to have a song. Then

9:23

the door bang shut, and a glimmer

9:25

of light began to shine from behind her

9:27

crudely curtained window. After

9:30

a moment or so of silence, Cox

9:33

heard Mary Jane's voice rise, scenes

9:37

of my childhood,

9:39

her rise before my gaze,

9:42

bringing wreck collections

9:45

of by gone happy days

9:49

when down in the middle childhood,

9:53

I would a rome. No

9:55

one's left to Jimmy. Now

9:58

within that good old home,

10:03

Cox seemed certain that she heard her neighbor

10:05

singing until around one am at least,

10:08

But as with so many of the witness testimonies

10:10

in the Ripper Murders, there are omissions,

10:13

questions, and inconsistencies,

10:16

And what precisely happened to Mary Jane's

10:18

male visitor in the course of this hour

10:20

and fifteen minute concert is anyone's

10:23

guess. The small wilt

10:26

I plucked from mother's

10:28

gray A

10:33

woman who lived above. Mary Jane claimed

10:36

that she could hear most sounds clearly through

10:38

the thin walls and floor, and

10:40

at one thirty am nothing

10:42

stirred in her neighbor's room.

10:45

At some point in the very early

10:47

hours of November ninth, Mary

10:49

Jane decided to bring an end to her

10:51

day and retire to sleep. She

10:54

removed her clothes, piece by piece,

10:56

a few shabby items from a once

10:59

resplendent wardrobe now diminished

11:01

by wear hems, dragged along

11:03

the uneven pavements of white chapel and

11:05

fabric splashed with beer and gin

11:09

all the same. She folded each

11:11

article neatly and placed them on her

11:13

chair. The flame of her only

11:15

candle, which she had balanced on a broken

11:17

wineglass, would have gutted

11:20

and bobbed until snuffed

11:22

out. The

11:29

following day, police inspector Abeleine

11:32

examined the crime scene and took an

11:34

inventory of the room. There

11:36

were traces of a large fire

11:39

having been kept up in the grate, so

11:41

much so that it had melted the spout

11:43

of the ket love. It appeared as if

11:45

a large quantity of women's clothing

11:47

had been burnt. I could only imagine

11:50

that it was to make a light for the men to see

11:52

what he was doing. The

11:54

ripper appeared to have spent considerable

11:56

time inflicting Mary Jane's wounds. Her

11:59

injuries were extensive and elaborate,

12:02

such that it would have been difficult for even

12:04

those who knew her to recognize her.

12:08

Certain detail of the murder, deemed too

12:10

horrific for any audience, were

12:12

suppressed from the coroner's inquest, though

12:15

many of them were printed by the press

12:17

around the world. Foul Fiend

12:20

resumes his ghastly work in London.

12:22

The city has again stirred to its very center,

12:25

and again mysterious murder

12:27

is the cause. And yet,

12:30

despite the extensive coverage, not

12:32

one friend or relation from the past

12:34

appears to have recognized her name or

12:37

any part of her story enough to come

12:39

forward and verify her history. Mary

12:42

Jen Kelly remained an

12:45

enigma. Figures

12:49

like Mary Jane raised questions of historical

12:52

responsibility. There are gaping

12:54

voids in her life story, and as

12:57

a historian, I can use my knowledge of the

12:59

Victorian world to suggest likely

13:01

scenarios to fill these gaps, But

13:04

without reliable sources names

13:06

are birth certificates, passenger lists,

13:08

or rent b I simply cannot

13:10

say anything concrete or definitive

13:14

that hasn't stopped others. Though writers

13:16

and filmmakers have fabricated all

13:19

kinds of stories about Mary Jane,

13:21

often presenting them as fact. She's

13:23

popular on the Ripper Ology forums too.

13:27

Threads about Mary Jane Kelly musing

13:29

over her injuries and identity vastly

13:32

outnumber discussions on any of

13:34

the other four victims. Crucially,

13:37

Mary Jane often receives special treatment.

13:40

The nineteen sixty five book Autumn of Terror

13:42

is a case in point, says expert on Ripper

13:45

writings, Rebecca Frost. It

13:47

calls the first four victims dregs

13:50

of wretched humanity. It was

13:52

among this flatsum that Mary Kelly

13:54

drifted borne along by the tide,

13:57

yet remaining aloof as befits an

13:59

Amazon queen. When some

14:01

women are called gliding queens while

14:04

others are dismissed as drifting trash,

14:06

it's a certainty that something has

14:08

gone very wrong. But

14:12

more on that. After this short break,

14:21

all we know about her is what

14:23

she told to her boyfriends. Rebecca

14:26

Frost is correct. After Mary Jane's

14:28

murder, Joseph Barnett became the primary

14:31

narrator of her life. Story. The

14:33

little we know of Mary Jane is thanks

14:35

to his earnest but fraught testimony

14:38

stammered out before a judgmental coroner's

14:40

jury. Everyone else has multiple

14:43

points of comparison, So you have like Polly's

14:45

husband can say this, her children can say this, Kate's

14:48

long term boyfriend says this, her daughter says

14:50

this. But Mary Jane Kelly exists

14:53

only in the stories she told about herself.

14:55

As with the Ripper, a lack of corroborated

14:58

knowledge about Mary Jane has made

15:00

her a blank page on which to inscribe

15:02

fanciful theories. Over

15:04

the years, it's been suggested

15:06

that Mary Jane was the victim of ritual

15:09

religious sacrifice, or she

15:11

fell prey to a deranged abortionist

15:14

Jill the Ripper. Others claim she

15:16

faked her own death, leaving a faceless

15:18

corpse. Even in the earliest

15:20

coverage of the Ripper murders, there was

15:23

something special about Mary Jane,

15:25

something different. She's already

15:27

separated from the others because she is younger,

15:30

and she gets described as being beautiful.

15:32

We don't actually know what she looked like because

15:34

all of these descriptions says she's blonder, brunette,

15:37

or she's got black hair, or she's a righthead, but there's

15:39

this idea that she was absolutely

15:41

young and gorgeous and truly attractive.

15:44

The reading public in the Victorian era would

15:46

have been primed by the conventions of Gothic

15:49

literature to appreciate beauty

15:51

and death in combination, and

15:53

to see the dead body as somehow

15:56

an object of desire. The death

15:59

of a beautiful woman is unquestionably

16:02

the most poetical topic in the world

16:05

a Girl and Poe had declared. One

16:07

enterprising publisher even placed newspaper

16:10

adverts for pose novella Murders

16:12

in the Room Morgue beside coverage

16:14

of Mary Jane's death, saying

16:17

it would be read with special interest

16:19

at the present time. Mary

16:23

Jane was known to have been involved in the

16:25

sex trade, and she was the only victim

16:28

to have the word prostitute actually

16:30

listed on her death certificate. In

16:32

books and films, she also tends

16:35

to be the most overtly sexualized

16:37

of the Ripper's victims. She's

16:39

often played by an attractive Hollywood star

16:41

and given a storyline that singles her

16:43

out. Take the two thousand

16:46

and one movie from Hell, where Heather Graham

16:48

takes up the Mary Jane Kelly Mantle in

16:51

this particular ripper myth, Mary

16:53

Jane and Inspector Abeline, an

16:55

opium addict played by Johnny Depp,

16:58

are in love. In this

17:00

fiction, the doomed women are all

17:02

friends, and they share the screen

17:04

in costumes that owe more to victorious

17:07

secret than Victorian poverty. That's

17:10

not what they would have looked like, That's not how they

17:12

would have dressed. But if Johnny Depp

17:15

is going to be talking to them and spending so much

17:17

time concerned about them, we need to have

17:19

that sort of visual indication that these women

17:21

are worthy of that time and attention. Not

17:25

unlike Gothic fiction, which connected

17:27

cruelty and pain with beauty and sexual

17:29

desire from hell, also

17:32

links sex and violence. Julia

17:34

Skelly, an art historian, remembers

17:37

watching the film as a teenager. Heather

17:39

Graham had this super artificial red

17:41

hair. I remember that very clearly. They tried

17:43

to make it a love story between her and

17:46

Johnny Depth, an opium addicted detective,

17:48

And what I remember most from that movie

17:51

was this moment that's supposed to be sexually

17:54

titillating, romantic, even God

17:56

forbid, where Johnny Depp pushes

17:59

this woman up against the wall to kiss

18:01

her. In hindsight, very

18:04

much part of this normalization

18:06

of violence towards women, where rape

18:09

behavior on the part of male subjects is

18:11

supposed to be romantic. Billy

18:15

Jensen, a journalist who focuses

18:17

on unsolved murders and missing persons,

18:20

sees the conflation of violence

18:22

and sex crop up time and again in

18:24

the most popular crime coverage. When

18:27

you look at the biggest stories of true

18:29

crime, the cases are all about

18:31

young, attractive females.

18:34

And I've been in newsrooms

18:36

and I've been on TV shows where

18:39

if the victim is not up

18:41

to a certain part, that story is only going to get five

18:43

minutes as opposed to thirty minutes. And

18:46

when you take a look at Mary Jane Kelly,

18:48

yes, she was quote unquote the last

18:51

victim, and she was brutalized more

18:54

than the other women. But I also think

18:56

as well it is because of

18:58

her youth and sexualization of her. For

19:01

some Mary Jane's murder also

19:03

seems to hold the unique promise of unlocking

19:06

the entire Ripper mystery.

19:08

Mary Jane Kelly is last, and

19:11

she is the most brutally murdered,

19:14

So therefore we want to look at

19:16

the question of motive. We want to explain

19:18

why was she last. Some

19:21

authors and ripporologists have answered that question

19:23

by stating that Mary Jane must have been

19:25

the true intended target of

19:27

the Ripper killings, and it's all censored

19:30

around this idea that Mary

19:32

Jane Kelly had to deserve it because

19:34

she was the most mutilated, this idea

19:37

that it was personal. Back in

19:39

nineteen twenty nine, Australian

19:41

journalist Leonard Matters published

19:43

the first full length book investigating Jack

19:45

the Ripper. In Matters account of killing

19:48

a physician he calls Doctor Stanley,

19:51

sets out to avenge the death of a son

19:53

who fatally contracted syphilis

19:56

from Mary Jane Kelly. He's going

19:58

looking for Mary Jane Kelly, and he's just killing

20:01

anybody who gives him any advice

20:03

on it so that nobody can trace his path.

20:05

But Mary Jane Kelly is the person he has

20:08

a personal She's at

20:10

fault because she didn't care

20:12

that she was passing on this disease. The

20:16

idea that Mary Jane Kelly was somehow to

20:18

blame for all the murders recurs again

20:21

and again. Often it goes

20:23

all the way to the top Mary Jane

20:25

meets her end because she's embroiled in

20:27

some royal scandal. There are several

20:30

variations on this theme, which we've touched

20:32

on before. One of my favorites

20:34

because it's absolutely awful but

20:37

super creative, says that Mary

20:39

Jane Kelly was actually pregnant by

20:41

the Prince of Wales in John Wilding's

20:43

nineteen ninety three book, The Prince's Friends

20:46

go on a murderous rampage designed

20:48

at first to eliminate the secret

20:50

of Mary Jane's pregnancy. We get

20:52

to the point though, where Queen Victoria finds

20:54

out what is happening, and she does not want

20:57

any possible descendant of her beloved Albert

20:59

to be murdered, so it changes

21:02

to we're going to keep murdering

21:04

so we can fake Mary Jane Kelly's death.

21:06

So she personally chooses

21:09

Liz and Kate to die, and

21:12

then she also puts somebody in

21:14

her room that night to be killed

21:16

and mutilated to the point where nobody can tell

21:18

it wasn't her. She ends

21:20

up participating in these murders

21:23

so that she can go on have her baby and level

21:25

life of luxury. Of course, there's

21:28

not a shred of evidence for any of this. What

21:32

others see in Mary Jane's disfigured

21:34

and outraged body is the chance

21:36

to reveal the identity of the killer from

21:39

the knife marks left on her bones during

21:41

the hours he spent elaborately

21:43

mutilating her. The ripper might

21:45

just have left behind some key evidence,

21:48

a unique part of himself that

21:51

will expose him. Unlike

21:53

the previous Ripper victims, she

21:56

was killed in a private room, were

21:58

her murderer lingered that

22:00

enclosed space was a source of intrigue.

22:03

Even in the earliest coverage of the crime,

22:06

newspapers published sketches of her room

22:08

and its layout. The readers to

22:10

pull over. You're supposed

22:12

to be able to sort of shut off the empathy

22:15

part in your brain that acknowledges this was

22:17

a person and turn on that

22:19

CSI laser eyesights

22:21

that's going to show you all the clues. Seeing

22:24

the crimes through the eyes of a detective can

22:26

be thrilling, but it can also

22:28

be dehumanizing. Forensic

22:31

photography, a relatively new practice

22:33

at the time, was used to document the

22:35

scene. Mary Jane's lifeless

22:38

and brutalized form was forever

22:40

fixed in two horrifying

22:42

snapshots you're looking

22:45

not at even the body as a whole.

22:47

You're looking at the wounds, at the injuries,

22:49

and you're already starting to tell yourself a story

22:52

about them. So if you start with the description

22:54

of a woman whose throat was slits, your

22:56

mind is meant to already go to was the

22:58

killer left or right handed? What weapons

23:01

did he use? Was it he or she? Can

23:03

we tell how tall they were? Everything about

23:05

that dead woman is meant to be a signpost

23:08

pointing you towards the Mary

23:10

Jane Kelly. The real flesh and blood

23:12

woman has vanished, and

23:14

the figure in her place belongs

23:17

to the realm of make believe. Somehow,

23:21

this Mary Jane manages to

23:23

be both the archetype of youthful

23:25

charm and beauty to admire

23:27

and desire, and simultaneously

23:31

a defiled object at

23:33

which to gork. The

23:37

ripper retold would be back after this

23:39

short break. In

23:52

the wake of Mary Jane's murder, the police

23:54

conducted house to house inquiries and

23:56

searches, interviewing possible witnesses

23:59

about what they had seen and heard on that fateful

24:01

night, But nothing concrete or

24:03

conclusive came of all these efforts.

24:06

Doctor Thomas bond, who had conducted

24:08

Mary Jane's postmortem, theorized

24:10

that all the victims must have been lying

24:12

down when they were murdered, and profiled

24:15

the offender as a man of physical

24:17

strength and of great coolness and daring

24:20

acquired inoffensive looking man, probably

24:23

neatly and respectably dressed. Suspects

24:26

were investigated, but no one

24:28

was charged with any of the murders. Yet

24:31

again, the ripper had evaded

24:33

captured. The excitement in

24:35

the neighborhood is intense, and some of

24:37

the low women with whom that street abounds

24:40

appear more like fiends than human

24:42

beings. Terror once more

24:45

gripped Whitechapel, fermented,

24:47

of course by the press. Some

24:49

parts of the murdered bodies are missing. Why

24:52

because this fiend has possessed

24:55

himself of as the Indian warrior

24:57

did the scalps of his victims.

25:00

So great was the panic that reportedly

25:02

the police struggled to maintain law and order

25:05

on the streets. At one point,

25:07

a mob threatened to lynch a suspicious

25:10

looking man. It turned

25:12

out that this fellow fancied himself as

25:14

a detective and had been criss crossing

25:16

the East End in various disguises

25:18

hoping to catch the ripper himself. Even

25:21

Queen Victoria intervened with a

25:23

telegram to the Prime Minister. This

25:26

new ghastly murder shows the absolute

25:28

necessity for some very decided

25:31

action. It seemed that the Queen

25:33

had some theories of her own. Is

25:36

there sufficient surveillance at night? The

25:39

murderer's clothes must be a saturated

25:41

with blood and kept somewhere. Has

25:44

any investigation been made as to

25:46

the number of single men occupying

25:48

rooms to themselves? Half

25:50

the cattle boats and passenger boats

25:53

being examined. But

25:57

the Ripper's murderous campaign had apparently

25:59

come to an end. Impoverished

26:02

women continued to be killed in Whitechapel,

26:04

but the police did not attribute these murders

26:07

to the culprit thought to have claimed the live of

26:09

Polly Anny, Elizabeth Kate and

26:11

Mary Jane. It was supposed

26:14

that the ripper stopped killing for various possible

26:16

reasons. Perhaps he had died

26:18

or emigrated, perhaps he'd been

26:20

locked away in a lunatic asylum. While

26:23

ripproology has ill served the memories

26:25

of Jack's victims, it ins introduced

26:28

many other bystanders too. When

26:30

popular, albeit reductive vein of

26:32

riproology is to accuse Whitechapel

26:35

locals from professions that employ blades

26:37

and who also had mental

26:39

health problems, to demonstrate

26:42

how idiotic, tasteless, and hurtful

26:44

this approach can be. In a later episode,

26:46

I'll introduce you to Jacob Leavey, a

26:48

Jewish butcher from Whitechapel who struggled

26:51

with mental illness and ended his days

26:53

in a nearby asylum, leaving a young

26:55

widow, several children, and

26:57

a swirl of unsubstantiated claims

27:00

that he was the Ripper. In

27:04

life, Mary Jane's identity have

27:06

been whatever she wished it to be, but

27:09

in the wake for death she became

27:11

whatever Joseph Barnett wished to commemorate.

27:14

It was he who insisted that the name

27:16

on her brass coffin plate read Mary

27:18

Jeannette Kelly, a moniker brimming

27:21

with all the flounts and flamboyance of

27:23

a Saturday night in the West End. In

27:26

death, Mary Jane became something

27:29

of a local heroine. Her

27:31

open hearse, two mourning carriages,

27:33

and polished oak and elm coffin, decorated

27:36

with two floral wreaths and a cross

27:38

of heartseed, was as much a

27:40

show of defiance against the killer.

27:42

As a mark of respect for Mary Jane.

27:46

This cortege attracted those wishing

27:48

to gawk and drink and exclaim

27:50

at the carnival of mourning as it

27:52

passed through the streets, trailed by

27:54

publicans and their best customers,

27:57

as well as the sorts of females that newspapers

27:59

called unfortunates. Women

28:02

with infants on their hips watched from their

28:04

doorsteps. Men removed

28:06

their hats as she passed. God

28:09

forgive her, they were said to have cried out

28:11

through their sobs. We will

28:13

not forget her

28:17

because she called herself Kelly, and

28:19

because she claimed to have been born in Ireland.

28:22

Mary Jane was interred at a Catholic

28:24

cemetery in East London. A

28:27

headstone bearing her name can still

28:29

be found here, the product of

28:31

a later campaign to honor her memory.

28:34

Today, visitors pay homage to Mary

28:36

Jane at her supposed graveside, leaving

28:38

behind gifts of flowers, candles,

28:41

and tiny bottles of gin. But

28:43

in the one hundred and thirty years since her burial,

28:46

Mary Jane hasn't entirely rested

28:49

in peace. One

28:51

of the crowning affronts to Mary Jane's

28:53

memory have been the attempts to exhume

28:56

her body. Her remains

28:58

in particular are of enormous

29:00

interest because he spent more

29:02

time with her body. If we had a chance

29:05

to find her remains. Are

29:07

their tool marks on it? Are there knife cuts

29:09

on it? What might we learn about

29:11

what Jack the Ripper did from looking

29:13

at her? And what did they miss at the time,

29:15

which would have been a lot. A

29:17

few years ago, crime writer Patricia

29:20

Cornwell reached out to my friend doctor

29:22

Torry King, a leading expert on

29:24

genetics, who had led a successful project

29:26

to identify the remains of English King

29:29

Richard the Third, and she

29:31

just said, look, I am very interested in Jack

29:33

the Ripper? Is this true? Could

29:35

we do this? The idea of exhuming

29:38

Mary Jane's body was on patricious radar

29:40

because of a man named Win Weston Davis,

29:42

who claimed to be a descendant so

29:45

his great aunt, a woman called Elizabeth

29:47

Weston Davies, who, as

29:50

far as we can tell from what he says, does appear

29:52

to have become a prostitute in

29:54

London. She doesn't appear to be in the

29:56

eighteen ninety one census, but that's not uncommon.

29:59

People do disappear from censuses,

30:01

and I understand that there was a family story that his

30:03

great aunt had met sort of with a nasty end,

30:05

and somewhere along the way this has gotten

30:08

conflated with her being Mary

30:10

Jane Kelly. I find it all

30:12

incredibly tenuous.

30:15

However, he was in the press

30:17

claiming that if you could find

30:19

a lab, he could get a license from the Ministry

30:21

of Justice to exhume her remains. Patricia

30:24

wanted to know if they could analyze Mary Jane

30:26

Kelly's DNA and restore her real

30:29

name. Yes, that's possible, we could do

30:31

genetic analysis. But what's really

30:33

critical for this is that you

30:35

have to know that the remains that you are looking

30:37

at are those of Mary Jane

30:39

Kelly. So that then brought us

30:41

to the question of okay, so where are Mary

30:44

Jane Kelly's remains. Mary

30:46

Jane was buried in a communal grave that

30:48

at the time was unmarked. She

30:50

had a number of people who were buried below

30:52

her, and then they put in

30:55

graves with multiple people all around

30:57

her. So this is an eighteen eighty eight years

30:59

later, the land was reclaimed and a

31:01

new burial system imposed, so

31:03

her present day headstone probably

31:06

has no relevance to the actual location

31:08

of her remain. You don't know

31:10

how the two different kind of

31:13

grave row systems match with

31:15

one another. What you can do is you can kind

31:17

of go, Okay, she's likely

31:20

to have been in this

31:22

area. Well, there could be around a thousand

31:25

over a thousand people in here. The chances

31:27

of us being able to come down on

31:30

a coffin that says on

31:32

it, Mary Jane Kelly is

31:35

so far out there and

31:37

ethically so not

31:39

right to be potentially disturbing the remains

31:42

of so many people to do

31:44

this, you just wouldn't even break

31:46

ground on this project.

31:49

What was Patricia's response, I mean,

31:51

she was she reasonable completely. When

31:54

we talked this through, we sort of said, look, you know this

31:56

is really important. You have to know that you've actually

31:58

got Mary Jane Kelly in order to be able to do the DNA

32:00

and elsis to compare with her great nephew. And

32:03

she was completely completely

32:05

on board with all of that. She's like, yep,

32:07

okay, yeah, no, coun't go down that, but

32:10

I'm going to be able to ask about all of this for

32:12

myself. I've heard

32:14

back from my agent and Patricia

32:17

has agreed to talk next

32:23

time on Bad Women. It's

32:26

nice to meet you, however distantly

32:29

and virtually nice to meet

32:31

you too. To be honest, I've been a little

32:33

bit nervous about it as well. Jack

32:36

the Ripper should make everybody nervous. First

32:39

of all, if you value your life and your sanity

32:41

and your well being, you'll stay as far away from the subject

32:44

as you possibly. You

32:46

know, you may have similar tales to tell, but it's

32:48

quite a journey when you get on it. Bad

33:03

Women The Ripper Were Told is brought to you by

33:05

Pushkin Industries and Me Hallie rubin

33:07

Hold, and is based on my book The Five.

33:09

It was produced and co written by Ryan Dilley

33:12

and Alice Fines, with help from Pete Norton.

33:14

Pascal Wise's Sound designed and mixed the show

33:17

and composed all the original music. You

33:20

also heard the voice talents of Soul Boyer,

33:22

Ben Crow, Sarah Bows, Melanie

33:24

Gutridge, Gemma Saunders, and rufus

33:26

Wright. The show also wouldn't

33:28

have been possible without the work of mir La

33:31

Belle, Jacob Weisberg, Jenguera,

33:33

Heather Fane, Carla mcgliori, Maggie

33:36

Taylor, Nicolemarino, Natal

33:38

Mullard, Eric Sandler, and Daniella

33:41

Lakhan with special things to my

33:43

agents Sarah Ballard and Ellie Karen