Most Ripper letters mailed October 20, 1888, through November 10th were postmarked London, and it is a certainty Sickert was in London prior to October 22nd to attend an early showing of the “First Pastel Exhibition” that opened at the Grosvenor Gallery. In letters that Sickert wrote to Blanche, references to the New English Art Club’s election of new members indicate that Sickert was based in London or at least was in England during the autumn, and most likely into November and possibly until the end of the year.
When Ellen returned home to 54 Broadhurst Gardens at the end of October, she came down with a terrible case of the flu that lingered and sapped her health well into November. I could find no record of her spending time with her husband or whether she knew where he was from one day to the next. I don’t know if she was frightened by the violent atrocities happening a mere six miles from her home, but it is hard to imagine she wasn’t. The Metropolis was terrorized, but the worst was yet to come.
Mary Kelly was twenty-four years old and very pretty with a fresh complexion, dark hair, and youthful figure. She was better educated than the other Unfortunates who trolled the area where she lived at 26 Dorset Street. The house was rented by John McCarthy, who owned a chandler’s shop and let out all the rooms at 26 Dorset to the very poor. Mary’s ground-floor room, number 13, was twelve feet square and separated from another room by a partition that was flush against her wooden bedstead. Her door and two large windows opened onto Miller’s Court, and some time ago – she wasn’t sure when – she had lost her key.
This hadn’t caused a huge problem. Not so long ago, she had a bit too much to drink and got into a row with her man, Joseph Barnett, a coal porter. She couldn’t remember, but she must have broken a windowpane then. She and Barnett would reach through the jagged hole in the glass to release the spring lock of the door. They never bothered repairing the glass or replacing the key, and probably didn’t think either was a wise expenditure of what little money they had.
Mary Kelly and Joseph Barnett’s last big row was ten days earlier. They exchanged blows, the cause of the fight being a woman named Maria Harvey. Mary had begun sleeping with her on Monday and Tuesday nights, and Barnett wouldn’t put up with it. He moved out, leaving Mary to somehow pay off the £l 9s. owed in rent. Barnett and Mary patched up their relationship a bit, and he dropped by occasionally and gave her a little money.
Maria Harvey last saw Mary the Thursday afternoon of November 8th, when Maria visited Mary in her room. Maria was a laundress and asked if it would be all right to leave some dirty laundry: two men’s shirts, a little boy’s shirt, a black overcoat, a black crepe bonnet with black satin strings, a pawn ticket for a gray shawl, and a little girl’s white petticoat. She promised to retrieve the garments later, and was still in the room when Barnett showed up unexpectedly for a visit.
“Well, Mary Jane,” Maria said on her way out, “I shall not see you this evening again.” She would never see Mary again.
Mary Kelly was born in Limerick, the daughter of John Kelly, an Irish iron worker. Mary had six brothers who lived at home, a brother in the Army, and a sister who worked in the markets. The family had moved to Caernarvonshire, Wales, when Mary was young, and at sixteen she married a collier named Davis. Two or three years later, he was killed in an explosion, and Mary left for Cardiff to live with a cousin. It was at this time that she began to drift into drink and prostitution, and for eight months she was in an infirmary to be treated for venereal disease.
She moved to England in 1884, and continued to have no trouble attracting business. There are no photographs I’ve found that show what she looked like, except after the Ripper completely destroyed her body. But contemporary sketches depict her as a very handsome woman with the hourglass figure coveted in that era. Her dress and manner were a remnant of a better world than the wretched one she tried to forget through alcohol.