Tuesday 30th Oct 1888
Welcome to Whitechapel on Tuesday 30th October 1888. Tonight we'll become acquainted with two residents of Whitechapel.
Today the torso found recently at Whitehall was interred at Woking. It remains unidentified. The case is a complete mystery. There's been little of shock value in the news lately. The Star from yesterday reports a knife-attack, but not on a woman. "A laborer named James Hall, aged 24, while walking in Bethnal-green, about midnight on Saturday, was attacked by a man. The man knocked him down and stabbed him in the throat. He was removed to the London Hospital in an unconscious state. His assailant is at large." - If the victim had been a girl no doubt every connection would have been made to the Ripper. Despite any murders for 30 days now, the is always something connected to the case, however tenuously. Such as this report: ""I'm Jack the Ripper," shouted Frederick Dunbar, 48, a hairdresser, of King-street, Somers Town, while drunk in Camden Town. He was taken to the police-station, and about a thousand persons gathered around. - Dunbar, in defence, said he was sorry. He had taken too much to drink. "You made a fool of yourself, and I will send you to prison for 21 days with hard labour." The attacks on Sir Charles Warren continues in the papers. The knives are out following his attempts to defend himself. "I am much alarmed about poor Sir Charles Warren. Does he drink? Or can it be that he is the victim of mental hallucination? "In Murray's Magazine he expresses himself so strangely that many friends (I include myself) have become frightened about him."
8.00pm
Come now as we take a walk in Spitalfields, amidst the bustle of the evening traffic, up the Commercial Road to a side-street.
We are in one of the worst areas in the slums of London. We head down Dorset Street until we reach an archway and a passage. Down this passage is Miller's Court, with a number of doors to lodgings. In Room 20, above a shed, lives Elizabeth Prater. Elizabeth Prater has been listening to an argument in the room below. The partition is so thin she can hear every word. The female voice is Mary Jane Kelly, a very beautiful 25-year-old blonde with blue eyes and fair complexion. Mary is Irish, born in Limerick, but she moved to Wales as a child and can speak fluent Welsh. Her father was an iron worker. Mary did well at school and is an excellent artist. She is much superior to most person in her position in life. Mary was married young but her husband was killed in a colliery explosion. She moved to Cardiff, then London four years ago. Also one of the most decent and nice girls you could meet when sober, she was very abusive and quarrelsome when drunk.
A years or two ago, she met Joseph Barnett, and they moved in together. He is the man with whom she now argues at number 13. Joseph, like Mary Jane, is of Irish heritage. He is a riverside labourer and market porter, of good character and kind. Joseph is angry that that she shelters prostitutes. The weather is cold and Mary sympathises with the girls with no homes. The particular woman in question at the moment is Maria Harvey. Joseph doesn't want her there but Mary lets her stay. Joseph collects his things and leaves. He heads off to find lodgings at Buller's Boarding House in New St, Bishopsgate.
Mary Jane Kelly is left with her female companion, in their tiny lodging house in this terrible slum. Good night from 1888.