The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper

Mary Jane Kelly first appeared in London’s West End in 1883 or 1884. According to the records, she told different versions of her life story to her acquaintances. One story was that she was born in Limerick in Ireland around 1863. Her father moved to Wales to take up a job as an ironworks foreman. Mary Jane claimed that, at the age of 16, she married a coal miner named Davis or Davies, “who died in an explosion a year or two later” (257). Afterward, she moved to the Welsh city of Cardiff, where possibly a cousin of hers coaxed her into sex work. Other times, she claimed she was born in Wales, that she had a two-year-old child, and that she was related to an actress in London. None of these details have ever been verified. Rubenhold suggests that this lack of evidence indicates that Mary Jane Kelly’s biography and name were “entirely fabricated” (257).

Mary Jane was apparently well-educated and “was a capable artist” (258), suggesting she may have come from a middle-class family. Rubenhold speculates she may actually have had a child. Like other middle-class daughters who had children out of wedlock, she would have been placed in an asylum or a reformatory.