Jack the Ripper (3 page)

Mary Kelly’s horrifically mutilated body was found on the morning of the 9 November; it was Barnett who had to identify her, by her eyes and ears alone. He was questioned by police but no case was ever laid against him, and at the time no suspicion seems to have been there either. Barnett was able to come up with a perfectly good alibi, having been ensconced in Buller’s lodging house in nearby Bishopsgate. However, the theory maintains, the fact that the door to No.13 Miller’s Court was locked and had to be broken down, was proof of Barnett’s having stolen the key; which, apparently, Barnett told Inspector Abberline, had gone missing some time back. Barnett then allegedly contradicts himself by saying that they used the broken windows as a means of gaining access to Miller’s Court, reaching in and jiggling the lock. However, Barnett had, in fact, moved out on the night when such a means of entrance would first have taken effect. Why then would he have known about the broken window if he left the day the damage was done? My theory is that Kelly hid the key from Barnett some time previously, as insurance in case she ever wanted to lock him out when he became – as he obviously was from time to time – too much for her. Also, it seems plausible that he discovered the alternative means of entrance on one of his subsequent visits, either from Kelly’s mouth or one of her friends; gin loosens the lips that way.

I will concede that it could’ve been Joe Barnett; indeed, when one thinks back on some of that circumstantial evidence, you come to the conclusion that it almost should’ve been Joe Barnett. And yet it wasn’t. After Mary Kelly’s death, Barnett moved back into the obscurity from which he came, living for another thirty-eight years, dying in Shadwell with his common-law wife Louisa in 1926. Men who eviscerate innocent women and mutilate them beyond recognition, who take the time to carve the faces of their victims as they lay sprawled in the relative seclusion of Mitre Square, don’t retire to a life of quiet sobriety because the object of their affections fell victim to the culmination of their own crazed desires. To the best of my knowledge, Barnett didn’t put so much as a foot wrong ’til the day he died. In fact, I’d go so far as to maintain he never actually put a foot wrong in the first place, outside of maybe being dismissed for swiping one too many mackerel for Mary Kelly’s supper. Speaking of mackerel, to probe the theory that little bit more, using FBI profiling, Bruce Paley would have us believe that Barnett would ‘…have sought a job where he could vicariously experience his destructive fantasies, such as a butcher, mortician’s helper, medical examiner’s assistant, or hospital attendant; Joseph Barnett’s job boning and gutting fish provided the necessary atmosphere wherein he could indulge his morbid fantasies.’
1

Mary Jane Kelly. (Moody/Morris Collection)

One imagines that your average fledgling serial killer would feel very hard done by indeed, if he had to take out all that frustration on a daily catch of cod and kippers. Other research also repudiates some of Paley’s suppositions about Barnett and Kelly’s relationship, including comments by Philip Sugden in his invaluable
The Complete History of Jack the Ripper
, that ‘…of Joe Barnett she was genuinely fond.’
2

The point is, we all want to be the one to catch the Ripper; or do we? If we did, it would probably ‘spoil the game’ for everyone else and pretty much put the kibosh on what is, in some quarters, a massive media industry, not to mention being the bread and butter of many a tour guide. The mystery hasn’t left anyone to avenge, irrespective of any nagging sense of social justice we may experience; and, probably, there’s no ghastly grave where the fiend lies for us to go and deface, should we so desire, waving our fists in righteous indignation. Instead, with Joe Barnett, as with so many other suspects, we not only haven’t caught the Ripper, but have instead hamstrung ourselves by pointing the finger at him in the first place, armed only with a few petty facts and not much else besides. As Paul Begg has said, Barnett has been singled out purely because he was ‘…suspected as far as one can tell simply because he was there.’
3

It sometimes seems that the realm of Ripperology has a quota of people it needs to point the finger at on a regular basis, perhaps to soothe its own collective conscience about being so captivated by all this gruesome stuff to begin with. Like the old adage says, you don’t need to blow other people’s candles out just to make your own burn brighter. Perhaps Paley, with all his rigorous research, really believed in Barnett’s guilt. However, he states the obvious without seeming to realise that many of his facts probably fit half the population of the immediate area, before proceeding to use Barnett’s love for Kelly as a stick by which to further beat him: ‘…not in one of the other theories is a direct and indisputable connection actually proven between the suspect and any of the victims. Nor have any other suspects been reliably placed at or near any of the scenes of the crimes.’
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Paley uses frequent bullet points in putting forward his FBI theory. In response, here are a few of my own:

1. Barnett had a direct and indisputable connection to Kelly because he loved her, and they were in as normal a relationship as their strained circumstances would allow.

2. Barnett could be ‘reliably’ placed at, or near, the scenes of the crimes because he lived near them, as did ‘x’ number of other people of considerably more questionable pedigree; in fact one almost envisions a veritable cornucopia of creepy sorts sitting around just waiting to be slandered!

Now, all this isn’t to say that I’m painting Joseph Barnett out to be some sort of saint – we are talking about a man who, along with Kelly, was evicted from their room in Little Paternoster Row for being drunk (one imagines eviction in such an area to be quite a feat). But it is one thing to be in your cups occasionally and quite another to have the placard, proclaiming you to be the most prolific serial killer in history, hung around your neck. We ought really to be feting Barnett, not flogging him; were it not for Barnett Mary Kelly would have been even more of an enigma than she already is. Without Barnett we wouldn’t have been furnished with many of the facts of her life which he later gave at her inquest and to the papers:

 …he said she had told him several times that she had been born in Limerick but had been taken when she was quite young to Wales, where her father had been employed at an ironworks in Carmarthenshire. She had also mentioned that she had six brothers and sisters; one of the brothers was in the army. When she was sixteen she had married a collier named Davis but a year or two later he had been killed in an explosion.
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When I first saw the famous picture of Mary Kelly’s crime scene I was left speechless, and I think that sums it up about Barnett, especially with regards to his echolalia. Here I am going along with Christopher Scott, whose view of Barnett in regard to such a condition runs thus:

…we must, for a moment, ponder the psychological condition in which he would have been at the inquest. He was the focus of press attention in the most notorious case of the day, in the formal, imposing setting of an inquest court, giving intimate and unflattering details about the woman with whom he had lived for a year and a half and who only a few days before had been murdered in an appalling and degrading manner. I think a little hesitancy or verbal stumbling on Barnett’s part could be forgiven, and, in my opinion, that is why the coroner commented on the manner in which he had given his evidence, for getting through a harrowing and traumatic experience with a modicum of dignity and lucidity.
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Funny how these horrendous events can just take the words right out of our mouths. Proximity to perhaps the most mysterious Ripper victim of all has bred a sort of journalistic jealousy with regards to Joe Barnett. Whilst Bruce Paley’s book is a cracking good read for anyone who wants a feel of the flavour of Whitechapel of 1888, along with an impressive amount of research, as far as pointing the finger at Joseph Barnett is concerned – well, it simply isn’t true.

  
1.
  Paley, B.,
Jack the Ripper: The Simple Truth
(Headline Book Publishing, 1996), P. 220

  
2.
  Sugden, P.,
The Complete History of Jack the Ripper
, (Robinson Publishing Ltd, 1995), p. 308

  
3.
  Begg, P.,
Jack the Ripper: The Facts
(Robson Books Ltd, 2006), p. 386

  
4.
  Paley, B., ‘The facts speak for themselves’ in Jakubowski, M. ed.,
The Complete History of Jack the Ripper
(Robinson, 2008), P. 266

  
5.
  Rumbelow, D.,
The Complete Jack the Ripper
(Penguin Books, 2004), P.96

  
6.
  Scott, C.,
Will the real Mary Kelly…?
(Publish and be damned, 2005), P. 128

Begg, P.,
Jack the Ripper: The Facts
(Robson Books Ltd, 2006)

Paley, B.,
Jack the Ripper: The Simple Truth
(Headline Book Publishing, 1996)

Paley, B., ‘The facts speak for themselves’ in Jakubowski, M. ed.,
The Complete History of Jack the Ripper
(Robinson, 2008)

Rumbelow, D.,
The Complete Jack the Ripper
(Penguin Books, 2004)

Scott, C.,
Will the real Mary Kelly…?
(Publish and be damned, 2005)

Sugden, P.,
The Complete History of Jack the Ripper
, (Robinson Publishing Ltd, 1995)

Jack the Ripper was a sexually-motivated serial killer, who terrorised London in the second half of 1888. He eluded both the police and the vigilant public, and left a mystery which continues to fascinate and horrify in equal measure. William Henry Bury was that most commonplace of killers; a man who abused his wife and finally murdered her. He died at the hands of James Berry, the public executioner, on 24 April 1889, in Dundee Prison. William Bury was Jack the Ripper.

William Bury was doomed from birth. He was the fourth child of a young married couple who lived in Stourbridge, in the West Midlands. They were not wealthy, but his father, also called William, was in employment with a fishmonger and they could hope for a happy future. But from the 25 May 1859, when young William first drew breath in this cruel world, the family was heading towards destruction.

William’s mother, Mary Jane Bury (
née
Henley), sank into a state of severe post-natal depression and then, within months, she lost the help and support of her eldest child. Seven-year-old Elizabeth Ann died suddenly at home, after a series of violent epileptic fits. Mary, ill and grieving, was left alone all day with three children under the age of six, while her husband went to work. This involved regular trips to Birmingham with a horse and cart to collect fish. On the 10 April 1850, coming down Muckley’s Hill near Halesowen, William Bury Snr had a problem with the horse and jumped down from the cart. He lost control of the animal and it galloped off, crushing his body lengthways under the wheel of the cart. With horrible irony, the papers gave his name as ‘James Berry’.

William Bury standing in the dock. (The
Dundee Advertiser
, 19 March, 1889)

Fate had dealt Mary yet another crushing blow, from which she never recovered. She was soon admitted to Powick Asylum, where she died four years later. The three orphaned children were taken in by Mary Bury’s brothers and sisters, and until 1871, William lived with his Uncle Edward’s family. When they moved to Ladywood, in Birmingham, they did not take him with them. While it is known that he was educated at the Bluecoate School in Old Swinford, near Stourbridge, it is not known who gave him a home.