Jack The Ripper: A True Love Story

by Wynne Weston-Davies

Many researchers have tried over the decades to discover Mary Jane Kelly's true identity. She was the final and most brutally murdered victim of Jack the Ripper, but almost nothing is known about her family or her earlier life. In this thrilling book,  author, qualified surgeon and Mary's great-nephew Wynne Weston-Davies explores the inscrutable circumstances behind the Ripper's fifth and final victim and how the elusive life of Mary Jane Kelly is wholly intertwined with the mystery of her legendary killer.

Genres: True Crime, History, Crime, Nonfiction

256 pages, Paperback

First published August 3, 2015

Reviews

[Jessica Powell]

First, the negatives. Like most Ripper authors, Weston-Davies tends to present speculation as fact and there is some over-reaching. (E.g. the Americanisms in the 'Dear Boss' series of letters are singled out because the suspect had spent two years in the States - some 20 years prior to their writing.) But, really, this is expected in Ripper works so don't let it put you off.

The credible potential identification of Mary Kelly is definitely worth reading this for. I would have loved to read more about how Weston-Davies made the connection, and any other family history which could lend support to the identification, but the information that is there is certainly a strong enough base for further research.

The other strength of this book is Weston-Davies' background as a surgeon, and his explanations of the medical terminology used in the original reports. There is a lot of debate in Ripper books over whether or not the killer had surgical / anatomical knowledge, and Weston-Davies' insight on this was particularly interesting - even if it didn't make the strongest case for his own suspect!

All in all, well worth reading (just remember your pinch of salt!).

[David Dellman]

The Real Mary Kelly: A Review
I purchased the book thinking it was a biography of Mary Kelly, the fifth and final “canonical” victim of Jack the Ripper. I was a little disappointed to learn that the book primarily develops the case for yet another identification of Jack the Ripper in an already very long list of viable suspects. To my delight the author does provide biographical detail of Mary Kelly but only if you accept his theory of who the real Mary Kelly was. If the author is correct in his assertion, then he is a direct decedent of the person he believes to be the real Mary Kelly. I won’t say who he believes Mary Kelly really was or who he believes killed her. I will say that the author’s theory is as good as any other, in my opinion, but it is not his theory that makes this book worth recommending. I am recommending it first and foremost because it is exceptionally well written. It is a compelling read regardless of your final agreement or disagreement with the author’s conclusions. Once you pick this book up you will not want to put it down. It is that good. I am a “Ripperologist” only incidentally as my real affection is for Victorian studies. I have read dozens of Ripper books because the Ripper is such an important part of Victorian history. Each Ripper book presents passionately, almost dogmatically, the case for a different suspect, each author is convinced that he or she has finally “solved” the case. For me, the identity of the Ripper remains a mystery. The other reason to read this book is that it provides valuable insight into Victorian culture. So if you are looking for a really good read or if you want to learn more about the wonderful age of the Victorians, read this book. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed. I was delighted. Thank you Wynne Weston-Davies on a job well done.

[Sarah]

Note: I have tagged the entire review as having spoilers, due to making points about some of the arguments put forward by the author in the text that are essential to his theory. It might be best to read the book first if you don't want to be spoiled about how he reaches his conclusions.

I am not an expert in all things Jack the Ripper. I've read articles and books over the years, but I don't know everything. I am trying to approach this from an analytical point of view, as this is a non-fiction book, and I read it to gain more information about the subject. And i read it because I have an interest in history and true crime and like to read about Jack the Ripper in the hopes that someone will put forward a good theory or come up with some better evidence one day.

The author, it should be stated, studied Anatomy, and was a Demonstrator of Anatomy at St. Mary's Hospital in London and has taught dissection of the human body, and has also worked as a surgeon at Westminster Hospital. He uses his knowledge of anatomy to draw conclusions about the killer, and his knowledge is useful in this respect. As a great nephew of Elizabeth Weston Davies, he also has access to family history that he uses in this book.

The author puts forward the theory that Elizabeth Weston-Davies, a young woman in her twenties who went missing in London the 1880s, is Mary Jane Kelly, the final victim of Jack the Ripper. He also theorises that Elizabeth's ex-husband is her killer, and killed the first four women as a ruse to get to Kelly. The author puts forward an interesting story. However, I did not really think there was a good enough case for this theory, mainly due to the flimsy evidence cited and the many assumptions made. For this reason, I did not enjoy the book as much as I could have.

Here are a few points on why I did not like this book:-

1. The title: Jack the Ripper: A True Love Story. This was changed from 'The Real Mary Kelly', and honestly, I think 'The Real Mary Kelly' is a better title. The tag line on the top of the front cover on the edition I read is 'Mary Kelly was his final victim. She had taken his heart, and now he was stealing hers.' It reads like a cheesy romance, and sensationalises and romanticises something which did not need to be romanticised or sensationalised. I know this may have not been the author's choice, but I still wanted to point this out.

2. The sources cited. On page 76, two of the sources are cited simply as 'Wikipedia', giving the website address as 'wikipedia.org', not even giving the actual page where the information was gleaned from. Everyone who has studied history knows not to cite Wikipedia as a source. An educated man such as this author should have known better. Furthermore, there are many instances where sources are not cited at all. Such as on page 16, where he says 'Because of this the word Kelly was frequently used as a synonym for a prostitute and many 'unfortunates', as lower class prostitutes were known, used it whenever they needed an alias.' No source is given for this information. How did he come across this information? Why should we believe it? Again, on page 21, he gives snippets of information about what life was like for these 'unfortunates', but cites no source for the information. This is just in the first 21 pages - there are more instances where he cites no sources or sources which I do not think are enough to prove his case (primary sources, for example, will have more weight to them than a secondary source, and more than one source for a conclusion drawn will have more weight than citing just one newspaper article out of the many that were printed at the time).

3. Assumptions, or conjecture - 'an opinion or conclusion formed on the basis of incomplete information' - is a trick the author uses a lot. In a case like Jack the Ripper's, it is often unavoidable, but it renders a lot of theories as just that: a theory or conclusion formed on the basis of incomplete information or evidence. For example, on page 17, the author notes that in 1886 Mary Kelly left one lodging for another, and assumes that this is because of the visit of an older man at about that time, who the source assumed to be her father. The author then assumes that this must have been Francis Craig, Elizabeth Weston-Davies' ex-husband, who was some years older than her and old enough to be her father. The only evidence was that Mary Kelly apparently told her partner Joe Barnett of the visit by an older man - he was not witness to the event himself. The connection between Mary Kelly and Elizabeth Weston Davies seems to be because of Davies being a name listed on her death certificate due to the evidence of Joe Barnett - Kelly told him that she had been married previously, and her name was Davies, and that her husband had died. There was no evidence to support this story either, other than Joe's account of a conversation he had with Mary Kelly.

4. 'Possibly', 'probably' and 'It is likely that' - the use of these words or phrases occurs frequently, where the author jumps to a conclusion based on flimsy evidence.

5. Repetition - very often, the author will repeat information in the main text that was in a footnote earlier, or vice versa. Such repetition was unnecessary.

6. Poorly edited footnotes - in this edition, from page 249 onwards, the chapter three footnotes (or endnotes) refer to those in chapter four. All subsequent footnotes are under the incorrect chapter heading, making it difficult to look them up.

7. Medical conditions attributed with little to no source material to back it up - on page 39 the author talks about the early life of Francis Craig and from descriptions given about the man in the inquest after his death, he assumes that the man 'may possibly have had high-performing Asperger syndrome'. This is purely because people described him as 'most eccentric', 'very nervous', with 'unpredictable behaviour' and 'delusions'. Hardly concrete evidence of Asperger's. He then says his behaviour would have been recognised today as 'psychopathy' and 'a true psychosis on the schizophrenia spectrum', again with little evidence. I know the author has a medical background, but he appears to be specialised in anatomy and dissection, not mental and psychological conditions.

8. The effect of the broken marriage on Craig - on page 55 the author again assumes that Elizabeth's desertion 'dealt Francis a savage blow' and that 'his reaction to Elizabeth's departure was extreme'. He cites no sources for this, so it is purely dramatisation based on his assumption that Francis was Jack the Ripper. He says that Francis enlisted a friend to help him search for his wife, but doesn't cite a source. It is possible this was information included in the divorce petition, but this is not specifically stated here.

9. How Francis Craig tracked down Elizabeth Weston-Davies - he cites an amendment of the divorce petition as being possibly prompted by getting information from someone named in the divorce petition about the whereabouts of his wife. While plausible, there is no evidence of this, and it is again jumping to conclusions.

10. The motive for murder. The author states that Francis Craig only murdered the first four women in order to disguise his real motive and the identity of the intended victim. It is a motive that has been put forward before, perhaps because Mary Kelly's murder was so much more savage than the other four. Putting an additional ulterior motive for the murders may be putting a modern analysis on it. It could simply have been a hatred of women, or more specifically of the unfortunates of the lower classes. Mary Kelly's murder may have been more savage because she was the last, and it was done in the confines of her home where he wasn't likely to be disturbed. The author's motive is not any more plausible than the others put forward.

11. The Americanisms in the Ripper letters. The first letter, subsequent postcard and a second letter are assumed here to be the work of the actual killer. A number of experts have agreed this is the case, while many others think the letters are fake and written by journalists. The author cites Francis Craig's work in journalism, knowledge of the Press and the Central News agency, and education as evidence for him being the killer and the author of the letters. Craig apparently visited America previously, and the author thinks he may have picked up local terms there. While this is plausible, this is still only circumstantial evidence. Also, I find it very unlikely that someone would retain such Americanisms when the words were not in frequent use in England at the time.

Overall, while I think the author has put a lot of research and work into this book, and has put forward a good story, there is little evidence to support his claims. I think with more supporting evidence, better source citing, and tidying up of the text, this could have been a better book. I'm certainly interested to see if the author does manage to get Mary Kelly's body exhumed for DNA testing, as this could give a lot more weight to his theory.

[Margaret]

Written by Wynne Weston-Davies, "The Real Mary Kelly" is the story of Elizabeth Weston-Davies, who was the real Mary Kelly. Even at the time of her murder police considered her name to be false but could not find the real woman.

Wynne Weston-Davies, her great-nephew, sets out to bring his great-aunt to life. From her time as lady's maid to the Marchioness of Londonderry, to an expensive brothel in Kensington, to an ill-advised marriage, to France, to the East End of London, and, finally, to her violent and gruesome death.

Wynne Weston-Davies has written and interesting and well-researched book that gives a degree on insight into the life of the woman that history knows as "Mary Kelly" and also to the man that we believes killed her and the other woman in those dreadful months of 1888.

Well worth a read. recommended.

[Novelle Novels]

3 out of 5 stars
Just a quick warning that this is very gory and graphic. Factually it’s really good and very informative but it’s not for the feint hearted

[Kelly Bond]

It was an enjoyable book but was not what i thought it was going to be as it seemed all about the identity of the killer and not a lot about her.

[Sandie]

This was a very hard book to follow and written in a way to make it truly uninteresting

[Kevinjwoods]

This seems to have followed the template for writing a book on Jack the Ripper a little too closely.
First pick a random person as your suspect, given that anyone who was a suspect at the time has been thoroughly ruled this requires, as here, to be someone that nobody has ever heard of. The advantage of this is that there isn’t any reason that anyone can give why he shouldn’t be considered.
Then you come up with a reason why your suspect is The Ripper, now the reason doesn’t have to make sense or be plausible, in fact if you can base it on a psychological reading of a serial killer and then find any minor details of your suspect to pin this on then so much the better, then all you have to do is find some kind of connection with the victims or area no matter how unproven, in this case the suspect’s wife disappeared and then Mary Jane Kelly appeared with a similar background, and then provide a reason for the killings, in this case to hide the fact that he wanted to kill only Mary Kelly. Don’t let the fact that there is no actual evidence proving the motive, in this case the fact that MJK lied about her background is sufficient to prove she is the wife of the killer.
Bonus points are always given if you can explain why the Dear Boss and Yours Truly letters were not actually written by a journalist but in fact clearly point to your suspect, and with a little thought they can be made to fit any suspect.
Then you can fill the bulk of your book by simply going over every murder and repeating as much as possible from the original inquests. Given that everybody reading it will probably know all this already be sure to mention how your suspect was there at every opportunity, by this point you should have already moved from “it is possible this happened” to “this happened” and almost nobody will have noticed you believe.
Finally, you explain what happened to your suspect after 1888, explaining if possible but it’s really not necessary, why he stopped killing, in this case he had about 15 years of normality before it suddenly became too much.
Not the worst book of its kind but nowhere near the best.

[George]

It is unfortunately impossible to offer an unambiguously positive review of this book. The quality of written English to be found in it is often rather poor (the accusative pronoun, for example, is consistently absent, the sentences not even being reworded in consequence so as to minimise the power of this idiolect to give the reader pause; sections of the book seem on occasion to repeat, quite needlessly and at some length, points that had already been amply made; and there are frequent and very basic typographical errors which cannot be readily overlooked), and the case it presents is, in itself, flimsy in the extreme - at one point, for example, Jack the Ripper is identified on the strength of the facts that one of three conflicting eyewitness reports broadly matched an individual depicted in a court drawing, and that the individual in question looks not unlike a photograph of the author's favourite suspect's father! But to judge a book about Jack the Ripper poorly in light of the flimsiness of the author's case is, perhaps, to miss the point: indeed, it is only fair to allow that, as it pertains specifically to Mary Kelly, the Ripper's final victim and this book's nominal subject, Weston-Davies's argument seems significantly more robust, and far harder to fault. Irrespective of the forensic or medico-legal merits of the book's contents, however, and indeed of the book's literary merits, it nevertheless contrives to be a perfectly unputdownable read (witness the fact I read it in only two days!). At a distance of well over a century, it seems improbable in the extreme that those murders attributed to Jack the Ripper will ever be definitively laid at the doorstep of any one individual. If, however, such impenetrable uncertainty means that people like Wynne Weston-Davies will go on writing books as good as this one (though, ideally, aided in doing so by a rather better proofreader), then it can only be a good thing.

[Michael Davies]

Another day and another candidate to add to the ever - growing list of those who may or may not have been Jack the Ripper. This time it's the estranged husband of Mary Kelly, the final and most mutilated of the unfortunate victims. This individual, a journalist by trade, son of a well known radical and newspaper editor, eventually became so psychotically disturbed by his wife's desertion that he tracked her to the East End and murdered four other women in a bizarre (yet successful) attempt to disquise the motive for the only killing he actually wished to commit. This theory, or one very like it, has cropped up before, only involving the Queen's surgeon Sir William Gull and a plot to cover up an affair (and the birth of a baby) between Mary and the Prince of Wales. One theory seems as implausible as the other to be honest, but the author, a qualified surgeon and the great - nephew of Mary Kelly (who, it appears was actually Elizabeth Weston-Davies, from Montgomeryshire) has clearly done an enormous amount of research and presents a very strongly argued case, albeit with a large sprinkling of speculation as is the case in all Ripper theories. It's undoubtedly an interesting addition to the oeuvre and a compelling , if somewhat gory read. Whether it's the definitive answer we will probably never know since every other candidate has his supporters who can make an apparently plausible case for their man. The one thing with which I would quibble is the title - it seems to be me to be about as far from "a true love story" as it is possible to get!

[Lanie]

Author posits two theories.

1. The Woman known as Mary Kelly was his Great Aunt. She came to a 'bad end' and her family didn't want to know.

2. Her estranged husband was the killer. He murdered the others as a warning to his wife. When she didn't listen he killed her too.

The first might be possible. Mary Kelly was someone, but who that someone was remains a mystery.

The second seems very unlikely. It is a similar supposition to the Barnett theory, the early murders as a warning, Kelly as the focus of the whole shebang.
This second point relies entirely upon the acceptance of the first.

There is talk of exhumation in order to prove this theory.
This too is unlikely.

In fact none of this is provable. The author gives no hard evidence for anything. He expects me to just believe him because he said so.
In fact all it proves is that the ripper sells books, and ripperologists are scraping the bottom of the barrel.

Kind of interesting for anyone with an interest in the case, actually less ludicrous than some, less entertaining than others.

[Beverley Gibbs]

Gallups along but is massively speculative. “We don’t know what he looked like but he was probably medium height and well built” and “We don’t know what French name she took but Marie Jeanette is as good as any” spring to mind. Not a great addition to an already over-populated genre.

[Sehar]

Full of conjecture and backed up with very little in the way of real evidence, this book only gets four stars from me because of the detailed descriptions of the inquests of all 5 ripper victims.

[Alessandro Mana]

The theory is well-documented, but all the claims and evidence to support it have to be validated - although sometimes the links are made to somewhat hasty conclusions.

There is no certainty of any link between the two women except those brought by the author.

Thus, the theory offered is not very different from all the other presented in other books so far. However, offer an interesting point of view - which must be developed and analyzed - and a split of life and of Victorian society that is rarely exposed in such a clear and direct way.

I would not regard it as one of the basic volumes of the personal library of a ripperologist, but one of those to be read as addendum and personal curiosity for free time.