South Wales Daily News comments, 14 November 1888

[Gary Barnett]

Because he attended the crime scene as head of Whitechapel CID and he was directly involved in the whole Kelly investigation so he knew it inside out

and I didnt say he was not involved in the other murders, I said he was not directly involved in some of the other murders stop misquoting me

It makes me laugh how what senior officers said back then or wrote back then seems to be readily accepted becasue they were senior officers and in the know, but when a senior officer says in an interview soemthing which kicks the backside out of a major part of the ripper mystery suddenly no one wants to belive him, what a fickle bunch you are !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

www.trevormarriott.co.uk

He seemed to have forgotten Thomas Bowyer’s name.

Anyone who readily accepts everything written by senior police officers decades after the event is being rather foolish. Drew being the classic example.

[Chris Phillips]

Getting back to Cardiff - looking at the newspapers, it's interesting that there was a significant crackdown against prostitution by the Cardiff police in late 1884.

I'm posting below a long letter protesting against what it describes as "The police crusade against vice in Cardiff." The letter was signed "Fair-Play" and published in the Western Mail of 9 December 1884. According to the writer, this was the result of deliberations at the last meeting of the Watch Committee, when complaints were made about the number of girls "parading the streets of the town" and the head constable received instructions to take measures to "drive those unfortunate outcasts from our midst." These measures are said to have been taken during the past two or three weeks, and are described by the writer as "tyrannical". The result is described as a "reign of terror".

The Western Mail took up the "Reign of Terror" description, and on 17 December printed under that title a long report of proceedings in the magistrates' court. Its routine reports of charges of prostitution were headed "Reign of Terror" for a couple of weeks. Not everyone was opposed to the campaign, though. The South Wales Echo retaliated by heading its reports "The Falsely-Styled Reign of Terror", and later (presumably in sarcasm) just "The Reign of Terror!".

The campaign doesn't seem to have lasted very long. The British Newspaper Archive brings up no more references to "Reign of Terror" after mid-January 1885, and the figures in the head constable's reports of crime don't show much of an increase in the annual totals of prosecutions for prostitution.

But I thought this was interest in several respects - not least in that this happened at just about exactly the time when Barnett's deposition would have Mary Jane Kelly leaving Cardiff for London (though other reports place that earlier).

WesternMail_1884-12-09.jpg

[Chris Phillips]

Here is the start of the Western Mail's report on the "Reign of Terror", which appeared on 17 December 1884.

WesternMail_1884-12-17start.jpg

[Chris Phillips]

And here are excerpts from the annual crime figures reported by the Western Mail on 9 October 1884 and 16 October 1885. (I must confess I can't work out why two different figures are given in 1885.)

1884

WesternMail_1884-10-09summary.jpg

1885

WesternMail_1885-10-16summary.jpg

[Gary Barnett]

Blimey! That was some crackdown.

[Chris Phillips]

Blimey! That was some crackdown.

The first of those figures (1884) covered the year before the crackdown started, so I think the message is that there was about one prosecution of a Cardiff prostitute per day in general during the 1880s, and while the crackdown generated a lot of controversy it didn't result in very many additional prosecutions.

I'd say the sheer numbers make it unlikely that the police had checked their records and failed to find mention of any prostitutes with similar names. Particularly given how many women named Mary Davies there must have been.

And I think this Mary Ann Kelly in 1884 (just before the crackdown) sounds like a prostitute. Custom House Street was a popular haunt of prostitutes in the 1950s, and a glance at newspaper reports suggests the same was true in the 1880s.

Western Mail, 18 September 1884:

WesternMail_1884-09-18.jpg

(Edit: Custom House Street is mentioned in this other report in the Cardiff Times, 20 September 1884

CardiffTimes_1884-09-20.jpg

[Chris Phillips]

And I think this Mary Ann Kelly in 1884 (just before the crackdown) sounds like a prostitute. Custom House Street was a popular haunt of prostitutes in the 1950s, and a glance at newspaper reports suggests the same was true in the 1880s.

This could perhaps have been the daughter of John Kelly of Homfray Street, who would have been about 18 at the time.

[Jurriaan Maessen]

Very interesting, Chris!

[Chris Phillips]

Custom House Street was a popular haunt of prostitutes in the 1950s, and a glance at newspaper reports suggests the same was true in the 1880s.

Just a small correction - by the 1950s the focus was the Custom House pub on the corner of Bute Street and Crichton Street, a couple of blocks to the south. But in the 19th century Custom House Street (until 1872 called Whitmore Lane) was a notorious red light district:
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/lifest...-gave-14510395
http://upsetvictorians.blogspot.com/...-and-lane.html