Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
It was once claimed that a piece of vital evidence would one day come forward that it would prove without doubt the identity of the man who brought the East End of London to its knees during the latter half of 1888 and the answer would not be shocking. It would not have the world reaching for all the hundreds of books written on the subject once more and be leafed through with the luxury of zealot like gratification on deciding who was right or wrong, but in fact would leave armchair Detectives and Ripperologists scratching their head and going, “Who”?
It is that who, that surprise which actually is one of the more instantly appealing pieces of detective work set out by Wynne Weston-Davies in his book The Real Mary Kelly that grabs the attention of the reader and asking the very real question, what if the author is right? What if somewhere along the line, the very heart of the mystery was always staring people in the face and all the dogged fanciful notions, all of them at some point odd, disparaging and not really worth the energy following through, could be finally sent to the furnace, the likes of Walter Sickert finally allowed to just revert to being a painter rather than a suspect; this is the angle that comes across in The Real Mary Kelly.
What is a true blessing though in the book, is not the reveal, which comes very early, nor is it the pain staking evidence once more being presented, it is more in the way that Wynne Weston-Davies actually allows the fifth victim of Jack the Ripper to breathe and live in the pages of his book. A narrative of truth of a person long since consigned to history as one of the many poor unfortunates that made 19th Century Whitechapel their home, long since designated by the circumstances of her death and murder and condemned to a pauper’s grave in Leytonstone.
Unlike many victims of murder in the 18th and 19th Century, Mary Kelly is linked forever by the times and place she lived in and in to this, albeit perhaps with Wynne Weston-Davies’ natural affinity for investigating, the disappearance of a great aunt at the same time as the poor Mary Kelly was taken brutally from the world, reveals the desperate attempts by a noted journalist at the time and the falling of grace to wreck revenge on a woman who made him nearly bankrupt, who in his eyes had abused his trust and took his life away from him.
Unlike many other books that have revealed a new name into the equation, Wynne Weston-Davies has not gone for sensationalism, nor indeed has the author embarked on a crusade of hate towards the perpetrator of the most notorious unsolved event in British criminal history, what is laid down is simple, almost too good to be true but which draws back enough not to scream perfection.
The Real Mary Kelly is a sincere theory, one that really does hold up against certain scrutiny and is a tremendously good read, not so much who? but more but of course it could be and why has it never been discussed before. There will always be books on the subject, Wynne Weston-Davies makes a very compelling argument and makes it be making one of the victims truly human and not a statistic. A very well delivered line of reasoning, one of the best on the subject in the last 30 years!
Ian D. Hall