Joseph Barnett: Mary Kelly's Lover - Jack the Ripper Suspect
Jack the Ripper: The Simple Truth by Bruce Paley
In the 1970s, writer Bruce Paley suggested that Joseph Barnett, the boyfriend of the last victim, Mary Jane Kelly, was Jack the Ripper. After years of research, his book Jack the Ripper: The Simple Truth was published.
Various reviewers have praised his descriptions of conditions in London’s East End at the time of the murders.
Like many growing up then, Joseph Barnett’s early life was far from ideal.
He was born on the 25th of May 1858, the fourth child of Irish immigrants. Joseph’s father died of pleurisy in 1864. Life would have been difficult for the Barnett family, and it was made more difficult when his mother mysteriously disappeared sometime in the next seven years.
Bruce Paley says that all of this had a traumatic effect on Joseph. He developed a stammer and later displayed symptoms of echolalia, in which a person repeats certain words spoken by another. Paley adds that echolalia may be symptomatic of schizophrenia.
It certainly shows that Joseph had a tough start in life. But, as has been said, he was far from alone; in Victorian London, life was tough; one in four infants would die in their first year.
Paley says that Joseph went on to join his three brothers working as a fish porter in Billingsgate Fish Market.
He was still working there when, in April 1887, he met a young prostitute called Mary Jane Kelly. Mary Jane Kelly ended up as the fifth victim of the unknown killer, who we call Jack the Ripper.
According to Bruce Paley, although Joseph disapproved of prostitutes, he first met Mary Jane Kelly as a customer.
Paley writes:
“To Barnett, still single at 29 and suffering from a speech impediment, the young, fresh and pretty Kelly must have seemed like a terrific catch, and he seems to have become quite smitten with her, to the point of sexual obsession.”
As a good, steady earner, Joseph Barnett was able to pay the rent on a single room for them both and provide them with food and drink. They ended up living at 13 Miller’s Court which ran of Dorset Street which was said to be the worst street in London.
Unfortunately, says Paley, after over ten years of working at Billingsgate Market, Joseph lost his job.
This loss of what had provided Joseph with a very good income changed the relationship. Mary Jane Kelly told her friend Julia Venturney that she could no longer bear to be with Barnett.
At this point, Paley says:
“Barnett knew that he was running out of time, and if he was going to prevent Kelly from leaving him, then drastic measures were called for.
Driven by his unrequited love and sexual obsession with Kelly - a twisted and overpowering emotion responsible for countless homicides to this day - Joseph Barnett concocted a desperate plan in which he would frighten Mary Jane Kelly off the streets by murdering and mutilating a series of prostitutes, leaving their disembowelled bodies lying out in the open as a warning for all to see.
At the same time, it must be pointed out that Barnett was equally driven by whatever psychological compulsions and disorders that a person capable of committing such atrocities invariably possessed.
Research into the subject has revealed that serial killers have been known to take jobs as butchers or hospital or mortuary attendants in which they can vicariously experience their morbid, destructive, fantasies. For Joseph Barnett, it was no great leap from gutting fish to mutilating women.”
So, Bruce Paley writes that “Barnett knew that he was running out of time, and if he was going to prevent Kelly from leaving him, then drastic measures were called for.”
How can anyone know what Joseph Barnett was feeling at that time?
I don’t say Joseph didn’t feel he was running out of time because I can’t prove he didn’t feel that way. But equally it can’t be proved that he did feel that way.
In line with books about Jack the Ripper, a good story is important, and Bruce certainly delivers:
“Driven by his unrequited love and sexual obsession with Kelly - a twisted and overpowering emotion responsible for countless homicides to this day.”
We have no evidence to support this drama. But as Mark Twain said, ‘Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.’
And so Bruce is quite at liberty to state that: “Joseph Barnett concocted a desperate plan in which he would frighten Mary Jane Kelly off the streets by murdering and mutilating a series of prostitutes, leaving their disembowelled bodies lying out in the open as a warning for all to see.”
It's one of the more than a hundred explanations that writers who have researched and finally discovered the ‘true’ identity of Jack the Ripper have presented to the world.
Joseph Barnett will appeal to some and not to others.
For Bruce Paley, Joseph Barnett is the killer.
He was “the unseen killer who struck at random and seemingly without motive and left behind no useful clues or evidence.”
In support of his argument, Bruce Paley says that Joseph Barnett would have known the victims because they all lived close to each other.
That is true. They all lived within a five-minute walk of each other. But whereas London’s population density was about 50 people per acre the population density of Spitalfields per acre was 600!
Walk through Spitalfields today and think how well its residents would know other residents living within five minutes of them.
Today’s population density in Spitalfields is 60. Imagine ten times more people than there are living in Spitalfields today.
I will need to see hard evidence to support Bruce Paleys’s theory that Joseph Barnet knew the victims.
The reader is led through the murders as Joseph Barnett commits them. If the reader has read only one book that claims to reveal the identity of the killer, then that reader may be persuaded that Bruce has nailed it.
However, there is just as much reason to believe that Patricia Cornwell, Trevor Marriott, Bob Hinton, Stephen Knight, Russell Edwards, and a host of others have nailed it because they, too, unequivocally present their man as the killer.
With all writers who seek to get a book published on the murders of 1888, evidence is selected to fit the theory.
The is no proof that the ‘Dear Boss’ letter was written by the killer. Bruce, however writes that:
“The words were intended specifically for Mary Kelly’s ears. ‘I am down on whores’, the killer wrote, singling out his targets, ‘and I shan’t quit ripping them until I do get buckled (caught) . . . I love my work and want to start again . . . You will soon hear of me with my funny little games . . . My knifes so nice and sharp . . . ‘
Bruce says “Barnet knew that his gruesome message would reach Kelly because, in a stroke of perverted genius, it would be Barnett himself who would personally deliver it to her.”
Joseph Barnett did claim that he would read the newspaper accounts of each murder to Mary but that is not proof that he wrote the Dear Boss letter.
In 1931, journalist Fred Best is reported to have confessed that he and a colleague at The Star newspaper named Tom Bullen wrote the letter to keep the story alive.
It is certainly true that the newspapers ruthlessly exploited these murders simply to increase circulation, and journalists were prepared to go the extra mile to get a great headline.
Bruce says that the other theories that have been put forward are based on “weak and flimsy evidence” and offer only “dubious circumstantial evidence”.
And he says, “Many theories also make the mistake of looking for complex and convoluted solutions that stretch logic and rationale.”
It must be said that authors writing about their preferred candidate for the role of Jack the Ripper often condemn opposing theories.
Bruce says, “But most important of all is the simple but significant fact that in not one of the other theories is a direct and indisputable connection actually proven between the suspect and any of the victims.”
Well, nowhere in Bruce Paley’s book is a direct and indisputable connection actually proven between any of the victims except, of course, for the last victim, Mary Jane Kelly, who we can all agree he certainly knew Joseph Barnett.
It is far from clear that Joseph Barnet killed these five women despite Bruce claiming that - “The facts speak for themselves: Joseph Barnett was Jack the Ripper.”
One point I will make is that the overwhelming majority of women who have been murdered have been murdered by their partner or someone they know.
Was Joseph Barnett Jack the Ripper? In my opinion, it’s unlikely.
Did Joseph Barnett murder his girlfriend, Mary Jane Kelly? Maybe.
Thank you for checking out this post.
I hope I’ll get to meet you on one of my tours.