James Kelly (1860-1929)

Suggested in: "Jimmy Kelly’s Year of Ripper Murders" by John Morrison

James Kelly, born in Lancashire, was told at the age of 15 by the woman who had raised him that she was actually his grandmother. He was told at the same time that his real mother had just died and left him a small fortune.

This news had a bad mental effect. He started acting irrationally and suffered from mood swings. He abandoned his life in Lancashire and moved to the East end of London in 1878 where he drifted into a life of casual work, drink and prostitutes.

By 1881 things his life seemed to be improving. He had fallen in love with a respectable young woman called Sarah Brider and moved in with her family. They married in 1883. However, they never had sex, because by this time he was suffering from a contagious sexually transmitted disease that gave him blinding headaches. Despite this, he became convinced that the only reason she refused to sleep with him was because she had a physical deformity that she was hiding from him. Soon afterwards, Kelly was dismissed from his job - his employer explained that "he was obviously not right in the head" – and his mental decline became more prounounced as he resorted to drink and drugs.

In June 1883 he got into an argument with his wife about his drugtaking. He accused her of being a prostitute, pulled out a pen-knife from his pocket and stabbed her in the neck. She died of her wounds three days later. Kelly was found guilty of murder but, due to his insanity, was locked up in Broadmoor mental asylum rather than being hanged.

Whilst in Broadmoor, he would have been made aware that the real source of his infection was not his wife, but the prostitutes he had used in the East End. In 1888 Kelly escaped from Broadmoor and disappeared. The police considered him a suspect during the Whitechapel Murders – they searched his former home and questioned his friends and relatives about his possible whereabouts after the murder of Mary Jane Kelly – but no trace of him was found. No evidence was found that the two Kellys were related.

In 1927, Kelly suddenly re-appeared at Broadmoor hospital begging to be re-admitted. He claimed to have been roaming around Europe and America since his escape. He died in the asylum in 1929.