Joseph Barnett (Jack the Ripper suspect)

Joseph Barnett was born on 25 May 1858 in Whitechapel's Hairbrain neighbourhood. He was the fourth son of dock worker John Barnett and his wife, Catherine, Irish immigrants who fled their native country for Great Britain following the great famines. The Barnetts already had a son before they moved to Whitechapel, Denis, and went on to have three others (excluding Joseph) - Daniel (b. 1851), Catherine (b. 1853) and John (b. 1860).

In 1861, the family moved to nearby Cartwright Street, and they lived there until 1864, when the elder Barnett, who worked as a porter in the Billinsgate Fish Market, died of pleurisy in July. His eldest son Denis assumed responsibility as head of the family, although he married Mary An Garrett and settled in Bermondsey.

Before he turned 20, Joseph began working in the Billingsgate Market as a fish porter, a job he held for more than a decade, although intermittently, until he was terminated in October 1888, when he was 30 years old and already lived with a woman, also from Ireland: Mary Jane Kelly. Barnett also worked briefly as a Horse slaughterer in the Kings Cross area for a short period.

Little is known about Barnett's life after Kelly's death. He only reappears in a register in 1906, when he was granted a license as a doorman, again in the Billingsgate Market. At that time he lived at Number 18 of New Lane Gravel, Shadwell, with his brother Daniel. The following year his work license says that he lived at Number 60 Red Lion Street, Shadwell, and in 1908 he lived in Tencas Street, in the district of Wapping.

After this, in 1919 he appeared in the electoral register living at 106 Red Lion Street in Shadwell with Louisa Barnett, who appears to be his wife, although there is no documented evidence to confirm whether he was married or had any children with her. The couple remained there until Louisa's death on 3 November 1926. Shortly thereafter, it is recorded that Joseph Barnett died on 29 November 1926, at the age of 68. The cause of death was edema in the lungs and acute bronchitis.[3]

Joseph Barnett was 30 years old and fired from his usual job when his ex-girlfriend Mary Jane Kelly was brutally murdered on Friday 9 November 1888. His usual activity was to work as a fish porter at the Billinsgate Fish Market in London's East End, although he occasionally worked as a construction worker. He was the last boyfriend of the young and sensual Irish woman known as "Marie Jeannette", "Fair Emma", "Ginger", and several other pseudonyms, and until a few days before the tragedy he shared with her the tiny room number 13 of the building called Miller's Court, located at number 26 on Dorset Street.

On 30 October that year he had just separated from Kelly after a violent fight, during which the angry lovers attacked each other by throwing blunt objects they had at hand. As a result of this, the glass of the window adjacent to the door that gave entry to the modest housing was broken.

Barnett later testified that, once said brawl occurred and despite the separation, they saw each other again outside the house several times, though only as friends. Both he and Mary adopted, from then on, the custom of introducing the arm through a slit in order to open the porch from the inside, pushing the inner bolt, since they would've lost the only key and had no money to manufacture a copy.

That version seemed incongruous and aroused distrust among the investigators. If Barnett had moved away from the woman, and ceased living with her, his claim that they both opened the keyless door by using the procedure he described was not understood. However, the ex-boyfriend defended himself when he was questioned and explained that, despite their confrontation, they remained on cordial terms, to the point that when he got a new job, he offered financial assistance to Mary.

Witnesses confirmed Barnett's claims, who had seen the couple drinking in a tavern in the company of Julia Venturney, another resident of Miller's Court. This information supported the man's story that the unstable couple was in the process of reconciliation.[4][5]

In the subsequent judicial survey conducted after the murder of Mary Kelly, he was called to the stand as a witness. Once there, he said he recognised his former lover, despite the dire state of the body, by the shape of her eyes and ears. After that statement, Barnett supplied to the justice most of the few information known about the Kelly's life.[6][7]

Even though the contemporary investigators did not suspect that this individual had consummated any murder, in more recent times he was accused of being the sordid killer by more than one scholar. The suspicions initially fell on Joseph Barnett in 1972 when, in an article edited by True Crime magazine, former British detective Bruce Paley suggested that he was Jack the Ripper.

Years later, in a book published in 1995 titled "Jack the Ripper: The Simple Truth", that same author resumed the theory by adding new speculation to endorse the candidacy of the fish porter from the Billinsgate Fish Market.[8]

Essentially, said writer proclaimed that Barnett passionately loved his girlfriend Mary Jane Kelly, and was desperate to get her away from prostitution and alcoholism. In order to frighten her so that she would abandon her dissolute lifestyle, and in order to permanently settle in with him, he devoted himself to brutally decimating her colleagues.

Barnett also used to read the press reports to his partner, and she frequently asked him if police had captured the perpetrator. The plan seemed successful, as the frightened young woman stopped walking the streets for a while. But at the end of October, Mary went on to share her room with another prostitute named Maria Harvey, with whom Paley suggested Kelly had a lesbian relationship. This situation stoked the ire of Barnett, who decided to leave her after a fiery fight on 30 October 1888.[9]

According to this theory, after some frustrated attempt at reconciliation, Joseph arrived unexpectedly the night of 9 November at his former lover's room. Soon after, the final arguing began. Noting the definitive rejection from Kelly, and taken over by uncontrollable jealousy and rage, he proceeded to kill her as well.[10]

A number of arguments have been highlighted in support of the hypothesis that blames Joseph Barnett for the murders, namely:

1) He would have kept the key to the room he shared with Kelly and, after completing the homicide, went out and locked the door using that key, which had not been lost, as he falsely claimed.

2) His physiognomy resembled the person who was described accompanying some victims before their; above all, age and height match.

3) He dwelt in the center of the Whitechapel district in 1888, when the crimes occurred.

4) He most likely met other of the murdered women, who would've let their guard down in his presence, a circumstance that explains why they did not defend themselves when he attacked them, because the man was familiar to the prostitutes when he was one of their boyfriends.

5) It was learned, and he admitted it himself to the authorities, that days before the murder, he had quarreled with Mary Jane Kelly.

6) It was speculated that Catherine Eddowes suspected he was the killer, as the told one pensioner. Her murder could've been consummated to eliminate a dangerous witness.

7) After Annie Chapman's death, an envelope that belonged to Barnett was found in the courtyard of Hanbury Street, who could've have lost it when he committed the murder.

8) He was of Irish origin, so he could've written the "From Hell" letter addressed to George Lusk, which contained idioms from that language.

9) As a fish porter, he filleted fish and possessed an appropriate weapon that matched the knife with which the killer inflicted the cuts to his numerous victims.

10) On 30 September 1888, the night of the "double event", the escape route taken by the murderer lead to Barnett's home. He could even have washed his bloody hands in a fountain near Miller's Court, where he lived at the time.

11) A tobacco pipe of his was found on the scene of Mary Jane Kelly's murder. If he had taken all of his belongings a few days before and no longer returned to the place, as he said, it is not explained why this object was there.

12) He had a reason to perpetrate the excesses of Jack the Ripper. He was not alienated or psychotic, but an intelligent and cunning individual who - precisely because of these characteristics - the police never managed to catch.[11]

• Jack the Ripper suspects

• Article by Dr. Frederick Walker, Joseph Barnett, on the digital site Casebook: Jack the Ripper.
• Joseph Barnett (1858-1926), suspect, on the digital site Casebook: Jack the Ripper.
• Joseph Barnett, on the Wiki Jack the Ripper: The Great Victorian Mystery.
• The Ripper Theory: Joseph Barnett.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Jack the Ripper.