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 Billingsgate Fish Market, died of pleurisy in July.

His eldest son Denis assumed responsibility as head of the family, until he married Mary Ann Garrett and moved to Bermondsey, on the other side of the river Thames.

Before he turned 20, Barnett began working in Billingsgate Market as a fish porter, a job he held for more than a decade, although intermittently, until he was sacked in October 1888, when he was 30 years old and living with an Irish woman, Mary Jane Kelly.

After this, in 1919 the electoral register recorded that he lived 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.

During the fight blunt objects had been thrown, resulting in the glass of the window adjacent to the door that entered the house being broken.

Both he and Kelly adopted, from then on, the custom of introducing the arm through the broken window in order to open the porch from the inside, pushing the inner bolt, since they had lost the only key and had no money to manufacture a copy.

However, Barnett 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 Kelly.

Some witnesses apparently confirmed Barnett's claims, having seen the couple drinking in a tavern in the company of Julia Venturney, another resident of Miller's Court.

[6][7] Even though contemporary investigators did not suspect this individual to be guilty of murder, in more recent times he has been accused of being the sordid killer by more than one scholar.

Suspicion initially fell on Joseph Barnett in 1972 when, in an article in True Crime magazine, American former private investigator Bruce Paley suggested he was Jack the Ripper.

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.

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

[citation needed] 8) He was of Irish origin, so could have written the "From Hell" letter addressed to George Lusk, which contained idioms from that country.