[4][n 1] According to Joseph Barnett, the man she had most recently lived with prior to her murder, Kelly had told him she was born in Limerick, Ireland, in around 1863—although whether she referred to the city or the county is not known—and that her family moved to Wales when she was a child.

[25][n 3] In 1884, Kelly apparently left Cardiff and relocated to London, where she briefly worked for a tobacconist in Chelsea[23] before securing employment as a domestic servant while lodging in Crispin Street, Spitalfields.

[27] Via her acquaintance with a young French woman whom Kelly had met in Knightsbridge, she found work in a high-class brothel in the more affluent West End of London.

[23] Reportedly, Kelly was invited by a client named Francis Craig[23] to France, but returned to England within approximately two weeks,[28] having disliked her life there.

In the brief period of time she lodged with Buki, the two are known to have visited the home of a French lady living in Knightsbridge to demand the return of a box of expensive dresses belonging to Kelly.

This information suggests Kelly's descent into East End life was markedly rapid and may have been influenced by her efforts to avoid retribution from a procurer.

[41] In early 1888, Kelly and Barnett moved into 13 Miller's Court, a small, sparsely furnished single room at the back of 26 Dorset Street, Spitalfields.

[46] Two irregularly sized windows faced the yard, in which the dustbin and water tap serving the property were located, and the door opened directly into the twenty-six-foot-long arched passageway which connected Miller's Court with Dorset Street.

"[50] When drunk, Kelly would often be heard singing Irish songs, although when intoxicated, she would often become quarrelsome and even abusive to those around her, which earned her the nickname "Dark Mary".

[61] Fellow Miller's Court resident and prostitute, 31-year-old Mary Ann Cox, who described herself as "a widow and unfortunate",[62] reported seeing Kelly returning home drunk and in the company of a stout, ginger-haired man, aged approximately 36, at 11:45 p.m.

She was still singing when Cox left her lodgings at midnight, and when she returned approximately one hour later, at 1 a.m.[65][n 5] Elizabeth Prater resided in the room directly above Kelly.

He saw neither one of them again, laying off his watch at about 2:45 a.m.[72][n 6] Hutchinson's statement appears to be partly corroborated by a laundress named Sarah Lewis, who reported that as she walked towards the courtyard at 2:30 a.m. to spend the night with her friends, the Keylers, who resided at 2 Miller's Court, she had observed two or three people standing near the Britannia pub, including a respectably dressed young man with a dark moustache talking with a woman.

She returned to her home at approximately 3 a.m. Cox reported hearing no sound and seeing no light from Kelly's room at this time,[75] although she thought she heard someone leaving the residence at about 5:45 a.m.[76] Elizabeth Prater, who resided in the room directly above Kelly's and who had been awoken by her kitten walking over her neck, and Sarah Lewis, who had slept at number 2 Miller's Court on 8–9 November, both reported hearing a faint cry of "Murder!"

[85] Pushing aside the clothing used to plug the broken windowpane and the muslin curtains which covered the windows, Bowyer peered inside the room—discovering Kelly's extensively mutilated corpse lying on the bed.

The wall by the right side of the bed and in a line with the neck was marked by blood which had struck it in several places.The face was gashed in all directions, the nose, cheeks, eyebrows, and ears being partly removed.

The intercostals between the fourth, fifth, and sixth ribs were cut through and the contents of the thorax visible through the openings.The skin and tissues of the abdomen from the costal arch to the pubes were removed in three large flaps.

In my opinion, he does not even possess the technical knowledge of a butcher or horse slaughterer or a person accustomed to cut up dead animals.

[108] The jury were duly sworn before being taken by Inspector Abberline to both view Kelly's body at the mortuary adjoining Shoreditch Church and the crime scene in Miller's Court.

[110] Discussing Kelly's background, Barnett related her Irish origins, her marriage at age 16 and subsequent relocation to Cardiff following the death of her husband.

[117] Following further eyewitness and character testimony from Julia Venturney and Maria Harvey, Inspectors Beck and Abberline testified about their response and examination of the crime scene.

[127][n 15] On 10 November, Bond wrote a report officially linking Kelly's murder with four previous ones to occur in and around Whitechapel—those of Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes.

Bond also provided an offender profile of the murderer, which suggested the perpetrator was a solitary, eccentric individual who was subject to periodic attacks of homicidal and erotic mania, and who had been in an extreme state of satyriasis as he performed the mutilations upon Kelly and the four previous victims.

[133] Kelly is generally considered to have been the Ripper's final victim, and it is assumed that the crimes ended because of the culprit's death, imprisonment, institutionalisation, or emigration.

[136] A century after the murder, authors Paul Harrison and Bruce Paley proposed Barnett killed Kelly in a fit of jealous rage, possibly because she had scorned him.

[143] Robert Anderson, head of the CID, later claimed that the only witness who got a good look at the killer was a Jew who had observed a previous victim with her murderer.

This claim is almost certainly wrong because if Kelly's husband was indeed killed two or three years later, this Jonathan Davies could not have been him, as the 1891 census return indicates this individual was still alive and residing in Brymbo.

[150] In 2015, author Wynne Weston-Davies advanced the theory that Kelly's real identity was his own great aunt Elizabeth Davies, born in 1857 as the daughter of a Welsh quarryman.

She was laid to rest in St Patrick's Roman Catholic Cemetery in Leytonstone in a service officiated by the Reverend Father Columban.

[152] No family members could be located to attend her funeral, and both Joseph Barnett and her landlord, John McCarthy, were insistent her remains were interred in accordance with the rituals of her Church.

[153] The eight individuals within the two mourning coaches following Kelly's polished elm and oak coffin from Shoreditch Church to the cemetery where she was buried were Joseph Barnett, an individual representing John McCarthy, and six women who had known Kelly and who had testified at the inquest into her murder: Mary Ann Cox; Elizabeth Prater; Caroline Maxwell; Sarah Lewis; Julia Venturney; and Maria Harvey.