Mary Jane Kelly was the last known victim of Jack the Ripper. The east end in Victorian London has always held a fascination to me and the case of Jack the Ripper seems to encapsulate the dark mystery of that time. Mary was the youngest of the victims and one whose life is the most mysterious and has engaged the most writing and research. It was reported on the night of her demise she was heard singing the popular Irish ballad "a violet on my grave". Mary had originated from Ireland a land she still referred to as "her people". In one of her last recorded conversations she warned a younger woman "watch out you don't do wrong and turn out like I did". There are many anomalies and startling mysteries surrounding her demise not least that a previous victim of JTR had booked herself into a doss house in Whitechapel under Mary's name the night before she herself met her demise. The maddening vortex of alcoholism, prostitution and crime had reached a crescendo with the ripper kilings that had captured the publics macabre fascination and even the intervention of Queen Victoria who had requested the east end be cleaned up socially and morally following the death of Mary Kelly. In this sense though it was the worst of all the killings it triggered a redemptive outworking of events. In biblical symbolism 8 is the number of new beginnings and the autumn of 1888 when Mary met her end triggered the renewal and cleansing of the east end never to fully return to he dark depths of that previous epoch. That's why I wrote the chorus "let me be the one who died for London". I wanted to write a song that captured the spirit and longing of these women in the face of the whirlpool of deprivation that twisted around them beyond the grainy macabre images of their final resting which so disturb even now. This is researched reasoneably though some details are stretched or mutated a little to suit poetic and dramatic effect. The grave stone of Mary Jane Kelly was incribed with the words "only the lonely know my sorrow". RIP Marie Jeanette.
