a curious addition to the poems I have composed and somewhat different in that, except for the first few lines (that I woke up thinking of a couple of years ago), I did some quick biographical research after which the rest of the verses seemed to flow naturally… this then is the imagined and fateful meeting of the archetypal comedic pairing, ‘the tart and the vicar’, although the essentially biographical story is anything but funny…
“Mary Jane Kelly (c. 1863 – 9 November 1888), also known as Marie Jeanette Kelly, Fair Emma, Ginger, Dark Mary and Black Mary, is widely believed by scholars to have been the final victim of the notorious unidentified serial killer Jack the Ripper, who murdered at least five women in the Whitechapel and Spitalfields districts of London from late August to early November 1888. At the time of Kelly’s death, she was approximately 25 years old, working as a prostitute and living in relative poverty…” (source: wikipedia)
in a week’s time, as of this posting, it will be the 136th anniversary of Mary Kelly’s unfortunate and gruesome death:
The Tart and the Vicar: 8th November 1888
I met her on a journey
From North to way down South
I admit I noticed straight-the-way
She had a pretty mouth
But the things that came from out of it
Told quite another tale
For the words she used, if truth be told
Could turn a quartermaster pale
She told me much about her life
Between each oath and curse
It seemed to me, as I listened well
Things couldn’t get much worse
She said she might have ‘royal blood’
Through her mother’s father’s line
Disowned she’d been by her own papa
Who, she claimed, purveyed fine wine
Her mother left this life, it seems
when this girl was only ten
For fifteen year she kept herself
Buy hook or crook, since then
Too young she learned, being fair-of-face
Some men would pay her well
To make the coin to pay for food
She’d endured a living-hell
At sixteen years she’d met a man
A miner, whom she’d wed
But three years on the mine blew-up
And her man and hopes were dead
So now at five-and-twenty years
The times were getting tougher
She still ‘made trade’ to pay her way
But her clients were getting rougher
She turned her cheek to show a scar
Just hidden by her hair
Some ‘gentleman’ (who was not so)
Last week had put it there
So now she’d rented a new place
Her living for to find
Away from fist or madman’s knife
if fate should be so kind
For life had landed many a blow
As she toiled to pay her rent “But,
I gave as many as I got” she winked
And I wondered what she meant
She’d found a place to ply-her-trade
Where wealthy patrons came
She liked to make out she was French
‘Jeanette’ was now her name
She told me that she felt her life
Was only getting better
She thanked me for my listening-ear
“So nice”, I said, to’ve met her
In Spitalfields the carriage stopped
She smiled as she bid goodbye
“It’s 13 Millers Court” she said
…“If you should happen by”