The Campo Santo of East London; St Patrick's Catholic Cemetery, Leyton

At 43 acres St Patrick’s Catholic Cemetery is relatively big by London standards, bigger than Abney Park, bigger than Brompton, bigger than West Norwood, and, rather surprisingly, bigger than both sides of Highgate combined. It doesn’t feel it, mainly because of the lack of landscaping, I think. You can see clear from one end of the cemetery to the other with barely a tree in the way to break up the view. Stand in the middle and religious statues surround you on all sides, apparently stretching out to infinity, countless Christs exposing bleeding hearts, myriad mothers of God as Madonna nursing the Christ child, or as mater dolorosa cradling him crucified or standing alone, her heart pierced by seven swords; however she is portrayed she is always suffering. And there are the saints, proliferating like reflections in a house of mirrors; the Pauls, the Benedicts, the Francis’, the Christophers, the Michaels (the dragon killers are always St Michael, most definitely not the far too English St George), the Anthonys, the Cecilias, the Thereses and the Trofimenas (actually, there is only one of them…) 

St Patrick’s has a sister cemetery in West London, St Mary’s in Kensal Green. As you would expect St Mary’s has a better class of clientele than her sister in the East End. There are better monuments, more mausoleums and a more catholic selection of Catholics than the Irish, Italians and Poles who make up the majority of the burials at St Patrick’s. Both cemeteries stand by railway lines but the tube at St Mary’s is much more obtrusive; you can stand amongst the graves and watch Central line trains pulling in and out of Leyton Station. Both are still very much working cemeteries; Catholics don’t much go in for cremations and to meet persistent demand for new graves both cemeteries resort to banking over old graves. But that is good news for the invalided priests of the Dioceses of Westminster, Arundel & Brighton, Brentwood, Portsmouth and Southwark who are the recipients of the revenue from the cemetery, as a sign tells you by the entrance. 

I am rather fond of St Patrick’s and have covered it before here and here. The most famous burial is that of ripper victim Mary Jane Kelly; we will come onto her in a minute. Also buried here are various relatives of Alfred Hitchcock, who was born locally, above the family grocery business at 517 Leytonstone High Road, Timothy Evans, who was wrongly hanged for one of the murders at 10 Rillington Place, and actor Stephen Lewis who played Blakey in the 70’s comedy series ‘On The Buses’.  I have already written about the four nuns who drowned in the Wreck of the Deutschland and, my favourite story from St Patrick’s, Vital Douat, the man who buried himself (for an insurance scam). 

Mary Jane Kelly, or Marie Jeanette Kelly as she is described on her headstone, the last iconic victim of Jack the Ripper was buried at St Patricks Roman Catholic Cemetery on Monday 19th November 1888. The Belfast Telegraph carried an account of the funeral published on the same day;

FUNERAL OF MARIE KELLY. The funeral of Marie Jeannette Kelly the victim of the late Spitalfields murderer took place today at Leytonstone Cemetery, Essex, in the presence of a large number of people. An hour before the remains left the Shoreditch mortuary many hundreds of onlookers assembled in the vicinity and watched while the final arrangements were bring made. The coffin was placed upon an open hearse drawn by two horses, and was followed by two mourning carriages containing the man Joseph Barnett, who had lived with the deceased, and several of the unfortunate woman & associates, who gave evidence at the inquest. The coffin bore the following inscription 'Marie Jeannette Kelly, died November 9th 1888 aged 25 years’, and on it were placed two crosses, and a cross made of heartsease and white flowers.  The whole of the funeral expenses were borne by Mr. Wilton, sexton of St. Leonard’s Church, Shoreditch, who for many years has shown practical sympathy for the poorer classes.

In 2015 retired colorectal surgeon Wynne Weston-Davies published ‘The Real Mary Kelly’, a book which argued that the murder victim’s true identity was his great aunt Elizabeth Weston-Davies, who he believes was hiding in Whitechapel to escape her abusive husband. Weston-Davies claims his great aunt’s husband, Francis Spurzheim Craig, is Jack the Ripper and that he murdered the other victims in order to lay a false trail before he killed his wife! Ripperology is full of farfetched theories and despite the book’s publishers managing to wrangle articles in the Daily Mail and Express, no one took this one particularly seriously until the grande dame of the Whitechapel Murders, Patricia Cornwell, got herself involved. In a surprise move in 2017 Cornwell commissioned the University of Leicester team who had identified Richard III, to carry out a feasibility study on running DNA tests on Marie Jeanette Kelly’s mortal remains. The newspapers went crazy! Was DNA going to crack the ultimate cold case and would science finally put an end to over a century of pointless speculation about the identity of Whitechapel Jack? The answer was no. After taking Ms Cornwell’s money and carrying out a field study at St Patrick’s the University of Leicester forensics team came to the conclusion that there was no realistic chance of identifying Mary Kelly’s remains in its common grave. The exact burial location was impossible to determine (Kelly’s headstone is in the ‘approximate’ spot but the siting always involved quite a bit of guesswork), which meant possibly digging up several hundred bodies before the correct one could be identified. Wynne Weston-Davies’ theory remains a theory and Kelly remains undisturbed in her final resting place.