One of the interesting aspects of Jack the Ripper research is the discovery of coincidences and connections between seemingly unrelated events or individuals. In October 1895 newspapers published an interview with a recently released prisoner about her encounters with Florence Maybrick in Woking Prison. In 1889 Florence was convicted of poisoning her husband, James Maybrick, who was later said to have confessed to being Jack the Ripper in a diary.

The judge who sentenced Florence to death was the father of J. K. Stephen, another Ripper suspect. Henry Matthews, the Home Secretary criticised during the Ripper investigation, commuted the sentence because there were grounds for believing that the death was not caused by arsenic. At the time there was no court of appeal to overturn verdicts, so Florence languished in jail for fourteen years.

The low number of inmates in Woking before it closed in November 1895 allow us to identify the woman who spoke to the press as Mary Jane Rees. She was convicted of procuring abortion in December 1888 and found not guilty of murder when the judge ruled that the evidence of a dying woman was inadmissible. She was also present when a woman died in 1884, and her father was controversially acquitted of murder. Whilst awaiting her own murder trail it was alleged that Mary Rees had employed the last Jack the Ripper victim, Mary Jane Kelly who remains unidentified.

Mary Rees was convinced of Florence Maybrick’s innocence. Her own involvement in two deaths was not disclosed.