Message #259169

[Keira Kensington]

Anyway, even despite his personal problems at the time he still grew closer to Sarah, meeting her parents on occasions and even moving in with them:


    December 1881 - A few weeks before Christmas he meets Sarah Brider and quickly becomes enamoured of her. Sarah takes him home to meet her family and the pair become an item. Sarah's parents think him a serious and religious young man with good prospects.

    March 1882 - Kelly moves into the Brider's house at 21 Cottage Lane, just off the City Road between Shoreditch and Islington, as a lodger. He has to share a room with another man. He cuts down on his drinking and other activities and spends many evenings in the house with Sarah and her parents.

    Christmas 1882 - Kelly and Sarah have become increasingly intimate over the year and, after much persistence on his part, she surrenders her virginity to him. The event is a disaster. Despite being sexually experienced, Kelly has only slept with low-class prostitutes and neither one has had any kind of sex education. He is not prepared for how different sex with a virgin will be and finds himself unable to penetrate. He is convinced that Sarah has some kind of deformity and she babbles a story of being interfered with by an uncle by way of explanation. Kelly's former erratic behaviour returns after this and he experiences stronger and stronger depressions and mood swings in the following months. He also returns to his former habits in the East End rather than pressing Sarah further.

    February 1883 - Fearful that he will lose Sarah who is growing more distant, he proposes marriage to her. She delays but eventually accepts. However in the meantime Kelly finds he has a venereal disease and, fearful of doctors, resolves to treat it himself.