The Short Life of Dolly Kelly

This is Dorothy Kelly, known to her friends as Dolly. She is 23 in this photograph. It is in the same style as small passport sized photographs that were popular in the Edwardian era. Note the lovely heart dangling from a choker. 

We start Dolly's story at the very start of the 20th century when she's 18. She was working as a waitress in The Philharmonic Restaurant on St Mary Street, Cardiff. 

Dorothy worked there alongside 9 other young waitresses and barmaids and a male cook and porter. 

The Philharmonic was, and still is, a large public house on one of Cardiff's main streets. It served food, held boxing matches, ping pong competitions, luncheons and also had a shooting range. The staff would have lived either in the top rooms seen in this 1890 photo, or probably rooms on the opposite side at the back. 

Copyright Cardiff Public Libraries.

We don't know if Dolly enjoyed or hated her job. It must have been something of an adventure living in the centre of a bustling Cardiff with a host of young women of the same age. 

Dorothy's life took her away from waiting on customers. Four years later, for reasons we will never know, she had 6 convictions to her name, was a 'well-known character' and was trashing her mother's house. 

After breaking one of her mother's chairs on a policeman Dotty picked up her seventh conviction.

Two months after this Dolly was working in a brothel on Cowbridge Road in Cardiff and using an alias of 'Mrs Munro' as she 'rented a room' from a Mr and Mrs Cheen.

Brothels in Edwardian Cardiff that were away from the dock area were often 'pop ups'. Someone would rent a house, take in some women, and when the neighbours complained or the police got suspicious it would shut down and move somewhere else. Dolly seemed to work here with another girl called Dotty Evans. 

When Dolly became ill she went to Cardiff infirmary for a few weeks to recover. On her return to the brothel Dolly found that not only had the owners been jailed for brothel keeping but the woman they had left in charge- Dotty- had also got herself jailed. 

Dolly blagged a neighbour who let her into the empty house. She found the keys on the kitchen table and another young prostitute called Rose Saunders joined her. They lived there for a fortnight until bailiffs came knocking about rent arrears and took some of the furniture to pay for it.
Dolly and Rose soon left in a cab and took a train to London Paddington. With her was a large trunk that she had stolen from the brothel. It contained the Gibby's possessions and when Dolly got to London she seemed to forget about it and it stayed gathering dust in a cloak room at the station. 

In January the next year the trunk and then Dorothy were tracked down and she was taken back to Cardiff by the police. The photograph at the start of this article was taken and the newspapers reported the strange headline 'Story of a Trunk'

Story of a Trunk, Remarkable charge at Cardiff, Case against Paddington Girl Breaks Down.

The Gibby's didn't get much sympathy in the court. Their brothel had been robbed while they were in prison for keeping it in the first place and Dorothy was set free. 

Not all of Dolly's court appearances appear in the newspapers. By the early 1900's they had stopped reporting every court case, choosing only to cherry pick the most interesting, so we don't know the full history of what Dolly was being arrested for. What is clear is that to her contemporaries she was notorious.

Proof of this comes in a paternity court case held a month after the trunk incident. A young woman called Isabelle was suing a young man called Sam claiming he was the father of their child (they had had sex in a cave in Penarth and on Llandaff Fields). As the young man's solicitor tried to fling as much mud as possible at Isabelle, one of his questions to her was 

'Were some of your friends woman of ill-fame? Dorothy Kelly?' 

In court Dolly's very reputation was used as a slander.  

Dolly Kelly returned to London in the months after her court case. She didn't live to see out the end of the year.

Written in the margin of the police photographic register of 1906 is the horrible note:

'Found drowned at foreshore of River Thames at Lambeth on 22nd November 1906.'

I ordered her death certificate, which is listed under 'Dolly Kelly' but it did not give much more information. 

There was an inquest on the 26th November but I have found no reports of this in the newspapers. Her address is given as unknown and she is of 'no occupation'. The only other piece of information on the certificate is the exact location that Dolly's body was found- Nelson's Wharf, Lambeth. 

I think her body was either identified by someone with only a fleeting acquaintance with her, someone who only knew her as 'Dolly Kelly', or she had something on her body that identified her name, like a letter from her mother. 

The Lambeth police must have spread the name around other police departments to find out who she was and of course the Cardiff police were well aware of Dolly's existence. 

Her drowning could be an accident, a suicide or a murder. The only thing we are certain of is the sad ending of a young woman.

As a postscript Dotty Evans, the young woman who had shared the brothel with Dolly, attempted suicide in the Canton Police Station in July of the same year. She had been arrested for being very drunk and disorderly and assaulting a policeman. In the cells she tied a garter around her neck and fell unconscious. She was only revived 20 minutes after she was discovered and in court the next day said 'Yes, I'll do it again if I get the chance, I am tired of my life.'

Dolly's Prisoner Details can be found at Glamorgan Record Office DCONC/3/2/1
Newpaper images are from Welsh Newspapers Online from National Library of Wales.
Image of Philharmonic Restaurant is copyright Cardiff Libraries.