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Every other Friday, True Crime of the Historical Kind returns to the scene of the crime...
We uncover the deeper story. The world that shaped the violence, and the humans that played a hand in history's tragedies.
Because the past may be distant, but human nature rarely is.
In the year 1888, there was a horrendous killing spree in Victorian London, one that left women mutilated in the streets. People knew Jack the Ripper was a madman on the loose. They just didn't know who Jack the Ripper really was. So who could this monster really be, and why did he disappear as mysteriously as he arrived? This is true crime of the historical kind.
Speaker 1:You're listening to part one of Jack the Ripper, desperation and darkness. This terrifying story is set in the East End Parish of Whitechapel, London. Picture yourself in a crowded soot filled labyrinth of streets in the shadow of the industrial revolution. You might hear the sound of horse drawn carriages clopping along twisting cobblestone lanes as the air hangs heavy with unbearable smells and the sound of persistent coughing. You'd see pale, thin children, some dressed half in rags, scurrying between the crowd, working as street sellers, errand runners, or pickpockets.
Speaker 1:You might pass a weary factory worker, face smudged with soot and eyes half closed from the night shift, a woman clutching a shawl tight around her shoulders, selling matches or flowers in the cold, or a man sleeping off gin in the gutter. The city was alive, but not all its people were fully living. That was during the day. At night, it would be difficult to see who may or may not be watching you. Many side streets and alleys were shrouded in darkness, either unlit or so poorly lit that it may as well have been pitch black.
Speaker 1:Perfect protection for someone with dark intentions. At odd hours, people would be going to and from hard labor jobs, or others would line the streets with nowhere else to sleep. But what everyone had in common was survival. This wasn't just a poor neighborhood. It was a breeding ground of desperation.
Speaker 1:This was life in Whitechapel London during the Victorian era. As a way to cope, many use alcohol, though it only became a curse. For the working class, drinking was an attempt to numb the pain of their circumstances. Yet a drinking habit could sadly be the difference in keeping you in relative safety to living on the streets. Gin palaces dotted the East End as brightly lit buildings that were deceptively welcoming.
Speaker 1:They offered only a fleeting escape, but this only deepened the cycle of poverty and despair. Alcoholism wasn't just common. It was almost expected. Once it consumed you, there was little to no hope for a person to ever escape the snare, especially for women. Within the sea of poverty, women face particular hardships.
Speaker 1:Without equal rights, a woman's life was merely completely dependent on her father then her husband. A husband could throw his wife out on grounds of adultery, Yet, it was expected men would employ a prostitute or have other relationships. But for a woman, that was unforgivable. Her purity in this dirty place was her value. The 1857 Matrimonial Causes Act allowed for divorce, but only if a woman could prove aggravated cruelty or adultery.
Speaker 1:And even then, access was costly and rare. This was a time when women could be placed in an asylum against their will, where so called mental treatment was more like a house of horrors. Diagnoses like hysteria or moral insanity were often enough to justify confinement, sometimes for life. Avoiding marriage and family came with its own problems. Single women were seen as strange spinsters who failed to achieve the highest form of success, which was being a virtuous wife and mother.
Speaker 1:A woman on her own simply existing in a place like Whitechapel would be danger enough. The public sphere was seen as a corrupting and immoral place that women didn't belong in. Yet women were thrust into the impossible situation of being responsible for staying out of the public spaces, but also usually had very little control since they were so dependent on the men in their lives. Regardless of how a woman found herself in difficult circumstances, they faced unforgiving consequences that usually left women destitute and homeless, left to wander through the city hoping to find a bed for the night. This was the life of a tramp.
Speaker 1:Tramping was a sort of lifestyle where the homeless would travel around looking for work or charity. This may or may not include prostitution as part of the fight to survive, but it wasn't always the case. Yet in the eyes of society and law enforcement, tramping and being a prostitute were one and the same thing. In an attempt to stay off the streets, people would stay in lodging houses, often referred to as DOS houses, but they were overcrowded and filthy. These establishments were for people without consistent work or who might otherwise be on the streets.
Speaker 1:Privacy was a novelty as an entire family might be sharing a single lice littered bed with multiple families to one room. Some of the cheapest lodging houses offered what was called a hangover rope. 2p for a literal rope stretched across the room where people would lean forward and sleep slumped over it. Imagine how terribly you would sleep if you could sleep at all. It's thought this is where the modern term hangover comes from, waking up feeling awful after a night of drinking, much like hanging over a rope to sleep.
Speaker 1:For an actual bed, the going rate was about 4p, which just so happens to be the same rate for basic sex work, An uncomfortable overlap that cemented assumptions about women's bodies as transactional. So if a woman was looking to secure her four pence for a bed for the night, she could easily be connected to prostitution, whether she was or wasn't. And not even just from the amount, but from her having and using money in of itself was a sign of impropriety. And to be clear, the women who did engage in prostitution were typically women who under any other circumstances would not be participating in this. They just literally had no other option and could make three or four times more in a night of prostitution versus an entire week or more in a workhouse.
Speaker 1:So let's talk about workhouses. The conditions here were the absolute last resort. Those who couldn't afford even a night's lodging often ended up in the workhouse system. These were grim institutions where food and shelter came at the cost of personal dignity and grueling labor. Bringing your family to a workhouse meant you had no other options.
Speaker 1:Children would be separated from their parents and put to work. People were essentially treated like prisoners with low wages that might only cover your lodging and meager rations, all with nearly unbearable living and working conditions. Then you had to deal with workhouse overseers who were known for their cruelty and ruled with an iron fist. They bullied the workers and took liberties wherever they wanted. They especially preyed on the helplessness of women and children.
Speaker 1:And, sadly, these working conditions were atrocious on purpose. The poor law amendment of 1834 established workhouses for the poor as a deterrent. They weren't meant to help the poor, but to make them as unbearable as possible as a way to force people to do everything else in their power first to avoid ever having to go there. And in theory, that might kind of make sense. This act was meant to replace an old Elizabethan system, so at least the part of wanting people to do everything else first.
Speaker 1:But with the lack of economic opportunity, in reality, there was nothing else. With overcrowding, low wages, and immigration, there was nowhere for people to just move on to and find work. So, really, all it did was trap the poor in these torturous conditions while blaming them for their position there and setting up the next generation for the same fate. Child labor was commonplace. The more mouths parents had to feed, the more they need the child to produce some sort of income to support themselves.
Speaker 1:It was do or die in textile mills, mines, or rope yards. Children faced stunted growth, chronic illnesses, and life altering injuries. All you have to do is look at the haunting pictures of children in this time with frail frames, bulging eyes, and solemn faces to know they were not treated as children at all. With little to no safety regulations, children could end up missing fingers or limbs or other serious complications. There was an estimated 30,000 homeless children on the streets of Greater London.
Speaker 1:There are no records to indicate the numbers in Whitechapel specifically. They just didn't keep that sort of information, but it can be presumed that the estimates would be higher in Whitechapel in relation to the rest of London. Speaking of which, zooming out of Whitechapel for a moment, another world existed just blocks away. The opulent West End felt like it belonged to another century entirely. Here, the air smelled of perfume and fresh pastries from elegant cafes.
Speaker 1:Gas lamps glowed over polished shop fronts, and the streets stayed brightly lit long after dark as carriages rolled down wide boulevards lined with theaters and gentlemen clubs. Well dressed couples strolled arm and arm, pausing at the glittering counters of Harrods, perhaps shopping for tea or imported luxuries. For them, nights were spent at the opera where chandeliers blazed and orchestras played in Drury Lane. Naturally, this disparity created discontent that was brewing, not just in the slums, but even among radicals and royalists. Queen Victoria, who gives her name to this age, had survived eight assassination attempts during her reign.
Speaker 1:Victorian Britain sat atop a booming empire. But like we've seen, the wealth it generated still left places like Whitechapel in the dark corners of neglect. We've seen both sides of Victorian era portrayed time and time again in literature and movies. We seem to not be able to get enough of the propriety and social rituals of the elite, like Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, While the other side is reflected in the work of Charles Dickens, who himself was sent to work in a factory at 12 and experienced his father being imprisoned in the Marshall Sea, a famous debtor's prison. His novels give a window into so many of the social and moral issues of the time, like social turmoil, industrial impact, inequalities, the unfair expectations placed on women, and the consistent themes of greed, charity, legal issues, and child suffering.
Speaker 1:Oliver Twist would just be one, and there are so many more. I'll just have to link my Goodreads in the show notes. And I can't not mention all the PBS Masterpiece Theater classics, so I'll link those as well. But more important to today's story is what people were reading in real time, the popular fiction that set the tone for the era. Stories like Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle and Sweeney Todd, the demon barber of Fleet Street.
Speaker 1:The tale of Sweeney Todd first appeared in the string of pearls in 1846 and evolved through stage plays and what were called penny dreadfuls, which were cheap sensationalized cereals sold for a penny, and they were filled with murder, mystery, and the macabre. They were the pulp thrillers of Victorian England, lurid, addictive, and perfectly tuned to a society obsessed with crime, much like today. There can be a misconception that Sweeney Todd was inspired by Jack the Ripper, but it was actually the other way around as it came much earlier. But the Victorian era in general was fascinated by death and really had no choice but to figure out how to be comfortable with it. With literacy rising and crime at the same time, that led to these criminal stories becoming a form of entertainment, which supported the rise of England's tabloid culture that we've all seen play out over the decades.
Speaker 1:These publications were often filled with exaggerated and inaccurate depictions of criminal activity, yet it still shaped the public's perception of Whitechapel and neighborhoods like it. They painted a picture of a lawless, dangerous place filled with depraved individuals. And, sure, there's some truth in that clearly with what took place, but the way it was viewed as if the way they lived was a deliberate choice and not just an extension of their circumstances was just not accurate. Maybe this is a subconscious way for the upper class to distance themselves from these hopeless living conditions, but the sensationalism not only fueled public fear, but it also contributed to the dehumanization of Whitechapel's residents, making them seem less like people and more like characters in one of those macabre stories. So this was the environment in which a person like Jack the Ripper could emerge.
Speaker 1:With the study of serial killers over the last one hundred and fifty years, modern criminology suggests that serial killers often exploit vulnerable communities where victims can disappear without immediate notice. Places like Whitechapel in 1888. Essentially, if the right circumstances align and they find a chance, that is what leads them to indulge in heinous behavior. It's a perfect storm, so to speak. And in late August eighteen eighty eight, that storm finally broke.
Speaker 1:In a place where life was cheap and violence was commonplace, a shadowed corner where the cries of the vulnerable were often lost in the din of the city. Here, a serial killer could move unnoticed, shrouded in the shadows of despair. There were 11 murders between 1888 and 1891 that are categorized as the Whitechapel murders, though only five are widely attributed to Jack the Ripper. The first victim was 43 year old Mary Ann Nichols. She, like many others during this time, lived a life of hardship.
Speaker 1:She had been married and had several children, but her marriage had collapsed, and she was separated from her husband. It's likely alcohol could have been her downfall, but as a woman on her own, she was at the mercy of whatever dark creatures roamed the streets. Enveloped in poverty, Mary Anne struggled in years of tramping. Her life was a precarious balance for existence. She had to rely on finding a man to partner with or find charitable housing.
Speaker 1:While she was assumed to have been involved in occasional prostitution, there's actually no concrete evidence of that. On a night like any other, Mary Anne was searching for a place to sleep. She was last seen in various locations in Whitechapel that night and had reportedly been turned away from a lodging house because she couldn't pay for a bed. The last time she was seen was on Bucks Row at around 03:40AM. Just minutes later, her body was found laying in the streets of Buck Row by a carter named Charles Cross.
Speaker 1:Her skirts were up as if in the middle of an act of prostitution. A second man on the scene, Paul, found Charles Cross standing over the body, and they set out for police. When he returned, another police officer was already there. Now they were able to see a pool of blood had formed around her, suggesting that this just happened. She was taken to a medical examiner where they were able to see that this was a mutilation.
Speaker 1:Her throat had been cut, and her lower abdomen was slashed brutally. Her death was initially treated like some act of street violence. Murder wasn't something new in Whitechapel, but they'd sued Fine. There was something much different about this killing. Mary Ann Nichols would later be known as the first victim of the canonical five.
Speaker 1:In the aftermath of Mary Anne's murder, the residents of Whitechapel recalled her final movements, and word began to spread of the heinous assault. People looked over their shoulders and hurried just that much quicker to find shelter. While people lived in fear of what might happen next, I don't think they were truly expecting such a similar repeat so soon after Mary Anne's murder. The killer, on the other hand, must have felt emboldened by not being caught and would soon strike again. Just a week after the death of Mary Ann Nichols, a woman named Annie Chapman was following her routine of finding a place to sleep for the night.
Speaker 1:Annie was also known as dark Annie for her dark eyes and hair. She had more of a stable upbringing than someone you might find in the most difficult corners of Whitechapel. She had been educated and came from a working class family, though tragedy plagued her life. As a child, three of her siblings succumbed to scarlet fever followed by her mother. Then her father slit his own throat, taking his life.
Speaker 1:Despite these devastations, she married John Chapman, a coachman who provided his family with a relatively comfortable life. They had children. However, after the death of her young son to the same fever that robbed her of most of her family, her life began to spiral downward. She found comfort in alcohol, which ultimately led to the collapse of her marriage. She found herself separated from her husband struggling for survival.
Speaker 1:Despite her family's best efforts of pulling her out of her dark dependency on alcohol, she found herself ill, dying of consumption, and homeless. She was a known alcoholic. She had cut her family off and lived day by day on the cold, unforgiving streets. So on a cool, crisp night on September 7, she had been seen around the streets of Whitechapel, staggering from one wall to the next in a drunken haze. She made her way past dark corners and shadowy figures, looking for a place to sleep, probably accepting that tonight would be a night under the stars.
Speaker 1:People were familiar with her struggling to find money for a bed. The last account of her being seen alive was around 05:30AM on September 8. Not long after, her body was found in the yard of 29 Hanbury Street. Her throat had been cut and her abdomen mutilated. The postmortem report revealed that the uterus had been removed, suggesting surgical precision or ritual intent.
Speaker 1:This chilling discovery made policemen quickly realize that this was connected to the murder of Mary Ann Nichols. It was just too similar of a circumstance. The killer was already beginning to display a pattern. They believe the perpetrator moved quickly and quietly because he was completely undetected. There was an estimated average of a 187 people living per square acre in Whitechapel at this time.
Speaker 1:So to be able to move so discreetly is a huge part of what makes the story of Jack the Ripper so terrifying and perplexing. And in real time, the clues were once again sparse. Without an ability to use modern crime, investigative, or evidence to go off of, speculation grew. The papers exploded with theories, accusations, and mixed fact with fiction as people found themselves horrified by the loose madman in their mitts but stayed strangely fascinated. The media circus surrounding this case was the first explosion of attention a serial killer would receive.
Speaker 1:This real life murder mystery was readily consumed by a huge audience, and competing papers profited greatly from it. Paranoia ensued. People began to blame anyone and everyone that they were either suspicious of or had predetermined hostility towards. Rumors flooded the streets. Who would have some skill with a blade?
Speaker 1:Who would have this sort of anatomical knowledge? A doctor? A butcher? Surely, this person had to be educated or trained. In the late nineteenth century, the average person would have little to no knowledge of any internal anatomy.
Speaker 1:Or was this some upper class elite using Whitechapel as a sick playground? Because of the severe social stratification, a really twisted practice of slumming was taking place. Slumming was when wealthy elites took a sort of gross field trip to the lower class areas like brothels and essentially exploited whoever they could for fun, dressed in disguises or masks in a twisted form of voyeurism. So because this person got away undetected twice now and seemed to have knowledge or technique, people figured it had to be some sort of upper class person essentially hunting women for sport. Regardless of the theories, all they knew for sure was that there was someone out there living and walking among them.
Speaker 1:It set fear to a higher level. There was already a pattern developing, and no one could comprehend why. The police were at a loss. They were under huge pressure to produce and capture the culprit. Scotland Yard was woefully unprepared.
Speaker 1:They went through countless interviews and had endless suspects. But criminal records were kept in handwritten ledgers, and officers had little forensic training. Even fingerprinting wouldn't become standard for another decade or so. At one point, the residents of Whitechapel had begun to tell police that there was a man wearing a leather apron covered in blood seen around the time of both murders. Though seeing someone walking down the street covered in blood would be a normal sight because of the slaughterhouses and meat markets.
Speaker 1:The witness statements could be conflicting, but prostitutes had reported that a man named John Pizer had been mistreating them, and he often wore a leather apron. So the name leather apron began to be used as the killer's name. And can we just say Leather Apron is nearly as terrifying of a name as Jack the Ripper? Though Jack the Ripper wasn't being used just yet. Speculation continued, and suspicion began to drift toward John Pizer.
Speaker 1:Police arrested him in September, but he had a solid alibi and was released. He was actually given an apology by one of the newspapers for naming him as Leather Apron because he had to essentially hide in fear of being lynched by a mob of people wanting someone to pay for what had happened. Kaiser's ordeal shows how quickly fear could lead to scapegoating, especially of immigrants or working class. People created patrol groups watching the streets for suspicious activity. But just two short frenzied weeks later on September 27, a letter dated September 25 was received by the Central News Agency.
Speaker 1:The letter was then forwarded to Scotland Yard. The letter written in red ink stated, dear boss, I keep on hearing the police have caught me, but they won't fix me just yet. I have laughed when they look so clever and talk about being on the right track. The joke about leather apron gave me real fits. I am down on whores, and I shan't quit ripping them till I get buckled.
Speaker 1:Grand work the last job was. I gave the lady no time to squeal. How can they catch me now? I love my work, and I want to start again. You will soon hear me on my funny little games.
Speaker 1:I saved some of the proper red stuff in a ginger beer bottle over the last job to write with, but it went thick like glue, and I can't use it. Red ink is fit enough, I hope. The next job I do shall clip the ladies' ears off and send them to the police just for jolly, wouldn't you? Keep this letter back till I do a bit more work. Then give it out straight.
Speaker 1:My knife's so nice and sharp, I want to get to work right away if I get a chance. Good luck. Yours truly, Jack the Ripper. Don't mind me giving the trade name. PS wasn't good enough to post this before I got all the red ink off my hands.
Speaker 1:Curse it. No luck yet. They say I'm a doctor now. So he named himself Jack the Ripper. This is the first time the name would be introduced into the universe, though many experts now believe the letter was a hoax possibly written by a journalist.
Speaker 1:It nonetheless branded the killer in the public imagination forever. The police decided to not share it with the public in fear that it would create even more panic, but what was said in the letter ended up coming true. Within days of Scotland Yard receiving the dear boss letter, Jack the Ripper was on the streets. Despite women's fears of who was out there, not everyone had the luxury of finding safety. One of those women was a Swedish immigrant named Elizabeth Stride.
Speaker 1:Like many immigrants, her past was mostly unknown by those around her, but she was known as long Liz because of her height. She was about five five, which for the time was slightly taller than average, but it may have also just been her slender frame. She had had a few run ins with the law back in Sweden, mostly for disorderly conduct, but the downfall may have started when she had fallen pregnant and found herself in a workhouse, arriving at the doors looking for a way to ensure her unborn child would have a fighting chance. She was treated nearly like a prisoner there and gave birth to a stillborn baby girl. Having been socially disgraced, she would still be ineligible for better positions as household servants.
Speaker 1:So she left and married John Stride. But after a series of events unfolded, she found herself separated from him and at the mercy of the streets. It was a night like so many others, a cold, wet, fall night and nowhere to sleep. The last time she was seen alive was just before midnight. Not but thirty minutes later, her lifeless body was found in the streets.
Speaker 1:Stride's throat had been slashed, but unlike the other victims, her abdomen was untouched. It appeared as though the ripper was interrupted, perhaps scared off by approaching footsteps, But the person who did find her would know exactly what happened. The ripper had struck again. Imagine finding someone and knowing the killer had just been there. The body was still warm, which at the time was really the main way of trying to determine the time of death.
Speaker 1:So whoever had just done this might even still be there watching you from the shadows. Once the police arrived, they found a familiar scene. And this murder caused a lot of speculation, not just because she was not as mutilated as the other bodies, but it wasn't the only murder that night. In less than an hour, another woman's body would be found. The press had a name, the police were dumbfounded, and the public had a monster among them.
Speaker 1:And worse, the ripper was far from finished. This was true crime of the historical kind. Stay tuned to hear how the murders become more brazen and the search for who did it explodes. Many hint, we've already mentioned more than one suspect. Check the show notes for the Goodreads link and more.
Speaker 1:Until next time. Bye.