Speaker 1: Welcomed unobscured a production of I Heart Radio and Aaron Minky.
Speaker 1: Charles Warren would remain at his post until they could
Speaker 1: pick a successor, that is, but Home Secretary Matthews was
Speaker 1: quick to accept the Police Commissioner's resignation. It was only
Speaker 1: too happy for their tense relationship to come to an end.
Speaker 1: There were some who mourned the choice, though the sound
Speaker 1: of boots pounding the halls at Scotland Yard had made
Speaker 1: it known the constables of his Metropolitan Police were grateful
Speaker 1: for his leadership. If anyone in the ranks had been
Speaker 1: unsettled by his order to beat down poor Londoners in
Speaker 1: the street on Bloody Sunday, of those concerns didn't make
Speaker 1: it into the police records, but Warren had always gone
Speaker 1: to bat on the men's behalf, and the new boots
Speaker 1: they were wearing were bought on Warren's orders. Others, though,
Speaker 1: felt the smallest amount of glee that Warren had been
Speaker 1: pushed aside. Among them was the surgeon who had served
Speaker 1: at Scotland Yard for years until that spring, Dr Thomas Bond.
Speaker 1: He was a distinguished police surgeon with an incredible record
Speaker 1: of providing expert forensic and medical analysis in tough cases.
Speaker 1: What's more, he was also paid to serve as the
Speaker 1: doctor for the police themselves, so he was well known
Speaker 1: to many of the officers at Scotland Yard, and when
Speaker 1: it came to wane in on medical evidence, he was
Speaker 1: no stranger to high profile tests. After all, he was
Speaker 1: the surgeon who had consulted on the Brighton railway murder.
Speaker 1: Since then, Dr Bond had joined the central hub of
Speaker 1: Police in London, making a pretty penny and doing his
Speaker 1: parts on tricky cases when it came to medical matters,
Speaker 1: But in eighteen eighty eight Charles Warren decided to see
Speaker 1: him off. Here's historian Adam Wood to tell us more.
Speaker 1: The story was that, as always we've Warren, he was
Speaker 1: looking to make changes to them to make it more
Speaker 1: fishing and as a majority of the detectives lived a
Speaker 1: wife from Scotland Jawdean Ld Division which is self of
Speaker 1: the Thames, with the new recruits were also by associated
Speaker 1: the training in early he moved their care to the
Speaker 1: divisional surgeons there, Dr George Farr. When Bond discovered this,
Speaker 1: he complained, but he obviously had had no choice and
Speaker 1: he resigned as a medical officer attached the Detective Department
Speaker 1: and the Commissioner's office on the full of Ottober. It
Speaker 1: wasn't long, though, before their situations were reversed, because all
Speaker 1: that took place just weeks before Charles Warren would tender
Speaker 1: his own resignation, and the senior officers of the Criminal
Speaker 1: Investigation Department came to Dr Bond with an urgent plea.
Speaker 1: They were facing a series of grizzly murders and the
Speaker 1: medical evidence was nearly the sum total of what they
Speaker 1: had to go on. There was no doctor the detectives
Speaker 1: trusted more than Thomas Bond, so they asked him to
Speaker 1: forgive Charles Warren's treatment and provide his expertise in the
Speaker 1: matter of the Whitechapel murders. Charles Warren was out and
Speaker 1: Dr Bond was back in. Among the reporting on Warren's
Speaker 1: stepping down was a note in The Times that the
Speaker 1: Commissioner's flight from his he created an opportunity to emphasize
Speaker 1: the distinction between the Criminal Investigation Department and the ordinary
Speaker 1: members of the force. Warren had always sided with the constables,
Speaker 1: but now the detectives were reasserting control. Warren was a general, sure,
Speaker 1: but he had been outmaneuvered. It seems that he never
Speaker 1: grasped that the politics of the Metropolitan Police were a
Speaker 1: different kind of battlefield than he was ready for. In fact,
Speaker 1: in all the history of British policing, the eighteen eighties
Speaker 1: were a pivotal moment. Two attitudes were battling for dominance.
Speaker 1: The standard set by Robert Peel and then pursued by
Speaker 1: Charles Warren was crime prevention, to put armed police forces
Speaker 1: in the streets and threaten such violence against the so
Speaker 1: called criminal class that crimes would simply never occur. On
Speaker 1: the other hand, there were the detectives. They weren't setting
Speaker 1: out to prevent crimes by force so much as to
Speaker 1: solve them with clues, to make sure that wrongdoers would
Speaker 1: suffer the consequences of their actions and thus ward our
Speaker 1: future crimes by imposing a sense of power of the
Speaker 1: police that was inescapable. But the idea of oppotent and
Speaker 1: inescapable secret police wasn't always treated kindly by the British public.
Speaker 1: Here's Drew Gray with more on that. There's a certainly
Speaker 1: a divide between uniform and playing clothes, the detectives and
Speaker 1: detection has a bad press. In England. It took a
Speaker 1: long time, so there wasn't a detective agency in England
Speaker 1: in eighteen twenty nine when the police was first formed.
Speaker 1: It took until eighteen forty two, and it took actually
Speaker 1: a couple of catastrophic failures of the police to catch
Speaker 1: murderers and high profile criminals for them to create the
Speaker 1: detective apartment in eighteen forty two. And that was a
Speaker 1: very small number of officers. You could ask ordinary uniform
Speaker 1: officers to go into playing clothes, but the British kind
Speaker 1: of didn't like the idea of playing clothes police in
Speaker 1: at the time it kind of smacked as Napoleonic spies.
Speaker 1: They had quite strong memories of Napoleon's secret police and
Speaker 1: we didn't really want to have a detective in that way.
Speaker 1: If Londoners feared that a police force given the authority
Speaker 1: to investigate crimes would also become a clandestine agency with
Speaker 1: a political agenda, well they didn't have to wait long.
Speaker 1: Soon enough a branch of the detectives would be ferreting
Speaker 1: out members of a political movement that we're making themselves
Speaker 1: known in London. But of course, as these things go,
Speaker 1: certain members of the public who might have rejected the
Speaker 1: idea of playing clothes officers sneaking around in alleys and
Speaker 1: back gardens of Londoners might eventually change their tune because
Speaker 1: as much as they hated a secret police, there were
Speaker 1: other things that they feared far more. This is unobscured.
Speaker 1: I'm Aaron Manky. The bomb had been placed in a
Speaker 1: public urinal. The urinal was for a pub, the Rising Sun,
Speaker 1: but when it detonated, the bomb hit its intended target,
Speaker 1: the police buildings at Whitehall Scotland Yard. The Special Branch
Speaker 1: building was ripped apart, including the office of the head
Speaker 1: of the Criminal Investigation Department. It was that was just
Speaker 1: one of the bombs that were set that night. In fact,
Speaker 1: there were explosions throughout the city, exactly as the warning
Speaker 1: letter had promised. It had arrived addressed to the head
Speaker 1: of the c i D the year before, saying that
Speaker 1: it would blow the head of Scotland Yard off his
Speaker 1: stool and dynamite all the public buildings in London they
Speaker 1: came close to. Here's historian Adam Wood to tell us
Speaker 1: more about who was behind the attack, The Irish Fenians.
Speaker 1: The Fenian bombing campaign started in eighty one and it
Speaker 1: lasted for four years. There was a previous campaign in
Speaker 1: the eighteen sixties and again they were trying to establish
Speaker 1: Irish independence. But in the eighteen sixties heads of state
Speaker 1: and other notable people were attacked in an attempt to
Speaker 1: highlight the campaign. But the eighties they were they were
Speaker 1: a little bit more direct in that they realized that
Speaker 1: if they targeted landmarks around London and elsewhere around the UK,
Speaker 1: that they did in still fear in the public and
Speaker 1: achieve an audience with the government. And in the eighties
Speaker 1: of the nineteen bombs exploded in Brittany Levin in London,
Speaker 1: and these were places such as Scotland Yard itself was attacked.
Speaker 1: There were there were bombs put around the base of
Speaker 1: Nelson's column which failed to explode. London Underground saw four explosions,
Speaker 1: with the bomb blowing up his own officers. The head
Speaker 1: of the Criminal Investigation Department resigned in shame and that
Speaker 1: created an opening. But there was a man at hand
Speaker 1: who was ready to step into the post, James Monroe.
Speaker 1: The government was looking for a man who was experienced
Speaker 1: in dealing with political crime, and Monroe certainly fit the bill.
Speaker 1: Like so many of the men we've met so far.
Speaker 1: James Monroe was trained and molded in the administration of
Speaker 1: the British Empire. A Scotsman like Donald Swanson, Monroe made
Speaker 1: his way to Bengal as part of the legal branch
Speaker 1: of the Indian civil Service, but by eighteen seventy seven
Speaker 1: he had worked his way up far enough that he
Speaker 1: was made Inspector General of the Police. The stairs he
Speaker 1: climbed that height were the bodies of those he killed
Speaker 1: when he crushed freedom movements in Northeast India. His investigations
Speaker 1: and his convictions of Indian Muslims for conspiracy to wage
Speaker 1: war against the Queen even went as far as convicting
Speaker 1: another magistrate, the deputy tax collector for the city of Putna,
Speaker 1: so his view of the Queen's justice was already formed.
Speaker 1: By the time he returned home. Political crime had become
Speaker 1: his specialty. The story is a familiar one to us
Speaker 1: by now. Like Charles Warren and like Robert Peel who
Speaker 1: founded the London Police, James Monroe's experience was in tightening
Speaker 1: the chokehold on people who had been seized by the
Speaker 1: British Empire. It was his job to bring that mentality home,
Speaker 1: but his position was certainly a complicated one and thoroughly political.
Speaker 1: He was made head of the Criminal Investigation Department, but
Speaker 1: given two more posts as well, the head of the
Speaker 1: Special Irish Branch, the set of detectives investigating the Fenny
Speaker 1: and bombings, and also the head of a separate section
Speaker 1: also called Special Branch, which reported only to government, not
Speaker 1: to the Police Commissioner. As well as serving under the
Speaker 1: Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Monroe immediately began working with the government's
Speaker 1: spymaster General, a man named Edward Jenkinson. He wasn't officially
Speaker 1: a policeman, but he had his own private force of spies,
Speaker 1: a network spread throughout London that acted in secrets without
Speaker 1: taking orders from the government or the police. It was
Speaker 1: everything suspicious. Britain's feared a detective service might become. Surveillance
Speaker 1: and information gathering were the order of the day. After all,
Speaker 1: there were Irish rebels to be caught and stopped, as
Speaker 1: well as crime to be solved and prevented, and one
Speaker 1: young officer working down the ranks from James Monroe found
Speaker 1: himself in the midst of all that work, Donald Swanson,
Speaker 1: Partnering with a senior Officer Adolphus Williamson. Here's Adam Wood
Speaker 1: once again. The two officers worked to give a a
Speaker 1: quite number of vistigations and in both the Fenian Campaign
Speaker 1: and later with the Bloody Sunday Roots and Trafical Square,
Speaker 1: they worked to give a looking at the overall picture
Speaker 1: rather than individual incidents, and they were patient to give
Speaker 1: a direction for the investigation. And that's exactly what happened
Speaker 1: later on in the Ripper case when Swanson was appointed
Speaker 1: by the Commissioner, Shovel was warrant to leave the investigation
Speaker 1: from Scotland Chide. So it was still years before the
Speaker 1: Whitechapel murders when an incendiary bomb roared through the Tower
Speaker 1: of London and burned its way into historical infamy with
Speaker 1: the nickname Dynamite Saturday. That had been the twenty four
Speaker 1: of January in eighty five. The tower was crowded at
Speaker 1: the time by two d visitors touring the site. The attack, though,
Speaker 1: was blunted, the fire was put out before anyone was hurt.
Speaker 1: And what's more, the tower was locked down by a
Speaker 1: White Chapel detective who ordered the gates closed so that
Speaker 1: he could question everyone there and that detective name was
Speaker 1: Frederick Alberlein. Aberleine noticed one of the men he questioned
Speaker 1: spoke with an Irish American accent, not to mention that
Speaker 1: he couldn't keep his story straight. So Aberleine collared him
Speaker 1: and when the detectives asked questions at his lodging house,
Speaker 1: it put them on the trail of yet another man,
Speaker 1: one who was setting a bomb at the House of Commons.
Speaker 1: But that wasn't even the biggest moment in scotland Yards
Speaker 1: efforts to stop the fenny and bombs. No, that came
Speaker 1: in two years later in eighteen eighty seven, during Queen
Speaker 1: Victoria's Golden Jubilee. That's when James Monrose, network of espionage
Speaker 1: contacts and the head of the Criminal Investigation Department, boiled
Speaker 1: a plot to bomb the Cell Libration. It was a
Speaker 1: high point in the efforts of the London detectives to
Speaker 1: bounce back from the wrongdoing of the turf fraud scandal
Speaker 1: and to ingratiate themselves not just with the public, but
Speaker 1: with the Crown as well. It seemed that the era
Speaker 1: of the detective was about to bloom. She told her
Speaker 1: own story. We can say that at least the truth
Speaker 1: and the fabrication are interwoven, and official records are silent.
Speaker 1: There's only what she told her most intimate friends. It's
Speaker 1: their testament to who she was that gives us the
Speaker 1: life of Mary Jane Kelly. She said she was born
Speaker 1: in Ireland, like so many families, though they went where
Speaker 1: the jobs were. They followed her father to the iron
Speaker 1: works in Carnarbonshire in Wales, and to make matters more stressful,
Speaker 1: Mary was one of eight children. Together with her sister
Speaker 1: and six brothers, she no doubt drove her father to
Speaker 1: find any work he could. What Mary found was a partner,
Speaker 1: a coal miner, who married her and took her out
Speaker 1: of that large family when she was just sixteen. But
Speaker 1: mining coal is dangerous work, and if Mary's story is true,
Speaker 1: she lost her first husband in a mine explosion just
Speaker 1: a couple of years later. That didn't push her back
Speaker 1: toward her father's house, though, because she was sick and
Speaker 1: that full house wasn't one of care and nurture. Instead,
Speaker 1: she spent a long stay in an infirmary in the
Speaker 1: Welsh city of Cardiff, where her cousin lived, and that
Speaker 1: might have been a comfort to her, not least because
Speaker 1: the family there had a little money, or so Mary said.
Speaker 1: But when those stories were later repeated for the papers
Speaker 1: and the police, they said that it was through that
Speaker 1: moneyed cousin that Mary first came into a bad life.
Speaker 1: That's the way it was passed down. At least, we
Speaker 1: can't know for sure if Mary thought the life she
Speaker 1: found was bad, but we do know that it brought
Speaker 1: her to London. Her first stop was in the city's
Speaker 1: west side, a gay house there, she said, a west
Speaker 1: end bordello by a frenchwoman near Knightsbridge, possibly a social
Speaker 1: connection of her wealthy Cardiff family. It may even be
Speaker 1: that they struck up a friendship. Mary would later recount
Speaker 1: the times that the two of them had ridden through
Speaker 1: London on a carriage together and even traveled to Paris.
Speaker 1: One woman would later tell The Star that Mary had
Speaker 1: a reputation for being a cultured young woman, an excellent
Speaker 1: scholar and artist. She said. One friend said that she
Speaker 1: spoke fluent Welsh, and she may have spoken French as well,
Speaker 1: and the contacts and connections she made eventually brought her
Speaker 1: back to life in France. If that sounds charming, it
Speaker 1: could have been anything, but it may have been that
Speaker 1: the French brothel owners lured her there with false promises
Speaker 1: of a life that they never intended to give her.
Speaker 1: Whatever the case, Mary was able to escape their grasp
Speaker 1: and find her way back to London. But this time
Speaker 1: it wasn't to the wealthy gay houses of the West Side.
Speaker 1: It was toward the East End, and things in Mary's
Speaker 1: life had taken a turn for the worse. She once
Speaker 1: went back to her former West End home, hoping to
Speaker 1: reclaim him a box full of the valuable dresses she
Speaker 1: had owned when she lived there. But she didn't go alone.
Speaker 1: She asked one of her new East End connections to
Speaker 1: come along with her. It was clear that something about
Speaker 1: the life she left behind wasn't quite right in the
Speaker 1: East End too, She moved around. She had a couple
Speaker 1: of different landlords and a couple of different partners. She
Speaker 1: was a young woman in her early twenties trying to
Speaker 1: find a place for herself in a growing and tumultuous city.
Speaker 1: Eighteen eighties six found her living in a lodging house
Speaker 1: in Thrall Street in spittle Fields, and that's where she
Speaker 1: met Joseph Barnett, a market porter who sold fruit and
Speaker 1: bought drinks for pretty women like Mary. Soon the two
Speaker 1: were living together. Joseph even remembered a time when Mary's
Speaker 1: father came to London to look for her. She asked
Speaker 1: Joseph to help her hide from him, not from the
Speaker 1: others in her family, though one of her brothers, a
Speaker 1: soldier in the Scott's Guard, had visited them once. They
Speaker 1: were carving out a sort of life for themselves in
Speaker 1: the East End, and in the fall of eighteen eighty
Speaker 1: seven they even had an pulled together to make their
Speaker 1: way to a little apartment off of Dorset Street. That
Speaker 1: might not mean much to us today, but when Mary
Speaker 1: Kelly and Joseph Barnett took their room there, it was
Speaker 1: a street with a reputation. Here's Paul Beg to tell
Speaker 1: us more. Dorset Street was a fairly narrow street. It
Speaker 1: had a pub one end and a bigger pub the
Speaker 1: other end, and a small pub in the middle, and
Speaker 1: it was otherwise pretty much lined with what we're called
Speaker 1: common lodging houses or doss houses. There was a little
Speaker 1: shop there run by a man called John McCarthy, which
Speaker 1: was basically an all night grocer's shop, and really nothing
Speaker 1: about it to be alarmed about it. It started out
Speaker 1: its life being known as Datchett Street, that became Dorset Street,
Speaker 1: and the locals used to call it Dorset Street because
Speaker 1: of the number of doss houses that it contained, And
Speaker 1: it was the doss houses which had a really bad
Speaker 1: reputation for being plays of immorality, because not too many
Speaker 1: questions were asked if a man and a woman turned
Speaker 1: up wanting a bed together, and they were thought to
Speaker 1: be hotbeds of crime and thievery, and so they weren't
Speaker 1: really looked upon very kindly. But in fact they were
Speaker 1: fairly horrible places, but especially by today standards, but they
Speaker 1: really were the poor man's hotel. They were where you
Speaker 1: went you could buy a bed for the night, and
Speaker 1: it's popularly argued that sometimes some just strung a rope
Speaker 1: from one side of the room to the other and
Speaker 1: for a penny you could lean on the rope and
Speaker 1: go to sleep there. There are photographs of this sort
Speaker 1: of thing happening, but I think that was a fairly
Speaker 1: uncommon practice. But so that yeah, the doss houses were
Speaker 1: thought to be fairly dangerous, and to some extent they were,
Speaker 1: and the that gave Dorset Street really bad name, which
Speaker 1: grew worse over the whereas more Millagers were committed there.
Speaker 1: So that was Mary's new neighborhood. But it wasn't her
Speaker 1: situation though. No. Mary still had enough to her name
Speaker 1: that she and Joseph were able to rent a small
Speaker 1: room in a nook off of Dorset Street called Miller's Court.
Speaker 1: Maybe Joseph was making enough from his work in Spittlefield's
Speaker 1: Market that they could afford the four shillings that the
Speaker 1: landlord charged each week. Over the course of things started
Speaker 1: to slip. We don't know whether it was because Joseph's
Speaker 1: work as a porter dried up, or if events in
Speaker 1: the East End made their lives too dangerous. In the
Speaker 1: later records, Joseph insisted he wasn't out of work, but
Speaker 1: by the end of October the couple were seven weeks
Speaker 1: behind in their rent and Mary was drinking. Of course,
Speaker 1: there was a shadow looming over both of them. Joseph
Speaker 1: said that Mary closely followed the news of the White
Speaker 1: Chapel murders. He would buy papers and Mary would have
Speaker 1: him read her everything. They said. It must have cast
Speaker 1: a chill in a room. On October, Joseph stormed out,
Speaker 1: it wasn't because of the drinking, though it was because
Speaker 1: Mary took in a woman who Joseph said was a prostitute.
Speaker 1: To him, that was an offense and one he couldn't bear.
Speaker 1: But we can imagine why Mary might want to offer
Speaker 1: shelter to a friend. In fact, Joseph would tell one
Speaker 1: newspaper that she was welcoming a number of sex workers
Speaker 1: into that narrow room. She was goodhearted, Joseph said, it
Speaker 1: did not like to refuse them shelter on cold, bitter nights.
Speaker 1: We can imagine the solidarity that Mary felt for the
Speaker 1: sex workers of White Chapel and the women who were
Speaker 1: being murdered in their neighborhood. Women who couldn't pay the
Speaker 1: fees for White Chapel lodging houses were being killed on
Speaker 1: the streets and in dark corners. In fact, there was
Speaker 1: a lodging house with rooms for three hundred sleepers just
Speaker 1: across Dorset Street. But Mary had a private room, a
Speaker 1: roof over her own head. She wanted to offer what
Speaker 1: she had. For some reason, this put Joseph in a fury.
Speaker 1: Was he per apps in denial about Mary's own past.
Speaker 1: We can't be sure, but we do know the fight
Speaker 1: between them was so bitter it even broke a window
Speaker 1: of their room, But it didn't change Mary's mind. So
Speaker 1: Joseph left and made his way to a lodging house
Speaker 1: in Bishop's Gate. With him gone, Mary was free to
Speaker 1: open the doors of her room in Miller's Court and
Speaker 1: provide refuge to other women. Clearly, Mary felt just how
Speaker 1: dangerous life was for poor women in the East End.
Speaker 1: She felt it so deeply she was willing to trade
Speaker 1: her lover and her partner to offer what shelter she
Speaker 1: had to her sisters in need. It was a ministry
Speaker 1: of compassion and mercy that we can only look back
Speaker 1: on with admiration. Of course, her door opened to other
Speaker 1: things too, and to other people, those who came with
Speaker 1: intentions that were much more sinister and far more evil.
Speaker 1: There was no way he could have known, but when
Speaker 1: Joseph stopped in to talk with Mary on a Thursday evening,
Speaker 1: it was only hours before or she would be murdered.
Speaker 1: It was around seven thirty at night, and Mary had
Speaker 1: just come back from the Ten Bells Pub. At some point,
Speaker 1: Mary and Joseph had lost the key to their little room,
Speaker 1: so to open the door, Mary had to reach in
Speaker 1: through the broken window and trip the spring lock from
Speaker 1: the inside. Her friend Lizzie all Brook was with her,
Speaker 1: and when Joseph joined them, the three struck up a conversation.
Speaker 1: He didn't stay long, maybe fifteen minutes, despite the fight
Speaker 1: that had separated them. He said their talk was friendly.
Speaker 1: Of course, not much about Mary's situation had changed. She
Speaker 1: was regularly welcoming her friends in and even held onto
Speaker 1: some of their belongings in clothing. Her Miller's courtroom was
Speaker 1: a haven in Whitechapel. It seems Joseph would have known this.
Speaker 1: To one journalist, he said he would stop in at
Speaker 1: Miller's Court to talk with Mary almost every day. If
Speaker 1: he had money, he said he would give her some,
Speaker 1: But on that evening he told her he hadn't gotten
Speaker 1: any work, and he apologized for coming with empty pockets.
Speaker 1: She would have to go on earning her own keep
Speaker 1: for now. Lizzie left the pair together, and as she
Speaker 1: was going, Mary called out to her, whatever you do,
Speaker 1: don't you do wrong and turn out as I have.
Speaker 1: When Lizzie talked to the press later on, she said
Speaker 1: Mary would often give her these warnings. Life in the
Speaker 1: East End was hard, and with her partner out of
Speaker 1: work and anger pushing them apart. Mary wished there was
Speaker 1: a way for her to go back to Ireland, where
Speaker 1: her people lived, but the money wasn't there to pave
Speaker 1: the way toward a new life somewhere else, and those
Speaker 1: dreams would be cut short in the coming hours. One
Speaker 1: of her neighbors in Miller's Court was headed home about
Speaker 1: fifteen minutes before midnight. As she turned onto Dorset Street,
Speaker 1: she claimed she saw a couple walking in front of
Speaker 1: her and recognized Mary, wearing a warm, practical frock under
Speaker 1: her red shawl, headed for the same place. They ambled
Speaker 1: into the passage together. The neighbor woman said, Mary and
Speaker 1: her escort stepped into the little room. She called good
Speaker 1: night to Mary, who answered back, I am going to
Speaker 1: have a song. She said, The words were slurred. The
Speaker 1: neighbor realized that Mary was drunk, but the man slammed
Speaker 1: the door shut behind them. She caught a look at him,
Speaker 1: though she guessed he was about thirty six years old.
Speaker 1: He was stout, she said, with a blotchy face under
Speaker 1: his black felt hat and a thick carroty mustache. His
Speaker 1: long dark overcoat was shabby, and he had a court
Speaker 1: can of beer. Clutched in his hand. From her own room,
Speaker 1: the neighbor heard the sound of a song floating out
Speaker 1: of Miller's court, and she recognized the song too, a
Speaker 1: popular tune from the music halls. It was a song
Speaker 1: of sorrow and nostalgia for a lost time, a violet
Speaker 1: plucked from mother's grave. It was called something Small and Beautiful,
Speaker 1: Held onto in the midst of Grief. A nearby flower
Speaker 1: seller also remembered hearing this song that night as it
Speaker 1: passed from Thursday into Friday. It was a half hour
Speaker 1: after midnight, and she said that if her husband hadn't
Speaker 1: stopped her, she would have banged on Mary's door and
Speaker 1: complained it was late for drunken ballads. But it wasn't
Speaker 1: too late for Mary Kelly. In fact, she was seen
Speaker 1: again that night out on the street. An unemployed laborer
Speaker 1: from the area named George Hutchinson recognized her standing on
Speaker 1: a corner. In fact, the two knew each other, and
Speaker 1: as George went by, Mary asked him to lend her
Speaker 1: a sixpence. George had spent all of his money, though
Speaker 1: he didn't have anything to lend her or anything to
Speaker 1: pay for her services. Mary was disappointed, but there was
Speaker 1: another man on the streets, a man George had walked
Speaker 1: by earlier, who was wearing a felt hat pulled down
Speaker 1: over his eyes. So far, George hadn't paid any attention
Speaker 1: to the man. He was just someone standing in the
Speaker 1: street now, though George watched Mary walk toward him. The
Speaker 1: two exchanged a few words before they threw back their
Speaker 1: heads in quiet laughter. Then George saw the man put
Speaker 1: his arm around Mary's shoulders and set off with her
Speaker 1: toward the room at Miller's Court. They had to pass George,
Speaker 1: though as they went by. Something made him lean down
Speaker 1: and try to get a look at the man's ace.
Speaker 1: The look that George got back was a stern glare,
Speaker 1: so stern that George felt compelled to follow the pair
Speaker 1: from a distance, and he took note of the man's appearance.
Speaker 1: He had a dark mustache that curled up at the ends,
Speaker 1: button boots and a black necktie, and a heavy gold
Speaker 1: chain that dangled from his waistcoat. In his right hand,
Speaker 1: he was carrying a pair of brown kid gloves even
Speaker 1: as he draped it over Mary's shoulder. Under his arm
Speaker 1: he had a small parcel. It was about eight inches long.
Speaker 1: George guest covered in what he called a dark American cloth,
Speaker 1: bundled together with a strap. George followed until a pair
Speaker 1: disappeared into Miller's court. He decided to wait until they
Speaker 1: came out again. So wait he did. In fact, he
Speaker 1: waited until the clock of the White Chapel Church struck three,
Speaker 1: but no one reappeared. Tired of waiting and watching, George
Speaker 1: moved on, and then it started to rain. In the
Speaker 1: dark hours that followed, a single cry went up in
Speaker 1: Miller's court. Two of the neighbor is remembered hearing the
Speaker 1: single words split the dark, followed by silence. They assumed
Speaker 1: it was some fearful passer by a drunk shout to
Speaker 1: be ignored. But they were wrong. It seems it was
Speaker 1: Mary's last testimony of her life. With her very last breath,
Speaker 1: she cried out a single word, murder. The room that
Speaker 1: Mary had rented with Joseph was small, about twelve ft square.
Speaker 1: The furniture came with the place and belonged to the landlord.
Speaker 1: A bed and washstand that stood in as a bedside table,
Speaker 1: a small table, and a single chair. We already know
Speaker 1: what it cost four shillings a week when he walked
Speaker 1: into Miller's court on Friday morning. Thomas Boyer knew how
Speaker 1: many times that four shillings had failed to appear. He
Speaker 1: was there on behalf of the landlord to collect Mary
Speaker 1: Kelly owed twenty nine shillings, and it wasn't like she
Speaker 1: was knocking on the landlord's door to hand it over,
Speaker 1: so he sent Thomas to do the knocking. He pounded
Speaker 1: his fist on the door and got no answer. It
Speaker 1: was around ten thirty in the morning, so he decided
Speaker 1: to step inside and see what he could see. When
Speaker 1: he tried the latch, though, he found the door was locked,
Speaker 1: so he knocked again, then leaned over and put his
Speaker 1: eye to the keyhole, but it didn't give him a
Speaker 1: good view of the room. When he stepped back, Thomas
Speaker 1: Bowyer realized the window was broken. He could just reach inside,
Speaker 1: so he stepped forward and pulled back the old coat
Speaker 1: that was hanging in the window frame as a curtain
Speaker 1: to block the draft, and that's when he saw two
Speaker 1: pieces of flesh that were resting on Mary's bedside table.
Speaker 1: Then he looked to Mary's bed and found blood pooling
Speaker 1: around it on the floor, and he saw what the
Speaker 1: killer had done to Mary. Thomas rushed back to the landlord.
Speaker 1: He would later tell the corner that he went as
Speaker 1: quietly as he could. The man who owned the property
Speaker 1: ran a small grocery out of the front of the building,
Speaker 1: and Thomas found him in the shop and told him
Speaker 1: what he had seen. Together they set out for the
Speaker 1: police station, and we can be sure that with every
Speaker 1: step they felt the growing weight of history. One of
Speaker 1: the officers who was at the station when the men
Speaker 1: arrived said Thomas's eyes were bulging out of his head,
Speaker 1: and he was so terrified that he could hardly speak.
Speaker 1: Two inspectors went together and followed Thomas's example. First they
Speaker 1: tried the lock door, then one of them pushed the
Speaker 1: old code aside. When he looked in, he saw what
Speaker 1: sent him reeling. For God's sake, don't look, he choked out,
Speaker 1: but the second officer ignored him and stepped forward to
Speaker 1: glance inside. When he later wrote his memoirs, the inspector
Speaker 1: said that what he saw was unprintable. The body on
Speaker 1: the bed was cut to pieces. Mary's face and the
Speaker 1: front of her body had all been carved away except
Speaker 1: for her eyes. The inspector said that they were the
Speaker 1: site that remained with him most vividly. When Joseph Barnett
Speaker 1: would later identify the body, he said it was only
Speaker 1: by the eyes and ears that he recognized me Ry.
Speaker 1: The rest of her body had been monstrously mutilated beyond recognition.
Speaker 1: The inspectors telegraphed Scotland Yard and sent constables running with messages,
Speaker 1: and one of them remembered the plans that Charles Warren
Speaker 1: had put into place. He sent for the bloodhounds. Soon enough,
Speaker 1: both ends of Dorset Street were blocked. The entrance to
Speaker 1: Miller's Court was put under guard. The call went out
Speaker 1: for the surgeons to come view the body, and they
Speaker 1: did come. Dr Phillips was the first to get the message,
Speaker 1: and he was just a few minutes away. He arrived
Speaker 1: at eleven fifteen that morning. The door was still locked.
Speaker 1: He made a simple assessment of Mary's mutilated body through
Speaker 1: the window and then waited with the other officers. Inspector
Speaker 1: Aberline arrived a few minutes later. Inspectors and constables all
Speaker 1: milled in the open space. They were waiting for the
Speaker 1: dogs and keeping the scene in the room undisturbed until
Speaker 1: their man hunters could come and catch the scent so
Speaker 1: they waited and waited. Two hours passed before another police
Speaker 1: inspector arrived on the scene. He informed Aberleine and the
Speaker 1: others that the order to send bloodhounds to the site
Speaker 1: had been overturned. They had waited for nothing and time
Speaker 1: was passing by then. The group was so impatient that
Speaker 1: they demanded the landlord opened the door immediately. Of course,
Speaker 1: the key was gone. He fetched a pick axe and
Speaker 1: levered it against the jam until under the strain the
Speaker 1: door leapt open, smashing into the bedside table as it opened.
Speaker 1: Onto the brutal scene. Dr Phillips was followed by Dr Brown,
Speaker 1: the surgeon from the London City Police who had examined
Speaker 1: Catherine Etto's body and suggested that perhaps a butcher would
Speaker 1: have carried out the mutilations, and then Dr Thomas Bond
Speaker 1: arrived too at around two pm, just after the head
Speaker 1: of Scotland Yard. The men took down, in medical detail,
Speaker 1: a horrifying catalog of violence to Mary's body, her face
Speaker 1: gashed in all directions, every cut to the bone, every
Speaker 1: organ that had been slashed out and placed around her
Speaker 1: in the bed, and when a photographer arrived, he took
Speaker 1: the photograph that would survive down through the years in
Speaker 1: the police files, offering a glimpse of the stomach, turning
Speaker 1: horror to later investigators. The first to examine Mary's body
Speaker 1: found that she was very cold. The doctors estimated that
Speaker 1: she had been dead for hours. The horse cart to
Speaker 1: move the body arrived just before four in the afternoon.
Speaker 1: Crowds of people who had caught wind of the news
Speaker 1: rushed the police cordons at the ends of Dorset Street.
Speaker 1: The writer for the time said that they were of
Speaker 1: the humblest cast, But as they came near the cart
Speaker 1: and its cargo, men pulled off their ragged caps. The
Speaker 1: women of the neighborhood pushed closer, and the reporter noticed
Speaker 1: that even as the cloth was draped over the rough
Speaker 1: wooden coffin that held Mary's remains, and it rolled out
Speaker 1: of Miller's Court, deep feelings moved through them. Another of
Speaker 1: their own had died, and the women of Dorset Street wept.
Speaker 1: It was Aberline who did the questioning. George Hutchinson came
Speaker 1: forward himself to the Commercial Street police station. Under Aberleine's eye,
Speaker 1: he described his observations of the night Mary Kelly died.
Speaker 1: George told the inspector that he was surprised to see
Speaker 1: such a well dressed man in Mary's company. His testimony
Speaker 1: about the man with the dark mustache struck Aberline as important,
Speaker 1: and what's more, he wrote in his report that he
Speaker 1: believed the statement was true. In fact, Aberline found Hutchinson
Speaker 1: so convincing that he sent two officers to patrol Whitechapel
Speaker 1: with Hutchinson that night to see if they could find
Speaker 1: the curled mustache. Again. It was back to the same
Speaker 1: old techniques, pounding the pavement looking for a needle in
Speaker 1: a haystack. Of course, questions persisted. Aberleine wanted to pursue
Speaker 1: Hutchinson's lead. What about the man that the other neighbor
Speaker 1: had seen, the one with the blotchy face and the
Speaker 1: charity mustache. The police and the press took her seriously too,
Speaker 1: and she gave her testimony at Mary Kelly's inquest and
Speaker 1: there were arrests made too. Eberleine said several people were detained.
Speaker 1: Hutchinson and Barnett were both carefully questioned, but he wrote
Speaker 1: everyone had been able to account for their movements that night,
Speaker 1: and when the questions ran out and no answers came,
Speaker 1: they were released. Any plans that had been laid came
Speaker 1: to nothing. The dogs that had been kenneled and Whitechapel
Speaker 1: were never used. The detectives had neither solved nor prevented
Speaker 1: one of the most monstrous crimes in British history. It
Speaker 1: was felt as far away as Scotland, where Queen Victoria
Speaker 1: was holding court at bell Moral. News of Mary's death
Speaker 1: reached her the day after the killing, and it must
Speaker 1: have been described in some detail. She sent a telegraph
Speaker 1: to the Prime Minister and it buzzed with her displeasure.
Speaker 1: This new, most ghastly murder, she wrote, shows the absolute
Speaker 1: necessity for some very decided action. All these courts must
Speaker 1: be lits and our detectives improved. If that wasn't clear enough,
Speaker 1: the Queen doubled down on the detectives and wrote, are
Speaker 1: not what they should be. A displeased monarch and a
Speaker 1: displeased people. The detectives at Scotland Yard were in over
Speaker 1: their heads, but with Charles Warren leaving his post, there
Speaker 1: was now a chance to make another change to London's police.
Speaker 1: The Home Secretary put forward his man once again, and
Speaker 1: James Monroe grabbed the reins that didn't leave everyone convinced, though.
Speaker 1: For journalists unfamiliar with Warren's fight against the Home Secretary,
Speaker 1: his resignation on the day of Mary Kelly's murder seemed
Speaker 1: like a clear admission that the police were incapable of
Speaker 1: the task, and this was the time that journalists also
Speaker 1: began to make note of just how many officers had
Speaker 1: vacated their posts for summer holiday when the murders began.
Speaker 1: On November twelve, one man who had been a member
Speaker 1: of the White Chapel Vigilance Committee wrote to the Evening
Speaker 1: News to suggest that no matter who took over at
Speaker 1: Scotland Yard, the police could no longer be trusted with
Speaker 1: the investigation of the crimes. He looked to the other
Speaker 1: armies in Whitechapel, the Salvation Army and those like them,
Speaker 1: and he wanted to start something like a recruiting drive.
Speaker 1: Surely a body of matrons from the West end of London,
Speaker 1: he wrote, of all classes, the higher the better, might
Speaker 1: meet a body of matrons from the East End and
Speaker 1: take common counsel for the relief of their airing sisters.
Speaker 1: There was, as we might expect, a pinch of Charles
Speaker 1: Warren's victim blaming in his note to his eyes, the
Speaker 1: trouble was the women that the murderer was targeting, and
Speaker 1: the solution was better more respectable women to step in
Speaker 1: and shape them up. The police were failing, the man's
Speaker 1: vigilance committee had failed. Maybe there was something that respectable
Speaker 1: women could do. He was even less ambitious than activist
Speaker 1: Francis power Cob. She had already suggested that a fleet
Speaker 1: of women detectives would actually be able to solve the
Speaker 1: case and catch the killer where Scotland Yard had come
Speaker 1: up short. After all, as the feminists of the day
Speaker 1: knew well, women were more willing to talk with each
Speaker 1: other than to answer the probing questions of Scotland Yards
Speaker 1: baton wielding sergeants, and the police were already casting around
Speaker 1: for better answers. A keen eyed woman might do as well,
Speaker 1: she wrote, as those keen nosed bloodhounds. And in many
Speaker 1: ways she was right. Women in the East End were
Speaker 1: already hard at work doing for themselves, but no one
Speaker 1: else would do. Of course, as we've seen over and
Speaker 1: over so far, it wasn't the respectable women who were
Speaker 1: making life more secure in Whitechapel, but Whitechapel women weren't
Speaker 1: making history. They had already identified their true foes, and
Speaker 1: they were doing battle with them in a way no
Speaker 1: one had expected. After all, white phosphorus had killed more
Speaker 1: women than the murderer's knife ever could. And when Fossey
Speaker 1: Jaw wasn't taking their health and their lives, the factory
Speaker 1: bosses were squeezing their paychecks. Yes, a killer was cutting
Speaker 1: East End women apart, following the most vile impulses of
Speaker 1: his imagination. But East End women were pulling together in
Speaker 1: ways they never had before. Here's Dr Louise Raw to
Speaker 1: tell us more. And the union was so busy because
Speaker 1: you see, they didn't rest on their laurels. They kept unionizing.
Speaker 1: They kept taking the message to other groups of workers.
Speaker 1: So the girls that worked in nearby confectionary factors, the
Speaker 1: sweetie girls who worked in jam factories, the wives of
Speaker 1: eastern dockers, they were constantly having meetings and trying to
Speaker 1: unionize them as well. And there was a really amusing
Speaker 1: account from one of the leagues of mother class women,
Speaker 1: philanthropic women who were trying to organize working class women,
Speaker 1: but in a bit of a middle class top down
Speaker 1: where we didn't always go down very well with the
Speaker 1: women themselves. But they recorded at the time that they
Speaker 1: were absolutely worn out with these match women because they
Speaker 1: kept coming to them and saying, all right, um, we
Speaker 1: want you to help us, because we want to have
Speaker 1: another union meeting please with the jam Factory girls. And
Speaker 1: we'd like you to help us find a venue please,
Speaker 1: and then we would like tea and cakes. Um would
Speaker 1: like some Irish music. And they're like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: you know, I've got to try and find an Irish musician.
Speaker 1: How it short noticed, But I love this idea of
Speaker 1: a union meeting that involves t and kach and Irish dancing.
Speaker 1: How fantastic. But even as the press and the police
Speaker 1: leaned into the darkness, even as they focused on the
Speaker 1: murderer and made the most vicious London or the loudest
Speaker 1: story in the Empire, other things were afoot, and the
Speaker 1: Match Factory women weren't content to wallow in the same
Speaker 1: fear that paralyzed their wealthy neighbors. Neglected by the nation storytellers,
Speaker 1: the match women nevertheless said about building something much more
Speaker 1: powerful than the story of Jack the Ripper. And it
Speaker 1: was a case that the women of the East End
Speaker 1: had already cracked wide open. The surgeons all agreed Dr
Speaker 1: Thomas Bond would be the one to write their report.
Speaker 1: He was joined in the Shortitch mortuary by all of
Speaker 1: the doctors who had come to Miller's court, and they
Speaker 1: even added the police surgeon for the White Chapel Division,
Speaker 1: Dr Dukes. Together, this small parliament of surgeons conducted the
Speaker 1: autopsy of Mary Kelly on Saturday afternoon, the day after
Speaker 1: her murder, and it brought together every medical mind that
Speaker 1: had considered the case. The work took them two and
Speaker 1: a half hours. Once they had discussed the job, they
Speaker 1: divided the duties up. Dr Phillips prepared to present their
Speaker 1: findings at the coroner's inquest. Dr Bond, who had already
Speaker 1: been commissioned to assess the White Chapel murders as a
Speaker 1: whole with a report to the police, agreed to write
Speaker 1: a specific report on the details of Mary Kelly's death.
Speaker 1: What he wrote took into account the work of his
Speaker 1: fellow surgeons. There was Dr phillips first guess that the
Speaker 1: killer brought some sort of medical background to his crimes,
Speaker 1: and there was Dr Brown's suggestion that perhaps the vicious
Speaker 1: hacking at Katherine Etto's body betrayed the work of a
Speaker 1: butcher or slaughter man, but taken together with the deaths
Speaker 1: of Liz Stride and Polly Nichols, Dr Bond came to
Speaker 1: a different conclusion. Here's Adam would to tell us more.
Speaker 1: In his report to the tenth of November, on concluded
Speaker 1: that all five had been killed by the same hand,
Speaker 1: with the fruit cut from left to right being the
Speaker 1: first attack while the women were lying down. The mutilations
Speaker 1: were carried out after death, and he believed a murderer
Speaker 1: did not have anatomical knowledge, not even to the degree
Speaker 1: of a butcher. He said the knife was that commit
Speaker 1: carried out the mutilations, was at least six years long,
Speaker 1: with a sharp point, such as a butcher's or surgeon's knife.
Speaker 1: And he went on from there too. The last two
Speaker 1: sections of Dr Byrd's report collected the thoughts and speculations
Speaker 1: of the other examiners and coroners who had endeavored to
Speaker 1: come up with a criminal profile. Reflecting these ideas through
Speaker 1: his own perspective, Dr Bond offered the Metropolitan Police his
Speaker 1: own perspective on the killer's character. Bond said that he
Speaker 1: worked alone it was likely to be ordinary looking, probably
Speaker 1: middle aged, and neatly dressed. Bond wrote, he must be
Speaker 1: in the habit of wearing a cloak or overcoat, and
Speaker 1: he could hardly have escaped notice in the streets if
Speaker 1: the blood on his clothes or hands were visible, and
Speaker 1: he would be and I quote solitary and eccentric in
Speaker 1: his habits, and likely without regular occupation. And finally, Bond
Speaker 1: guests that the murderer might even live among respectable persons
Speaker 1: who have some knowledge of his character and habits, and
Speaker 1: who may have grounds for suspicion that he is not
Speaker 1: quite right in his mind at times. In signing off,
Speaker 1: Dr Bond made the suggestion that the prospects of a
Speaker 1: reward might overcome the trouble or notoriety that could be
Speaker 1: keeping back informants from turning in their man. It was
Speaker 1: a measured sketch of the killer, and while it took
Speaker 1: pains to overturn the earlier stabs that identification from the
Speaker 1: other doctors, it did little to narrow the search. It
Speaker 1: was nearly a declaration that unless there was someone who
Speaker 1: could be moved to turn in the murderer, a man
Speaker 1: would never be caught. But with London turn on one
Speaker 1: of their own, just as the killer had turned on London.
Speaker 1: It was a question that would have been on many
Speaker 1: minds a week later, when Mary Kelly's body was carried
Speaker 1: to the churchyard of St Leonard's and Shortitch, the parish
Speaker 1: clerk was also keeper of the Shortitch mortuary, and he
Speaker 1: had prepared to lay Mary to rest to the best
Speaker 1: of his ability. No wealthy relatives appeared from Cardiff to
Speaker 1: pay for Mary's burial, but the mortuary keeper decided not
Speaker 1: to let her slip into a pauper's grave. In death,
Speaker 1: Mary received what life never gave her, a polished elm
Speaker 1: and oak coffin gleamed on its metal mounts under ornaments
Speaker 1: of artificial flowers. Two horses drew the open carriage through
Speaker 1: the enormous crowd that assembled in the thoroughfare. As it
Speaker 1: rolled by, the carts was covered with cards. As the
Speaker 1: church bell rang out the noon hour, four pall bearers
Speaker 1: lifted the caskets and carried it into the cemetery. Hands
Speaker 1: reached out from every side to touch the polished box
Speaker 1: as it went by, and again the sound of weeping
Speaker 1: wept through the crowd. Joseph followed, and despite all the
Speaker 1: questions that remained unanswered, He did the least that he
Speaker 1: could do. He joined the men and women of the
Speaker 1: East End to lay married, to rest with dignity. That's
Speaker 1: it for this week's episode of Unobscured. Stick around after
Speaker 1: this short sponsor break for a preview of what's in
Speaker 1: store for next week. The arguments swirled back and forth
Speaker 1: through the causes and consequences of the murders. What could
Speaker 1: the Home Office do about the East Ends lodging houses
Speaker 1: with their cramped conditions housing crowds of unknown persons? What
Speaker 1: could the Home Office do to stop the police from
Speaker 1: publishing the names of suspects who turned out to have
Speaker 1: no connection to the murders but were stained with a
Speaker 1: connection to Jack the Ripper. When all the questions were asked, though,
Speaker 1: Parliament would be left unsatisfied. They could demand the afture
Speaker 1: of the killer. Sure, they could demand a change. But
Speaker 1: even after Charles Warren stepped away from his post and
Speaker 1: James Monroe stepped out from his shadowy corner of the
Speaker 1: Home Office to take command, Home Secretary Matthews had nothing
Speaker 1: more to give them. Like the police of the world's
Speaker 1: largest city, the government of the world's most commanding empire
Speaker 1: was at a loss because the answers to their questions
Speaker 1: just weren't there. Unobscured was created by me Aaron Manky
Speaker 1: and produced by Matt Frederick, Alex Williams, and Josh Thane
Speaker 1: in partnership with I Heart Radio. Research and writing for
Speaker 1: this season is all the work of my right hand
Speaker 1: man Carl Nellis, and the brilliant Chad Lawson composed the
Speaker 1: brand new soundtrack. Learn more about our contributing historians, source
Speaker 1: material and links to our other shows over at history
Speaker 1: unobscured dot com, and until next time, thanks for listening.
Speaker 1: Unobscured is a production of I Heart Radio and Aaron Benkey.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit I heart Radio, app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.