Speaker 1: Welcomed, unobscured a production of I Heart Radio and Aaron Minky.
Speaker 1: By all accounts, it was a nice spring evening. That's
Speaker 1: why Lizzie was out on a double date, walking Regent's
Speaker 1: Park on Joseph's arm. It was their usual spot, although
Speaker 1: tonight they were joined by Lizzie's sister strolling beside one
Speaker 1: of Joseph's coworkers. At some point, it seems Lizzie and
Speaker 1: Joseph wanted to have a quiet moment alone. With a smile,
Speaker 1: they picked up the pace a bit while the other
Speaker 1: pear trailed behind. You can picture them leaning in together,
Speaker 1: whispering as they passed into the beautifully manicured landscape that
Speaker 1: had made London the envy of the modern world when
Speaker 1: it was first designed a generation before. One writer had
Speaker 1: expressed his awe at its grandeur. Rome had its ruins
Speaker 1: and Jerusalem It's temple, but London had its own shining glories.
Speaker 1: As they ambled through Regent's Park, maybe Lizzie rested her
Speaker 1: head on Joseph's shoulder. Back in eighteen twenty four, London
Speaker 1: had repeat old the city's ancient law against walking the
Speaker 1: streets at night. That was thanks in part to the
Speaker 1: new wonder of the age, light that could throw back
Speaker 1: the darkness on command. Maybe, as the clipped lawns glowed
Speaker 1: under the gas lights that came to life, Lizzie had
Speaker 1: the time to recall the lofty terms in which their
Speaker 1: city had been praised the room of modern history. But
Speaker 1: if it was a beautiful, quiet moment, it would be
Speaker 1: their last. The sound of running feet neared on the
Speaker 1: path behind them. Someone shouted, are you Macy. Joseph turned
Speaker 1: to answer with I don't know what you mean, as
Speaker 1: another voice called out, that's the one. Lizzie looked just
Speaker 1: in time to see half a dozen young men closing
Speaker 1: in anger on their faces, and they were staring at Joseph.
Speaker 1: In an instant, they were upon him. One of them
Speaker 1: grabbed him by the collar. Other hands and arms came
Speaker 1: swinging in more violently. Joseph did his best to fight back,
Speaker 1: throwing up his arms. He was a printer's machinist and
Speaker 1: strong man, but there were too many of them, so
Speaker 1: he took off, running his hat flew into the darkness.
Speaker 1: They were faster, and they came on him too. Suddenly.
Speaker 1: It only took a few moments before Lizzie caught up
Speaker 1: just in time to see a knife flash in the
Speaker 1: shadows between their bodies. As she came within reach, the
Speaker 1: group was already on the run, whooping as they made
Speaker 1: their escape. They had left Joseph draped over a park
Speaker 1: gate with blood running from his mouth. He was gasping.
Speaker 1: At first, she thought he had been punched in the face,
Speaker 1: but he wheezed out the words I am stabbed. Someone
Speaker 1: nearby came over to help and hail a cab, but
Speaker 1: Lizzie could still see the attackers running off and no
Speaker 1: one was giving chase. A righteous fury took hold of her,
Speaker 1: and she set off running. Lizzie could tell they were
Speaker 1: getting away. She yelled stop thief, and a man in
Speaker 1: front of them tried to answer the call. Stepping into
Speaker 1: the group's path. They knocked him aside, but it slowed
Speaker 1: them down just enough for Lizzie to catch up. That's
Speaker 1: when one of them turned and knocked her down. A
Speaker 1: vicious kick smashed her ribs. Before she could get up,
Speaker 1: they disappeared. As she climbed to her feet, she saw
Speaker 1: a group of bystanders taking it all in. Why didn't
Speaker 1: any of you help, she demanded, but the nearest man
Speaker 1: turned away, and then she remembered Joseph still bleeding in
Speaker 1: the park. She got back to him just as he
Speaker 1: was helped into a cab. Lizzie climbed in with him
Speaker 1: and they began rattling toward the hospital. But they wouldn't
Speaker 1: make it. Blood was flowing from Joseph's chest and neck,
Speaker 1: and he died in Lizzie's arms while they were still
Speaker 1: on the way. It was a terrifying, senseless murder. To
Speaker 1: say that it shocked London would be an understatement. Papers
Speaker 1: across Britain, from Leeds to Ipswich to Bristol, reported the
Speaker 1: murder at a frenzied pitch. The story made the same
Speaker 1: splash in Scotland and Ireland. Like the Brighton railway murder.
Speaker 1: It drew the attention of a reading public to the
Speaker 1: turmoil in the streets of London. As suspects were questioned,
Speaker 1: the picture became clear. The attackers were members of the Deck,
Speaker 1: and they'd mistaken Joseph for a member of a rival gang,
Speaker 1: a gang that had attacked them in Regent's Park the
Speaker 1: night before. The knife that had sliced Joseph long was
Speaker 1: a sailor's dagger. The sanitary workers dredged the sewers at
Speaker 1: the request of Scotland Yard and found the six inch
Speaker 1: blade embedded in the mud. Its owner had loaned it
Speaker 1: to the killer, who had carried it to the park
Speaker 1: with revenge on his mind. Youth gang's sailor's knives and
Speaker 1: evidence stashed in sewers, only to be dredged up by
Speaker 1: London's finest It all gave London an air of incredible danger.
Speaker 1: And of course this heinous crime had occurred along Regent
Speaker 1: Street inside Regent's Park. That place was a wonder of
Speaker 1: modern design, meant to replace pestilent alleyways, squalid hovels and
Speaker 1: myrie rhodes at the heart of London with healthy streets,
Speaker 1: elegant buildings and park like scenery, or so they had
Speaker 1: said in eight when the park was first opened. But
Speaker 1: like the Brighton Railway murder, the Regent's Park murder of
Speaker 1: eight would force Britain's wide eyed readership to revisit the
Speaker 1: question asked by the rampaging crowds two years earlier. Had
Speaker 1: the modern world really washed away the worst impulses of
Speaker 1: London's past, or had it simply invited the sins of
Speaker 1: Mother England to play out once more, only this time
Speaker 1: on a much grander scale. This is unobscured. I'm Aaron
Speaker 1: manky m M. London didn't just get this way by itself.
Speaker 1: There's always a backstory. It was certainly true that in
Speaker 1: the eighteen hundreds London was a city on the grow,
Speaker 1: and no one could take more credit for that than
Speaker 1: the Prince Regent himself, George the Fourth, well except maybe
Speaker 1: his architect John Nash. You see, in the centuries before
Speaker 1: the industrial era, much of the land around London was
Speaker 1: owned by the Crown. It was then leased to farmers
Speaker 1: and builders, who used it for their own ends. But
Speaker 1: those leases ended in eighteen eleven, just as the Prince
Speaker 1: Regent was puzzling over England's place in the modern world,
Speaker 1: and if the reports are true, he was especially troubled
Speaker 1: when he looked across the channel and saw the grandeur
Speaker 1: of France. By all accounts, he set out to make
Speaker 1: the city at the center of his empire a metropolis
Speaker 1: that could quite eclipse Napoleon, and he spared no expense.
Speaker 1: Not only did George the Fourth and John Nash create
Speaker 1: Regent Street and Regent's Park, but they remade Buckingham House
Speaker 1: into a pal us worthy of any continental monarch. Acts
Speaker 1: of Parliaments launched three new bridges across the Thames, which
Speaker 1: cleared the way for new roads to cross the river.
Speaker 1: Gas Lights began to pop up in eighteen oh seven
Speaker 1: and spread along London streets for years until their glow
Speaker 1: could be seen throughout the city in the eighteen forties.
Speaker 1: But this was more than a facelift, and the scalpel
Speaker 1: did more than scratch the surface. Along those streets and
Speaker 1: gas lines traveled new sewers that would sluice the city's
Speaker 1: filth to the river that would carry it out to sea.
Speaker 1: At least that was the story for London's West End.
Speaker 1: When the Prince Regent and John Nash were done and
Speaker 1: collecting their praise from observers, others took up the vision
Speaker 1: for creating London anew Throughout the century, huge projects continued
Speaker 1: to be launched, even up to eighteen sixty seven, when
Speaker 1: the Holburn Viaduct, the biggest and most expensive project of
Speaker 1: the century, was built to serve London's financial district. All
Speaker 1: of that remodeling came at a cost, though, and not
Speaker 1: just to a purse, No, it was much more severe
Speaker 1: than that. For the new city to arise, the old
Speaker 1: one had to be cut to pieces. Among the wealth
Speaker 1: and well to do, John Nash was known for his
Speaker 1: beautiful architecture, but among poor and working people he was
Speaker 1: known for the men who cleared the way for those buildings,
Speaker 1: Nash's housebreakers. Here's historian Adam Wood. Fifty years earlier. The rookeries,
Speaker 1: where the poor in the criminal classes congregated, were to
Speaker 1: be found in the West End and Saint Charles Area
Speaker 1: and spill Fields and White chap in the early teen hundreds,
Speaker 1: were by comparison and quite prosperous. When the West End
Speaker 1: was developed, a large number of people were forced from
Speaker 1: the rookeries. And when Oxford Street and Shaws Revenue, which
Speaker 1: are well known West End streets now were developed, that
Speaker 1: St Charles Area was demolished and all the five five
Speaker 1: thousand poor residents were relocated to the East End. That's right,
Speaker 1: thousands of poor Londoners were dispossessed and displaced as the
Speaker 1: West End developed. The homes where they had lived in
Speaker 1: some cases for generations were destroyed and those people were
Speaker 1: simply turned out into the streets. Where did they go?
Speaker 1: Not far? Actually, pushed out from the neighborhoods where they
Speaker 1: used to live. Many now found themselves only a few
Speaker 1: neighborhoods away in the East End, but there was hardly
Speaker 1: a reprieve in the docklands. When a project to build
Speaker 1: the St. Catherine's Docks was arranged, the first thing to
Speaker 1: do was clear the way. House breakers arrived at three
Speaker 1: neighborhoods in the East End called Cat's Whole, Pillory Lane
Speaker 1: and Dark Entry and they left them in ruins. Construction
Speaker 1: on this single project left over eleven thousand people without
Speaker 1: their homes. Here's historian Louise raw If you were better
Speaker 1: off and the property owner, then you get compensation. If
Speaker 1: you didn't tough on, you go. And we presume because
Speaker 1: nobody bothered to record where people went, that they just
Speaker 1: went deeper into London. They just increased the overcrowding everywhere
Speaker 1: else they would had no choice, perhaps stay with friends,
Speaker 1: go wherever you could. A lot of them would just
Speaker 1: have been homeless. And there was a large increase in homelessness.
Speaker 1: So London's posh West End and it's dark East End
Speaker 1: didn't just drop out of the sky or sprout up
Speaker 1: from the soil. Among the Thames River. They were choices
Speaker 1: that had been made by Crown and country that lay
Speaker 1: behind the fashionable facade of the West End and the
Speaker 1: desperation of the East. In fact, many Londoners of the
Speaker 1: Victorian era agreed where we might differ from them, though
Speaker 1: is in whose choice that was. Because for the middle
Speaker 1: class Victorians who looked to the East from their comfortable homes,
Speaker 1: it was clear the east Enders had brought this upon themselves.
Speaker 1: The link they saw was between the squalid conditions of
Speaker 1: the East End neighborhoods and the morality of the people
Speaker 1: who lived there. It was an endless cycle, they thought,
Speaker 1: between bad homes and bad morals. It was as if
Speaker 1: the grandness of Nash's designs had white all memory of
Speaker 1: his house breakers from their minds, assuming, of course, they
Speaker 1: had ever given them a thought in the first place.
Speaker 1: The Regent's Park murder locked a lot of London doors.
Speaker 1: The house breaking and home wrecking that middle class Victorians
Speaker 1: worried about had little to do with fears that their
Speaker 1: home might be destroyed to clear the way for a
Speaker 1: grand promenade. Instead, they worried that someone might break into
Speaker 1: their homes and make off with their belongings, or that
Speaker 1: someone with loose morals might disturb the tranquility of their
Speaker 1: family arrangements with temptations. And that's what had them turning
Speaker 1: to a new organization that grew up alongside the modern city,
Speaker 1: the modern police Department. They turned to men like Charles
Speaker 1: Warren to coordinate and lead the efforts against both violence
Speaker 1: and vice, and they counted on men like Detective Inspector
Speaker 1: Donald Swanson to untie the difficult knot at the center
Speaker 1: of inexplicable crimes. After all, when Swans and arrested the
Speaker 1: Brighton Railway murderer in eight eight one, it wasn't the
Speaker 1: first time that his quick thought and decisive action brought
Speaker 1: relief to London's wealthy. In fact, by then he had
Speaker 1: already solved a string of cases that made him highly
Speaker 1: respected among the public who knew him, but in the
Speaker 1: police department too. In eighteen seventy, when Swanson was still
Speaker 1: just a constable, a small gang of thieves made off
Speaker 1: with gold chains lifted from a pawnbroker's shop on Fleet Street.
Speaker 1: They had used the cover of night to creep to
Speaker 1: the shop's closed shutters with a small metal file and
Speaker 1: a plan while two of them stood look out. The
Speaker 1: other two board holes through the shutters and pulled out
Speaker 1: the valuables they found inside. They had spotted diamond necklaces
Speaker 1: in the shop, and no mere wooden board could stop
Speaker 1: someone with a penchant for drilling his way to wealth.
Speaker 1: But they knew they couldn't attract too much attention. They
Speaker 1: had to work quickly, and they ran out of time.
Speaker 1: The holes they made were too small for the diamonds.
Speaker 1: Only a few thin gold chains would slip through. The
Speaker 1: hall was far us valuable than it could have been,
Speaker 1: but when the thieves vanished with the gold chains, it
Speaker 1: was enough to set the police on the scene. The
Speaker 1: gang would have gotten away completely if it weren't for
Speaker 1: Constable Donald Swanson. He traced their path through the city,
Speaker 1: into the East End and into Whitechapel. Ultimately, Swanson arrested
Speaker 1: three of the four thieves. Alongside the stolen gold chains,
Speaker 1: he found a bent wire in the belongings of a
Speaker 1: woman named Curly Paul. Swanson convinced the judge that the
Speaker 1: wire had been used to lift the stolen gold through
Speaker 1: the punctured shutters of the shop. Curly Paul was convicted
Speaker 1: of acting as a lookout for the group, but that
Speaker 1: was only one case when Swanson slapped the hand reaching
Speaker 1: from the East End, because as well as helping the
Speaker 1: residents and retailers of West London hold onto their valuables,
Speaker 1: he was also tasked with making sure that their moral
Speaker 1: fiber remained intact. The year after catching the pawn shop burglars,
Speaker 1: Swanson worked with another officer, Frederick Aberlein, to investigate a
Speaker 1: different kind of business, one that threatened to corrupt respectable
Speaker 1: und dinners. Here is Adam Wood. Once again, Swanson was
Speaker 1: a PC and Atherline a serjump and complaints have been
Speaker 1: made to the police that the infamous fear to impresario
Speaker 1: George Sanger was putting on plays without a license, and
Speaker 1: to get around this he placed advertisement stating that entry
Speaker 1: was free, but when nearly four hundred people turned up
Speaker 1: on the night, they were told they had to buy
Speaker 1: a program before they had gained admittance. Other Line went
Speaker 1: along in playing clothes and watched the performance and observed
Speaker 1: what the newspapers described. Got it written here as several drunks,
Speaker 1: men of a doubtful character and women of an immoral character,
Speaker 1: causing nuisance to the ability to the public so you
Speaker 1: just imagine what an evening that that was like. Sanger
Speaker 1: eventually appeared before the magistrates and was fined just five
Speaker 1: pound and I know a little bit about saying that
Speaker 1: he did go on to continue with his illegal playhouse career,
Speaker 1: should he say? And he was quite quiet notorious that
Speaker 1: Swanson was transferred to Bow in the East End three
Speaker 1: months later on a line to whitechape Or two years later.
Speaker 1: Those transfers for Donald Swanson and Frederick Aberleine would be
Speaker 1: a fateful one for both men. As they worked in
Speaker 1: the East End, they came to know its streets and
Speaker 1: its people, and those experiences meant that in eighteen eighty eight,
Speaker 1: when Scotland Yard needed detectives to investigate a series of
Speaker 1: gruesome murders, first Frederick Aberleine and then Donald Swanson would
Speaker 1: get the call. Not at first though, because in eighteen
Speaker 1: eighty seven, after nine years as the head of investigation
Speaker 1: in Whitechapel, Aberleine had been transferred to the central office
Speaker 1: at Scotland Yard. Donald Swanson joined him in the same November.
Speaker 1: In eighteen eighty eight, both men were senior officers climbing
Speaker 1: toward the top of the criminal investigation Department or c
Speaker 1: i D, whose responsibilities were more and more administrative, to
Speaker 1: follow the patterns of crime around London. But when murder
Speaker 1: came to Whitechapel in eighteen eighty eight, they found themselves
Speaker 1: facing a pattern they had never seen before, and it
Speaker 1: would prove to be their greatest challenge. Pearly Paul sat
Speaker 1: uneasily looking at the corner. If it was an ordinary week,
Speaker 1: that man would have been Win Baxter, who led the
Speaker 1: inquest into the Brighton railway murder. But Baxter was vacationing
Speaker 1: in Scandinavia. His work got handed down to the next
Speaker 1: in line, so Pearly Paul was faced with Baxter's deputy.
Speaker 1: The newspapers that reported her testimony would mock her. They
Speaker 1: would call her masculine looking and say that her face
Speaker 1: was soddened by drink. But the past few weeks had
Speaker 1: been terrible ones for Paul, and now she was sitting
Speaker 1: at a coroner's inquest, and she was about to relive
Speaker 1: all those weeks again. After all, her friend had been
Speaker 1: murdered when she was first called into the inquest two
Speaker 1: weeks before. Paul was pulled into view the body of
Speaker 1: a dead woman. She told the police that yes, she
Speaker 1: knew her name. Her name was Emma, but the inquest
Speaker 1: came to a halt when the next two women to
Speaker 1: view the body gave different names for the dead woman.
Speaker 1: Frustrated by the confusion, the deputy corner delayed the second
Speaker 1: day of the inquest by two weeks in hopes that
Speaker 1: Scotland Yard could sort out the confusion. At least one
Speaker 1: historian has noted that while wind Baxter was known for
Speaker 1: guiding inquests with cool detachment in the face of gruesome
Speaker 1: injuries and mysterious deaths, this backup Deputy Corner was not
Speaker 1: so collected. His shock and horror are evident in his records.
Speaker 1: We can only imagine how glad he was to put
Speaker 1: the terrible crime out of his mind and turn things
Speaker 1: over to the detectives as they slowly began to put
Speaker 1: together the pieces of Martha Tabram's life. Here's historian Drew Gray.
Speaker 1: She was an alcoholic and she had a reputation for
Speaker 1: being seen out with men that she wasn't going out with,
Speaker 1: which might have tainted her reputation. She was found dead
Speaker 1: on the landing of George Yard Buildings on the seventh
Speaker 1: of August. She can stabbed thirty nine times. Most of
Speaker 1: the wounds are targeted to abdomen. I think at the
Speaker 1: time it was considered to be a very brutal murder,
Speaker 1: and there's a suggestion it might have been carried up
Speaker 1: by soldiers. That suggestion caught on because a constable patrolling
Speaker 1: that neighborhood had talked with the Grenadier guardsman loitering in
Speaker 1: the street around two am. Hurley Paul's testimony made that
Speaker 1: theory even stronger. You see, she and Martha had been
Speaker 1: out drinking with a couple of soldiers on the night
Speaker 1: of the murder. Just before midnight. They left the White
Speaker 1: Swan Pub to go their separate ways with their separate men.
Speaker 1: Hurly Paul had seen Martha walk away on the soldier's arm.
Speaker 1: It was the last time anyone would see Martha alive.
Speaker 1: Her body was found at four fifty a m. The
Speaker 1: next morning in the stairwell of the George Yard buildings,
Speaker 1: just off the White Chapel Road. A dock worker spotted
Speaker 1: her body as he was coming down the street to
Speaker 1: go to work. He rushed to find a constable and
Speaker 1: brought the man who had talked with the soldier. A
Speaker 1: few hours earlier. That brought more police and a Sir
Speaker 1: Rgin to examine Martha's body. What he found was terrifying.
Speaker 1: Small knife wounds covered her thighs, her abdomen, and her chest.
Speaker 1: The surgeon guests they were inflicted with what he called
Speaker 1: an ordinary pen knife. The blade had pierced both lungs
Speaker 1: and Martha's heart as well. One wound that had punctured
Speaker 1: her stern um, though likely required something bigger, a dagger
Speaker 1: or maybe a soldier's bayonet. The doctor did report that
Speaker 1: there was no evidence of recent intimacy to use the
Speaker 1: terms of Victorian propriety that were published in the paper.
Speaker 1: But there's no wonder it was considered a brutal murder
Speaker 1: because that's exactly what it was. So with the White
Speaker 1: Chapel Constable into the detectives rounded up Grenadier guards at
Speaker 1: the Tower of London, especially the ones who had been
Speaker 1: on leave the night of the murder. The constable couldn't
Speaker 1: spot his man among them, or rather, first he picked
Speaker 1: out one man, then changed his mind and picked another.
Speaker 1: After talking with them, the inspector decided the constable had
Speaker 1: made mistake, so a few days later they called Pearly
Speaker 1: Paul She was brought into view an identity parade, and
Speaker 1: the detectives asked her, can you see here either of
Speaker 1: the men you saw with the woman now dead? She
Speaker 1: scrutinized them for a long time, but in the end
Speaker 1: she shook her head. When the inspectors asked her again,
Speaker 1: she looked him in the eye and said he ain't here.
Speaker 1: All she remembered was that the soldiers had white bands
Speaker 1: around their caps. That led the search to the Wellington
Speaker 1: Barracks and the cold Stream Guards. They brought Paul back
Speaker 1: to review more potential killers, and when they came through
Speaker 1: in a lineup, she picked out two men. The trouble
Speaker 1: was both of them had alibis, so the inspector scribbled
Speaker 1: an ominous phrase in his notes. Identification failed. Scotland Yard
Speaker 1: questioned neighbors around the building where Martha's body had been found,
Speaker 1: and people who had passed by along the street that night.
Speaker 1: None had information to add, though in fact, no one
Speaker 1: in the neighborhood where she died even claimed to know her. Strangely,
Speaker 1: the police didn't press the supervisor of the building where
Speaker 1: Martha's body was found. He was questioned, but he told
Speaker 1: the inspectors he hadn't heard anything. Maybe he was just
Speaker 1: trying to keep his head down. His wife told them
Speaker 1: that she had heard someone shout a single word murder,
Speaker 1: but that wasn't so unusual, she said, after all, this
Speaker 1: was the East End. When the inquest reconvened on August,
Speaker 1: only Martha's identity had been established. Her estranged husband, Henry Tabram,
Speaker 1: had come in to identify her from Greenwich, on the
Speaker 1: other side of the Thames and a bit farther downriver.
Speaker 1: Henry said they had been separated for thirteen years and
Speaker 1: I quote owing to her drinking habits. Another Henry, Henry Turner,
Speaker 1: had been her partner since then. She had been his
Speaker 1: wife for nine years, he said, but he had separated
Speaker 1: from her two or three weeks before she was killed.
Speaker 1: Their landlady testified as well, but all she said was
Speaker 1: that Martha owed her two weeks rent. So Pearley Paul
Speaker 1: came last. She gave her account of the night when
Speaker 1: Martha died. She gave her account of reviewing the suspected soldiers.
Speaker 1: She even admitted to saying she might drown herself, though
Speaker 1: at the inquest she tried to take that back. In
Speaker 1: the days since the murder. Paul had taken refuge with
Speaker 1: her cousin on Drury Lane. We can only imagine how
Speaker 1: much she needed that support to not be alone. The
Speaker 1: inspector responsible for Whitechapel told the Deputy coroner that none
Speaker 1: of the soldiers were found with any blood on their
Speaker 1: clothes or weapons. He ended his statement with the plea
Speaker 1: that was published in the London Times on August if
Speaker 1: anyone had information about Martha's death, please let them know.
Speaker 1: They had reached a dead end without The inspector responsible
Speaker 1: for investigating crime in Whitechapel moved on literally. He followed
Speaker 1: Win Baxter's example and left London on vacation. The next day.
Speaker 1: The East London Adviser responded with an article of their own.
Speaker 1: They saw the way that the East Ends reputation was looking,
Speaker 1: and they hoped to head it off. A murder in
Speaker 1: Whitechapel or any in the East End was regarded differently
Speaker 1: from attacks elsewhere in London, say Regent's Park, for example,
Speaker 1: A murder there would get sympathy from a wide British readership.
Speaker 1: But let a poor man sin in the East End,
Speaker 1: they wrote, and it draws the finger of scorn alongside
Speaker 1: the gasp of horror. After all, fearful readers and the
Speaker 1: journalists who fed them stories truly believed east Enders were
Speaker 1: all Ruffians. It seemed the papers used every story to
Speaker 1: reinforce that prejudice too. If the editors of the East
Speaker 1: End Adviser thought Martha Tabram's murder was used to spoil
Speaker 1: their neighborhood's reputation, though they were completely unprepared for what
Speaker 1: was coming, and they had no idea just how bad
Speaker 1: things could get. Regent's Park was built for the Lizzies
Speaker 1: and Josephs of London and their betters. But as we're
Speaker 1: starting to see, that's only one small part of london story.
Speaker 1: When the old city was chewed and swallowed by the
Speaker 1: reads plans and the industrial era crept into the light,
Speaker 1: Londoners saw three faces of their home. To the west
Speaker 1: sat Court and Parliament. It was the city's government seat,
Speaker 1: second at the city center. Tides of money were pulled
Speaker 1: in from all around the globe to create the banks
Speaker 1: and towers, all of which spilled into the creeping suburbs
Speaker 1: for the middle classes who served in them, and finally
Speaker 1: on the eastern side of the city and flowing ever eastward,
Speaker 1: towards the open sea were London's ducks and the factories
Speaker 1: and warehouses that hunched against them. Here's historian Drew Gray.
Speaker 1: The West End, or in popular parlance, the Best End,
Speaker 1: was home to the wealthy. It was a playground for
Speaker 1: those who had money, and of course it was a
Speaker 1: magnet for people who wanted to work. So plenty of
Speaker 1: East London has worked in the West End, worked in
Speaker 1: the shops and the clubs, and the clubs and the
Speaker 1: and came over, you know, the women came over sometimes
Speaker 1: to collactic prostitutes and escorts in that part of town.
Speaker 1: And this is where the shops and the clubs in
Speaker 1: the theaters of Victoria and London were. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: this is where you'd find the elegant streets and the
Speaker 1: squares around Bloomsbury. And this is this is what looked
Speaker 1: like the capital of the greatest empire of the world
Speaker 1: had ever seen, all of it, beautifully lit and well
Speaker 1: served by transport networks. If you contrast that with the
Speaker 1: East End of London, um, this is poor, dark, overcrowded
Speaker 1: and largely degraded. So, as I've said before, the while
Speaker 1: the West End was affluent, the East End was affluent,
Speaker 1: kind of strich, stinking in the noses of those that
Speaker 1: visited it. And that's the image we have of the
Speaker 1: contrast between the East and West ends of London in
Speaker 1: nineteenth century, and it's probably the image that most Londoners
Speaker 1: would have had, certainly most West Londoners and people from
Speaker 1: outside the capital as Londoners white, these factions growing in
Speaker 1: their home, popular songs and political cartoons arrived to tell
Speaker 1: the story of St. Giles and St. James. It was
Speaker 1: an easy way to paint a picture of a divided city. St.
Speaker 1: James represented posh and aristocratic West London. St. Giles was
Speaker 1: the London of hard labor and heavy industry. The swelling
Speaker 1: middle classes and the ranks of money men and industrialists
Speaker 1: were squeezed in between the two worlds. Of course, all
Speaker 1: of this was far too black and white to give
Speaker 1: a clear picture of the real city. Here's Drew Gray
Speaker 1: once again. Well, the East End was poor, it was overcrowded,
Speaker 1: and it was home to those dirty trades that were necessary,
Speaker 1: such as slaughtering and tanning. Those industries has always been
Speaker 1: placed in the east of the capital. Um that that
Speaker 1: goes right back in history. But Charles Bose Great Survey
Speaker 1: of Poverty, um He's macking of London reveals that, yeah,
Speaker 1: were certainly more areas of wealth and prosperity in the
Speaker 1: West End than in the East End. To the east
Speaker 1: End wasn't entirely riddled with poverty, and you will find
Speaker 1: pockets of deprivation across the capitol in West London as well.
Speaker 1: So the contrast is a useful starting point. But London
Speaker 1: was a very mixed city in the eighteen hundreds, and
Speaker 1: poverty and wealth often lived cheap by jiles side by side.
Speaker 1: After visiting the city at the beginning of the nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: one American observer wrote that the constant press of carriage traffic,
Speaker 1: even in London's West End, created and I quote a
Speaker 1: universal hubbub, a sort of uniform grinding and shaking, like
Speaker 1: that experienced in a great mill with fifty pair of stones.
Speaker 1: I should say that it came upon the ear like
Speaker 1: the fall of Niagara, and the city only continued to grow.
Speaker 1: In the East End. It wasn't just factories, it was
Speaker 1: also the homes of the people who worked in those
Speaker 1: factories and on the docks, and yeah, us who worked
Speaker 1: back in the West End too, but we're just too
Speaker 1: poor to live there. But grand as the houses were
Speaker 1: in the West End of London, the houses in the
Speaker 1: East End where the holdovers from another era. Here's Adam
Speaker 1: Wood once again, when you combine that large movement of
Speaker 1: or poverty stricken residents into an area, as I say,
Speaker 1: which had been prosperous, but the buildings were getting older
Speaker 1: and dilapidated. Certainly the the the sewage facilities around the
Speaker 1: East End were getting dated. It just become too overcrowded
Speaker 1: and more. From historian Drew Gray, I always trying to
Speaker 1: imagine that I'm going back in time and I'm stepping
Speaker 1: out onto the rather dirty streets of London in the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century. But I would describe the East End is
Speaker 1: a multicultural melting pot, a kind of vibrant community of
Speaker 1: people struggling to survive in a society, of course, which
Speaker 1: generally failed to support those that fell on on hard times.
Speaker 1: So I see a series of communities, not one community,
Speaker 1: but several communities, and not always seeing eye to eye,
Speaker 1: where kind of new immigrants mingled with established ones and
Speaker 1: native east Enders for want of a better word, robbed
Speaker 1: shoulders with new arrivals and with slumming tourists, you know,
Speaker 1: wealthier people coming into the area to kind of got
Speaker 1: at what they could see. I see White Chapel is
Speaker 1: somewhere where poverty was endemic, but at the same time
Speaker 1: there's an entrepreneurial spirit kind of everywhere. So words I'd
Speaker 1: use to describe White Chaplain in the would be bold,
Speaker 1: with brassy, sometimes shocking, often funny, amusing, always lively and
Speaker 1: exciting and ever changing. There was a city teaming with life,
Speaker 1: full of sorrows and struggles and excitement, and plenty of suffering,
Speaker 1: but also a place of work in a real home
Speaker 1: too many. That's the world that the East London Adviser
Speaker 1: set out to defend in the days after Martha Tabram's murder,
Speaker 1: not to deny the seriousness of the crime, but to
Speaker 1: argue that there was so much more to Whitechapel than
Speaker 1: the shadow of an uncaught killer. But to the journalists
Speaker 1: of the other papers out looking to scare up a story,
Speaker 1: and to the readers who followed them there, the neighborhood
Speaker 1: was most useful as the home to those men of
Speaker 1: doubtful character and immoral women who filled up illegal playhouses
Speaker 1: and worse, if some writers were praising London as the
Speaker 1: rome of modern history. Others weren't so celebratory. When he
Speaker 1: visited London in eighteen seventy six, American writer Henry James
Speaker 1: had harsher words for the city. He dubbed it and
Speaker 1: I quote, the murky modern Babylon. James called London plenty
Speaker 1: of other things too, like a strangely mingled monster that
Speaker 1: stirred together all the classes and activities of English society.
Speaker 1: That one's probably my favorite image. But it also expressed
Speaker 1: a prejudice that we see over and over again in
Speaker 1: writers of the period, that London's worst inhabitants and impulses
Speaker 1: were all mixed up with its best, and it turned
Speaker 1: the whole thing monstrous. But it was that phrase modern
Speaker 1: Babylon that carried the right weight of history, the mix
Speaker 1: of awe and horror and fear of foreigners from the East,
Speaker 1: to really catch on, even more so when the British
Speaker 1: journalist W. T. Stead used it in the title of
Speaker 1: a series of newspaper articles that shocked the reading public.
Speaker 1: In them, he described the depths of the city's depravity,
Speaker 1: and in doing so he launched a wave of fear
Speaker 1: and fury about life in the East End long before
Speaker 1: the name Jack the Ripper was ever whispered. In July,
Speaker 1: the pall Mall Gazette gave it to readers a warning.
Speaker 1: All those who are squeamish and all those who are
Speaker 1: prudish the article read, and all those who pre for
Speaker 1: to live in a fool's paradise of imaginary innocence and
Speaker 1: purity were told that they would do well not to
Speaker 1: read the paper for the next four days, because it
Speaker 1: was about the publish a story of an actual pilgrimage
Speaker 1: into a real hell. Of course, all of this meant
Speaker 1: that the next few issues of the paper sold like
Speaker 1: never before, and the story that it told was indeed
Speaker 1: hellish and diabolical. But if Bryant and May were bad
Speaker 1: enough for exploiting women and girls to make matches in
Speaker 1: their East End factory, well London was home to matchmaking
Speaker 1: of an even more depraved and creditory sort. In his
Speaker 1: series of articles called The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon, W. T.
Speaker 1: Stead described a hell that was far too close for
Speaker 1: most of his listeners, child sex trafficking. He argued that
Speaker 1: young girls were being bought and sold rights in the
Speaker 1: heart of the British Empire sold off like sacrifices to
Speaker 1: a vicious god. Instead, it was the deepest damnation of
Speaker 1: Victorian society. And to add to that, he wrote, the
Speaker 1: girls there were being shipped off to foreign sures. Gladstone
Speaker 1: and his Liberal government were focused on military campaigns overseas,
Speaker 1: so Stead realized that in order to make them pay attention,
Speaker 1: he needed the public's help, so he whipped them into
Speaker 1: a fury. In part because Stead crossed the line in
Speaker 1: order to demonstrate the trafficking, he did some himself. He
Speaker 1: convinced the London mother that he had a place for
Speaker 1: her daughter as a domestic servant. Once he had the
Speaker 1: girl in his power, he drugged her and shipped her
Speaker 1: to Paris, where she was held by the Salvation Army.
Speaker 1: As Stead chronicled the process in the Paul mal Gazette,
Speaker 1: and not just his own paper either, London newspapers and
Speaker 1: the stories they published were reaching around the world. Stead
Speaker 1: would proudly announce that his articles on London sex trafficking
Speaker 1: were printed in every capital across Europe and in America too.
Speaker 1: The sensation was international. In London, unauthorized reprints alone sold
Speaker 1: more than one and a half million copies. Now, obviously W. T.
Speaker 1: Stead had a noble vision behind his lured writing. To
Speaker 1: begin with, recent government reports had shown that at least
Speaker 1: thirty three British girls and women had been taken to
Speaker 1: brothels on the European continent in the short time between
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy nine and eighteen eighty, and at the time
Speaker 1: English law set the age of consent at just thirteen.
Speaker 1: Instead correctly saw that the law itself was deeply criminal,
Speaker 1: a moral stain. His spate of articles was meant to
Speaker 1: scrub that away, and there's no doubt that on one level,
Speaker 1: the horrified response to his expose on child trafficking was
Speaker 1: a good thing. As a result, the law did change.
Speaker 1: But there were people Stead had not taken into account,
Speaker 1: which included the girl's parents. Their names were splashed all
Speaker 1: over the papers saying that they had sold their daughters
Speaker 1: into sexual slavery. To their mind, they had trusted the
Speaker 1: word of a respected journalist when he offered to help
Speaker 1: their daughter find a good job. So in response they
Speaker 1: turned around and sued him for defrauding them and for
Speaker 1: committing the very same crime that he was blasting in
Speaker 1: his paper, which to be honest, seems fair. There were
Speaker 1: other consequences too, like the fact that Stead's made a
Speaker 1: tribute of modern Babylon served to deepen middle class distrust
Speaker 1: of London's poor. Here's historian Louise Raw once again. In fact,
Speaker 1: there was this idea that the poor didn't love their children,
Speaker 1: which is a really strange one. How separate of a
Speaker 1: species have you got to be considered if people question
Speaker 1: whether you love your children. And there are even some
Speaker 1: commentators who say, well, you know, I've talked some of
Speaker 1: this poor pl and Jina, they actually do. And once
Speaker 1: those attitudes were exposed, it only got uglier, and some
Speaker 1: of that ugliness was right there insteads articles. Here's a
Speaker 1: bit more from historian Drew Gray. One thing we have
Speaker 1: to remember, of course, is that most people were certainly
Speaker 1: most middle class people, even middle class people in London,
Speaker 1: and these are the people that read most of them
Speaker 1: new papers. Rarely ventured into the East End or any
Speaker 1: of London's other poorer areas, you know, it's like Saint
Speaker 1: Giles or the Borough in Southolk, and they just didn't
Speaker 1: go there. Instead, they learned about those areas through the
Speaker 1: newspapers they read, and papers gave them a partial and
Speaker 1: a biased view of those areas, not unlike the way
Speaker 1: in which Darkest Africa was described by the missionaries who
Speaker 1: went there to loosely use the term civilize it in
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century, so colorful descriptions of the East End,
Speaker 1: you know, featuring the strange people that lived there. There
Speaker 1: they're weird customs there, smelly food and the clothes that
Speaker 1: people we're all printed in ways that was similar to
Speaker 1: the descriptions offered of far away in exotic lands in
Speaker 1: India and China and Africa, all the parts of the
Speaker 1: all the parts touched by the British Empire, and people
Speaker 1: like William Stead, who pioneered what we could probably call
Speaker 1: you know, who pioneered what's been termed new journalism, recognized
Speaker 1: the power that the media had to affect change as
Speaker 1: well as turning a profit by saying newspapers. It was
Speaker 1: the combined fear of the East End, whipped up by
Speaker 1: reporting like the Maiden Tribute stories and the growing fear
Speaker 1: of gang violence stemming from the Regent's Park murder that
Speaker 1: lifted Martha Tabram's death to the headlines. Fear and horror
Speaker 1: about sex among London's poor was already at a boiling point.
Speaker 1: The doctor who examined Martha's body suggested that she hadn't
Speaker 1: been raped, but that barely broke through the real lens
Speaker 1: by which middle class readers saw the East End with
Speaker 1: someone like Pearly Paul as the main witness to an
Speaker 1: East End murder investigation, murder and prostitution were stitched together
Speaker 1: for the public, and it's no coincidence that the London
Speaker 1: docks in the East End were the places where people
Speaker 1: and plunder from around the world entered Britain's bloodstream. When
Speaker 1: the Sailor's knife was found after the Regent's Park murder
Speaker 1: and identified as the murder weapon, it could only have
Speaker 1: reinforced the East Ends reputation for the mysterious and dangerous
Speaker 1: and the fear and suspicion that many readers had of
Speaker 1: lands beyond England Shore. It was exactly the kind of
Speaker 1: thinking that Britain's leaders had used to justify the invasion
Speaker 1: and plundering of lands around the world, so of course
Speaker 1: it brought campaigners to the East End too, As we'll
Speaker 1: see in the future, most of the attention on the
Speaker 1: East End was like this. The women and girls who
Speaker 1: worked in the match factory were looked at as almost
Speaker 1: subhuman species. The poor were considered at best, lost souls
Speaker 1: in need of saving, or reprobates in need of reform.
Speaker 1: The common attitude was that the monstrous darkness of the
Speaker 1: East End needed to be conquered and brought to heal.
Speaker 1: And all of that was before murders began to spot
Speaker 1: Whitechapel with blood, and when sensationalist stories sold papers in
Speaker 1: the name of righteous campaigning. While that could only have
Speaker 1: journalists drooly over a good East End story, one that
Speaker 1: would trigger all of the worst prejudices of their London readership.
Speaker 1: A summer of anxiety was about to become the autumn
Speaker 1: of terror. A sailor's knife and a soldier's bayonet, tools
Speaker 1: of empire and weapons of war. These were the objects
Speaker 1: conjured up by the ink stained hands of London journalists
Speaker 1: to evoke a shutter of horror, not because they were new,
Speaker 1: but because they were being used in London itself. And
Speaker 1: then Charles Cross found the body of Polly Nichols. Like
Speaker 1: the man who discovered Martha Tabram's body, Charles was a
Speaker 1: laborer headed off to work in the early hours of
Speaker 1: the morning when he saw something lying on the cobbles,
Speaker 1: slumped against a gate. Another man going by join him,
Speaker 1: and they approached. The shape was a woman with a
Speaker 1: bonnet tossed to the side. At first the two men
Speaker 1: couldn't tell if she was asleep. Her face was still warm,
Speaker 1: but her hands were deathly cold. Charles said to the other,
Speaker 1: I think she's dead, and they ran off to find
Speaker 1: a policeman. The constables they found, fetched a hand carts
Speaker 1: and a nearby doctor. He pronounced her dead and ordered
Speaker 1: them to move her body to the mortuary for examination.
Speaker 1: But it was when the constables lifted her that they
Speaker 1: saw the blood. It ran from her body to the
Speaker 1: gutter and covered her back. It covered everything Polly's body,
Speaker 1: the stones of the street, and the officer's hands too,
Speaker 1: so they examined the surrounding roads to see if there
Speaker 1: were any marks or traces elsewhere. Nearby, they checked the
Speaker 1: neighborhood's railway lines and embankments, but beyond the location where
Speaker 1: her body had been found, there were no other signs
Speaker 1: of Polly's blood. Soon enough, though, it would stain everything.
Speaker 1: When the doctor arrived to make his examination in the
Speaker 1: mortuary at ten a m. He began by cataloging the
Speaker 1: wounds that would become the next press sensation. Her throats
Speaker 1: had been cut and several deep, jagged wounds crossed her abdomen.
Speaker 1: Experience and evidence led him to surmise that the cuts
Speaker 1: had been made with a very sharp knife. The number
Speaker 1: of wounds made him think that the attack had taken
Speaker 1: as long as five minutes from start to finish, a
Speaker 1: brutally long demonstration of violence, and it had happened just
Speaker 1: one mile east of where Martha Tabram had been killed.
Speaker 1: It had begun. Events were now set in motion that
Speaker 1: would possess an entire nation a deadly series of killings
Speaker 1: that would become forever known as the White Chapel Murders.
Speaker 1: That's it for this week's episode of Unobscured. Stick around
Speaker 1: after this short sponsor break for a preview of what's
Speaker 1: in store for next week. Emma had suffered a brutal
Speaker 1: attack in the street. Afterwards, she was able to make
Speaker 1: her way back to the lodging house where she was staying. There,
Speaker 1: she told other lodgers what had been to her. They
Speaker 1: helped her to the hospital. Along the way, she told
Speaker 1: the women helping her that she was attacked by three men,
Speaker 1: and one of them was only nineteen years old. Emma
Speaker 1: even pointed out the place where she was attacked as
Speaker 1: they passed by, and she talked with the doctors who
Speaker 1: treated her wounds. All of this had reached the papers
Speaker 1: within a week of her death, after the inquest held
Speaker 1: by coroner Win Baxter, was reported in major newspapers like
Speaker 1: The Times of London and the front page of Lloyd's
Speaker 1: Weekly News. Of course, almost five months later, it was
Speaker 1: more profitable for The Star to leave out those details
Speaker 1: and replaced them with the suggestion of a mysterious killer
Speaker 1: who had already taken three lives. It conjured up the
Speaker 1: image of a figure haunting White Chapel who would never
Speaker 1: really leave. It didn't hurt the paper if it brought
Speaker 1: in some cash in the process of spinning up a
Speaker 1: false narrative of events. The thing is, though Emma's murder
Speaker 1: was horrible enough, there's no question that her death, along
Speaker 1: with Martha Tabraham's and now the murder of Polly Nichols,
Speaker 1: were a terrible sign of life in East London. No
Speaker 1: price can be put on any human life, but an
Speaker 1: evening issue of The Star, well, that was just one halfpenny.
Speaker 1: Unobscured was created by me Aaron Manky and produced by
Speaker 1: Matt Frederick, Alex Williams, and Josh Thane in partnership with
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio. Research and writing for this season is
Speaker 1: all the work of my right hand man Carl Nellis
Speaker 1: and the brilliant Chad Lawson composed the brand new soundtrack.
Speaker 1: Learn more about our contributing historians, source material and links
Speaker 1: to our other shows over at history unobscured dot com,
Speaker 1: and until next time, thanks for listening. Un Obscured is
Speaker 1: a production of iHeart Radio and Erin Mankey. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts for My heart Radio, visit I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.