Speaker 1: Pushkin Izzie. Aaronson is losing his patience. It's the third
Speaker 1: time today that American soldier Private John Waters has pitched
Speaker 1: up at the dress shop looking for Aaronson's employee, Doris Staples.
Speaker 1: Seems just Doris is also sick of the constant intrusions.
Speaker 1: What does he want now? I better go out and
Speaker 1: see Doris steps out into the street. Perhaps she can
Speaker 1: get rid of Waters once and for all. She tells
Speaker 1: him she won't be going out with him tonight and
Speaker 1: hopes this will end the conversation. Go away, Johnny, I've
Speaker 1: got work to do. It's four Thursday in the afternoon,
Speaker 1: but Water's breath smells of drink. Doris has been going
Speaker 1: on dates with him since February, but now it's mid
Speaker 1: July and she increased leasingly finds Waters a drag. The
Speaker 1: American is jealous and possessive. Aaronson calls out, I'm going
Speaker 1: in after all, he pays me my money. Doris turns
Speaker 1: her back on the soldier and steps into the shop,
Speaker 1: but jamming his foot in the door to stop her
Speaker 1: closing it on him, Waters barges his way inside. This
Speaker 1: is the seldom told story of women in World War Two,
Speaker 1: who were killed not by the enemy but by husbands, lovers,
Speaker 1: and strangers wearing the uniform of their own side. It's
Speaker 1: also the tale of a particular string of murder victims
Speaker 1: that history has swept from view. I'm Hallie Rubinhold and
Speaker 1: I'm Alice Finds, and you're listening to bad Women the
Speaker 1: Blackout River. We'll return to the bloody sequence of events
Speaker 1: that unfolded it Izzie Aaronson's dress shop later, but it
Speaker 1: will come as no surprise that, once the gunsmoke had cleared,
Speaker 1: the shattered glass had been swept up, and the bodies
Speaker 1: of the dead and injured removed from the scene, public
Speaker 1: sympathy sided firmly with Private John Waters. No one had
Speaker 1: a good word for Doris, but everyone spoke well of Johnny. Women,
Speaker 1: particularly those who wish to live and love as they please,
Speaker 1: have long been condemned for making choices that run counter
Speaker 1: to society's rigid and restrictive expectations of them. This was
Speaker 1: as true for women alive in the nineteen forties as
Speaker 1: it had been fifty years earlier for the women who
Speaker 1: were murdered by Jack the Ripper. In this episode, we're
Speaker 1: stepping away from the story of the Blackout Ripper to
Speaker 1: examine the long and contradictory lists of charges leveled at
Speaker 1: such women. They have no children or too many children.
Speaker 1: They stay single, or they marry unsuitable men. They commit
Speaker 1: to a career or their own free as they please.
Speaker 1: They have sex with men, or they refuse to have
Speaker 1: sex with men. The approved path of docility, domesticity and
Speaker 1: monogamy is narrow, and any woman who crosses its strict
Speaker 1: borders can expect to be shamed, denounced as unnatural a deviant.
Speaker 1: And that's in peacetime. In times of war, the accusations
Speaker 1: are worse. Bad women undermine the fight and aid the enemy.
Speaker 1: Bad women are as good as helping Hitler to victory.
Speaker 1: This is a criminal offense of the most serious character.
Speaker 1: The prosecution at Peterborough Police Court wants the presiding judges
Speaker 1: to throw the book at Olive Ward and Dorothy Bouldry.
Speaker 1: The court should make an example of these young women
Speaker 1: and make the severity of their crime quite clear to
Speaker 1: the public at large. Olive twenty one and Dorothy just
Speaker 1: twenty both work at a local munitions factory, and they've
Speaker 1: been charged under a new wartime law what they've been
Speaker 1: accused of sands almost like treason with consequences, is said
Speaker 1: to be more devastating than Hitler's bombs. These two, the
Speaker 1: court is told, have made casualties of men from the
Speaker 1: Allied armies, men who should engaged fighting the enemy. Olive
Speaker 1: and Dorothy, a single parent, could face incarceration their crime sedition, spying, sabotage. Well, no,
Speaker 1: they've both missed doctor's appointments. Defense Regulation thirty three B
Speaker 1: had recently come into force, and it was aimed squarely
Speaker 1: at women like Olive and Dorothy. Thirty three B made
Speaker 1: it a punishable offense to fail to attend medical treatment
Speaker 1: for certain transmissible illnesses, certain sexually transmitted infections. That is,
Speaker 1: as you might recall from our previous season, in the
Speaker 1: days of Jack the Ripper, it was women who were
Speaker 1: considered to be the vectors of dreaded venereal disease. Elizabeth Stride,
Speaker 1: one of the women murdered in eighteen eighty eight, was
Speaker 1: locked up in a VD hospital in her native Sweden.
Speaker 1: There she underwent compulsory, unhygienic and humiliating examination and was
Speaker 1: threatened with quack cures involving toxic mercury, and even though
Speaker 1: the spread of venereal disease always takes two, Elizabeth's male
Speaker 1: clients warrant subject to any such restrictions on their freedom
Speaker 1: or forced to have medical interventions. And so it was
Speaker 1: in the era of the Blackout Ribber two. When they
Speaker 1: announced the new law, the newspapers enthusiastically promised that Regulation
Speaker 1: thirty three B would mean prison for spreaders, and in
Speaker 1: the first six or so months after thirty three B
Speaker 1: came into force, action was taken against sixty four women
Speaker 1: but only two men. The law said that anyone being
Speaker 1: treated for VD, often soldiers, should be asked who had
Speaker 1: given them the infection. If the person they named had
Speaker 1: also been cited in another VD case, that spreader would
Speaker 1: be summoned for compulsory testing and treatment. Failure to attack
Speaker 1: and any of these mandatory medical appointments would result in
Speaker 1: criminal prosecution. Professor Julia lat says the law was not
Speaker 1: only deeply unjust, it was also utterly flawed. What seemed
Speaker 1: to usually happen is an enlisted man would discover they
Speaker 1: were suffering from veneeral disease and then make an educated
Speaker 1: guess as to which woman they caught it from and
Speaker 1: denounce her to the police, and the police would then
Speaker 1: have to investigate her. Bearing in mind that diagnostic technologies
Speaker 1: were not very far advanced, and even today it's very
Speaker 1: difficult to tell who gave who veneerial disease, So it's
Speaker 1: very possible that it was the man who gave the
Speaker 1: woman vineerial disease. But police were supposed to go investigate
Speaker 1: this woman, arrest her forcibly, inspect her for venereal disease,
Speaker 1: so you assault her essentially, and then she would have
Speaker 1: to stand trial. And you can only imagine the stigma
Speaker 1: and the shame of being dragged into court for sex
Speaker 1: with a soldier and maybe giving him VD or maybe
Speaker 1: catching VD from him. It was really awful. Olive and
Speaker 1: Dorothy's court appearances would have been deeply humiliating. The soldiers
Speaker 1: who had denounced them were not named, but the two
Speaker 1: young women had to endure the public airing of their
Speaker 1: medical records, as well as police conjecture about their private lives.
Speaker 1: She'd been brought to my attention many times and being
Speaker 1: seen associating with soldiers. The women's parents were also named
Speaker 1: in court and shamed for not doing more to curb
Speaker 1: the behavior of their adult offspring. If thirty three B
Speaker 1: was intended to reduce the spread of VD, in practice,
Speaker 1: it relied on publicly humiliating defendants to such a degree
Speaker 1: that other young women might think twice before even dating
Speaker 1: a soldier. She's a loose character, said the police constable
Speaker 1: giving evidence against young mother Dorothy Baldry. Thirty three B
Speaker 1: did have its critics. Several female politicians campaigned against it,
Speaker 1: arguing that it was a gift for the blackmailer, the informer,
Speaker 1: and the poisoned pen, but their attempts to vote down
Speaker 1: the regulation were crushed two hundred and forty five to
Speaker 1: thirty one. Julia Late says that government officials weren't too
Speaker 1: bothered if schools of young women suffered as a result
Speaker 1: of thirty three B. They were more concerned about applicating
Speaker 1: visiting Allied generals whose men were increasingly reporting sick with
Speaker 1: v D. The Americans were especially upset because they painted
Speaker 1: a picture of these American boys, you know, could come
Speaker 1: from a farm in Oklahoma, had never had sex before,
Speaker 1: coming to London and being corrupted by British women who
Speaker 1: taught them all these sort of debauched things, and then
Speaker 1: gave them vinereal disease. That's certainly what the Americans wanted
Speaker 1: to believe was happening. I think that the real story is,
Speaker 1: of course very different, but that's absolutely what they were saying,
Speaker 1: and they were putting an immense amount of pressure on
Speaker 1: the British government and the War Office to control these women. Britain,
Speaker 1: make no mistake, was at this point a dull and
Speaker 1: dismal place. The young foreign men who arrived in their
Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands were a glimmer of glamor amid the
Speaker 1: drudgery and death of wartime pubs and dance halls across
Speaker 1: the nation, filled with Australians, Canadians, free French and the
Speaker 1: unbelievably exotic Americans who had fat wallets, chewing gum and
Speaker 1: even under armed the odorant. Most young women weren't far
Speaker 1: from an army camp, airbase or port, and some even
Speaker 1: chose to head to the center of it all, London.
Speaker 1: Some of them ended up trading sex for money, all
Speaker 1: for a night out on the town, and they were
Speaker 1: labeled amateur prostitutes or good time girls by the police.
Speaker 1: They were also an acute source of embarrassment for the
Speaker 1: British authorities, who feared that the national reputation would be
Speaker 1: harmed when American gis started writing letters back to the
Speaker 1: States about the British women they'd encountered. As one government
Speaker 1: memo put it, the impression created on the American troops
Speaker 1: and their mammas at home is bad. A report was
Speaker 1: even compiled. It's somewhat overwrought title was the Pestering of
Speaker 1: American Troops by loose women. Wiser heads in the police
Speaker 1: and government pointed out that the American servicemen themselves were
Speaker 1: far from innocent bystanders in such events. They flocked to
Speaker 1: London expressly in search of the women they Riley referred
Speaker 1: to you as Piccadilly commandos. All right, sweetheart, who are
Speaker 1: so glad I watched you are starving? Many of the
Speaker 1: girls were young eighteen was not at an unusual age,
Speaker 1: and were often quite pretty, so, said American pilot Paul
Speaker 1: Wagner to an American raised in the pure technical culture
Speaker 1: of the Great Depression. This open discussion of sex for sale,
Speaker 1: carried out in broad daylight by girls who looked exactly
Speaker 1: like the wholesome American counterpart, was most astounding. Want to
Speaker 1: take me for a drink on a place thereby. It
Speaker 1: seems unlikely that young British women behaved so very differently
Speaker 1: to their counterparts in New York, San Francisco or Honolulu,
Speaker 1: But all the same, the view that took hold was
Speaker 1: that visiting Yanks were being corrupted by local women and
Speaker 1: infected with v D, and so the British acquiesce to
Speaker 1: American demands and Regulation thirty three B was introduced. But
Speaker 1: this was clearly not a proud chapter in British legal history.
Speaker 1: Julia Late says it remains difficult for his story like her,
Speaker 1: to access any of the official papers. The prosecution fowles
Speaker 1: are closed and the War office fows are closed. We
Speaker 1: only know the depressing details of the cases against Olive
Speaker 1: and Dorothy because their local newspaper, the Peterborough Standard, covered
Speaker 1: the hearings. The Standard at least printed the defendants side
Speaker 1: of the case. Both Olive and Dorothy had attended examinations
Speaker 1: and treatment sessions when they could, and Olive's mother had
Speaker 1: gone to the clinic to pick up tablets for her daughter,
Speaker 1: But it seems that their rather patchy attendance record had
Speaker 1: exhausted the patience of their doctor, Doctor Christopher Rolliston was
Speaker 1: a curious character and not one to hide his somewhat
Speaker 1: odd opinions. He was regularly quoted in newspapers railing against
Speaker 1: such things as undesirable Irish migrants and warning that women
Speaker 1: who wore trousers posed a threat to the survival of
Speaker 1: the human race. Nor was he a fan of young
Speaker 1: women working in factories. The discipline of the home is relaxed,
Speaker 1: and the opportunities and temptations before becoming infected with VD
Speaker 1: are much increased. Even before Regulation thirty three B came
Speaker 1: into force, Rolliston thought doctors always knew best, and that
Speaker 1: patients should be fined if they refused vaccinations or compulsory
Speaker 1: treatment for everything from dentistry to VD. Had a more
Speaker 1: sympathetic medical officer handled these cases, Olive and Dorothy might
Speaker 1: never have ended up in the police court. Both women
Speaker 1: pleaded that they'd found it impossible to take enough time
Speaker 1: off work to attend the numerous medical appointments required of them.
Speaker 1: Perhaps they'd also run out of excuses to give their employer.
Speaker 1: Dorothy's financial troubles were particularly acute. Her husband, away fighting
Speaker 1: in North Africa, had stopped sending money to support her
Speaker 1: and their three year old daughter the previous spring. In
Speaker 1: the end, the judges imposed a fine on the women,
Speaker 1: though one smaller than the hundred pound maximum. They were
Speaker 1: sent away with the promise that another appearance in the
Speaker 1: dock would see them imprisoned. Being spared time behind bars
Speaker 1: might have been of little consolation, for the national press
Speaker 1: had picked up the juicier parts of the evidence. The
Speaker 1: two women had been disgraced throughout the land, from bustling
Speaker 1: cities to the furthest reaches of the British Isles. Their
Speaker 1: reputations were in tatus. Dorothy Baldry, called a menace to
Speaker 1: society in court, found it impossible to secure work following
Speaker 1: her conviction. Unable to pay off all of her fine,
Speaker 1: Dorothy was soon hauled up before the judges again and
Speaker 1: this time sent to jail. Bad women, the blackout Ripper
Speaker 1: will return in just a moment. Some serving soldiers went
Speaker 1: to extraordinary lengths to avoid the supposed pestering of loose women.
Speaker 1: All right, yo, look, get in a line along here,
Speaker 1: look to your front. New recruit Richard Bryer, arriving at
Speaker 1: a provincial railroad station to join his training unit. What
Speaker 1: have I done to deserve a gang like you. It's
Speaker 1: about to learn that some men are on the hunt
Speaker 1: for alternatives to the good time girls and Piccadilly commandos.
Speaker 1: Have you looking like soldiers? Step up? Look sharp? Because
Speaker 1: venereal disease was on the rise, the military authorities bombarded
Speaker 1: their new soldiers with stern lectures and lurid posters warning
Speaker 1: that she may look clean, but good time girls spread syphilis.
Speaker 1: God Fearing Northern Ireland, the army even pleaded that cinemas
Speaker 1: be allowed to open on the sabbath. Even a few
Speaker 1: hours at the movies were a few more hours when
Speaker 1: its soldiers weren't in danger of contracting gonorrhea, And here
Speaker 1: they might even be shown one of the army's own
Speaker 1: information films, a tale of boy meets girl. What's your name?
Speaker 1: And blame's Jenny? What do you say we celebrate our
Speaker 1: This particular soldier goes straight back to his barracks to
Speaker 1: brag to his friend. Don't tell me you were sure
Speaker 1: it did? Boy? Something nice? Too clean as a whistle,
Speaker 1: Even a whistle can get messy. The morning comes with
Speaker 1: a sting. What matter? What did the posters say about
Speaker 1: clean looking girls? Find this particular film assumed that men
Speaker 1: could never be dissuaded from sleeping with women, so its
Speaker 1: main message was to encourage soldiers to at least use condoms. However,
Speaker 1: some soldiers, scared of venereal disease, fearful of unwanted pregnancy,
Speaker 1: squeamish about paying for sex, or unwilling to be unfaithful
Speaker 1: to wives and sweethearts back home, did swear off women
Speaker 1: and seek other outlets for their sexual desires. Back at
Speaker 1: that train station, raw recruit Richard Bryer is singled out
Speaker 1: by one of the sergeants and guided towards a truck
Speaker 1: headed for the barracks. You lucky lot of joining a
Speaker 1: best regiment in the army, as you put a smile
Speaker 1: on your worried looking faces, little did he realize that
Speaker 1: he'd been specially selected because of his physical attractiveness. During
Speaker 1: the drive, I sound the jolting of the lurry was
Speaker 1: inclined to throw us to get and at first I,
Speaker 1: innocent assumed it was accidental. But then at discovernment that
Speaker 1: body can't act was being made even when the movement
Speaker 1: of the barry did require and we were down through
Speaker 1: the black out again, and so there was no possible
Speaker 1: observation of what was going on and the extra sexual
Speaker 1: maneuvering on me was made during that journey. This interview
Speaker 1: with Richard was recorded by historian Emma Vickers, author of
Speaker 1: Queen and Country, Same Sex Desire in the British Armed Forces.
Speaker 1: Emma says Richard wasn't unwilling to enter into a sexual
Speaker 1: relationship with his sergeant and later slept with other married
Speaker 1: officers who opted for sex with recruits over paying for prostitutes.
Speaker 1: So the men that were ostensibly straight that were married
Speaker 1: or engaged, they would often say, I didn't want to
Speaker 1: invite the attention to a sex worker, and so I
Speaker 1: know I found the next best thing. But such same
Speaker 1: sex encounters, which were still illegal for men, could also
Speaker 1: rely on coercion. There are a couple of examples of
Speaker 1: mass exploitation by officers who sexually proposition the men that
Speaker 1: they command in a very secretive, exploitative way. You know,
Speaker 1: that's hard to read as a historian when you have
Speaker 1: twelve men from the same battalion that are complaining about
Speaker 1: a single officer, even though these were punishable offenses. During wartime,
Speaker 1: military leaders took a lenient view of the sexual activities
Speaker 1: of men under their command. There are plenty of examples
Speaker 1: of men that tumble out of each other's bunks, and
Speaker 1: senior officers will say, what do you want them to do?
Speaker 1: They're just about to go on a major operation. Emissais.
Speaker 1: The prevailing attitude was that men away from home needed
Speaker 1: to have some form of sexual outlet, whether with good
Speaker 1: time girls were so called professional prostitutes, or with each other.
Speaker 1: Men's sexual appetites could not be curbed or control rolled.
Speaker 1: It's the kind of boys will be boys' attitude. It's
Speaker 1: part of the bonding, it's part of a culture, and
Speaker 1: there is this sense that sexually satisfied men are easier
Speaker 1: to manage. Of course, while the unbridled male sex drive
Speaker 1: was a fact of life, woe betide any woman who
Speaker 1: considered having more than one sexual partner. She was just
Speaker 1: asking for trouble. Thirty sixty year old seamstress Doris Staples
Speaker 1: was a newcomer to Henley on Thames, a genteel country
Speaker 1: town thirty miles upstream from London famed for the rowing
Speaker 1: races at its annual royal regatta. Henley's townspeople appear not
Speaker 1: to have welcomed her arrival before the war, Doris had
Speaker 1: lived for years in West London, first with her family
Speaker 1: and then in a place of her own, a terraced house,
Speaker 1: where she resided first with her younger brother Bernard, and
Speaker 1: then with another sibling, Arthur, who was just a year
Speaker 1: her junior. The West End would have been just a
Speaker 1: short hop on the subway or bus. After a day
Speaker 1: spent perusing the district's fashionable shopping streets and grand apartment stores,
Speaker 1: Doris may well have called in for a drink at
Speaker 1: the Universal Brasserie, the Salted Almond or Mazon Lions Venus,
Speaker 1: familiar to the victims of the Blackout Ripper. The capital
Speaker 1: must have been dizzyingly exciting for the dressmaker, for she'd
Speaker 1: been raised on the remote island of Guernsey, a tiny
Speaker 1: speck of Britain nestled just off the coast of France.
Speaker 1: Why Doris left London isn't clear, but her departure did
Speaker 1: coincide with the worst air raids of the Blitz. It's
Speaker 1: thought that sixteen high explosive bombs landed in the streets
Speaker 1: around Doris's home over just one week in October nineteen forty.
Speaker 1: Dress shop owner is the Aaronson met Doris in nineteen
Speaker 1: forty one. The tailor may have valued her sewing skills,
Speaker 1: but otherwise he seems to have held Doris in low.
Speaker 1: She did not have such a great name in the town.
Speaker 1: According to her co workers, Doris was the subject of
Speaker 1: considerable local gossip. It was murmured disapprovingly that she spent
Speaker 1: weekends with Air Force fellows. The countryside around Henley was
Speaker 1: dotted with new air fields and military installations, so perhaps
Speaker 1: she met men who came into town in search of fun.
Speaker 1: Or maybe Doris went further afield to the cities of
Speaker 1: Oxford or Reading, or took the train back into London.
Speaker 1: At some point she met an American sergeant and formed
Speaker 1: a close relationship with him. It was suggested that she
Speaker 1: loved the man and they'd become engaged. According to some reports,
Speaker 1: the man was already married, though unhappily. In any case,
Speaker 1: that romance was soon interrupted by the war. The sergeant
Speaker 1: was posted to North Africa, and then in February nineteen
Speaker 1: forty three, Doris cross paths with another unhappily married Yank
Speaker 1: private John Waters. In fact, the thirty seven year old
Speaker 1: from perth Amboy, New Jersey was unhappy. On several fronts.
Speaker 1: The American military had staged what was jokingly dubbed a
Speaker 1: friendly invasion of the UK. Biccadilly Circus was teeming with
Speaker 1: visiting soldiers, but so too were cities, towns and villages
Speaker 1: across the land. The hundreds of thousands of young Americans
Speaker 1: brought with them millions of candy bars, bottles of coke,
Speaker 1: and all kinds of other luxuries from home too. Henley
Speaker 1: on Thames, however, was yet to experience this bounty. In
Speaker 1: civilian life. Waters was a skilled craftsman in terra cotta
Speaker 1: and ornamental plaster, and he'd been selected to join a
Speaker 1: small but special detachment of Americans loaned out to the
Speaker 1: Royal Air Force based at a requisition country club, Phyllis Court.
Speaker 1: Waters was engaged in top secret work making miniature models
Speaker 1: of German military targets to help the Allied planners work
Speaker 1: out the best way to attack or bomb them. But
Speaker 1: stranded amid a mass of limes, Waters and a handful
Speaker 1: of comrades were denied the enviable amenities that US bases
Speaker 1: had to offer, as well as the potential for promotion
Speaker 1: to the better and higher paying roles that were available
Speaker 1: in larger units. Waters not only worked alongside British servicemen.
Speaker 1: To his disgust, he had to eat their food too,
Speaker 1: everything's fried bread and Brussels sprouts, and it just wrecked
Speaker 1: my stomach. Waters often left his base north of Henley
Speaker 1: and cycled into town to buy whatever decent food he
Speaker 1: could find, an expensive habit that was crippling his already
Speaker 1: fragile finances. Waters must have met Doris during one of
Speaker 1: his numerous visits to town, and his attraction to her
Speaker 1: soon verged on obsession. I saw her nearly every day.
Speaker 1: I used to go to see her at the dress
Speaker 1: shop where she worked. I used to take her to
Speaker 1: movies and to pubs. The cash strapped Waters he paid
Speaker 1: for these outings and also showered Doris with gifts. Then
Speaker 1: one day she came to him with bad news. She
Speaker 1: told me she was pregnant, and I gave her money
Speaker 1: to straighten it out. Neither Waters nor Doris seemed to
Speaker 1: countenance bringing a child into the world together, but straightening
Speaker 1: it out would involve breaking the law. In nineteen forty three,
Speaker 1: abortion was illegal in Britain, and it was dangerous back
Speaker 1: when women won the vote. It was hoped that their
Speaker 1: participation in politics would prompt the reform of their reproductive rights.
Speaker 1: Says historian professor Pat Thane. What happened in the mid
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties is and women were campaigned for legalized abortion
Speaker 1: because there were a lot of deaths due to backstreet abortions,
Speaker 1: whom well off women could always pay hav an abortion.
Speaker 1: Working class women couldn't, and there were so called backstreet
Speaker 1: abortionists who were coming it. Or the women might take
Speaker 1: drugs and either made themselves seriously ill or they died.
Speaker 1: Serves quite a serious problem. The campaigners did for some changes.
Speaker 1: Abortions were no longer punishable if they were done in
Speaker 1: good faith for the purpose of preserving the life of
Speaker 1: the mother, and a landmark court ruling just before the
Speaker 1: outbreak of the war allowed for terminations of pregnancies resulting
Speaker 1: from traumatic events such as rape. But for tens of
Speaker 1: thousands of women each year, women just like Doris Staples,
Speaker 1: their only option was to resort to the backstreet abortionist,
Speaker 1: or worse, it's not hard to find prosecution files on
Speaker 1: so called professional abortionists, often women. They performed terminations for
Speaker 1: a few pounds. If caught, they faced around three years
Speaker 1: in jail, and far longer if the pregnant woman died
Speaker 1: as a result of their work. Alongside such cases are
Speaker 1: reports on pregnant women pushed to awful lengths, like the
Speaker 1: forty year old abandoned by her lover who took us
Speaker 1: so called noxious thing to end her pregnancy. The substance
Speaker 1: had the desired effect, but the woman became so gravely
Speaker 1: ill that her neighbors called the police, who only then
Speaker 1: summoned a doctor. Another woman found herself in the dock,
Speaker 1: charged with using an instrument to induce her young neighbor
Speaker 1: to miscarry. The defendant denied the offense, saying she found
Speaker 1: the desperate young woman in the bathroom using the implement
Speaker 1: on herself and merely wrested it from her hands. Some women,
Speaker 1: of course, didn't seek to end their pregnancies. Thirty two
Speaker 1: year old army cook Margaret Williams popped round to a
Speaker 1: friend's house early one morning. Moving the pet bird to
Speaker 1: another room. She drew the heavy blackout curtains in the kitchen,
Speaker 1: sealed the doors and windows, turned on the gas oven,
Speaker 1: and placed her head inside. However, Doors Staples straightened out
Speaker 1: her situation by the summer of nineteen forty three. She
Speaker 1: was no longer pregnant, but she could not rid herself
Speaker 1: of John Waters. No matter once she tried, bad women
Speaker 1: will return in a moment. Private John Waters couldn't take
Speaker 1: the hint. Even when Doris would end their dates early.
Speaker 1: She used to tell me she had to go home,
Speaker 1: and then the boys would see her later in the
Speaker 1: evening with another guy. That burned me up. Waters believed
Speaker 1: that Doris was sleeping with other men. Perhaps she was,
Speaker 1: perhaps she wasn't. But what is apparent from the file
Speaker 1: in this case is that the idea of her infidelity
Speaker 1: increasingly obsessed best Waters. He was convinced that she was
Speaker 1: lying to him, and he was angry. We argued because
Speaker 1: she was stepping out and it made a goddamn fool
Speaker 1: of me. When Doris's father visited one Sunday, he saw
Speaker 1: the problem for himself. We were sitting in a local
Speaker 1: hotel in the evening when my daughter pointed out an
Speaker 1: American and told me that he was always paying her
Speaker 1: a lot of attention. I walked over to him and
Speaker 1: told him that he must stop it. So Waters wasn't
Speaker 1: just showing up at Doris's place of work. He was
Speaker 1: shadowing her in the Pubs of Henley two. When I
Speaker 1: was reading this story about this couple, what struck me
Speaker 1: immediately was how nothing's changed. How the way this played
Speaker 1: out was exactly the same as the way these murders
Speaker 1: are playing out right now. Professor Jane Monkton Smith is
Speaker 1: the author of in Control, Dangerous Relationships and How They
Speaker 1: End in Murder. I got into this area of research
Speaker 1: because I was a police officer many years ago, and
Speaker 1: I saw a lot of violence against women and violence generally,
Speaker 1: and I was surprised at the time by the way
Speaker 1: that we justify and excuse violence depending on the victim
Speaker 1: we send. Jane our notes on the case of Doris
Speaker 1: Staples and the events of nineteen forty three seemed all
Speaker 1: too familiar to her. Him turning up at her work
Speaker 1: is absolutely typical of a controlling partner. What are you
Speaker 1: doing when I'm not there? I want to exert my
Speaker 1: authority on this relationship. I want you to know that
Speaker 1: you're being watched. I need to know what you're doing.
Speaker 1: I need to let everyone else know that I own you.
Speaker 1: There's that kind of paranoid sexual jealousy, and there's the
Speaker 1: coercive control. We wouldn't even call it coercive control. Then,
Speaker 1: I don't even know if we'd have called it domestic abuse.
Speaker 1: It would just have been seen, I think, as pretty
Speaker 1: normal in a relationship. Besides Doris's father, no one else
Speaker 1: in her life seemed to feel there was anything particularly
Speaker 1: wrong with the soldier's behavior. Indeed, fellow dressmaker Gertrude Hurst
Speaker 1: thought Doris was rather rude to Waters and recommended that
Speaker 1: she moderate her behavior towards him. Don't make Johnny very
Speaker 1: sore if you keep on like that. Jane recognizes this
Speaker 1: pattern too. We spend so much time defending those problematic
Speaker 1: behaviors as if they're natural in men, completely natural, and
Speaker 1: attacking the responses of the woman to those problematic behaviors.
Speaker 1: We don't seem to see those behaviors as problematic until
Speaker 1: something violent happens. Jane sees other familiar and worrying factors
Speaker 1: in the case. Waters was suffering setbacks in many parts
Speaker 1: of his life, but seems to have focused his frustrations
Speaker 1: on Doris. The soldier felt he'd experienced an acute loss
Speaker 1: of status. He found the army's way of model making
Speaker 1: did not require the full use of his skill. A
Speaker 1: colleague said, Waters grumbled about his living conditions and the
Speaker 1: inferior British food rations, and his inability to gain a promotion.
Speaker 1: He had money troubles too, which became even more stark
Speaker 1: when his estranged wife, whom he hadn't seen for around
Speaker 1: thirteen years, filed for an allotment from his pay. Twenty
Speaker 1: two dollars a month would be deducted from his wages
Speaker 1: and sent to support his wife and child. This was
Speaker 1: a considerable sum, and witnesses say it greatly agitated Waters.
Speaker 1: He was reduced to borrowing money from his comrades and
Speaker 1: even his superiors, and now even more humbling Doris appeared
Speaker 1: to be pulling away from their relationship. That's what this
Speaker 1: is all about. It's entitlement and status and protecting men
Speaker 1: from being humiliated, because humiliation, allegedly is the thing that
Speaker 1: men are most afraid of. Women are most afraid of
Speaker 1: violence and being killed, men are far more frightened of humiliation.
Speaker 1: So if you leave them, you're pushing that button. On
Speaker 1: July fourteenth, Waters was due to take over sentry duty
Speaker 1: at Phyllis Court. It was his turn to guard the
Speaker 1: top secret installation as he was issued with a pistol
Speaker 1: and ammunition. He said he was burnt up at Doris.
Speaker 1: He was said to be sane and sober when he
Speaker 1: claimed his weapon, but shortly afterwards he was tapping at
Speaker 1: the window of the dress shop, the stench of drink
Speaker 1: on his breath. Doris looked up from her work and
Speaker 1: then came that altercation on the street. Away, Johnny, I've
Speaker 1: got work to do. When the shopkeeper final he ordered
Speaker 1: Doris back inside. Waters followed close on her heels. Doris turned,
Speaker 1: saw the pistol in his hand and began to back
Speaker 1: away from him. Doris Staples fell to the floor. I'll
Speaker 1: get you some water, said Gertrude Hurst, who assumed that
Speaker 1: Doris had merely fainted. Waters fired twice more, striking Doris again,
Speaker 1: and then he turned the gun on himself, aiming a
Speaker 1: shot up into his brain. The staff finally fled the
Speaker 1: chaos of the shop, crying out for help. Armed police
Speaker 1: and firemen were soon on the scene, along with American
Speaker 1: soldiers from Phyllis Court. Throw your gunner. Waters were still
Speaker 1: alive and far from all right, but he also wasn't
Speaker 1: about to surrender, and allowed Doris to receive medical treatment.
Speaker 1: If you can hear me, then come out slowly with
Speaker 1: your hands raised. The British police tried to end the
Speaker 1: siege by smoking Waters out with tear gas and bullets
Speaker 1: whistled past their ears. Finally, the police and soldiers stormed
Speaker 1: the shop. Waters had dragged himself to an outside laboratory.
Speaker 1: His jaw was shattered and bloody, and a bullet was
Speaker 1: lodged in his brain, but he was still alive. He
Speaker 1: was cautioned and then taken away for treatment. Doris was dead.
Speaker 1: One bullet fired by Waters had wrought terrible internal damage,
Speaker 1: shattering bone, severing arteries, slicing organs, and then lodging in
Speaker 1: her spine. It was judged likely she died within moments
Speaker 1: of Waters opening fire. Once he'd sufficiently recovered, the US
Speaker 1: Army tried Waters for murder, a capital offense. Given the
Speaker 1: weight of evidence, the only hope of escaping the hangman
Speaker 1: would be to win some sympathy for the defendant by
Speaker 1: trashing the reputation of dead Doris with witness after witness
Speaker 1: asked about her relationships with men and the humiliating effect
Speaker 1: these had on Waters. This is a narrative. It's a
Speaker 1: narrative that's constructed to explain this violence and this murder.
Speaker 1: Here's Jane Monkton Smith again. And you could simplistically say
Speaker 1: this narrative has come from the killer himself, but it
Speaker 1: hasn't just come from him. It's come from society, and
Speaker 1: it's come from the defense and prosecution narratives. And it's
Speaker 1: an attack on her reputation. I think it's almost impossible
Speaker 1: for women to have a good reputation. You can pull
Speaker 1: up practically anything, and Doris seemed to be the kind
Speaker 1: of woman who liked a bit of fun. She was social,
Speaker 1: she liked to go out, and that can be misconstrued
Speaker 1: to defend the killer. Do we realize we're doing that?
Speaker 1: I don't know, because it just feels like it comes
Speaker 1: from such a natural place, deep in our bone marrow,
Speaker 1: that we defend these narratives that if a woman's bad,
Speaker 1: then she should expect to get murdered. And that's crazy
Speaker 1: when you say it like that, isn't it? But in
Speaker 1: the end the court van Water is guilty. His jealousy
Speaker 1: was not an excuse, but rather another sign of criminal premeditation.
Speaker 1: He thought that she was having intercourse with other men
Speaker 1: and was afraid that she would turn him down in
Speaker 1: favor of the others. He also believed she loved another
Speaker 1: man who was married. I shut her because I don't
Speaker 1: like any pushing around. His actions revealed called deliberate purpose,
Speaker 1: on the absence of adequate provocation, either to kill Miss
Speaker 1: Stables or to inflict upon her grievous bodily harm. The
Speaker 1: townspeople of Henley, however, was so fond of Johnny Waters,
Speaker 1: and so sympathetic to his plight, that three hundred and
Speaker 1: two of them signed a clemency petition asking that his
Speaker 1: life be spared. His army bodies added their names. Two
Speaker 1: these efforts were in vain. Waters, who was increasingly debilitated
Speaker 1: by his catastrophic self inflicted headwounds and whose memory and
Speaker 1: cognitive capacity were severely impacted, was hanged almost a year
Speaker 1: to the day after he first met Doris. For Jane.
Speaker 1: The whole Sorry case reveals are continuing inability to comprehend
Speaker 1: the threat that men such as Waters post. This is
Speaker 1: a dangerous person. He was always going to be dangerous.
Speaker 1: Is highly highly likely that some kind of trigger was
Speaker 1: going to come at some point around his possession of Doris.
Speaker 1: He is the classic classic killer. She wanted to break
Speaker 1: it off. It is so dangerous for a woman to
Speaker 1: try and reject a man, even if they're not in
Speaker 1: a relationship with them. No one was listening to her.
Speaker 1: They were all like, poor guy, poor guy that hasn't
Speaker 1: really changed a lot, and it's sad, bad women. The
Speaker 1: Black Out Ripper is hosted by me Hallie rubin Hold
Speaker 1: and me Alice Fines. It was written and produced by
Speaker 1: Alice Fines and Ryan Dilley, with addition or support from
Speaker 1: Courtney Guerino and Offa Gomberts. Kate Healy of Oakwood Family
Speaker 1: Trees aided us with genealogical research. Pascal Wise Sound designed
Speaker 1: and mixed the show and composed all the original music.
Speaker 1: The show was recorded at Wardoor Studios by David Smith
Speaker 1: and Tom Berry. You also heard the voice talents of
Speaker 1: Ben Crow, David Glover, Melanie Gutridge, Stella Harford, Jemma Saunders,
Speaker 1: and Rufus Wright. Much of the music you heard was
Speaker 1: performed by Edgarchan, Ross Hughes, Christian Miller, and Marcus Penrose.
Speaker 1: They were recorded by Nick Taylor at Portcupine Studios. Pushkin's
Speaker 1: Ben Tolliday mixed the tracks, and you heard additional piano
Speaker 1: playing by the great Berry Wise Hi Berry. The show
Speaker 1: also wouldn't have been possible without the work of Jacob Weisberg,
Speaker 1: Heather Fane, Carlie Migliori, Maggie Taylor, Nicole Morano, Eric Sandler,
Speaker 1: and Daniella Lukhan. We'd also like to thank Michael Buchanan
Speaker 1: Dunn of the Murder Mile podcast, Lizzie McCarroll, Catherine Walker
Speaker 1: at the Royal Pharmaceutical Society and the Earbe Historical Society.
Speaker 1: Bad Women is a production of Pushkin Industries. Please rate
Speaker 1: and review the show and spread the word about what
Speaker 1: we do, and thanks for listening. He he