Speaker 1: Pushkin. You're alone on a city street. The darkness is total.
Speaker 1: It envelops you, pressing in. You stumble on, not knowing
Speaker 1: where the sidewalk ends and the road begins. You brush
Speaker 1: by a darkened building, bump into an unlit street lamp.
Speaker 1: You're desperate to reach safety. For somewhere in this neighborhood
Speaker 1: looks a killer who strikes in the hours of darkness.
Speaker 1: The cruelty and viciousness of his crimes are unspeakable. This
Speaker 1: does not make believe horror. This really happened, and it
Speaker 1: happened in living memory. It's a tale you've probably never
Speaker 1: heard before, a tale of forgotten women murdered in a
Speaker 1: city without light. This is London for a year and
Speaker 1: a half, its department stores and palaces, its churches and factories,
Speaker 1: its schools and homes have been blasted and burnt by
Speaker 1: waves of Nazi bombers. My friend ain't curling can night
Speaker 1: after night and another. Darkness is the only defense against
Speaker 1: the blitz and stopping my heir. To make it harder
Speaker 1: for enemy aircraft to find the city. The lights have
Speaker 1: been dimmed, but the dark and dislocation of war also
Speaker 1: offers a serial killer cover to single out his victims,
Speaker 1: his prey, or ordinary women who are just trying to
Speaker 1: make the best of things in London's bomb damaged nightlife district.
Speaker 1: Watching Let's start in Piccadilly, which locals boastfully called the
Speaker 1: center of the world. For, as the guide book says,
Speaker 1: anyone looking for a high life must sooner or later
Speaker 1: find themselves in Piccadilly Circus. Welcome to the Brasserie Universal.
Speaker 1: It's a favorite haunt of flyers. Men from the air
Speaker 1: forces of France, Poland, Australia, Norway, South Africa and a
Speaker 1: dozen other nations gather here to brag about the Germans
Speaker 1: they've shot down, or drink to the memories of comrades lost.
Speaker 1: Everybody either starts from here or ends up here, says
Speaker 1: one young Canadian pilot in a letter home. Soon this
Speaker 1: subterranean joint will burst at the scenes with American gis
Speaker 1: flush with cash. They'll transform this area into what locals
Speaker 1: will dub Little America. But today only a handful of
Speaker 1: yankster in town. For this is February twelfth, nineteen forty two.
Speaker 1: It's a Thursday night, and a young woman called Greta
Speaker 1: Haywood has come to town. She's alone. Excuse me, are
Speaker 1: you waiting for somebody? The voice is an educated one,
Speaker 1: but perhaps a little affected, as if its owner is
Speaker 1: trying to adopt the diction of a duke or earl.
Speaker 1: Or maybe it's the effect of the drink. His breath
Speaker 1: carries the sour reek of water down wartime beer. He's
Speaker 1: a rather slight man, of around five foot eight or nine,
Speaker 1: and he wears the blue wool uniform of a leading
Speaker 1: aircraftman a Royal Air Force. On his cuff is a
Speaker 1: single stripe, a commendation for good conduct. Gretta is waiting
Speaker 1: for someone. She has a date, she tells the stranger,
Speaker 1: a strange from her husband. Gretta struck up a new
Speaker 1: relationship with a captain in the army. He'll join her
Speaker 1: here within the hour. You are a very nice girl.
Speaker 1: I've been looking at you for some time. Beneath the
Speaker 1: sweep of dark hair, the stranger has piercing, pale blue
Speaker 1: eyes and rather sharp features that some consider handsome. You
Speaker 1: shouldn't come down to a place like this. It's not
Speaker 1: very nice down here, a place like this. The Brassery
Speaker 1: Universal is known by other names. Some call it the
Speaker 1: Universal Brasserie. Others refer to it simply as the Universal brothel,
Speaker 1: to the annoyance of the owners. Any woman coming here
Speaker 1: alone is eyed with deep suspicion and assumed to be
Speaker 1: either a so called good time girl or a professional prostitute.
Speaker 1: Gretta has allowed the stranger to buy her a drink,
Speaker 1: and he returns from the bar with two whiskeys. She
Speaker 1: repeatedly declines his offers to take her to dinner, for
Speaker 1: her date will be here by nine. We have plenty
Speaker 1: of time. Eventually, she agrees to accompany the stranger to
Speaker 1: another bar for one more drink. The man retrieves his
Speaker 1: hat and winter coat from the cloak room. He's no
Speaker 1: officer yet, but the white cotton flash on his cap
Speaker 1: shows he's in training to become a pilot, one of
Speaker 1: the most glamorous jobs in the Armed Services. They climb
Speaker 1: the steps up out of the brasserie and into the night.
Speaker 1: The streets here are busy, but Gretta only hears the
Speaker 1: people around her, feels them bump past or glimpses the
Speaker 1: bouncing red tips of their lighted cigarettes. For Piccadilly Circus,
Speaker 1: once famed for its vast illuminated signs advertising Haig Whisky,
Speaker 1: Gordon's Gin and Wrigley's Gums is completely blacked out. The
Speaker 1: head lamps of taxis and double decker buses are also hooded,
Speaker 1: so only the tiniest chinks of light are visible. Many
Speaker 1: pedestrians have taken to carrying flashlights as these darting glow
Speaker 1: worms pass Grata might see the flash of a polished
Speaker 1: button on a military tunic, or perhaps the fleeting silver
Speaker 1: shimmer of a fox fur coat. Such furs are deregeurs
Speaker 1: and Piccadillys. There almost a uniform for the women who
Speaker 1: sell sex along this bustling thoroughfare. A visiting American serviceman
Speaker 1: remembered one particular woman in a fur coat underneath that
Speaker 1: she didn't have any clothes. On true story, the Airmond
Speaker 1: leads Gretta away from Piccadilly Circus to a cocktail bar
Speaker 1: the salted Almond. To her relief, this is no dark
Speaker 1: and sleazy dive. The bar is decorated in a brilliant
Speaker 1: shade of a million, and it's spacious and well lit.
Speaker 1: They sit at one of the round tables, far from
Speaker 1: the other customers, out of earshot. The Airmond doesn't remove
Speaker 1: his heavy outdoor coat. As they drink two more whiskies.
Speaker 1: He seems keen to move on. Where do you live?
Speaker 1: Gretta's home is twelve or more stops away on the subway.
Speaker 1: That's a long way. Don't you know anywhere around here
Speaker 1: that we can go? The airmond clearly won't be satisfied
Speaker 1: with simply buying Gretta a drink and walking her back
Speaker 1: to meet her captain. Are you a naughty girl? Inwardly,
Speaker 1: Gretta bristles at the crude insinuation, but she answers simply, no,
Speaker 1: I'll show you something. The man reaches deep into his
Speaker 1: pocket and pulls out a fat bundle of bank notes.
Speaker 1: There's thirty pounds there. You see, I have plenty of money.
Speaker 1: Thirty pounds is more than eight months pay for this
Speaker 1: leading aircraftman. Gretta repeats that she'll be late for her
Speaker 1: date with the captain. He asks if he could meet
Speaker 1: Gretta again to show her a good time. Perhaps Gretta
Speaker 1: doesn't want to anger this man in uniform. She reluctantly
Speaker 1: hands him a scrap of paper bearing her telephone number.
Speaker 1: She stresses that she's not interested in having sex with him.
Speaker 1: All right, if you don't want to, I can't make you.
Speaker 1: Do you know? I knocked a girl out once. It's
Speaker 1: cold outside, and in this quiet side street it's bible black.
Speaker 1: Gretta realizes this isn't the quickest route back to the
Speaker 1: Brasserie Universal and her waiting date, but perhaps to avoid
Speaker 1: enraging a clearly violent man, Gretta follows his odd route
Speaker 1: without objecting. She does, however, take a flashlight from her
Speaker 1: purse to eliminate their path. You don't want to use
Speaker 1: the torch. He grabs the light from her hand and
Speaker 1: plunges them back into darkness. I want to kiss you
Speaker 1: good night. Are there any air age shelters around here?
Speaker 1: Gretta doesn't know, but she is certain of one thing.
Speaker 1: She doesn't want to venture into a secluded, unlit bunger
Speaker 1: with this man. He grabs her and steers her into
Speaker 1: a doorway, pushing closely up against her and kissing her.
Speaker 1: Come on, you've got to let me make love to you.
Speaker 1: He raises her skirt. Gretta protests and pushes his hands way.
Speaker 1: The airman reaches up as if to cradled her face
Speaker 1: for another kiss, but instead his hands knit around her throat.
Speaker 1: She tries to break free. You won't, You won't. Gretta
Speaker 1: struggles to release the man's grip, but his fingers only
Speaker 1: tighten around her neck, cutting off the flow of air
Speaker 1: to her lungs and blood to her brain. You won't,
Speaker 1: You won't. Gretta Heyward loses consciousness. You want at some time.
Speaker 1: Gretta is not this killer's first victim, nor will she
Speaker 1: be the last. Over the course of just a few
Speaker 1: days in that chilly wartime February, women were attacked night
Speaker 1: after night on the blacked out streets of London, in
Speaker 1: deserted air raid shelters, even in their own homes. In
Speaker 1: this series, you'll hear the stories of Evelyn Hamilton, Evelyn Oatley,
Speaker 1: Margaret Lowe, Greta Hayward, Catherine Mulcahey, and Doris Jouannee from
Speaker 1: their birth to the moment when their attacker struck. I'm
Speaker 1: social historian Hallie Rubinholdt. In the last season of Bad Women,
Speaker 1: I explored the case of Jack the Ripper by telling
Speaker 1: the famous Victorian story of the White Chapel murders through
Speaker 1: the lens of the victims. The Ripper retold was based
Speaker 1: on my book the five. But this new season of
Speaker 1: bad women springs from all new research. It's a mammoth task,
Speaker 1: so I enlisted the help of journalist and criminologist Alice Fines.
Speaker 1: I had never heard of this case before, which was
Speaker 1: puzzling the murderer. That airman was especially brutal in his
Speaker 1: attacks on the women, and such cruelty usually ensures that
Speaker 1: a killer is remembered, even assigned a dark celebrity. But
Speaker 1: over the years, this particular story has been talked about
Speaker 1: very little, and the victims even less. So why to
Speaker 1: change that and to restore those women to memory? We
Speaker 1: set about reconstructing their lives. We've mined the national archives
Speaker 1: and sifted through thousands of yellowing pages, police reports, witness statements, photos,
Speaker 1: fingerprint records, and newspapers. We've even had an expert genealogists
Speaker 1: traced the women's family trees for clues. Weighing up all
Speaker 1: this material, I was struck by the fact that, on
Speaker 1: the surface, at least, there's little to connect these victims.
Speaker 1: They range in age from their twenties to their mid forties.
Speaker 1: Some were married, but others were separated or resolutely single.
Speaker 1: Some sold sex. One was a highly qualified graduate, and
Speaker 1: another dreamt of a life the stage. But there are
Speaker 1: a few points of connection, and these are illuminating. In
Speaker 1: wartime London, these women shared common experiences. They faced the
Speaker 1: same risk as men from the falling bombs, but the
Speaker 1: hardships and upheavals of the war often affected them disproportionately.
Speaker 1: War had turned the old social and moral order on
Speaker 1: its head. As a result, women like the ones in
Speaker 1: our story had new opportunities, but they were also viewed
Speaker 1: with suspicion and disapproval for trying to work, live and
Speaker 1: love as they pleased in a world in turmoil. The
Speaker 1: other awful point of intersection for these women was that
Speaker 1: they all found themselves isolated and alone, and that gave
Speaker 1: the airmen with the affected aristocratic accent his opportunity to
Speaker 1: strike new world In their moments of vulnerability. He beat
Speaker 1: and throttled them with his bare hands, robbed them of
Speaker 1: money and possessions, and then set about mutilating and defiling
Speaker 1: their bodies with anything at hand, from razors to kitchen implements,
Speaker 1: even their own flashlights. And surprisingly, the ferocity and sadism
Speaker 1: of these murders prompted the papers to liken him to
Speaker 1: a killer who had terrorized the city of full fifty
Speaker 1: years earlier. You're listening to bad women, the Blackout Ripper
Speaker 1: back in just a moment. In the decades separating the
Speaker 1: White Shoppel murders of eighteen eighty eight and the blizz
Speaker 1: the lives of London's women had altered significantly. The women
Speaker 1: who were killed in nineteen forty two, the women you
Speaker 1: will meet in this series witnessed huge changes in their lifetimes.
Speaker 1: The oldest were born as the Victorian era was ebbing away,
Speaker 1: and they entered adulthood as greater opportunities were becoming available
Speaker 1: to women. Greater legal protections were also being put in place,
Speaker 1: and while not perfect, these would have been unimaginable to
Speaker 1: the victims of Jack the Ripper. For example, these women
Speaker 1: could all vote. The war sped up some of the
Speaker 1: more positive changes for women. They entered roles in military
Speaker 1: and civilian workplaces that had been denied to their mothers
Speaker 1: and grandmothers. But global conflict also brought into stark relief
Speaker 1: many of the injustices and prejudices that continued to blight
Speaker 1: women's daily lives. The war saw male partners shipped to
Speaker 1: the other side of the world, and at the same
Speaker 1: time a mass influx of young men from other nations.
Speaker 1: Amid this upheaval, women were accused of being bad mothers,
Speaker 1: unfaithful wives, sexual deviance, spreaders of venereal disease, gossips, even
Speaker 1: spies who were passing vital secrets to the enemy. In peacetime,
Speaker 1: men had often pestered, intimidated, and hurt women with impunity,
Speaker 1: but the coming of war created new spaces, while women
Speaker 1: were exposed to unwanted advances determine sexual harassment, violent assault,
Speaker 1: and worse. As we unravel the lives of those killed
Speaker 1: by the Blackoutripper and other ordinary women who met untimely, unjust,
Speaker 1: and violent deaths during the war, will glimpse a world
Speaker 1: far removed from the cozy myths of the Greatest generation,
Speaker 1: a world where some women had as much reason to
Speaker 1: fear the men wearing Allied uniforms as they did the enemy.
Speaker 1: This story will take us to many places, but at
Speaker 1: its center is London's West End, the districts of Piccadilly,
Speaker 1: High Park, Mayfair and Soho, places where the rich and famous,
Speaker 1: the great and the good mingled with the poor and desperate,
Speaker 1: the deplorable, and the vile. These were places of excitement
Speaker 1: and freedom, but also of degradation and danger. From diaries,
Speaker 1: oral history recordings, autobiographies, and contemporary accounts, we've created a
Speaker 1: snapshot of these neighborhoods and the people who frequented them.
Speaker 1: To understand the women at the heart of this story,
Speaker 1: we need to understand the problems and prevailing attitudes of
Speaker 1: the time to immerse ourselves in their world. So let's
Speaker 1: explore London's wartime West End together. It's spring nineteen forty one.
Speaker 1: The Blackout murders are nearly a year away, and Nazi
Speaker 1: bombs have been falling for months now. Some nights the
Speaker 1: area is spared. It is mercilessly pummeled in daylight, bustling
Speaker 1: Piccadilly Circus could be mistaken for its pre war self.
Speaker 1: Well almost. The famous winged statue of Antios, the Greek
Speaker 1: god of requited love, has been taken down and stored
Speaker 1: away for safe keeping. His ornate perch a fountain, has
Speaker 1: been buried beneath sandbags to protect it from bomb damage.
Speaker 1: The plinth is covered in propaganda posters encouraging citizens to
Speaker 1: buy government bonds to pay for ships, guns and warplanes,
Speaker 1: or to drive less to preserve precious rubber so that
Speaker 1: vital army trucks can have tires. Britain is almost totally
Speaker 1: cut off from the world, and her cargo ships are
Speaker 1: being sunk by German submarines at an appalling rate. But
Speaker 1: despite rationing and shortages, Piccadilly's feigned restaurants remain open, some
Speaker 1: offering meals every bit as luxury as during peacetime. Mark Gavny.
Speaker 1: The hotels are bustling too, Just off Piccadilly Circus. In
Speaker 1: a grand sweep of buildings owned by the British royal
Speaker 1: family is Odnino's. Do you have any vacancies for the
Speaker 1: next This one hundred room establishment tries to win custom
Speaker 1: by bragging about the quality of its plumbing. We have
Speaker 1: a lovely room on the third floor, but adverts also
Speaker 1: make careful mention of the ample bomb shelter accommodation forty
Speaker 1: feet below ground. Henri Jouanne works as a manager at Odnino's.
Speaker 1: Approaching seventy years old, Henri should be enjoying retirement in
Speaker 1: the country, but his annuity from his native France collapsed
Speaker 1: when the war broke out, and so He's returned to
Speaker 1: London and to hotel management. His wife, Doris Willouis and Fairhead,
Speaker 1: is thirty years his junior. She's defied his wishes and
Speaker 1: followed him back to the city. Doris, he has known poverty,
Speaker 1: and she's determinedly carved out a better life for herself.
Speaker 1: Perhaps what she craves most of all his financial security
Speaker 1: and stability, but now it might all be slipping through
Speaker 1: her fingers. When she met Henri, he was one of
Speaker 1: her paying clients. He promised to provide for her and
Speaker 1: take her off the streets. When I married my wife,
Speaker 1: it was agreed between us that she would cease her
Speaker 1: mode of life and regain her respectability. Their early married
Speaker 1: DearS were comfortable and they enjoyed some luxuries too, But
Speaker 1: Henri now fears that, with his diminished income, his wife
Speaker 1: is at risk of drifting back to her old life.
Speaker 1: Henri a is working punishingly long hours at Danino's, where
Speaker 1: he also lives, and his health and their marriage are
Speaker 1: beginning to suffer. Setting herself up in rented rooms, Doris
Speaker 1: will indeed take her financial situation back into her own hands.
Speaker 1: This will also fatally put her into the path of
Speaker 1: the blackout Ripper. The West End boasts a concentration of
Speaker 1: shops to rival the greatest cities on earth, from the
Speaker 1: tiny high end tailors of Sapple Row to vast department
Speaker 1: stores the size of an ocean liner. Despite the blitz,
Speaker 1: they've mostly kept trading. One correspondent from a regional newspaper
Speaker 1: is in Piccadilly to report conditions back to his rural readership.
Speaker 1: It looked exactly like old times. I saw the facade
Speaker 1: of a fine building, seemingly untouched. Then you realize that
Speaker 1: you could see daylight through the windows from the outside,
Speaker 1: and that the walls were all that was left. I
Speaker 1: saw an elegant establishment carrying on with tarpaulins slung across
Speaker 1: the open roof. Glass out everywhere. When storefronts and windows
Speaker 1: are blasted away, shopkeepers are keen to make a show
Speaker 1: of defiance. Business as usual, reads the sign on one
Speaker 1: shuttered shop doorway in fact more open than ever. A
Speaker 1: sign outside another bomb damage shop admits we never did
Speaker 1: like window dressing anyway. Not everyone can joke about the carnage.
Speaker 1: The writer George Orwell is crunching through west End Street,
Speaker 1: slittered with stone fragments and glittering with broken glass. He
Speaker 1: comes across some debris from a bombed out department store,
Speaker 1: a pile of plaster dress models, very pink and realistic,
Speaker 1: looking so like a pile of corpses that one could
Speaker 1: have mistaken them for that at a little distance. The
Speaker 1: scene is utterly shocking to him, But what astounds him
Speaker 1: most of all is that passers by seem utterly unfazed
Speaker 1: by the damage. To an astonishing extent. Things have slipped
Speaker 1: back to normal, and everyone is quite happy in the daytime,
Speaker 1: never seeming to think about the coming night, like animals
Speaker 1: which are unable to foresee the future so long as
Speaker 1: they have a bit of food a place in the sun.
Speaker 1: But the sun is setting now and night approaches, while
Speaker 1: the cover of darkness bring the bombers once again. The
Speaker 1: entrances to the Tube London subway system begin to clog
Speaker 1: with shoppers and workers heading home, but others are seeking
Speaker 1: to reach the train platform's deep underground too, for the
Speaker 1: tunnels have become a refuge to tens of thousands of locals.
Speaker 1: There are still too few official air raid shelters, and
Speaker 1: those that exist are often wretched, uncomfortable and unsanitary, and
Speaker 1: so to the utter dismay of the authorities, Nearly two
Speaker 1: hundred thousand Londoners prefer to bed down each night in
Speaker 1: the tube, with the trains rumbling by just inches from them.
Speaker 1: Worried Londoners, men, women and children line up for a
Speaker 1: sleeping spot while rush hour is still on, despite official
Speaker 1: orders that they stay away the pace. Since of these
Speaker 1: waiting shelters is wearing, few police officers are here to
Speaker 1: keep order amid a throng of anxious mothers and their
Speaker 1: wailing offspring. Wooa, there's plenty of time. You can't go
Speaker 1: down yet. If we didn't stop them, some of these
Speaker 1: kids would spend half their lifetime underground. Now there are
Speaker 1: other officers in this ticket hall too, but they're not
Speaker 1: concerned with crowd control. Instead, they want to find someone
Speaker 1: and quickly. Forty seven year old Rachel Tomkin is missing.
Speaker 1: Her sister Polly has been looking for her, and she
Speaker 1: fears foul play. Since Rachel's strange disappearance, Polly has visited
Speaker 1: a clairvoyant, and the mystic insists at something sinister and
Speaker 1: violent has occurred. Polly isn't just worried, she's also out raged.
Speaker 1: She thinks the police aren't taking the case seriously, so
Speaker 1: Polly calls in at her local station, has her lawyer
Speaker 1: send letters of complaint, and takes out adverts in national newspapers.
Speaker 1: The detectives think that Rachel's mental health history points to
Speaker 1: her having taken her own life. She's probably drowned herself,
Speaker 1: they think, But under constant pressure from Polly, whose mental
Speaker 1: health they now also question, their inquiries continue. So far,
Speaker 1: the only clue to Rachel's fate is her purse, which
Speaker 1: was discovered the day after her disappearance but a post
Speaker 1: office well outside the city. It contained her ID card,
Speaker 1: her rent book, and the ration coupons needed to buy
Speaker 1: essentials such as food. Also inside were two Tube tickets
Speaker 1: bought the morning after she was last seen. The police
Speaker 1: are asking staff at stations across London to cast their
Speaker 1: minds back. Can they remember a woman of about five
Speaker 1: foot three, her black hair graying, wearing a tweed coat
Speaker 1: with a brown fur collar, a navy blue skirt and
Speaker 1: a brown hat. No one can. As you'll hear later
Speaker 1: in this series, when Rachel is finally found, the prophecy
Speaker 1: of Polly's clairvoyant will prove more accurate than anyone could
Speaker 1: have predicted bad women. The Blackout Ripper will return shortly.
Speaker 1: Not everyone is heading underground to shelter from the bombs.
Speaker 1: Some have grown tired of hiding away and are willing
Speaker 1: to risk enjoying the West End nightlife once again. There
Speaker 1: is no longer any excuse to be bored in London now.
Speaker 1: In fact, if you can't enjoy yourself in London must
Speaker 1: indeed be a poor prue. However, revel as attracted to
Speaker 1: the West End aren't universally admired. Isn't it callous to
Speaker 1: dance when this city is going up in flames? One
Speaker 1: serviceman on leave is disgusted by the scenes of merriment
Speaker 1: in a Piccadilly club. In his journal, he confides that
Speaker 1: he'd happily see the establishment and its customers blown to smithereens.
Speaker 1: The clubs and bars of London are the backdrop to
Speaker 1: the story of the Blackout Ripper and his victims, which
Speaker 1: is why I want to show you who frequents them,
Speaker 1: how those people are viewed by the rest of society,
Speaker 1: and exactly what happens inside The Cafe de Paris is
Speaker 1: beginning to fill once the cabaret spot of choice for
Speaker 1: Hollywood stars and aristocrats. The war has injected a little
Speaker 1: egalitarianism into the clienteles spid. A reduction in prices has
Speaker 1: helped people like Greta Hayward and her army and would
Speaker 1: now feel able to cross its venerate, a threshold he had.
Speaker 1: Three Martis are the known to stomach. The star attraction
Speaker 1: is Ken's snake Hips. Johnson and the West Indian Orchestra
Speaker 1: often build as the only all black swing band in Britain.
Speaker 1: They're seen as the height of glamor's sophistication and received
Speaker 1: glowing reviews wherever they play. Twenty six year old Ken
Speaker 1: is a key part of the allure. Though his role
Speaker 1: is ostensibly as bandleader, Ken's grasp of music is basic.
Speaker 1: His real talent is dance. As his bandmaids play, Ken
Speaker 1: will make a pretexts at conducting them with his baton,
Speaker 1: but then launch into one of his trademarking teens. He
Speaker 1: was so graceful in his white dinner jacket. His whole
Speaker 1: body was so electric and fluid as he moved it
Speaker 1: in time to the music. It was easy to see
Speaker 1: why they build him as Snake Hills. The Cafe de
Speaker 1: Paris is several floors below ground, and many have been
Speaker 1: lulled into thinking that it is invulnerable to the bombs
Speaker 1: of the Luftwaffer. In fact, the club is known for
Speaker 1: its insusians when it comes to air raids. When the
Speaker 1: sirens sound, snake Hips Johnson tells the drinkers and dancers
Speaker 1: that they're free to seek shelter in the basements even
Speaker 1: deeper below the club, but if they do, they'll miss
Speaker 1: the time of their lives on the dance floor in
Speaker 1: the skies. High above the club, the cruver German bomber
Speaker 1: lets go its deadly cargo. The bombs, especially designed to
Speaker 1: demolish buildings, hurtle earthwords, shrieking and whistling as they pick
Speaker 1: up speed. Even the keenest of ears would have missed
Speaker 1: their sound, for snake Hips and its orchestra have just
Speaker 1: launched into another number. A one hundred and ten pound
Speaker 1: bomb tears through the roof a cinema above the Catholic
Speaker 1: and Marie, and it keeps slicing through floor, half the
Speaker 1: floor until it reaches the balcony right above the heads
Speaker 1: of snake Hips. Johnson and a guitarist, Joe Denise I
Speaker 1: can't describe the sound it and everything went black. I
Speaker 1: tried to stand up. I thought I was uninjured. The
Speaker 1: next thing I know, I just fell down again. I
Speaker 1: looked down and saw a nasty mess where my leg
Speaker 1: had been. It was chaos, screams and shouts and dust
Speaker 1: and dirt. Joe Denise is horrifically wounded. Snake Hips Johnson
Speaker 1: is killed outright. The oddities of bomb blasts mean that
Speaker 1: musicians to their left and right are entirely unscathed, while
Speaker 1: others have been cut ribbons. Some dancers haven't so much
Speaker 1: as a hair out of place, but a stone dead.
Speaker 1: Others still have been stripped of their clothes but have survived.
Speaker 1: Around thirty four staff and guests are dead. An off
Speaker 1: duty nurse does her best to help the many wounded,
Speaker 1: for aside from the bomb's own shrapnel, flying glasses and
Speaker 1: shattered wine bottles, of inflicted terrible injuries on the revelers.
Speaker 1: The woman is hailed as a hero for her efforts. However,
Speaker 1: there is a telling PostScript. In an article printed in
Speaker 1: many newspapers, the young nurse had little to say about
Speaker 1: her work, but mentioned that while she was helping the injured,
Speaker 1: someone ransacked her handbag, taking from it objects of sentimental value,
Speaker 1: including a fountain pen. The selfless nurse has been robbed.
Speaker 1: Corpses too, have been stripped of watches, wedding rings, and jewelry.
Speaker 1: While the coming of war has encouraged some people to
Speaker 1: act with bravery and compassion, it's also created tempting opportunities
Speaker 1: for the more unscrupulous. In fact, the blackout is a
Speaker 1: boom time for criminality in London. Indeed, it will be
Speaker 1: an important thread running throughout this series. As the enemy
Speaker 1: bombers turned for home and the groan of their engines
Speaker 1: fades away, as the fires of burning furniture and burning
Speaker 1: floorboards and rafters, it dowsed as the dust of pulverized plaster,
Speaker 1: brick and stone settles. The task of rescuing the trap,
Speaker 1: recovering the dead, and reclaiming whatever valued possessions have survived
Speaker 1: must now begin. The bohemian and slightly seedy West End
Speaker 1: neighborhood of Soho has been battered in this air raid.
Speaker 1: Whole buildings have disappeared in the night, and their remnants
Speaker 1: now block Soho's narrow streets. A rescue worker spots a
Speaker 1: miraculously undamaged bottle of whiskey in the rubble and recommends
Speaker 1: that the dazed and dusty homeowner takes a swig. She's
Speaker 1: not impressed. Yeah, the bottler alone is for emergencies. Unlucky
Speaker 1: residents stumble over the rubble and sift through the wreckage
Speaker 1: for salvageable clothing, furnishings, ornaments, or other valuables. It's a
Speaker 1: race against time for many dread that looters will swiftly
Speaker 1: descend to pick clean the bomb site. Some criminal gangs
Speaker 1: organized sophisticated looting operations. Teams of men arrive in trucks
Speaker 1: and swarm over a bomb site, cuting away anything of value.
Speaker 1: So brazen and so methodical are they that onlookers sometimes
Speaker 1: presume they are official reclamation squads working for the property owner. However,
Speaker 1: such events are rarer than newspaper coverage would have us believe,
Speaker 1: and most looting is opportunistic and trivial for serious criminals.
Speaker 1: The war has brought far easier and far more lucrative
Speaker 1: ways of making money than scrabbling around in the rubble.
Speaker 1: The conflict means that everything from luxury goods to basic
Speaker 1: foodstuffs is in short supply. Many items are rustioned by
Speaker 1: the government, so even citizens with money to spare can't
Speaker 1: legally buy all the things they want, and so black
Speaker 1: markets flourish, pulling people who might be scrupulously law abiding
Speaker 1: in peacetime into the orbit of thieves and gangsters. Women
Speaker 1: are often drawn into the trade, for it's women who
Speaker 1: must feed and clothe their families, and if her husband
Speaker 1: is away in the armed forces, his pitiful rate of
Speaker 1: pay makes that task nearly impossible. If a wife tries
Speaker 1: to find paying work for herself, an abysmal lack of
Speaker 1: childcare options can mean the heartbreaking choice of leaving children
Speaker 1: in a less than ideal setting in some cases. All
Speaker 1: this makes the pull of the black market trade hard
Speaker 1: to resist. In one court case, more than a dozen
Speaker 1: lawn dresses were charged with stealing army blankets and using
Speaker 1: the material to make coats. The thefts went unnoticed during
Speaker 1: the warm weather, but when temperatures dropped, the military authorities
Speaker 1: found they were twelve hundred blankets short. What started as
Speaker 1: petty pilfering spread through the laundry women like a form
Speaker 1: of cancer, said the prosecutor. Soho is no stranger to
Speaker 1: the black market. With supplies of booze constricted by the war,
Speaker 1: bootleggers filled the gap with stolen, counterfeit or simply homemade hooch.
Speaker 1: At one illegal still discovered in the back of a cafe,
Speaker 1: colorings and flavorings were added to pure alcohol to mimic
Speaker 1: the look and taste of genuine spirits. Whiskey, gin and
Speaker 1: rum could be made so apparently perfect that only an
Speaker 1: expert could detect that they were synthetic. But many of
Speaker 1: those drawn to Soho are not merely thirsty for drink.
Speaker 1: We're in Soho's Windmill Theater. This establishment has two claims
Speaker 1: to fame. One the show here went on even at
Speaker 1: the height of the bombing, when many other theaters were dark.
Speaker 1: And two, it's the only place in town to see
Speaker 1: naked female flesh. It puts on a kind of glorified
Speaker 1: burlesque called rivou deville. Time magazine's Walter Greatneth tells his
Speaker 1: American readers for an audience composed mostly of bald headed
Speaker 1: businessmen from the provinces, The Windmill avoids the prudish censorship
Speaker 1: laws by arguing that it shows aren't pornography but art
Speaker 1: my classical statues. The naked women on stage stand stock
Speaker 1: still any movement will break the spell and see the
Speaker 1: show close down for obscenity. Evannoeby lives a few streets
Speaker 1: from here. For many years, her husband, Harold has believed
Speaker 1: that she worked at the famous Windmill Theater. I think
Speaker 1: it was in the chorus. While he lives hundreds of
Speaker 1: miles away in the country, Evelyn spends most of her
Speaker 1: time in Soho pursuing the more glamorous life of a
Speaker 1: show girl a nightclub hostess. She finds farm life and
Speaker 1: that chicken was dull, and Harold wants her to have
Speaker 1: her freedom to enjoy a career that's exciting, but certainly not,
Speaker 1: as he puts it, immoral. Evelyn's London friends claim she
Speaker 1: has another occupation. She was earning her living by prostitution,
Speaker 1: says Gladys Barton. She was very honest and when I
Speaker 1: say that, I mean she'd never steal from her clients
Speaker 1: in London. Away from Harold in the farm, Evelyn has
Speaker 1: adopted an alter ego as Lita Ward. She weaves a
Speaker 1: complex patchwork of relationships. Love, sex, money, and the struggle
Speaker 1: for independence, all exert competing claims on Evelyn, as they
Speaker 1: do on many women in this war. Her main problem
Speaker 1: was that she was lonely. According to gladys Lita as
Speaker 1: paying clients with whom she also happily socializes, and she
Speaker 1: meets men in local clubs and bars or on the street,
Speaker 1: bringing them back to her modest Soho dwelling until one
Speaker 1: night when she brings home a man with an aristocratic accent.
Speaker 1: The radio gets turned up louder and louder until the
Speaker 1: neighbors can hear nothing but the music. She won't. So
Speaker 1: this has been your introduction to the worlds of women
Speaker 1: such as Brota Hayward, Dorschuanne, Rachel Dobkin, and Evelyn Oatley,
Speaker 1: a world made darker and more dangerous by war. In
Speaker 1: the coming episodes will look not just at the case
Speaker 1: of the Blackoutripper, but also at the stories of other
Speaker 1: women who didn't live to see the victory parades and
Speaker 1: the peace. Women killed not by the enemy but by husbands,
Speaker 1: by lovers, and by strangers wearing the uniform of their
Speaker 1: own side. Will find out who each woman was, explore
Speaker 1: the events that shaped her, and hear about the personal
Speaker 1: triumphs and tragedies, her longings and disappointments. Will examine why
Speaker 1: they came to be in such deadly peril, and how
Speaker 1: society was often unsympathetic to their plight. In the next episode,
Speaker 1: available right now, we'll meet thoughtful and reserved Evelyn Hamilton, intelligent, contained,
Speaker 1: perhaps inscrutable. Some of the people she meets cruelly dismiss
Speaker 1: her independent spirit as mystifying, odd and annoying. Evelyn has
Speaker 1: spent most of her life living far away from London.
Speaker 1: A new job, we'll see her stop in the West
Speaker 1: End only briefly between trains, but that window of just
Speaker 1: a few hours will be long enough for her killer
Speaker 1: to strike bad women. The Blackout Ripper is hosted by
Speaker 1: me Hallie rubin Hold and me Alice Fines. It was
Speaker 1: written and produced by Alice Fines and Ryan Dilley, with
Speaker 1: additional support from Courtney Guerino and Arthur Gomberts. Kate Heay
Speaker 1: of Oakwood Family Trees aided us with genealogical research. Pascal
Speaker 1: Wise Sound designed and mixed the show and composed all
Speaker 1: the original music. The show was recorded at Wardoor Studios
Speaker 1: by David Smith and Tom Berry. You also heard the
Speaker 1: voice talents of Ben Crow, David Glover, Melanie Gutridge, Stella Haafer,
Speaker 1: Gemma Saunders and rufus Wright to The music You Had
Speaker 1: was performed by Edgarchan, Ross Hughes, Christian Miller and Marcus Penrose.
Speaker 1: They were recorded by Nick Taylor at Porcupine Studios. Pushkin's
Speaker 1: Ben Holiday 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, Katherine 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.