WEBVTT - S3 – 5: Flaws 0:00:01.080 --> 0:00:04.280 Welcomed unobscured a production of I Heart Radio and Aaron Minky. 0:00:10.080 --> 0:00:13.119 The police held on to the letter. If what they 0:00:13.160 --> 0:00:15.680 said at the Central News Agency was true, it took 0:00:15.680 --> 0:00:17.640 them a few days to decide what to do with 0:00:17.680 --> 0:00:20.880 the Dear Boss letter. Then maybe it makes sense that 0:00:20.880 --> 0:00:23.799 Scotland Yard didn't take immediate action when the letter reached 0:00:23.840 --> 0:00:27.280 Donald Swanson's desk, And honestly it's hard to blame him 0:00:27.320 --> 0:00:30.400 because letters and suggestions and tips had been coming in 0:00:30.520 --> 0:00:33.320 from across England. It was the kind of thing that 0:00:33.400 --> 0:00:35.440 Donald had managed to sort out when he was on 0:00:35.479 --> 0:00:38.400 the trail of the Brighton Railway killer. That may even 0:00:38.400 --> 0:00:40.760 have been the reason that Charles Warren thought he was 0:00:40.800 --> 0:00:43.280 the right man to handle the things. But this was 0:00:43.360 --> 0:00:46.760 something different, and from our point of view today, some 0:00:46.880 --> 0:00:50.200 of the ideas that reached the police are truly baffling. 0:00:51.200 --> 0:00:55.240 Take the suggestion. On septem the week after Annie Chapman 0:00:55.320 --> 0:00:58.120 was killed, The Star said that police had received a 0:00:58.160 --> 0:01:01.040 request to photograph the retin as of the dead women. 0:01:01.480 --> 0:01:03.800 They were hoping that an image of the murderer had 0:01:03.840 --> 0:01:08.679 been imprinted on Annie Chapman's eyeball. Could a camera properly calibrated, 0:01:08.800 --> 0:01:12.000 take an imprint of that image and reveal the face 0:01:12.080 --> 0:01:15.120 of the killer. That was just one of the desperate 0:01:15.160 --> 0:01:19.280 suggestions made to the police that September. There's no way 0:01:19.319 --> 0:01:21.959 that the police could take action on every whim and 0:01:22.080 --> 0:01:25.480 scheme that reached them, let alone take them at face value. 0:01:25.959 --> 0:01:28.640 The city waited in terror for the killer to be captured, 0:01:28.920 --> 0:01:32.120 or for another woman to be murdered. The city waited, 0:01:32.400 --> 0:01:35.280 but Donald Swanson could not. He had work to do. 0:01:36.000 --> 0:01:40.280 Here's historian Adam would. At this time, Swanson and his 0:01:40.360 --> 0:01:43.959 family were living in South London. I would imagine, knowing 0:01:44.000 --> 0:01:46.000 that route, it would have been probably a cop right 0:01:46.200 --> 0:01:48.400 in each day and each evening. And he does actually 0:01:48.440 --> 0:01:52.960 describe his working day in between September December. It's quite 0:01:53.000 --> 0:01:55.000 a heavy workload, he said. I had to be at 0:01:55.000 --> 0:01:57.320 the office at half past night in the morning, then 0:01:57.360 --> 0:01:59.080 I had to reach for all the papers that had 0:01:59.080 --> 0:02:00.440 come in which took me in who we live in 0:02:00.560 --> 0:02:03.240 PM and sometimes between one and two in the morning, 0:02:03.880 --> 0:02:06.040 then I had to go to watch chaplains through the officers, 0:02:06.440 --> 0:02:09.440 genuinely getting home between two and three, I am so, 0:02:09.720 --> 0:02:11.400 you know, you can you imagine that there's there's something 0:02:11.440 --> 0:02:15.400 like about fourteen hours minimum of just literally just reading 0:02:16.280 --> 0:02:19.320 the reports and statements which are coming each day. That's 0:02:19.360 --> 0:02:21.919 an enormous amount of work for one officer to do. 0:02:22.840 --> 0:02:25.480 And as the days stretched on, with Polly Nichols and 0:02:25.520 --> 0:02:29.480 Annie Chapman's inquests both still open, with interviews and evidence 0:02:29.520 --> 0:02:32.760 being reported in the papers, well it wasn't like anyone 0:02:32.880 --> 0:02:36.240 was holding their breath. No, the panic in London was 0:02:36.320 --> 0:02:40.280 what you might call vocal. One letter to the editor 0:02:40.360 --> 0:02:43.639 at the start put things in stark terms. The detectives 0:02:43.639 --> 0:02:46.800 were clearly inefficient. In fact, they were so ignorant of 0:02:46.840 --> 0:02:49.680 London that their policing was a joke. And the writer 0:02:49.800 --> 0:02:53.040 thought that he knew why a police force dependent on 0:02:53.120 --> 0:02:56.040 taking men from the military rather than recruiting them from 0:02:56.080 --> 0:02:59.320 London neighborhoods. In fact, Londoners who might be able to 0:02:59.360 --> 0:03:02.639 actually or of the community, Well, they weren't even allowed 0:03:02.680 --> 0:03:05.680 into the Metropolitan Force because they didn't meet the standards 0:03:05.680 --> 0:03:08.960 of Army service, standards that were hardly appropriate for the 0:03:09.040 --> 0:03:12.160 very work of policing a city. At least that's what 0:03:12.200 --> 0:03:16.760 the letter argued. Under the present system, it said, men 0:03:16.840 --> 0:03:19.880 are kept out not for want of skill or knowledge, 0:03:20.120 --> 0:03:23.600 but because they are below the standard five ft nine inches. 0:03:24.080 --> 0:03:26.960 Today the public are made to pay for height and 0:03:27.040 --> 0:03:31.400 not for brains. But that question of whether the police 0:03:31.400 --> 0:03:34.760 should recruit from the military, and whether London crime could 0:03:34.760 --> 0:03:37.920 be addressed by people who weren't London born, well that 0:03:38.040 --> 0:03:41.520 was nothing new. In fact, those had been common complaints 0:03:41.600 --> 0:03:45.640 about the London Police for a very long time. How long, well, 0:03:45.800 --> 0:03:49.720 right from the beginning, since about eighteen nine. That's when 0:03:49.760 --> 0:03:53.280 a reform bill was passed under the Home Secretary Robert Peel, 0:03:53.880 --> 0:03:56.880 the Act for Improving the Police in and Near the 0:03:56.920 --> 0:04:00.960 Metropolis it was called. But almost exty years had passed 0:04:00.960 --> 0:04:04.160 since Peel had organized the London Police. So when he 0:04:04.240 --> 0:04:06.880 was put in charge of supervising the investigation of the 0:04:06.880 --> 0:04:11.480 White Chapel murders in Donald Swanson, wasn't just sorting through 0:04:11.560 --> 0:04:15.840 mountains of official reports from East End constables and thousands 0:04:15.880 --> 0:04:19.760 of rabbit trails suggested by British citizens. It was also 0:04:19.880 --> 0:04:24.480 navigating Robert Peel's legacy, and not all of it was good. 0:04:26.720 --> 0:04:54.880 This is unobscured. I'm Aaron Manky. A lot had changed 0:04:55.720 --> 0:04:58.919 before Robert Peel remade the London Police. According to his 0:04:59.040 --> 0:05:02.080 modern plan. The city was patrolled by a patchwork of 0:05:02.160 --> 0:05:06.960 parish beatles, elected constables, deputies, and night watchmen. The roots 0:05:06.960 --> 0:05:09.039 went back to a time when tenant farmers took on 0:05:09.080 --> 0:05:12.080 the task of what was referred to as controlling and 0:05:12.120 --> 0:05:17.120 reforming the ungodly. Early parish policing wasn't so much about 0:05:17.200 --> 0:05:20.920 enforcing crown law. That was the work of sheriffs. Instead, 0:05:21.000 --> 0:05:24.320 it was about things like enforcing church attendance. What did 0:05:24.320 --> 0:05:27.400 that mean for these predecessors of the police, Well, in 0:05:27.600 --> 0:05:30.159 one significant way, it meant that some of these jobs 0:05:30.160 --> 0:05:34.800 were unpaid. Punishing people for swearing, drunkenness and vagrancy was 0:05:34.920 --> 0:05:38.159 a service to God, after all, and people shouldn't expect 0:05:38.200 --> 0:05:41.720 to be paid for that right. Other policing roles, while 0:05:41.839 --> 0:05:45.240 less connected to the church, were no less burdensome. For 0:05:45.279 --> 0:05:46.960 a while, there was even a market in what we're 0:05:47.000 --> 0:05:49.919 called Tiburn tickets, the rewards that were given out for 0:05:50.000 --> 0:05:53.799 prosecuting someone with a felony. If that person was convicted 0:05:53.839 --> 0:05:57.400 and executed, a Tiburn ticket was awarded to the person 0:05:57.440 --> 0:05:59.799 who had made the arrest, and then the ticket holder 0:05:59.880 --> 0:06:02.760 was exempt from future duties in the parish. As you 0:06:02.800 --> 0:06:07.039 can imagine that made those tickets quite valuable to get 0:06:07.040 --> 0:06:10.039 out of the job. Wealthy Londoners would pay handsomely for 0:06:10.120 --> 0:06:13.040 a ticket that someone else had earned, and the ticket 0:06:13.080 --> 0:06:15.800 holders knew they had something valuable on their hands. They 0:06:15.839 --> 0:06:19.680 would even advertise them in the papers. In eighteen eighteen one, 0:06:19.680 --> 0:06:23.800 tickets sold in Manchester for two pounds. By one estimate, 0:06:23.880 --> 0:06:28.080 that's roughly twenty five thousand pounds today, and the get 0:06:28.120 --> 0:06:30.680 out of work tickets weren't the only things for sale 0:06:31.080 --> 0:06:34.440 in London. The Nightly Watch in particular, earned themselves a 0:06:34.440 --> 0:06:37.560 reputation for being in the pockets of anyone wanting to 0:06:37.600 --> 0:06:40.640 get away with something nefarious under the cover of darkness. 0:06:41.040 --> 0:06:45.440 Some even spent their nighttime hours avoiding dangerous situations entirely 0:06:46.640 --> 0:06:49.080 so when it came to protecting the property of the wealthy, 0:06:49.200 --> 0:06:52.000 there was really no police force to rely on. That 0:06:52.120 --> 0:06:55.240 led to even more armed forces popping up in the city. 0:06:55.320 --> 0:06:58.159 For instance, along the banks of the River Thames, rich 0:06:58.240 --> 0:07:01.479 merchants would organize their own security forces to protect the 0:07:01.520 --> 0:07:06.360 merchandise in their ships and warehouses. So much for preventing crime, 0:07:06.600 --> 0:07:08.800 but when it came to solving London crying before the 0:07:08.839 --> 0:07:12.280 eighteen hundreds, while there were the Bow Street Runners. They 0:07:12.280 --> 0:07:15.640 were a professional group of detectives originally formed by the 0:07:15.680 --> 0:07:19.160 parish magistrate to guard against highwaymen on the main roads 0:07:19.160 --> 0:07:22.920 into London. They made their money chasing rewards for crime solved, 0:07:23.360 --> 0:07:25.560 but in the early years of the New century they 0:07:25.600 --> 0:07:30.960 were also caught collecting rewards for crimes they committed. Clearly, 0:07:31.040 --> 0:07:33.280 there was something deeply wrong with the way the city 0:07:33.320 --> 0:07:36.960 was patrolled and crime was managed. With London growing, all 0:07:37.000 --> 0:07:40.200 those mercenaries riding out from bow Streets and the parish 0:07:40.280 --> 0:07:44.360 constables marching their neighborhoods made a muddle of either preventing 0:07:44.480 --> 0:07:48.600 or solving crime. But Robert Peel's ideas were battle tested. 0:07:48.920 --> 0:07:52.200 After all, he developed his system for controlling a population 0:07:52.280 --> 0:07:55.520 with police just next door. In the decade before he 0:07:55.560 --> 0:07:57.920 got his reform passed, he was honing it to a 0:07:57.960 --> 0:08:03.280 sharp point in Ireland. That's where the traditional authorities the 0:08:03.360 --> 0:08:06.800 landed gentry, had been failing to control the world poor. 0:08:07.240 --> 0:08:11.040 A seventeen eighty nine rebellion had shocked the British aristocracy. 0:08:11.440 --> 0:08:13.880 It was caused by a deep depression and the collapse 0:08:13.880 --> 0:08:17.560 of prices for farm products. Before the rural poor had 0:08:17.560 --> 0:08:19.920 not owned their land, but now they didn't even have 0:08:19.960 --> 0:08:22.480 a way to make a living. But the British government 0:08:22.520 --> 0:08:25.640 decided that rather than address the problem's root cause, they 0:08:25.680 --> 0:08:28.880 needed new means of social control, so they gave the 0:08:28.960 --> 0:08:33.040 job to Robert Peel. His diagnosis was brimming with the 0:08:33.160 --> 0:08:38.079 typical condescending prejudice. Rather than seeing an island of dispossessed people, 0:08:38.200 --> 0:08:42.760 he instead saw the irishman's natural predilection for outrage and 0:08:42.880 --> 0:08:46.319 lawless life. So he created what he called a peace 0:08:46.400 --> 0:08:50.360 preservation force to discipline what he called the morally depraved 0:08:50.400 --> 0:08:53.440 of the lower orders. What a pedestal you must have 0:08:53.440 --> 0:08:57.679 placed himself on. When they marched out into Ireland, Robert 0:08:57.679 --> 0:09:01.160 Peel's constables were mocked using his name aim The Irish 0:09:01.160 --> 0:09:05.440 residents called his forces bobbies after Roberts and Peelers. That 0:09:05.520 --> 0:09:08.960 makes sense. Those names stuck too, and came back to London. 0:09:09.000 --> 0:09:12.400 When Peel's model for cudgeling the Irish poor was returned 0:09:12.480 --> 0:09:15.040 to England, he came home to find that from his 0:09:15.120 --> 0:09:18.000 perch it looked like there were lower orders in London 0:09:18.120 --> 0:09:22.600 as well as in Ireland. When Robert Peel's bill passed 0:09:22.600 --> 0:09:26.040 in eighteen twenty nine. It created a unified, centralized force 0:09:26.080 --> 0:09:29.640 of policemen, all gathered in London under his command. Their 0:09:29.760 --> 0:09:32.600 orders were to prevent crime, but they weren't very well 0:09:32.600 --> 0:09:35.720 received by some Londoners from the beginning. One of the 0:09:35.760 --> 0:09:38.840 complaints against them was that they were outsiders, pushing out 0:09:38.880 --> 0:09:42.560 the old neighborhood watchman and replacing him with unfamiliar oaths 0:09:42.559 --> 0:09:45.720 and bullies. One east Ender said in disgust that his 0:09:45.800 --> 0:09:49.040 hatred for the Bobby's was because they were and my quote, 0:09:49.400 --> 0:09:54.040 red hot Irishman just imported they were strangers, They didn't 0:09:54.040 --> 0:09:57.880 know the city they brought their clubs down upon. There 0:09:57.920 --> 0:09:59.920 may have been some element of truth to that too. 0:10:00.480 --> 0:10:02.800 Even towards the end of the eighteen hundreds, only one 0:10:02.840 --> 0:10:05.439 out of every six police in London had been born 0:10:05.520 --> 0:10:09.080 in this city, and that included Chief Inspector Donald Swanson. 0:10:09.920 --> 0:10:12.400 His family, you see, it was from Scotland, and there 0:10:12.400 --> 0:10:15.640 were plenty of Scots in London's Metropolitan Police. But there 0:10:15.640 --> 0:10:19.520 were things that made Swanson unique as well. Here's Adam Wood. 0:10:19.600 --> 0:10:25.880 Once again, Swanson nothing perhaps uniquely among policemen of that time. 0:10:26.000 --> 0:10:28.360 A lot of what comfortables joined the police were from 0:10:28.360 --> 0:10:31.760 out of London laborers or farm workers, and came looking 0:10:31.800 --> 0:10:34.040 for a regular work, which the police obviously was at 0:10:34.080 --> 0:10:37.920 that time. But Swanson was born to a brewing family. Eventually, 0:10:37.960 --> 0:10:41.280 by Tommy was sixteen, he became a second master at 0:10:41.280 --> 0:10:43.320 the Miller Institute, which is the school he was in, 0:10:43.480 --> 0:10:46.040 assisting the head teacher, and it looked as though he 0:10:46.080 --> 0:10:49.520 had a career marked out in education. I don't know whether, 0:10:49.720 --> 0:10:51.680 as I said, Donald just gave up turned his back 0:10:51.720 --> 0:10:55.800 on a educational career, or he went to London to 0:10:56.080 --> 0:10:59.079 support the family, which I suspect may have been the case. 0:10:59.679 --> 0:11:02.560 He got a job quite quickly in the offices of 0:11:02.600 --> 0:11:05.520 the City Clock, just as a general clock, nothing too 0:11:05.520 --> 0:11:09.040 strain uous, but again some degree of intelligence was required. 0:11:10.360 --> 0:11:12.960 Swanson put that intelligence to work when the company he 0:11:13.040 --> 0:11:15.840 was clerking for closed down. That's when he picked up 0:11:15.840 --> 0:11:19.040 the paper and browsed the job advertisements, and a position 0:11:19.040 --> 0:11:22.480 in the Metropolitan Police caught his eye. You see, Donald's 0:11:22.520 --> 0:11:25.200 oldest brother had served on the City of London Police 0:11:25.200 --> 0:11:27.520 force for a time before moving back to Scotland to 0:11:27.600 --> 0:11:30.760 do the same in Edinburgh, and for him policing became 0:11:30.800 --> 0:11:34.160 a profitable career, so Donald decided to follow in his 0:11:34.200 --> 0:11:37.920 brother's footsteps. He wrote in an answer to the advertisements, 0:11:38.240 --> 0:11:41.520 after passing an examination with flying colors, he had three 0:11:41.559 --> 0:11:45.200 weeks of drill training and that's all it took. In 0:11:45.280 --> 0:11:49.000 less than a month. Donald Swanson was a London Bobby. 0:11:53.760 --> 0:11:57.000 If we peel back the layers, there's a lot to criticize, 0:11:57.400 --> 0:12:00.240 because right from the beginning the new unified police force 0:12:00.360 --> 0:12:02.800 didn't quite live up to the neats and tidy plan. 0:12:03.320 --> 0:12:05.840 They were supposed to reform and replace a group of 0:12:05.880 --> 0:12:08.560 bullies who were easily paid off, But right out the 0:12:08.600 --> 0:12:13.280 gates the Bobbies earned themselves a bad reputation. First there 0:12:13.280 --> 0:12:16.440 were the arrests on flimsy evidence. It's true that a 0:12:16.440 --> 0:12:18.920 lot of the new policemen were brought in from outside 0:12:18.920 --> 0:12:21.360 the city and they took to nabbing people on the 0:12:21.360 --> 0:12:23.920 streets just for being near the scene of a crime. 0:12:24.400 --> 0:12:28.000 Then there was the slow realization that these new policemen, well, 0:12:28.040 --> 0:12:32.200 they developed a bad habit of abusing that power. After 0:12:32.280 --> 0:12:35.320 one constable was caught stealing mutton from a neighborhood butcher, 0:12:35.400 --> 0:12:38.440 patrolman across the city were met with mocking cries of 0:12:38.520 --> 0:12:41.800 who stole the Mutton. After all, the bobbies were supposed 0:12:41.840 --> 0:12:45.320 to prevent crime, not perpetrated. But it wasn't just a 0:12:45.400 --> 0:12:48.559 leg of lamb that uniform bullies felt themselves entitled to. 0:12:48.920 --> 0:12:51.760 There was also their relationship to London's world of vice. 0:12:52.240 --> 0:12:56.320 Although under most circumstances prostitution was not actually illegal for 0:12:56.400 --> 0:12:58.760 most of the century, there were still plenty of ways 0:12:58.800 --> 0:13:01.960 that the new constables could make life hell for sex workers. 0:13:02.320 --> 0:13:04.679 Only a few of the stories filtered up to London's 0:13:04.720 --> 0:13:07.480 reading public before the end of the century, though, and 0:13:07.520 --> 0:13:10.000 at the time it was clear most of the wealthy 0:13:10.080 --> 0:13:13.000 and middle class London liked it that way. They were 0:13:13.040 --> 0:13:15.520 okay with their new bobbies bringing the club down on 0:13:15.559 --> 0:13:18.160 the London poor as long as they could look the 0:13:18.200 --> 0:13:20.960 other way, as long as it kept them in their place. 0:13:22.480 --> 0:13:25.200 There aren't stories of Swanson indulging in the worst of 0:13:25.200 --> 0:13:28.480 these excesses. The worst reprimand he received in his days 0:13:28.480 --> 0:13:31.160 as a constable was for drinking on the job, but 0:13:31.240 --> 0:13:33.120 there's no doubt that he was part of the effort 0:13:33.160 --> 0:13:35.640 to clean up the West End. He had been on 0:13:35.679 --> 0:13:38.240 the force for three years when he and Aberline made 0:13:38.240 --> 0:13:41.960 their undercover raid on the illegal theater in eighteen seventy one. 0:13:42.360 --> 0:13:44.920 It was part of police operations that would push most 0:13:44.960 --> 0:13:49.440 sex workers out of haymarkets by eighteen seventy four, and 0:13:49.520 --> 0:13:52.439 it was the kind of operation that made Swanson's intelligence 0:13:52.559 --> 0:13:55.280 stand out from the pack. He was only a constable, 0:13:55.440 --> 0:13:58.400 but his plain clothes work didn't go unnoticed. It made 0:13:58.480 --> 0:14:01.200 him material to be lifted from ranks of peelers on 0:14:01.240 --> 0:14:04.760 the streets into the hallowed rooms at Whitehall, where professional 0:14:04.840 --> 0:14:07.160 sleuths took up the mantle of crime serving from the 0:14:07.160 --> 0:14:10.920 Bow Street runners in the early eighteen forties. But the 0:14:10.960 --> 0:14:13.680 decade when Swanson joined the detectives is one that would 0:14:13.679 --> 0:14:16.000 give them quite a bad name. You see, they had 0:14:16.000 --> 0:14:19.280 more power than the Bobby's naturally, and in eighteen seventy 0:14:19.320 --> 0:14:21.240 seven word got out that they had been using that 0:14:21.360 --> 0:14:24.200 power for evil in what became known as the turf 0:14:24.320 --> 0:14:28.360 Fraud scandal. Here's Adam Wood once again. Well. The turf 0:14:28.400 --> 0:14:30.880 Fraud was a long running scam in which a London 0:14:30.920 --> 0:14:33.400 gang committed a fraud on a rich French widow that 0:14:33.520 --> 0:14:36.840 Superintendent Frederick Williamson of the Detective Department sent his best 0:14:36.880 --> 0:14:39.680 men to investigate. But for some reason, the gang always 0:14:39.720 --> 0:14:42.320 seemed to be one step ahead and avoided arrest. They're 0:14:42.320 --> 0:14:44.480 eventually captured and sent to prison, but one of them 0:14:44.480 --> 0:14:46.480 then wrote to the government revealing the reason that had 0:14:46.480 --> 0:14:49.080 been so difficult to arrest was that the detectives had 0:14:49.080 --> 0:14:51.280 been bribed to warn them when the police were getting close. 0:14:51.560 --> 0:14:54.880 Free detectives from the department and one corrupt solicitor were 0:14:54.920 --> 0:14:57.360 put on China found guilty as you say in eighteen 0:14:57.400 --> 0:14:59.680 seventy seven, and the result was that the Detective Department 0:14:59.720 --> 0:15:02.880 of School and Joad was completely disbanded and replaced by 0:15:02.920 --> 0:15:06.240 a new system called the Criminal Investigation Department or the CID. 0:15:07.120 --> 0:15:08.840 All of the detectives who had served in the old 0:15:08.880 --> 0:15:12.400 department that not being arrested replaced on Freemont's proviation, had 0:15:12.440 --> 0:15:16.080 to prove they could be trusted. Luckily, for Donald, he'd 0:15:16.080 --> 0:15:18.920 only been appointed to detectives two weeks before the discovery 0:15:18.920 --> 0:15:21.160 of the turf fraud, so he cannot have been evolved 0:15:21.160 --> 0:15:24.480 in the cover up by the corrupt detectives. Needless to say, 0:15:24.520 --> 0:15:27.560 it was a massive disgrace for the detectives, and make 0:15:27.640 --> 0:15:30.600 no mistake about it, it was noticed by all of London. 0:15:31.000 --> 0:15:33.160 After all, it had begun in the papers as a 0:15:33.200 --> 0:15:37.040 fraudulent advertisement. That's what lured in the French Widow along 0:15:37.040 --> 0:15:40.960 with other Parisians. Now the papers said things like the 0:15:41.000 --> 0:15:44.080 detective service has broken down and is no longer to 0:15:44.160 --> 0:15:47.200 be relied upon. The call came from all sides to 0:15:47.360 --> 0:15:50.320 overhaul the force, which included the new c I D 0:15:50.440 --> 0:15:53.920 in eight seventy eight, just ten years before the Whitechapel 0:15:54.000 --> 0:15:57.080 murders began, and Donald Spanson would be one of the 0:15:57.080 --> 0:16:00.280 men responsible for that work. But if London was a 0:16:00.280 --> 0:16:03.960 place where established people like Donald could remake themselves into 0:16:04.000 --> 0:16:08.200 something new, it wasn't that easy for everyone. But sometimes 0:16:08.240 --> 0:16:19.640 even newcomers needed a shot at remaking London. The police 0:16:19.800 --> 0:16:23.320 were called missionaries. They were bringing the gospel of British 0:16:23.320 --> 0:16:27.040 middle class refinements to the undisciplined mass of London's poor. 0:16:27.640 --> 0:16:30.480 At least that was the idea. If we think about 0:16:30.520 --> 0:16:33.360 the legacy of violence and corruption that the early Bobbies 0:16:33.480 --> 0:16:36.400 or the turf fraud scandal left behind, then that kind 0:16:36.400 --> 0:16:39.560 of praise might sound contrived. But then there's the equally 0:16:39.560 --> 0:16:42.680 ironic fact that when it came to London, missionaries, perhaps 0:16:42.720 --> 0:16:46.680 the most famous group called themselves an army and in 0:16:46.720 --> 0:16:50.040 August of eight seventy eight, William and Catherine Booth summoned 0:16:50.040 --> 0:16:52.360 them to a war congress in the East End to 0:16:52.520 --> 0:16:56.120 plan his campaign. That's when they founded the Salvation Army 0:16:56.480 --> 0:17:01.480 right there in Whitechapel. Here's Dr Drew Gray. If we're 0:17:01.520 --> 0:17:05.119 sending missionaries out to Africa, you know, we're sending the 0:17:05.160 --> 0:17:08.840 likes of Stanley and Livingstone. There's kind of explorers come 0:17:09.359 --> 0:17:13.320 missionaries to bring the word of It's not just the 0:17:13.400 --> 0:17:15.359 word of God, is it. It's the word of white 0:17:15.359 --> 0:17:22.520 civilization two so called uncivilized African tribes in that terribly 0:17:22.560 --> 0:17:26.040 imperialistic way that was such a feature of the nineteenth century. 0:17:26.200 --> 0:17:28.840 But if you're going to do that in Africa, then 0:17:28.920 --> 0:17:32.639 surely you need missionaries to go out to White Chapel 0:17:32.680 --> 0:17:36.200 and Spittlefields, and then down below the river south of 0:17:36.200 --> 0:17:39.679 the River into the Borough and Southolk Burman's in places 0:17:39.840 --> 0:17:43.320 that way. Similarly, it looks like the world has been neglected. 0:17:43.720 --> 0:17:46.679 It looks like Christ is not permeating into those parts 0:17:46.720 --> 0:17:51.800 of the empire. Like the detectives at the New c I. D. 0:17:52.040 --> 0:17:55.080 William and Catherine Booth had ten years to transform the 0:17:55.080 --> 0:17:58.200 neighborhood before it's the darkest chapter would begin. Of course, 0:17:58.240 --> 0:17:59.879 there was no way for him to know that at 0:17:59.880 --> 0:18:01.879 the time. But if you told William Booth that a 0:18:01.960 --> 0:18:04.880 remorseless killer would soon be carrying out his brutal plan 0:18:04.960 --> 0:18:08.960 in Whitechapel, William wouldn't have been surprised. In fact, he 0:18:09.040 --> 0:18:11.879 did know London well. He arrived in the city in 0:18:12.000 --> 0:18:15.240 eighteen forty nine, and together William and Catherine had been 0:18:15.280 --> 0:18:18.719 preaching hell, fire and damnation in East London since eighteen 0:18:18.760 --> 0:18:22.000 sixty five, when they founded the East London Christian Mission. 0:18:22.320 --> 0:18:25.080 When they rebranded their work as the Salvation Army in 0:18:25.119 --> 0:18:28.560 eighteen seventy eight. There were ways that they reinforced middle 0:18:28.600 --> 0:18:31.439 class values. They wanted the London poor to look a 0:18:31.440 --> 0:18:34.280 lot more like the sober and orderly families of those 0:18:34.320 --> 0:18:36.720 with money. But they also knew what it took to 0:18:36.760 --> 0:18:39.400 reach East London with their message, and that meant they 0:18:39.400 --> 0:18:42.720 sometimes offended the middle class notions of what was proper 0:18:42.760 --> 0:18:47.120 and respectable. First of all, there were the Hallelujah lasses 0:18:47.520 --> 0:18:50.800 that was the nickname for Salvation Army women, and starting 0:18:50.800 --> 0:18:53.639 with Catherine Booth, they were out there preaching right alongside 0:18:53.680 --> 0:18:56.439 the men. Then there was the music, the thing for 0:18:56.440 --> 0:18:58.879 which the Salvation Army would become best known in the 0:18:58.920 --> 0:19:02.199 East End. They were singing religious songs, for sure, but 0:19:02.320 --> 0:19:04.760 those songs were set to the tunes of the popular 0:19:04.840 --> 0:19:07.080 music that match women out on the town would have 0:19:07.119 --> 0:19:10.640 heard in London's music halls. Even the advertisements for their 0:19:10.640 --> 0:19:15.280 gatherings borrowed designs from circus posters and newspaper advertisements, and 0:19:15.280 --> 0:19:18.159 they were posted up in places like pubs, music halls 0:19:18.200 --> 0:19:22.320 and coffee shops, anywhere that dock workers, costermongers and bookies 0:19:22.359 --> 0:19:25.359 taking bets would likely see them. So by the eighteen 0:19:25.400 --> 0:19:28.680 eighties the Salvation Army had something of a bad reputation 0:19:28.760 --> 0:19:32.520 among wealthy Christians, who thought that Christianity was only true 0:19:32.600 --> 0:19:35.920 if it was suitably reverent and refined. But they took 0:19:35.920 --> 0:19:39.720 criticism from other directions too. Years more from Dr Drew 0:19:39.760 --> 0:19:44.240 Gray and then they were former Methodists, and they wanted 0:19:44.240 --> 0:19:48.639 to bring religion and abstinence from alcohol to the people 0:19:48.680 --> 0:19:52.359 of the East End. They operated by holding large public 0:19:52.400 --> 0:19:57.760 meetings and organizing marches true communities. These marches are accompanied 0:19:57.760 --> 0:20:01.640 by brass bands made up of members. There's a military 0:20:01.760 --> 0:20:05.160 system of organizations, so General Booth is at the head, 0:20:05.200 --> 0:20:08.280 and they have soldiers, and of course they distribute their 0:20:08.320 --> 0:20:12.280 weekly newspaper, the War Cry, on the streets and by 0:20:12.280 --> 0:20:15.040 going into public houses. And they brought their kind of 0:20:15.119 --> 0:20:19.000 brand of religious further into communities like Whitechapel, which often 0:20:19.080 --> 0:20:21.480 drew down quite a lot of abuse and ridicule from 0:20:21.480 --> 0:20:24.280 the locals, and they might not have listened to the 0:20:24.359 --> 0:20:27.920 rhetoric that they were putting out their Christian vision. And 0:20:28.040 --> 0:20:33.239 you quite often find Salvationists being brought before magistrates by 0:20:33.280 --> 0:20:36.679 the police for causing a nistance, not causing an obstruction. 0:20:37.280 --> 0:20:40.400 But they're clearly people who were driven by a very 0:20:40.480 --> 0:20:45.200 strong religious beliefs to affect change in the communities they 0:20:45.280 --> 0:20:50.480 see that are so blighted by alcohol and poverty, crime 0:20:50.520 --> 0:20:55.240 and homelessness. So the Salvation Army had a complicated relationship 0:20:55.280 --> 0:20:58.480 with their Eastern neighbors. There's no question they were motivated 0:20:58.520 --> 0:21:01.119 to help with the misery and suff weren of desperate people, 0:21:01.480 --> 0:21:04.680 and we can easily share the compassion that reformers felt 0:21:04.680 --> 0:21:07.520 for people whose homes had been smashed to make way 0:21:07.560 --> 0:21:10.240 for London's new buildings, or who had come in from 0:21:10.240 --> 0:21:12.920 the countryside looking for jobs only to find that many 0:21:12.960 --> 0:21:15.840 of the city's businesses just wanted to chew them up 0:21:15.840 --> 0:21:18.280 and spit them out for the benefit of London Banks, 0:21:19.520 --> 0:21:22.040 And as we explored in the last episode, there was 0:21:22.080 --> 0:21:24.639 a lot of confusion about the difference between a working 0:21:24.680 --> 0:21:28.000 woman and a working woman and whatever they were actually 0:21:28.000 --> 0:21:30.800 preaching in their sermons. The message that came through from 0:21:30.840 --> 0:21:33.480 the Salvation Army was that the way to raise yourself 0:21:33.480 --> 0:21:36.480 out of poverty was to first transform your inner life, 0:21:36.760 --> 0:21:39.320 to remake yourself. But if part of what a woman 0:21:39.359 --> 0:21:42.000 in the East End was supposed to do was stopped working, 0:21:42.359 --> 0:21:45.040 how could they have any life to speak of? Now? 0:21:45.080 --> 0:21:48.160 Some East End women, like the matchwoman Mary Driscoll, had 0:21:48.200 --> 0:21:51.320 what you might call an interesting relationship with anti vice 0:21:51.400 --> 0:21:54.680 campaigners like the Salvation Army. Even if she didn't love 0:21:54.720 --> 0:21:57.399 working for Bryant and May in their match factory, that 0:21:57.440 --> 0:21:59.720 didn't mean she would fully embrace the message of the 0:21:59.720 --> 0:22:02.320 angelists in her neighborhood who were telling her to quit 0:22:02.400 --> 0:22:05.879 working for a living, let alone, to abandon her Catholic faith. 0:22:06.440 --> 0:22:08.919 Like many of the match women, Mary Driscoll was an 0:22:08.960 --> 0:22:12.480 Irish Catholic, but that didn't mean she rejected everything about 0:22:12.520 --> 0:22:17.160 their ministry. In East London. Here's Dr Louise ra There 0:22:17.160 --> 0:22:19.080 were no flies on marriage. She was a very clever 0:22:19.119 --> 0:22:22.439 woman and like all Eastern moms, she did whatever she 0:22:22.480 --> 0:22:25.760 had to do to survive. And the Salvation Army, the 0:22:25.880 --> 0:22:29.479 Sally Anne was some of the people that would do 0:22:29.560 --> 0:22:33.440 good work amongst the poor and crucially ran soup kitchens 0:22:33.600 --> 0:22:36.480 and would give out soup and give out free food 0:22:37.400 --> 0:22:40.720 and mary. But only if you were, you know, a 0:22:40.760 --> 0:22:42.960 good Protestant. They were not in the business of giving 0:22:43.000 --> 0:22:47.520 it out to Jewish people of Catholic people. So Mary 0:22:47.840 --> 0:22:52.560 trained all her children to sing Salvation Army hymns and 0:22:52.600 --> 0:22:55.720 they would go along to these soup kitchens sing these hymns, 0:22:55.720 --> 0:22:58.520 you know, passionately pretend to be religious. A Salvation Army 0:22:58.480 --> 0:23:01.919