Speaker 1: Pushkin. This episode contains depictions of sexual assault that some
Speaker 1: listeners may find upsetting. Eighteen year old night porter John
Speaker 1: Shine is navigating one of the narrow and twisting backstreets
Speaker 1: of Piccadilly. It's pitch black. Ah, you've got to let
Speaker 1: me make last year. No, I already told you. I'm
Speaker 1: not going to let you up. Ahead in the darkness,
Speaker 1: there are unseen people. Shine can hear a rustling noise
Speaker 1: from doorway. The beam of a flashlight darts for a moment,
Speaker 1: but is there extinguished. As the teenager draws closer, the
Speaker 1: light comes on again and illuminates the legs of a
Speaker 1: woman lying on the ground. The person holding the flashlight
Speaker 1: drops something and disappears. Around a corner. Shine lights a match.
Speaker 1: What's wrong, he asked the woman sprawled at his feet.
Speaker 1: Gretta Heyward has been choked into unconsciousness. As she slowly
Speaker 1: comes round, she tries to talk, but no words come out. Well,
Speaker 1: anybody help. Gretta's face is bloodied and dirty. Her clothes
Speaker 1: are ripped, her buttons torn away, her skirt pushed high
Speaker 1: up towards her waist. Answering Shine's cries for assistance, a
Speaker 1: passer by with a flashlight arrived. I just saw her
Speaker 1: drinking with an erman. Shine helps Gretta to her feet,
Speaker 1: still unsteady, he leans her against the wall. He again
Speaker 1: asks how she is, but she seems not to comprehend him.
Speaker 1: My bag hit done. Wanting to get her to a
Speaker 1: police station as quickly as possible, the young night porter
Speaker 1: scans the ground around them for Gretta's handbag that sees
Speaker 1: only her gloves, and an airman's have a sack containing
Speaker 1: a gas mask inside. Scribbled in indelible ink is the
Speaker 1: owner's service number five two, five nine eight seven, and
Speaker 1: the number of leads to a name. The Blackout ripper
Speaker 1: is twenty seven year old Gordon Frederick Cummons. Barely thirty
Speaker 1: minutes after Gretta Hayward was forced into that darkened doorway,
Speaker 1: detectives are calling the nearby Royal Air Force Base and
Speaker 1: demanding that Cummings be arrested on site, But the airman
Speaker 1: isn't headed back to barracks. His night on the town
Speaker 1: has only just begun. Hello, would you like to go
Speaker 1: with me? Yes? For two pounds exactly. This is the
Speaker 1: seldom told story of women in World War Two who
Speaker 1: 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 Fines, and you're listening to bad women. The
Speaker 1: Blackout Ripper. Greta Hayward's welts and contusions were still forming
Speaker 1: as doctor Alexander Baldy appraised her injuries at west End
Speaker 1: Central Police Station. As the Metropolitan Forces Divisional Surgeon for
Speaker 1: the area, Doctor Baldy was called on to examine all
Speaker 1: of Cummings victims. He remembered vividly the icy cold of
Speaker 1: the bleak air Raid shelter where Evelyn Hamilton lay in
Speaker 1: Evelyn Oatley's gloomy subdivided room on Wardour Street. Baldy had
Speaker 1: needed a flashlight to help him determine her time of death.
Speaker 1: Margaret Lowe's body was awaiting discovery in her flat on
Speaker 1: Gosfield Street. The doctor would attend to that soon. In
Speaker 1: Greta Hayward's case, doctor Baldy was able to match testimony
Speaker 1: to Bruce's and abrasions on living flesh her left eyebrow
Speaker 1: and cheek were injured, but it was the redness and
Speaker 1: discoloration across the left side of her neck that pointed
Speaker 1: to the blackout ripper's telltale preference for strangling his victims.
Speaker 1: The police surgeon judged that Greta's marks were consistent with
Speaker 1: her allegations of being grasped by the throat. Greta shared
Speaker 1: her story of meeting Comings at the Brasserie Universal. She
Speaker 1: told of his insistence that they head outside to another
Speaker 1: venue and his persistence that she relent and allow him
Speaker 1: to have sex with her. She recalled how in the
Speaker 1: blacked out streets he'd forced her into the doorway and
Speaker 1: begun to sexually assault her, how he'd counted her attempts
Speaker 1: to resist by grabbing her throat and squeezing tighter and tighter.
Speaker 1: It was saying something all the time, but I can't
Speaker 1: remember what it was. I do you remember that? Some
Speaker 1: of the words were you won't, you won't. Gretta's next
Speaker 1: memory was of regaining consciousness with young John Shine standing
Speaker 1: over her. The teenager had not been able to find
Speaker 1: Gretta's handbag, but a police constable returned to the scene
Speaker 1: of her ordeal to retrieve it. I had attentionally note
Speaker 1: and about five shinings in silver. I also had my
Speaker 1: Russian book, keys and letters in there. The handbag when
Speaker 1: it was returned to Gretta was empty. Cummings delighted in
Speaker 1: robbing his victims, taking money to add to his already
Speaker 1: bulging bank roll, but also seeking out trophies to keep
Speaker 1: mementos of his murders. Had Cummings been ransacking Gretta's purse
Speaker 1: when John Shine disturbed him, had the Airman's greed momentarily
Speaker 1: diverted him and stopped him, finishing Gretta off. Whatever happened
Speaker 1: in those few moments between Gretta passing out and John
Speaker 1: Shine scaring comings away, the attack was a breakthrough for
Speaker 1: the police hunting the Blackout Ripper. The havasak he'd left
Speaker 1: behind revealed his identity. It had a serial number inside,
Speaker 1: but it also linked comings to other crime scenes in
Speaker 1: the police laboratory. Dust and dirt residues from the air
Speaker 1: raid shelter where a pharmacist, Evelyn Hamilton was killed, were
Speaker 1: compared to traces on the gas masked bag and found
Speaker 1: to have a similar appearance and the same characteristics. Unlike
Speaker 1: the women killed by Commings. The police did little to
Speaker 1: explore the background of Gretta Heyward. Her witness statements off
Speaker 1: a few biographical details, save that she was married but
Speaker 1: living apart from her husband, and that her date that
Speaker 1: evening was an army officer she'd been meeting by appointment
Speaker 1: since before Chris. Detectives seem to have thought it wasn't
Speaker 1: worth finding this captain or delving into Gretta's marital problems,
Speaker 1: and other official records shed precious little light on the
Speaker 1: life of Margaret Mary Teresa Heywood. Gretta's marriage certificate suggests
Speaker 1: that she was born in nineteen oh seven, that her
Speaker 1: maiden name was Keen, and that her father was a dancer.
Speaker 1: No other trace of her exists in the records, not
Speaker 1: of her birth nor of her upbringing. However, Gretta's marital
Speaker 1: troubles can be pieced together from archival fragments. Her husband,
Speaker 1: Henry A. Bank Clark, seems to have been residing with
Speaker 1: a woman in her early twenties, a full decade younger
Speaker 1: than Gretta. The couple had not wed, but were living
Speaker 1: as man and wife and already had a baby girl together.
Speaker 1: Cumming's attack on. Gretta had been vicious and determined, and
Speaker 1: as she at with police detectives, she admitted to feeling
Speaker 1: very bad. Sitting across from Greta that night was Detective
Speaker 1: Sergeant Amy Eetridge, one of the most senior women in
Speaker 1: the entire London force. Back in the nineteen twenties, Amy
Speaker 1: had swapped a bank position for a job that would
Speaker 1: offer her the open air life. Her days as a
Speaker 1: beat cop were far behind her, and now she investigated
Speaker 1: some of the most serious crimes in the West End.
Speaker 1: The newspapers called her a heroine who gently outwitted the
Speaker 1: bad men of the district. Is not unusual for me
Speaker 1: to be working all night, said the detective, and that
Speaker 1: night seemed to be no exception. The Blackout Ripper was
Speaker 1: somewhere out there in the dark, still at large, still
Speaker 1: a deadly threat to women, but the police now had
Speaker 1: a name, and thanks to Gretta a fulsome physical description.
Speaker 1: I'm sure I should recognize him again. Gretta recalled the
Speaker 1: man's height and slim build, his light blue eyes and
Speaker 1: sharp features, but his voice was what stood out. He
Speaker 1: was very well spoken. Hillare Cummings held up a lit
Speaker 1: cigarette to illuminate the face of twenty five year old
Speaker 1: Katherine Mulcahy. They stood in the darkness outside Ordnino's, a hotel,
Speaker 1: a few hundred yards from where the airmen had just
Speaker 1: throttled Gretta into unconsciousness. Would you like to go with me? Yes?
Speaker 1: For two pound? Catherine described herself as a married homemaker,
Speaker 1: but on occasion she took men back to her flat
Speaker 1: for sex, perhaps once or twice a month. She estimated
Speaker 1: that apartment was a little way distant from Piccadilly, too
Speaker 1: far to walk. Catherine tentatively raised the prospect of hailing
Speaker 1: a cab, hoping the extra expense wouldn't scare this client off.
Speaker 1: Exactly Southwick Street, driver number twenty nine, Yeah right, indigate.
Speaker 1: Perhaps impressed by the airman's posh accent and his willingness
Speaker 1: to stump up for the taxi fair, Catherine openly mused
Speaker 1: about the two pound fee she'd negotiated in haste. I
Speaker 1: wish I could do five pounds tonight. As the taxi
Speaker 1: motored west out of Piccadilly and towards the dark expanse
Speaker 1: of Hyde Park, Cummings couldn't resist once again bragging about
Speaker 1: his fat bankroll. Don't worry, I have thirty pounds on me.
Speaker 1: He peeled off three more pound notes and handed them
Speaker 1: to Catherine. This woman was now bought and paid for.
Speaker 1: He immediately knelt at her feet, pushed her skirt up,
Speaker 1: and forced his way between her thighs. The young woman
Speaker 1: protested she wanted him to stop, now, would be there
Speaker 1: in a moment, Please stop, But Cummings continued his assault,
Speaker 1: and the taxi driver likely didn't even turn around to
Speaker 1: check on the commotion. He's learned to look kind of
Speaker 1: permanently look the other way with issues like that. Historian
Speaker 1: Julia Late is an expert on the wartime sex trade.
Speaker 1: As mentioned in previous episodes, the police were cracking down
Speaker 1: on brothels and women were increasingly forced to work out
Speaker 1: of rented rooms. For those with a clientele of trusted regulars,
Speaker 1: this arrangement worked well, but if a woman was meeting
Speaker 1: a churn of servicemen on the streets, then the inconvenience
Speaker 1: of shuttling back and forth to a flat if an
Speaker 1: affordable one could be leased close to Piccadilly, was a headache,
Speaker 1: and so women would pick up clients and get into
Speaker 1: taxi cabs with them, and the taxi would drive around
Speaker 1: the block while they had sex, and then they'd get
Speaker 1: out again. The use of cabs by sex workers had
Speaker 1: been part of London life for centuries, but the introduction
Speaker 1: of sweeping emergency powers at the outbreak of the war
Speaker 1: gave the authorities new tools with which to tackle this phenomenon.
Speaker 1: They knew they couldn't call them brothels, and so they
Speaker 1: went after them with a defense of the realm AC
Speaker 1: regulation for wasting petrol. It's just the sort of eternal
Speaker 1: game of cat and mouse, and the war really puts
Speaker 1: extra pressure on both sides of that. Stop it's not decent.
Speaker 1: Sit back down beside me. The cabbies of Piccadilly were
Speaker 1: accustomed to their role in the sex trait. They kept
Speaker 1: their eyes on the road and their ears tuned to
Speaker 1: their meters, clicking up the fair not in front of
Speaker 1: the driver. What will he think? Cummings finally returned to
Speaker 1: his seat beside Catherine, just as the driver took them
Speaker 1: past Hyde Park, acre upon acre of shadowy open ground,
Speaker 1: tank old bushes and thickets of trees. The airmen suggested
Speaker 1: halting the taxi so that he could take Catherine into
Speaker 1: this black void in the heart of the city. The
Speaker 1: prospect made Catherine afraid, very afraid the Blackoutripper will return
Speaker 1: in a moment. On especially cold nights, women congregated outside
Speaker 1: the famous Dorchester Hotel on Park Lane. They came not
Speaker 1: to catch a glimpse of its celebrity guests, nor to
Speaker 1: sample its lavish amenities and the fabled Turkish baths, but
Speaker 1: for a warm air vent around the back that they
Speaker 1: nicknamed the hot Plate. Legs off, anything to take the
Speaker 1: chill from their bones before they crossed the road back
Speaker 1: into high hands, high blocks of ice. Oh my feet
Speaker 1: just can't fail them Anymore's horrible in it's so cold
Speaker 1: bloody here. And the reason they're there is because they
Speaker 1: can't afford to pay for the inside accommodation, so they're
Speaker 1: using the park as a place to have sex. London's
Speaker 1: green spaces had for centuries been associated with illicit liaisons
Speaker 1: and the professional sale of sex. You're walking the park.
Speaker 1: On the eve of war, one hotelier on the edge
Speaker 1: of Hyde Park complained in court that women selling sex
Speaker 1: outside of his establishment were scaring away guests. No I'm
Speaker 1: in a little chat, is there? Look at in. Come on,
Speaker 1: let's get in. Do you want some comp As many
Speaker 1: as twenty women had gathered nearby, and there were even
Speaker 1: going as far as to grasp at the lapels of
Speaker 1: passing men. Get your hands off me, this instant have
Speaker 1: a good mind to call the constable, But what bloody
Speaker 1: good would that do. Police efforts to crack down on
Speaker 1: the sex trade only pushed these women from bustling and
Speaker 1: well lit areas towards the unfenced and deserted park land.
Speaker 1: Bad women, said one senior officer in charge of policing
Speaker 1: Hyde Park, often migrate to hear from other districts in
Speaker 1: the hope of carrying on their immorality undetected. The blackout
Speaker 1: made detection even more unlikely, and the decision of America's
Speaker 1: General Eisenhower to set his headquarters up right beside the
Speaker 1: park flooded the area with potential clients. The women frequenting
Speaker 1: this quarter, the women who availed themselves of the hot
Speaker 1: plates occasional warmth, became mockingly known as the Hyde Park Rangers,
Speaker 1: sisters and neighbors of the Piccadilly Commandos. Not everyone viewed
Speaker 1: the situation with levity. One scandalized London newspaper dispatched a
Speaker 1: team to the park to carry out a census of
Speaker 1: the nightly activities. Within one hour of dusk, they witnessed
Speaker 1: a dozen layers ons get in the night for mate,
Speaker 1: swing your bleeding or kuperbet. Couples were lying on the grass,
Speaker 1: visible to anyone walking by. I'll pass around the air,
Speaker 1: I begin to walk taking a lathe pie and the
Speaker 1: ages of some of those involved shocked these observers. Most
Speaker 1: of the young girls described as amateurs were between fifteen
Speaker 1: and sixteen years of age. Of particular concern was the
Speaker 1: number of girls orphaned or living apart from their families
Speaker 1: who had swapped group homes or other public institutions for
Speaker 1: the excitement of Piccadilly and its environs. So these are
Speaker 1: what we would now call juvenile delinquents who are running
Speaker 1: away from the residential schools that they've been stuck into,
Speaker 1: hitchhiking down to London and hooking up with soldiers, maybe
Speaker 1: for money, maybe for just a good time. The local
Speaker 1: elected official, a former fighter pilot called Captain Cunningham Read
Speaker 1: publicized one particularly disturbing case of a vulnerable fifteen year
Speaker 1: old girl who'd fled a grim government run hostel where
Speaker 1: she was sick of being exploited for long hours of
Speaker 1: unpaid scrubbing and cleaning. There go Love. She was found
Speaker 1: drunken and capable in Hyde Park at one am. He's
Speaker 1: certainly knocking back for a young and surrounded by a
Speaker 1: group of soldiers. You'll be top top safely in big Darling. Nah.
Speaker 1: She didn't do much more fun out in the park.
Speaker 1: It was into dark and cold and lawless Hyde Park
Speaker 1: that the black up Ripper hoped to take A petrified
Speaker 1: Katherine Mulkahi. Don't be silly, She told the airmen they
Speaker 1: should stay in their taxi and keep to their original plan.
Speaker 1: Soon be in my room. The inside of the room
Speaker 1: at twenty nine Southwick Street was dark. The electric meader
Speaker 1: needed feeding, though Cummings claim not to have a spare coin,
Speaker 1: despite his protestations that they didn't need light, Katherine lit
Speaker 1: a scrap of paper. She didn't want to be in
Speaker 1: the pitch black with Cummings. Something was very wrong about
Speaker 1: this man and this transaction, and it frightened her. He'd
Speaker 1: given the money over too easily, almost as if he'd
Speaker 1: thought he'd soon get it back. Catherine's life up to
Speaker 1: this point might well have taught her to be on
Speaker 1: her guard. Those who knew her talked of her deep
Speaker 1: reserves of strength and resolve. She was born in Penny Greig,
Speaker 1: one of the famously tough coal mining communities clustered along
Speaker 1: the rendezvo Alley in South Wales. Her father had worked
Speaker 1: at one of the village's deep mines, crouching in the
Speaker 1: gloom to hack and hew away at a shining ribbon
Speaker 1: of coal, but he'd probably missed the arrival of his
Speaker 1: daughter in nineteen sixteen. On her birth certificate, he cited
Speaker 1: as a private soldier in a local Welsh regiment, likely
Speaker 1: posted far from Ronda as World War One raged. On
Speaker 1: returning to the pit in nineteen nineteen, Thomas wasn't the
Speaker 1: same man who'd left to fight in the war. He
Speaker 1: was awarded a partial pension because of a dilated heart,
Speaker 1: which had been aggravated by his time in the service.
Speaker 1: Despite this ailment, the coal hewer had little choice but
Speaker 1: to return to that underground seam and resume his backbreaking profession.
Speaker 1: Catherine grew up amid bleak slag heaps, belching chimney stacks
Speaker 1: and whirring mine shaft elevators. The economic and political drop
Speaker 1: was no less grim. Poor wages and dangerous working conditions dogged,
Speaker 1: angry disputes flared, and bitter strikes were called. In nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty one, Thomas was listed as out of work. Global
Speaker 1: coal prices had collapsed and collery owners had slashed wages
Speaker 1: in half, closed pits and sacked some rohnder Men were
Speaker 1: reduced to digging at any coal close to the surface,
Speaker 1: tunneling down to find fuel that might heat the family hearth.
Speaker 1: Thomas eventually returned to the coal mines, though at first
Speaker 1: as a mere laborer rather than as a coal hewer.
Speaker 1: It's possible that this job title reflected both a drop
Speaker 1: in wages and in status. Nineteen twenty seven brought a
Speaker 1: double tragedy. In February, tuberculosis claimed the life of Catherine's
Speaker 1: thirty one year old mother, and in Thomas's heart finally failed.
Speaker 1: Eleven year old Katherine was an orphan aged nineteen, Katherine
Speaker 1: had left the Welsh Valleys behind and was living in London,
Speaker 1: married to Patrick mulcahey, a waiter. The couple set up
Speaker 1: home north of Hyde Park, near Paddington railway station. There's
Speaker 1: no evidence that Katherine sold sex at this point, but
Speaker 1: such activities certainly weren't on heard of in the local,
Speaker 1: says Julia Late. So Paddington is it's sort of an
Speaker 1: offshoot of the West End sex trade in some ways,
Speaker 1: but it tends to be associated with what the police
Speaker 1: would call a lower class of prostitution. It tends to
Speaker 1: be associated with younger women, though not always with poorer
Speaker 1: women with lower prices. And one of the reasons for
Speaker 1: that is because there's cheaper accommodation there. There's lots of
Speaker 1: cheap hotels, there's lots of cheap furnished rooms all around
Speaker 1: that area, and there's also a lot of sort of
Speaker 1: military barrack around that area, so a lot of soldiers
Speaker 1: to sell sex too. And finally there's the park. Katherine's
Speaker 1: marriage to Patrick seems to have been on again, off
Speaker 1: again in character. During the war, she was living under
Speaker 1: an assumed name Kathleen King, and it's not clear if
Speaker 1: she shared her flat at twenty nine Southwick Street with
Speaker 1: her husband. Patrick certainly wasn't there on Thursday February twelfth,
Speaker 1: nineteen forty two, with five pounds paid and stashed away
Speaker 1: in her kitchen. Katherine now naked except for boots in
Speaker 1: her necklace, said she was anxious to get the business over. Cummins,
Speaker 1: also naked, made an odd request that Catherine lye on
Speaker 1: the floor, which she declined. She instead got into bed,
Speaker 1: hoping the sex would be over quickly. The man pressed
Speaker 1: on top of her, but instead of caressing her, he
Speaker 1: clasped his hands around Catherine's throat. His two thumbs were
Speaker 1: pressing on my windpipe. I could not make a sound.
Speaker 1: I struggled and managed to loosen his grip on my throat.
Speaker 1: Not fighting for her life, Catherine screeched for help before
Speaker 1: Cummings again clamped his hands round her neck and began
Speaker 1: to throttle her. I was still wearing my boots. I
Speaker 1: pulled my leg up high and kicked him in the stomach.
Speaker 1: Hard winded, Cummings fell off the bed, landing on his head.
Speaker 1: Catherine made a break for the door into the common stairwell. Please,
Speaker 1: Catherine implored her female neighbors to summon help, but initially
Speaker 1: they were too petrified to act. Finally, an elderly lady
Speaker 1: armed with a vase stood guard over Katherine until her
Speaker 1: client gathered his clothes. Counted out more pound notes by
Speaker 1: way of compensation, mumbled about being drunk and made to leave. Katherine,
Speaker 1: now wrapped in a tablecloth, was in no doubt about
Speaker 1: what had just happened. You're the man who've been murdering
Speaker 1: women around here, she called out, as Cummins trudged down
Speaker 1: the stairs and out into the blackout, leaving the street
Speaker 1: door open behind him. Just a few blocks away, Doris
Speaker 1: Joanna was bidding goodbye to her husband Henri at Paddington
Speaker 1: Tube station. The couple had managed to spend part of
Speaker 1: the evening together there nearby flat, but an exhausted Ennrie
Speaker 1: was now catching a train to return to work at
Speaker 1: the Royal Court Hotel. The sixty sixty year old to
Speaker 1: have been enjoying a comfortable retirement, but the couple's finances
Speaker 1: had taken a battering. Reluctantly, on Ree was spending less
Speaker 1: time with his young wife than he thought. Wives Doris,
Speaker 1: he feared, had also returned to work, in her case
Speaker 1: selling sex. This evening, Doris had wanted to get some
Speaker 1: fresh air, so she walked on Read to his tube stop.
Speaker 1: He fretted about her, and he wanted her to turn
Speaker 1: around and go straight home, but she didn't, and before
Speaker 1: reaching her front door at Sussex Gardens, she would encounter Cummings.
Speaker 1: The blackout Ripper will be back in a moment. Doris's
Speaker 1: story begins hundreds of miles from London, in a world
Speaker 1: that felt like it would never be touched by the
Speaker 1: terrors of war. Indeed, December sixteenth, nineteen fourteen, began like
Speaker 1: any other peaceful morning. The people of Hartlepool, on England's
Speaker 1: northeast coast woke to the chill winter gloom, rose from
Speaker 1: their beds and sat down to breakfast, or made their
Speaker 1: way through the misty streets, children to the classroom, adults
Speaker 1: to their places of toil. The North Sea was still
Speaker 1: shrouded in dense fog. Then something unusual flashes of light
Speaker 1: way off in the distance, illuminating that thick curtain of cloud,
Speaker 1: And was that thunder. White hot metal was raining through
Speaker 1: the air, screaming, whistling, fragmenting. As it met the wall
Speaker 1: or stone paved streets. The lethal shards sliced through brickwork, roof,
Speaker 1: timber and flesh. A single shell torn through four houses,
Speaker 1: wrecking the buildings, blasting the bodies of the people inside.
Speaker 1: One family was at their breakfast table when a shell
Speaker 1: burst to the ceiling. Seeing their daughter instantly, Another man
Speaker 1: fleeing his home found the bodies of his two little
Speaker 1: grandchildren by the front door, crushed beneath the debris of
Speaker 1: their crumbling home. Other townsfolk met their ends sleeping in
Speaker 1: their beds and were atomized along with their furniture. The
Speaker 1: hometown of eight year old Doris Robson was being pounded
Speaker 1: and pulverized by the mighty guns of three German battleships.
Speaker 1: The cowering locals feared that this was just a prelude,
Speaker 1: for the enemy was at that very moment stealing up
Speaker 1: the beach, ready to invade and capture the town. Britain
Speaker 1: had been at war with Germany for months now, but
Speaker 1: this bombardment was the first time that its civilians had
Speaker 1: come under fire, and the enemy did not discriminate little children.
Speaker 1: Doris's peers and playmates were struck down as holding hands,
Speaker 1: they ran for cover. After forty long minutes, the onslaught
Speaker 1: was over Stunned, petrified, shaken, The men, women and children
Speaker 1: of Hartleypool began to emerge from their hiding places to
Speaker 1: peer at the wreckage on Doris's street. The row of
Speaker 1: terraced houses was battered and pop marked, jagged holes gaping
Speaker 1: where once there had been walls, windows and doors. Other
Speaker 1: dwellings said the papers had been completely ripped open, and
Speaker 1: their interiors could be seen from the streets. A local
Speaker 1: gas works had also been struck and then exploded in
Speaker 1: the attack, plunging what remained of Hartlepool into darkness. That night,
Speaker 1: the Germans had not set foot on British soil, as
Speaker 1: had been feared, but more than a thousand shells had
Speaker 1: been fired. Over a hundred people were dead and hundreds
Speaker 1: more wounded, among them a large number of women and children,
Speaker 1: mostly of the poorer class. The people of Hartlepool and
Speaker 1: of two neighboring towns had tasted the horrors of modern war.
Speaker 1: The fighting had seemed distant, relegated to the battlefields of
Speaker 1: far away France and Belgium, but now they were forced
Speaker 1: to confront the distressing truth that even the barrier at
Speaker 1: the sea and the walls of their own homes could
Speaker 1: not protect them from the enemy. Recruitment drives capitalized on
Speaker 1: the devastation this bombardment had wrought enlist now and helped
Speaker 1: to avenge the murder of innocent women and children at Scarborough,
Speaker 1: Hartlepool and Whitby exhorted. The posters show the enemy that
Speaker 1: we will exact a full penalty for this cowardly slaughter.
Speaker 1: The men of Britain were being urged to defend a
Speaker 1: particular vision of the home, an idealized tableau of domesticity,
Speaker 1: with mother and children gathered round the family half. In reality,
Speaker 1: not all families, and not all lone mothers were deemed
Speaker 1: worthy of protection. It was only those women married to
Speaker 1: absent soldiers, for instance, who were eligible to receive benefit
Speaker 1: payments in the form of a separation allowance during the
Speaker 1: war years, and even they stood to forfeit that payment
Speaker 1: if it could be proven that they had committed adultery
Speaker 1: in their husband's apps. When Doris was born in March
Speaker 1: nineteen oh six, in the place on her birth certificate
Speaker 1: where her father's name ought to have been inscribed, there
Speaker 1: was simply a slash of ink. Her mother, Mary Robson,
Speaker 1: was unwed. There's a lot of prejudice against unmarried mothers.
Speaker 1: Doctor Ginger Frost is a research professor of history at
Speaker 1: Stamford University in Alabama. The assumption is that she's sexually
Speaker 1: incontinent rather than in a relationship and it failed, or
Speaker 1: something like that. Given that Hartleypool was still a relatively
Speaker 1: small town, Ginger says that Mary Robson's community would likely
Speaker 1: have known that Doris's father was absent. Both mother and
Speaker 1: child would have been shamed. There would have been whispers
Speaker 1: in the streets. Slatton and Mary might have even found
Speaker 1: it impossible to secure a job. Some women in merry
Speaker 1: situation were cast out by their families and ended up
Speaker 1: in the workhouse. Others even drowned themselves when they discovered
Speaker 1: were to have a child out of wedlock. The unmarried
Speaker 1: mother was considered a deviant and feared. Social scientists held
Speaker 1: that single mothers were feeble minded and would create morally
Speaker 1: inferior offspring. They were influenced by eugenics, the then popular
Speaker 1: pseudoscience that preach that good and bad traits could be
Speaker 1: passed from generation to generation. There is evidence that such
Speaker 1: a child is more likely to become a criminal or
Speaker 1: a prostitute than as the child born within marriage. Mary
Speaker 1: was not among those unfortunate women who were wholly rejected
Speaker 1: by their families. Prejudice against single mothers was widespread, but
Speaker 1: they weren't universally vilified. Here's historian Pat Thane, there's always
Speaker 1: a tendency for the kind of moralists who scream about
Speaker 1: things to be remembered more than ordinary people who don't
Speaker 1: make such a face as that. There always were moralizers
Speaker 1: who were terribly star to single mothers and nun thought
Speaker 1: they were shameful and immoral, but also bob see plenty
Speaker 1: of other people who wore beard to support them and
Speaker 1: understood hi could come about that somebody might be raped
Speaker 1: or relationship might fail. Mary and her sister Isabella raised
Speaker 1: Doris together in a home near the sea. The women
Speaker 1: were originally of working class stock. Their father had worked
Speaker 1: in the mines, but Isabella had a good enough level
Speaker 1: of education to become a school teacher. Mary meanwhile, stayed
Speaker 1: at home, tending to the household duties. Illegitimacy and its
Speaker 1: attendant shame often fostered secrecy. As a result, we can't
Speaker 1: be sure what Doris felt about that cruel slash on
Speaker 1: her birth certificate, or even what she knew of her
Speaker 1: parent kitch. Some illegitimate children enjoyed happy childhoods, but others
Speaker 1: faced mercy, silis, bullying, ginger Frosts has read some first
Speaker 1: hand accounts of such cruelty. Usually started at school. Usually
Speaker 1: the other kids all know because their parents, so they
Speaker 1: overhear them. And then they kids use things right. If
Speaker 1: you've got red hair, they make fun of you for that.
Speaker 1: If you're wearing glasses, they make fun of you for that.
Speaker 1: If you're too tall, if you're too short. It goes
Speaker 1: on and on, and that's the thing you pick on
Speaker 1: with those kids. And they would call them bassard to
Speaker 1: their face at times, and they hated hearing it. It
Speaker 1: shamed them for something they didn't even really understand. There's
Speaker 1: all kinds of prejudices like that that illegitimate children complain
Speaker 1: of growing up for something they didn't even do. And
Speaker 1: some of them didn't know a lot and father. Grandparents
Speaker 1: were their parents, and it was other children who enlightened
Speaker 1: them because they overheard their parents talking about it. The
Speaker 1: label of bastage could cast a long shadow over not
Speaker 1: just the early years of these children, but their entire lives.
Speaker 1: Lots of them fantasize about rich, wonderful parents showing up
Speaker 1: and taking them away from All of this, of course,
Speaker 1: didn't happen, because most of them the fathers were just
Speaker 1: as poor as their mothers. The novelist Katherine Cookson was
Speaker 1: born the same year as Doris, also in England's poor northeast.
Speaker 1: She too bore the stain of illegitimacy, and even as
Speaker 1: an adult, Cookson recoiled at the very word illegitimate, This
Speaker 1: frightening word, this word that had bred fear, that had
Speaker 1: brought shame into my life, This word that had started
Speaker 1: all the trouble. The dictionary word illegitimate meant not authorized
Speaker 1: by law, improper, not born in lawful wedlock, bastard, wrongly inferred, abnormal.
Speaker 1: Mary and Isabella Robson managed their house alone. There was
Speaker 1: no father, no man, no patriarchal protector, their roof offering
Speaker 1: his stamp of respectability. All the same, Doris grew into
Speaker 1: a poised and collected young woman. Quiet, occasionally moody. She
Speaker 1: was said to carry herself with a certain elegance, to
Speaker 1: have a refined bearing. Perhaps the Robson sisters encouraged aspiration
Speaker 1: in Doris and a sense of possibility, for she seems
Speaker 1: to have hungered for a world beyond the small port
Speaker 1: town in which she'd been raised, Or perhaps she simply
Speaker 1: wished to escape the legacy of her birth and the
Speaker 1: disapproving whispers. Either way, London beckoned with its bustle, bright lights,
Speaker 1: and promises of prosperity. We'll hear more of Doris's story
Speaker 1: in our next episode, charting her transformation into Olga, a
Speaker 1: woman accommodating the niche desires of a high end clientele
Speaker 1: in the London Sex Trait. Will also learn about how
Speaker 1: she landed a rich husband thirty years her senior, allowing
Speaker 1: her to hang up her whips and retire from selling sex.
Speaker 1: But that is not the end of Doris's tale, for
Speaker 1: as on that December day in nineteen fourteen, the horrors
Speaker 1: of war would come again. Her world of comfort would
Speaker 1: be turned on its head, and Doris would once again
Speaker 1: find herself on streets that were dark and dangerous bad women.
Speaker 1: The Blackout 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 additional support from Courtney
Speaker 1: Guerino and Offa Gomperts. Kate Healy of Oakwood Family Trees
Speaker 1: aided us with genealogical research. Pascal Wise sound designed and
Speaker 1: mixed the show and composed all the original music. The
Speaker 1: show was recorded at Wardoor Studios by David Smith Tom Berry.
Speaker 1: You also heard the voice talents of Ben Crow, David Glover,
Speaker 1: Melanie Gutridge, Stella Haaford, Gemma Saunders, and rufus Wright. Much
Speaker 1: of the music you had was performed by Edgachan, Ross Hughes,
Speaker 1: Christian Miller and Marcus Penrose. They were recorded by Nick
Speaker 1: Taylor at Porcupine Studios. Pushkin's Ben Tolliday mixed the tracks
Speaker 1: and you heard additional piano playing by the great Berry
Speaker 1: Wise Hi Berry. The show also wouldn't have been possible
Speaker 1: without the work of Jacob Weisberg, Heather Fane, Carlie Migliori,
Speaker 1: Maggie Taylor, Nicole Morano, Eric Sandler, and Daniella Lukhan. We'd
Speaker 1: also like to thank Michael Buchanan Dunn of the Murder
Speaker 1: Mile podcast, Lizzie McCarroll, Katherine Walker at the Royal Pharmaceutical
Speaker 1: Society and the Earbe Historical Society. Bad Women is a
Speaker 1: production of Pushkin Industries. Please rate and review the show
Speaker 1: and spread the word about what we do, and thanks
Speaker 1: for listening and H M H.