Speaker 1: Welcomed Unobscured, a production of I Heart Radio and Aaron Minkey.
Speaker 1: Our final guest for Unobscured Season three is Paul Beg.
Speaker 1: When he published Jack the Ripper The Uncensored Facts in
Speaker 1: he set a new standard for serious historical writing about
Speaker 1: the Whitechapel murders and challenged writers and investigators to bring
Speaker 1: a more complete and critical eye to the case. Fortunately
Speaker 1: for all of us, Paul Beg continued to work in
Speaker 1: that mold. With each new book, Paul Beg has commanded
Speaker 1: the attention of interested readers and professional historians alike. Paul
Speaker 1: has worked solo as well as with other writers to
Speaker 1: publish books like Jack the Ripper, The Definitive History, The
Speaker 1: Complete Jack the Ripper A to Z and recently Jack
Speaker 1: the Ripper The Forgotten Victims, and along the way, Paul's
Speaker 1: books have demonstrated to interested readers like Adam would, for instance,
Speaker 1: what had been missing from the discussion without his comprehensive
Speaker 1: and rigorous devotion to historical detail. His collaborative spirits and
Speaker 1: his dedication to primary sources have made at him a
Speaker 1: universally respected authority on the history and the facts of
Speaker 1: the case. Researcher Karl Nellis asked Paul to take us
Speaker 1: back to how it all began for him, and so
Speaker 1: that's how it will all begin for us. This is
Speaker 1: the Unobscured Interview series for season three. I'm Aaron Minky.
Speaker 1: I started off investigating historical mysteries of one sort or another,
Speaker 1: and it was coming to the centenary of the Jack
Speaker 1: the Ripper murders, and I had always been interested in
Speaker 1: Jack the Ripper, and I bought every book that I
Speaker 1: could find at that time, and nobody had really done
Speaker 1: a history of who saw what, where and when, which
Speaker 1: I suppose is part of my journalistic background, and so
Speaker 1: I decided to write a book that didn't have anything
Speaker 1: to do with suspects, but just looked at the crimes.
Speaker 1: And that book led to another book and an other
Speaker 1: one after that, and so before I knew it, I
Speaker 1: was spending probably the best part of my life research
Speaker 1: in Jack the Ripple, which in a way I regret
Speaker 1: because I would like to have researched something infinitely more important.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, uh, Jack the Ripper is
Speaker 1: is becomes acutely interesting subject too to research and write about.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm, well, I can say, for my own part,
Speaker 1: I'm really grateful for the historical approach that you've taken,
Speaker 1: uh and the way that you have researched and written
Speaker 1: about in Whitechapel, and you know so for for this program,
Speaker 1: we've been consulting your definitive history the facts, and I've
Speaker 1: especially appreciated the perspective that you take in the Forgotten Victims.
Speaker 1: And we hope that listeners interested in thoughtful, detailed work
Speaker 1: we'll seek out your books and maybe as a as
Speaker 1: a way into that. As a historian, how would you
Speaker 1: describe your historical approach. You mentioned a history of the
Speaker 1: crimes rather than focusing on the suspect, But if you
Speaker 1: would put yourself in the context of other history writing,
Speaker 1: what kind of is your approach as a writer of
Speaker 1: these histories. Well, I think it's important to just establish
Speaker 1: those basic facts as I as I mentioned earlier, the
Speaker 1: very basic stuff of who saw, what, where, when and
Speaker 1: why that every good story should have, and very often,
Speaker 1: particularly in the history of something like crime, that's one
Speaker 1: thing that people don't do. They are they will describe
Speaker 1: the crime, but they're real interest is in the suspect.
Speaker 1: And I think in historical crime, the great thing about
Speaker 1: it is that it it it enables you to see
Speaker 1: people doing normal things at the time a murderer is committed.
Speaker 1: So it's one of the few ways that you actually
Speaker 1: have a chance to see historically people doing ordinary things,
Speaker 1: which historians don't normally bother to look at, and consequently
Speaker 1: we don't find out of that. So in kind of
Speaker 1: general terms, how would you describe that ordinary life for
Speaker 1: most people in the East End of London that we
Speaker 1: get a glimpse of when we look at and almost
Speaker 1: through this series of horrific crimes and then see the
Speaker 1: ordinary life that was happening around it. What do we see?
Speaker 1: What do we see there? Well, then we see, we
Speaker 1: see we see an awful lot actually, uh, but it's
Speaker 1: a very hard life that the people were living at
Speaker 1: that time, particularly in the East End, and so it
Speaker 1: was uh, it was, it was tough. But but an
Speaker 1: event like a murder captures the witnesses and the investigators
Speaker 1: in that moment of time going about their day to
Speaker 1: day lives, and there things mains. As I said, mainstream
Speaker 1: histories don't often tell you, and that many people probably
Speaker 1: probably wouldn't choose to read even if historians did. For example,
Speaker 1: there were lots of horses, lots of them. So what
Speaker 1: did you do if your horse was injured in an
Speaker 1: accident or if it dropped dead in the street? And
Speaker 1: how dirty were those streets are washed with horse urine
Speaker 1: and worse? And what was it really like to travel
Speaker 1: in a handsome cab, rocking along like a ship tossed
Speaker 1: in a storm called in winter, hot in summer? And
Speaker 1: then of course if you opened the window in the
Speaker 1: handsome cab because it was getting very hot, the horses
Speaker 1: hooves flicked the mess from the straight back into the cab,
Speaker 1: which brings us back two horses. And so we you know,
Speaker 1: all of that is sort of stuff that you don't
Speaker 1: normally find out about. Even the Sherlock Holmes story you have.
Speaker 1: You have homes bowling along in a handsome cab, but
Speaker 1: we don't actually get told what it was really like.
Speaker 1: And we don't have doss houses anymore. People don't go
Speaker 1: into work into the workhouse. We buy our milk from
Speaker 1: a supermarket, not from a dedicated milk shop. We carry
Speaker 1: a torch to see in the dark, not an oil lamp.
Speaker 1: And we don't have music calls, and we don't have clubs.
Speaker 1: Every few yards. Um, So a murderer is a a
Speaker 1: terrible thing, but it tells us about ordinary people going
Speaker 1: to the who have to go into the workhouse and
Speaker 1: who have to go into a doss house. And we
Speaker 1: can find out a little bit of what it was
Speaker 1: like from people who we're writing at the time, and
Speaker 1: we we can we can collect that information together. But
Speaker 1: it there aren't that many books that go out and
Speaker 1: tell you these things, and when they do, it can
Speaker 1: be it does can sometimes not have that level of
Speaker 1: interest that the murder story has. It doesn't have that
Speaker 1: frision of drama attached to it. So when when you're
Speaker 1: discovering how people lived and how their world fund should
Speaker 1: that can be really interesting when when it's attached to
Speaker 1: a murder, because very often in some small way those things. Uh,
Speaker 1: knowing about those things could be relevant. Two understanding the
Speaker 1: murder itself and perhaps knowing who the murderer was. M hm,
Speaker 1: m hm. For a little more context, Um, the Ripper
Speaker 1: murders weren't the only kinds of violent crime in London's
Speaker 1: East End. They weren't the only killings in that year,
Speaker 1: and there was enough violent crime on record in the
Speaker 1: neighborhood throughout the eighties that we can get a more
Speaker 1: textured picture. How violent was Whitechapel and what was the
Speaker 1: general understanding of that violence among contemporary observers, writer is,
Speaker 1: and what do we know about how the people in
Speaker 1: the neighborhood of Whitechapel, or Whopping or around bethnal green Um,
Speaker 1: what did they think of the violence in their neighborhoods Well,
Speaker 1: I think it's again it's one of those things that
Speaker 1: is somewhat difficult to to pinpoint what the people themselves
Speaker 1: actually thought. What we get a lot of is what
Speaker 1: people coming from outside the area thought of it. So
Speaker 1: you have lots of reasonably well off middle class people
Speaker 1: commenting on the horrors that they saw and witnessed in
Speaker 1: the East End, but not a great deal of what
Speaker 1: people who lived there actually experienced. The facts and figures
Speaker 1: suggest that there weren't very many murders, surprisingly in the
Speaker 1: East End of London, and in fact, I think, off
Speaker 1: the top of my head, I mean, for for the period,
Speaker 1: most of the murders that were committed there with the
Speaker 1: were the jack the Ripper murders. There weren't very many
Speaker 1: other than those. As for the violence of the area, well,
Speaker 1: that's a different thing altogether, and it does that there
Speaker 1: does seem to have been a considerable amount of violence,
Speaker 1: and very nasty violence of the sort that would make
Speaker 1: the top of the news today if it happened. Um
Speaker 1: and and things were happening there. I was just reading
Speaker 1: recently about an altercation that took place. Uh. And the
Speaker 1: man through an oil lamp at at somebody, and although
Speaker 1: he wasn't intending to that person, he missed h and
Speaker 1: he hit the wall behind him, and the and the
Speaker 1: oil lamp shattered and it burst into flame, and the
Speaker 1: person was caught splattered with the oil from the lamp
Speaker 1: and and was burned quite badly. And of course there
Speaker 1: was an awful lot of of domestic violence going on.
Speaker 1: So one another story told by a policeman called Benjamin Lease,
Speaker 1: and he was walking down Dorset Street, uh and suddenly
Speaker 1: a knife was thrown from one of the houses and
Speaker 1: stuck into some boarding close to him. So, I mean
Speaker 1: it possible that you could be walking down the street
Speaker 1: and have a knife thrown at you for no reason whatsoever.
Speaker 1: M So it was quite it was quite a dangerous place,
Speaker 1: and it was known even the police. When you read
Speaker 1: the newspapers and the police reports it was it was violent.
Speaker 1: But one of the problems is that you get stories
Speaker 1: about um sailors coming into Whitechapel from the docks, and
Speaker 1: one such man, Thomas Sadler, for example, was walking down
Speaker 1: a street and he was attacked and robbed UM. And
Speaker 1: yet other times people are walking around the streets and
Speaker 1: they don't see a soul. It would appear that one
Speaker 1: of Jack the Ripper's victims, the first one Mary and Nichols,
Speaker 1: walked about half a mile without being seen by anybody
Speaker 1: as she walked down the main street. M So some
Speaker 1: of the information that you get can be quite conflicting,
Speaker 1: but hopefully you will be able over the next years
Speaker 1: to be able to learn a lot more MHM. And
Speaker 1: and from what I've read, there are some places where
Speaker 1: it was especially dangerous to be if you were a policeman. Well, again,
Speaker 1: it is a common story that policemen wouldn't venture down
Speaker 1: Dorset Street unless they were in pairs. And UM, I
Speaker 1: think that I can't find I'm not saying it's not true,
Speaker 1: it's just that I can't find any evidence of that
Speaker 1: being the case. And I can read of other areas
Speaker 1: outside of the east end, which were known to be
Speaker 1: particularly dangerous, and the same thing is said of those streets,
Speaker 1: so it it's it really does dependent. Rsett Street may
Speaker 1: have been a dangerous street, but other streets on Flower
Speaker 1: and Dean Street and Thrall Street, they were both they
Speaker 1: were all just as dangerous to walk down, just as rough.
Speaker 1: And it's not said that policemen walked down those streets
Speaker 1: in pairs. So I think you have to take certain
Speaker 1: later statements with a pinch of salt. Mhm. Would you
Speaker 1: would you describe Dorset Street for us? Yes, Dorset Street was.
Speaker 1: It was a fairly narrow street. It had a pub
Speaker 1: one end and a bigger pub the other end, and
Speaker 1: a small pub in the middle, and it was otherwise
Speaker 1: pretty much line with with what we're called common lodging
Speaker 1: houses or doss houses. There was a little shop there
Speaker 1: run by a man called John McCarthy, which was basically
Speaker 1: and all grocer's shop, uh, and really nothing about it
Speaker 1: to be to be alarmed about. It had started out
Speaker 1: its life being known as Datchett Street. That became Dorset Street,
Speaker 1: and the locals used to call it Dosset Street because
Speaker 1: of the number of doss houses that it contained. And
Speaker 1: it was the doss houses which had a really bad
Speaker 1: reputation for being places of immorality because not too many
Speaker 1: questions were asked if a man and a woman turned
Speaker 1: up wanting a bed together. Uh. And they were thought
Speaker 1: to be hotbeds of crime and and thievery, and so
Speaker 1: they weren't really looked upon very kindly. But in fact
Speaker 1: they were fairly horrible places. But it's specially by today's standards,
Speaker 1: but they really were the poor man's hotel. They were
Speaker 1: where you went you could buy a bed for the night. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it's popularly argued that sometimes some just strung a
Speaker 1: rope from one side of the room to the other
Speaker 1: and for a penny you could lean on the rope
Speaker 1: and go to sleep there. There are photographs of of
Speaker 1: this sort of thing happening, but I think that was
Speaker 1: a fairly uncommon practice. So that, Yeah, the doss houses
Speaker 1: were thought to be fairly dangerous, and to some extent
Speaker 1: they were, and the that gave Dorset Street a really
Speaker 1: bad name, which grew worse over the whereas more murders
Speaker 1: were committed there. MHM. When it comes to policing the
Speaker 1: East End um and especially heading toward the events of
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty eight and the personalities and the people. Um,
Speaker 1: let's go to Charles Warren. Can you briefly describe Charles
Speaker 1: warren'ts uh? Maybe his personality and his career leading up
Speaker 1: to Who was Charles Warren? Yes, Sir, Charles Warren basically
Speaker 1: was a soldier, a scholar, engineer and administrator. He had
Speaker 1: basically been undertaking or overseeing engineering work done in various
Speaker 1: places abroad. He was also an archaeologist of some distinction
Speaker 1: and eventually was a senior Freemason, and he undertook excavation
Speaker 1: work in in Egypt and elsewhere in Palestine. Um, and
Speaker 1: he was. But it's also been claimed that whilst he
Speaker 1: was doing this work he was acting as a spy
Speaker 1: and mapping out land for for the government. But he
Speaker 1: was quite distinguished in that respect, wrote a couple of
Speaker 1: books about it, and he also played a part in
Speaker 1: investigating the death of a professor who had gone out
Speaker 1: out there and had gone missing and had actually been
Speaker 1: murdered by the natives. And Warren trapped down the natives
Speaker 1: and found out who they were, which really was It
Speaker 1: was no mean feat. So he came back to the
Speaker 1: uk as uh, you know, quite quite a bit of
Speaker 1: a national hero actually, the way the newspapers had portrayed
Speaker 1: his actions abroad. So he came back. He he was
Speaker 1: chosen to be commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. He that
Speaker 1: was probably a very good decision because certainly the press
Speaker 1: welcomed it because the police needed to be we're in
Speaker 1: desperate need really of organization. Later he was accused of
Speaker 1: organizing the police too much along military lines, paying too
Speaker 1: much attention to minor things such as boots and shoes
Speaker 1: and things. But he did have a very keen concern
Speaker 1: about the welfare of the ordinary policeman. So yeah, um,
Speaker 1: what is interesting is that what happened at the time
Speaker 1: of Jack the Ripper uh caused a change in the
Speaker 1: police which has carried on through to today and probably,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it might be fair to say
Speaker 1: it's affected things on really on both sides of the
Speaker 1: Atlantic and elsewhere. When the police were formed, it was
Speaker 1: formed as an organization to protect the public from crime
Speaker 1: and protect and prevent crime. And that was the reason
Speaker 1: why they started. Why why you had policemen patrolling the
Speaker 1: streets on their beat. Detective work was really perceived as
Speaker 1: a sign of failure to have the detective meant that
Speaker 1: a crime had been committed and that needed it needed
Speaker 1: to be detected, whereas the whole object of the police
Speaker 1: was was the crimes were not going to be committed.
Speaker 1: So there was this difference. Now a man called James Munroe,
Speaker 1: his background being very much detecting crime. He had been
Speaker 1: done a fair amount of workouts as running a clandestine
Speaker 1: side of things, and so he was aware of of
Speaker 1: all of that, especially when he was ahead of the
Speaker 1: police in India, and he was appointed head of the
Speaker 1: c I D which is the detective branch of Scotland Yard.
Speaker 1: And so you had these two men who were really
Speaker 1: either end of things. And when Warren resigned as he
Speaker 1: did later in he was replaced by James Munroe. And
Speaker 1: so whereas Warren in his annual report had not even
Speaker 1: bothered to mention anything about the detectives, Munroe was very
Speaker 1: probe his department MHM. And that's carried through right down
Speaker 1: to today where more interest is being given is given
Speaker 1: to detectives and many detectives almost became superstars in the past.
Speaker 1: But the ordinary copper on a beat, the copper and
Speaker 1: uniform UH is almost seen as a less so being,
Speaker 1: which wasn't the case under Warren's regime. Warren, unfortunately, ah
Speaker 1: after he resigned, he was sent out to to fight
Speaker 1: abroad and he made are there's some slight evidence to
Speaker 1: the effect that he was a man and a general
Speaker 1: appointing him was suffering from senility and thought he was
Speaker 1: somebody else. I thought Warren was somebody else and appointed
Speaker 1: him to a job that he was a seriously deficient
Speaker 1: inexperience to undertake. And there was a battle at a
Speaker 1: place called spied On cop and it was an absolute disaster.
Speaker 1: And that's basically stuck with Warren uh and has damaged
Speaker 1: his reputation for the rest of his life and right
Speaker 1: down to today. M hm. Now, his time as Commissioner
Speaker 1: only lasted about two years, is that right? That's right? Yeah.
Speaker 1: And as well as having a difference of approach to Monroe,
Speaker 1: he also had frequent conflicts with Matthews, the Home Secretary. Um,
Speaker 1: can you describe what the conflicts were in their relationship? Well, basically,
Speaker 1: when Sir Charles Warren accepted the commissionership of the Metropolitan Police,
Speaker 1: he believed that he had full authority over the police
Speaker 1: and he wasn't aware so well led to believe that
Speaker 1: he was answerable to the own secretary and two various
Speaker 1: of the Home Office mandarins, and so he wanted to
Speaker 1: have full control over what was going on. That first
Speaker 1: of all, brought him into conflict with James Munroe, who
Speaker 1: also believed that he had almost complete authority over the
Speaker 1: c i D, and he resented Warren's involvement with the
Speaker 1: c i D, and he resented Warren almost ignoring the
Speaker 1: c i D. Matthews was also a fairly difficult man,
Speaker 1: as was the sort of liaison between the two, which
Speaker 1: was a man called Godfrey Lushington, and eventually got to
Speaker 1: a point where Munroe sorry where Warren wrote an article
Speaker 1: that but he had received permission to write that article,
Speaker 1: and he felt that all he could do at that
Speaker 1: time was offered his resignation, which he did, and that's
Speaker 1: why he went. But it typifies the sort of relationship
Speaker 1: that he had with Henry Matthews is that the Metropolitan
Speaker 1: Police was being criticized and he thought the criticism was unjustified,
Speaker 1: and so he defended his department, only to discover that
Speaker 1: he could only defend his department providing he had the
Speaker 1: permission of Henry Matthews to do so. And if therefore,
Speaker 1: if Henry Matthews said no, he had no alternative but
Speaker 1: to sit back and and sort of bite his tongue
Speaker 1: and seethe. And those are the sort of conflicts that
Speaker 1: they had. And in the previous prior to the murders,
Speaker 1: there had been what turned out to be a riot
Speaker 1: in Trafalgar Square as a consequence of the unemployed wanting
Speaker 1: to hold meetings, and there was this march was planned
Speaker 1: to take place on Trafalgar Square and Warren uh they
Speaker 1: they they, Matthews couldn't make up his mind what the
Speaker 1: legal situation was with regard to trying to stop these marches,
Speaker 1: so he vacillated from one thing to another. Warren was
Speaker 1: putting out instructions that the march couldn't go ahead, and
Speaker 1: then it was all right to go ahead. Everybody was
Speaker 1: getting frustrated. The whole thing blew up into a riot
Speaker 1: that was quite nasty, and Warren got blamed for the
Speaker 1: whole thing. So he was now he was he Matthews
Speaker 1: was a bit of a waste of time. Really. He
Speaker 1: probably had his own troubles, which, unfortunately we don't know
Speaker 1: a huge amount of that. Um. But he doesn't. He
Speaker 1: seems to have fallen out with most people in one
Speaker 1: way or another. UM. And the even the government wanted him,
Speaker 1: really found him unsuitable as Home Secretary, but for various
Speaker 1: political reasons, they were not able to get rid of him,
Speaker 1: so he had to stay in office, even though he
Speaker 1: was causing quite a bit of difficulty. Mm hm hm.
Speaker 1: Let's talk a couple of other people who ended up
Speaker 1: being pivotal figures um, either in the investigation of the
Speaker 1: White Chapel murders or in the reporting on the White
Speaker 1: Chapel murders. Uh. Let's talk Dr Winn Baxter. Um. Who
Speaker 1: was he? Why is he such a significant figure in
Speaker 1: the investigation and in the press reporting about the Whitechapel Well.
Speaker 1: Win Baxter was actually a lawyer, not a not a doctor,
Speaker 1: but which was possibly one of the problems. He was
Speaker 1: the coroner for the area where at least three of
Speaker 1: the murders were committed, and so it was his job
Speaker 1: to basically inquire into the crime and to establish cause
Speaker 1: of death, time of death and details like that. There's
Speaker 1: also the fact that he felt a little bit that
Speaker 1: part of things were with an unsolved crime, that there
Speaker 1: was a responsibility there to interview and gave the gain
Speaker 1: sorry interview and gain the evidence of people so that
Speaker 1: in the event their testimony would be that were given
Speaker 1: under oath, would be available to be brought to court
Speaker 1: if at some point in the future somebody was put
Speaker 1: on trial for the crime, because they couldn't always guarantee
Speaker 1: that some that a witness would could be found or
Speaker 1: would even be alive. Baxter is distinguished for perhaps being
Speaker 1: a little pedantic. He questioned in depth the his inquests
Speaker 1: covered several weeks. There there were adjournments, and the press
Speaker 1: would speculate whilst that the adjournment was taking place, and
Speaker 1: there would be lots of press reporting around around the
Speaker 1: the the inquiry themselves, the days the inquests were held.
Speaker 1: So he was thought in some instances to be a
Speaker 1: bit of a bit of a pain, a bit of
Speaker 1: a nuisance. Uh So that that, But thank goodness he was,
Speaker 1: because it's only as a consequence of his inquests that
Speaker 1: we have as much information about the crimes as we
Speaker 1: do hm. Hm. The eighties offered the London Police little
Speaker 1: by way of the forensic techniques that detectives used today. Um.
Speaker 1: But over the course of investigating the White Chappel murders.
Speaker 1: There are a few interesting ideas that were suggested suggested
Speaker 1: uh in one setting or another, either at the I
Speaker 1: D or in an inquest um that might even seem
Speaker 1: a little strange today. What were some of the the
Speaker 1: cutting edge methods that were considered for collecting and analyzing
Speaker 1: evidence in the course of investigating the murders. Well, the
Speaker 1: the it's it's it's a difficult thing because the police
Speaker 1: hadn't actually encountered something of this kind before, So for
Speaker 1: a lot of them this was a new and difficult experience,
Speaker 1: and the police had over the years they had worked
Speaker 1: out how things were to be done. So the police
Speaker 1: basically they were required to protect the crime scene pretty
Speaker 1: much as we do today, although to compare how we
Speaker 1: protect a crime scene today from how they protected a
Speaker 1: crime scene in you would see very considerable differences. But
Speaker 1: ideally the body should be dis scribed and looked at
Speaker 1: before the doctor and other policemen came up and trampled
Speaker 1: all over the area. The police were supposed to uh
Speaker 1: look at the clothing and and look at other aspects
Speaker 1: of the the physical side of the crime. The a
Speaker 1: doctor would look for would would be there to ensure
Speaker 1: that death had happened, but would also be providing a
Speaker 1: time of death, would be trying to determine what the
Speaker 1: weapon used was uh, and where it was used from
Speaker 1: and so on and so forth, which is all pretty
Speaker 1: much the same sort of thing that that that is
Speaker 1: done today. They didn't have any really techniques of anything.
Speaker 1: They couldn't They couldn't identify human blood, couldn't distinguish that
Speaker 1: too well. They obviously they didn't have anything like DNA photography.
Speaker 1: They did use for crime scenes. They did that in
Speaker 1: the case of Mary Kelly, but it was a fairly
Speaker 1: rudimentary process and bad lighting could affect that. So they
Speaker 1: were they were really down in detecting crime. Was was
Speaker 1: down to hard nose detective work, lacking the science that
Speaker 1: were used to today. M Hm m hm. So let's
Speaker 1: start stepping toward that investigation of the murders themselves. Um.
Speaker 1: One of the interesting facts that complicated the investigation was
Speaker 1: that Robert Anderson was absent from office on the day
Speaker 1: that Mary and Nichols is killed, and he continues a
Speaker 1: month long sick leave the day after any Chapman is killed.
Speaker 1: M Can you describe the apartment that he left behind
Speaker 1: when he was on this sick leave. Well, what happened
Speaker 1: with with Sir Robert Anderson was that he was appointed
Speaker 1: head of the c I D. And he had he
Speaker 1: or he says that he his doctor had at that
Speaker 1: point prescribed him with a necessary holiday because he was
Speaker 1: suffering from exhaustion. So when he was appointed to the job,
Speaker 1: he made this point known, and the date when and
Speaker 1: for how long he should take leave was given to
Speaker 1: him by Sir Charles Warren. So it wasn't at Anderson's
Speaker 1: choice to go at that time. That was the time
Speaker 1: that Warren wanted him to leave, because Warren was actually
Speaker 1: expecting there to be an up search later on in
Speaker 1: when there would be when he thought there would be
Speaker 1: further demonstrations by the unemployed as had happened to him
Speaker 1: in the previous year. So he wanted Anderson back and
Speaker 1: fully ensconced in the Assistant Commissioner's chair for later in
Speaker 1: the year, so he told him to go at that time.
Speaker 1: So Anderson went on holiday. He couldn't have known that
Speaker 1: there was going to be a murder on the day
Speaker 1: he left, nor could he have known or would he
Speaker 1: have expected, that there would be another week murder straight afterwards. Um,
Speaker 1: and so he was he when when he was alerted
Speaker 1: to to come back, he he did so. So Anderson
Speaker 1: was away. But I don't think any any blame can
Speaker 1: be assigned to Anderson for that fact. Uh. What he
Speaker 1: left behind, of course was it was a department that
Speaker 1: didn't have him at the top. But it seems to
Speaker 1: have functioned reasonably well. The investigation seems to have gone ahead.
Speaker 1: And it was towards the end of Anderson's absence abroad
Speaker 1: that the police um decided to do a house to
Speaker 1: house search for investigating men who were living on their own.
Speaker 1: So all the all the all the usual things seemed
Speaker 1: to have done in the case being done with the
Speaker 1: murders of of Annie Chapman and Mary Nichols. M Um,
Speaker 1: who was Mary Anne or or Polly Nichols? What do
Speaker 1: we know about her life? Well? Um, Mary Anne Nichols
Speaker 1: was was born in eighteen forty five near Fleet Street,
Speaker 1: which is where lots of newspapers were located until relatively recently. Um.
Speaker 1: She was the middle of three children. The others were brothers,
Speaker 1: one older and the other younger, and she married a
Speaker 1: man called William Nichols in eighteen sixty four um. He
Speaker 1: was a printer, and they would have five children, and
Speaker 1: they lived quite comfortably in a block of flats or
Speaker 1: apartments as you might call them, known as peabody buildings,
Speaker 1: which this was a somewhat upmarket place. You had to
Speaker 1: be you had to pass certain qualities, have certain qualifications
Speaker 1: to to be allowed to live there. And they had
Speaker 1: shared toilet facilities, they were cooking facilities, there was a
Speaker 1: close washing area. You could even book and have a
Speaker 1: hot bath every day if you liked so. There were
Speaker 1: facilities for for personal hygiene, and most of those things
Speaker 1: were things that people in the surrounding houses didn't necessarily enjoy.
Speaker 1: So you can see that this was quite a They
Speaker 1: were a little bit upmarket and paying a modest rent
Speaker 1: for for this kind of establishment. But about eight the
Speaker 1: couple separated. The precise circumstances aren't probably understood, but William
Speaker 1: Calls said that Mary Ann began drinking heavily and had
Speaker 1: left him on several occasions. Then she left him for
Speaker 1: good and he provided some financial support, but in two
Speaker 1: he discovered that she was living by prostitution and ceased
Speaker 1: making the payments. He was summoned for maintenance, but proved
Speaker 1: his case, and that is what is said in the
Speaker 1: police One of the police reports that have survived Mary's
Speaker 1: life thereafter is a series of stays in workhouses until August,
Speaker 1: when she was staying in a common lodging house in
Speaker 1: Thrall Streets, Spittlefields, paying fortunes a night for a bed.
Speaker 1: She then moved to another workhouse, sorry, and the lodging
Speaker 1: house and it was search that's where she was living
Speaker 1: when on the thirty one of August she was found
Speaker 1: dead in a street called Buck's Road. Mhm mhm. Um.
Speaker 1: So one of the people who is responsible for determining
Speaker 1: what happened, Uh, it's a detective named Frederick Aberlein who
Speaker 1: is attached to H division, the White Chapel Division, I believe, Um,
Speaker 1: can you describe what approach he would have taken, uh
Speaker 1: to beginning a murder investigation before there's a kind of
Speaker 1: expectation that it's a serial killing. There's no idea about
Speaker 1: there being some figure named Jack the Ripper. It's just
Speaker 1: Frederick Aberlein and c I D investigating a murder. What
Speaker 1: would would Airline's approach have been? Well, first of all,
Speaker 1: there there were there had been two murders in Whitechapel
Speaker 1: prior to the murder of Mary Ann Nichols. The first
Speaker 1: had been earlier in the year when a woman named
Speaker 1: emeral Elizabeth Smith was attacked by apparently by by a
Speaker 1: group of three men u and one of them had
Speaker 1: round some sort of object into her, causing paraitonitis to
Speaker 1: set in, from which she had died. And then about
Speaker 1: a week before Mary Ann Nichols was murdered, another woman
Speaker 1: called Martha Tabrum had been murdered on the landings of
Speaker 1: a block of flats, and she had been stabbed nearly
Speaker 1: thirty times, m in a friend that fairly frenzied attack,
Speaker 1: a lot of the stabs being to the area of
Speaker 1: the genitals and upper thighs and so forth. So then
Speaker 1: the murder of mary Ann Nichols came along, So that
Speaker 1: was the third murder in Whitechapel, remembering that there weren't
Speaker 1: any other murders taking place, those were the only three
Speaker 1: murders that had taken place in Whitechapel at that time.
Speaker 1: So by the time he got to Nichols, it was
Speaker 1: beginning to be recognized that there was something odd going on.
Speaker 1: The original idea was that that the murders had perhaps
Speaker 1: been committed by a gang who had been extorting money
Speaker 1: from the local prostituere u. And so basically these two attacks,
Speaker 1: first of all, a very violent attack that wasn't necessarily
Speaker 1: intended to kill, and then a frenzied attack on which
Speaker 1: obviously was intended to kill, but were were these were
Speaker 1: lessons to show what other women could expect if they
Speaker 1: didn't pay up to the gang. So that was the
Speaker 1: had been a prevailing theory. Inspector Abilene had been assigned
Speaker 1: to the White Chapel area in March eighteen seventy three
Speaker 1: and had been been there until February seven, at which
Speaker 1: point he was transferred to the METS headquarters Scotland Yard.
Speaker 1: So when Nichols was murdered, he was sent back to
Speaker 1: investigate the murder us because he knew the area really
Speaker 1: well and was very well respected there, and I knew
Speaker 1: a lot of people, so you he would have had
Speaker 1: quite a lot of eyes on the ground as it were, uh,
Speaker 1: And so his investigation was really came to the conclusion
Speaker 1: that it was He then sort of abandoned the idea
Speaker 1: that this was a gang, and he came to the
Speaker 1: conclusion that they'd probably all been committed by the same person,
Speaker 1: and that the murder of Mary Anne Nichols had it
Speaker 1: was by one person and not a gang, and that
Speaker 1: that person was a man. Mhm. So why um, why
Speaker 1: would the the earlier killings of Ma Smith and Martha
Speaker 1: Tabrum later be omitted from considerations of the case as
Speaker 1: a whole by someone like Dr Thomas Bond on November Well,
Speaker 1: To be honest, I don't think we really know why it.
Speaker 1: Bond didn't include those crimes. He he was, he wasn't
Speaker 1: asked two h take any part in in the examination
Speaker 1: of those crimes, and it was with Nichols that we
Speaker 1: start to get detailed descriptions of what were happening. So
Speaker 1: it may well be that his he was only provided
Speaker 1: with information from Nichols to Mary Kelly, which was a
Speaker 1: crime that he was responsible for actually was there, and
Speaker 1: he only worked from the reports that he had been
Speaker 1: provided up to ah the murder of Mary Kelly. M hmm. Now,
Speaker 1: just before any Chapman's murder um the radical newspaper The Star,
Speaker 1: which had been publishing for less than a year UM
Speaker 1: they began to trump at the story that Polly Nichols
Speaker 1: killer was a Jew named leather Apron. Can you describe
Speaker 1: when these reports start hitting the public, what kinds of
Speaker 1: stereotypes about Jewish life in the East End would these
Speaker 1: reports have conjured up for the Stars readership. Well, the
Speaker 1: the East End Jewish community was as largely consisted of
Speaker 1: recent immigrants fleeing persecution in Eastern Europe. Ah they formed
Speaker 1: tight knit communities, often often built around people who had
Speaker 1: come across from there from the same village, So whold
Speaker 1: streets could be taken over by uh people who have
Speaker 1: fled from the same village abroaden and in Eastern Europe,
Speaker 1: and they had they'd have their own little places of worship,
Speaker 1: and of course, because they were looking for kosher food,
Speaker 1: they would only be eating the food provided in the
Speaker 1: main by their own community. So that alienated a lot
Speaker 1: of the the native people, especially when accommodation that had
Speaker 1: formerly been made available to one family, the immigrants coming
Speaker 1: from Eastern Europe were content to take a room with
Speaker 1: the whole family living in a room, and so these properties,
Speaker 1: many of these properties could be let to lots of
Speaker 1: people instead of one person, and so the single tenants
Speaker 1: were finding it very hard to find somewhere to live,
Speaker 1: and so there's a lot of ill feeling about these people,
Speaker 1: um which basically boils down to the difficulty that we
Speaker 1: have in being able to distinguish between hostility towards people
Speaker 1: because they were Jewish or just because they were that
Speaker 1: they were there were foreigners, and not using not not
Speaker 1: sort of relating well to the native population. So that
Speaker 1: was the first thing that it's a bit uncertain about
Speaker 1: and the but what's interesting I think about the leather
Speaker 1: Apron story is uh he was portrayed in the Star
Speaker 1: as a Jewish criminal, almost sort of in the in
Speaker 1: the tradition of Dickens Fagin. The Star reported that he
Speaker 1: moved through the streets at night. He was strangely silent,
Speaker 1: very menacing and threatening the prostitutes with a sharp leather
Speaker 1: knife as a knife to cut leather, not a knife
Speaker 1: made out of leather. As the Star reported his uh
Speaker 1: It said, his expression is sinister and seems to be
Speaker 1: full of terror for the women who describe aimed it.
Speaker 1: His eyes are small and glittering. His lips are usually
Speaker 1: parted in a grin, which is not only not reassuring
Speaker 1: but excessively repellent. I mean, so that they're really going
Speaker 1: overboard in their description of this sort of nightmare creation.
Speaker 1: And they also described features which are sterop stereotypically Jewish,
Speaker 1: so it was quite obvious what they were aiming at. Uh.
Speaker 1: The interesting thing is that is that leather Apron probably
Speaker 1: didn't have never existed. There were undoubtedly men who stole
Speaker 1: from the women, and it may well be that it
Speaker 1: was some of these men who women thought was the
Speaker 1: leather Apron being described. But as far as we can tell,
Speaker 1: the original story seems to have been credited to a
Speaker 1: man called Harry Damn, and he was an American journalist
Speaker 1: who has looking briefly for the start in London. He
Speaker 1: was young, and it seems likely that some of the
Speaker 1: women he spoke to when he was sent to the
Speaker 1: East then to gain information, fed him the basics of
Speaker 1: the leather Apron story. Uh. And then he exaggerated that
Speaker 1: and worked that up in a way that American journalists
Speaker 1: were a bit more used to doing than the British
Speaker 1: journalists were. And unfortunately for him, it turned out that
Speaker 1: there was a man in the East Den with the
Speaker 1: nickname of leather Apron, and so the star story really
Speaker 1: didn't do that man much many favors m And that
Speaker 1: man's name was was John Piser. That's right. Um, So
Speaker 1: when this story comes to attach to John Piser, what
Speaker 1: are the consequences for him? Well, John Pies was the
Speaker 1: was the son of a Polish immigrant, and he was
Speaker 1: a slipper maker by trade. He and he wore a
Speaker 1: leather apron, which was the usual attire for someone in
Speaker 1: his life line of business, and for some reason it
Speaker 1: had also won him the nickname leather Apron, probably because
Speaker 1: he walked to work and came home and everything we're
Speaker 1: wearing the apron. We don't really know an awful lot
Speaker 1: about it for certain, except that his health was poor
Speaker 1: and that a police sergeant for some reason thought it
Speaker 1: likely that he was the man allegedly spoken about by
Speaker 1: the local prostitutes to the start, and so he was
Speaker 1: arrested and hauled in. And of course the result of
Speaker 1: that was that first of all, he found himself with
Speaker 1: with the fear of being jack the rippa being held
Speaker 1: over his head uh and and sort of fighting not
Speaker 1: two pcent to the gallows uh And And secondly, it
Speaker 1: awakened even more animosity towards the Jews, because suddenly this
Speaker 1: to a lot of people, it looked like this murderer
Speaker 1: was a Jew, was one of the recent immigrants from
Speaker 1: Eastern Europe. Is there a way to kind of generally
Speaker 1: describe the relationship between the police and the press and
Speaker 1: the East End Jewish community in mid September. Is there
Speaker 1: something that characterizes the relationship between those three kind of
Speaker 1: parties to what's happening here at the beginning of the
Speaker 1: of the murder investigation, Well, I think the police. The
Speaker 1: police seemed to have been fairly mixed, as as I
Speaker 1: suppose you would expect there. They were fairly mixed in
Speaker 1: their opinions about the the the immigrant Jewish population, but
Speaker 1: then the native Jewish population was was unhappy about them
Speaker 1: as well, So they were not really winning on on
Speaker 1: any account, so the police. But at the time of
Speaker 1: the crimes, the police were very happy with the way
Speaker 1: that that the Jews had accommodated there their inquiries. And
Speaker 1: yet on the other hand, we have policemen reporting that
Speaker 1: they were keeping watch on some Jewish property and they
Speaker 1: had to pretend to be not to be policemen, because
Speaker 1: if it had been known that they were policemen, their
Speaker 1: lives would have been at risk, so it it's very difficult.
Speaker 1: One suspects that the Jewish immigrants kept very much to
Speaker 1: themselves as far as the police were concerned, because the
Speaker 1: police had been the agents of their persecutors in Eastern Europe,
Speaker 1: so they are not likely to have been particularly anxious
Speaker 1: to to get involved with them. The press was again
Speaker 1: at times openly hostile. They there was a lot of
Speaker 1: anti Semitic views were being expressed, but again there's still
Speaker 1: this uncertainty about whether it was anti Semitic or whether
Speaker 1: it was anti immigrant. Uh. And so the press and
Speaker 1: the local population again they were they were fairly hostile
Speaker 1: towards the immigrant population, and in a sense understandably so.
Speaker 1: These people had were coming in large numbers fleeing abroad.
Speaker 1: They were coming with lots of beliefs of their own.
Speaker 1: They were coming from small villages into into a big city.
Speaker 1: They didn't speak the language, they didn't understand the customs,
Speaker 1: and for the most part they kept themselves to themselves.
Speaker 1: So by not integrating with the with the population, UH,
Speaker 1: they weren't at that stage doing themselves any any favors either.
Speaker 1: So it was it was really a very difficult situation,
Speaker 1: it could flare up at any moment. M hm. So
Speaker 1: let's turn to Dr George Baxter Phillips, who was the
Speaker 1: police surgeon who responds to the scene of any chapman's murder.
Speaker 1: Can you describe a police surgeon's role and the work
Speaker 1: that someone like doctor Dr Baxter Phillips was doing at
Speaker 1: the time. Well, a police surgeon was a surgeon, obviously
Speaker 1: often a local doctor who was called upon to visit
Speaker 1: a murder scene to confirmed death, determine whether it was
Speaker 1: from natural causes or not, and in the case of
Speaker 1: it not being from natural causes, then the surgeon was
Speaker 1: supposed to estimate time of death, estimate things such as
Speaker 1: the instrument used, how it was used, and so on.
Speaker 1: So the police surgeon very often performed the autopsy as
Speaker 1: well and when necessary, and he gave would give evidence
Speaker 1: at the inquest and the trial if there was one,
Speaker 1: And he could also be called upon to give advice
Speaker 1: to the police as and when they needed it. So
Speaker 1: the police surgeon was was a fairly central figure and
Speaker 1: usually well almost always lived in the area where the
Speaker 1: where the policeman were. So h division had its own
Speaker 1: police surgeons. M hm. Can you describe the influence of
Speaker 1: Dr Baxter phillips judgment of any Chapman's murder. How did
Speaker 1: what he concluded affect the investigation as a whole. Well, yes,
Speaker 1: in in his case, Dr Baxter Phillips did influence the
Speaker 1: direction of the investigation. Um. In the case of any Chapman,
Speaker 1: the most important thing that the police surgeon did was
Speaker 1: the estimate of time of death. Now, he estimated that
Speaker 1: she had died around about four twenty in the morning. However,
Speaker 1: he was not certain because the effect conditions such as
Speaker 1: loss of blood and the coldness of the of the
Speaker 1: day of that morning could have had on the body.
Speaker 1: So he wasn't certain about time of death, but he
Speaker 1: said around about four twenty. It could have been earlier,
Speaker 1: it could have been later. The police gave weight to
Speaker 1: the police surgeon's conclusion m hm, whereas when Baxter he
Speaker 1: gave weight to witness testimony. And those witnesses were a
Speaker 1: woman who may have passed Annie Chapman with a murderer
Speaker 1: not long before the murder itself, and there was a
Speaker 1: neighbor who may have heard overheard the murder to making place.
Speaker 1: So the police tended to virtually ignore both of those
Speaker 1: witnesses because what they claimed to have seen and heard
Speaker 1: took place after the estimated time of death. But of
Speaker 1: course if Dr Phillips was wrong, and it would have
Speaker 1: been fairly significantly wrong in the time of death, then
Speaker 1: those witnesses should have been accorded greater seriousness than they were.
Speaker 1: So in that instance we have a case of the
Speaker 1: doctor's evidence then and the theorists still now being a
Speaker 1: matter of considerable argument today at least. M hm. You've
Speaker 1: mentioned the length of the inquests that win Extra held. Um,
Speaker 1: the inquest for for Nichols and for Chapman conclude, uh,
Speaker 1: just four days apart from each other. At that point,
Speaker 1: after both of those inquests have closed, Um, what were
Speaker 1: the results? Was there kind of a prevailing opinion, especially
Speaker 1: among the detectives and those who are running the investigation,
Speaker 1: about what was happening. Yes, By the time Abilene was
Speaker 1: transferred to Whitechapel to take charge of the investigation, Uh,
Speaker 1: the he concluded that at least Nichols had been killed
Speaker 1: by one person, and there are press reports that suggest
Speaker 1: that he was also of the opinion at that stage
Speaker 1: that possibly Smith and Taburn were also killed by the
Speaker 1: same person. So there was a movement now towards thinking
Speaker 1: that uh, the that they were dealing with with what
Speaker 1: today we would call a serial killer. Now it has
Speaker 1: to be realized that whilst the police, uh we're certainly
Speaker 1: senior policeman, members of the medical profession, and the judiciary
Speaker 1: were aware of a thing of what we call serial killers,
Speaker 1: they didn't The average man in the street didn't understand
Speaker 1: it at all. It was a completely new and frightening
Speaker 1: phenomenon as far as they were concerned. The senior police
Speaker 1: and the doctors and so forth didn't have a shared
Speaker 1: language with which to describe these people. So whereas we
Speaker 1: quite happily talk about serial killer and you know what
Speaker 1: I'm talking about, back then they didn't. And also, the
Speaker 1: prevailing medical opinion was basically one that these people were
Speaker 1: a moral defectives in a way that insane people were
Speaker 1: insane um and so they had a brain issue. And
Speaker 1: others thought that the serial killer was and a moral deficiency,
Speaker 1: which obviously we now know well, obviously they do have
Speaker 1: a moral deficiency, but it's not an illness. Um. So
Speaker 1: there was a considerable amount of uncertainty about what serial
Speaker 1: killers were, but it was and for the average man
Speaker 1: in the street. This was a completely new experience. And
Speaker 1: that is where what I suppose you might call the
Speaker 1: beginnings of ripparology lie, because people then the man in
Speaker 1: the street and in the newspapers, uh, trying to speculate
Speaker 1: about the kind of person they thought the murderer was.
Speaker 1: So they weren't coming up with names, but they were
Speaker 1: thinking of things like a deranged doctor, or a mad midwife, uh,
Speaker 1: a religious fanatic. So they were they were trying to
Speaker 1: work out who the murderer was by that kind of method.
Speaker 1: And so that's what and so the and they the
Speaker 1: Nichols and Chapman inquests partly running side by side, meant
Speaker 1: that the press had a lot of time, a lot
Speaker 1: of days in which to speculate about who the murderer
Speaker 1: was and what sort of personally was and what the
Speaker 1: police were doing, and what the police should be doing,
Speaker 1: and what the police weren't doing mhm. And so it
Speaker 1: was all really quite a new form phenomenon really for
Speaker 1: for everybody to be dealing with mm hmm. And then
Speaker 1: we have the dear Boss letter arriving at the press office.
Speaker 1: Can you describe that letter and what effect it had
Speaker 1: on the investigation. Well, there was a news agency called
Speaker 1: Central News and they claimed to have received this letter
Speaker 1: on the seven September and treated it first as a joke,
Speaker 1: but on the twenty nine September they passed it across
Speaker 1: to the to the police and the letter started dear Boss,
Speaker 1: and the text purported to be from the murderer, who
Speaker 1: signed himself Jack the Ripper. And whether or not the
Speaker 1: police actually believed that this letter came from the murderer,
Speaker 1: they gave publicity to the letter, probably just in the
Speaker 1: hope that someone might recognize the handwriting and they could
Speaker 1: investigate from that. The letter did two things. First of all,
Speaker 1: it was the first time the name Jack the Ripper
Speaker 1: was used, and whoever dreamt that up, well they it
Speaker 1: was a work of genius. Really had caught the public's imagination,
Speaker 1: and it continues to do so. Whether or not the
Speaker 1: murders would have been so widely known without it isn't known,
Speaker 1: but it certainly did no harm to the longevity of
Speaker 1: the story. And it also briefly passed into the language
Speaker 1: because people started to threaten to Jack the Ripper somebody,
Speaker 1: and almost any murder bearing the least similarity and to
Speaker 1: be honest sometimes no similarity, were called Jack the Ripper murders.
Speaker 1: The newspapers reported Jack the Ripper murders from all around
Speaker 1: the world. The second thing it did was to spark
Speaker 1: a letter writing bug in thousands of people. So the
Speaker 1: police were deluged with advice from the public and from
Speaker 1: the murderer, or at least so the letters alleged Um
Speaker 1: the Dear Boss was just one of a number of
Speaker 1: letters that made it into print, But not all of
Speaker 1: them were were printed, made their way into the newspapers,
Speaker 1: and in fact it would seem that there were thousands
Speaker 1: of letters were received. In many the writers suggested that
Speaker 1: the murderer was somebody they knew. Others suggested the type
Speaker 1: of person a ripple was a policeman or a doctor,
Speaker 1: as I said, and how aware how and a where
Speaker 1: he might be caught in. In others, people suggested how
Speaker 1: the police should do their job. Others were supposed to
Speaker 1: be from the murderer, and they were jeering or gloating
Speaker 1: about the stupidity of the police, or giving the location
Speaker 1: of where he intended to strike next. And other letters
Speaker 1: were sent to newspapers, and a few were sent to
Speaker 1: private individuals in the latter case. Indeed, a few people
Speaker 1: were even arrested for writing these letters, meant most of
Speaker 1: them thinking that they were being funny when they did so.
Speaker 1: Mhm mhm uh. Would you describe the Saucy Jackie postcard? Yeah?
Speaker 1: The Saucy Jackie postcard was posted to the Central News
Speaker 1: on the first of October. It also addressed the recipient
Speaker 1: as Boss, and other contents suggested that it was written
Speaker 1: by the same person as the Dear Boss letter, and
Speaker 1: the postcard appeared to give details of the murders of
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Stride and Katherine Eddoes that only the killer at
Speaker 1: that time could have could have known. It's now thought
Speaker 1: possible that it could have been posted after the details
Speaker 1: of the murder were published, and neither Dear Boss nor
Speaker 1: Saucy Jackie areb are really now believed to have been
Speaker 1: written by the murderer at all, but they certainly contributed
Speaker 1: considerably to the notoriety of this series of murders. M
Speaker 1: hm hm uh. No, Liz Stride was Swedish. Can you
Speaker 1: describe what what brought her to London? What was her
Speaker 1: life in England like in the years before she ended
Speaker 1: up alone in Whitechapel well, this Stride was registered as
Speaker 1: a prostitute in Sweden, but how and why it isn't
Speaker 1: certainly known. She managed to gain some decent employment in Sweden,
Speaker 1: and um she was she was taken off the prostitute's register,
Speaker 1: and then a small inheritance enabled her to emigrate to London.
Speaker 1: She worked here and then married, and even ran a
Speaker 1: small coffee shop with her husband, but the marriage eventually collapsed.
Speaker 1: Elizabeth had apparently started drinking heavily and this was the
Speaker 1: cause of the breakup. We're told she took to pleading,
Speaker 1: apparently meaning mainly for the Jews, and it was said
Speaker 1: that she could speak Yiddish, but her life spiral downward.
Speaker 1: Her drinking landed her in court on charges of being drunken,
Speaker 1: disorderly and using obscene language on several occasions. There's no
Speaker 1: known record of her being arrested for prostitution, but um
Speaker 1: there's no reason to doubt that, as with many women
Speaker 1: at that time, she could have resorted on them, and
Speaker 1: did resort to prostitution whenever she had when there was
Speaker 1: no other alternative. Somebody said to me many years ago
Speaker 1: that you'd be horrified if you knew what great Granny
Speaker 1: had done in her life to make ends meet, so
Speaker 1: this was not an uncommon thing in the East End.
Speaker 1: But a fellow, a fellow lodger where she stayed from
Speaker 1: time to time told a journalist. He said, when she should,
Speaker 1: when she could get no work, she had to do
Speaker 1: the best she could for a living and so and
Speaker 1: that was in relation to being a a prostitute. But
Speaker 1: he was He was defending and said that she was
Speaker 1: a nicer, cleaner woman you couldn't wish to meet. So, yes,
Speaker 1: she was. This ride was had a tragic life, I think, hm, hm,
Speaker 1: can you describe what Israel Schwartz saw on the night
Speaker 1: of Liz Strides's murder. Israel Schwartz told the police that
Speaker 1: he had been walking home at night. A short distance
Speaker 1: ahead of him was was a man, and that man
Speaker 1: turned into Burner Street, which was also the direction in
Speaker 1: Schwartz was going, so he followed him in a little
Speaker 1: up the way. Up the road, there was a lone woman.
Speaker 1: The man ahead of Schwartz stopped. There may have been
Speaker 1: a brief exchange of words, we we don't know, and
Speaker 1: then the man pulled a woman into the street and
Speaker 1: threw her to the ground. She gave a low scream,
Speaker 1: and a Schwartz, thinking it was a domestic and not
Speaker 1: wanting to get involved, across the street and hurried away.
Speaker 1: As he did so, the man shouted out what sounded
Speaker 1: like Lipski, and Schwartz ran off, just seeing another and
Speaker 1: holding what he seriously described as a knife or a pipe.
Speaker 1: The attack had taken place very close to the spot
Speaker 1: where Elizabeth Stride was found dead, and had taken place
Speaker 1: about fifteen minutes before her body had been discovered. It
Speaker 1: was therefore possible that Schwartz had seen the run up
Speaker 1: to the murder and the murderer mhm mhm. So in
Speaker 1: terms of the case as a whole, and in terms
Speaker 1: of trying to identify a suspect on the part of
Speaker 1: the police prevent further killings, how important was Israel Schwartz
Speaker 1: as a witness for having seen these events. It's very
Speaker 1: difficult to say how important Israel Schwartz was. He wasn't
Speaker 1: called to the inquest, which perhaps suggests that what Schwartz
Speaker 1: witnessed had nothing to do with the murder, or that
Speaker 1: it was this decided he was lying and the assault
Speaker 1: never took place. Whether or not he witnessed an assault
Speaker 1: on Elizabeth Stride. He was nevertheless a witness if he
Speaker 1: was telling the truth to what was going on in
Speaker 1: the streets shortly before Stride's body was found, So in theory,
Speaker 1: he should have been called to give evidence. But of course,
Speaker 1: if the police thought that he wasn't telling the truth,
Speaker 1: then he had nothing relevant to say if he wasn't
Speaker 1: in burning streets at the time. But however, we know
Speaker 1: that another street witness in the street who had also
Speaker 1: seen nothing, but whose testimony was relevant to what was
Speaker 1: happening or rather not happening in Burna Street at the
Speaker 1: time of the murders. She wasn't called either. So it's
Speaker 1: possible that the police were keeping Schwartz under wraps, which
Speaker 1: they shouldn't really have done and assuming they were doing it,
Speaker 1: or or rather they shouldn't have done it, assuming that
Speaker 1: they did it at all, or it's possible that Schwartz
Speaker 1: gave his testimony and camera or off the public record,
Speaker 1: or finally that he had gone to ground and the
Speaker 1: police couldn't find him. So basically, if Schwartz was telling
Speaker 1: the truth, then his testimony would be important. Obviously, if
Speaker 1: he wasn't telling the truth, his testimony was unimportant if
Speaker 1: he had been in the street at the time he
Speaker 1: said he was, but hadn't seen the assault on stride,
Speaker 1: his testimony was still relevant because he was there shortly
Speaker 1: before the murders were committed. However, Sir Robert Anderson, who
Speaker 1: was the head of the c i D at the time,
Speaker 1: said in his memoirs written in that Jack the Ripper
Speaker 1: had been positively identified by an eye witness, the only
Speaker 1: person who ever had a good view of the murderer.
Speaker 1: This person had refused to give evidence because the murderer
Speaker 1: was a Jew like himself. So we are being told
Speaker 1: by Sir Robert Anderson that the witness was a Jew
Speaker 1: and that he had a good view of the murderer.
Speaker 1: We know of only two men who saw a man
Speaker 1: with a woman identified as a victim, a man called Novender,
Speaker 1: who was one of the three men who passed a
Speaker 1: woman they identified as Catherine Eddoes, and Israel Schwartz. By
Speaker 1: no stretch of the imagination could Levender genuinely be described
Speaker 1: aimed as having had a good view of the murderer.
Speaker 1: So that means that the only Jewish eye witness to
Speaker 1: anything that we know about was Israel Schwartz. So either
Speaker 1: Anderson's story confirms what Schwartz said and also means that
Speaker 1: Schwartz was Anderson's eyewitness, or the whole thing is open
Speaker 1: to serious doubt. Mhm mhm. Now, in that in that
Speaker 1: story that that Schwartz tells, there's that shout of of Lipsky.
Speaker 1: Can you describe the Lipsky case that he is probably
Speaker 1: referring to? There? Yes, very briefly, Israel Lipsky lived in
Speaker 1: Batty Street, which was a street adjacent to Burner Street,
Speaker 1: which is where Stride was murdered. A fellow lodger in
Speaker 1: the house was a young woman named Miriam Angel, and
Speaker 1: in June of she was poisoned with nitric acid. On
Speaker 1: nitric acid, it also appears that Lipsky had tried to
Speaker 1: commit suicide by drinking the acid too, but he didn't die,
Speaker 1: and when he had recovered, he was charged and tried
Speaker 1: and convicted of murdering Miriam Angel. He denied having done so,
Speaker 1: and a lot of people believed him, but the jury
Speaker 1: wasn't amongst them, and he was sentenced to hang. There
Speaker 1: was a great deal of effort to try and persuade
Speaker 1: the Home Secretary to commute the sentence. But Henry Matthews
Speaker 1: refused to do so, and Lipsky then wrote a confession
Speaker 1: shortly before he went to the gallows. Many people still
Speaker 1: entertained doubt about his guilt. However, the name we're told
Speaker 1: that the main Dame Lipsky, was briefly used as a
Speaker 1: term of insult. So uh it is to be assumed
Speaker 1: that the man who Schwartz are attacking a woman was
Speaker 1: making a remark about Schwartz's appearance. M hm hm um.
Speaker 1: From that same night when with Dry was killed, can
Speaker 1: you describe Leon Goldstein and what he contributed to what
Speaker 1: came to be the public image of Jack the Ripper.
Speaker 1: Around the time Elizabeth Stride was murdered, a man was
Speaker 1: seen in the street. He carried a black bag, and
Speaker 1: fortunately a man named Leon Goldstein recognized the description of
Speaker 1: himself in the newspaper and went along to the police.
Speaker 1: The contents of his black bag were utterly harmless, and
Speaker 1: Mr Goldstein went on his way, But his black bag
Speaker 1: stayed in the public's mind and added to the image
Speaker 1: of the top the the upper class gent with a
Speaker 1: top hat, wearing a cape, and always carrying a black bag.
Speaker 1: The bag is iconic in the story of Jack the
Speaker 1: Ripper as much as the deer Stalker hat is icon
Speaker 1: nick in the image of Sherlock Holmes. So Leon Goldstein
Speaker 1: inadvertently gave rise to this, this myth of the black Bag,
Speaker 1: and the police didn't help because they never released the
Speaker 1: story of Mr Goldstein too the press, so it was
Speaker 1: never significantly reported. M Hm. When was it that that
Speaker 1: the story that the police knew from their conversation with
Speaker 1: Goldstein finally did become public so that you and I
Speaker 1: could know about it today. Well, that's that's known as
Speaker 1: a consequence of the since the release of the police files,
Speaker 1: because they were they were kept private until the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: so that's part of the information that's coming to light
Speaker 1: in these recent years. It's worthwhile remembering that up until
Speaker 1: really the year two thousand, research into Jack the Ripper
Speaker 1: and his crimes was severely curtailed by the fact that
Speaker 1: police files were closed. The newspaper library was in effect
Speaker 1: was in London, which effectively meant that anybody not living
Speaker 1: in or near London had to make a major sacrifice
Speaker 1: to get there to to look through the newspaper files.
Speaker 1: So researching Jack the Ripper was with which you know,
Speaker 1: has been done by private individuals, not people with with
Speaker 1: tons of money and lots of spare time, and done
Speaker 1: when they are also trying to Very often they have
Speaker 1: a job, full employment, and there maybe a family and
Speaker 1: family demands, so they weren't able to go off and
Speaker 1: do all these things. But from two thousand, UH, we've
Speaker 1: benefited greatly from the vast you know, the genealogical records
Speaker 1: that have been made available on sites like Ancestry, and
Speaker 1: the massive digitalization of newspapers which is going on in
Speaker 1: America and here and elsewhere in the world, which has
Speaker 1: opened up, uh, a huge range of information that prior
Speaker 1: to two thousand people didn't have access to. And the
Speaker 1: search facilities available on the computers have made looking for
Speaker 1: information so much easier, and with a click of a button,
Speaker 1: I can now find records that it would maybe have
Speaker 1: taken me a week to find twenty years ago that
Speaker 1: one twenty years ago, thirty or forty years ago, So
Speaker 1: there's a big difference there. And also in two thousand m.
Speaker 1: Stewart Evans and Keith skin Are published a book which
Speaker 1: contained all the police files which hitherto had again only
Speaker 1: been available to people living in or near London who
Speaker 1: who could see them at the Public Record Office. There
Speaker 1: are a few people, myself being one of them, who
Speaker 1: was lucky enough to be able to buy a photocopy
Speaker 1: of the entire files, but that cost about a thousand
Speaker 1: over a thousand pounds, and that was back in when
Speaker 1: a thousand pounds was worth. However, a lot more have
Speaker 1: had a bigger buying power than it does today. So
Speaker 1: when people say, oh, you know that reparologists aren't doing,
Speaker 1: haven't haven't really paid an awful lot of attention to
Speaker 1: the people involved in the victims and everything. That's because
Speaker 1: we haven't really had access to the source materials until
Speaker 1: relatively recently. M hm m hm um. And I really
Speaker 1: commend your your book Forgotten Victims to anyone who does
Speaker 1: want to undertake thinking along those lines. And I think
Speaker 1: you've done such a good job with with that book
Speaker 1: in talking about a number of murders that happened over
Speaker 1: a span of time, including the Jackie Ripper murders, and
Speaker 1: discussing with some sensitivity, um, how stories about especially you know,
Speaker 1: favored suspects and the identity of possible murders uh includes
Speaker 1: or excludes consideration of the lives of women and who
Speaker 1: lived and died in the East End in the eighties. Um.
Speaker 1: I thought, you know, in some ways it is a
Speaker 1: hard subject, but in some ways I found in a
Speaker 1: beautiful book and I'm really grateful for that one, thank you. Um.
Speaker 1: There's a there's a footnote in that book, uh, about
Speaker 1: the life of Katherine Eddos that she had attended her
Speaker 1: cousin's public hanging in eighteen sixties six. Um. Can you
Speaker 1: describe that event and the resulting Gallows ballad chat book
Speaker 1: about Christopher Robinson that was a part of who Katherine
Speaker 1: Eddos was in the years before her murder. Well, um, uh,
Speaker 1: not not a great deal really about that. It was
Speaker 1: passing passing statement that was made about Katherine Eddos that
Speaker 1: she had gone to witness the execution of her relative.
Speaker 1: The story basically is that Eddoes and the man that
Speaker 1: she was living with at the time, he was, as
Speaker 1: far as we can tell, the one who apparently wrote
Speaker 1: these little books and they were cheap almost sort of
Speaker 1: pamphlets really that that described events that had happened in
Speaker 1: very often in rhyme of some sort. Uh, and the
Speaker 1: as you said, Gallows ballads, and they had gone to
Speaker 1: witness this execution, and they had produced one of the ballads.
Speaker 1: Whether this story is absolutely true or not, and whether
Speaker 1: they were produced in these books again, um, we really
Speaker 1: we really don't know. I don't know. The trouble is
Speaker 1: that very few of these things have survived. They were
Speaker 1: almost throw away things when they were created, So it's
Speaker 1: very difficult to to know. And I haven't actually seen,
Speaker 1: uh seen any ballad relating to and as relative mhm, mhm.
Speaker 1: Would you describe for us the events that occurred in
Speaker 1: Minor Square right? Um? Well, and about one five in
Speaker 1: the morning, uh PC. Edward Watkins was on his eat,
Speaker 1: which took him into Mica Square, which was a small
Speaker 1: square with with three entrances. In the shadows of the
Speaker 1: southwest corner, he saw the body of Katherine Edo's. It
Speaker 1: emerged that about ten minutes earlier, three men had passed
Speaker 1: one of the entrances to Mica Square and had there
Speaker 1: seen a woman talking to a man. Two of the
Speaker 1: men walking past would later identify the woman by her
Speaker 1: clothing as Katherine Eddo's, and one of those men was
Speaker 1: the man that I mentioned earlier, Joseph Lavender. Um, Now,
Speaker 1: it's very likely that they did see Katherine Eddos with
Speaker 1: a murderer, but it is equally likely that the woman
Speaker 1: was not Katherine Eddo's, or even if it was Eddos,
Speaker 1: that the man had just been accosted by her when
Speaker 1: the three men walked by, and had disengaged himself and
Speaker 1: walked on, leaving heads to meet Jack the Ripple. So again,
Speaker 1: as with all of these cases, there are lots of
Speaker 1: variable So they did see a woman. She they did
Speaker 1: recognize her and identify her by a fairly distinctive clothing
Speaker 1: as being Edos. So they probably did see Eddoes with somebody.
Speaker 1: But there was a small margin of time during which
Speaker 1: the man that they saw could have left her, And
Speaker 1: if she had wandered into the shadows of Might Square,
Speaker 1: then she might well have encounter Jack the Ripper looking there,
Speaker 1: listening to everything that had gone on, and maybe proposition
Speaker 1: to her there and then so we can't say that
Speaker 1: the man that she was with was the murderer. M
Speaker 1: hm hm. Can you describe the way that the location
Speaker 1: of Miter Square complicated the investigation? I assume you mean
Speaker 1: that the murderer of Mita Square in Mighty Square was
Speaker 1: committed in the jurisdiction of the City of London Police.
Speaker 1: Many people don't realize that London actually has two police forces.
Speaker 1: The central part of London, the business district known as
Speaker 1: the Square Mile, is the jurisdiction of the City of
Speaker 1: London Police and the Metropolitan Police Orange, whose headquarters are
Speaker 1: at Scotland Yard, have charge of the rest. So the
Speaker 1: murderer murder of Catharine Eddos introduced two forces, two sets
Speaker 1: of inquiries. Um, they liaised with one another, but we
Speaker 1: don't know for certain how well. There were some complaints
Speaker 1: to the effect that the City Police weren't passing across
Speaker 1: all the information. Um. There may well have been complaints
Speaker 1: by the City Police and that the network passing over
Speaker 1: all the information. But unfortunately all the City Police files
Speaker 1: on this case were destroyed in the bombing of World
Speaker 1: War two, so we don't have any of the police,
Speaker 1: the City Police documentation telling us anything, any snippets of
Speaker 1: inside information. Mhm hm, yeah, that's all us. Um. Can
Speaker 1: you describe describe that the Gholston Street graffido and Charles
Speaker 1: Warren's reaction to it. Yeah, A piece of apron seems
Speaker 1: to have been torn from the apron that Katharine Edos
Speaker 1: was was wearing uh and that that piece of apron
Speaker 1: was was later found in a sort of covered entrance
Speaker 1: to some stairs leading to the landings of several flats
Speaker 1: or apartments. The eight piece of apron was smeared with
Speaker 1: blood and it appears to have been taken by the
Speaker 1: murderer to wipe his hands or knife. Above it on
Speaker 1: the wall, there's some writing in short which said something
Speaker 1: along the lines of the Jews are not the men
Speaker 1: to be blamed for nothing. The odd thing was that
Speaker 1: Jews were spelt j u w e s. We don't
Speaker 1: know whether that meant something or it was us playing
Speaker 1: and ordinary misspelling. Anyway, ever since the leather apron business,
Speaker 1: there was growing animosity towards the Jews and in this area,
Speaker 1: and the head of the head of h Division while
Speaker 1: Superintendent Thomas Arnold, and he concluded that the writing had
Speaker 1: nothing to do with the murderer, but he was concerned
Speaker 1: that the message might incite further anti Jewish unrest. It
Speaker 1: was a genuine concern because we know that fifty extra
Speaker 1: policemen were drafted into the area the next day to
Speaker 1: deal with any trouble. MHM Arnold wanted to have the
Speaker 1: writing erased he had already got a man with a
Speaker 1: wet sponge ready to wipe the wall clean. And Sir
Speaker 1: Charles Warren, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, recognizing the
Speaker 1: seriousness of erasing what could have been the murderer's handwriting,
Speaker 1: carefully listened to Arnold's concerns and took the responsibility of
Speaker 1: giving the order to wipe off the joke writing. He
Speaker 1: took that responsibility upon himself, so that basically he'd get
Speaker 1: the blame and not Ah, not Thomas Arnold. So I
Speaker 1: think that gives an insight, a little insight into Charles
Speaker 1: Warren's character there anyway. Uh. Later commentators, including policemen such
Speaker 1: as Sir Robert Anderson, decided that Warren's actions were wrong
Speaker 1: and described them as cross dupidity um. And we're of
Speaker 1: the opinion that war and had destroyed the only clue
Speaker 1: ever to be left by the murderer. Their fairness to Warren,
Speaker 1: Superintendent Arnold had recommended the range, and as I said,
Speaker 1: had been a waiting about to give the order himself.
Speaker 1: His concerns about the message perhaps barking anti Jewish unrest
Speaker 1: were genuine, So Warren really had very little option but
Speaker 1: to accept that that the anxieties of the man in
Speaker 1: charge of that part of London. Arnold knew it far
Speaker 1: better than Warren did, and Arnold also didn't believe that
Speaker 1: the writing had any connection with the crimes. So Ever
Speaker 1: since then people have argued about whether the apron and
Speaker 1: the writing were connected or not, what did the writing mean,
Speaker 1: and if they were connected, what did the writing mean
Speaker 1: and so on, So it's all a bit in the conundrum.
Speaker 1: So would you describe for us the speculation of Dr
Speaker 1: Frederick Gordon Brown when he examined Katherine Eddo's body. Dr
Speaker 1: Frederick Gordon Brown was the police surgeon who conducted the
Speaker 1: autopsy on Katherine Eddo's A kidney had been removed from
Speaker 1: Katherine Eddos and apparently taken away by the murderer. Dr
Speaker 1: Brown concluded that the removal of the kidneys suggested that
Speaker 1: the murderer possessed anatomical knowledge, and to have successfully removed it,
Speaker 1: he thought that he must have had a degree of
Speaker 1: surgical skill. Other doctors who had examined the other victims
Speaker 1: did not necessarily agree, and some said that the ripper
Speaker 1: didn't even possess us the skill of the butcher. However,
Speaker 1: Dr Brown's opinion fired what's perhaps the most popular theory
Speaker 1: about Jack the Rippon, namely that he was a deranged doctor.
Speaker 1: Mhm h M. Can you describe the White Chapel Vigilance Committee, um,
Speaker 1: and what led the committee to dissolve towards the end
Speaker 1: of October. On October, a lot of the residents in
Speaker 1: the East End were dissatisfied with the police investigation and
Speaker 1: they that this and those especially those with businesses, formed
Speaker 1: together to offer a reward and to assist the policeman
Speaker 1: on their beat by patrolling the streets, keeping an eye
Speaker 1: out for suspicious men and reporting any they observed. They
Speaker 1: were called the White Chapel Vigilance Committee. Uh. They were
Speaker 1: not as they are sometimes described vigilantes. Uh. Maybe the
Speaker 1: same roots of the word, but they weren't taking the
Speaker 1: law into their own hands. They were merely keeping an
Speaker 1: eye open. They were being vigilant m hm hm um.
Speaker 1: And despite the dissatisfaction with the police at the time
Speaker 1: that the Vigilance Committee was formed, um, And you mentioned
Speaker 1: earlier there is a major mobilization of the police in
Speaker 1: Whitechapel in October. Um, how would you describe that operation?
Speaker 1: That's undertaken well. Basically, the the the police had very
Speaker 1: little option but to catch the catch Jack the ripper
Speaker 1: in in the act. Uh. And so therefore they drafted
Speaker 1: police into the area in large numbers from other arts
Speaker 1: of London. As ever, of course there were issues with
Speaker 1: regarding the um the cost of this exercise, so they
Speaker 1: were they they came in and then as things quiet
Speaker 1: and they were moved out, and then they will move
Speaker 1: back in again m hm um. At the end of
Speaker 1: the month, Robert Anderson asks Dr Thomas Bond, who we
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, to examine all of the medical evidence of
Speaker 1: the murders. To that point, Um, why was Dr Bond
Speaker 1: a trusted observer, trusted by Robert Anderson? And uh, you
Speaker 1: know what in his life had led him to be
Speaker 1: in Robert Anderson's trust. And then when he did have
Speaker 1: the amassed evidence together, what did he conclude and did
Speaker 1: the police find it helpful? Um? Dr Thomas Bond was
Speaker 1: really the doctor that Robert Anderson favored and was was
Speaker 1: one of the senior, most senior of the of the
Speaker 1: police surgeons. And on the twenty October Robert Anna Star's
Speaker 1: Bond to assist in the Ripper investigation. He hadn't done
Speaker 1: much on the earlier victims, but he was able to
Speaker 1: study their inquest testimony. Uh, and he had seen Mary
Speaker 1: Kelly's body, and he submitted a report on the ten oh,
Speaker 1: sorry tenth of November. So he uh he was the
Speaker 1: senior as I said, was the senior surgeon. He was
Speaker 1: the surgeon to a division of the Metropolitan Police, the
Speaker 1: division basically Scotland Yards. And he reviewed the notes as
Speaker 1: m as we know, and had been involved in the
Speaker 1: inquest in sorry, the autopsy on Mary Kelly. He was
Speaker 1: basically the first, if not the first, one of the
Speaker 1: earliest ah psychological or creat creators of a psychological profile.
Speaker 1: He his report to Anderson basically profiled the murderer and
Speaker 1: said things like he he he concluded that the murderer
Speaker 1: would not necessarily be splashed or deluged with blood. His
Speaker 1: hands and arms must have been covered in parts of
Speaker 1: his clothing must certainly have been smeared with blood. But
Speaker 1: he could have rolled down his sleeves and put on
Speaker 1: gloves and things, so he could have made his escape
Speaker 1: without blood necessarily being all over him. Um. He concluded
Speaker 1: things like he he thought the mutilations in all the
Speaker 1: cases except Bernard Street, were all of the same character,
Speaker 1: he said, and so we that's one of the reasons
Speaker 1: why the murderer of the murder of Elizabeth Stride sometimes
Speaker 1: isn't thought to be one of the Ripper victims. But
Speaker 1: then at the same having said that, the circumstances of
Speaker 1: that murder we're different. She Stride wasn't mutilated. It appears
Speaker 1: that the murderer had made an escape. Um. So, really,
Speaker 1: all I have to say on Bond, that's great, That's
Speaker 1: that's good, and I'll have h Adam. Adam Wood has
Speaker 1: has written a lot about about Bond's career in his
Speaker 1: Swanson books, so when I talk with him, we'll get
Speaker 1: to go into Bond's history a little more. So that's great,
Speaker 1: that's great. Um. After after Mary Kelly's killing, can you
Speaker 1: describe the way that the police worked to make sure
Speaker 1: that that her murder, despite it's horrific nature, did not
Speaker 1: incite the same kind of of press coverage of the
Speaker 1: previous killings. Uh. The the issue I think with after
Speaker 1: Mary Kelly was really that, um, it was it was
Speaker 1: the murder of Kelly was committed within the jurisdiction of
Speaker 1: the from coroner. Again, coroner's had had different areas that
Speaker 1: they were responsible for, and the previous murders, with the
Speaker 1: exception of Katherine Eddoes in the City of London, had
Speaker 1: fallen within the jurisdiction of Wind Baxter, and he was
Speaker 1: a man who took care to question almost everyone with
Speaker 1: something relevant to say, and to probe what they said
Speaker 1: as best best he could. Mary Kelly fell within the
Speaker 1: jurisdiction of Dr Roderick McDonald, and he decided to take
Speaker 1: only that information necessary to establish the cause and time
Speaker 1: of death, so the inquest was over within a day.
Speaker 1: The effect of this was that it curtailed a sort
Speaker 1: of press speculation that had been indulged in when reporting
Speaker 1: the quests day after day in between adjournments. Whether this
Speaker 1: was done in accordance with Dr McDonald's personal beliefs about
Speaker 1: how in quest should be conducted, or was done at
Speaker 1: the request of the police or even the Home Office,
Speaker 1: the result was that it it switched off press interest,
Speaker 1: almost like he was switching off an electric light. Reports
Speaker 1: continued to be made of other murders in the area,
Speaker 1: and there were flurries of Jack the Ripper excitement, but
Speaker 1: for many it put a full stop to the murders.
Speaker 1: Kelly was indeed remind regarded by many as as the
Speaker 1: last Jack the Ripper murder m hm hm um. And
Speaker 1: there there are some writers who have written that Charles
Speaker 1: Warren resigns because of the failure of the police to
Speaker 1: solve the case, to catch the killer. You mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: his his conflicts with with Matthews leading up to the
Speaker 1: Murray's Magazine article. UM, So, in your mind, what were
Speaker 1: the reasons that Warren did resign, Maybe just the article
Speaker 1: um and his and his conflict with Matthews, and then
Speaker 1: what was the process for selecting as a new Commissioner Monroe,
Speaker 1: as you mentioned, once Charles Warren had left his post. Um.
Speaker 1: I think it's fairly well established that the reason why
Speaker 1: Warren resigned was because he'd he was basically fed up
Speaker 1: with the restrictions that were being placed upon him by
Speaker 1: the Home Office. He was somebody who ran his own businesses,
Speaker 1: it were, and resented the fact that he had to
Speaker 1: sometimes go cap in hand to somebody else for permission
Speaker 1: to do what he believed was the right thing to do.
Speaker 1: And the writing of the Murray's Magazine article, which didn't
Speaker 1: contain anything really that anybody could object to. But Matthews
Speaker 1: did object to it because simply because Warren hadn't asked
Speaker 1: his permission to write it and have it published. Warren,
Speaker 1: I think also had probably been quite keen to leave
Speaker 1: the job, and prior to this blowing up in his face. UH,
Speaker 1: Monroe was a had been a senior policeman in India
Speaker 1: UH and on his return to England need have been
Speaker 1: appointed Assistant Commissioner c I D. He also ran into
Speaker 1: trouble with with Warren, mainly because Monroe, like Warren, wanted
Speaker 1: to run his own department his way, and he didn't
Speaker 1: like Warren interfering any more than Warren, like Matthews interfering.
Speaker 1: It's just odd perhaps that Monroe, who must have understood
Speaker 1: Warren's problems, had no sympathy for Warren, who was suffering
Speaker 1: the same as Monroe was suffering only with Warren. But
Speaker 1: so he resigned, and the Home Office then appointed him
Speaker 1: to a special permission to run a clandestine secret department
Speaker 1: reporting on subversive groups other than the Fenians. So he
Speaker 1: was still there, if you like, running this separate section UH.
Speaker 1: And he was consulted about the White Chapel murders throughout
Speaker 1: and was perhaps therefore, for very many reasons, best equipped
Speaker 1: ahead the met at the time. And I don't think
Speaker 1: that there was much of a process of of selection
Speaker 1: process going on. I think mon Row was basically chosen
Speaker 1: for the job and put into it. M hmmmmm. You
Speaker 1: mentioned that there are further murders that happened in the
Speaker 1: East End. Uh. Some of them do generate more speculation,
Speaker 1: more press coverage, more interest in whether or not Jack
Speaker 1: the Ripper, They say, you know that, whether or not
Speaker 1: the same hand was involved. Um. So I'd like to
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about Alice mackenzie and Francis calls. Um.
Speaker 1: How was the murder of Alice mackenzie investigated relative to
Speaker 1: the killings that we've talked about so far, Nicholson, Chapman,
Speaker 1: ETOs Stride Kelly. Initially, in the case of Alice McKenzie,
Speaker 1: M James Monroe personally took charge of that murder investigation.
Speaker 1: And he initially because Sir Robert Anderson was on holiday again. Uh,
Speaker 1: And he initially believed that she was murdered by the
Speaker 1: same person who had committed the earlier murders, but he
Speaker 1: later changed his mind, and so the the murder of
Speaker 1: Alice Mackenzie was just followed as if it were an
Speaker 1: ordinary murder investigation. What's interesting, I suppose for today for
Speaker 1: people who are interested in who the ripper was, is that,
Speaker 1: although Monroe later changed his mind, his initial conclusion means
Speaker 1: that the ripper had not been identified at the time
Speaker 1: of Mackenzie's murder in July, so various suspects who were
Speaker 1: dead by that time or had either not become suspects
Speaker 1: at that point or they weren't the ripper. The murder
Speaker 1: of Francis Coles again is doesn't appear really to have
Speaker 1: any connection with the Jack the Ripper murders um, but
Speaker 1: it is significant for being the last murder included in
Speaker 1: the White Chuckle murders file held by the police. Francis
Speaker 1: Coles also, to some ex then comes across as possibly
Speaker 1: one of the nicest of the victims from what little
Speaker 1: we know about mm hmm, yeah. What gives us that
Speaker 1: impression about about her? About her life? I think it
Speaker 1: was the fact that she was She had tried various jobs,
Speaker 1: and one of which appears to have damaged her hands.
Speaker 1: She was not able to do jobs. She tried very
Speaker 1: hard to retain some degree in respectability, and particularly not
Speaker 1: to let her father know what she was doing or
Speaker 1: what she had become h and always trying to keep
Speaker 1: her clothes look or keep looking decent. She also when
Speaker 1: she met up with Thomas Sadler that that last night
Speaker 1: of her life, she had tried to basically take care
Speaker 1: of him and look after him. And she obviously taken
Speaker 1: drinks and done what she was supposed to do. But
Speaker 1: she just comes across as being hard done by somebody
Speaker 1: she she she wouldn't probably have been doing what she
Speaker 1: was doing in at a different time, in a different place.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that she comes across as having other
Speaker 1: failings such as being a desperate alcoholic or or anything
Speaker 1: like that, or not failings particularly, but but illness issue
Speaker 1: of that kind. She was just somebody who seems to
Speaker 1: have found herself in her having hard times almost through
Speaker 1: note falls of our own. Yeah, um, when we're thinking
Speaker 1: about yeah, stepping further and further away from the time
Speaker 1: of the murders and and starting to look back on them, um,
Speaker 1: and almost to shape our understanding of them from a
Speaker 1: historical perspective. Who was Melville McNaughton and what role did
Speaker 1: he have in enjoining the investigation. Melville mc norton had
Speaker 1: been a was was a and from a wealthy family
Speaker 1: that had tea plantations in India, and he had gone
Speaker 1: to run the tea plantations. They were it was a
Speaker 1: tough time for him. They were fairly remote from the
Speaker 1: rest of civilization. He'd get to see an awful lot
Speaker 1: of people. But he appears to have stuck it out
Speaker 1: and being quite good at what he did. But at
Speaker 1: one point he ran into trouble with some of the
Speaker 1: natives and basically they beat him up and left him
Speaker 1: for dead in the plane. Fortunately he recovered and he
Speaker 1: returned eventually returned to England. But as a consequence of
Speaker 1: that event, he actually met James Monroe, who was the
Speaker 1: senior policeman out there at the time, and so the
Speaker 1: two of them became quite good friends. So when mc
Speaker 1: norton came back to Britain, Munroe wanted him to join
Speaker 1: the met and become I think it was Assistant Chief Constable.
Speaker 1: Uh All appeared to be going swimmingly until Warren found
Speaker 1: out about this incident of him being beaten up in India,
Speaker 1: and he really then said no. And so that was
Speaker 1: another interference with with with Munroe's department that put him
Speaker 1: at odds with Warren. So it was the following year
Speaker 1: that that Norton was when, after Warren had gone, that
Speaker 1: McNaughton managed to all the Monroe managed to get McNaughton
Speaker 1: into into place, and he joined the met in the
Speaker 1: middle of and so he was there for all the
Speaker 1: the later to investigate the later murders. But he had
Speaker 1: a tremendous interest in the case and apparently kept pictures
Speaker 1: of the victims and other informa in his desk draw
Speaker 1: so he would have been able to make it acquaint
Speaker 1: himself with with all the the basic facts of the investigation.
Speaker 1: And then of course he was active in the subsequent investigation,
Speaker 1: so he became quite a knowledgeable person. And he wrote
Speaker 1: a report called the which we refer to as the
Speaker 1: mc norton Memorandum. And he wrote this probably in anticipation
Speaker 1: of questions being asked of the police about a man
Speaker 1: called Thomas Cutbush, who a newspaper at the time was
Speaker 1: identifying but not naming him as Jack the Ripper. In
Speaker 1: this report, he briefly summarizes the Jack the Ripper murders
Speaker 1: and refers to three suspects. They were Montague, John Druette,
Speaker 1: somebody called Kasminski, and a man called Ostrog. We don't
Speaker 1: know very much about any of them. Drew it appears
Speaker 1: to have been come to the attention of the police
Speaker 1: some years after when Norton joined the met. A lot
Speaker 1: of has been done on Kasminsky. We don't know for
Speaker 1: sure who Cosminski was, but the we do know that
Speaker 1: he went into an asylum and the only k anything
Speaker 1: Ski that's been found in asylum records as a chap
Speaker 1: called Aaron Kasminski, and a lot of theorizing has been
Speaker 1: done about him and Michael Ostrog. Turns out that he
Speaker 1: was actually in a prison in France at the time
Speaker 1: the murders were committed, and so he couldn't have been
Speaker 1: Jack the Ripper, But obviously mc norton didn't know that
Speaker 1: when he wrote the memorandum, so he's become quite an
Speaker 1: important figure in the case. Do we know how the
Speaker 1: memorandum was received on its first being written, Well, as
Speaker 1: far as we can tell it, it was never received
Speaker 1: by anybody we we suppose. We we assume that it
Speaker 1: was written for his senior officer, which at that time
Speaker 1: would have been Robert Anderson. Um or it was prepared
Speaker 1: at Anderson's request forman Rose request, possibly for the attention
Speaker 1: of the Home Office, But we really don't know, and
Speaker 1: there's nothing. There are no none of the usual stamps
Speaker 1: to suggest this was received by somebody or read by somebody,
Speaker 1: as as are appended to most documents, so it may
Speaker 1: not ever have been needed and Munroe sorry, not just
Speaker 1: stuck it into the files. We do know. What's interesting
Speaker 1: is that there was a copy that he kept a
Speaker 1: copy of that report, which differs slightly from the one
Speaker 1: in the police files, which some people have argued, ah
Speaker 1: was something that mc norton wrote later. I think it was.
Speaker 1: It's more likely to be a rough draft of the
Speaker 1: one that's in the police files. They basically say that
Speaker 1: the same thing m but there are important details that
Speaker 1: are different, so it probably wasn't We can't you know,
Speaker 1: it wasn't received by anybody, so there was no reaction
Speaker 1: to it. Um Stepping now more towards those kinds of
Speaker 1: retrospective questions and considerations, you've written that that Wind Baxter,
Speaker 1: the coroner for everyone except Atos and Kelly um that
Speaker 1: he gained undeserved notoriety for advancing the theory that the
Speaker 1: murders were committed in order to obtain the victims internal organs.
Speaker 1: Would you say more about that theory, why drew the
Speaker 1: attention it did to Baxter, and why it was undeserved? Well,
Speaker 1: when Baxter had heard that an American doctor was trying
Speaker 1: to buy you y ah and the explanation given for this,
Speaker 1: unprobable as it sounds, was to accompany a book he
Speaker 1: was writing. Now, when Baxter heard this story and at
Speaker 1: the inquest, suggested that ah that they said possibly may
Speaker 1: have been heard or something like it may have been
Speaker 1: heard by the murderer and given the murderer the idea
Speaker 1: of killing women in order to obtain organs that he
Speaker 1: could then sell. In honesty, it was an insane idea,
Speaker 1: but when Baxter suggested that it was, the murderer was insane.
Speaker 1: So in fairness to Baxter, all he suggested was that
Speaker 1: a madman might have been inspired by a story that
Speaker 1: was in circulation at the time. And I think that's
Speaker 1: quite quite reasonable. I'm in a madman, to be honest,
Speaker 1: could have been inspired by anything, and we know that
Speaker 1: the most obscure things seem to have inspired people to
Speaker 1: kill um. It's just a pity that because win Baxter
Speaker 1: put forward this idea, it's been assumed that the idea
Speaker 1: was his. It wasn't really his. There was a doctor
Speaker 1: who was trying to buy you try. We don't know
Speaker 1: who he was, unfortunately, but there was one am and
Speaker 1: it's perfectly reasonable to think that somebody who was insane
Speaker 1: would have might have been inspired by that. So I
Speaker 1: think it's really unfair to take win Baxter there and
Speaker 1: give him give him trouble for for something that wasn't his.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm um. In and You've Forgotten Victims book, you
Speaker 1: talk a bit about the random, the White Hart, the
Speaker 1: Pension and other Torso or or Thames murders, and you
Speaker 1: noted that at the time of writing um, they had
Speaker 1: drawn little attention relative to what we consider the Ripper killings.
Speaker 1: Could you say a few more words on on that. Uh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: as a very good question. Unfortunately, it's one to which
Speaker 1: there's no definitive answer. I guess it's part because they
Speaker 1: were overshadowed by the Whitechapel murders, and therefore they just
Speaker 1: didn't get the publicity that they One imagine that they
Speaker 1: might have done had they had the Whitechappel murders not
Speaker 1: being committed at the same time equally, of course, it
Speaker 1: depends on what really grabs the attention of the press.
Speaker 1: And these were bodied parts in effect that we're being
Speaker 1: found at different times in fairly separated places. And unlike
Speaker 1: the Ripper killings, which were suggested one person operating in
Speaker 1: a very small area, it may well be that the
Speaker 1: to Also killings just didn't grab public attention. And we
Speaker 1: have known about these murders for quite a long time,
Speaker 1: and it's only in the last few years that people
Speaker 1: have been writing books about them and ah really bringing
Speaker 1: them into the sphere of of anybody interested in the
Speaker 1: Ripper murders as well, because they show what was going
Speaker 1: on at the time. Mhm Um. In that same book,
Speaker 1: all right, and you offered a few comments on this
Speaker 1: on this earlier Um, but just stepping towards wrapping up
Speaker 1: our conversation for today. UM. In that book, you've written
Speaker 1: that often the stories of women killed in Whitechapel are
Speaker 1: omitted from the studies of the murder and that their
Speaker 1: status um, whether they're in or out of being included
Speaker 1: in in the victims of a you know, Jack the Ripper,
Speaker 1: kind of depends on in your term that the whim
Speaker 1: of the theorist about the identity of the killer. Um,
Speaker 1: with that in mind, would you be going to offer
Speaker 1: how you have gone about thinking about the identity of suspects,
Speaker 1: potential um possibilities for who the murderer was. Well, right
Speaker 1: from the I've never been terribly interested in the identity
Speaker 1: of Jack the Ripper. Oddly enough, it was always for
Speaker 1: me was compiling the data, the about all the crimes
Speaker 1: and what led to various conclusions and so forth. So
Speaker 1: it's really I think that the chances of us ever
Speaker 1: knowing who Jack the Ripple was largely depends on who
Speaker 1: the police at the time thought Jack the Ripple was.
Speaker 1: And the only clues to that that we have are
Speaker 1: the are the names provided in the Norton memoranda, and
Speaker 1: to a slightly lesser extent, to Francis Tumbletye, who was
Speaker 1: a definite suspect at a time at some point, UM,
Speaker 1: and maybe one or two others. But there's That's basically it.
Speaker 1: And of those really, really I suppose it all boils
Speaker 1: down to Drewid and kause Minsky and the research that
Speaker 1: has been done on them. UM. And I wouldn't like
Speaker 1: to I know, to be honest, I really don't feel
Speaker 1: capable of, uh, sort of nailing my colors to to
Speaker 1: the master of either one. At the moment. I think
Speaker 1: there subjects that really do demand a lot more in
Speaker 1: a lot more investigation and research. And I suppose that
Speaker 1: really is we're trying to understand what was going on
Speaker 1: at the time, and understanding the history of the case
Speaker 1: becomes so important because, for example, it was h h
Speaker 1: In the case of Kazminski, we believe that he is
Speaker 1: also a suspect named by Anderson as being the witness,
Speaker 1: sorry that the person who was seen by a witness,
Speaker 1: the only person who have had a good view of
Speaker 1: the murderer. And so what Anderson wrote and how seriously
Speaker 1: he can be taken depends to a very great extent
Speaker 1: on what we know about Sir Robert Anderson and what
Speaker 1: kind of man he was, and how things that we
Speaker 1: know about him may have influenced the way he believed
Speaker 1: and the things that he said. Is for example, some
Speaker 1: people have said that he and it, strangely enough, has
Speaker 1: almost become an accepted fact that he was anti Semitic,
Speaker 1: and that was something that was leveled an accusation that
Speaker 1: was leveled at him at the time, and he vehemently
Speaker 1: denied it, and the evidence such as we have it
Speaker 1: would support that denial. So there's no real evidence that
Speaker 1: I am aware of that Anderson was anti science semitic.
Speaker 1: But this is a neat theory provided by people who
Speaker 1: want to undermine what he said, and it doesn't have
Speaker 1: any support. So we really need to study people like
Speaker 1: Anderson and mc norton and Swanson in great depth. The
Speaker 1: trouble is there's not an awful lot of information out
Speaker 1: there that enables us to do the If they have
Speaker 1: been politicians or something, they've probably been fifteen biographies of them,
Speaker 1: like there are with people like Gladstone. That's where we are,
Speaker 1: and nobody has done that in depth research. Really. Um
Speaker 1: Adam Wood has done a tremendous book about Swanson and
Speaker 1: probably has packed into that book everything that anybody will
Speaker 1: ever know about Swanson and um and it does really
Speaker 1: help to get some sort of insight into into Swanson
Speaker 1: because he was the man who wrote the the notes
Speaker 1: in a copy of Anderson's book that tends to confirm
Speaker 1: the things that Anderson said about his suspect that we
Speaker 1: believe to be McNaught Skazminski, So, Um, you know that
Speaker 1: it really is important. History now is is becoming really important.
Speaker 1: We can't just theorize willy nilly, we we really do
Speaker 1: have to get down to the serious level of history.
Speaker 1: And maybe as a as a final thought to conclude
Speaker 1: our conversation, UM, could you offer what, in your opinion,
Speaker 1: studying the White Chapel murders gives to us in the present.
Speaker 1: What's the value of this ongoing study which has been
Speaker 1: has been undertaken ever since the murders, and you know,
Speaker 1: doesn't look like it will stop anytime soon. Um, But
Speaker 1: having dedicated, as you said, so much of your own
Speaker 1: writing life to this case, what have you discovered maybe
Speaker 1: as you've done this work well, as I said, I
Speaker 1: think the I think the main thing is that uh
Speaker 1: probably said it a thousand times, is that Jack the Ripper,
Speaker 1: that the mystery if it attracts, if the if the
Speaker 1: mystery itself is something that somebody enjoys, if they're curious
Speaker 1: about trying to resolve who Jack the Ripple was, just
Speaker 1: in the same way as they might be if they're
Speaker 1: interested in who King Arthur was, or who Robin Hood was,
Speaker 1: or any any of those sort of mysteries of identity.
Speaker 1: The great thing about it is that it gets you
Speaker 1: to read books. People who are interested and want to know,
Speaker 1: they read the books, and they very often they collect
Speaker 1: the books. More important than that is that they actually
Speaker 1: think about what they're reading. And that's no bad thing either.
Speaker 1: So you those are two basic things that you get
Speaker 1: out of it, that you learn. And of course it's
Speaker 1: I I have found from right from when I got
Speaker 1: interested in this myself, that people would be interested in
Speaker 1: the mystery of identity. They would perhaps retain that mystery,
Speaker 1: but they would get interested into some other aspect of
Speaker 1: the case. So I always had one person in mind
Speaker 1: who I know was drawn to the ripper by the
Speaker 1: mystery of identity and then found out that one of
Speaker 1: the suspects came from Chiswick, where he lived, and then
Speaker 1: he started to investigate the connection with Chiswick. And then
Speaker 1: he started took that even further and ended up being
Speaker 1: quite a uh well a highly knowledgeable local historian. Uh
Speaker 1: And so it it took him off in all sorts
Speaker 1: of different directions. I mentioned earlier the issue of horses
Speaker 1: dropping dead in the street. When you think about it,
Speaker 1: horses then were like cars are today, and if your
Speaker 1: car breaks down now you call somebody like one of
Speaker 1: the motoring organizations here, it would be the A A
Speaker 1: or something like that. Uh. There was a similar operation
Speaker 1: which were the horse slaughterers in Victorian London, and they
Speaker 1: had a branch all over different places and they would
Speaker 1: come out and they would get the horse and take
Speaker 1: it back to their to their yards. So there's all
Speaker 1: this business going on um and about the way that
Speaker 1: people lived, and so there are people who have actually
Speaker 1: specialized in learning about the horse slaughtering business that was
Speaker 1: huge in Victorian London and really one company basically had
Speaker 1: the monopoly on it. And so there's all kinds of
Speaker 1: things that people lead off to discover and as I say,
Speaker 1: the murder aspect of it adds a frision of of excitement.
Speaker 1: But of course it's not just that. I mean, Jack
Speaker 1: the Ripper now is part of our popular culture known
Speaker 1: around the world. You still can, I believe, go to
Speaker 1: a burger bar Singapore where they're selling you can have
Speaker 1: an anti burger, which is somewhat the thought of that
Speaker 1: is rather repellent, but nevertheless it's it just goes to
Speaker 1: show how how deep Jack the Ripper has penetrated into
Speaker 1: the national psyche in in some cases you can see
Speaker 1: how the name has been used in everything from advertising,
Speaker 1: which virtually began as the murders were being committed, right
Speaker 1: through is everything. There was a worldwide World War Two
Speaker 1: bomber called Jack the Ripper. There's everything from a toilet
Speaker 1: spray to a computer game being mat to a novel
Speaker 1: or a movie or even an opera all about Jack
Speaker 1: the Ripper. So that's an area that is a very
Speaker 1: valid area for study. And I'm sure that just as
Speaker 1: there have been books written just about the TV and
Speaker 1: movies about Jack the Ripper, I'm sure that somebody at
Speaker 1: some point is going to write a popular culture book,
Speaker 1: probably quite an academic one which I wouldn't understand, about
Speaker 1: about the way that Jack the Ripper is part of
Speaker 1: of everything that's going on today. And and then of course,
Speaker 1: right at the end is the is Jack the Ripper
Speaker 1: is a mystery and understanding perhaps even solving it, you
Speaker 1: have to study the evidence. You have to know how
Speaker 1: people lived and so on, because all of how they
Speaker 1: lived could have a bearing on what they did and
Speaker 1: therefore ultimately lead to perhaps a discovery of who the
Speaker 1: murderer was or getting close to that now means you've
Speaker 1: got to, as I said, you have to read books,
Speaker 1: which is no bad thing. You've got to learn about sources,
Speaker 1: which ones are and which ones aren't reliable, all sorts
Speaker 1: of things that that historians do. That's part of their job.
Speaker 1: And many of those things have applications in in our world,
Speaker 1: ah such as now there is an increasing need to
Speaker 1: distinguish between trustworthy and untrustworthy news stories and blogs and
Speaker 1: web pages goodness knows what else. And looking at the
Speaker 1: Ripper mystery is a good way of learning how um,
Speaker 1: how to do these things and how to be uh
Speaker 1: so analytical and and how to understand sources and in
Speaker 1: many respects in schools where Jack Ripper is taught, because
Speaker 1: it adds that frision of of excitement too otherwise tedious
Speaker 1: life in Victorian Britain, but it teaches people how to
Speaker 1: about things like very simple historians one of one stuff
Speaker 1: like what is the primary source, what's the secondary source?
Speaker 1: What's a tertiary source? Are news for make newspapers one
Speaker 1: of those? Which so which one? And how do you
Speaker 1: distinguish between the editorial in a newspaper and a news
Speaker 1: story all of that kind of stuff. So Jack the
Speaker 1: Ripper really does have an area where it teaches. It
Speaker 1: can teach people things on so many different levels, and
Speaker 1: that for me, I think is the thing. And I
Speaker 1: suppose as a writer, if you want to understand Jack
Speaker 1: the Ripper, you're gonna read books, which is great because
Speaker 1: then you can go out in my mind and help
Speaker 1: to brilliant Billiam Paul. That's it for this week's episode
Speaker 1: of Unobscured. Unobscured was created by me Aaron Manky and
Speaker 1: produced by Matt Frederick, Alex Williams, and Josh Thane in
Speaker 1: partnership with I Heart Radio. Research and writing for this
Speaker 1: season is all the work of my right hand man
Speaker 1: Carl Nellis and the brilliant Chad Lawson composed the brand
Speaker 1: new soundtrack. Learn more about our contributing historians, source material
Speaker 1: and links to our other shows over at History unobscured
Speaker 1: dot com. M HM, and until next time, thanks for listening.
Speaker 1: Unobscured is a production of I Heart Radio and Aaron Menkey.
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