WEBVTT - S3 – INTERVIEW 3: Drew Gray 0:00:01.120 --> 0:00:04.240 Welcomed Unobscured, a production of I Heart Radio and Aaron Minke. 0:00:05.480 --> 0:00:07.920 Dr Drew Gray is a historian of the eighteenth and 0:00:08.000 --> 0:00:11.320 nineteen centuries who teaches at the University of Northampton, where 0:00:11.320 --> 0:00:14.360 he's the subject lead for History. He's our guest for 0:00:14.400 --> 0:00:16.799 this episode. You won't be surprised to hear that he 0:00:16.840 --> 0:00:20.599 also specializes in the history of crime and punishment. His 0:00:20.680 --> 0:00:24.400 books on Jack the Ripper include London's Shadows, The Dark 0:00:24.440 --> 0:00:27.600 Side of the Victorian City and Jack in the Thames 0:00:27.640 --> 0:00:31.440 Torso Murders a New Ripper Those hit the shelves, alongside 0:00:31.440 --> 0:00:34.879 big projects like his book Crime, Policing and Punishment in 0:00:34.920 --> 0:00:38.280 England from sixteen sixty to nineteen fourteen. You can also 0:00:38.320 --> 0:00:41.400 find his writing on his blog The Police Magistrate, which 0:00:41.440 --> 0:00:45.440 tells dramatic stories from England's history of summary justice. Dr 0:00:45.479 --> 0:00:48.360 Gray is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. 0:00:48.440 --> 0:00:50.519 He has been a member of the editorial Board of 0:00:50.520 --> 0:00:53.080 The London Journal since two thousand eleven and is a 0:00:53.080 --> 0:00:56.920 Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Recently, Dr Drew has 0:00:56.960 --> 0:00:59.760 been publishing articles on the myths and legends around Jack 0:00:59.800 --> 0:01:03.040 the b and how historians would benefit from paying more 0:01:03.120 --> 0:01:06.520 attention to the murderers in Victorian Whitechapel. You could say 0:01:06.520 --> 0:01:08.760 that he's been doing a little un obscuring of his own, 0:01:09.080 --> 0:01:11.399 and we're delighted to have him on the show. We 0:01:11.520 --> 0:01:13.720 begin with his thoughts on Jack the Ripper as a myth, 0:01:14.040 --> 0:01:16.959 as someone who never ever existed, and then move on 0:01:17.080 --> 0:01:21.440 from there. This is the Unobscured Interview series for season three. 0:01:21.880 --> 0:01:26.360 I'm erin Minky. Well, if I could start by saying 0:01:26.840 --> 0:01:30.039 something probably signly controversial, which is to say, there's there's 0:01:30.040 --> 0:01:33.160 no such person as Jack the Ripper. He never existed. 0:01:34.160 --> 0:01:38.280 Of course, there was a serial killer or possibly serial killers, 0:01:41.120 --> 0:01:44.400 and that person was responsible for the murder of several 0:01:44.920 --> 0:01:49.400 very poor and vulnerable women. But the monster that's come 0:01:49.440 --> 0:01:51.559 down to us as Jack the Ripper is in many 0:01:51.560 --> 0:01:57.480 ways an invention of popular print culture and then subsequently 0:01:57.520 --> 0:01:59.720 a century or more of how it's a sluicing and 0:02:00.000 --> 0:02:05.280 reculation about the killer. So Jack is a sort of 0:02:05.400 --> 0:02:09.280 dark fantasy figure that was created in and has developed 0:02:09.360 --> 0:02:13.720 ever since, and in doing so has taken on the 0:02:13.800 --> 0:02:17.800 aspects of each succeeding generation that's looked at him. I'm 0:02:17.840 --> 0:02:20.760 not unlike in some respects the way in which Sherlock 0:02:20.800 --> 0:02:24.560 Holmes has been reimagined to suit the age in which 0:02:24.560 --> 0:02:29.160 he inhabits. So since we don't know who Jack was, 0:02:30.320 --> 0:02:35.200 we can continue to continue to offer up suspects that 0:02:35.280 --> 0:02:38.919 reflects our own fears and our own prejudices, the things 0:02:38.919 --> 0:02:41.600 that bother us in our own in our own ages. 0:02:42.880 --> 0:02:47.560 And this process starts right at the beginning of the case, 0:02:47.800 --> 0:02:52.480 in the autumn of when the murderers first thought of 0:02:52.600 --> 0:02:56.639 to be possibly a sort of top hatted top a 0:02:56.760 --> 0:03:01.720 slumming Burlington bertie, or a psychotic doctor carrying a gladstone 0:03:01.720 --> 0:03:06.079 bag full of sharp knives, or perhaps even a crazy 0:03:06.120 --> 0:03:12.480 immigrant do an anarchist revolutionary bent on destroying English society. 0:03:12.600 --> 0:03:15.440 And then when you throw in dark alleyways covered in 0:03:15.520 --> 0:03:18.839 fog from which a murderer can sort of emerge raith 0:03:18.960 --> 0:03:22.360 like clutching a knife and then vanished just as easily, 0:03:23.040 --> 0:03:26.160 leaving the police behind looking baffled, you've got the kind 0:03:26.200 --> 0:03:29.800 of perfect recipe for a Gothic horror story. And the 0:03:29.800 --> 0:03:32.680 fact that this bears very little resemblance to the truth 0:03:33.840 --> 0:03:36.880 is kind of immaterial. The industry that's grown from the 0:03:36.960 --> 0:03:40.240 murder of these women is the reality that most people 0:03:40.560 --> 0:03:45.760 today understand. Another observation that you make in that same book, 0:03:45.800 --> 0:03:48.920 London's Shadows, is that most of what we know about 0:03:48.960 --> 0:03:52.320 the reality of life in London in the eighties is 0:03:52.400 --> 0:03:56.800 filtered through the middle class sensibilities of the time. How 0:03:56.840 --> 0:04:00.080 would you describe those sensibilities and the way that they 0:04:00.680 --> 0:04:04.600 shaped then and shaped now what we can know about 0:04:04.640 --> 0:04:07.960 that moment in the city's history. Maybe you know, in 0:04:07.960 --> 0:04:11.640 Britain's history, what kinds of documents do we have that 0:04:11.680 --> 0:04:15.280 guide us through the details of what was happening in 0:04:15.280 --> 0:04:17.960 the East End, or or the murders themselves. How do 0:04:18.000 --> 0:04:22.800 we get at that? Well, of course, it's extremely difficult 0:04:22.839 --> 0:04:26.880 before our century, or the twentieth century perhaps to know 0:04:27.000 --> 0:04:30.040 at all what people thought about the world around them. 0:04:30.360 --> 0:04:34.400 Especially it's especially true for what you might call ordinary 0:04:34.440 --> 0:04:38.960 working class people. Even if people could read and write, 0:04:39.040 --> 0:04:43.200 which is very far from universal in the eighties, not 0:04:43.279 --> 0:04:45.720 many of them would have at the time to do so, 0:04:45.760 --> 0:04:49.240 all the money to spare on ink and paper to 0:04:49.279 --> 0:04:52.080 write them, So working class memories of life in the 0:04:52.160 --> 0:04:57.800 Victorian period are extremely rare. Instead, we have examples of 0:04:57.800 --> 0:05:01.800 popular culture, so musical song things like my old man, 0:05:02.839 --> 0:05:05.360 My old Man's a dustman, for example, which provide the 0:05:05.440 --> 0:05:09.800 plimpses of now folk understood their society at the time, 0:05:11.040 --> 0:05:13.960 kind of coming down to through song and music, hall 0:05:14.080 --> 0:05:19.240 and jokes and that kind of thing. Um. But that's 0:05:19.320 --> 0:05:22.720 very little from working class people. Instead, historians have had 0:05:22.760 --> 0:05:24.960 to make do with the diaries and writings of the 0:05:25.040 --> 0:05:29.120 middle class um and the elite um. So I'm kind 0:05:29.120 --> 0:05:32.120 of thinking of men like William instead that the newspaper 0:05:32.200 --> 0:05:37.719 editor or authors like George Sims or Andrew Mens, or 0:05:37.839 --> 0:05:41.440 social investigators and reformers like Charles Booth or Beatrice Webb. 0:05:42.240 --> 0:05:45.400 And of course these people mostly from the middle classes 0:05:46.279 --> 0:05:49.920 right as as to some extent, we all do from 0:05:50.000 --> 0:05:53.279 their own perspective, and so this history is kind of 0:05:54.360 --> 0:05:58.040 naturally imbued with their own prejudices and their own moral compass, 0:05:58.839 --> 0:06:00.919 which was quite different, of course from the way in 0:06:00.920 --> 0:06:06.520 which working class people understood their lives. And in terms 0:06:06.520 --> 0:06:10.760 of documentation about White Chapel and the White Chapel murders, 0:06:11.240 --> 0:06:14.800 we've got very little, you know. I always think that 0:06:15.600 --> 0:06:18.400 it's a it's a truism that people in the past 0:06:18.440 --> 0:06:21.479 don't really think about the needs of researchers in the 0:06:21.520 --> 0:06:26.160 future when they're keeping or not keeping documentation. Most of 0:06:26.200 --> 0:06:29.280 what we do have is kept well. Most of what 0:06:29.320 --> 0:06:31.040 we do have in the public realm is kept at 0:06:31.040 --> 0:06:34.440 the National Archives, a que in in the south of 0:06:34.440 --> 0:06:38.680 the River in London, in a couple of police files, 0:06:39.160 --> 0:06:43.080 and this is actually rather disappointing when you actually get 0:06:43.120 --> 0:06:46.479 to look at it. There are some case papers, but 0:06:46.600 --> 0:06:49.200 these are pretty thin. There are some photos of the 0:06:49.320 --> 0:06:52.479 victims which are widely known now and they're all over 0:06:52.520 --> 0:06:55.400 the Internet. And a lot of letters sent to the 0:06:55.440 --> 0:07:01.560 police impressed during and after the summer and autumn um 0:07:01.600 --> 0:07:04.800 In addition, we have the reports of coroner's inquests and 0:07:04.800 --> 0:07:08.320 our commentary on the police investigation through the pages of 0:07:08.360 --> 0:07:14.880 the newspapers, and over the decades have passed, various pieces 0:07:14.880 --> 0:07:20.760 of evidence have emerged um like, for example, the Maybrick Diary, 0:07:20.840 --> 0:07:24.240 which have been hotly disputed, or the Little Child letter 0:07:24.720 --> 0:07:28.440 which these bits and pieces have provided more angles for 0:07:28.520 --> 0:07:33.760 researchers to hang their speculations on what not necessarily much 0:07:33.920 --> 0:07:37.840 illumination into the case itself. And I think most researchers 0:07:37.840 --> 0:07:40.240 will agree that we've probably lost as much evidence over 0:07:40.240 --> 0:07:43.560 the years as we've found, and there's so that we're 0:07:43.640 --> 0:07:46.400 left with very little that a modern detective force could 0:07:46.520 --> 0:07:50.840 use to identify the killer in terms of the history 0:07:50.840 --> 0:07:53.920 of White Chapel in the East End, in terms of 0:07:53.960 --> 0:07:59.480 that sort of documentation, we have census records which are interesting. 0:08:00.040 --> 0:08:02.840 We have street directories which tell us quite quite a bit, 0:08:03.360 --> 0:08:07.560 and we have Charles Boo's fantastic maps of London in 0:08:07.640 --> 0:08:10.840 the late nineteenth century which indicate the areas of poverty 0:08:10.840 --> 0:08:15.880 and relative wealth, but of course not really very much 0:08:15.880 --> 0:08:19.280 survived because again, what why would you keep that kind 0:08:19.280 --> 0:08:21.680 of stuff? That stuff we want to find out about 0:08:21.760 --> 0:08:25.440 ordinary people's lives. They just don't generate those records unless 0:08:25.440 --> 0:08:31.520 they're appearing something, for example, like a court case. Mhmm. Yeah. 0:08:31.560 --> 0:08:34.640 And and speaking of of court cases and and settings 0:08:34.640 --> 0:08:40.560 where where documents are generated. Um, you mentioned that your 0:08:40.640 --> 0:08:44.199 your focused as a historian is on crime, and you've 0:08:44.240 --> 0:08:46.880 done a lot of work on Victorian police courts and 0:08:47.000 --> 0:08:51.640 published regularly on the Police Magistrate blog, which is full 0:08:51.720 --> 0:08:57.680 of fascinating stories. Um. Can you describe Victorian police courts 0:08:57.760 --> 0:09:00.240 and the role that they played in the US, The 0:09:00.320 --> 0:09:08.440 system of the weight eight Yeah, the the the Victorian 0:09:08.480 --> 0:09:12.440 police court and the Victorian police court magistrates that presided 0:09:12.480 --> 0:09:15.400 in these courts is part of a long tradition of 0:09:15.679 --> 0:09:21.120 summary justice in England which has a very long history, 0:09:21.120 --> 0:09:23.360 and that's kind of been the focus of most of 0:09:23.400 --> 0:09:31.160 my career um since I started in academia. And so 0:09:31.200 --> 0:09:32.760 of course, whe do you think it's quite it' quite 0:09:32.800 --> 0:09:35.000 difficul to say a little when you can settle for 0:09:37.320 --> 0:09:41.720 um the police court. A police court magistrate presided over 0:09:42.440 --> 0:09:48.440 a whole range of different sorts of um cases throughout 0:09:48.480 --> 0:09:52.480 the nineteenth century. They were they were appointed as men 0:09:52.559 --> 0:09:54.840 with who had at least seven years of experience of 0:09:54.880 --> 0:09:59.360 practicing law and they sat in rotation in a series 0:09:59.400 --> 0:10:03.319 of courts. So there were there were police magistrates courts 0:10:03.320 --> 0:10:07.600 from the late eighteenth century from on was a little 0:10:07.640 --> 0:10:11.880 bit earlier for places like both streets and they covered 0:10:13.000 --> 0:10:15.559 most of the metropolis. So there were places at Westminster 0:10:15.640 --> 0:10:19.280 and Great Marble Street and Queens Square, there was a 0:10:19.320 --> 0:10:24.520 couple in the East Standard Worship Street and Thames Um. 0:10:24.559 --> 0:10:30.000 There was police courts in in Southbok and Lambeth, and 0:10:30.040 --> 0:10:34.880 then later in the century they moved out to the suburbs, 0:10:34.920 --> 0:10:38.360 like places like Highgate for example, so so you could 0:10:38.360 --> 0:10:43.360 see a magistrate right across the city and there were 0:10:44.000 --> 0:10:46.520 In addition, of course, there were two magistrates courts in 0:10:46.520 --> 0:10:51.080 the city of London itself, which is a separate authority, 0:10:51.679 --> 0:10:53.760 as a separate urban authority, it is not it's not 0:10:54.080 --> 0:10:57.840 under the same government as the rest of the metropolis. 0:10:59.240 --> 0:11:05.320 And these police court magistrates sat alone, which which made 0:11:05.320 --> 0:11:08.680 them unique in England, where most magistrates would sit in 0:11:08.720 --> 0:11:11.480 pairs or threes, but in London they had extra powers. 0:11:11.840 --> 0:11:14.320 They were advised by a clerk, but otherwise they make 0:11:14.360 --> 0:11:17.680 decisions on whether to send someone to prison to find 0:11:17.720 --> 0:11:19.800 them or or to send them on for a trial 0:11:19.960 --> 0:11:22.600 for a jury entirely on their own, so there's no 0:11:22.720 --> 0:11:25.200 jury in these trials. They sit at the bottom, if 0:11:25.200 --> 0:11:28.760 you like, of the criminal justice system, below the the 0:11:28.840 --> 0:11:32.080 quarter sessions and then the assize or the old baby 0:11:32.440 --> 0:11:38.480 court and police court magistrates would have dealt with all 0:11:38.559 --> 0:11:42.600 sorts of crime, but also a lot of social problems. 0:11:42.640 --> 0:11:44.840 So they would deal with a tremendous amount of drunken 0:11:44.840 --> 0:11:50.319 disorderly behavior, but also petty theft, some quite serious theft 0:11:50.440 --> 0:11:55.440 like burglary and fraud, right through two cases of domestic 0:11:55.520 --> 0:11:59.400 violence assorts on the police and murder. They if it 0:11:59.520 --> 0:12:03.440 came to an arder, they wouldn't be convicting somebody of murder, 0:12:03.480 --> 0:12:05.880 but they will be pushing them up through the criminal 0:12:05.960 --> 0:12:08.040 justice system. So this this is a place of first 0:12:08.760 --> 0:12:12.040 first hearing, so it's where some of the facts of 0:12:12.120 --> 0:12:14.960 cases are established before they then sent on up through 0:12:15.360 --> 0:12:22.080 the criminal justice system. But these courts are also the 0:12:22.120 --> 0:12:25.800 first port of call for those complaining about all sorts 0:12:25.800 --> 0:12:28.839 of things that bothered them in Victorian London. So people 0:12:28.880 --> 0:12:36.000 being overcharged by cab drivers, policemen bringing cost costomongers bringing 0:12:36.000 --> 0:12:40.680 in market traders for obstructing the streets, or for the 0:12:40.840 --> 0:12:44.959 very poor in London who are requesting help. Um this 0:12:45.000 --> 0:12:48.240 is where you'll find people accused of committing suicide or 0:12:48.280 --> 0:12:54.320 attempted suicide, escaped lunatics, dangerous dogs. All these sorts of 0:12:54.360 --> 0:12:57.559 things will come before the police courts. So there are 0:12:57.600 --> 0:13:06.520 fantastic wind into the Victorian um capital. Unfortunately, going back 0:13:06.600 --> 0:13:10.920 to the problem of documentation in the past, these courts 0:13:10.960 --> 0:13:14.120 leave us very little in the way of archival material. 0:13:15.280 --> 0:13:17.880 Most of the records are lost if they were ever 0:13:18.000 --> 0:13:20.920 kept for very long. There are a small smattering of 0:13:21.000 --> 0:13:25.560 cases of case books from the Thames Court, but but 0:13:25.679 --> 0:13:29.200 not much else outside of Bow Streets. But we do 0:13:29.360 --> 0:13:32.800 have newspaper reports because the newspapers daily reported on the 0:13:32.840 --> 0:13:35.199 cases that came for the police courts, because I think 0:13:35.200 --> 0:13:38.560 their readers were ready interested in looking at life through 0:13:38.600 --> 0:13:43.800 this this particular lens. M Turning now a little toward 0:13:44.240 --> 0:13:47.800 the East End. You've also written that it's a place 0:13:47.840 --> 0:13:52.880 that had a diverse culture. You say, many places of worship, entertainment, trade, 0:13:53.600 --> 0:13:58.680 a long history. Um. But that after a eight everyone 0:13:58.720 --> 0:14:03.640 in the world new where White Chapel was. But at 0:14:03.640 --> 0:14:07.960 the same time the Ripper murders obscured the reality of 0:14:08.000 --> 0:14:11.960 that part of London. So if the murders didn't actually 0:14:11.960 --> 0:14:16.160 define White Chapel and you know, hide what life was 0:14:16.160 --> 0:14:18.920 actually like thereby be by growing beyond the you know, 0:14:19.440 --> 0:14:23.440 the do of those events, how could the East End 0:14:23.440 --> 0:14:27.040 at the time be more justly described, you know, with 0:14:27.040 --> 0:14:31.480 with your historians eyes looking back beyond those obscuring events, 0:14:31.480 --> 0:14:33.720 How do we describe the East End of London at 0:14:33.760 --> 0:14:37.000 this time? I think it of course, with everything becomes 0:14:37.000 --> 0:14:41.080 sort of mired in in representations from the period. I 0:14:41.120 --> 0:14:44.000 always trying to imagine that I'm going back in time 0:14:44.040 --> 0:14:48.000 and I'm stepping out onto the rather dirty streets of 0:14:48.720 --> 0:14:52.160 London in the nineteenth century. But I would describe the 0:14:52.200 --> 0:14:56.640 East End is a multicultural melting pot, a kind of 0:14:56.760 --> 0:15:01.480 vibrant community of people struggling to vibe in a in 0:15:01.520 --> 0:15:04.680 a society, of course, which generally failed to support those 0:15:04.680 --> 0:15:07.720 that fell on on hard times. So I see a 0:15:07.760 --> 0:15:13.040 series of communities, not not one community, but several communities 0:15:13.080 --> 0:15:16.280 known and not always seeing eye to eye, where kind 0:15:16.280 --> 0:15:20.560 of new immigrants mingled with established ones and native east 0:15:20.640 --> 0:15:24.320 Enders for want of a better word, rubbed shoulders with 0:15:24.400 --> 0:15:29.320 new arrivals, and with slumming tourists, you know, wealthier people 0:15:29.360 --> 0:15:31.920 coming into the area to kind of gorput what they 0:15:31.960 --> 0:15:36.840 could see. I see White Chapel is somewhere where poverty 0:15:37.040 --> 0:15:42.920 was endemic, but at the same time there's an entrepreneurial 0:15:43.080 --> 0:15:49.119 spirit kind of everywhere. So words I'd used to describe 0:15:49.640 --> 0:15:54.680 White Chapel in the would be bold, with brassy, sometimes shocking, 0:15:54.920 --> 0:16:00.920 often funny, amusing, always lively and exciting and and ever changing. 0:16:01.640 --> 0:16:05.880 And I'd probably go further and say that that's actually 0:16:05.960 --> 0:16:09.440 how I see the East End, That East End and 0:16:09.560 --> 0:16:13.400 short ditch and white chaplains, Pittel Fields in twenty one 0:16:13.480 --> 0:16:19.480 century Britain. It's very much that kind of exciting, exciting 0:16:19.520 --> 0:16:22.880 place to be. The first place my mind went when 0:16:22.920 --> 0:16:27.080 I read that passage that you'd written was those those maps. 0:16:27.080 --> 0:16:32.200 There's Charles Booth maps that you mentioned where there there 0:16:32.560 --> 0:16:35.680 you said, you know, there's the color coding and for 0:16:36.560 --> 0:16:40.920 showing different levels of of wealth, of class, of success. 0:16:40.960 --> 0:16:43.760 You know, so there's a the markings for very deep 0:16:43.800 --> 0:16:47.920 poverty and they're marked in black. And with that stereotype 0:16:47.920 --> 0:16:50.080 about the East End, I go to look at the map, 0:16:50.360 --> 0:16:53.800 but it's really a mix it's not there are these 0:16:53.840 --> 0:16:56.640 pockets where he's marked in black, you know, desperate poverty. 0:16:56.920 --> 0:17:01.359 But you mentioned the entrepreneurial spirit and these different communities 0:17:01.440 --> 0:17:05.200 kind of shoulder to shoulder, kind of jostled up together, 0:17:05.240 --> 0:17:08.560 and I see even in terms of class, there are 0:17:08.600 --> 0:17:12.520 some very very wealthy neighborhoods in the East End as 0:17:12.520 --> 0:17:15.320 well as some of the very poor. So even in 0:17:15.359 --> 0:17:17.320 the documents that we do have from the time Mike 0:17:17.400 --> 0:17:21.439 Charles Booth's maps, you can see that kind of the 0:17:21.560 --> 0:17:25.800 mixing and people shoulder to shoulder who are living quite 0:17:25.840 --> 0:17:30.360 different lives from each other, even in the same neighborhood. Um, 0:17:30.359 --> 0:17:35.040 when what were the contrasts between East and West London 0:17:35.320 --> 0:17:38.399 as victorians imagined them in the eighteen eighties. How for 0:17:38.680 --> 0:17:41.520 how fair were the kinds of generalizations maybe that they 0:17:41.560 --> 0:17:45.879 had about each other. Mhmm, yeah, I think yeah. I 0:17:45.880 --> 0:17:48.879 mean the all all of what you've just said about 0:17:48.920 --> 0:17:53.760 the about Boothes is stuff I would certainly point to. 0:17:53.840 --> 0:17:57.480 I mean the West End, or in popular parliance, the 0:17:57.520 --> 0:18:02.560 best in was to the wealthy. It was a playground 0:18:03.200 --> 0:18:05.480 for those who had money, and of course it was 0:18:05.520 --> 0:18:07.520 a magnet for people who wanted to work. So plenty 0:18:07.520 --> 0:18:09.960 of East London has worked in the West End, worked 0:18:09.960 --> 0:18:11.959 in the shops and the pubs and the clubs, and 0:18:12.000 --> 0:18:14.520 the and came over, you know, the women came over 0:18:14.640 --> 0:18:18.680 sometimes to act as prostitutes and escorts in that part 0:18:18.720 --> 0:18:21.080 of town. And this is where the shops and the 0:18:21.119 --> 0:18:25.080 clubs and the theaters of Victoria and London were. Um, 0:18:25.080 --> 0:18:27.880 you know, this is where you'd find the elegant streets 0:18:27.880 --> 0:18:31.560 and the squares around Bloomsbury, And this is this is 0:18:31.600 --> 0:18:36.600 what looked like the capital of the greatest Empire of 0:18:36.600 --> 0:18:39.960 the world had ever seen, all of it, beautifully lit 0:18:41.160 --> 0:18:45.760 and well served by transport networks. If you contrast that 0:18:45.840 --> 0:18:50.480 with the East End of London, um, this is poor, dark, 0:18:50.640 --> 0:18:57.640 overcrowded and largely degraded. Um. So, as I've I've said before, 0:18:57.800 --> 0:19:00.520 the while the West End was affluent, the East End 0:19:00.600 --> 0:19:04.040 was affluent, kind of strich stinking in the noses of 0:19:04.080 --> 0:19:08.280 those that visited it. And that's the image we have 0:19:09.080 --> 0:19:13.240 of the contrast between the East and West ends of 0:19:13.280 --> 0:19:16.600 London in nineteenth century, and it's probably the image that 0:19:16.800 --> 0:19:20.520 most Londoners would have had, certainly most West Londoners and 0:19:20.600 --> 0:19:24.280 people from outside the capital. How fair was this? Well, 0:19:25.359 --> 0:19:29.199 the East End was poor, it was overcrowded, and it 0:19:29.359 --> 0:19:34.040 was home to those dirty trades that were necessary, such 0:19:34.080 --> 0:19:37.960 as slaughtering and tanning. Those industries has always been placed 0:19:38.000 --> 0:19:40.880 in the east of the capital, and that that goes 0:19:41.000 --> 0:19:46.360 right back in history. But Charles Boo's Great Survey of Poverty, 0:19:47.600 --> 0:19:52.280 his mapping of London, reveals that there were certainly more 0:19:52.320 --> 0:19:54.920 areas of wealth and prosperity in the West End than 0:19:54.960 --> 0:19:57.280 in the East End. But the East End wasn't entirely 0:19:57.359 --> 0:20:01.280 riddled with poverty so rare. It's for commercial and well 0:20:01.359 --> 0:20:04.480 to do streets mingle with black and dark blue areas 0:20:04.480 --> 0:20:09.320 which denote poverty and criminality. Um, and you will find 0:20:09.520 --> 0:20:13.919 pockets of deprivation across the capital right in what in 0:20:13.960 --> 0:20:17.880 West London as well. So the contrast is a useful 0:20:18.000 --> 0:20:21.720 starting point. But London was a very mixed city in 0:20:21.760 --> 0:20:26.840 the eighteen hundreds and poverty and wealth often lived cheap 0:20:26.880 --> 0:20:31.440 by jiles side by side. That remains the case about 0:20:31.520 --> 0:20:34.080 London in a way that it's not true of some 0:20:34.200 --> 0:20:37.440 of some other European cities like Paris in the nineteenth 0:20:37.480 --> 0:20:42.479 century or or today, which which kept the wealthy and 0:20:42.720 --> 0:20:49.080 poorer areas much better, um, separated mhm. Can you describe 0:20:49.119 --> 0:20:53.960 the role of journalism, like like the Median Tribute of 0:20:54.000 --> 0:20:59.320 Modern babylone series that was published I believe in eight five, Um, 0:20:59.320 --> 0:21:02.520 how the journalism that was being published in the eighties 0:21:02.920 --> 0:21:07.119 helped to kind of create that imaginative geography, you know, 0:21:07.160 --> 0:21:11.399 the stereotypes of the East End. Mm hmm, Well, I 0:21:11.440 --> 0:21:13.520 think I mean. One thing we have to remember, of course, 0:21:13.600 --> 0:21:17.399 is that most people were certainly most middle class people, 0:21:18.480 --> 0:21:21.520 even middle class people in London, and these were the 0:21:21.520 --> 0:21:24.760 people that read most of the newspapers rarely ventured into 0:21:24.800 --> 0:21:28.240 the East End or any of London's other poorer areas. 0:21:28.840 --> 0:21:32.639 It's like St. Giles or the Borough in southern and 0:21:32.760 --> 0:21:36.920 they just didn't go there. Instead, they learned about those 0:21:36.960 --> 0:21:41.320 areas through the newspapers they read, and papers gave them 0:21:41.320 --> 0:21:44.399 a partial and a biased view of those areas. Not 0:21:44.600 --> 0:21:48.199 unlike the way in which Darkest Africa was described by 0:21:48.240 --> 0:21:51.320 the missionaries who went there to you know, loosely use 0:21:51.400 --> 0:21:55.440 the term civilized it in the nineteenth century, so colorful 0:21:55.520 --> 0:21:58.360 descriptions of the East End, you know, featuring the strange 0:21:58.400 --> 0:22:02.560 people that lived there, There weird customs, there smeeady foods, 0:22:02.600 --> 0:22:05.399 and the clothes that they wore. We're all printed in 0:22:05.440 --> 0:22:07.960 ways that was similar to the descriptions offered of far 0:22:08.000 --> 0:22:13.160 away in exotic lands in India and China and in Africa, 0:22:13.240 --> 0:22:16.680 all the parts of the all the parts touched by 0:22:16.720 --> 0:22:22.920 the British Empire MHM, and people like William Stead, who 0:22:23.119 --> 0:22:28.080 pioneered what what we could probably call who pioneered what's 0:22:28.080 --> 0:22:33.600 been termed new journalism, recognized the power that the media 0:22:33.800 --> 0:22:37.200 had to affect change as well as turning a profit. 0:22:37.240 --> 0:22:42.480 By saying newspapers. Steadies a very modern journalist and newspaper editor, 0:22:42.680 --> 0:22:47.080 and he'd fit right in to our modern media circus. 0:22:47.119 --> 0:22:51.040 So sensational articles like his made in Tribute of Modern 0:22:51.040 --> 0:22:55.399 Babylon or or Andrew mens Is a bitter Cry of 0:22:55.400 --> 0:23:01.160 outclass London, which stead also published, were intended to both 0:23:01.240 --> 0:23:07.320 shock and titillate the readers. Since most most people have 0:23:07.480 --> 0:23:10.480 no first hand experience of the way that the poor lived, 0:23:10.520 --> 0:23:14.720 the articles that they read in the pages of Organs 0:23:14.800 --> 0:23:18.960 like the Powerma Gazette would have shocked and concerned them 0:23:18.960 --> 0:23:25.399 and helped to sort of create this vision of um 0:23:25.520 --> 0:23:29.920 the East End and other parts of London which whilst 0:23:29.960 --> 0:23:32.360 having germs of truth in them, it's not to say 0:23:32.400 --> 0:23:36.120 that these things weren't true, but they come to dominate 0:23:36.160 --> 0:23:41.919 all the narratives. But it's it's rather like I would say, 0:23:43.000 --> 0:23:49.280 until people started to travel in the sort of seventies 0:23:49.320 --> 0:23:53.720 onwards to other parts of the world, including the United States, 0:23:54.680 --> 0:24:00.440 people got their ideas about other countries through television, so 0:24:00.520 --> 0:24:02.360 you know, we all have and you know, I grew 0:24:02.440 --> 0:24:05.240 up having an idea of nineteen seventies and nine eighties 0:24:05.280 --> 0:24:09.240 Americas and I've never been there, and would you like, 0:24:09.600 --> 0:24:12.440 you know, your prime time television to be the accurate 0:24:12.480 --> 0:24:17.400 portrayal of you know, American life. And you know it's 0:24:17.560 --> 0:24:19.720 I guess it's a similar to the Americans watching Downton 0:24:19.760 --> 0:24:24.200 Appe and thinking that's how English people live. Popular culture 0:24:24.240 --> 0:24:27.720 presents us with an image which isn't necessarily true. Yeah. Yeah, 0:24:27.960 --> 0:24:33.520 last night I watched since in Sensibility film with my wife, 0:24:33.520 --> 0:24:37.200 you know, yeah, yeah, And I watched Perry Mason. There 0:24:37.280 --> 0:24:41.000 we Go, the New One or or or City of Angels. 0:24:41.000 --> 0:24:42.560 I think that's the only thing I'm watching at a moment. 0:24:42.560 --> 0:24:45.320 So you know, I know all about America in the 0:24:45.400 --> 0:24:49.440 nineteen thirties thirties because I watched for Walk Empire and 0:24:49.480 --> 0:24:52.399 all these kind of HBO, big budget things, so I 0:24:52.440 --> 0:24:55.879 know exactly what it's like over there. Ye. Well, and 0:24:55.920 --> 0:25:00.600 there's another Booth, William Booth, who's working in White Chapel 0:25:00.640 --> 0:25:03.399 in the eighteen eighties. So at the same time that 0:25:03.400 --> 0:25:06.560 that Charles Booth is producing his maps and that these 0:25:06.640 --> 0:25:10.640 journalists are writing stories, there are people who are motivated 0:25:10.680 --> 0:25:13.840 to take action. And William Booth and his wife Katherine, uh, 0:25:13.880 --> 0:25:18.000 they've formed the Salvation Army, and that's in the East 0:25:18.119 --> 0:25:22.480 End right, absolutely so he founded the East London Christian 0:25:22.520 --> 0:25:27.720 Mission in eighteen sixty five. Um, I think on the 0:25:27.800 --> 0:25:32.840 White Chapel Road. Um, it's I think his first part 0:25:32.840 --> 0:25:35.399 of his first preaching sessions was in a building which 0:25:35.480 --> 0:25:38.959 is now a pub called the Blind Beggar, which has 0:25:39.040 --> 0:25:44.800 more famous modernity connections to the Cray Twins in the nineties. Yeah, 0:25:45.080 --> 0:25:50.400 the he adopted. They adopted the Salvation Army tag in 0:25:50.400 --> 0:25:55.000 in eight They were former Methodists and they wanted to 0:25:55.040 --> 0:25:59.399 bring religion and abstinence from alcohol to the people of 0:25:59.480 --> 0:26:04.480 East End. They operated by holding large public meetings and 0:26:05.040 --> 0:26:09.480 organizing marches through through communities. Of these marches are accompanied 0:26:09.480 --> 0:26:13.600 by brass bands made up of their members. Um, there's 0:26:13.640 --> 0:26:17.439 a military system of organizations. So General Booth is at 0:26:17.440 --> 0:26:21.360 the head and they have soldiers, and of course they 0:26:21.520 --> 0:26:26.640 distribute their weekly newspaper, the War Cry, on the streets 0:26:26.800 --> 0:26:30.960 and by going into public houses and Booth Like many 0:26:31.040 --> 0:26:36.240 social reformers at the time, saw alcoholism as an integral 0:26:36.320 --> 0:26:41.200 cause of poverty, immorality and then of domestic violence, and 0:26:41.600 --> 0:26:45.719 his Army challenged men and women to change their lives, 0:26:46.240 --> 0:26:49.840 looking to recruit from within those working class communities, and 0:26:49.880 --> 0:26:53.080 they brought their their kind of brand of religious further 0:26:53.240 --> 0:26:57.320 into into communities like White Chapel, which often drew down 0:26:57.440 --> 0:26:59.840 quite a lot of abuse and ridicule from the locals. 0:27:00.600 --> 0:27:03.000 And it might he might not have listened to the 0:27:03.080 --> 0:27:06.720 rhetoric that they were putting out their their Christian vision, 0:27:07.960 --> 0:27:10.399 because in the early days of the Army of the 0:27:10.440 --> 0:27:13.160 marching bands delivered a sort of a rather terrible din 0:27:13.760 --> 0:27:16.320 rather than a badley of beautiful music, because they weren't 0:27:16.320 --> 0:27:19.720 particularly good at playing their instruments. And you quite often 0:27:19.760 --> 0:27:24.960 find Salvationists being brought before magistrates by the police for 0:27:25.080 --> 0:27:28.920 causing a nistance not or causing an obstruction. But they're 0:27:28.920 --> 0:27:31.920 clearly people who were driven by their very strong religious 0:27:31.920 --> 0:27:36.200 beliefs to affect change in the communities they see that 0:27:36.359 --> 0:27:41.880 are so blighted by alcohol and poverty, crime and homelessness. 0:27:43.160 --> 0:27:47.560 And when you talk about journalists publishing stories about the 0:27:47.600 --> 0:27:51.840 East End in a way that connects them to the 0:27:51.920 --> 0:27:55.560 margins are the reaches of the British Empire. I thought 0:27:55.600 --> 0:27:58.440 it was so interesting that William Booth he picks up 0:27:58.480 --> 0:28:02.240 on the in Dark Africa kind of stereotype and he 0:28:02.320 --> 0:28:05.520 publishes a book called in Darkest England, right, yeah, and 0:28:06.080 --> 0:28:10.439 I think in eighteen nine one, um, yes, he he 0:28:10.480 --> 0:28:14.320 publishes a book because it's taking that kind of idea 0:28:14.440 --> 0:28:19.480 of the missionary. So if we're sending missionaries out to Africa, 0:28:19.720 --> 0:28:22.240 you know, we're sending the likes of Stanley and Livingstone, 0:28:22.520 --> 0:28:26.919 there's kind of explorers come missionaries to bring the word 0:28:26.960 --> 0:28:29.679 of It's not just the word of God, is it. 0:28:29.720 --> 0:28:32.480 Of course, it's it's the it's the world word of 0:28:32.520 --> 0:28:40.680 white civilization. Two so called uncivilized African tribes in that 0:28:40.840 --> 0:28:43.959 in that terribly imperialistic way that was such a feature 0:28:43.960 --> 0:28:47.640 of the nineteenth century. And but if you're going to 0:28:47.720 --> 0:28:51.640 do that in Africa and you've got desperate poverty and 0:28:51.880 --> 0:28:57.840 people who are living in immoral conditions, people not getting 0:28:57.880 --> 0:29:02.240 married and having children out of word and in Andrew 0:29:02.280 --> 0:29:07.360 Menss term, you know, incest is common in in the 0:29:07.640 --> 0:29:11.480 in the hovels of Leash, London. Even if he was exaggerating, 0:29:12.440 --> 0:29:16.120 then surely you need missionaries to go out to White 0:29:16.200 --> 0:29:20.000 Chapel and Spittlefields and then down below the river south 0:29:20.040 --> 0:29:23.080 of the River into the Borough and Southolk and Burman's 0:29:23.200 --> 0:29:27.560 in place of that where you've got Similarly, it looks 0:29:27.640 --> 0:29:31.160 like the world has been neglected. It looks like Christ 0:29:31.280 --> 0:29:34.480 is not permeating into those parts of the Empire, so 0:29:35.200 --> 0:29:39.720 darkest England is it's kind of perfect vehicle for him 0:29:39.760 --> 0:29:43.960 to to make that point. Mm hmmm. And it strikes 0:29:44.000 --> 0:29:46.280 me that if we're talking about a place that is, 0:29:46.600 --> 0:29:50.240 you said at the beginning, a multicultural melting part um, 0:29:50.360 --> 0:29:53.080 then some of what we've been discussing when it comes 0:29:53.120 --> 0:29:59.440 to middle class sensibilities is also it's mixing and being 0:29:59.480 --> 0:30:03.400 motivated by some of those ideas about white civilization too, 0:30:03.800 --> 0:30:05.520 when you're talking about bringing it to the margins of 0:30:05.520 --> 0:30:12.000 the Empire or into this multicultural region of your own city. Yeah, 0:30:12.360 --> 0:30:15.920 I mean, let's I mean, we need to be really clear. 0:30:15.960 --> 0:30:18.080 It's a different it's a different world, it's a different 0:30:18.120 --> 0:30:22.560 it's a different society. But but nine century Britain is 0:30:22.600 --> 0:30:26.360 a is a quite it's quite a racialist society. You know, 0:30:26.400 --> 0:30:30.560 were the British see themselves as superior, and superior is white, 0:30:30.760 --> 0:30:35.120 but superior is British English and then pretty much the 0:30:35.120 --> 0:30:37.560 rest of the world, and we look down on pretty 0:30:37.640 --> 0:30:43.320 much everybody. In the nineteenth century, and waves of immigrants 0:30:43.360 --> 0:30:47.120 from from Eastern Europe that are coming into London will 0:30:47.160 --> 0:30:52.400 be disparaged. We are pretty pretty down on the Irish, 0:30:52.680 --> 0:30:57.280 We are pretty down on the Chinese, who have the 0:30:57.320 --> 0:31:01.920 small pockets of communities around Lime House. And even the 0:31:01.920 --> 0:31:04.640 Europeans are fellow Europeans like the French and the Germans, 0:31:04.680 --> 0:31:07.320 well we have a beef with them as well throughout 0:31:07.320 --> 0:31:12.280 the century. So everybody is everybody compares very badly to 0:31:12.440 --> 0:31:18.400 white British civilization. HM. And when you're talking about social 0:31:18.440 --> 0:31:22.880 reform and there's kind of missions into the East, and 0:31:23.320 --> 0:31:26.840 you mentioned some of the attitudes towards alcohol, especially for 0:31:26.920 --> 0:31:29.720 William Booth, but I know those are more general as well. 0:31:30.160 --> 0:31:33.720 What were some of the attitudes towards you mentioned earlier prostitution? 0:31:35.000 --> 0:31:38.560 How do the social reformers talk about prostitution as a 0:31:38.600 --> 0:31:40.920 part of kind of anti vice campaigning and that kind 0:31:40.920 --> 0:31:45.440 of thing in the East End. So prostitute, I mean, 0:31:45.520 --> 0:31:49.840 attitudes towards prostitution, they kind of they yo yo through 0:31:49.920 --> 0:31:54.840 the century, the eighteenth and nineteen centuries, so there are 0:31:54.920 --> 0:31:58.160 varying views of prostitution. They kind of come in and 0:31:58.160 --> 0:32:02.920 out of fashion. So prostitutes are quite often seen as 0:32:03.120 --> 0:32:07.080 a necessary evil sort of protecting the pure and innocent 0:32:07.120 --> 0:32:10.480 young women from from lust from male lust, which which 0:32:10.480 --> 0:32:14.920 are seen as kind of natural or at least uncontrollable. Um, 0:32:14.960 --> 0:32:18.800 they're also seen as victims, so the kind of trope 0:32:18.800 --> 0:32:21.920 of the poor servant girl who's forced into prostitution after 0:32:21.960 --> 0:32:26.720 being ruined by a predatory master or or a dishonest 0:32:26.760 --> 0:32:31.040 lover who's promised to marry her and then run off UM. 0:32:31.200 --> 0:32:34.760 But in the aftermath of the Crimean War in the 0:32:34.920 --> 0:32:40.880 eight fifties, the problem of prostitution became mostly focused around 0:32:41.680 --> 0:32:45.840 sexually transmitted diseases, particularly the diseases of syphilis and ganaria, 0:32:45.920 --> 0:32:49.680 because these are he's a kind of undermined being the 0:32:49.720 --> 0:32:54.560 British war effort against Russia and the Crimea UM. Many 0:32:54.600 --> 0:32:57.080 more people were lost to disease than were lost to 0:32:59.080 --> 0:33:04.280 bullets and cavalry savers of the Russians, So this kind 0:33:04.320 --> 0:33:07.760 of dominates the discourse surrounding prostitution and its effects on 0:33:07.840 --> 0:33:13.200 society in the sixties. And in the sixties there are 0:33:13.240 --> 0:33:16.520 attempts to control prostitution and the spread of what we 0:33:16.640 --> 0:33:20.440 today would call s T I s U, particularly the 0:33:20.760 --> 0:33:24.720 spread of sexually transmitted infections in the armed forces, the 0:33:25.200 --> 0:33:28.520 army and the Navy, and a series of acts had passed, 0:33:28.520 --> 0:33:32.720 the Contagious Diseases Acts, which helped to cement the idea 0:33:32.800 --> 0:33:38.840 that prostitutes were a pollutant within society. They are spreading disease. 0:33:40.200 --> 0:33:45.800 And this is coupled with the concepts that are criminal 0:33:45.880 --> 0:33:50.600 class existed in Victorian London, not a particularly new concept, 0:33:50.800 --> 0:33:54.640 but one that sees a revival in the sixties once 0:33:54.680 --> 0:33:59.560 we stopped transporting people to Australia. So instead of getting 0:33:59.640 --> 0:34:02.320 rid of our criminals, they're kind of with us still. 0:34:02.320 --> 0:34:04.400 They're in our prisons and they're back on our streets, 0:34:04.640 --> 0:34:08.080 and that kind of reinvigorates this idea of a criminal class, 0:34:08.120 --> 0:34:11.800 a subspecies of humanity that had the power to corrupt 0:34:12.600 --> 0:34:16.600 the honest, respectable working man and his family. And prostitutes 0:34:16.600 --> 0:34:18.920 were seen as the kind of female bit of this 0:34:19.040 --> 0:34:24.360 criminal fraternity, even though technically prostitutions not not actually a crime, 0:34:25.840 --> 0:34:30.440 and so prostitutes were associated with immorality, with drunkenness, with 0:34:30.640 --> 0:34:34.640 theaters and musicals, and of course with poverty. So there's 0:34:34.680 --> 0:34:38.280 a whole range of things that come with the Victorian 0:34:38.320 --> 0:34:43.919 associations with prostitution. In the Victorian period. Mhm, Let's let's 0:34:43.920 --> 0:34:47.040 take a step into the East End. We've been talking 0:34:47.120 --> 0:34:53.480 about the attitudes, the stereotypes, but how did people in 0:34:53.520 --> 0:34:58.759 the East End actually live? Um? You know, I'm interested 0:34:59.239 --> 0:35:04.000 for thing king about the White Chapel murders. Um, what 0:35:04.080 --> 0:35:08.160 are the model dwellings that you write about, the pabod 0:35:08.280 --> 0:35:14.920 buildings or or other structures like them. Um, what were 0:35:14.960 --> 0:35:18.880 these model dwellings? And relatedly, kind of who owned the 0:35:18.920 --> 0:35:23.520 property in the East End where where all these people lived? 0:35:26.400 --> 0:35:30.480 So Peabody homes or model dwellings are an attempt from 0:35:30.480 --> 0:35:35.520 the pretty from the eighteen sixties onwards to rehouse, to 0:35:35.640 --> 0:35:41.719 re home the poor in better well ventilated and her 0:35:41.800 --> 0:35:46.719 Genie Holmes, there's a recognition that London is full of 0:35:47.239 --> 0:35:55.240 unpleasant slums um really badly built and and crumbling housing 0:35:55.280 --> 0:35:58.120 from the eighteenth and early and nineteenth century. There are 0:35:58.160 --> 0:36:01.200 parts of London where which almost no go areas so 0:36:01.400 --> 0:36:07.000 around St Giles, parts of White Chapel where the term 0:36:07.080 --> 0:36:09.600 rookery is used, you know, kind of thinking of crows 0:36:10.280 --> 0:36:14.520 living living together in in nests at the top of 0:36:14.560 --> 0:36:21.000 the top of trees. These rookeries are um full of 0:36:21.040 --> 0:36:25.320 crime and vice and systematically, the the authorities try to 0:36:25.400 --> 0:36:28.759 knock them down and build better places, or sometimes they 0:36:28.880 --> 0:36:32.319 knocked down for example around Liverpool Street to build the 0:36:32.400 --> 0:36:36.440 new railway station in the nineteenth century. But the idea 0:36:36.520 --> 0:36:41.120 of model dwellings really comes from movements in the eight 0:36:41.719 --> 0:36:44.040 comes to fruition in the sixties, and so you have 0:36:44.320 --> 0:36:49.560 particularly gathering momentum through the philanthropy of George Peabody, who 0:36:49.640 --> 0:36:53.040 is a wealthy American banker, and he kind of gets 0:36:53.080 --> 0:36:57.600 together with the architect Henry Derbyshire to establish a trust, 0:36:57.640 --> 0:37:00.920 the Peabody Trust, which is to which is designed to 0:37:00.960 --> 0:37:05.239 build affordable block housing tenement housing across London. Of one 0:37:05.239 --> 0:37:06.880 of the first of these is in the East End. 0:37:07.600 --> 0:37:12.080 So these are large tenement blocks um sort of built 0:37:12.120 --> 0:37:14.759 around built in a sort of square and oblong around 0:37:14.800 --> 0:37:18.120 the central courtyard, which is creating a safe space for 0:37:18.280 --> 0:37:21.920 communities which are shut off from the streets outside. And 0:37:22.160 --> 0:37:25.799 Peabody is not the only organization doing this, there are 0:37:25.840 --> 0:37:29.160 other companies who are doing this is part philanthropy, but 0:37:29.239 --> 0:37:32.719 obviously you're making profit, hopefully but a small profit out 0:37:32.719 --> 0:37:36.279 of this. So there's the Rothschild Buildings in Flarendine Street, 0:37:36.320 --> 0:37:42.880 which built. But many of these places, whilst the emphasis 0:37:42.880 --> 0:37:45.840 is on rehousing the poor, they only really accommodate the 0:37:45.840 --> 0:37:50.319 working class who could guarantee to pay the rent, so 0:37:50.600 --> 0:37:53.359 they acted as a sort of some of these these 0:37:53.440 --> 0:37:55.960 people are acting as a sort of moral land owner. 0:37:56.840 --> 0:38:01.359 The model's Weddings movement a kind of moral and owners. Yeah, 0:38:03.160 --> 0:38:05.839 this is where you'll find people like Octavia Hill from 0:38:05.840 --> 0:38:09.920 the charity organization Society charity visitors who come around and 0:38:10.040 --> 0:38:12.359 check on the people that were living here. So they're 0:38:12.440 --> 0:38:14.799 checking that the men are in work, they're checking that 0:38:14.840 --> 0:38:18.080 the children at school, that the rooms are clean and tidy. 0:38:18.440 --> 0:38:21.840 And if you fail in any of these areas, or 0:38:21.880 --> 0:38:24.800 you can't pay your rent, then you're going to be evicted. 0:38:25.440 --> 0:38:29.200 So and that's very difficult to guarantee for people at 0:38:29.200 --> 0:38:31.920 the very bottom end of society, people who are the 0:38:31.960 --> 0:38:35.960 casual poor, who don't have regular jobs, who are alive, 0:38:36.040 --> 0:38:38.759 for example, on work at the docks, on picking up 0:38:38.840 --> 0:38:41.319 work on a daily or a weekly basis. Now you 0:38:41.360 --> 0:38:44.279 can't guarantee that you can pay your rent, so you're 0:38:44.280 --> 0:38:46.959 not going to get into a model's wedding. And they're 0:38:47.000 --> 0:38:51.600 actually the people that really need this decent housing. So 0:38:52.239 --> 0:38:55.799 the models only movement is definitely a good thing. And 0:38:55.880 --> 0:38:58.680 you can see many of the model dwellings people buildings 0:38:58.680 --> 0:39:01.319 are still existent in London today. They built them very well, 0:39:01.719 --> 0:39:06.520 the beautiful examples of Victorian engineering and building, but they 0:39:06.560 --> 0:39:10.839 weren't in placea so many other people in the East 0:39:10.920 --> 0:39:14.760 End will have been forced into you know, poor crowded housing, 0:39:15.000 --> 0:39:17.960 and we see terrible examples of people living all the 0:39:17.960 --> 0:39:21.120 way down to two sellers where they're living in sort 0:39:21.160 --> 0:39:27.600 of stigen conditions in dark, unlit um damp basements all 0:39:27.600 --> 0:39:31.240 the way up to living in attic spaces, whole families 0:39:31.280 --> 0:39:35.400 in one room. Um I no sanitation. You know, you 0:39:35.480 --> 0:39:39.799 might have um shared pridulate facilities in the yard at 0:39:39.800 --> 0:39:45.239 the back. So very poor, very cold in winter, very 0:39:45.239 --> 0:39:48.960 hot in summer. Um. So you see lots of images 0:39:48.960 --> 0:39:52.520 of white chapel of people outside, people being outside because 0:39:52.719 --> 0:39:55.120 you wouldn't want to be inside. Because also your inside 0:39:55.160 --> 0:39:59.719 space is also probably your workshop space. So people who 0:39:59.760 --> 0:40:06.120 are working, um piece workers, copying or building matchboxes were 0:40:06.120 --> 0:40:08.799 going to do that at home. So you've kind of 0:40:08.800 --> 0:40:10.600 got to get the kids out from under your feet 0:40:10.600 --> 0:40:13.520 in order to turn them your space into a into 0:40:13.520 --> 0:40:20.080 a workspace during the day, families sharing beds. These these 0:40:20.120 --> 0:40:23.680 conditions were what shocked the middle classes when they came 0:40:23.719 --> 0:40:27.560 to investigate. And below that, if you, if you, if 0:40:27.560 --> 0:40:30.799 you couldn't afford even that sort of to rent a room, 0:40:31.200 --> 0:40:33.880 then you'd be on casual lodging houses where you are 0:40:33.920 --> 0:40:38.040 paying a few pennies a night for a room or 0:40:38.280 --> 0:40:40.359 not even a royom, but you're paying for your bed 0:40:41.280 --> 0:40:43.640 or even a rope to sleep on in the worst 0:40:43.640 --> 0:40:47.359 possible conditions. And these are some of the situations that 0:40:47.520 --> 0:40:50.400 the women who found themselves as victims of Chapter Ripper, 0:40:51.040 --> 0:40:54.120 and we're living in the nights before they died. And 0:40:54.160 --> 0:40:58.360 there's even below that, below the casual lodgings are is 0:40:58.360 --> 0:41:03.120 the workhouse. The workhouse casual ward where you went in 0:41:03.120 --> 0:41:05.840 in the evening, you've got a little bit of bread 0:41:05.880 --> 0:41:10.000 to eat, and you've probably got south down as some 0:41:10.080 --> 0:41:14.120 kind of wash um, your clothes, taking your belongings taking 0:41:14.120 --> 0:41:16.520 away and workhouse close to where and in the morning 0:41:16.520 --> 0:41:20.279 you get breakfast. Such a thing it was, but in 0:41:20.400 --> 0:41:23.920 return for doing some work, breaking rocks or picking oakum 0:41:24.040 --> 0:41:27.000 or something like that. So there's a whole degree of 0:41:27.160 --> 0:41:31.239 poor housing in the East end um, none of it 0:41:31.360 --> 0:41:34.760 is very good. And who owns it well, it's owned 0:41:34.760 --> 0:41:39.879 by by slim landlords, mostly people like McCarthy who owns 0:41:41.000 --> 0:41:44.120 most of whites Row and Dorset Street where Mary Kelly 0:41:44.239 --> 0:41:47.719 is murdered. These are these are landlords who are not 0:41:47.800 --> 0:41:52.360 wealthy themselves, but a certainly exploiting the fact that people 0:41:52.400 --> 0:41:54.920 need somewhere to live in a desperate for anything they 0:41:54.920 --> 0:42:00.080 can care mhm h. In all of these conditions, as 0:42:00.120 --> 0:42:03.600 you say, existed side by side in Whitechapel. Yeah, they 0:42:03.760 --> 0:42:07.319 they're they're all running and people will probably fall through 0:42:07.360 --> 0:42:11.759 different gaps, you know. They they Your life was determined 0:42:11.800 --> 0:42:15.000 by what money you had. So in a society without 0:42:15.000 --> 0:42:19.200 a benefit system, if you had work then you would 0:42:19.200 --> 0:42:22.200 probably great. So if you were reasonably if you you 0:42:22.280 --> 0:42:23.959 and your wife were in work, or you're in work 0:42:23.960 --> 0:42:26.759 and your wife could look after the kids, and yeah, 0:42:27.000 --> 0:42:28.920 you could live in a model's warning and probably have 0:42:29.000 --> 0:42:32.080 a decent, clean environment to live in. Nobody in the 0:42:32.120 --> 0:42:34.719 working class has been played very much. But if you 0:42:34.800 --> 0:42:40.680 lost work, you've got ill um, your wife died, your 0:42:40.719 --> 0:42:46.279 husband died, um, then you were very quickly going to 0:42:46.360 --> 0:42:53.640 fall into poverty and then fall through those gaps in society, 0:42:53.920 --> 0:42:56.120 So you would fall from a model's welling into a 0:42:56.200 --> 0:42:59.760 cheap lodging, UM in a room and a cheap lodging, 0:42:59.800 --> 0:43:03.279 how too, maybe a bunk in a in a kit 0:43:03.400 --> 0:43:08.880 house to a workhouse, UM to the streets, because because 0:43:09.760 --> 0:43:12.440 once you once you can't even afford the two or 0:43:12.480 --> 0:43:15.719 three pence a night for um for part of a 0:43:15.840 --> 0:43:19.440 bed in a shared lodging, then you're going to be 0:43:19.440 --> 0:43:25.000 sleeping on a park bench. M Thinking about the kinds 0:43:25.040 --> 0:43:28.640 of people that were living in these neighborhoods. You mentioned 0:43:29.920 --> 0:43:34.279 a large Irish community, a large Jewish community. Um, what 0:43:34.360 --> 0:43:38.120 was it like to be Irish in London's East End? 0:43:38.360 --> 0:43:41.320 What was that exp was the experience of being Irish 0:43:41.320 --> 0:43:44.239 in the East End typical of what they would be 0:43:44.239 --> 0:43:48.520 like in other places in London? What kinds of trades, 0:43:48.640 --> 0:43:52.840 what kind of residence as homes were open to London's 0:43:52.880 --> 0:43:57.280 Irish population. I think being Irish and being working class 0:43:57.280 --> 0:44:00.239 Irish and in the East End was probably much to 0:44:00.320 --> 0:44:03.600 being working class Irish anywhere else in London or anywhere 0:44:03.640 --> 0:44:06.759 else in England. You know, places like Liverpool had large 0:44:06.760 --> 0:44:12.280 Irish communities as well, so poor and the Irish population 0:44:12.360 --> 0:44:14.880 was generally poor, but it was pretty well established. I 0:44:14.880 --> 0:44:17.719 mean Irish people have been coming to England forever, but 0:44:17.960 --> 0:44:21.759 particularly in the nineteenth century after the Potato family. They 0:44:21.760 --> 0:44:26.360 were generally lower skilled than most other Londoners, that which 0:44:26.440 --> 0:44:29.520 made them more at risk to unemployment, to lower wages 0:44:29.600 --> 0:44:34.160 and therefore impoverishment in London. In the East End, they 0:44:34.200 --> 0:44:36.800 could find work at the docks, because irishman were noted 0:44:36.800 --> 0:44:40.560 as strong and capable and good workers. They made they 0:44:40.600 --> 0:44:44.400 made good doctors and importantly they made good Stevie doors, 0:44:44.400 --> 0:44:47.560 which are the higher end of the of the dock industry. 0:44:48.000 --> 0:44:51.839 Irish women would find work in workshops, so they might 0:44:52.000 --> 0:44:57.120 they might work as seamstresses or match girls, and many 0:44:57.160 --> 0:44:58.840 of course would have been as they would have been 0:44:58.880 --> 0:45:02.040 anywhere else in than they would have been employed as 0:45:02.239 --> 0:45:08.040 domestics and domestic servants. So I mean the Irish being 0:45:08.280 --> 0:45:10.080 what it was like to be Irish in London. I 0:45:10.160 --> 0:45:12.759 mean there's prejudiced against the Irish, but it's it's not 0:45:13.960 --> 0:45:16.040 in the same way that it might have been prejudiced 0:45:16.760 --> 0:45:22.439 towards people on on the basis of their hum their race. 0:45:22.760 --> 0:45:27.800 As such, the Irish um were associated very much with 0:45:28.400 --> 0:45:31.080 a with a hard drinking and a hard fighting culture 0:45:32.040 --> 0:45:35.880 and um and their their predominant religion, which is Catholicism 0:45:35.920 --> 0:45:38.600 for many of the ones that came over, set them 0:45:38.640 --> 0:45:43.960 apart from largely Protestant England. And I think what you 0:45:44.040 --> 0:45:48.239 find from the seventies onwards into the eight is the 0:45:48.440 --> 0:45:54.480 kind of growth of it's the growth of Irish nationalism. 0:45:54.520 --> 0:45:58.080 So Irish home rule becomes very much on the comes 0:45:58.080 --> 0:46:05.040 to dominate politics, domestic politics from the seventies onwards, and 0:46:05.080 --> 0:46:08.440 then in the eighties we start to see, although it 0:46:08.440 --> 0:46:10.920 has happened earlier in the eighteen sixes, we start to 0:46:10.960 --> 0:46:18.360 see episodes of Fenian Irish Republican terrorism. So there's a 0:46:18.360 --> 0:46:22.799 series of bombings in the eighties, which probably means that 0:46:23.680 --> 0:46:29.200 the Irish are um that they're suspected. They become a 0:46:29.239 --> 0:46:34.640 suspected part of society, and that probably increases prejudices their Catholics, 0:46:35.080 --> 0:46:39.600 their bombers, their drunkards, they're violence and they're probably all thieves. 0:46:39.680 --> 0:46:43.560 That's probably a prevalent view of the Irish, but they 0:46:43.560 --> 0:46:46.759 don't have it as bad as some other people. I think, Hm, 0:46:47.920 --> 0:46:50.920 can you describe the Jewish community in the East End 0:46:50.960 --> 0:46:56.399 at the time. Um again kind of homes, trades, attitudes. 0:46:56.960 --> 0:47:00.799 How long had there been a Jewish community in the 0:47:00.800 --> 0:47:03.920 East end of London. Well, there's been a Jewish community 0:47:03.920 --> 0:47:07.040 in the East end of London for a tremendously long 0:47:07.080 --> 0:47:10.880 period of time, because it's Oliver Cromwell in the period 0:47:10.920 --> 0:47:13.480 of the English Republic who allows the Jews who have 0:47:13.520 --> 0:47:16.640 been expelled from England in the medieval period back in. 0:47:17.320 --> 0:47:19.520 So they aren't to establish communities, but they're not allowed 0:47:19.560 --> 0:47:22.279 to live in trade in the city of London, so 0:47:22.360 --> 0:47:25.719 they set up around the edges. So that's kind of 0:47:25.719 --> 0:47:29.000 why we get a Jewish community around Spittle Fields on 0:47:29.040 --> 0:47:31.319 the on the edge of the city, in the edge 0:47:31.360 --> 0:47:38.360 of Mita Square. Um. This community, which is well established 0:47:38.360 --> 0:47:43.120 by the eighteenth century but quite small, is mainly made 0:47:43.200 --> 0:47:51.040 up of Sephadic of Portuguese Jews, and this changes in 0:47:51.080 --> 0:47:56.160 the nineteenth century with large numbers of Eastern European Central 0:47:56.200 --> 0:48:04.040 European Jews coming and fleeing from persecution and economic distress 0:48:04.080 --> 0:48:07.080 in the Russian Empire, so that the so called pale 0:48:07.080 --> 0:48:09.840 of settlement where they're forced to live and forced to 0:48:09.880 --> 0:48:15.040 serve in the Czar's armies. So Jewish people are are 0:48:15.120 --> 0:48:19.000 leaving Russia, UM and places like Poland and Lithuania what 0:48:19.040 --> 0:48:22.360 we would call today, and they're and they're coming across 0:48:22.440 --> 0:48:25.080 Europe to settle in England or to travel on to 0:48:25.160 --> 0:48:27.600 whether I think they really want to go, which is America. 0:48:28.880 --> 0:48:31.680 And when they settle in places like Spittlefields where there's 0:48:31.680 --> 0:48:35.600 already an established community, this works for them because there 0:48:35.640 --> 0:48:39.640 they can find work as shoemakers and as tailors and shopkeepers. 0:48:39.800 --> 0:48:43.520 They can they can understand the language, which generally becomes 0:48:43.520 --> 0:48:48.480 a kind of speaking of Yiddish. And they are concentrated 0:48:48.480 --> 0:48:51.960 in areas around brook Lane, Went Street, Flower in Dean 0:48:52.040 --> 0:48:55.719 Street and Galston Street where where their their synagogues are 0:48:56.080 --> 0:48:58.200 whether people that understand them, where they can buy the 0:48:58.239 --> 0:49:02.719 food they're used to and actually from descriptions at the time, 0:49:02.760 --> 0:49:07.760 you know, this is looking like another country. Actually, of course, 0:49:08.000 --> 0:49:10.799 if you travel to White Chapel today, you'll see a 0:49:10.840 --> 0:49:13.920 similar thing, but with a different community. You've got a 0:49:14.000 --> 0:49:20.120 Bengali community there lots of people from from Um, a 0:49:20.200 --> 0:49:24.799 different part of the world. But but but similarly to 0:49:24.880 --> 0:49:28.000 the Jewish community in the nineteenth century, you would have found, 0:49:28.080 --> 0:49:33.560 you know, black things posted in Hebrew signs on walls 0:49:33.560 --> 0:49:36.520 in Hebrew. So they brought their own customs, their religion, 0:49:36.560 --> 0:49:40.240 their language, their clothes, their food. And they also, of course, 0:49:40.360 --> 0:49:42.960 and I think it's also helped with their prejudice against them, 0:49:43.040 --> 0:49:46.800 they bought some of their radical political ideas like socialism 0:49:46.840 --> 0:49:53.919 and anarchism. Mhm hm um. Jumping forward just a little 0:49:53.960 --> 0:49:56.440 bit to touch on White Chapel before we continue some 0:49:56.480 --> 0:50:00.880 of these general comments. Um, just before any Chapman's murder, 0:50:01.239 --> 0:50:07.000 the Star begins to publish the story that that Polly 0:50:07.080 --> 0:50:10.560 Nichols killer was a Jew named leather apron Can you 0:50:10.600 --> 0:50:14.960 describe what kinds of prejudices, as you said, against Jewish 0:50:15.000 --> 0:50:19.120 life that kind of reporting would have conjured up for 0:50:19.239 --> 0:50:23.400 the Stars readership. Yes, I mean there's a there's a 0:50:23.800 --> 0:50:27.959 the suggestion that the Whitechapel murderer was a guy called 0:50:28.040 --> 0:50:34.280 leather apron Um sometimes identified as John Piser, and that 0:50:34.480 --> 0:50:37.839 this is this is very much in keeping with contemporary 0:50:37.880 --> 0:50:40.719 views of Jews, but also the way in which the 0:50:40.719 --> 0:50:44.840 Whitechapel murderer was the idea of the Whitechapel murderer was 0:50:44.880 --> 0:50:47.759 constructed at the time and has come down to us 0:50:47.760 --> 0:50:51.360 ever since. So the descriptions of leather Apron in the 0:50:51.400 --> 0:50:54.040 newspapers highlighted things like his small black eyes and his 0:50:54.239 --> 0:50:57.600 Hebrew features, which is probably suggesting he had a large nose, 0:50:58.040 --> 0:51:02.080 that kind of Semitic appearance, and the color of his skin. 0:51:02.560 --> 0:51:08.239 He was described as sinister um. He was in the 0:51:08.320 --> 0:51:13.080 trades that we would associated, not exclusively with Jewish immigrants 0:51:13.080 --> 0:51:14.920 in the nineteenth century, but certainly with many of them. 0:51:15.080 --> 0:51:17.760 He was a shoemaker or a bootmaker or a slipper maker, 0:51:18.880 --> 0:51:20.719 and he was he was said to be someone who 0:51:20.800 --> 0:51:24.160 terrorized local women with a long sharp knife. Now I 0:51:24.160 --> 0:51:28.680 think that's important because English people weren't necessary associated with knives. 0:51:28.680 --> 0:51:35.239 You associated foreigners with knives, Portuguese sailors, um, Jewish barbers 0:51:35.640 --> 0:51:42.840 and shoemakers, Native Americans escaping from buffalo bills while west 0:51:42.880 --> 0:51:47.760 traveling show. So it was easier for people in London 0:51:47.800 --> 0:51:50.040 in the nineteenth century to believe that Jack the Repper 0:51:50.160 --> 0:51:53.640 was a foreigner. He was a crazy immigrant, someone identified 0:51:53.680 --> 0:51:59.120 as other, rather than an indigenous resident of White Chapel. 0:51:59.719 --> 0:52:04.120 So those are all things which it's the presence of 0:52:04.200 --> 0:52:07.000 large numbers of Jews in that area, and the prejudice 0:52:07.000 --> 0:52:10.560 and the anti Semitism, which is definitely rife in Victorian London, 0:52:11.080 --> 0:52:13.680 which helps to allow someone like the start to point 0:52:13.680 --> 0:52:16.719 the finger at a leather ape. And for what it's worth, 0:52:16.719 --> 0:52:20.160 of course John Piser wasn't chatter rippey. He had an 0:52:20.200 --> 0:52:26.120 alibi for that. That that's um night and the sergeant 0:52:26.200 --> 0:52:29.640 Sergeant Thick that arrested him ended up having to protect 0:52:29.680 --> 0:52:34.840 him from the mob outside. Mhm, mhm. In the opening 0:52:35.080 --> 0:52:39.920 of London Shadows, you mentioned, um that there are some 0:52:39.960 --> 0:52:45.439 distinctly theological aspects of the East Ends reputation. Uh. And 0:52:45.719 --> 0:52:49.000 we've talked about the Salvation Army and you know, mentioned 0:52:49.040 --> 0:52:52.799 kind of missionary efforts and that kind of way of 0:52:52.840 --> 0:52:57.799 thinking about what was going on. Um. And in your 0:52:57.800 --> 0:53:00.880 book you say it wasn't the worst, the most criminal 0:53:00.920 --> 0:53:03.440 place to live in London in the eighteen eighties, but 0:53:03.520 --> 0:53:06.440 it was representative from many Victorians of the depths to 0:53:06.520 --> 0:53:10.640 which humanity could sink when separated from a close relationship 0:53:10.680 --> 0:53:14.879 with God and Christianity. Can you say a bit more 0:53:14.880 --> 0:53:18.400 about how theology is shaped the ideas we've been talking 0:53:18.400 --> 0:53:23.000 about about crime and poverty and vice. Yeah, for sure, 0:53:23.719 --> 0:53:25.680 I'll never get used to hearing my words come back 0:53:25.719 --> 0:53:31.880 at me. Um, yeah, I think I mean Victorian British 0:53:31.880 --> 0:53:36.960 society was a lot more religious than modern Britoness society is, 0:53:37.640 --> 0:53:42.560 even if going to church wasn't as ubiquitous as as 0:53:42.600 --> 0:53:45.479 some people probably thought it ought to be. But most 0:53:45.520 --> 0:53:49.800 social reformers were motivated by their Christian beliefs. And this 0:53:49.800 --> 0:53:54.000 this kind of manifested itself in a in a highly 0:53:54.080 --> 0:53:59.239 moral discourse about society and charity was closely linked to Christianity, or, 0:53:59.520 --> 0:54:03.480 in the case of the Jewish community, to traditions within Judaism. 0:54:03.880 --> 0:54:07.000 It was it was a moral obligation to help the poorest, 0:54:07.080 --> 0:54:11.320 but that obligation sat side by side with a belief 0:54:11.360 --> 0:54:14.040 that some sections of Victorian society had lost sight of 0:54:14.120 --> 0:54:17.840 the message of Christ. They had to be enlightened. The 0:54:17.880 --> 0:54:20.600 Word of God needed to be brought to the people 0:54:20.600 --> 0:54:23.520 of our chapel, just as missionaries will bringing it to 0:54:23.600 --> 0:54:29.439 the supposedly uncivilized peoples of Africa. Um. So, I think 0:54:31.320 --> 0:54:36.520 you've got that kind of sense that the all the 0:54:36.560 --> 0:54:39.400 people that are writing about the East, and Andrew Mens, 0:54:39.560 --> 0:54:45.680 William Stead, Samuel Barnett, you know, the women like Helen 0:54:45.680 --> 0:54:52.200 den Dendy, Helen Bows and Cake, Beatrice Web. Very many 0:54:52.280 --> 0:55:00.279 of those social reformers, Charles Booth, they are motor of eight. 0:55:01.640 --> 0:55:05.920 They can't separate out there their religion. It's such a 0:55:06.000 --> 0:55:09.879 part of them, and I think that's quite different. It's 0:55:09.920 --> 0:55:12.160 quite difficult, I think, to get that across to people 0:55:12.239 --> 0:55:15.400 in our world because religion doesn't play that kind of 0:55:15.480 --> 0:55:17.520 role in our society. It's very much an add on 0:55:17.840 --> 0:55:20.839 for many people in Britain today. You know, you go 0:55:20.960 --> 0:55:24.880 to church at certain times for for weddings and funerals 0:55:24.880 --> 0:55:28.520 and baptisms perhaps, but it's not part of your daily 0:55:28.600 --> 0:55:31.000 life in the way that it would have informed the 0:55:31.080 --> 0:55:33.759 lives of people at that time. So everything kind of 0:55:33.760 --> 0:55:41.880 gets seen through that particular lens. Mhm, mhm. Thinking about 0:55:43.520 --> 0:55:49.680 life and death in the East End, Um, what we 0:55:49.760 --> 0:55:56.120 consider today the Ripper murders weren't the only killings in 0:55:56.480 --> 0:56:00.799 the White Chapel area or across the East End. And 0:56:00.920 --> 0:56:04.000 there's violent crime on record in the neighborhood throughout the 0:56:04.040 --> 0:56:10.400 eighteen EIGHTI its not just you know, in a few months, um, 0:56:10.440 --> 0:56:12.600 but how violent And again we're kind of talking about 0:56:12.600 --> 0:56:18.080 stereotypes of versus reality. How violent was Whitechapel really and 0:56:18.080 --> 0:56:21.160 and then what was the general understanding of that violence 0:56:21.160 --> 0:56:24.920 that did occur. Yeah, and it's obviously very difficult to 0:56:24.960 --> 0:56:29.240 measure violence in the past. It's quite difficult to measure 0:56:29.360 --> 0:56:31.560 violence in our own society. Is very diffult to measure 0:56:31.560 --> 0:56:35.399 of violence in the past because because you're you can 0:56:35.440 --> 0:56:41.200 only measure statistics of violence. So you can you can 0:56:41.239 --> 0:56:44.600 measure reported crime, you can measure prosecuted crime, you can 0:56:44.600 --> 0:56:50.320 measure convictions, so the number of assaults and number of murders, etcetera, etcetera, 0:56:50.920 --> 0:56:53.880 and we don't really have those sorts of stats for 0:56:54.480 --> 0:56:58.080 nine century. There's a sense that violence is how the 0:56:58.200 --> 0:57:01.880 generally speaking crime has been in the decline from the 0:57:01.920 --> 0:57:06.239 eighteen fifties onwards and is beginning to rise again in 0:57:06.280 --> 0:57:10.320 the eighties. And that's probably also to do with cycles 0:57:10.400 --> 0:57:15.960 of of economic cycles. It's also to do with economic cycles, 0:57:16.000 --> 0:57:19.720 because poverty and crime are are interlinked. And when we 0:57:19.760 --> 0:57:21.960 talk about violent crime in the past, we're often talking 0:57:21.960 --> 0:57:26.600 about violent property crime like robbery, rather than violence per se. 0:57:27.320 --> 0:57:31.560 I think violence was endemic in the East ending White Chapel, 0:57:32.440 --> 0:57:38.040 but murder was relatively uncommon, or perhaps we could say 0:57:38.080 --> 0:57:41.880 that it was no more common than anywhere else in London, 0:57:43.440 --> 0:57:46.000 and the White Chapel murders of course are notable because 0:57:46.040 --> 0:57:50.720 of their particular brutality and the and the sequence that 0:57:50.880 --> 0:57:56.920 was unusual. Casual violence, assaults, fights between men in pubs, 0:57:57.200 --> 0:58:01.000 domestic abuse were daily occurrences and we can see this 0:58:01.080 --> 0:58:03.920 in the prosecutions at the police magistrate courts. At places 0:58:03.960 --> 0:58:07.920 like Thames and Worship Street, m violence was mostly carried 0:58:07.920 --> 0:58:11.880 out by men, either against other men, against the police, 0:58:12.720 --> 0:58:16.040 or against their female partners and wives, or violence was 0:58:16.080 --> 0:58:21.320 directed at children. And the East End Whitechapple Spittlesfields was 0:58:21.360 --> 0:58:23.160 a rough area, but I don't think it's helpful to 0:58:23.200 --> 0:58:26.800 see it as more violent than any other poor district 0:58:26.840 --> 0:58:31.080 in the UK at that particular time. Well, I can 0:58:31.120 --> 0:58:36.000 say a bit about other murders if that's useful, Yeah, sure, yeah, yeah, 0:58:36.440 --> 0:58:40.640 I mean there were there were other murders, and not 0:58:40.640 --> 0:58:45.560 not least the Thames torso mystery, which which could possibly 0:58:45.600 --> 0:58:49.720 be linked to the rip of Killings um so. In 0:58:49.720 --> 0:58:52.800 that case, there was a discovery of a female torso 0:58:52.920 --> 0:58:56.400 in the Thames at Raynham in May seven, with more 0:58:56.440 --> 0:59:00.960 body parts surfacing that that same year and then in 0:59:01.000 --> 0:59:05.480 September right while the White Chappel cases is kind of 0:59:05.520 --> 0:59:09.880 reaching its enif another torso was being found amongst the 0:59:09.880 --> 0:59:15.680 building worked for police headquarters at Whitehood and in June, 0:59:15.680 --> 0:59:18.920 third dismembered female body was dragged from the Thames at 0:59:18.920 --> 0:59:23.960 Horsby down before in September of that year, the police 0:59:24.000 --> 0:59:27.840 discovered the rotting torso underneath arches in Pension Street, which 0:59:27.880 --> 0:59:31.080 isn't far from where There's Stride had been murdered just 0:59:31.160 --> 0:59:35.120 a year earlier. There were several other high profile murders 0:59:35.120 --> 0:59:39.840 in London. Only four men were sent to the gallows 0:59:39.840 --> 0:59:41.640 of the result of that, so I think we have 0:59:41.720 --> 0:59:43.720 to put it into context that we think of it 0:59:43.760 --> 0:59:46.840 as being a murderous age, but actually they weren't sending 0:59:46.880 --> 0:59:50.600 that many people. We weren't executing that many people for murder. 0:59:51.200 --> 0:59:54.160 The most compelling murder of eighteen eighty I think was 0:59:54.200 --> 0:59:58.760 probably that of Joseph Rumbold, who was killed in May. 0:59:59.000 --> 1:00:01.320 He was a was in the wrong place at the 1:00:01.320 --> 1:00:04.480 wrong time. He was killed as he strolled in Regent's 1:00:04.560 --> 1:00:08.840 Park with his girlfriend um and this is part of 1:00:08.840 --> 1:00:12.240 a gang feud out of hand and his killer was 1:00:12.280 --> 1:00:14.920 an eighteen year old there was sentenced to death, but 1:00:15.520 --> 1:00:18.120 reprieved on account of his age. So he kind of 1:00:18.120 --> 1:00:21.160 tells us that that there were there were domestic murders, 1:00:21.200 --> 1:00:24.840 there were murders through robberies, there were gang murders. The 1:00:24.920 --> 1:00:29.560 Ripper murders because they were serial, because they were particularly brutal, 1:00:30.160 --> 1:00:34.800 are different. But but but there wasn't a particularly more 1:00:34.880 --> 1:00:39.640 murderous here than any other. Mm hmmmm. Well, And in 1:00:39.680 --> 1:00:44.080 your book Jack and the Temps Torso Murders, Um, you 1:00:44.200 --> 1:00:48.440 describe those cases that you just mentioned at Raynom and 1:00:48.480 --> 1:00:53.200 Whitehall and Pension Street, UM, in a way that I 1:00:53.240 --> 1:00:59.080 think is very that I found very helpful and compelling, 1:00:59.160 --> 1:01:05.000 because we do talk as if even and this is 1:01:05.040 --> 1:01:07.880 part of the myth of Jack the Ripper, that what 1:01:07.960 --> 1:01:13.360 we call the White Chapel murders were particularly horrifying and brutal, 1:01:13.400 --> 1:01:18.960 and they were. But reading about the Torso murders I 1:01:19.040 --> 1:01:25.080 found equally horrifying. UM. And so I appreciated what you 1:01:25.120 --> 1:01:27.360 did with that book, and so I'm glad you. I'm 1:01:27.360 --> 1:01:29.480 glad you went on to mention them in this conversation 1:01:29.520 --> 1:01:33.840 now despite me not dropping that into the outline, because 1:01:34.520 --> 1:01:38.600 and Paul Beg does this too in his book Forgotten Victims, 1:01:39.920 --> 1:01:42.800 where he talks about the way that you think about 1:01:43.040 --> 1:01:46.960 the White Chapel murders, and often it's a favored suspect 1:01:47.160 --> 1:01:52.560 or something that based on you know who, uh, someone 1:01:53.240 --> 1:01:57.360 you know who's identified as a suspect brings in or 1:01:57.440 --> 1:02:02.200 omits certain crimes are killings that happened in the East 1:02:02.320 --> 1:02:04.720 End in that year. So I thought that was very 1:02:04.720 --> 1:02:08.840 helpful in your own work when we're talking about building 1:02:08.840 --> 1:02:11.160 a case and how connected to see these things or 1:02:11.240 --> 1:02:17.160 not um that there's so much of of life of death, 1:02:17.280 --> 1:02:19.880 even of the crimes that were committed. That's that gets 1:02:19.880 --> 1:02:24.320 omitted from the stories that we tell for sure. Yeah, absolutely. 1:02:24.360 --> 1:02:26.720 I mean we focus on what we want to focus 1:02:26.720 --> 1:02:29.480 on in the replicase and that that's how that's how 1:02:29.480 --> 1:02:33.080 it's been driven. And that's kind of the falsification of 1:02:33.280 --> 1:02:35.960 history in a way, because you leave out the bits 1:02:36.000 --> 1:02:40.160 that don't fit the argument you want to make. And 1:02:40.320 --> 1:02:43.200 I think even even the best historians are are guilty 1:02:43.240 --> 1:02:49.880 of of that um at some point, because it's in 1:02:50.280 --> 1:02:52.360 as long as you don't admit things which as long 1:02:52.400 --> 1:02:56.840 as you don't admit omit things which completely dismantle your argument. 1:02:57.880 --> 1:03:01.280 I think he's trying to probably get away with with 1:03:01.680 --> 1:03:07.919 with emphasizing the facts or the situations which they think 1:03:08.040 --> 1:03:11.200 are most compelling to drive the narrative that they want 1:03:11.240 --> 1:03:20.240 to present. Thinking about the agencies responsible for investigating or 1:03:20.320 --> 1:03:24.840 preventing all of these crimes. Um, you mentioned earlier that 1:03:24.920 --> 1:03:28.160 the City of London Police is different from the Metropolitan Police. 1:03:28.920 --> 1:03:31.800 You mentioned the Thames River Police. There's also the c 1:03:32.000 --> 1:03:35.240 i D at Scotland, the Criminal Investigative. I'm sorry, what's 1:03:35.280 --> 1:03:40.560 the department? Yes? Can you briefly describe those various agencies 1:03:40.680 --> 1:03:43.000 how they related to each other? Uh, you know, give 1:03:43.040 --> 1:03:46.240 our listeners a sense of what was going on with 1:03:46.240 --> 1:03:51.800 this complex, sometimes seemingly byzantine, policing organization in a complicated 1:03:51.800 --> 1:03:55.400 city like London. Yeah. Well, the first thing we have 1:03:55.480 --> 1:03:58.280 to establish, a course, is that London. London didn't have 1:03:58.320 --> 1:04:03.720 a police force until so the police in still relatively new. 1:04:04.960 --> 1:04:06.840 That might seem a strange thing to say, but but 1:04:08.360 --> 1:04:11.560 you know, it's only fifty or sixty years of policing 1:04:11.680 --> 1:04:15.440 by the time you get to eight. Since Peel passed 1:04:15.520 --> 1:04:18.720 the Metro and Police Act in eighteen twenty nine. The 1:04:20.200 --> 1:04:25.880 that created a professional police force which covered all of London, 1:04:26.080 --> 1:04:29.080 apart from the City of London, which kept its own 1:04:29.360 --> 1:04:32.680 discreete police force. The City of London is governed differently 1:04:32.760 --> 1:04:36.200 to the rest of London. It still is governed differently 1:04:36.200 --> 1:04:38.760 to the rest of London. It has its own corporation. 1:04:39.880 --> 1:04:45.280 So by eight for the Rippmoders, when the Rippermoders take place, 1:04:45.880 --> 1:04:51.280 London has divided into twenty six police districts, effectively plast 1:04:51.360 --> 1:04:56.680 the city of London. Um, so you've got they're all 1:04:56.720 --> 1:05:00.400 they're all given a letter, so aid through to to 1:05:00.640 --> 1:05:05.240 why Um, I don't think this is it? Actually there 1:05:05.280 --> 1:05:07.640 might be, so scrap that bit. But anyway, there's there's 1:05:07.680 --> 1:05:10.320 they've all they're all given a letter, and so H 1:05:10.400 --> 1:05:16.320 Division looks after most of White Chaplain's bittlefield. But there 1:05:16.440 --> 1:05:20.720 is there is the ability to draft in officers from 1:05:20.760 --> 1:05:25.520 different divisions. But they've all got their own particular divisional 1:05:26.240 --> 1:05:31.000 commanders and therefore their own petty jealous and rivalries. So 1:05:31.040 --> 1:05:33.960 we shouldn't think that A division and H Division are 1:05:33.960 --> 1:05:38.520 necessarily getting on with each other. And there's certainly a 1:05:38.520 --> 1:05:45.720 divide between uniform and playing clothes. The detectives and detection 1:05:45.760 --> 1:05:50.120 has a bad press in England. It took a long time, 1:05:50.440 --> 1:05:55.280 so there wasn't a detective agency in England in nine 1:05:55.320 --> 1:05:57.880 when the police was first formed. It took until eighteen 1:05:57.960 --> 1:06:02.040 forty two, and it took at Chilly a couple of 1:06:02.080 --> 1:06:08.720 catastrophic failures of the police to catch murderers, high profile criminals, 1:06:08.960 --> 1:06:12.600 criminals for them to create the detected apartment in eighteen 1:06:12.680 --> 1:06:18.440 forty two, and that that was a very small number 1:06:18.560 --> 1:06:24.200 of officers, and you could ask ordinary uniform officers to 1:06:25.440 --> 1:06:28.880 go into playing clothes. But the British kind of didn't 1:06:28.960 --> 1:06:31.520 like the idea of playing clothes policing at the time. 1:06:31.800 --> 1:06:37.880 It kind of smacked of Napoleonic spies. They had quite 1:06:37.880 --> 1:06:43.680 strong memories of of Napoleon's secret police, and we didn't 1:06:43.720 --> 1:06:46.520 really want to have a detective in that way. It 1:06:46.600 --> 1:06:50.240 only that only really changes in the nineteenth centuries as 1:06:50.320 --> 1:06:54.560 detectives get a place in popular culture. So Dickens the 1:06:54.600 --> 1:06:59.720 American Wilkie Collins, and then of course um Sherlock Holmes, 1:07:00.520 --> 1:07:04.800 that they these characterizations of detection, if not police detective 1:07:04.840 --> 1:07:07.640 in the case of homes, that they begin to establish 1:07:07.640 --> 1:07:11.000 in the in the popular mind, the idea that detection 1:07:11.040 --> 1:07:14.280 can be a good thing because Jenery speech and we 1:07:14.360 --> 1:07:19.919 don't think it's a good thing. Um. Alongside the Met 1:07:20.080 --> 1:07:23.200 and the City of London Police Force, you have the 1:07:23.240 --> 1:07:27.920 Criminal Investigation Department which is created in it's basically the 1:07:28.000 --> 1:07:36.840 Detective Division, the Detective Department renamed so in there's a 1:07:36.880 --> 1:07:44.520 massive scandal um called the turf fraud scandal, when several 1:07:45.080 --> 1:07:52.280 members of the detective departments are um fingered as as 1:07:52.320 --> 1:07:59.760 being part of a criminal fraud racket surrounding betting, and 1:08:00.000 --> 1:08:04.080 there's a there's a there's a um. Some of these 1:08:04.280 --> 1:08:07.840 these detectives kind of flee and the trackdown and eventually 1:08:07.880 --> 1:08:10.600 there's a big trial at the Old Bailey in in 1:08:12.000 --> 1:08:17.080 in October November eight and a couple of officers are 1:08:18.200 --> 1:08:20.679 I think three officers are eventually sent to prison for 1:08:20.680 --> 1:08:23.960 for the fraud. And there's a Home Office inquiry after 1:08:24.040 --> 1:08:28.120 that which looks at the defects in the Detective Department 1:08:29.320 --> 1:08:33.480 not just in London but elsewhere. And there's a reorganization 1:08:33.640 --> 1:08:37.040 led by a guy called Howard Vincent who becomes the 1:08:37.080 --> 1:08:41.200 first director of the Criminal Investigation Department and he appoints 1:08:42.600 --> 1:08:47.160 a guy called Frederick Adolphus Williamson as the first Superintendency. 1:08:47.200 --> 1:08:51.519 I d he'd been in the detective department and he 1:08:51.680 --> 1:08:53.800 kind of survived the scandal. He'd come out of that 1:08:54.640 --> 1:08:59.080 smelling of roses and he investigated the guys that have 1:08:59.120 --> 1:09:03.120 been been called up in it, and so they redeemed 1:09:03.200 --> 1:09:08.320 it the Criminal Investigation Department so that it didn't have 1:09:08.479 --> 1:09:17.280 the word detective in its Yeah. Um, and then once 1:09:17.280 --> 1:09:22.280 we're into the eighteen eighties and we're headed for the 1:09:22.400 --> 1:09:26.800 year of the White Chapel murders. Before we get there, Ah, 1:09:28.000 --> 1:09:32.439 Charles Warren comes in as Commissioner of Police. Um. Can 1:09:32.479 --> 1:09:38.680 you describe his personality and maybe some achievements from his 1:09:38.800 --> 1:09:43.200 career leading up to his appointment as commissioner and what 1:09:43.280 --> 1:09:47.840 were his relationships to these various players in the in 1:09:47.880 --> 1:09:52.559 the Metropolitan Police, the Home Office, the Detectives. Mm hmm. 1:09:52.960 --> 1:09:58.040 As Charles Warren is is an interesting character. UM. He's 1:09:58.040 --> 1:10:02.840 a military man. He's background is in the military. In fact, 1:10:02.880 --> 1:10:08.800 his his background was particularly in the Royal Engineers. So 1:10:09.120 --> 1:10:14.280 he's a kind of military man who builds bridges, literally 1:10:14.360 --> 1:10:18.960 builds bridges, UM, does earthworks and as part of the Empire, 1:10:19.000 --> 1:10:23.320 that's extremely important. So he's a very successful military man. 1:10:23.560 --> 1:10:26.680 For most of his career. He blots that a bit 1:10:26.760 --> 1:10:30.519 later on, but will come to that. UM and he 1:10:31.680 --> 1:10:36.720 I mean he's prior to the his appointment in six 1:10:37.600 --> 1:10:41.240 as head of the Metropolitan Police, he for example, investigated 1:10:41.320 --> 1:10:46.240 the disappearance of an eminent Orientent. Orient and eminent Orientent, 1:10:46.439 --> 1:10:53.799 I can't say that a guy called Professor Edward Henry Palmer. 1:10:54.000 --> 1:10:58.719 He disappeared in Syria. UM and he looked into into 1:10:58.760 --> 1:11:02.640 what had happened to him on bath of the government. UM. 1:11:02.680 --> 1:11:06.040 He earned a knighthood for his service in South Africa 1:11:06.479 --> 1:11:10.320 in Becuana Land, so he was he was kind of considered. 1:11:10.360 --> 1:11:12.200 He must have been considered as a safe pair of 1:11:12.280 --> 1:11:17.760 hands and Henderson had to well. Henderson resigned from the 1:11:17.800 --> 1:11:20.200 MET has been been in charge for many, many years 1:11:20.200 --> 1:11:24.360 and he resigned for the MET following the West End 1:11:24.439 --> 1:11:31.240 riots of when the police mishandled the demonstration in Table 1:11:31.280 --> 1:11:35.920 Square which ended up with rioters smashing windows in power 1:11:36.000 --> 1:11:43.559 Mau and I think what what the authorities wanted was 1:11:43.640 --> 1:11:47.519 someone who could who could impose some discipline on the police, 1:11:47.520 --> 1:11:50.040 because there were also concerns that the police we weren't 1:11:50.120 --> 1:11:52.800 disciplined enough and weren't able to deal with these sorts 1:11:52.800 --> 1:11:56.840 of difficult situations, and I think his military background in 1:11:56.880 --> 1:12:00.519 many respects defines his time as commissioner of them. He 1:12:00.560 --> 1:12:04.439 didn't really get detection, he didn't get planes closed, so 1:12:04.479 --> 1:12:06.920 he clashed with C I, with I D. And he 1:12:06.960 --> 1:12:16.080 didn't get on with his boss, who was the Home Secretary, Matthews, 1:12:16.080 --> 1:12:20.479 so he wasn't well served by his relationship. Probably I 1:12:20.479 --> 1:12:24.920 imagine it was quite a prickly upstanding military guy. You 1:12:25.360 --> 1:12:28.519 probably see him in those sort of images of him 1:12:28.520 --> 1:12:30.519 in those things like the Charge of the like Brigade, 1:12:30.560 --> 1:12:33.360 and there's sort of great films from the sixties and 1:12:33.400 --> 1:12:40.280 seventies of British Imperial military figures, so I kind of 1:12:40.320 --> 1:12:45.960 see him like that. Um, but actually a very successful 1:12:46.240 --> 1:12:52.040 military man until he resigned in their memor, not as 1:12:52.080 --> 1:12:55.240 people say, because of the failure of the police to 1:12:55.320 --> 1:12:59.080 catch the ripper, but actually because he he published a 1:12:59.160 --> 1:13:03.600 sort of defensive himself in a and a popular magazine, 1:13:03.600 --> 1:13:06.680 and he forgot to ask his boss for permission to 1:13:06.680 --> 1:13:08.680 do so, so he kind of had to fall on 1:13:08.800 --> 1:13:13.479 his um, on his sword and leave the police. I 1:13:13.520 --> 1:13:15.559 suspect he was probably quite bad of that, and he 1:13:15.600 --> 1:13:22.200 went back to the army and and and in this 1:13:22.240 --> 1:13:25.880 case he ends he ends up in in eighteen nine, 1:13:26.000 --> 1:13:30.080 so eleven years after the Ripper case, serving um in 1:13:30.160 --> 1:13:33.120 the South African War that what sometimes owned as the 1:13:33.120 --> 1:13:37.000 Boar War. And he's he has to lead the assault 1:13:37.120 --> 1:13:41.479 on Spine Cop which is an unmitigated military disaster. He 1:13:42.320 --> 1:13:46.080 got through that and actually he recovered his reputation in 1:13:46.080 --> 1:13:49.840 the relief of the the town of Ladysmith. And I 1:13:49.840 --> 1:13:52.000 think it's interesting that Paul Big describes him as a 1:13:52.000 --> 1:13:56.599 man to whom fate certainly dealt to cruel hands. Leadership 1:13:56.640 --> 1:13:59.679 of the police during the Ripper case, which is probably 1:13:59.680 --> 1:14:02.680 in sible for them to solve, and leadership of a 1:14:03.280 --> 1:14:06.439 of the of soldiers at the battles Fine Cop where 1:14:06.439 --> 1:14:12.360 they were rudely defeated by the boors. So yeah, interesting guy. 1:14:14.720 --> 1:14:17.840 One other piece of the legal process that becomes very 1:14:17.880 --> 1:14:25.519 important in the White Chapel case is coroners. There there 1:14:25.560 --> 1:14:29.800 are plenty of surgeons and coroners who have a hand 1:14:29.880 --> 1:14:37.320 in the investigation, uh the inquests, the examinations in general. 1:14:37.680 --> 1:14:40.920 How significant were coroners in the legal process of the 1:14:40.920 --> 1:14:46.960 eighties when it came to murder or violent crime. Well, 1:14:47.000 --> 1:14:49.320 I kind of think of the coroner is very important 1:14:49.680 --> 1:14:55.320 because they kind of declare that someone's their role is 1:14:55.400 --> 1:14:59.600 to decide that someone has been unlawthy killed, So that 1:14:59.760 --> 1:15:04.080 do tears to investigate sudden or unexplained death so long 1:15:04.080 --> 1:15:06.200 as that's been notified as a death by a member 1:15:06.200 --> 1:15:10.639 of the public um. But we shouldn't assume that they 1:15:11.000 --> 1:15:15.360 investigated every suspicious death, or that that every homicide was 1:15:15.400 --> 1:15:17.960 identified as such. I think in the case of the 1:15:18.040 --> 1:15:22.800 Ripper motors is pretty clear that you didn't need a 1:15:22.840 --> 1:15:25.599 tremendous amount of medical knowledge to know that somebody had 1:15:25.640 --> 1:15:30.120 been murdered in those situations. But in recent years, I 1:15:30.120 --> 1:15:33.840 think historians have concluded that as the costs of coroner's 1:15:33.880 --> 1:15:37.880 inquest and the cost of investigation investigating crime increased in 1:15:37.920 --> 1:15:41.839 the nineteenth century, some of the homicides that were deemed 1:15:41.880 --> 1:15:46.599 more difficult to solve might might more commediently been labeled 1:15:46.600 --> 1:15:52.840 as accidental death by by coroner's um so and going 1:15:52.880 --> 1:15:55.559 on from the eight fifties, the police took on quite 1:15:55.560 --> 1:15:57.800 a few of the duties of the coroners. So you 1:15:57.880 --> 1:16:01.519 have policemen appointed as coroner's office is, and that they're 1:16:01.560 --> 1:16:04.599 the intermediates between the police and the coroner, so by 1:16:05.560 --> 1:16:08.840 corner is important. But the police also have their own 1:16:08.840 --> 1:16:12.720 attached officers and of course the police surgeons to help 1:16:12.720 --> 1:16:16.080 them determine whether a death was suspicious, and then if 1:16:16.120 --> 1:16:20.439 it was, what clues whatevidence could be gleaned about the 1:16:20.479 --> 1:16:26.720 cause of death and any potential perpetrated mhm, mhm. And 1:16:26.760 --> 1:16:33.599 so we come to and let's begin with Emma Smith 1:16:34.080 --> 1:16:40.320 and Martha Tabram. What were the circumstances of their murders 1:16:40.360 --> 1:16:44.640 and how were they interpreted when they first occurred and 1:16:45.280 --> 1:16:50.479 were examined and discussed. They're quite different. I think the 1:16:50.520 --> 1:16:52.599 two murders, the murders of m Smith and the murder 1:16:52.640 --> 1:16:57.200 of Martha Tabron, should probably be separated out. I think 1:16:57.200 --> 1:16:59.880 you'll find as a as a consensus growing now that 1:17:00.040 --> 1:17:04.920 Martha Tabran was a ripper victim was killed by the 1:17:05.040 --> 1:17:09.800 same man who killed the five canonical victims. Not not 1:17:09.920 --> 1:17:12.320 everybody would agree that with that, But then not everybody 1:17:12.400 --> 1:17:15.599 would agree that the five canonical victims were killed by 1:17:15.600 --> 1:17:19.639 the same person anyway, But then a Smith is quite different. 1:17:19.800 --> 1:17:25.679 She was most probably a prostitute living in spittlefields, living 1:17:25.680 --> 1:17:29.639 in George Street who in April was set upon by 1:17:29.640 --> 1:17:32.479 a gang of men on Osborne Street, which is at 1:17:32.520 --> 1:17:38.040 the foot of Brick Lane. It looked like a particularly 1:17:38.120 --> 1:17:43.679 nasty street robbery and Emma was left was left for dead. 1:17:44.840 --> 1:17:48.439 She she managed to crawl back to her digs, but 1:17:48.560 --> 1:17:51.200 she died later she was she was taken on on 1:17:51.320 --> 1:17:54.400 the stretcher to a London hospital where she died of 1:17:54.520 --> 1:17:59.720 peritonitis on the fourth of April. So I think she 1:17:59.880 --> 1:18:02.320 was killed by a group of men, which doesn't really 1:18:02.320 --> 1:18:07.439 fit in with them the rest of the murders, and 1:18:07.479 --> 1:18:09.360 at the time I think it was just put down 1:18:09.400 --> 1:18:13.160 to a group of bullies, bullies being like a group 1:18:13.240 --> 1:18:20.200 of pimps, prostitutes, pimps or bullies. Martha Tabram is a 1:18:20.200 --> 1:18:25.160 bit different. I mean, she's thirty seven year old woman, 1:18:25.640 --> 1:18:30.120 possibly a prostitute um but like many of the victims, 1:18:30.120 --> 1:18:32.360 you know, she may not have been a prostitute. She 1:18:32.680 --> 1:18:36.360 may she may have temporarily been a prostitute. She had 1:18:36.400 --> 1:18:42.600 a family background, but she was an alcoholic and she 1:18:42.640 --> 1:18:45.760 had a reputation for being seen out with men that 1:18:45.840 --> 1:18:49.400 she wasn't going out with, which might have tainted her reputation. 1:18:50.400 --> 1:18:53.719 And she was found dead on the landing of George 1:18:53.760 --> 1:18:57.719 Yard Buildings on the seventh of August. She'd been stabbed 1:18:57.880 --> 1:19:02.639 thirty nine times. Most of the wounds have targeted her abdomen, 1:19:02.920 --> 1:19:05.880 so she hadn't had her throat slashed, and she hadn't 1:19:05.880 --> 1:19:09.879 had organs removed, which would be like the later killings 1:19:09.960 --> 1:19:12.360 or some of the later killings. But I think there's 1:19:12.520 --> 1:19:16.479 enough in in Martha's murder which is suggestive of somebody 1:19:17.240 --> 1:19:22.120 early on in the process developing the the modes operandi, 1:19:22.200 --> 1:19:26.640 which was which we would see in later killings. I 1:19:26.680 --> 1:19:30.040 think at the time it was considered to be a 1:19:30.120 --> 1:19:32.040 very brutal murder, and there was a suggestion it might 1:19:32.080 --> 1:19:35.080 have been carried up by soldiers off duty soldiers, a 1:19:35.160 --> 1:19:38.400 though there was never any proof of that. Um it 1:19:38.520 --> 1:19:42.200 made a link to prostitution because again she one of 1:19:42.240 --> 1:19:44.320 the women that came forward in the aftermath of her 1:19:44.400 --> 1:19:47.760 murder was a woman called Mary Anne Connolly or pearly Pole, 1:19:47.840 --> 1:19:49.880 who was a local prostitute, who said that she and 1:19:49.920 --> 1:19:52.120 Martha had been out and picked up men on the 1:19:52.120 --> 1:19:56.519 White Chapel Road. UM So it made the identification between 1:19:56.520 --> 1:19:59.360 prostitution and a killer on the streets and that there's 1:19:59.439 --> 1:20:04.479 kind of those kind of links, But it wasn't until 1:20:04.880 --> 1:20:07.400 Polly Nichols was murdered at the end of all, because 1:20:07.720 --> 1:20:10.760 the people began to put those two things together in 1:20:10.800 --> 1:20:14.240 the newspapers. Yeah, and when you talk about the newspapers 1:20:14.240 --> 1:20:17.720 starting to put things together with the murder of poly Nichols, 1:20:17.760 --> 1:20:22.639 can you describe the way that the press covered murders 1:20:22.680 --> 1:20:26.920 like this and maybe, um, what relationship did that put 1:20:27.720 --> 1:20:33.680 journalism in with the police. Yeah, I think probably the 1:20:33.680 --> 1:20:37.040 reality is that the relationship between the press and the 1:20:37.080 --> 1:20:41.000 police in the throughout the Rippl case was was pretty 1:20:41.040 --> 1:20:46.080 mixed and and that depended on as well on what 1:20:46.200 --> 1:20:51.800 newspaper you were reading. So the police, Charles Warren in fact, 1:20:51.800 --> 1:20:54.800 had drawn both praise and criticism for the way that 1:20:54.960 --> 1:20:57.240 they dealt with things like Bloody Sunday, which is the 1:20:57.320 --> 1:21:01.160 suppression of writing in Faco Square in the November seven 1:21:01.200 --> 1:21:05.840 the previous year. Um So the Times, which is an 1:21:05.920 --> 1:21:10.320 establishment newspaper, kind of admired the strong armed tactics used 1:21:10.320 --> 1:21:14.760 against a mob of near due worlds and vagrants. But 1:21:14.880 --> 1:21:18.800 the more liberal press, so the Star radical press like 1:21:18.840 --> 1:21:22.519 the Star or William Staid to powermal gazette tended to 1:21:22.560 --> 1:21:26.320 condemn police brutality and heavy handedness, and that follows through 1:21:26.360 --> 1:21:30.160 into the Ripper murders as they as the Watchhopple murders 1:21:30.240 --> 1:21:34.200 unfolded and they become a national and then an international story. 1:21:34.920 --> 1:21:38.200 The inability of the police to catch the killer, to 1:21:38.280 --> 1:21:43.120 catch Jack, drew down greater criticism on them and and 1:21:43.320 --> 1:21:46.840 onto Warren. And then once you start to see the 1:21:46.880 --> 1:21:51.400 publication of taunting letters from supposedly coming from the murderer 1:21:51.479 --> 1:21:55.920 himself or officers advice from the public, the police investigation 1:21:56.200 --> 1:21:59.320 actually becomes part of the story and that becomes a 1:21:59.360 --> 1:22:02.600 negative or that it's very easy for the press to 1:22:02.760 --> 1:22:07.760 snipe at the police. And you have that business as well, 1:22:07.800 --> 1:22:12.519 if you wouldn't have today of the police investigation being 1:22:12.760 --> 1:22:15.360 tainted by the fact that journalists are all over it. 1:22:15.520 --> 1:22:17.760 So as soon as the murder occurs, there's not that 1:22:17.800 --> 1:22:20.360 business of a sort of clean police space for them 1:22:20.360 --> 1:22:25.439 to investigate. It's full of journalists with pens and paper 1:22:25.560 --> 1:22:29.880 and ask interviewing witnesses. And you have examples of the 1:22:29.920 --> 1:22:34.479 police interviewing somebody and then half an hour later they're 1:22:34.520 --> 1:22:38.360 being interviewed by by a journalist and that there were 1:22:38.400 --> 1:22:41.479 to have been printed in the newspapers. That's very difficult 1:22:41.520 --> 1:22:44.360 for the police to control the investigation in that way. 1:22:44.760 --> 1:22:50.880 Mhm hm. Why so you mentioned those letters. Why did 1:22:50.920 --> 1:22:55.240 the press publish the what's called the Dear Boss letter. 1:22:55.640 --> 1:22:59.280 How would you describe the significance of that letter and 1:22:59.360 --> 1:23:04.600 it's public pitian for the case and for an understanding 1:23:04.800 --> 1:23:08.000 of these murders. Well, I think actually the reality is 1:23:08.040 --> 1:23:10.400 that the letter was of course, the letter is not 1:23:10.400 --> 1:23:12.760 written by Jack the Ripper. It's given the name Jack 1:23:12.760 --> 1:23:14.879 the Ripper. It's not coming from the killer. It's probably 1:23:14.880 --> 1:23:18.120 coming from an enterprising journalist or a newspaper editor. And 1:23:18.600 --> 1:23:20.840 I think we probably know now that that is Tom 1:23:20.880 --> 1:23:25.000 Bullying and Charles Moore of the Central News Agency. They 1:23:25.160 --> 1:23:27.559 could see a good story when they saw one, and 1:23:27.560 --> 1:23:31.599 they and they exploited it by penning that letter and 1:23:31.680 --> 1:23:34.680 getting it onto the pages of the London Press. And 1:23:34.720 --> 1:23:38.120 I think probably with the compliance it will be reluctantly 1:23:38.120 --> 1:23:42.040 at first of the police. The police are desperate from lead, 1:23:42.479 --> 1:23:45.439 so they this might work. This might get people to 1:23:45.439 --> 1:23:48.599 recognize the handwriting, who knows, might trigger a memory. That's 1:23:48.600 --> 1:23:52.160 why they That's why they do it. But in publishing it, 1:23:52.439 --> 1:23:55.040 they kind of created the monster that we know as 1:23:55.120 --> 1:24:00.360 Jack the Ripper. Before the Deer Boss letter was published, UM, 1:24:00.400 --> 1:24:02.840 and it was published in the newspapers and on bill 1:24:03.000 --> 1:24:06.280 bill posters, at least two women have been brutally murdered 1:24:06.280 --> 1:24:11.000 by a person or persons unknown. After the release of 1:24:11.040 --> 1:24:15.280 the Better and the subsequent double event, that the killing 1:24:15.280 --> 1:24:19.160 of two women on one night, a mythical lone assassin 1:24:19.200 --> 1:24:21.639 has been established in the minds of the Victorian public. 1:24:22.840 --> 1:24:26.360 And significantly, I think we've we've never shifted from that 1:24:26.479 --> 1:24:28.280 view of the killer in the hundred and thirty or 1:24:28.320 --> 1:24:32.600 more years that have passed since the murders ended. And 1:24:32.680 --> 1:24:35.960 that's the power of the Victorian press. It created the 1:24:36.080 --> 1:24:43.679 idea of a lone assassin. What in the history of 1:24:43.680 --> 1:24:47.760 of the British press, what kinds of precedents were therefore 1:24:47.760 --> 1:24:54.600 discussing a case like this? UM. Was the sensational journalism 1:24:54.640 --> 1:24:57.880 part of a tradition or you mentioned that it's called 1:24:57.920 --> 1:25:02.960 sometimes the new journalism? Is it something really new? Yeah? 1:25:03.080 --> 1:25:06.439 So what was new about new journalism was its focused 1:25:06.479 --> 1:25:11.320 I think on an investigation on highlighting and interrogating social 1:25:11.360 --> 1:25:16.639 ills scandals in some depth. But This is actually prompted, 1:25:16.680 --> 1:25:19.480 of course, in part by the greater freedoms of publishing. 1:25:19.640 --> 1:25:23.880 So in previous part of the century there's been restrictions 1:25:23.880 --> 1:25:26.439 on the presidents, some degree of censorship which could form 1:25:26.479 --> 1:25:29.200 the way largely by the nineteenth century, and taxation. So 1:25:29.360 --> 1:25:32.800 newspapers are expensive. And if you couple this with the 1:25:32.840 --> 1:25:36.320 fact that what we see coming across from from the 1:25:36.439 --> 1:25:42.000 USA is the technological development in printing that makes us 1:25:42.080 --> 1:25:47.599 able to produce newspapers um more rapidly and cheaper. And 1:25:47.640 --> 1:25:50.559 then of course things like railways allow us to distribute 1:25:50.640 --> 1:25:54.760 distribute them more quickly, so news could travel further and 1:25:54.840 --> 1:25:59.479 travel faster. Many more people could read, or know somebody 1:25:59.520 --> 1:26:01.840 who could read, so they could read to them, sit 1:26:01.880 --> 1:26:04.360 around in the pub and read it. More people could 1:26:04.360 --> 1:26:07.120 afford to buy a newspaper because they're cheaper, and so 1:26:07.200 --> 1:26:10.719 the newspaper industry is growing. So it's a massive takeoff, 1:26:10.720 --> 1:26:16.640 particularly from the sixties and seventies, in newspaper readership and 1:26:16.720 --> 1:26:22.200 newspaper production. Um So the kind of modern newspaper industry, 1:26:22.240 --> 1:26:26.240 certain newspaper industry we're familiar with by the middle of 1:26:26.240 --> 1:26:32.520 the twentieth century is kind of established in the late century, 1:26:33.000 --> 1:26:37.000 and as a result, newspaper editors are looking for more 1:26:37.040 --> 1:26:40.240 and more sensational copy, especially stories that are going to 1:26:40.360 --> 1:26:43.600 plug readers in and keep them coming back for next installments. 1:26:43.600 --> 1:26:46.640 If you're a daily newspaper, what are you going to 1:26:47.280 --> 1:26:49.280 how are you going to attract your reader to come 1:26:49.320 --> 1:26:54.439 back Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. Um. If you're a 1:26:54.479 --> 1:26:57.240 weekend newspaper and you've got that's more time to think 1:26:57.280 --> 1:26:59.919 about the story you're putting out. What kind of sensation 1:27:00.040 --> 1:27:03.160 your story do you want to represent to your readers 1:27:03.200 --> 1:27:06.320 to get them to buy your newspaper on Sunday rather 1:27:06.360 --> 1:27:10.080 than your rivals. And you've got paper boys crying the 1:27:10.120 --> 1:27:14.320 news in the streets and literally shouting the headlines and 1:27:14.479 --> 1:27:17.760 persuading people to part with their pennies and shillings. So 1:27:17.880 --> 1:27:22.560 that's really important to have an installment story, and the 1:27:22.640 --> 1:27:27.680 Ripper case is perfect for that in terms of sensational 1:27:27.800 --> 1:27:33.719 crime news, though there's nothing particularly new about in news terms. 1:27:34.200 --> 1:27:37.720 Prime news had filled columns in the papers going right 1:27:37.720 --> 1:27:39.639 back to the eighteenth century, right back to the early 1:27:39.720 --> 1:27:43.200 days of the newspapers, and which which emerged really after 1:27:43.280 --> 1:27:47.080 the English Civil Wars of the seventeenth century, and in 1:27:47.080 --> 1:27:52.639 addition to newspapers, there's a tremendous English print culture, British 1:27:52.720 --> 1:27:57.240 print culture, which had provided a regular diet of murder 1:27:57.360 --> 1:28:00.000 news and moral panics for readers all the way through 1:28:00.000 --> 1:28:03.200 through that period. So every execution there would be people 1:28:03.280 --> 1:28:07.040 selling pamphlets about the person being executed, so you could 1:28:07.080 --> 1:28:09.919 kind of read about the person you're seeing slowly strangled 1:28:09.920 --> 1:28:14.360 to death. And the Victorians, as I think writers like 1:28:14.479 --> 1:28:19.840 Judith Flanders and Rosalind Crone have both eloquently described, the 1:28:19.960 --> 1:28:23.000 Victorians are fascinated by murder, and they followed all the 1:28:23.040 --> 1:28:26.639 gruesome details of homicides, from the discovery of dead bodies 1:28:26.960 --> 1:28:29.839 through to the capture of the killers, to their trial 1:28:30.439 --> 1:28:35.000 and then and then at least until eight their public execution. 1:28:35.560 --> 1:28:38.439 And actually, I think Flanders has argued that once you 1:28:39.640 --> 1:28:44.840 remove hanging from the public gaze, whence it's no longer 1:28:44.880 --> 1:28:48.519 taking place on in front of a prisoner, on the 1:28:48.560 --> 1:28:52.400 roofs of a prison, and you put it behind brick walls. 1:28:53.040 --> 1:28:58.400 Actually that makes people's fascination with murder grow even more. 1:28:59.000 --> 1:29:01.519 And of course, by the sixties we were only hanging 1:29:01.560 --> 1:29:03.559 people for murder. We weren't hanging people as we did 1:29:03.560 --> 1:29:08.519 in the eighteenth century for all forms of crime MHM. 1:29:08.680 --> 1:29:14.280 One case from the eighteenth century that looks like an 1:29:14.320 --> 1:29:18.879 interesting point of comparison or a precedent is the London 1:29:18.960 --> 1:29:23.320 monster case. Can you describe that in brief terms and 1:29:23.360 --> 1:29:28.960 maybe how it was published about in the press? Yes, briefly. 1:29:29.040 --> 1:29:31.960 In there were a series of attacks in London on 1:29:32.080 --> 1:29:35.040 women which kind of provoked a sort of moral panic. 1:29:36.040 --> 1:29:38.160 They kind of happened like this, So a strange man 1:29:38.200 --> 1:29:42.120 would approach respectable women, offered to let them smell his 1:29:42.120 --> 1:29:46.840 his bunch of artificial flowers, his nosegay, and then stabbed them, 1:29:47.040 --> 1:29:50.120 usually whilst making suggestive comments. And he generally stabbed them 1:29:50.120 --> 1:29:54.120 in in, in the behind, in the buttons, and sometimes 1:29:54.160 --> 1:29:56.639 they wouldn't even realize they've been stabbed until they got home. 1:29:56.680 --> 1:29:59.800 And because they wore so many players of clothing. Yeah, 1:30:00.000 --> 1:30:03.400 And the story occupied the columns of newspapers, which created 1:30:03.439 --> 1:30:08.800 a sensation. And the man named John Julius Augustine, he 1:30:08.920 --> 1:30:13.080 was a wealthy insurance broker, off with a fifty pound reward, 1:30:13.160 --> 1:30:17.680 which fifty pounds is a considerable sum of money. And 1:30:17.760 --> 1:30:20.960 eventually someone was caught and put on trial in July 1:30:21.160 --> 1:30:23.840 seventeen ninety a man named Rennick Williams. He was an 1:30:23.880 --> 1:30:29.320 artificial flower sell um. He had two trials because the 1:30:29.320 --> 1:30:30.760 first trial is a bit of a fast but it 1:30:30.800 --> 1:30:33.640 was he was convicted and sent to prison. And I 1:30:33.640 --> 1:30:36.599 think we can see some links between the man because 1:30:36.600 --> 1:30:40.560 he was dubbed the London Monster or the monster two 1:30:41.160 --> 1:30:46.479 event in and and of course to the context of 1:30:46.520 --> 1:30:49.320 the time. I think it's important to always to see 1:30:49.360 --> 1:30:52.200 history in context. And it's seventeen eighty nine. We know 1:30:52.240 --> 1:30:54.720 about seventeen eighty nine is there was a revolution going 1:30:54.720 --> 1:30:59.160 on across the channel in France. But the revolution in France, 1:30:59.200 --> 1:31:02.360 following on from the the revolution in America in the 1:31:02.360 --> 1:31:06.240 seventeen seventies, had raised all these ideas about rights and freedoms, 1:31:06.680 --> 1:31:08.400 and one of the rights and freedoms that people talk 1:31:08.439 --> 1:31:13.320 about was women's rights and freedoms. And I think when 1:31:13.320 --> 1:31:16.320 we look at the London Monster, while it didn't directly 1:31:16.360 --> 1:31:21.040 influence press reporting of the White Chapels, there's a connection 1:31:21.040 --> 1:31:23.400 in between the way in which the demonizing of the 1:31:23.479 --> 1:31:27.960 represvctives as loose women operating outside of male protection, and 1:31:28.040 --> 1:31:30.280 the late eighteenth century advice for women to stay off 1:31:30.320 --> 1:31:32.880 the streets for fear of the London Monster. There's a 1:31:32.920 --> 1:31:37.040 connection there in this idea that women should stay off 1:31:37.040 --> 1:31:39.840 the streets. So the White Chapel murder and the London 1:31:39.880 --> 1:31:44.240 Monster of both examples along with spring Hill Jack in 1:31:44.280 --> 1:31:49.559 the nineteenth century, of characters who target women, and male 1:31:49.640 --> 1:31:53.280 characters and target women and are kind of saying get 1:31:53.360 --> 1:31:57.240 back inside the house. Stopped straying into what is male 1:31:57.479 --> 1:32:04.599 masculine territory. So regarding uh, the letters that came that 1:32:04.640 --> 1:32:10.599 followed after, Um, the Dear Boss letter that, as you say, 1:32:10.760 --> 1:32:14.400 gives the kind of mythological character of Jack the Ripper, 1:32:14.479 --> 1:32:21.960 his his name and you know, a kind of saucy identity. Um, 1:32:22.000 --> 1:32:24.840 you've written that it's highly likely that all of the 1:32:24.960 --> 1:32:28.360 letters are fakes or hoaxes and do not come from 1:32:28.400 --> 1:32:31.880 the killer at all. You mentioned the only one that 1:32:31.880 --> 1:32:34.240 that maybe is different from that is the what's called 1:32:34.240 --> 1:32:38.559 the Fromhell letter. Um. You explore those ideas at length 1:32:39.080 --> 1:32:42.880 in the Torso Murders book. Can you say a bit 1:32:42.920 --> 1:32:48.200 more about that point about the letters likely all being hoaxes. 1:32:48.400 --> 1:32:52.160 How difficult was it for police to trust any kind 1:32:52.160 --> 1:32:58.000 of tips or notes or witness statements that they got. Yeah, 1:32:58.080 --> 1:33:00.439 I mean, I think most researchers today would agree that 1:33:00.479 --> 1:33:03.840 the vast majority of the letters, certainly the letters that 1:33:03.840 --> 1:33:07.840 are purport to be from the killer are either fakes 1:33:07.960 --> 1:33:11.559 or hoaxes. I mean, lots of people writing letters, were 1:33:11.600 --> 1:33:13.920 writing letters which were offering advice, and we probably have 1:33:13.960 --> 1:33:18.120 to deal with them slightly differently. Um, but it's not 1:33:18.560 --> 1:33:21.519 it's not beyond the bounds of credibility that the killer 1:33:21.560 --> 1:33:23.880 would try and communicate with the police of the public. 1:33:23.920 --> 1:33:27.160 I mean in the States, and you have the Zodiac killer, 1:33:27.200 --> 1:33:31.559 who certainly did. It's just that these particular letters generally 1:33:31.600 --> 1:33:35.479 seem incredulous. And I think the exception being made from 1:33:35.560 --> 1:33:40.879 hell letters because it wasn't signed chat the Ripper. Um. 1:33:41.040 --> 1:33:45.439 Also that handwright some handwriting experts, and I would qualify 1:33:45.479 --> 1:33:47.960 that because they don't all agree. Do hold out the 1:33:48.000 --> 1:33:51.920 possibility that this was the work of some poorly educated 1:33:52.080 --> 1:33:55.760 individual who was unused to writing, perhaps someone learning their 1:33:55.840 --> 1:33:58.040 letters as an It's one of the points that we 1:33:58.560 --> 1:34:01.920 make in attempts to also case a book about the 1:34:01.960 --> 1:34:07.400 tempts also cases that we imagine that our guy was 1:34:07.439 --> 1:34:13.400 potentially kind of trying to trying to improve himself. So, 1:34:13.920 --> 1:34:17.559 but regardless of whether the letters are real or fake, 1:34:17.880 --> 1:34:24.960 hoaxes or whatever. Um, it follows that in such a difficult, 1:34:25.000 --> 1:34:28.800 fevered situation as the police found themselves, they'd have to 1:34:28.880 --> 1:34:31.760 check every single lead they got, regardless of whether it 1:34:31.800 --> 1:34:35.519 was credible or not. Um. So hours and hours and 1:34:35.560 --> 1:34:38.639 hours of police time would have be wasted following up 1:34:38.760 --> 1:34:42.240 those kind of false leads sent in by attention seekers. 1:34:42.800 --> 1:34:45.560 If that's how we want to see them. Um, just 1:34:45.720 --> 1:34:49.200 because the stuff is looks obviously fake of him, what 1:34:49.360 --> 1:34:51.360 if it had been true? And I think that's probably 1:34:51.360 --> 1:34:53.880 explains also why they published the deer Bost letter, because 1:34:53.880 --> 1:35:00.360 it's what if when it when it came to investigating crimes, um, 1:35:00.400 --> 1:35:05.160 to what extent did police depend on good informants and 1:35:05.240 --> 1:35:10.400 good tips in order to solve a tricky case? Were 1:35:10.400 --> 1:35:13.439 there any significant or high profile crimes that were solved 1:35:14.080 --> 1:35:18.400 with the assistance of like an anonymous letter leading up 1:35:18.439 --> 1:35:22.120 to this point, I, yeah, it's one of your curveballs. 1:35:22.160 --> 1:35:24.320 I don't really know of any. I mean, what I 1:35:24.360 --> 1:35:28.800 can say is that the police use informants, and you know, 1:35:28.960 --> 1:35:32.799 the use of informants by detectives by polices is often reported. 1:35:32.840 --> 1:35:34.640 So there are very many cases that have become for 1:35:34.800 --> 1:35:39.120 the police, magistrates, or before the old baby in the 1:35:39.200 --> 1:35:42.320 nineteenth century where you will hear a policeman saying acting 1:35:42.360 --> 1:35:45.759 on information, acting on information, and some of that information 1:35:45.800 --> 1:35:48.840 will be information by what we would call a steak out, 1:35:48.920 --> 1:35:52.920 you know, watching a watching a building, watching watching particular 1:35:53.280 --> 1:36:00.760 suspected criminals. But often it's information from the criminal um fraternity, 1:36:01.880 --> 1:36:07.680 from neighbors overhearing conversations. In much the same way that 1:36:07.720 --> 1:36:11.120 the police have probably always and will always gain information. 1:36:11.160 --> 1:36:13.639 The public will tell them some, they'll get some from 1:36:13.640 --> 1:36:20.280 criminals who want two um get a lighter sentence, or 1:36:20.360 --> 1:36:23.960 they'll they'll pay money to people on the margins of 1:36:24.040 --> 1:36:26.880 criminality in order to get information. All of that kind 1:36:26.880 --> 1:36:28.599 of stuff is really important. I don't think the police 1:36:28.600 --> 1:36:31.479 could operate without and I don't think the police in 1:36:31.520 --> 1:36:36.200 the ninete century could operate without informants, without information. Um. 1:36:36.240 --> 1:36:38.080 We have to bear in mind because of the nineteent 1:36:38.080 --> 1:36:41.800 century police don't have many of the tools that the 1:36:41.880 --> 1:36:45.280 modern police have, you know, like DNA testing, fingerprint testing, 1:36:46.280 --> 1:36:49.240 close circuit television, and they have none of that stuff. 1:36:50.479 --> 1:36:57.280 M mhm. Thinking um, back to the people who were 1:36:58.080 --> 1:37:01.960 the women who were targeted. You challenge the idea that 1:37:02.040 --> 1:37:04.120 all of the women killed in the White Chapel murders 1:37:04.160 --> 1:37:07.479 were prostitutes, and you mentioned this earlier in this conversation too. 1:37:08.160 --> 1:37:11.040 Um you wrote, one of the first things that anyone 1:37:11.160 --> 1:37:13.320 reads about the Ripper murders is that all of the 1:37:13.400 --> 1:37:16.760 victims were prostitutes. However, it is probably more accurate to 1:37:16.760 --> 1:37:18.479 say that all of the women killed by the White 1:37:18.520 --> 1:37:21.200 Chapel murderer had been selling themselves for sex in the 1:37:21.240 --> 1:37:25.680 streets shortly before they met their death. So can you 1:37:25.840 --> 1:37:29.880 describe the significance of the distinction that you're making there, 1:37:30.479 --> 1:37:33.280 because I do think it's important, But I'd like to 1:37:33.280 --> 1:37:35.920 hear hear you talk a little bit more about how 1:37:36.120 --> 1:37:38.479 from your understanding of what was going on in the 1:37:38.520 --> 1:37:40.080 East End of One at the time, what life was 1:37:40.160 --> 1:37:45.960 like there, how important this distinction is. Mhmm. Yeah, well, 1:37:45.960 --> 1:37:48.920 I mean it's become it's now become wholly contested whether 1:37:48.960 --> 1:37:54.680 the victims um of Jack the Ripper, specifically the canonical 1:37:54.760 --> 1:37:58.400 fire victims were prostitutes. I think I'd make a distinction 1:37:58.439 --> 1:38:01.840 on the grounds ocasionally selling sex in order to get 1:38:01.920 --> 1:38:03.840 enough money to eat, drink, or pay for the roof 1:38:03.920 --> 1:38:06.120 of your head is not the same thing as being 1:38:06.160 --> 1:38:09.880 a full time sex worker. It may well be that 1:38:09.920 --> 1:38:14.479 all of Jack's victims were impoverished prostitutes, as they've been 1:38:14.479 --> 1:38:17.360 described for over a century, But I think we should 1:38:17.360 --> 1:38:20.920 hold out the possibility that at the time that they 1:38:21.000 --> 1:38:26.120 met their deaths, they were so down and out the 1:38:26.160 --> 1:38:31.679 prostitution was their only option. It's, of course very easy 1:38:31.760 --> 1:38:33.840 for the police. It was very of course, very easy 1:38:33.920 --> 1:38:36.640 for the police and oppressed to dismiss these women as 1:38:36.720 --> 1:38:40.240 unfortunate who brought their own deaths upon themselves. They were 1:38:40.280 --> 1:38:44.559 all thought to be prostitutes. But whether that's because they 1:38:44.560 --> 1:38:47.840 were single women, or they were women who were out 1:38:47.920 --> 1:38:49.920 drinking and they're women out on their own, I mean, 1:38:50.640 --> 1:38:54.760 those all fit with ideas of what prostitutes were. So 1:38:54.920 --> 1:38:58.280 kind of that boundary between being what we might describe 1:38:58.280 --> 1:39:03.439 as a woman of loose morals and a prostitute. A 1:39:03.520 --> 1:39:07.200 prostitute somebody who sells sex for money. Women to lose 1:39:07.240 --> 1:39:11.599 morals doesn't necessarily sell sex at all, and she might 1:39:11.680 --> 1:39:16.160 have sex with people who she's not married to m 1:39:16.320 --> 1:39:19.200 and have multiple partners and that might even in our 1:39:19.240 --> 1:39:23.519 own society be frowned upon, rightly or wrongly, but in 1:39:23.520 --> 1:39:26.160 the nineteenth century most certainly would have been So I 1:39:26.160 --> 1:39:32.680 think for me, all these women were killed because the 1:39:32.680 --> 1:39:35.880 the killer for they were prostitutes. There is also a 1:39:35.920 --> 1:39:38.360 distinction there. I think the killer believed that they were 1:39:38.400 --> 1:39:42.519 prostitutes and that was his motivation for killing them. But 1:39:42.720 --> 1:39:47.559 the same token prostitutes would present themselves in parts of 1:39:47.600 --> 1:39:50.680 London where it was they made themselves vulnerable to a 1:39:50.800 --> 1:39:56.000 killer who targeted strangers in the way that we think. Yeah. Yeah, 1:39:56.080 --> 1:40:00.400 And and in some of your writing you followed Walker 1:40:00.439 --> 1:40:05.320 with in describing Eastern sex workers as members of the 1:40:05.320 --> 1:40:10.840 working class. Can you describe how how that point helps 1:40:10.920 --> 1:40:16.320 us to understand their lives, how they would have thought 1:40:16.360 --> 1:40:20.360 about themselves, their control over their own trade. How is 1:40:20.400 --> 1:40:22.439 it helpful to think of sex workers as members of 1:40:22.439 --> 1:40:26.360 the working class. Yeah, absolutely, I think it's really important. 1:40:26.400 --> 1:40:29.360 I mean, um, these are poor women. None of them 1:40:29.400 --> 1:40:31.519 came from wealth, and we know a bit more about 1:40:32.479 --> 1:40:34.840 thanks to the work of various members of the White 1:40:34.880 --> 1:40:39.800 Chappele Society and authors like Neil Sheldon. We know that 1:40:40.000 --> 1:40:43.719 many of these represctives had kind of normal, respectable lives 1:40:43.800 --> 1:40:46.080 before they arrived in the East Den. But but almost 1:40:46.120 --> 1:40:49.479 invariably their lives are characterized by kind of decline into 1:40:49.479 --> 1:40:56.559 poverty exacerbated by by alcoholism, um, personal tragedies, broken marriages, 1:40:57.080 --> 1:41:00.519 you know, bereavements, financial insecurities. This is of what led 1:41:00.560 --> 1:41:04.599 them to the East End. But they're all working class women. 1:41:04.600 --> 1:41:08.439 None of them came from a higher ranking society. And 1:41:09.800 --> 1:41:13.240 I think Walker which is interesting in saying that when 1:41:13.240 --> 1:41:16.799 we look at Victorian prostitutes, who who are invariably described 1:41:16.840 --> 1:41:21.040 as fallen and unfortunate by people at the time, these 1:41:21.120 --> 1:41:23.479 these are women who have fallen from grace, who are 1:41:23.520 --> 1:41:26.679 unfortunately in the situation. They find themselves a Walker which 1:41:26.720 --> 1:41:29.040 wants to turn that around. And I think this is 1:41:29.080 --> 1:41:32.920 interesting to see these women as being empowered and independent 1:41:33.920 --> 1:41:36.120 being you know, these are women who have refused to 1:41:36.360 --> 1:41:40.080 follow the kind of path in life that's been mapped 1:41:40.080 --> 1:41:44.040 out for them by men generally, and instead of gone 1:41:44.040 --> 1:41:51.240 for the relative quick prosperity and freedom that that that 1:41:51.400 --> 1:41:53.920 prostitution might bring them, at least in the short term. 1:41:55.120 --> 1:41:58.080 So I mean we again, context is everything. We have 1:41:58.120 --> 1:42:03.040 to remember that late nineteenth century British society was heavily patriarchal, 1:42:03.200 --> 1:42:06.600 with women's rights, feminism. These are things that are emerging, 1:42:07.280 --> 1:42:12.200 but but it's very very slow. For the vast majority 1:42:12.240 --> 1:42:15.840 of working class women, life offered not very much. You 1:42:15.880 --> 1:42:18.160 had a life of judging, drudgery. You had a life 1:42:18.160 --> 1:42:23.120 which is it's a life characterized by almost constant pregnancy 1:42:23.240 --> 1:42:27.000 or childcare, and a marriage to a man who, frankly 1:42:27.080 --> 1:42:29.320 was probably considered decent if he didn't beat you up. 1:42:30.760 --> 1:42:33.880 So perhaps it's not unreasonable for some young women to 1:42:33.960 --> 1:42:37.559 choose to prostitute themselves for a relatively brief period of 1:42:37.560 --> 1:42:42.040 time if it brought them much more money than they 1:42:42.040 --> 1:42:48.920 would earn by sewing or charing or something else. Um Like, 1:42:48.920 --> 1:42:51.200 like young women of all ages, they want to be 1:42:51.240 --> 1:42:54.559 able to spend money on nice things, on the hats 1:42:54.560 --> 1:42:59.320 and clothes and jewelry. And I think we should recognize 1:42:59.680 --> 1:43:03.520 that that that this sort of female independence was frequently 1:43:03.560 --> 1:43:06.760 being repressed by by male and female actors in society 1:43:06.920 --> 1:43:10.600 at all classes. Victorian society is obsessed with notions of 1:43:10.600 --> 1:43:14.920 respectability and the proper social order of things. So prostitutes 1:43:14.960 --> 1:43:18.800 are independent women who clearly didn't know their proper place, 1:43:19.479 --> 1:43:22.840 and who flaunted their sexuality, and for some that set 1:43:22.880 --> 1:43:26.120 them apart as social priors, and in many ways, of course, 1:43:26.560 --> 1:43:31.599 justified the actions of a serial killer in murdering them. Um. 1:43:31.720 --> 1:43:36.240 It's something that um Donald Romblo for his sites is 1:43:36.520 --> 1:43:39.919 it's for some victorians that the Ripple was just engaged 1:43:39.920 --> 1:43:45.720 in street cleaning. Um. You mentioned Neil Sheldon, and you 1:43:45.720 --> 1:43:49.920 know in reading I mentioned already Paul Begs Forgotten Victims book. 1:43:50.320 --> 1:43:52.840 But in those studies that have looked at the lives 1:43:52.880 --> 1:43:56.080 of these women, you know, we find as you mentioned, 1:43:56.080 --> 1:43:59.720 that any Chapman was married to a coachman for a 1:43:59.760 --> 1:44:03.200 time and lived with him in Berkshire where she where 1:44:03.200 --> 1:44:06.439 he attended to sear test marry um before she ended 1:44:06.479 --> 1:44:10.360 up in Whitechapel, And that Liz Stride she opened a 1:44:10.400 --> 1:44:13.639 coffee hall with one of her husbands. Um. What sort 1:44:13.760 --> 1:44:17.479 of of class positions were these? Were these still working 1:44:17.479 --> 1:44:24.320 class people? Um kind of what from what heights did 1:44:25.280 --> 1:44:28.880 any Chapman and list Ride in particular fall if we're 1:44:28.880 --> 1:44:32.880 talking in that kind of parlance of the time. But 1:44:32.960 --> 1:44:36.040 as I understand it, Liz Stride, you know, should come 1:44:36.040 --> 1:44:41.400 over from Sweden, so she's an immigrant and a very 1:44:41.520 --> 1:44:43.760 interesting life, and it's reasiful to know about her life 1:44:43.760 --> 1:44:46.519 because I think much of it was invented by her 1:44:46.600 --> 1:44:50.120 and tellings of it. And that's one of the problems 1:44:50.160 --> 1:44:52.879 that we have. We know very little about the repect 1:44:52.920 --> 1:44:56.559 and dreading. We're very very little about Mary Kelly, for example, 1:44:56.640 --> 1:44:59.879 so that allows people to him fill with invention stories 1:45:00.000 --> 1:45:05.120 out um. But I think in terms of the fall yeah, 1:45:06.360 --> 1:45:08.680 I think there's a danger here to say that these 1:45:08.720 --> 1:45:14.000 women have these women are unusual in um in in 1:45:14.160 --> 1:45:20.320 falling through the social thrawning down the social staircase. But 1:45:20.840 --> 1:45:23.720 I suspect that's true of very many women in in 1:45:24.200 --> 1:45:32.559 Victorian society. I think you would probably characterize this drivers 1:45:32.680 --> 1:45:34.760 coming from the working class with a bit of entrepreneurial 1:45:34.880 --> 1:45:37.320 spirit in setting up a coffee shop. And we're not 1:45:37.400 --> 1:45:39.120 talking about somebody who's going to have a string of 1:45:39.720 --> 1:45:43.600 Starbucks up and down the country. Is not It's not 1:45:43.720 --> 1:45:46.000 that this is not a rich entrepreneur. This is somebody 1:45:46.080 --> 1:45:52.920 getting by running a coffee shop. And um, so the 1:45:53.040 --> 1:45:57.160 coachman is still a servant. So any chapman is married 1:45:57.200 --> 1:45:59.519 to a coachman, but a coachman is a respectable servant, 1:45:59.560 --> 1:46:03.200 but it's still a domestic servant, so you're still tied 1:46:03.240 --> 1:46:06.920 to a family house and depends upon um, your master, 1:46:07.640 --> 1:46:11.320 So it's a it's a subservient position in society. Is 1:46:11.320 --> 1:46:13.880 a member of the working class. But there are degrees 1:46:14.360 --> 1:46:17.720 of working class life. And I think, what's happening to 1:46:17.840 --> 1:46:19.760 these women and we see it and it's very it's 1:46:19.880 --> 1:46:23.200 very well illustrated in in Reuben Holtz book. Is is 1:46:23.280 --> 1:46:28.439 the way that a series of events, tragic events, undermined them. 1:46:29.320 --> 1:46:32.040 And when you add things like drinking to that or something, 1:46:32.320 --> 1:46:35.320 it's a drink which is the catalyst for this. That's 1:46:35.360 --> 1:46:39.680 when they start to slip. And a woman without a 1:46:39.800 --> 1:46:45.280 husband is is really in a very very dangerous situation, 1:46:45.680 --> 1:46:48.479 which is why so many women in working class women 1:46:48.560 --> 1:46:52.320 in Victorian London would have quickly found another partner adopted 1:46:52.400 --> 1:46:55.040 his name. So you know, with several of the Ripper victims, 1:46:55.800 --> 1:46:58.559 their names are kind of movable. It's whoever they are 1:46:58.640 --> 1:47:01.880 with it becomes their common law husband. And marriage is 1:47:01.920 --> 1:47:05.400 not necessarily something you need to have. UM in that 1:47:05.479 --> 1:47:09.360 respect of quite modern, I suppose, but there is a 1:47:09.439 --> 1:47:13.640 fall from grace. But we know about these five or 1:47:13.720 --> 1:47:17.680 six women because they were murdered by someone who's come 1:47:17.720 --> 1:47:19.839 down to history as Jack the Ripper. And it's interesting 1:47:19.920 --> 1:47:23.400 because one of the criticisms of ripper ology has been 1:47:23.439 --> 1:47:26.719 that it focuses on the ripper and not on the victims. 1:47:27.240 --> 1:47:29.439 But of course we would only know that. We only 1:47:29.520 --> 1:47:31.719 know the victims because they were killed by the Ripper. 1:47:32.560 --> 1:47:36.800 You know, millions of working class women died. Plenty of 1:47:36.880 --> 1:47:41.240 them were murdered or or beaten and then died of 1:47:41.320 --> 1:47:45.000 injuries or died of relative starvation or illness in the 1:47:45.080 --> 1:47:47.479 nine century, or died in childbooth. We don't know any 1:47:47.520 --> 1:47:53.920 of their names. They weren't killed by a syrial. I'm 1:47:53.960 --> 1:47:56.680 not I'm not making a case for a statue to 1:47:56.720 --> 1:47:59.439 the Ripper. It's just it is another way to look 1:47:59.479 --> 1:48:04.400 at him. Well. And I yeah, when you were talking 1:48:04.439 --> 1:48:09.719 about Liz Stride coffee shop, when I read that detail 1:48:09.840 --> 1:48:13.160 of her life, that was actually what I just felt, 1:48:13.280 --> 1:48:17.320 such a close connection to someone like that. No, I haven't, 1:48:17.320 --> 1:48:18.720 I haven't, but I do have friends. I do have 1:48:18.800 --> 1:48:21.840 friends who you know, opened a small shop. So when 1:48:21.880 --> 1:48:23.840 I was thinking about yeah, of course, but that's that's 1:48:23.880 --> 1:48:25.439 the thing, isn't it. It's like walking the streets to 1:48:25.479 --> 1:48:27.639 Whitechapel and it's like being in a place where someone 1:48:27.840 --> 1:48:31.160 was Those are the things that connected to it. You know. 1:48:31.680 --> 1:48:34.880 The class is is you know famously in another country, 1:48:34.920 --> 1:48:37.679 but actually it's a most of things that we recognize 1:48:37.720 --> 1:48:44.000 in it. M hm. So you mentioned earlier, UM that 1:48:44.160 --> 1:48:51.360 in November the murder of the murder investigation is under way, UM, 1:48:53.080 --> 1:48:56.559 and the police are not catching the killer. There's been 1:48:56.760 --> 1:49:01.599 a huge mobilization of the forces in October that has 1:49:01.680 --> 1:49:08.639 been unsuccessful in charging anyone with these crimes. And as 1:49:08.680 --> 1:49:11.240 you mentioned, that's often pointed to as the reason for 1:49:11.360 --> 1:49:15.120 Charles Warren's resignation. UM. But he publishes his article the 1:49:15.200 --> 1:49:19.640 Police of the Metropolis in Murray's magazine. UM. And you 1:49:19.720 --> 1:49:21.920 talked a little bit about the consequences of that already 1:49:22.320 --> 1:49:24.640 with with Matthews in the Home Office. But what was 1:49:24.760 --> 1:49:28.200 the substance of the article, UM? You know, what's this 1:49:29.000 --> 1:49:31.719 this military man who is now in charge of the police. 1:49:32.400 --> 1:49:36.160 What's he arguing about the way that policing should be done. 1:49:36.320 --> 1:49:39.559 What's he saying? Well, I think what what is mostly 1:49:39.680 --> 1:49:43.200 saying in that article is that he hasn't been able 1:49:43.320 --> 1:49:45.000 to run the police in the way that he wants 1:49:45.040 --> 1:49:48.440 to run it. He's being he's having interference, is frustrated 1:49:48.600 --> 1:49:51.920 by interference from from c I D you know, from 1:49:51.960 --> 1:49:56.920 the detectives. Um, he's suffering a tremendous amount of criticism, 1:49:57.000 --> 1:49:59.200 and it suggested he's trying to resign several times and 1:49:59.280 --> 1:50:02.519 not been allowed to resign. UM. So I guess what 1:50:02.600 --> 1:50:04.880 he's really saying in that is the police are a 1:50:04.920 --> 1:50:09.759 fine body of men. My police are working extremely hard, 1:50:10.479 --> 1:50:16.280 and UM, while I'm working with one hand type behind 1:50:16.320 --> 1:50:18.960 my back, I'm not able to properly run this case 1:50:19.000 --> 1:50:21.160 as I want I want to. And I think that's 1:50:21.280 --> 1:50:23.640 that's a kind of inevitability you get in that In 1:50:23.760 --> 1:50:31.240 that that conflict which which exists in British policing, I 1:50:31.320 --> 1:50:34.400 think even to some extent people would probably arguing it 1:50:34.520 --> 1:50:37.800 still exists. It certainly existed in British society right through 1:50:37.880 --> 1:50:42.519 until the relatively recent decades of that tension between the 1:50:42.680 --> 1:50:48.680 uniform and playing clothes, uniform and detection. The detectives are 1:50:48.760 --> 1:50:51.200 kind of seen as a they see themselves as an 1:50:51.280 --> 1:50:55.000 elite part of the police, and they're kind of seen 1:50:55.040 --> 1:50:57.120 as people who don't have to follow the rules by 1:50:57.560 --> 1:51:00.879 by others and therefore resented to get better pay conditions 1:51:00.920 --> 1:51:04.120 and all that kind of stuff. It may be the 1:51:04.240 --> 1:51:11.559 same in the US, but it's certainly um frustrates Sir 1:51:11.680 --> 1:51:15.400 Charles Warren. And I'd rather suspect you couldn't get out 1:51:15.439 --> 1:51:18.400 of the police quick enough so that the article for 1:51:18.520 --> 1:51:21.280 Laurie's magazine was his chance to have a goal for 1:51:21.360 --> 1:51:27.439 those who criticize and called for his resignation. I mean, 1:51:27.640 --> 1:51:29.559 and you just look at the reaction of the press 1:51:29.640 --> 1:51:33.800 to it. I mean, you know, the start as a 1:51:33.880 --> 1:51:36.759 real go in from it. You know, it's it says 1:51:37.320 --> 1:51:41.120 I wrote this down. A more extraordinary document never found 1:51:41.200 --> 1:51:44.479 its way into print. It would be charitable to suppose 1:51:44.560 --> 1:51:47.280 that when he penned this remarkable addition to the literature 1:51:47.320 --> 1:51:50.200 of Connie Hatch, Sir Charles Warren was laboring under some 1:51:50.600 --> 1:51:56.160 unusual excitement for contents. Coney Hatch is London's largest lunatic asylum. 1:51:56.960 --> 1:51:59.760 It was it's kind of like saying that he'd gone 1:52:00.000 --> 1:52:03.960 that basically, No, and I didn't. I didn't mention this 1:52:04.040 --> 1:52:05.720 in any of the outlines. But I've been thinking a 1:52:05.800 --> 1:52:10.320 lot about Charles Warren bringing that kind of imperial military 1:52:10.840 --> 1:52:13.840 discipline to the London police. And you know, a lot 1:52:13.880 --> 1:52:16.640 of the discussions that I'm a part of here in 1:52:16.760 --> 1:52:19.960 the in the United States today are about the militarization 1:52:20.160 --> 1:52:21.759 of the police. You know, it's kind of the phrase 1:52:21.840 --> 1:52:24.519 that we used to get at that issue here and now, 1:52:25.600 --> 1:52:28.280 and and I've read a little bit about some of 1:52:28.320 --> 1:52:33.280 the radical press criticizing Charles Warren along similar grounds, saying 1:52:33.320 --> 1:52:37.439 that he was turning the London Police the met into 1:52:38.479 --> 1:52:43.400 a military and occupying military force. Um, this wasn't the question. 1:52:43.479 --> 1:52:45.479 So maybe you don't have something prepared, but would you 1:52:45.520 --> 1:52:47.760 be able to say a few more words about you know, 1:52:48.080 --> 1:52:51.360 was it fair to criticize Charles Warren for militarizing the 1:52:51.439 --> 1:52:55.160 police in London. I think it's. Um, it's certainly something 1:52:55.240 --> 1:52:56.760 that's thrown at him, and it's thrown at him in 1:52:56.800 --> 1:53:00.840 the wake of Bloody Sunday in November Heaven, when when 1:53:01.560 --> 1:53:05.679 he kind of he doesn't want to suffer what happened 1:53:05.720 --> 1:53:09.960 to his predecessor Henderson in in the pal mall all 1:53:10.000 --> 1:53:14.280 the West End Rights of six. So he tries to 1:53:14.400 --> 1:53:17.800 close down demonstrations in Trafalgar Square, which is kind of 1:53:17.880 --> 1:53:23.600 London's traditional place for demonstrations and political gatherings and that 1:53:23.800 --> 1:53:27.559 kind of He's met with cries of outrage, cries about 1:53:27.640 --> 1:53:31.559 free speech, as you might imagine, and protests go ahead, 1:53:31.640 --> 1:53:34.760 and he sends in the soul. He ends in his 1:53:35.640 --> 1:53:40.000 he's disciplined policeman with in a in a battle, charged 1:53:40.080 --> 1:53:42.799 to crack heads and clear the square, and that creates 1:53:42.800 --> 1:53:48.000 a riot. And some fantastic cartoons from the time depicting 1:53:48.640 --> 1:53:52.240 Warren as on top of Nelson's column and policeman beating 1:53:52.320 --> 1:53:56.880 up protesters on all the plints around the square, um 1:53:57.360 --> 1:54:00.640 the Lions getting involved in everything else, and there's a 1:54:01.000 --> 1:54:03.080 there's that kind of sense of the he's an own 1:54:03.160 --> 1:54:06.320 goal really for Warren because the press can can rage 1:54:06.400 --> 1:54:10.920 against his militarization into Faga Square. Although some of them 1:54:10.960 --> 1:54:13.200 are very pleased with what he does, the Times are 1:54:13.240 --> 1:54:17.600 very pleased with what he does. And and when it 1:54:17.680 --> 1:54:21.160 comes to the riplicate, of course he doesn't catch the killer. 1:54:22.080 --> 1:54:27.920 So there's a you know, the criticism is aimful square 1:54:27.920 --> 1:54:29.840 at the metroids and police because here is a murderer 1:54:29.840 --> 1:54:35.280 who's killing poor women in East London, and here is 1:54:35.320 --> 1:54:39.040 a commissioner of the met who sent his men into 1:54:39.160 --> 1:54:43.000 beat up poor men in the West end of London, 1:54:43.240 --> 1:54:46.680 So there's kind of a it's a it's a very 1:54:47.480 --> 1:54:52.520 obvious target for radical press, for the liberal press to 1:54:52.600 --> 1:54:54.320 have a go up, to have a go out warrant 1:54:54.320 --> 1:54:59.680 about it, whether it's fair. He did concentrate on military discipline, 1:55:00.920 --> 1:55:04.280 but he probably thought that was very important. And let's 1:55:04.320 --> 1:55:09.920 face it, he only becomes a commissioner in late he 1:55:09.920 --> 1:55:11.840 has not had that much time to do very much 1:55:11.920 --> 1:55:15.440 with metropologies, and already they've got one of the most 1:55:16.280 --> 1:55:19.520 high profile murder cases, were the most high private profile 1:55:19.600 --> 1:55:23.880 murder case for decades, So it's a bit tricky for him. Really. 1:55:23.920 --> 1:55:27.960 I always started off disliking to Charles Warren and I 1:55:28.120 --> 1:55:31.400 kind of have a lot of sympathy for him now. Hm. 1:55:33.200 --> 1:55:36.560 When it comes to the press covering the murders and 1:55:36.640 --> 1:55:44.440 the investigation, um stories start to dwindle after the inquest 1:55:45.040 --> 1:55:50.120 of Mary Kelly. Why is that? Why Why does the 1:55:50.320 --> 1:55:54.640 press kind of decide that the story is over at 1:55:54.720 --> 1:55:58.680 that point? Well, I guess someone like Stanley Cohen and 1:55:58.720 --> 1:56:01.240 sociologists would argue that a moral panic with us out 1:56:01.240 --> 1:56:03.400 and the press eventually get bored of it and they 1:56:03.480 --> 1:56:05.280 move on to something else. But I think the answer 1:56:05.360 --> 1:56:10.360 is quite simple really, in the police refuse refused to 1:56:10.480 --> 1:56:14.000 cooperate with the press in the wake of Mary Kelly's murder. 1:56:14.760 --> 1:56:18.040 They stopped providing any information or access. You kind of 1:56:18.080 --> 1:56:23.520 imagine them closing down. You imagine, I imagine reporters standing 1:56:23.520 --> 1:56:25.920 outside Lehman Street and being told to go away by 1:56:26.240 --> 1:56:31.280 by uniformed officers. And when they've got the the inquest 1:56:31.400 --> 1:56:34.040 is closed down. And that's another trific place for the 1:56:34.360 --> 1:56:38.280 press to get information. So there's no inquest, there's no 1:56:38.400 --> 1:56:43.160 information coming out of the police headquarters. Coppers on the 1:56:43.240 --> 1:56:47.000 beat aren't talking to the press. There's nothing to print. 1:56:47.840 --> 1:56:51.240 So if there's nothing to print, then you go on 1:56:51.320 --> 1:56:56.320 and start talking about something else. H M. Of course, 1:56:56.400 --> 1:57:00.200 those of us who are looking back at the year, 1:57:00.840 --> 1:57:07.000 at the case, at the killings with um historical interest, 1:57:08.800 --> 1:57:14.800 there are things that follow events, documents that do continue 1:57:14.840 --> 1:57:19.240 to draw interest, and one of those is McNaughton's memorandum. 1:57:20.280 --> 1:57:25.800 H can you talk about Melvin McNaughton and who he was? 1:57:26.440 --> 1:57:29.560 What is this this memorandum that he wrote, and to 1:57:29.680 --> 1:57:32.440 what extent it is or is not significant, especially in 1:57:32.600 --> 1:57:35.360 light of one of the comments you've written that that 1:57:35.520 --> 1:57:38.520 he in particular may have been invested with too much 1:57:38.800 --> 1:57:43.880 significance by others who have looked at the investigation. Yeah. 1:57:44.160 --> 1:57:46.240 I mean, I think one thing you probably have to 1:57:46.280 --> 1:57:49.120 say is if you you could ask, you could ask 1:57:49.160 --> 1:57:53.760 a dozen different so called experts about the replication about McNaughton, 1:57:53.840 --> 1:57:56.960 and you'd probably get a dozen slightly different answers. But this, 1:57:57.240 --> 1:58:00.480 this would be mine, I think. So we know Melville 1:58:00.520 --> 1:58:05.520 mcdorton was Chief Comsortable c I D In June, so 1:58:05.640 --> 1:58:08.440 he has an indirect connection to the Whitechapel murdericers. He 1:58:08.480 --> 1:58:10.880 would have known people who were involved in the case, 1:58:11.160 --> 1:58:15.760 even though he wasn't directing the case himself. In February 1:58:17.320 --> 1:58:20.520 he wrote a report on the case, and that was 1:58:20.800 --> 1:58:24.000 prompted by speculation in the Sun newspaper of the day 1:58:24.440 --> 1:58:28.960 that the murderer as a man named Thomas cut Blush, 1:58:29.080 --> 1:58:32.560 and he was kind of refuting that. I think the 1:58:32.640 --> 1:58:36.800 report really comes to light though, in in nineteen fifty nine, 1:58:37.400 --> 1:58:43.200 when mcnorton's daughter allowed a TV documentary maker access to 1:58:43.320 --> 1:58:47.840 her father's papers. Um, so that's kind of how we 1:58:48.200 --> 1:58:51.600 we get this this thing. The report itself is quite short, 1:58:52.440 --> 1:58:57.720 and it In it mcdaorton named three possible ripper suspects, 1:58:57.720 --> 1:59:00.160 So three people that were supposedly known to the police's 1:59:00.560 --> 1:59:06.480 part of the investigation at the time, and these were Monskey, 1:59:06.640 --> 1:59:13.320 John Druitt, Michael Ostrog's Michael Michael Ostrog and a guy 1:59:13.480 --> 1:59:16.520 just known as Kosminski, not given a first name, but 1:59:16.680 --> 1:59:21.720 generally has been given the name Aaron Kazmitski, but Kazminski 1:59:21.760 --> 1:59:27.920 a police jews how mc norton right. The mc norton memorandum, 1:59:28.000 --> 1:59:31.880 as it's known, has been given significance, considerable significant over 1:59:31.920 --> 1:59:35.760 the years since because because it names three men and 1:59:35.840 --> 1:59:39.760 because it suggests the police had them in mind. Um. 1:59:39.920 --> 1:59:43.080 And this supported the claims of Sir Robert Anderson, who 1:59:43.280 --> 1:59:45.720 was head of c D at the time of the murders, 1:59:45.760 --> 1:59:49.000 and so we can consider to be a fairly reliable 1:59:49.120 --> 1:59:53.840 source um. And he said this in he said the 1:59:53.880 --> 1:59:56.360 police knew who the rewards in his memoirs, which were 1:59:56.400 --> 2:00:03.080 published in nine Now police memoirs and notoristly difficult because 2:00:03.080 --> 2:00:06.520 they're often self justifications and they're written after the event. 2:00:06.880 --> 2:00:10.840 So we we can give them quite a lot of credibility, 2:00:10.920 --> 2:00:13.040 but we need to also be skeptical at the same time. 2:00:13.960 --> 2:00:16.280 And when we look at mc norton's trier of suspects, 2:00:16.560 --> 2:00:21.320 my problem is that they broadly fit the typology of 2:00:21.400 --> 2:00:24.320 who the Victorians thought ought to have ought to have 2:00:24.400 --> 2:00:27.800 been the killer I someone who was considered to be 2:00:27.880 --> 2:00:31.080 a social other. So we have an upper class gentleman, 2:00:31.680 --> 2:00:34.240 we have a psychotic doctor, and we have a deranged 2:00:34.320 --> 2:00:40.560 immigrant dr um, deranged Jewish immigrants. That they're all the 2:00:40.680 --> 2:00:43.640 people who are drew it or strong on Kosminski, and 2:00:43.800 --> 2:00:48.840 I think it's rather convenient that mc norton identifies those 2:00:48.920 --> 2:00:51.160 three as the people that the piece we're looking for, 2:00:51.240 --> 2:00:53.720 because those are the sort of people the press we're 2:00:53.760 --> 2:00:58.680 telling the police they ought to be looking for. So yeah, 2:00:59.240 --> 2:01:02.920 m the annoying thing about McNaughton is spending his name right. 2:01:05.160 --> 2:01:07.360 That's his name spelled differently all the times, and I 2:01:08.200 --> 2:01:10.840 spelt it wrong, having corrected it in my book, my 2:01:11.000 --> 2:01:13.200 last book, And that was one of the reasons that 2:01:13.280 --> 2:01:18.320 Ripper ologies had such a nothing like, nothing like a 2:01:18.400 --> 2:01:21.120 typo to get them upset. I spelled a few of 2:01:21.240 --> 2:01:23.800 my own I spelled it a few of my own 2:01:23.840 --> 2:01:28.520 ways to um you mentioned at the beginning of this conversation, 2:01:29.520 --> 2:01:32.520 when you were talking about Jack the Ripper has a 2:01:32.560 --> 2:01:39.080 modern myth um that kind of without the mystery, the 2:01:39.120 --> 2:01:43.280 White Chapel murders are just another tale of statistic killing, 2:01:43.600 --> 2:01:45.920 and that part of what makes it compelling is the 2:01:45.960 --> 2:01:50.720 ability to project our own ideas into the gap where 2:01:51.400 --> 2:01:54.160 we don't have a person there. Can you speak a 2:01:54.200 --> 2:01:57.520 little bit more to the idea that it's the uncertainty 2:01:57.560 --> 2:01:59.920 about the identity of the killer that keeps this story 2:02:00.040 --> 2:02:01.680 your life. Do you have more to say about that 2:02:01.720 --> 2:02:05.240 than you already already said? Well, I can certainly try. 2:02:05.320 --> 2:02:09.080 I mean, yeah, and I think identifying Jack the Ripper, 2:02:09.240 --> 2:02:13.000 or arguing about the identity of the White Chappel murderers 2:02:13.120 --> 2:02:15.920 as has kind of fuel the ripper industry. It's an 2:02:15.960 --> 2:02:19.640 industry which has existed for over hundred years. I mean, 2:02:19.640 --> 2:02:22.680 there are ripper tours taking place whilst the murders are 2:02:24.200 --> 2:02:28.040 are happening. You know, ripper tours aren'to modern invention. People. 2:02:28.200 --> 2:02:31.160 There was a waxworkshell on Whitechappel High Street at the 2:02:31.240 --> 2:02:33.720 time of the Ripper murders. This is an industry which 2:02:34.000 --> 2:02:37.800 started in and has continued the pace ever since, and 2:02:37.880 --> 2:02:42.200 now we have films and movies, and we have franchises 2:02:42.280 --> 2:02:47.840 like Assassin's Create the video game which references the Rapper. 2:02:47.920 --> 2:02:49.520 You can play as Jack the Ripper if you want to. 2:02:49.960 --> 2:02:54.920 And there are numerous Ripper solution histories, and there are 2:02:55.080 --> 2:02:58.840 Ripper novels, and um, you know, I have a Ripper 2:02:59.000 --> 2:03:02.120 Jack the Ripper game. You can get rapp Jack the 2:03:02.200 --> 2:03:08.080 Ripper themed T shirts, you know, all sorts of things, Um, 2:03:08.520 --> 2:03:13.040 Jack the Ripper if you want to. Um. But the 2:03:13.120 --> 2:03:15.400 fact that so many facts in the case of disputed 2:03:15.520 --> 2:03:17.720 like like, for example, just a number of victims, how 2:03:17.760 --> 2:03:19.440 many were there? Were there? Five? Were? The six? Were 2:03:19.440 --> 2:03:22.360 the eight? Were? Nine? Were? Were there more? The writing 2:03:22.600 --> 2:03:27.400 on the wall in Galston Street graffiti, the Ripper letters themselves. 2:03:27.440 --> 2:03:29.280 You know, whether the Dear Boss or from Hell or 2:03:29.280 --> 2:03:31.960 any of the others are real or not, all of 2:03:32.000 --> 2:03:34.240 those things. I mean, we can keep on revisiting the 2:03:34.320 --> 2:03:38.000 case in the hope of finding new evidence, or more accurately, 2:03:38.080 --> 2:03:43.440 we can look for new interpretations of old evidence. But 2:03:44.360 --> 2:03:46.480 I kind of think it's worth saying this again. But 2:03:47.120 --> 2:03:50.240 more than this, successive popular representations of Jack the Ripper 2:03:50.320 --> 2:03:52.960 have kind of recast the killer for their own age. 2:03:53.480 --> 2:03:58.000 So currently Jack has become sort of Mr Ordinary, a 2:03:58.200 --> 2:04:02.600 mundane every day a killer hiding him side. And I 2:04:02.680 --> 2:04:05.720 think that's interesting because he's like the modern terrorists who 2:04:05.800 --> 2:04:08.960 we don't notice until he draws his knife or he 2:04:09.040 --> 2:04:12.920 reveals he's wearing a suicide. So I think it's the 2:04:13.000 --> 2:04:15.720 ability of Jack to fit in where we want him to. 2:04:17.000 --> 2:04:19.600 And of course we all love the past, and we 2:04:19.760 --> 2:04:23.520 love the Victorians because they kind of seem very close 2:04:23.600 --> 2:04:25.160 to us. I mean, they're only a hundred or so 2:04:25.360 --> 2:04:27.960 years ago. You know, there are people alive who were 2:04:28.000 --> 2:04:33.640 alive in almost alive in the Victorian period UM. And 2:04:33.800 --> 2:04:38.400 my grandmother was born um at the turn of the century. 2:04:38.400 --> 2:04:41.200 I mean she she's passed away now, but she's you know, 2:04:41.360 --> 2:04:43.960 she could tell me things from her mother which were 2:04:43.960 --> 2:04:48.680 about Queen Victoria's jubileean things. It seems close, but it's 2:04:48.760 --> 2:04:52.200 so different. And in Jack's London there are things we'd recognize, 2:04:52.240 --> 2:04:55.720 but they're all kind of I want to say, swathed 2:04:55.800 --> 2:04:57.840 in a sort of gas, like a sort of mystic 2:04:57.960 --> 2:05:02.800 mystic missed in a smoke that kind of swirls around 2:05:02.840 --> 2:05:05.280 and giving that kind of touch of Gothic horror. That's 2:05:05.320 --> 2:05:10.440 so much part of our way of viewing that period. Um. 2:05:11.560 --> 2:05:13.960 So I don't think we'll ever be able to conclusively 2:05:14.160 --> 2:05:19.320 prove who Jack the Ripper was, um, at least not 2:05:19.400 --> 2:05:21.480 be able to prove to a standard that you could 2:05:21.560 --> 2:05:26.680 prosecute somebody in a port in England today. But that 2:05:26.920 --> 2:05:30.400 kind of sense of mystery of wanting to work out 2:05:30.440 --> 2:05:33.720 who it was, and then spinoffs from that that keep 2:05:33.760 --> 2:05:37.680 the story going. So organizations like the White Chapel Society 2:05:38.480 --> 2:05:41.560 are people who have moved on from just identifying the 2:05:41.640 --> 2:05:44.560 Ripper trying to They're now interested in the victims. They're 2:05:44.600 --> 2:05:48.280 interested in the streets, the buildings, the social history, the 2:05:48.360 --> 2:05:54.040 popular culture of the time, that that the riplication is 2:05:54.120 --> 2:05:56.840 so much more than it was even twenty years ago. 2:05:56.880 --> 2:06:00.680 I think. I mean, I'm planning a conference in two 2:06:00.800 --> 2:06:05.320 thousand and twenty two if we ever get through lockdown. Um, 2:06:06.040 --> 2:06:07.960 you know, I want to have an international conference at 2:06:08.000 --> 2:06:12.120 Northampton that brings people who are amateurs rheologists as we 2:06:12.200 --> 2:06:15.400 might call them, Whitechappel Society and their their their groups 2:06:15.840 --> 2:06:19.080 together with serious academics like you know some I like 2:06:19.200 --> 2:06:22.560 you the walk of It or you know, um, some 2:06:22.680 --> 2:06:25.720 of the people that have researched, who have researched things 2:06:25.760 --> 2:06:28.720 like prostitution and crime, and bring those people together to 2:06:28.840 --> 2:06:34.400 have a conversation because they get pro fascinating mm hm um, 2:06:34.760 --> 2:06:39.200 and you just to kind of sew things up for us. Um. 2:06:40.640 --> 2:06:44.120 I read your Jack in the terms torso murderous book 2:06:44.520 --> 2:06:48.040 as one of those studies that does look at Jack 2:06:48.080 --> 2:06:52.080 as or the killer, because there is noough Jack as 2:06:52.640 --> 2:06:57.560 one of those kind of everyman figures, someone who wasn't 2:06:57.640 --> 2:07:01.520 one of those three stereotypes, but who instead was at 2:07:01.600 --> 2:07:04.520 home and fit in and would have been recognizable as 2:07:04.600 --> 2:07:10.080 belonging in the East end. Um. Could you talk about 2:07:10.200 --> 2:07:15.640 your own thinking about why it was important to put 2:07:15.760 --> 2:07:19.280 that book together and explore the reasons for making an 2:07:19.320 --> 2:07:23.000 identification of the killer the way that you did. Yes, 2:07:23.120 --> 2:07:27.120 I mean, you know how very aware that in under 2:07:27.160 --> 2:07:29.560 shadows I kind of said, you can't do this, So 2:07:29.680 --> 2:07:31.680 it's no point is there are much more interesting things 2:07:31.680 --> 2:07:35.120 to talk about. And now I wrote a book saying 2:07:35.120 --> 2:07:37.720 who I thought the report was. Um, I mean I 2:07:37.800 --> 2:07:41.880 have very particular reasons for doing that. I wrote it 2:07:41.960 --> 2:07:44.600 with someone else, with Andy Wise, who felt he had 2:07:44.640 --> 2:07:47.160 a story to tell and I wanted to enable him, 2:07:47.200 --> 2:07:49.920 as a former student of mine, to tell his story, 2:07:50.040 --> 2:07:51.720 because I think he was a struggle to get that 2:07:52.480 --> 2:07:54.720 out into print in the way that perhaps with a 2:07:54.760 --> 2:07:57.760 little bit of background behind me, I was able to 2:07:58.120 --> 2:08:00.880 enable him to do so. There was partly a personal 2:08:01.000 --> 2:08:04.400 story of allowing Andy to tell the story he wanted 2:08:04.440 --> 2:08:08.240 to tell. And then he'd spent many, many years researching UM. 2:08:09.520 --> 2:08:12.440 I always felt it was problematic to identify a killer, 2:08:12.480 --> 2:08:15.760 and I kind of still do. But I think Harderman 2:08:15.840 --> 2:08:18.040 is as good as suspect, as as any and better 2:08:18.120 --> 2:08:20.560 than many. And I think so. I mean, one of 2:08:20.600 --> 2:08:22.720 the things we concluded was if we if we tried 2:08:22.760 --> 2:08:26.560 to apply historical research methods and the rationale of a 2:08:26.640 --> 2:08:32.080 police detective who's looking for means, motive and opportunity, we 2:08:32.120 --> 2:08:34.120 could point the finger at a local man who we 2:08:34.240 --> 2:08:37.800 believed was responsible, a man involved in them trade. He 2:08:37.920 --> 2:08:42.360 seems to fit. So we we figured that the killer 2:08:43.440 --> 2:08:45.680 had to know White Chapel. He had to be able 2:08:45.680 --> 2:08:49.600 to move around White Chapel in Spittlefield without causing suspicion. 2:08:50.640 --> 2:08:54.480 UM and I had to know all these dark alleys 2:08:54.560 --> 2:08:59.160 and cut throughs. He had to appear to avoid police patrols, 2:08:59.200 --> 2:09:01.840 particularly as has more and more police were put on 2:09:01.880 --> 2:09:07.080 the streets, particularly following the double event. So this is 2:09:07.160 --> 2:09:09.080 someone who needs to know his local environment, and that 2:09:09.160 --> 2:09:11.480 doesn't really fit with a doctor from outside, or a 2:09:11.560 --> 2:09:14.560 slumming top or any of these other people. It has 2:09:14.600 --> 2:09:18.120 to be a local man. I think you had to 2:09:18.160 --> 2:09:20.360 have somebody who had a clear motive for wanting to kill. 2:09:20.400 --> 2:09:22.320 In many of the books I've read about Jack Ripper, 2:09:22.480 --> 2:09:25.400 I can't really understand why he would do the things 2:09:25.480 --> 2:09:27.520 he would do. That's kind of a bit that the 2:09:27.600 --> 2:09:30.360 writers don't tell you why would you do that? Now? 2:09:30.440 --> 2:09:34.160 I understand, of course that without knowing who the killer ism, 2:09:34.200 --> 2:09:37.600 without a confession, we can never know why somebody chooses 2:09:37.680 --> 2:09:41.720 to murder. Um. We think of serial killers today and 2:09:42.280 --> 2:09:44.960 there's a lot of time spent pouring over what they 2:09:45.040 --> 2:09:47.600 have to say, if they can say, or they choose 2:09:47.640 --> 2:09:49.280 to say what they want to say, and we can't 2:09:49.320 --> 2:09:52.640 necessarily trust it anyway. But I feel you had to 2:09:52.680 --> 2:09:55.000 find a try and identify a motive, and in this 2:09:55.120 --> 2:09:58.800 case we found somebody who had means, motive and opportunity. 2:10:00.080 --> 2:10:04.600 So James Hardiman had been flagged up in a previous 2:10:04.680 --> 2:10:07.040 short article in a couple of short articles for a 2:10:07.120 --> 2:10:10.920 phiologists and and he thought he was worth investigating, so 2:10:11.160 --> 2:10:14.520 he set off to investigate him. And James Hardiman was 2:10:14.760 --> 2:10:19.040 probably a pet food salesman and someone who probably worked 2:10:19.080 --> 2:10:22.240 as a horse slaughterer. We accept that you can't find 2:10:22.280 --> 2:10:24.280 records for many of these things, so it's very difficult 2:10:24.280 --> 2:10:28.280 to prove, but it seems quite likely um And if 2:10:28.320 --> 2:10:30.800 he was a horse slaughterer, if he was involved in 2:10:30.840 --> 2:10:34.040 the meat trade, he was probably familiar with or operate 2:10:34.560 --> 2:10:37.440 or he was probably familiar with or working for a 2:10:37.560 --> 2:10:40.600 company called Harrison Barber in the eighteen eighties because they 2:10:40.840 --> 2:10:45.360 entirely dominated horse saughtering and horse slaughtering. You know, it 2:10:45.440 --> 2:10:50.720 might seem like a niche occupation, but London is entirely 2:10:50.880 --> 2:10:54.600 powered by horses. In the nineteenth century. There are thousands 2:10:54.680 --> 2:10:59.400 of horses carrying carts, people riding horses, pulling carriages, hands 2:10:59.480 --> 2:11:03.520 and cabs. Everything is horse drawn. We talk about horsepowering cars, 2:11:03.600 --> 2:11:08.000 but this is literally horsepower. And horses get sick and 2:11:08.320 --> 2:11:10.880 they get old, and when they get old and sick, 2:11:11.240 --> 2:11:13.000 you know, they don't go and live in some nice 2:11:13.040 --> 2:11:17.120 little paddocks somewhere on the outskirts of London. They're slaughtered, 2:11:17.800 --> 2:11:21.000 and their flesh and their bones and all their bits 2:11:21.040 --> 2:11:24.240 and pieces are turned into other products like blue and 2:11:24.560 --> 2:11:26.680 pet food and all sorts of other things, and sometimes 2:11:27.320 --> 2:11:33.640 Dickens suggested human food. So it's kind of ubiquitous. And 2:11:33.920 --> 2:11:37.360 the man pushing a cart run the street selling captives 2:11:37.360 --> 2:11:39.680 everyone and know who was but no one really see 2:11:39.760 --> 2:11:42.320 him because he was just that guy, you know, that 2:11:42.440 --> 2:11:45.960 strange guy, probably a bit weird. So that's kind of 2:11:46.000 --> 2:11:49.000 why he's having in plain sight. And as for motive, 2:11:49.800 --> 2:11:54.960 we believe that Harderman had contracted syphilis, probably from a prostitute. 2:11:55.320 --> 2:11:57.440 He would have passed up to his wife, who passed 2:11:57.440 --> 2:12:00.920 it to their child, and their own a child who died, 2:12:01.000 --> 2:12:03.040 and then his wife died in the hospital. She was 2:12:03.120 --> 2:12:05.320 in London for a long time, so he had plenty 2:12:05.320 --> 2:12:08.480 of opportunity. He lived in White Chapel, he lived in 2:12:08.600 --> 2:12:12.400 Henning Street, His family lived in Hambury Street where any 2:12:12.480 --> 2:12:15.480 Chapman was killed. He lived right next door to where 2:12:15.520 --> 2:12:18.040 any chapman was killed by that court, so he was 2:12:18.200 --> 2:12:23.520 right at the heart of the killing zone. And we 2:12:23.680 --> 2:12:26.680 kind of extrapolated that to think that perhaps Hardyman was 2:12:26.760 --> 2:12:29.320 not just responsible for the White Chapel murders, but we 2:12:29.360 --> 2:12:31.720 also believe he could be connected to the four Torso 2:12:31.880 --> 2:12:36.560 murders that occurred in London between May seven and September 2:12:36.680 --> 2:12:40.920 eighteen eighty nine. And in total, we argue that that 2:12:41.120 --> 2:12:45.680 Harderman is probably responsible for thirteen murders and three more 2:12:45.800 --> 2:12:49.440 fatal attacks over a period of nearly four years. He 2:12:49.600 --> 2:12:53.960 died in December eight He was only thirty two. And 2:12:55.240 --> 2:12:58.200 Alice Mackenzie is the last victim in the series, dying 2:12:58.560 --> 2:13:05.560 in February UM and her death is looks like a 2:13:05.680 --> 2:13:08.640 tired killing. You know that that she she almost survives 2:13:08.680 --> 2:13:10.760 at least, and comes upon her bodies has had a 2:13:10.840 --> 2:13:13.200 throat cut and nothing else has been done to I 2:13:13.280 --> 2:13:19.280 think I concluded that James Hardyman is as good as 2:13:19.320 --> 2:13:24.160 suspect as many and I think you know, you can 2:13:24.240 --> 2:13:29.040 criticize quite a lot of our case, um wides quite 2:13:29.040 --> 2:13:34.920 a lot of my writing, but he certainly bears close examination. 2:13:35.560 --> 2:13:38.000 But we're not going to know who the ripper was. 2:13:38.080 --> 2:13:40.040 No one is going to be satisfied who the ripper 2:13:40.280 --> 2:13:42.720 was for the quite simple things. As soon as you 2:13:42.800 --> 2:13:45.880 decide who the ripper was. And we agree that kills 2:13:45.920 --> 2:13:49.120 the industry, or or it kills one branch of the industry. 2:13:51.680 --> 2:13:55.640 That's it for this week's episode of Unobscured. Stick around 2:13:55.680 --> 2:13:58.920 after this short sponsor break for a preview of what's 2:13:58.960 --> 2:14:07.960 in store for next week. It's a very hard life 2:14:09.520 --> 2:14:13.000 that the people were living at that time, particularly in 2:14:13.000 --> 2:14:15.760 the East End. But an event like a murder captures 2:14:16.600 --> 2:14:20.160 the witnesses and the investigators in that moment of time 2:14:20.920 --> 2:14:24.320 going about their day to day lives, and they're things mains. 2:14:24.480 --> 2:14:29.040 As I said, mainstream histories don't often tell you. For example, 2:14:29.120 --> 2:14:32.640 there were lots of horses, lots of them. What did 2:14:32.720 --> 2:14:35.160 you do if your horse was injured in an accident 2:14:35.840 --> 2:14:39.360 or if it dropped dead in the street? And how 2:14:39.480 --> 2:14:43.880 dirty were those streets are washed with horse urine and worse? 2:14:45.120 --> 2:14:47.000 And what was it really like to travel in a 2:14:47.160 --> 2:14:50.640 handsome cab rocking along like a ship tossed in a storm. 2:14:50.920 --> 2:14:53.600 So we you know, all of that is sort of 2:14:53.680 --> 2:14:57.160 stuff that you don't normally find out about. Even the 2:14:57.240 --> 2:15:00.800 Sherlock Holmes story have you have homes rolling along in 2:15:00.840 --> 2:15:03.520 a handsome cap, but we don't actually get told when 2:15:03.560 --> 2:15:22.560 it was really like Unobscured was created by me Aaron 2:15:22.640 --> 2:15:25.920 Manky and produced by Matt Frederick, Alex Williams, and Josh 2:15:26.040 --> 2:15:29.760 Thane in partnership with I Heart Radio. Research and writing 2:15:29.840 --> 2:15:31.800 for this season is all the work of my right 2:15:31.880 --> 2:15:35.200 hand man Carl Nellis and the brilliant Chad Lawson composed 2:15:35.240 --> 2:15:39.160 the brand new soundtrack. Learn more about our contributing historians, 2:15:39.320 --> 2:15:42.440 source material and links to our other shows over at 2:15:42.520 --> 2:15:47.880 history unobscured dot com, and until next time, thanks for listening. 2:15:55.360 --> 2:15:57.520 Unobscured is a production of I Heart Radio and Aaron 2:15:57.600 --> 2:16:00.720 Monkey for More podcast for my heart Radio, because heart Radio, app, 2:16:00.800 --> 2:16:03.240 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. 2:16:06.000 --> 2:16:06.040 H