Speaker 1: Pushkin Hi, they're bad women listeners. Today we're sharing a
Speaker 1: little something extra with you. At the end of last year,
Speaker 1: Hallie had a conversation with Kate Lister, historian of sex
Speaker 1: work and host of the podcast Betwixt the Sheets, The
Speaker 1: History of Sex, Scandal and Society. They spoke about our
Speaker 1: culture's fascination with serial killers and the rolemasogyny plays in
Speaker 1: how certain people who are victims of crime are portrayed
Speaker 1: on our screens and elsewhere in the media too. We
Speaker 1: thought you might be interested in their conversation, so here
Speaker 1: it is, and if you'd like to check out Betwixt
Speaker 1: the Sheets, you'll find it wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: It's created by our friends over at History Hit, with
Speaker 1: episodes out on Tuesdays and Fridays on everything from medieval
Speaker 1: sex to the history of cosmetic surgery. But for now,
Speaker 1: on with the conversation between Hallie and Kate. What is
Speaker 1: it with our society's fascination with serial killers? And I
Speaker 1: count myself amongst those obsessed with true crime Ted Bundy,
Speaker 1: Jeffrey Dahmer, Peter Sutcliffe, Jack the Ripper. Ultimately, these aren't
Speaker 1: interesting people, led violent murderers who treated innocent people horrendously
Speaker 1: and ended their lives, and yet the names of these
Speaker 1: killers are as recognized as some of our national treasures.
Speaker 1: It's bizarre, isn't it. But what role does misogyny play
Speaker 1: in how serial killers are portrayed and our screens in
Speaker 1: our newspapers. How does how we view the women involved
Speaker 1: affect the court cases? Today, we're going betwixt the sheets
Speaker 1: to find out. Hello there, I'm Kate Lister. I'm welcome
Speaker 1: to betwixt the Sheets the history of sex scandal in society.
Speaker 1: Netflix have announced record ratings for their drama about the
Speaker 1: serial killer Jeffrey Dalmer, which was watched collectively for around
Speaker 1: one hundred and ninety six million hours in its first
Speaker 1: full week. That's a lot of us sitting down to
Speaker 1: watch this stuff, and that made it number one in
Speaker 1: sixty countries around the world. And that's just the latest
Speaker 1: TV show and a long list of popular and gory
Speaker 1: TV shows, podcasts, books on true crime. Well, today I'm
Speaker 1: joined by Hallie rubin Holt, author of the award winning
Speaker 1: book of the Five, where she researched the lives of
Speaker 1: the victims of the serial killer known as Jack the
Speaker 1: Ripper and highlighted the sexism at work in our culture's
Speaker 1: obsession with this case. There's also an adjoining podcast about
Speaker 1: her research called Bad Women, and it's back today with
Speaker 1: a brand new series, and she's looking at the criminal
Speaker 1: who has come to be known as the Blackout Ripper,
Speaker 1: a man who killed women during the blitz of World
Speaker 1: War Who. Halle and I talk about misogyny and stigma
Speaker 1: in serial killer cases and how women's lives are valued
Speaker 1: differently depending on how they earn their money, where they
Speaker 1: like to spend their downtime, what they wear, etc. Etc.
Speaker 1: Has a lot to think about, and I hope you
Speaker 1: find our chat interesting. Hello to Halle Rubin Hall. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much to joining me betwixt the Sheets. Oh,
Speaker 1: it's so wonderful to be on with you, my friends, Kate.
Speaker 1: We get to have a nice natter that's recorded for
Speaker 1: the whole world to hear. Oh, I'm so excited to
Speaker 1: talk to you about this because we've met before and
Speaker 1: weave its radio before and women Twitter friends for a while.
Speaker 1: And like when you wrote the five about the victims
Speaker 1: of Jack the Ripper, did you have any idea that
Speaker 1: it was going to be the absolute insane smash that
Speaker 1: it was going to be Did you have an inkling? No, No,
Speaker 1: I had no idea. Well, I knew it was likely
Speaker 1: to certainly be a popular book given its subject matter. Obviously,
Speaker 1: I'm absolutely delighted that it took off in the way
Speaker 1: that it did and that it's had the impact that
Speaker 1: it's had. Oh god, yeah, yeah, it's just been incredible. Genuinely,
Speaker 1: I'm thrilled. You know, when you're a writer, you know,
Speaker 1: you spend a lot of time, especially as a historian,
Speaker 1: and you spend a lot of time looking at things
Speaker 1: in the past, and you know a lot of people
Speaker 1: are always asking question, oh, what's relevant about history and
Speaker 1: how can it change things? And this goes to show
Speaker 1: that history does have an impact on the present, and
Speaker 1: history does have a way of illuminating problems today and
Speaker 1: making us think in different ways about it. And certainly
Speaker 1: as a public historian, that's what I want to do,
Speaker 1: you know, That's why I get up in the morning.
Speaker 1: And so the fact that this is doing that and
Speaker 1: changing things and changing the narrative is really quite amazing.
Speaker 1: If anyone's listening hasn't read Halley's book or isn't aware
Speaker 1: of it, it's basically a biography of what we can
Speaker 1: call the canonical five victims Sariah killer known as Jack
Speaker 1: the Ripper, Only you're not interested in really how these
Speaker 1: women met their death, as in the Gruesome Grizzle, you're
Speaker 1: not interested in the killer. So the biography is from
Speaker 1: as much as you can get back in their past
Speaker 1: too when their lives ended, and he's not in it.
Speaker 1: He doesn't feature in it. I mean, that's the whole point.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's really quite astonishing that for over one
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty years our focus has been on a
Speaker 1: serial killer whose name we don't know, who we know
Speaker 1: absolutely nothing about, at the expense of the five people
Speaker 1: he killed, who we do know actually quite a lot about.
Speaker 1: And the whole angle on this has been like a
Speaker 1: murder mystery, like who is Jack the Ripper? Why did
Speaker 1: he do what he did? And then these women just
Speaker 1: become like pieces in a puzzle. It's like a parlor game.
Speaker 1: They've never really had identities of their own, and in
Speaker 1: writing the book, what I wanted to do was to
Speaker 1: give them back their identities, to restore them effectively to
Speaker 1: the record, and for us to know them as women
Speaker 1: and not just parts of the Jack the Ripper mystery.
Speaker 1: We do this every once in awhile with any kind
Speaker 1: of research, is it someone sort of hits pause on
Speaker 1: something and goes, Guys, what the hell have we been doing?
Speaker 1: And then everyone kind of goes, oh shit, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: really bad. Like a really reason example is like when
Speaker 1: you go back and you're watch an old episode of
Speaker 1: Friends and now you're just kind of like watching it
Speaker 1: with twenty twenty two vision, and you're like, you would
Speaker 1: never be able to get away with saying this stuff.
Speaker 1: But I think your book kind of had that moment
Speaker 1: of pointing out something really obvious, like why don't we
Speaker 1: know about these women? Or why isn't why hasn't there
Speaker 1: been a focus on them? Yeah, I think you're absolutely right.
Speaker 1: I think that you know, again, this is something we
Speaker 1: really really have to think about how we tell murder
Speaker 1: stories because the way in which we're always focusing on
Speaker 1: a true crime story, a murder story, it's always killer centric.
Speaker 1: It's murderer centric, and the more gorry the better. Often
Speaker 1: and generally it's a his story, Okay, so we focus
Speaker 1: on his perspective, and often he is a killer of women.
Speaker 1: We suppress the whole female angle of this so we
Speaker 1: can raise up this very interesting male the male brain,
Speaker 1: you know, the killer's brain. Why did he do what
Speaker 1: he did? You know, what is this telling us about
Speaker 1: him and his ego? And we're not actually really focusing
Speaker 1: on the fact that actually this person is not the
Speaker 1: most important person in all of this. A murder story
Speaker 1: is about kind of everything in the round. It's about
Speaker 1: how do we let this happen as a society, whether
Speaker 1: in the past, whether in the present. How did society
Speaker 1: create the victim as much as the society created their killer.
Speaker 1: We're all to blame. We're all culpable past and present,
Speaker 1: and we need to turn the mirror around onto ourselves
Speaker 1: and to also look at other angles of true crime
Speaker 1: and true crime stories, so it's not always murderer centric.
Speaker 1: True crime is still a huge popular genre, and I
Speaker 1: confess to enjoying a bit of true crime myself. But
Speaker 1: since I've read your book, since I've become more conscious
Speaker 1: of the fact that these aren't fairy stories, these are
Speaker 1: like real people. I do occasionally reflect on it side
Speaker 1: this is just a bit too much, But even I
Speaker 1: with that conscious story in my head of like this
Speaker 1: is a bit gory. I'm lying there relaxing about to
Speaker 1: go to bed watching a documentary about somebody being disemboweled.
Speaker 1: I don't know what that says about me, but like,
Speaker 1: why are we so fascinated with it? What is it?
Speaker 1: Because it's huge all Netflix blockbusters, a true crime? Now,
Speaker 1: what is it that we keep returning to these stories
Speaker 1: because they're awful stories? Yeah, they are awful. I think
Speaker 1: as humanity were really interested in the dark side as well.
Speaker 1: And I think there's something really basic in the response,
Speaker 1: which is there's a human need to understand and identify
Speaker 1: what the threat is in order to have avoid it.
Speaker 1: It's interesting and I think there's a lot of that
Speaker 1: going on, and I think that's why we're drawn to it,
Speaker 1: because we're looking for, you, any signs that one of
Speaker 1: these people may be entering our lives, maybe in our lives.
Speaker 1: And I also think you're also learning how do I
Speaker 1: avoid becoming a victim as well? What mistakes? This is
Speaker 1: where a lot of our conditioning comes in about this
Speaker 1: idea that victims are somehow to blame and that murders
Speaker 1: are extraordinary, that murders are extraordinary. Is what did these
Speaker 1: women do? What mistakes did they make to put them
Speaker 1: in the path of a killer, and the fact that
Speaker 1: we're even conditioned to go down that road, I think
Speaker 1: is quite telling without even realizing we're doing it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've researched the history of sex work, and obviously the
Speaker 1: history of Jack the Ripper is also the history of
Speaker 1: sex work, or at least that's the popular narrative around it.
Speaker 1: Your work has disturbed that somewhat. It becomes doubly effacing
Speaker 1: when you're with a woman who is associated with sex
Speaker 1: and then meets a violent end, because those women are
Speaker 1: doubly written out of the narrative because they're just quote
Speaker 1: quote prostitutes, just prostitutes. One of the chapters in my
Speaker 1: book is called just prostitutes because that's what I had
Speaker 1: heard said, what I had read about them. Oh, they
Speaker 1: weren't they just prostitutes? Just that were just wow. You know,
Speaker 1: it's as if sex workers were are a separate species
Speaker 1: of women. That is extraordinary, you know, to actually even
Speaker 1: consider how we ever got to a place where that
Speaker 1: thought is comfortable. It's part of this concept of the
Speaker 1: less dead, you know, this idea that some people are
Speaker 1: more dead than others, some people in society are more
Speaker 1: valued than other people. So For example, if the pretty
Speaker 1: eighteen year old white university stute, virginal virginal university student
Speaker 1: is killed, Oh my god, this human cry because you know,
Speaker 1: this innocent girl, good girl, was murdered. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: if a woman who's been working as a sex worker
Speaker 1: who was addicted to drugs was in and out of prison,
Speaker 1: she goes missing and she's dead, it's like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: why did you expect. It's like she brought it on herself,
Speaker 1: and that woman is considered less dead because she's not
Speaker 1: considered as much of a value to society as this
Speaker 1: pretty white university student is. It still shocks me to
Speaker 1: see that narrative and effect, because I'd love to be
Speaker 1: able to say that this has been consigned to the
Speaker 1: historical husband, but it hasn't. Sex workers are still subject
Speaker 1: to high levels of violence, and when they're written about,
Speaker 1: it's often prefaced with this word prostitute, prostitute killer, someone killed,
Speaker 1: And it's like, you ask yourself, would that article have
Speaker 1: been with the headline of however this person earned their
Speaker 1: money if it was anyone else. You're listening to a
Speaker 1: special crossover episode of Bad Women and betwixt the sheets,
Speaker 1: they'll be more chat after this short break when we
Speaker 1: talk about your book on the five, tell me a
Speaker 1: little bit about what your research turned up, because it's
Speaker 1: this particular narrative, isn't it is that they were prostitutes
Speaker 1: and all the cultural baggage and stigma that comes with
Speaker 1: that word. You research that, tell me what you found
Speaker 1: out about it, and tell me about the resistance that
Speaker 1: you met to that. Yeah, that's the flip side to it.
Speaker 1: I mean, you really really have to unpack Victorian attitudes
Speaker 1: and this word prostitute, which is such a fascinating word
Speaker 1: historically because it's so loaded, it's so pregnant with meaning
Speaker 1: and interpretation and emotion and ring in mind that really
Speaker 1: any woman who breached the conventions of what was acceptable
Speaker 1: womanhood at the time, well, any woman who had sex
Speaker 1: outside of marriage was a whore, and a whore is
Speaker 1: a prostitute. And these two words were interchangeable. And you know,
Speaker 1: she was damaged good, she was a fallen woman. But
Speaker 1: the other interesting thing is Victorians were very generalized, very
Speaker 1: broad in their definition of damaged womanhood, of broken womanhood.
Speaker 1: I would be extremely damaged by Victorians. Consigned to the dustpin.
Speaker 1: We all would be and I kind of love that
Speaker 1: I do have these weird moments. I'm at the gym
Speaker 1: and you know, all the music videos are playing, all
Speaker 1: these women, and I'm thinking, what would somebody from like
Speaker 1: the eighteenth or nineteenth century think of our modern era
Speaker 1: if they see I think we were nude, wouldn't they?
Speaker 1: They would think it was just a NonStop orgy. In
Speaker 1: twenty four cent and everybody who was depraved and this
Speaker 1: was you know, go Morai. By contrast, their views were
Speaker 1: so black and white of what woman who was So
Speaker 1: if you transgress the norms, if you were a woman
Speaker 1: who didn't live in a stable home, if you didn't
Speaker 1: have a father figure, a husband, some male family member
Speaker 1: looking after you, you were kind of suspect. You know,
Speaker 1: a single woman who was suspect at the time. But
Speaker 1: a single woman who was homeless, a single woman who
Speaker 1: also was addicted to alcohol might have mental health problems.
Speaker 1: Any one of those types of women were considered broken women,
Speaker 1: and broken women were considered to be morally defective and
Speaker 1: morally damaged, and so then broken women and the fold
Speaker 1: woman were conflated. In the Victorian mind, your morality is damaged,
Speaker 1: you will do anything. So if you're living on the streets,
Speaker 1: if you're begging, if you're an alcoholic, you're a whore
Speaker 1: as well, you know, because you're a damaged, can fallen woman.
Speaker 1: There was no real investigation that went on to investigate
Speaker 1: how these women who lived on the streets actually lived
Speaker 1: their lives. And yes, some were engaged in sex work,
Speaker 1: but some weren't engaged in sex work. And for us
Speaker 1: to broadly say, oh, they were all prostitutes, because the
Speaker 1: Victorian police that they were all prostitutes, you know, the
Speaker 1: Victorian police were carrying all the judgments of their era.
Speaker 1: The Victorian police were not always right, you know. In fact,
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Cass case which happened shortly before the Ripper murders,
Speaker 1: where you Elizabeth Cass, who was a seams was mistaken
Speaker 1: as being a street walker. And then the police code
Speaker 1: had to be changed about how sex workers were arrested
Speaker 1: and how they were identified. And in fact, at one
Speaker 1: point a sex worker couldn't be called a prostitute unless
Speaker 1: she's self identified as one. And that's amazing. So this
Speaker 1: idea who was and wasn't prostitute, it was largely kind
Speaker 1: of an arbitrary label. And if we just accept whatever
Speaker 1: the victorians said about women who were down on their luck.
Speaker 1: We're taking in all of that morality into the press era,
Speaker 1: and we're judging again. We're doubling down on that judgment
Speaker 1: of those women. That was part of the thesis of
Speaker 1: my book. I mean, that's just one aspect of it.
Speaker 1: That's a bit that a lot of people like to
Speaker 1: jump on. But you know, the other thing was I
Speaker 1: wanted to tell these women's stories. Now, the second part
Speaker 1: of your question was about the response to this, and
Speaker 1: there are a lot of people who were furious at
Speaker 1: the suggestion not all of them had been telling sex
Speaker 1: at the time of death. Yeah, And the interesting thing
Speaker 1: is I learned something really fascinating about this, which is
Speaker 1: the people who hold on to this are people who
Speaker 1: have invested their own lives in ripparology, which is the
Speaker 1: study of Jack the Ripper and their own egos. And
Speaker 1: so by me, you know, somebody who is an outsider
Speaker 1: from this community of riparologists. You know, spent like decades,
Speaker 1: some of them just like reading the same stuff over
Speaker 1: and over again, either trying to solve the murder mystery
Speaker 1: or developing their own theories. So me, this outsider comes
Speaker 1: and says, well, actually this is kind of wrong. It
Speaker 1: just totally disrupted their sense of identity, their ego. It
Speaker 1: was like me saying to a load of men, well
Speaker 1: actually you're wrong, and they were just utterly horrified. I mean,
Speaker 1: months before the book even came out, before any of
Speaker 1: them had ever even read it. I had this man,
Speaker 1: who is you know, one of this sort of more
Speaker 1: imminent ripparologists basically threatening me on Twitter saying you can't
Speaker 1: talk about your research until we've vetted it, like excuse me,
Speaker 1: and then being aft at, and then I get blamed
Speaker 1: somehow for being somebody who incited problems when these people
Speaker 1: were tearing apart a book they hadn't read, and then
Speaker 1: when the book came out, claimed to be impartial in
Speaker 1: their criticism. You know, there's a big difference between criticism
Speaker 1: and trolling, and it was pretty incessant trolling and being
Speaker 1: also compared to a Holocaust denier being called a liar,
Speaker 1: being called a fraud, a somebody who made stuff up,
Speaker 1: who hid evidence. I mean, these are people who would
Speaker 1: stop at nothing to prove that they were right, and
Speaker 1: that somehow I head straight into their territory. So there's
Speaker 1: this whole thing about like everybody feels they own these women.
Speaker 1: And that's what makes me so angry, is that how
Speaker 1: dare a group of people feel ownership over these women,
Speaker 1: these poor women who have never been able just to
Speaker 1: have a story and be recognized as individuals apart from
Speaker 1: Jack Ripper and apart from men who wanted to own them.
Speaker 1: Awful for you to experienced it, I have no doubt,
Speaker 1: but just to watch it happening was fascinating trying to
Speaker 1: get a handle on what it was that had so
Speaker 1: upset this community, because surely if your research had turned up, oh,
Speaker 1: actually know, they weren't selling sex. They were teachers and
Speaker 1: this one was a dentist, that doesn't change the fact
Speaker 1: that they were still killed by this person. So, like,
Speaker 1: I could never quite get my head around what is
Speaker 1: it that so fundamentally disturbing about taking away this prostitute
Speaker 1: label hundreds of years later. Well, I think there has
Speaker 1: been an actual deliberate misreading of my work in some
Speaker 1: cases where people have said, oh, she's anti sex worker
Speaker 1: because what she wants to do is exactly the opposite
Speaker 1: of what I've done. And even how you can even
Speaker 1: get that message from the book where I say literally
Speaker 1: at the end of the book, they were women, they
Speaker 1: were human beings, and that in itself is enough. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't understand. I think it is just a desire
Speaker 1: to own the narrative. And actually I think it's about them.
Speaker 1: It's about personal egos, male egos, some female egos, and
Speaker 1: just using these women for their own sense of identity.
Speaker 1: The book is not doing a Mary Magdalene thing, which
Speaker 1: is like, how dare you call her a prostitute? She
Speaker 1: wasn't that awful thing is? It's certainly not doing that.
Speaker 1: It's saying these are lives of these women. There's some
Speaker 1: evidence that some of them were selling sex, but interestingly
Speaker 1: some evidence there isn't for others. And the argument that
Speaker 1: they must have been sound sex because they were poor
Speaker 1: doesn't make any sense if you try and said that today,
Speaker 1: that if you're a homeless woman you must be selling
Speaker 1: sex as well. That doesn't make sense today. Why would
Speaker 1: that made sense in the nineteenth century. But it did
Speaker 1: show me just how entrenched and powerful that narrative is.
Speaker 1: And for my own money on it, it seems to
Speaker 1: me that it's because by doing that, by clinging onto
Speaker 1: that label of they were prostitutes, is it helps the
Speaker 1: Ripper narrative that we're so familiar with the cloak and
Speaker 1: the cobbled streets of swirling old London smog and all
Speaker 1: of that stuff. Because you know what, a serial killer
Speaker 1: who killed homeless women is not as sexy as a
Speaker 1: serial killer who killed whores. Right, that's the hook, that's it,
Speaker 1: that's what people like. He doesn't seem like some sort
Speaker 1: of rock star if he's killing homeless woman. No, that
Speaker 1: doesn't have the same ring to it at all, does it? Exactly? Wow,
Speaker 1: it's bizarre when you just like press paws on these
Speaker 1: things and you start to unpack it of like, yeah,
Speaker 1: just when you said that there, that does not have
Speaker 1: the same impact When you're studying this stuff and you're
Speaker 1: studying the history of murders and particularly how women have
Speaker 1: been killed. The jack the Ripper narrative is far reaching.
Speaker 1: And it's not just in people that really like to
Speaker 1: research this historian's point of view and the media, and
Speaker 1: it's in policing as well, because the name Ripper repeats,
Speaker 1: It gets given to different serial killers, doesn't it. And
Speaker 1: you researched other Rippers. So for my podcast, the next
Speaker 1: season of my podcast, we are actually looking at someone
Speaker 1: who was called the Blackout Ripper during the Blitz, and
Speaker 1: obviously we know about the Yorkshire Ripper. Also, almost a
Speaker 1: hundred years later, we have another killer who's called Ripper.
Speaker 1: But Blackout Ripper is the subject of my podcast, which
Speaker 1: is The Ripper Retold. So the first season was an
Speaker 1: expansion of my book and we kind of went into
Speaker 1: all sorts of corners and expanded on things and spoke
Speaker 1: to academics and judges and sex workers and give it
Speaker 1: a name. Drop, Pali, the name of your podcast is.
Speaker 1: It's called Bad Women The Ripper Retold. That was the
Speaker 1: first season. The second season is called Bad Women the
Speaker 1: Blackout Ripper, and that drops on the length of October.
Speaker 1: And so the Blackout Ripper was a man called Gordon
Speaker 1: Cummings who was in the Air Force. I don't actually
Speaker 1: want to go into that much detail about him because ultimately,
Speaker 1: what we're doing with this podcast, and what we were
Speaker 1: doing in the first season, and what I feel very
Speaker 1: strongly about is this is not about the murder per se.
Speaker 1: It's about the women, the society, the circumstances that created
Speaker 1: this murderer and created the victims and created this situation.
Speaker 1: So we're really examining London during the Blitz and Britain
Speaker 1: during the war and how a lot of violence against
Speaker 1: women went under the radar because we were so distracted
Speaker 1: with winning a war and because London was being bombed,
Speaker 1: and we look into women's lives and what they were like,
Speaker 1: and we look into the lives of the four women
Speaker 1: he killed and the two women he attempted to kill
Speaker 1: who survived. We look at a number of other cases
Speaker 1: from that time as well, cases of sexual assault, cases
Speaker 1: of domestic violence which ended in murder as well. Who
Speaker 1: was the victims did the Blackout Ripper? So the victims
Speaker 1: of the Blackout Ripper were Evelyn Hamilton, Evelyn Oatley, Margaret Lowe,
Speaker 1: Katherine McCaughey who survived and Door Joanne who was killed
Speaker 1: and another woman who was called Margaret Hayward but went
Speaker 1: by the name of Gretta Gretta Hayward, who also survived.
Speaker 1: So thankfully these women, the ones who survived, were able
Speaker 1: to inform the police and were responsible for getting him arrested.
Speaker 1: But the four other women were killed in some pretty
Speaker 1: horrific circumstances, and there is a sex worker link between
Speaker 1: them as well. With the exception of the first one,
Speaker 1: Evelyn Hamilton, but this is often the case, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean, I like to say that although a lot
Speaker 1: of these murders are sexually driven, they're women hating murders.
Speaker 1: Sometimes the fact that they're sex workers does play into it.
Speaker 1: It certainly makes them more vulnerable. But much like Jack
Speaker 1: the Ripper, much like a Yorkshire ripper, these people, these
Speaker 1: men killed women because they hated women, and sex workers
Speaker 1: are women, and we have to stop hiving them off
Speaker 1: as some separate thing. There's a lot of research about this,
Speaker 1: but I hear people say if you're a sex worker,
Speaker 1: I suppose there is a certain level of vulnerability because
Speaker 1: you have to meet someone, and when it's criminalized, you
Speaker 1: have to meet them in a clandestine way. But there
Speaker 1: are many professions where you meet somebody in their home
Speaker 1: and they aren't subject to this kind of stigma. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of research coming out about why serial killers
Speaker 1: attack sex workers, and it's not just that they are available,
Speaker 1: it's that, like you said, they are symbolic to them
Speaker 1: of a sexual woman. Yeah, an a stigmatized woman as well.
Speaker 1: And any group of people that you stigmatize violent is
Speaker 1: enabled against them and There's been research by a Canadian
Speaker 1: professoral John Loman in two thousand, I think it was,
Speaker 1: who traced newspaper reportings around street based sex work and
Speaker 1: he charted violence against them, and he found that whenever
Speaker 1: there was a media campaign to clean up the streets
Speaker 1: or get rid of these women, violence against them escalated
Speaker 1: because they're a stigmatized group of people. Yeah. Absolutely, It's
Speaker 1: very interesting that the sort of interplay between that and
Speaker 1: how we tacitly allow that violence to occur. Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: Is it the case that whenever there's a circle who
Speaker 1: attacks women that are selling sex, that's when the ripper
Speaker 1: label is applied? Yeah, I think it is. It tends
Speaker 1: to be, I mean, just anecdotally from what I've read
Speaker 1: from my experience. You know, I'm not a criminologist. I'm
Speaker 1: certainly not an expert in the whole cannon of murderers
Speaker 1: who have been given the label ripper, but it seems
Speaker 1: to be the case because of this connection. The ripper
Speaker 1: killed prostitutes. Therefore men who cut up women who are
Speaker 1: out on the street or but I mean the rs
Speaker 1: ripper used the hammer. I mean, that case is a
Speaker 1: perfect example of how the ripper stigma still plays out,
Speaker 1: and exactly like your research showed, there's evidence actually that
Speaker 1: at least one of the women that they called a
Speaker 1: prostitute Wilmam account, there's no evidence that she was selling
Speaker 1: sex apart from what Peter Sutcliffe himself said. But that's
Speaker 1: an example of an investigation that was pretty much derailed
Speaker 1: by stigma around sex work, wasn't it. Yeah, that's right,
Speaker 1: And as we well know, the police suffer long way
Speaker 1: to go in terms of cleaning up their prejudices about
Speaker 1: a whole load of things. They are not the most
Speaker 1: female friendly or open minded about race or anything. So
Speaker 1: it's not difficult to believe that these attitudes are very
Speaker 1: systemic and they allow violence to go under the radar
Speaker 1: in some cases. If you speak to any sex worker
Speaker 1: rights groups or communities today, they still have an incredibly
Speaker 1: problematic relationship with the police. There are efforts by various
Speaker 1: police forces to encourage women to come forward to report
Speaker 1: crimes and blah blah, but historically there's an awfully long
Speaker 1: way to go to repair that kind of reputation because
Speaker 1: as long as things are criminalized, you're effectively reporting a crime.
Speaker 1: Many sex workers are reported sexual assault from police force
Speaker 1: or stigma or prejudice, or an idea that they shouldn't
Speaker 1: report something against them because they're going to be told
Speaker 1: that they deserved it. In your thoughts, what do we
Speaker 1: kind of need to do going forward talking about these
Speaker 1: kind of crimes, like when you might start identifying this
Speaker 1: stuff in action, as it were, when you're watching a
Speaker 1: serial killer documentary or something. What do we need to
Speaker 1: do going forward? Oh? I just think we've got to stop.
Speaker 1: We've got to move the focus off of the killer.
Speaker 1: It's funny because there are a lot of people who
Speaker 1: don't get it. They don't get the idea that glamorizing
Speaker 1: the killer, you know, but we're not glamorized, and we're
Speaker 1: not making him look like he's all rocks or anything
Speaker 1: like that. He's you know, he's awful. No, no, No.
Speaker 1: Glamorizing means putting the spotlight on him, making it all
Speaker 1: about him. And I think a lot of people are
Speaker 1: just so not accustomed to actually even hearing crime stories
Speaker 1: which aren't murderer centric, that they don't know, they don't
Speaker 1: know how to process, they don't know what other options
Speaker 1: there are in terms of restructuring the narrative and how
Speaker 1: we can tell these stories. It will always be well,
Speaker 1: the murderer is the most important person, He's the protagonist.
Speaker 1: And my argument is the murder isn't the protagonist. Necessarily,
Speaker 1: we don't even have to ascribe a protagonist. There are
Speaker 1: other ways to discuss this. There are other ways in
Speaker 1: I have seen since your book a shift in how
Speaker 1: true crime documentaries are made, in the kind of tone
Speaker 1: of them, and there seems to be more of a
Speaker 1: recognition of, like, Jesus Christ, we've just spent ages just
Speaker 1: given the serial killers any nicknames, and we've just spent
Speaker 1: an hour on this documentary talking about all this violence
Speaker 1: that they did, and it's like people suddenly caught up
Speaker 1: and like, oh, fuck, yeah, we haven't actually spoken. There's
Speaker 1: been documentaries now about the victims of Dennis Nielsen and
Speaker 1: about the stigma that they were subject to victims of
Speaker 1: Jeffrey dam But again, I kind of see this slight
Speaker 1: in creeping through. There are the more salacious documentaries there,
Speaker 1: but they seem to have tacked on this kind of
Speaker 1: but obviously we need to remember the victims. They're just
Speaker 1: doing the same thing, but they're putting that at the end,
Speaker 1: I know it drives me bananas. It really does. And
Speaker 1: I've seen this kind of battle go on within production
Speaker 1: companies that I've spoken to that want to do something
Speaker 1: with my material and other material, and it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: we're going to do this and it but you see
Speaker 1: the thread that runs through It has to be him.
Speaker 1: It has to be the tension had No, there are
Speaker 1: other ways of doing this. It doesn't have to be
Speaker 1: about the murderer. Oh, but then you lose the tension.
Speaker 1: No other ways of doing it. If you've just spent
Speaker 1: an hour talking about somebody being disemboweled, putting a nice
Speaker 1: memorial to them on the end, it's probably not helping
Speaker 1: the fact that this was a real person. Absolutely, it's
Speaker 1: you know, like, let's focus on the crime. Yeah, let's
Speaker 1: talk about all the injuries, let's talk about how it happened.
Speaker 1: Let's look at the blood and the gun, jair photos,
Speaker 1: jair photos, and then oh, moment of silence for the victims. No,
Speaker 1: it doesn't work that way. You're not a victim centric
Speaker 1: program or series or you know, story if you do that.
Speaker 1: I mean, we've still got a long way to go,
Speaker 1: I suppose, but at least people are becoming more aware
Speaker 1: of it that it's kind of problematic, like people are
Speaker 1: finally starting to go actually it's having a street tour
Speaker 1: of the Jack the Ripper victims. Is that a good thing?
Speaker 1: I mean, just frame that of like would you have
Speaker 1: a Jamie Bulger murder tour or a Harold Shipman, Like
Speaker 1: when you think about that, it's so insane. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: is insane, but it's somehow become like cultural background noise
Speaker 1: that we're like, oh, yeah, it's good for I hear this,
Speaker 1: and it's one for us as historians to grapple with,
Speaker 1: which is, oh, yeah, but it was so long ago,
Speaker 1: what does it matter? And then I point out, well, actually,
Speaker 1: it wasn't that long ago, and actually these women have
Speaker 1: descendants alive today, and the sex worker community is very
Speaker 1: much alive today and aware of this. And every time
Speaker 1: if we're talking about people one hundred years ago, if
Speaker 1: we trying to dress up that, oh, isn't it kind
Speaker 1: of like a sort of staged theater production because they
Speaker 1: were prostitutes? That has a resonance with people and how
Speaker 1: we talk about it today, it just does. It does.
Speaker 1: And again I don't think people are aware of the
Speaker 1: way in which we hear ambient stories, you know, and
Speaker 1: that becomes the norm and we take it in and
Speaker 1: then that becomes our default setting, you know. And that's
Speaker 1: what we understand, and that's the prism through which we
Speaker 1: see various things. And that truism, I say with air quotes,
Speaker 1: is constantly being reaffirmed. That Jack Roper killed prostitutes, So
Speaker 1: it's okay, hey, to kill prostitutes, a prostitutes to get killed.
Speaker 1: That being a prostitute means you're putting yourself in danger.
Speaker 1: It's your own fault if you die. You know, all
Speaker 1: of this stuff, and if you check people on that,
Speaker 1: like we're to grab anybody and say, pang on, can
Speaker 1: we kind of unpack this a little bit? Do you
Speaker 1: believe this? Do you? No? I don't. I don't. Most
Speaker 1: of them will say that, but yet they're parroting these things.
Speaker 1: It's the same for every really kind of unpalatable set
Speaker 1: of beliefs we have. Whether that's misogyny, whether that's racism,
Speaker 1: it's certain things that if we don't correct this, and
Speaker 1: by correct I mean just even stop and examine them.
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about a puritanical movement to check what
Speaker 1: everybody says all the time and punish people for saying things,
Speaker 1: and there's a wrong thing, and there's a right thing.
Speaker 1: But stop pause, think that's the most important thing, you know.
Speaker 1: At the same time, it surprises people when I say this.
Speaker 1: I think the idea of banning Jack the reppertures in
Speaker 1: the East End, that's never going to happen, and I
Speaker 1: think it would be wrong. First of all, there's something
Speaker 1: to be learned from it. Second of all, not all
Speaker 1: of them are bad. And also, as you know and
Speaker 1: I know, and sex workers know, the moment you ban
Speaker 1: things is the moment they become taboo and then all
Speaker 1: hell breaks loose and it's not the most responsible thing
Speaker 1: to do. Before I let you go, and I can
Speaker 1: talk to you firm about this. You know that. But
Speaker 1: tell me about the new podcast. Tell me all the
Speaker 1: things that you're looking at on the new upcoming podcast.
Speaker 1: It sounds fascinating. Oh, it is fascinating, and we're still
Speaker 1: in the process of recording it and putting it together.
Speaker 1: So it's very interesting to suddenly move into the nineteen
Speaker 1: forties and to look at Britain at war, and to
Speaker 1: look at women, and to also look at how women's
Speaker 1: lives changed. Really quite dramatically in the twentieth century. And
Speaker 1: also to look at links again, I mean, there's so
Speaker 1: many similarities between the women men who were the victims
Speaker 1: of the Blackout Ripper and the women who were the
Speaker 1: victims of Jack the Ripper, and that they came from
Speaker 1: backgrounds of poverty, broken homes, tremendous hardship. It's interesting to
Speaker 1: trace that. It's interesting to see how often that paves
Speaker 1: a road for a lot of women to go into
Speaker 1: sex work. Again, I think when we're looking at modern
Speaker 1: urban problems and issues, I think looking back to the
Speaker 1: past can be really useful because we do have effectively
Speaker 1: kind of data sets. We can look at other cases,
Speaker 1: we can see how long these problems have been in existence,
Speaker 1: and we question that, and then it can help us
Speaker 1: reflect on why we haven't been able to adequately address
Speaker 1: these problems today. So, you know, history does serve a
Speaker 1: really important purpose and we can really harness that. But
Speaker 1: it is interesting effectively, Like I'm looking at this very
Speaker 1: much as a historian, So I'm interested in sort of
Speaker 1: social three data sets, and so I'm looking at two
Speaker 1: sets of like what has changed, what has stayed the same?
Speaker 1: Women had much more opportunity in the twentieth century. So,
Speaker 1: for example, woman like Evelyn Hamilton, who was the first victim,
Speaker 1: really escaped this kind of pattern of poverty that was
Speaker 1: very similar to what someone like Annie Chapman or Paul
Speaker 1: Nichol's experience. She came from a very similar background, but
Speaker 1: because education was so much more widely available to women
Speaker 1: in the twentieth century, she was able to train as
Speaker 1: a pharmacist and to be a single woman who lived
Speaker 1: on her own, who supported herself. She got a degree,
Speaker 1: she took exams, she got qualifications, and her sister, again
Speaker 1: from the same background, became a nurse, went into nursing. Now,
Speaker 1: this only started to happen for women really at the
Speaker 1: very very end of the nineteenth and beginning of the
Speaker 1: twentieth century, and all these possibilities opened up for them,
Speaker 1: women of the working classes, and it completely revolutionized women's
Speaker 1: lives and their ability to be autonomous, which is amazing,
Speaker 1: to make their own money, to make their own money,
Speaker 1: and to be independent. But you know, the interesting thing is,
Speaker 1: like the fact that she was a victim of the
Speaker 1: Blackout River is kind of questioning this autonomy that women
Speaker 1: had also at the time and during the Second World war,
Speaker 1: like everything was in disarray, you know, the men were gone,
Speaker 1: women were shagging American soldiers and like everybody that they
Speaker 1: felt able to. You know, there were women entering the army,
Speaker 1: you know, and it was kind of believed it was
Speaker 1: like a kind of sexual free for all with these women.
Speaker 1: And there was a lot of misogyny as a result
Speaker 1: of this, and a lot of this misogyny led to violence.
Speaker 1: The army in many cases upheld this misogyny and still does.
Speaker 1: We talked to a former member of the US Army,
Speaker 1: a woman who talks about the treatment she received, about
Speaker 1: how women just accept rape and sexual assault within the
Speaker 1: army today and that was what women of the ATS
Speaker 1: during the Second War we're expected to do. Also. It's amazing,
Speaker 1: and it just you look at things like that and
Speaker 1: then you're horrified, like I can't believe that happened, And
Speaker 1: then you find trace echoes of it, or not even
Speaker 1: an echo that it's actually still very much in force today.
Speaker 1: We're still doing the same thing again. This is like
Speaker 1: the thing that is just so chilling about whether it's
Speaker 1: the victims of Jack the Ripper, whether it's what happened
Speaker 1: during the Second World War, these problems are still here.
Speaker 1: You know, it's really hard to kind of sit there
Speaker 1: with this and think, why, why after all of these
Speaker 1: years some cases, you know, one hundred and thirty years
Speaker 1: longer even, why are we still content to live with this?
Speaker 1: Why is this still a part of our lives? Oh? Helly,
Speaker 1: I wish I had an easy anthrophy, but it has
Speaker 1: been amazing to talk to you. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: If people want to know more about you or your work,
Speaker 1: where can they find you? Well, I'm on Twitter, I
Speaker 1: have a website which is my name dot com Hallie
Speaker 1: Ribbin Holts. But most importantly, please listen to Bad Women,
Speaker 1: both season one and season two, which is dropping on
Speaker 1: the eleventh of October wherever you get your podcasts. It's
Speaker 1: so good anto I can't recommend it enough. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for joining me today. Oh it's been an
Speaker 1: absolute pleasure. Always fun to talk to you, Kate. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much everyone for listening, and thank you to
Speaker 1: Hallie for coming on the podcast and for sharing your research.
Speaker 1: Please do check out her podcast Bad Women. It's so
Speaker 1: good and if you like what you've heard, please don't
Speaker 1: forget to like with you and subscribe wherever it is
Speaker 1: that you get your podcasts. We honestly do love it
Speaker 1: hearing your feedback. We've got episodes coming up on Gothic
Speaker 1: Fiction in Decent Exposure and Haunted Houses, and I'll see
Speaker 1: you soon. This episode includes music by Epidemic Sound