Speaker 1: Pushkin. Mary Jane Kelly is hiding. A man from her
Speaker 1: troubled past has come looking for her. Stalking the dark
Speaker 1: and miserable neighborhood she calls home, asking after her in
Speaker 1: its dingy pubs, making sinister inquiries among the young women
Speaker 1: who work these streets by the dogs. This middle aged
Speaker 1: man seems determined to find Mary Jane. He tells people
Speaker 1: he is her father. Whoever he really is, his presence
Speaker 1: means danger for the young woman. Hiding is familiar to
Speaker 1: Mary Jane, and she's good at it. Whenever acquaintances and
Speaker 1: companions ask her for her life story, she offers up
Speaker 1: misty half truths. Even her friends and lovers don't really
Speaker 1: know her. The enigmatic Mary Jane holds her cards close
Speaker 1: to her chest, and for good reason. She may be young,
Speaker 1: but in her twenty three or so years, she's made
Speaker 1: some fearsome enemies. Perhaps the sudden presence of this unwelcome
Speaker 1: pursuer prompts her to move on. For Mary Jane soon
Speaker 1: packs her bags and heads to a new address, each
Speaker 1: move taking her closer and closer to Whitechapel and closer
Speaker 1: and closer to her murderer. I'm Hallie rubin Holt, you're
Speaker 1: listening to bad women. The Ripper retold a series about
Speaker 1: the real lives of the women killed by Jack the Ripper,
Speaker 1: and how we got their stories so wrong. One side
Speaker 1: mane plenty, and friends too by the score. Then fortune
Speaker 1: smilder upon me. I now one pass my door alone,
Speaker 1: and not to have Harne seems to lonely. I'm compliever broken.
Speaker 1: By the eighteen eighties, a discreet sort of party was
Speaker 1: becoming fashionable in certain rich London circles. Wealthy gentlemen would
Speaker 1: clamor to receive an invitation to a private ball, health
Speaker 1: and smart function rooms in the city's affluent west End. There,
Speaker 1: forty men would meet forty women. The men alone would
Speaker 1: be charged an admission fee to cover the cost of
Speaker 1: the room, higher the band and the supper. To the
Speaker 1: casual observer, this gathering of gentlemen in top hats in
Speaker 1: evening dress and beautiful young women in ballgowns and jewels
Speaker 1: would have hinted at nothing untoward. In fact, as an
Speaker 1: anonymous sexual adventurer known only as Walter wrote in his memoirs,
Speaker 1: there was little about this type of hall that might
Speaker 1: be described as immodest or irregular, except that no introductions
Speaker 1: were needed, and men asked any woman to dance, and
Speaker 1: women did not hesitate to ask men to dance. However,
Speaker 1: following supper the tone changed. The men kissed the women's
Speaker 1: shoulders as they waltzed. One or two couples would even
Speaker 1: dance a boardy poker. The dancing became romping, and concupissance
Speaker 1: asserted itself. Suggest of talk was now the order of
Speaker 1: the night. Eventually, the evening came to an end. Couples
Speaker 1: peeled off and departed in their carriages, only to continue
Speaker 1: their rebels and private at the women's lodgings in the
Speaker 1: city's leafy suburbs. This was the face of high class
Speaker 1: vice in London. Mary Jane Kelly, or a woman calling
Speaker 1: herself Mary Jane Kelly, entered this demimonde of silk dresses,
Speaker 1: champagne and oysters at some point between eighteen eighty three
Speaker 1: and eighteen eighty four. The luxuries of this existence may
Speaker 1: have been familiar to her, but then again they may not.
Speaker 1: According to one version of Mary Jane's tail, she was
Speaker 1: born in the West of Ireland in around eighteen six three.
Speaker 1: Her father took the family across the Irish Sea to
Speaker 1: settle in Wales when she was very young. She claimed
Speaker 1: to have been one of nine children. At sixteen, she
Speaker 1: said she'd married a coal miner that he died a
Speaker 1: year or two later in an explosion. Such a tale
Speaker 1: would have been readily believed, since mining disasters took an
Speaker 1: awful toll un Welsh pit villages. One blast in the
Speaker 1: summer of eighteen eighty killed every single worker at the
Speaker 1: New Risker Colliery in an instant. The shockwave claimed the
Speaker 1: lives of around one hundred and twenty colliers, woodworkers and masons,
Speaker 1: even the thirteen year old boys who sat alone in
Speaker 1: the dark opening and closing the pit's many doors. The
Speaker 1: explosion tore off the men's clothes and ripped apart the
Speaker 1: dozens of pit ponies that worked alongside them. Widowed, Mary
Speaker 1: Jane went to the city of Cardiff, where she had family.
Speaker 1: She stated that she fell in with a female cousin
Speaker 1: who followed a bad life. Only then came her move
Speaker 1: to London. Sometimes, though Mary Jane offered a variation on
Speaker 1: this origin story, she was Welsh and her parents, who
Speaker 1: had discarded her, still resided at Cardiff. To confuse matters Further,
Speaker 1: some of those who knew Mary Jane said that she
Speaker 1: was originally from a well to do family. One of
Speaker 1: her neighbors believed she had a female relation in London.
Speaker 1: It was on the stage. Mary Jane also told acquaintances
Speaker 1: that she had a two year old child who would
Speaker 1: have been born around eighteen eighty three, when she was
Speaker 1: also supposed to have spent eight or nine months in
Speaker 1: an infirmary in Cardiff. No trace of this child has
Speaker 1: ever been found, nor is there any record of its fate.
Speaker 1: An extended stay at a publicly funded general hospital was
Speaker 1: highly unlikely at this time, so if Mary Jane did
Speaker 1: indeed spend several months in an infirmary Indiff, this probably
Speaker 1: would have been at a private establishment, perhaps reformatory for
Speaker 1: fallen women or an asylum, which would have been the
Speaker 1: appropriate recourse for a middle class daughter who had transgressed
Speaker 1: the social norm by engaging in sex outside marriage. Mary
Speaker 1: Jane's life before her arrival in London amounts to a
Speaker 1: collection of disconnected snapshots, none of which has ever been verified.
Speaker 1: No Kelly's or Mary Jane's matchup in censuses or parish
Speaker 1: records in Wales or in Ireland, nor has any record
Speaker 1: of her minor husband ever been found. The only conclusion
Speaker 1: that might be drawn is that the tales of Mary
Speaker 1: Jane Kelly's life, even her name, were fabrications. She may
Speaker 1: have borrowed real components of her identity from someone she knew,
Speaker 1: or even dreamt them up entirely herself. This phenomena was
Speaker 1: fairly common for women who practiced her profession sex work.
Speaker 1: It's so easy for people to hide and to completely
Speaker 1: reinvent themselves in this period. It's before official identity documents,
Speaker 1: it's before any kind of state surveillance. Really, Julia Late
Speaker 1: is an expert on the Victorian sex trade, and it's
Speaker 1: incredibly easy to change your identity. People picked up names
Speaker 1: and took them back off like clothes. This might be
Speaker 1: aided by a move to another town and an alteration
Speaker 1: in dress and manners, but certain features of one's history
Speaker 1: were more difficult to conceal. A higher quality of education,
Speaker 1: for instance, left an indelible mark an individual. Schooling came
Speaker 1: across not only in their ability to read and write,
Speaker 1: but in their speech, they're bearing their interests, and often
Speaker 1: in their artistic or musical accomplishments. While the poor had
Speaker 1: access only to the most basic instruction. The rising middle
Speaker 1: classes sought to distinguished themselves socially by investing in the
Speaker 1: education of their children so that their progeny might bear
Speaker 1: the stamp of respectability. According to those who knew her,
Speaker 1: this distinction seems to have made itself apparent in Mary Jane.
Speaker 1: One of her landladies in London remarked on her high
Speaker 1: level of scholarship, while also commenting that she was a
Speaker 1: capable artist. At this time, training and drawing was only
Speaker 1: given to girls at fashionable young ladies schools, lending weight
Speaker 1: to the idea that Mary Jane hailed from a respectable,
Speaker 1: well to do family. More interesting, still, no one who
Speaker 1: knew Mary Jane noted any regional accent, possibly as a
Speaker 1: result of elocution lessons, and those who inquired about her
Speaker 1: origins had to be told she was Welsh or Irish.
Speaker 1: You would not have supposed, if you had met her
Speaker 1: on the street, that she belonged to the miserable class
Speaker 1: as she did, remarked a missionary who knew her in
Speaker 1: East London. Was always neatly and decently dressed, and looked
Speaker 1: quite nice and respectable. Of all the holes in Mary
Speaker 1: Jane's account none is so gaping as that which explains
Speaker 1: how or why she left Cardiff to join the sex
Speaker 1: trade in London's West End. At roughly twenty one years old.
Speaker 1: The sex trade was present in most parts of the metropolis,
Speaker 1: and by the early eighteen eighties it also began to
Speaker 1: move nearer to train stations, areas with transient populations and
Speaker 1: lodging houses. But the West End comprised the highest concentration
Speaker 1: of commercial sex in London, which was also entangled with
Speaker 1: a growing entertainment industry. London's theater land was located here, too.
Speaker 1: Newly illuminated by twinkling electric lights, people from all walks
Speaker 1: would come to enjoy nightlife in the West End, making
Speaker 1: it a popular circuit for soliciting. As a newcomer, it
Speaker 1: would have proven difficult for Mary Jane to negotiate an
Speaker 1: immediate entry into the upper ranks of the sex trade
Speaker 1: without the help of personal contacts, but perhaps a friend
Speaker 1: gave Mary Jane the name of a madam, because she
Speaker 1: was soon working under the auspices of a French landlady
Speaker 1: whose boarders were offered opportunities to make the acquaintance of
Speaker 1: middle and upper class gentlemen. These lodgings were in the
Speaker 1: chicest part of town, which had acquired a reputation as
Speaker 1: a haven for the so called artistic set, who indulged
Speaker 1: in sin discreetly behind shutters and dark velvet drapery. Assignations
Speaker 1: might occur by chance meeting. On one occasion, the anonymous
Speaker 1: memoiist Walter gained an introduction to a discreet London brothel
Speaker 1: by exchanging classes with its madam while on train. After
Speaker 1: he struck up conversation, she informed him that she was
Speaker 1: a dressmaker and employed only the prettiest girls at her
Speaker 1: place of business. Before disembarking, she handed him a card
Speaker 1: for her dress shop and invited him to call and
Speaker 1: try on like gloves. Walter was certain that she drummed
Speaker 1: up a good amount of trade by approaching men in
Speaker 1: railway carriages and on public transport. Other meetings might be
Speaker 1: arranged through an exchange of letters. A very rich man
Speaker 1: would write to the brothel madam. A lot of these
Speaker 1: brothels catered to what was called flagellation, so what we
Speaker 1: would today call s and m. There was this real
Speaker 1: trend in England that posh Englishmen really liked flagellation, and
Speaker 1: women made quite a lot of money doing it. Mary
Speaker 1: Jane would likely have had a high class clientele. As
Speaker 1: a young woman in her twenties, with blue eyes and long,
Speaker 1: luxuriant hair, she would have found no obstacle to making
Speaker 1: a good living in the center of town. There's a
Speaker 1: range of things she could have been doing, but she
Speaker 1: definitely would have been making a fair amount of money. Then,
Speaker 1: who sought the company of women like Mary Jane through
Speaker 1: a landlady procurus would have expected to commit to an
Speaker 1: evening of entertainment in addition to receiving sex. A client
Speaker 1: would have paid the sum of five pounds up front
Speaker 1: and then taken her to dinner the following evening. Compared
Speaker 1: to the wages of the time, five pounds would translate
Speaker 1: to over three thousand dollars today. At venues like Saint
Speaker 1: James's restaurant known as Jimmy's or the Cafe Deller Europe,
Speaker 1: women and their male companions sat down to dine in
Speaker 1: smoke filled, mirrored and palm fronded rooms where they were
Speaker 1: tended by French and Italian waiters who were noted for
Speaker 1: their discretion. After gorging on oysters, deviled kidneys, and roast beef,
Speaker 1: all washed down with champagne. Mary Jane and her client
Speaker 1: would have traveled by hackney cap or carriage, either to
Speaker 1: an equally discreet hotel or back to her own bed.
Speaker 1: Such liaisons might also involve a trip to the theater,
Speaker 1: music hall, or races. In exchange for the pleasure of
Speaker 1: Mary Jane's company, her client would expect to be billed accordingly.
Speaker 1: The price generally involved the purchase of trinkets as well
Speaker 1: as cash. Women also made themselves known to potential clients
Speaker 1: through public display. They would appear in the galleries of
Speaker 1: certain music halls and theaters, in addition to promenading in
Speaker 1: the streets. The Alhambra Theater catered to every rank of
Speaker 1: women in the sex trade. On any given night, there
Speaker 1: might be over a thousand women present. Access to the
Speaker 1: promenade encircling the ground floor of the auditorium cost a shilling.
Speaker 1: It cost more to get closer to the stage, but
Speaker 1: according to one visiting American author, catching the performance wasn't
Speaker 1: the prime attraction, for the space was choked, with men
Speaker 1: and women walking past each other, looking the stage, drinking
Speaker 1: of the bars, chafing each other in a rough way,
Speaker 1: and laughing loudly. He ventured into the other sections of
Speaker 1: the theater, too, rising higher and higher until he reached
Speaker 1: the cheapest seats far above the stage. When a woman
Speaker 1: goes to the sixpenny gallery in the Alhambra, she is
Speaker 1: indeed lost, beyond all hope of rescue. I came down, disgusted.
Speaker 1: The sixpenny gallery was not for Mary Jane, who referred
Speaker 1: to herself as Marie Jeannette and accumulated numerous expensive dresses,
Speaker 1: she would have been accustomed to elegant gentlemen making her
Speaker 1: proposals and promises, buying her gloves and jewelry, and spoiling
Speaker 1: her with fine food and drink. The savviest women in
Speaker 1: the sex trade understood that their youthful allure was fleeting,
Speaker 1: and that in order to capitalize on their worth, it
Speaker 1: was essential to seize every opportunity put before them. So
Speaker 1: when a mysterious gentleman offered to take Mary Jane to Paris,
Speaker 1: she agreed. Unfortunately, this visit to France would turn out
Speaker 1: to be no vacation. The ripper retold, will be back
Speaker 1: in just a moment. Victorian travelers sent their lugger John separately,
Speaker 1: so Mary Jane packed most of her expensive wardrobe into
Speaker 1: a trunk, expecting it to be forwarded to her new
Speaker 1: address in Paris. But the baggage was never sent, and
Speaker 1: perhaps its failure to arrive alerted Mary Jane to the
Speaker 1: possibility that she had been deceived. The trafficking of women
Speaker 1: between Britain and continental Europe was a lucrative enterprise, aided
Speaker 1: by the expansion of the rail and shipping networks. Just
Speaker 1: as London became a receiving hub for young women from France,
Speaker 1: Belgium and Germany to meet a domestic appetite for variety,
Speaker 1: so English girls were shipped out to brothels abroad. Those
Speaker 1: involved in international sex trafficking worked discreetly and carefully, so
Speaker 1: that a woman destined for overseas trade would not guess
Speaker 1: what awaited her. It's probable that Mary Jane's French landlady
Speaker 1: had some role in sending her to Paris, and that
Speaker 1: she colluded with the mysterious gentleman to place her in
Speaker 1: a brothel. Fare whatever the scenario, she seemed certain enough
Speaker 1: that Mary Jane would have no need for her trunk
Speaker 1: of pretty gowns when she arrived at her destination, likely
Speaker 1: a state sanctioned brothel or meison close. Some women were
Speaker 1: duped into foreign prostitution, but others who were already in
Speaker 1: the sex trade and looking for a change, went abroad
Speaker 1: to such establishments willingly. However, once at a maison close,
Speaker 1: a woman's own belonging might be taken away and replaced
Speaker 1: with new silk dresses and other finery, adding to an
Speaker 1: impossible debt she now owed her employer. Such ruses had
Speaker 1: been common practice in brothels for centuries and would just
Speaker 1: as likely to catch seasoned sex laborers off guard as
Speaker 1: they were to entrap the novice. They would get their room,
Speaker 1: they would get their clothes, they would potentially get their
Speaker 1: ticket to Paris. But it was all money's owing, and
Speaker 1: that debt could be manipulated to be greater than what
Speaker 1: it originally was. These forms of debt bondage affected migrant
Speaker 1: people all over the world in the late nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: who would have to pay migration agents, pay the steamship
Speaker 1: ticket off, pay off the person who found them their job.
Speaker 1: This was a kind of exploitative system in which many
Speaker 1: many people were caught, including women who were selling sex
Speaker 1: life at a maison close was tightly regulated in order
Speaker 1: to keep the streets free of the evils of prostitution.
Speaker 1: The law restricted women's movements in and out of the
Speaker 1: brothels where they worked. They were only permitted in public
Speaker 1: during certain hours. Even then, they were not allowed to
Speaker 1: congregate in groups, loiter near their doors, or even make
Speaker 1: themselves visible through their windows, which were to remain shuttered.
Speaker 1: What's more, all new recruits were expected to register with
Speaker 1: the police demur or Morality Police, and to submit to
Speaker 1: twice weekly examinations for venereal disease. If indebtedness for a
Speaker 1: brothel was not enough to break a traffic to woman's will,
Speaker 1: the strict laws governing her personal freedom would complete the process.
Speaker 1: Once caught within the rigid jaws of a foreign maison close,
Speaker 1: a woman on her own, without friends, and unable to
Speaker 1: communicate in French would have had little hope of escape.
Speaker 1: By Mary Jane Kelly's day, the trafficking of women had
Speaker 1: become something of a cause celeb However, only certain victims
Speaker 1: were deemed deserving of sympathy and of protection under the law.
Speaker 1: The idea that innocent women were being compelled into the
Speaker 1: sex trade and forcibly shipped overseas, gripped the public imagination,
Speaker 1: and was extravagantly sensationalized in the press. Adeline Tanner was
Speaker 1: in some ways the original victim of trafficking, in that
Speaker 1: it was her story that launched the whole thing. In
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy eighteen eighty, nineteen year old Adeline was a
Speaker 1: recently unemployed domestic servant when a respectably dressed man struck
Speaker 1: up a conversation with her in a railway waiting room.
Speaker 1: He plied her with drink and introduced her to a
Speaker 1: man named Eduard Roger. After a short conversation, Roget told
Speaker 1: her he had taken a great fancy to me, that
Speaker 1: he would like to take me to Paris, and if,
Speaker 1: after seeing his grand house I would like to be
Speaker 1: his wife, he would marry me. A more experienced young
Speaker 1: woman might possibly have sensed the direction of travel, but
Speaker 1: nineteen year old Ada Lene was a virgin and sheltered one.
Speaker 1: Dazzled and intoxicated, she enthusiastically agreed. Of course, Adeline had
Speaker 1: been tricked. Roget wouldn't be her husband, but her pimp.
Speaker 1: She was not destined for Paris, but for a brothel
Speaker 1: in Brussels. Before departing England, she was issued with a
Speaker 1: false identity. Upon her arrival in Belgium, she was informed
Speaker 1: that her papers were in fact illegal and she would
Speaker 1: be immediately arrested if she attempted to flee. Adeline eventually
Speaker 1: escaped her traffickers and spoke about her experiences as part
Speaker 1: of an investigation into this illicit trade. And it's really
Speaker 1: interesting reading her testimony in which she does appear as
Speaker 1: a very innocent victim and she is being asked by
Speaker 1: a panel of men to narrate her abuse and victimization
Speaker 1: for the sake of proving that it existed. They craft
Speaker 1: her story and encouraged her to craft a story as
Speaker 1: this kind of performance of ideal victimhood, ignorance and innocence
Speaker 1: and vulnerability and guilelessness and naivete. The controversial journalist W. T. Stead,
Speaker 1: whose Crusading newspaper we've mentioned often in this series, published
Speaker 1: a powerful investigation into the commercial exploitation of children for sex.
Speaker 1: All those who are squeamish and all those who are prudish,
Speaker 1: and all those who prefer to live in a fool's
Speaker 1: paradise of imaginary innocence and purity will do well not
Speaker 1: to read the Powell mal Gazette of Monday and the
Speaker 1: three following days. This series of articles was entitled The
Speaker 1: Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon. Stead invoked hyperbolic subheadings like
Speaker 1: the violation of Virgins and how girls are bought and ruined.
Speaker 1: These virgins are mostly of tender age, being too young
Speaker 1: in fact, to understand the nature of the crime of
Speaker 1: which they are the unwilling victims. These outrages are constantly
Speaker 1: perpetrated with almost absolute impunity. Instead, wanted to show how
Speaker 1: young girls could be bought from their parents and dispatched
Speaker 1: to brothels, so he staged just such a transaction himself.
Speaker 1: He orchestrated the purchase of a thirteen year old virgin
Speaker 1: girl named Eliza Armstrong, who he called Lily in his
Speaker 1: newspaper expose. Because he was always one for heavy handed metaphors,
Speaker 1: and he used the story of Lily or Eliza Armstrong
Speaker 1: to prove this buying and selling of young virgin girls
Speaker 1: in Britain was rife and very possible. But then, for
Speaker 1: the sake of his metaphor, he insisted on having Lily
Speaker 1: or Eliza, I should say he insisted on having Eliza
Speaker 1: forcibly inspected for virginity. He arranged her assault in the
Speaker 1: name of protecting girls, and it makes me so angry
Speaker 1: whenever I think about it. When it came to light
Speaker 1: at rather than just reporting on a tragic case, Stead
Speaker 1: had actually arranged for the purchase of Eliza, rival newspapers
Speaker 1: called for his head. He was found guilty of abduction
Speaker 1: and procurement and sentenced to three months in prison. Even
Speaker 1: though Lily's story was pure fabrication, Stead's articles proved incredibly popular,
Speaker 1: stirring a moral panic that British girls were being sold
Speaker 1: into so called white slavery. But by English law, women
Speaker 1: like Mary jen Kelly were not to be classed as
Speaker 1: victims of trafficking. Only women and girls who had previously
Speaker 1: been ignorant of sex could hold the identity of victim.
Speaker 1: I fully believe that she was defrauded to Paris, that
Speaker 1: she ran into a very coercevie, potentially even abusive situation
Speaker 1: when she arrived, and that she found it difficult to
Speaker 1: get out. This is, by any definition, what would call trafficking.
Speaker 1: For the law to say that it was impossible to
Speaker 1: traffic a woman who was already a prostitute rendered the
Speaker 1: law itself practically obsolete. But it also tells us again
Speaker 1: a great deal about who gets to be an ideal
Speaker 1: victim and who doesn't get to be a victim at all.
Speaker 1: Mary Jane somehow managed to wriggle free from the snare
Speaker 1: that had been laid for her, and spent no more
Speaker 1: than a fortnight in Paris. If she was well educated,
Speaker 1: as has been suggested, she would have possessed at least
Speaker 1: a basic grasp of French, enough perhaps to communicate with
Speaker 1: an amenable client or with the police. According to French statute,
Speaker 1: any customer who suspected illegal trafficking might make an appeal
Speaker 1: to the police Demurs, who were bound by law to
Speaker 1: release any English girl detained an abroadl against her will,
Speaker 1: even if she has not paid her debt. Setbacks such
Speaker 1: as this would not have been taken lightly by the
Speaker 1: traffickers who lost money when their so called human parcels escaped,
Speaker 1: nor would they have liked knowing a young woman was
Speaker 1: at large who could attest to their crimes. Pimps and
Speaker 1: trafficking gangs were not people with whom to trifle. They
Speaker 1: felt no compunction at removing and inconvenient witness if it
Speaker 1: helped them escape the law. Mary Jane had somehow outrun
Speaker 1: her captors in Paris, but her new life in London
Speaker 1: would be neither tranquil nor safe. The rippery told would
Speaker 1: be back in just a moment. At first glance, the
Speaker 1: Ratcliffe Highway, close to London's docks, offered an innocent mercantile impression.
Speaker 1: The first stretches of the street were stuffed with every
Speaker 1: shop and outfitter a mariner might wire. However, further down
Speaker 1: the highway, its truer character was revealed. Cheap lodging houses,
Speaker 1: music halls, pubs, and opium dens replaced the ship's chandlers,
Speaker 1: and the thrumming sound of sin grew ever more audible.
Speaker 1: The Ratcliffe Highway had its own identity and economy, driven
Speaker 1: by the steady influx of sailors who stalked at streets
Speaker 1: in search of drink and sex. Rousing polka melodies hung
Speaker 1: in the air, punctuated by the smashing of glass and jaws.
Speaker 1: The spilling of drink and blood were regular occurrences among
Speaker 1: its salty visitors. It was in this neighborhood that Mary
Speaker 1: Jane washed up, had it been safe for her to
Speaker 1: return to the West End to show her face in
Speaker 1: Piccadilly or the Haymarket, she might simply have continued in
Speaker 1: her previous luxurious existence. Instead, she had little choice but
Speaker 1: to turn eastward. Luckily for her or the east ends
Speaker 1: of London, the Ratcliffe Highway and the Haymarket were just
Speaker 1: universes away from each other at this time. If Mary
Speaker 1: Jane was hiding from her traffickers, they were unlikely to
Speaker 1: start looking for her. In this grim and desolate district.
Speaker 1: She took up lodgings in the house of Elizabeth Bocou,
Speaker 1: who rented rooms to women who sold sex. How much
Speaker 1: of her past she revealed to her new madam is unknown,
Speaker 1: but if Kelly was not Mary Jane's real surname, then
Speaker 1: it may have been at this point that she adopted it.
Speaker 1: If her pursuers were hunting for a welshwoman, it might
Speaker 1: have been sensible to assume a common Irish name for
Speaker 1: Mary Jane. The clientele and practices on the Ratcliffe Highway
Speaker 1: would have been rather different to those she had been
Speaker 1: accustomed to in the West End. One social reformer observed
Speaker 1: the particular protocols of the area when a ship arrives
Speaker 1: in the docks, so many of the women as are disengaged,
Speaker 1: go down to the entrance and there and then endeavor
Speaker 1: to invague or the seamen. These attachments would last for days.
Speaker 1: A sailor's chosen girl would accompany him hither and thither,
Speaker 1: always in the neighborhood, carousing by night and sleeping by day.
Speaker 1: When a seafarer's purse was empty or his shore leaf
Speaker 1: had ended, there was always the next shipload to greet,
Speaker 1: unless a replacement could be found in a pub or
Speaker 1: on the street. More of this noted that women from
Speaker 1: the Ratcliffe Highway appeared to tout for trade more brazenly
Speaker 1: than those in the West End or other parts of
Speaker 1: the city. The demand for commercial sex quite literally swelled
Speaker 1: with the tide, so that even the police found it
Speaker 1: difficult to regulate prostitution. Women who sold sex walked the
Speaker 1: streets openly without much fear of the authorities. Mary Jane
Speaker 1: may well have spent her evenings in the public singing
Speaker 1: rooms in order to drawn seafaring custom. Most of these
Speaker 1: smoke filled drinking dens were decorated with a nautical theme,
Speaker 1: their walls dauged with crude seascapes, anchors and mermaids. As
Speaker 1: singer's belted out tunes about lovely lasses left ashore. Most
Speaker 1: of the audience spoke Swedish, Danish, German, Portuguese, Spanish or
Speaker 1: French and didn't understand a word of what was being sung. Still,
Speaker 1: they were happy to slump on the wooden benches, drink
Speaker 1: the bar dry, and fondle their girls until a fight
Speaker 1: broke out. Perhaps desperate for money, Mary Jane seems to
Speaker 1: have enlisted missus Boku to help her reclaim that missing
Speaker 1: trunk of expensive dresses, which had failed to follow her
Speaker 1: to Paris. Mary Jane could not have felt easy about
Speaker 1: returning to a part of town where she was known,
Speaker 1: and a sense of trepidation must have gnawed at her
Speaker 1: as she traveled west with her new procurus for support.
Speaker 1: It's unlikely that this risky trip paid off. In all probability,
Speaker 1: mary Jane's trunk would have been sold off long ago.
Speaker 1: Worse still, the visit seems to have attracted unwanted attention,
Speaker 1: for shortly afterwards, a man pitched up on the Ratcliffe Highway,
Speaker 1: seeking Mary Jane and claiming to be her father. Although
Speaker 1: they were almost certainly not related. She seems to have
Speaker 1: avoided him successfully, but his presence must still have been
Speaker 1: a source of intense anxiety. Adding to this strain, Mary
Speaker 1: Jane began quarreling with her landlady the dispute mary Jane's
Speaker 1: drinking habits, as in the more expensive West End, an
Speaker 1: evening's entertainment along the Ratcliffe Highway revolved around drink. However,
Speaker 1: savvy women in the sex trade would tipple with care.
Speaker 1: Unfamiliar customers could be dangerous. To fill one with booze
Speaker 1: was like playing Russian roulette. A woman could never predict
Speaker 1: what sort of client a man would be once intoxicated.
Speaker 1: If she was fortunate, he might slip into a stupor.
Speaker 1: If she was less so, he might beat her senseless.
Speaker 1: Her best defense was to remain as sober as possible.
Speaker 1: But drink also offered a convenient escape from a miserable existence.
Speaker 1: It obliterated the horrors of intimacy with a man who
Speaker 1: was physically repellent, and it quieted, even for a short time,
Speaker 1: feelings of self loathing, guilt, pain, and traumatic memories of violence.
Speaker 1: Mary Jane was likely to have drunk throughout her career
Speaker 1: in the sex trade, but after her return from France,
Speaker 1: her usage became problematic. Missus Bocu's sister in law said
Speaker 1: Mary Jane was one of the most decent and nicest
Speaker 1: girls when sober, but she became very quarrelsomilar, you see
Speaker 1: when in toxic head. Missus Boku would have been accustomed
Speaker 1: to drinkers. Even so, Mary Jane's indulgence in intoxicance soon
Speaker 1: made her an unwelcome friend. Mary Jane left, however, she
Speaker 1: did not go very far. McCarthy's, a nearby establishment, was
Speaker 1: almost identical to missus Bocu's concern, except that its offer
Speaker 1: of a legal drink and female company was used to
Speaker 1: lure in unwary sailors and rob them. Sometime between late
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty six and early eighteen eighty seven, a plasterer
Speaker 1: called Joseph Fleming fell in love with Mary Jane. A
Speaker 1: construction worker, was no match for the rich gentleman who
Speaker 1: so recently must have swooned for her, but she seems
Speaker 1: to have returned Fleming's affections. Marriage might even have been discussed.
Speaker 1: At any rate, Mary Jane left the environs of the
Speaker 1: docks and moved in with him, but Fleming's powerful protestations
Speaker 1: of love were no assurance of his kindness. It is
Speaker 1: said he ill used Mary Jane, prompting her to uproot
Speaker 1: once again. But where to go. Nearby was a neighborhood
Speaker 1: full of cheap housing and densely populated with people who
Speaker 1: didn't pry into anyone's past that closely. So packing up
Speaker 1: the tatters of her once fine wardrobe, Mary Jane moved
Speaker 1: to the edge of Whitechapel. Surely there she might hide
Speaker 1: safe from any pursuers with murder in mind. Bad women.
Speaker 1: The Rippery Told is brought to you by Pushkin Industries
Speaker 1: and me Hallie Rubinhold, and is based on my book
Speaker 1: The Five. It was produced and co written by Ryan
Speaker 1: Dilley and Alice Fines, with help from Pete Norton. Pascal
Speaker 1: Wise Sound designed and mixed the show and composed all
Speaker 1: the original music. You also heard the voice talents of Bencrow,
Speaker 1: Melanie Gutridge, Gemma Saunders and Rufus Wright. The show also
Speaker 1: wouldn't have been possible without the work of miel La Belle,
Speaker 1: Jacob Weisberg, Jenguerra Heather Fane, Carla mcgliori, Maggie Taylor, Nikolemarino,
Speaker 1: The Tal Mullard, Eric Sandler, and Daniella La Khan. With
Speaker 1: special thanks to my agents Sarah Ballard and Ellie Karn