Speaker 1: Pushkin. It's a warm September evening. The sky has darkened
Speaker 1: and a moon has risen over the flat, oily river.
Speaker 1: Hundreds of day trippers and pleasure seekers are aboard the
Speaker 1: Princess Alice as she steams through London. Music, singing, and
Speaker 1: the excited shouts of children give the so called Moonlight
Speaker 1: Cruise a holiday. Few no one notices that the craft
Speaker 1: is moving directly into the course of a great iron
Speaker 1: hulled freighter. The Princess Alice plows on her paddle wheels,
Speaker 1: biting into the rank sewage bread waters at the Thames.
Speaker 1: What unfolds over the next few terrible minutes will be
Speaker 1: a tragedy for the city, but an opportunity for Elizabeth Stride,
Speaker 1: maybe the first time she has benefited from the misfortune
Speaker 1: of others, but it will not be the last, before
Speaker 1: she meets her murderer on the streets of Whitechapel. I'm
Speaker 1: Hallie rubbin Holt. You're listening to Bad Women The Ripper retold,
Speaker 1: a series about the real lives of the women killed
Speaker 1: by Jack the Ripper and how we got their stories
Speaker 1: so wrong. One side, money plenty and friends too. By
Speaker 1: the score, then fortune smild upon me. Now one passmo
Speaker 1: anney and not with her to make Elizabeth, Gustav's daughter,
Speaker 1: was borne by candlelight in the darkness of a Swedish November.
Speaker 1: Her father tended the land and rural towards lander, cultivating
Speaker 1: fields of grain, flax and potatoes. He also owned a barn,
Speaker 1: several cows, pigs, chickens, and a horse. The family was
Speaker 1: more prosperous than many in the area, and Elizabeth grew
Speaker 1: up in a sturdy clapboard farmhouse as a farmer's daughter
Speaker 1: in the eighteen forties. She would have been initiated into
Speaker 1: the routine of agricultural life as soon as she was
Speaker 1: steady enough on her feet to carry pails and gather eggs.
Speaker 1: When she grew older, she would have assisted with milking,
Speaker 1: tending the chickens and pigs, making butter, and even distilling aquivit,
Speaker 1: the alcoholic liquor traditionally offered at meal times in Swedish households.
Speaker 1: Elizabeth's local community was small and conservative. She was raised
Speaker 1: a Lutheran, and prayer would have punctuated her days upon waking,
Speaker 1: before meals and before bed, asking the Lord to shepherd
Speaker 1: his flock safely through the long night. As a girl,
Speaker 1: little was expected of her beyond mastery of housekeeping, childcare,
Speaker 1: and basic animal husbandry, all of which she could learn
Speaker 1: from assisting her mother. She therefore received little schooling. Elizabeth
Speaker 1: probably grew accustomed to the constant rhythm of farm life,
Speaker 1: the turning of the seasons, the cutting of the fields,
Speaker 1: the freezing of the earth before the sowing of seeds.
Speaker 1: But just before her seventeenth birthday everything changed. Elizabeth set
Speaker 1: out for the city of Gothenburg to seek employment as
Speaker 1: a servant. In Sweden, as in other European it was
Speaker 1: traditional for young women to gain experience of domestic life
Speaker 1: beyond the confines of their homes and communities. This was
Speaker 1: seen as a kind of apprenticeship before they eventually assumed
Speaker 1: command of their own households. Elizabeth went to work as
Speaker 1: a maid for a lower middle class family. Domestic labor
Speaker 1: at this time was cheap and in plentiful supply, so
Speaker 1: even families of meager means could afford to hire help.
Speaker 1: Employers were obliged to house, feed, clothe, and tend to
Speaker 1: their servants when they were ill. In return, servants offered
Speaker 1: their complete obedience, yet Choosing and hiring a servant could
Speaker 1: also be risky. Bringing unknown young women into the home
Speaker 1: could have unpredictable consequences. There was a preference for the
Speaker 1: ruddy cheeked daughters of yeomen, who smelled like grass and goats.
Speaker 1: It was believed that these girls had not yet learned
Speaker 1: how to deceive or steal. They were innocent and honest.
Speaker 1: By contrast, urban girls had been exposed to avarice and licentiousness.
Speaker 1: Although it was a master or mistress's responsibility to keep
Speaker 1: them safe, peril nonetheless lurked at every turn for maidservants,
Speaker 1: whether or not she encouraged the advances of the master
Speaker 1: or his son, his brother, cousin, friend, or father. There
Speaker 1: were plenty of opportunities for a young servant woman to
Speaker 1: find herself alone with men, to be coerced, overpowered, or
Speaker 1: to give in to mutual desire. And so while service
Speaker 1: was believed to be the making of a young working
Speaker 1: class woman, becoming entangled with a man could be her undoing.
Speaker 1: Some women's lovers would promise to look after them, and
Speaker 1: many made good on these pledges, establishing their mistresses and lodgings.
Speaker 1: Some men lived alongside their paramours and they posed as
Speaker 1: married couples. Others visited only on occasion. Some relationships continued
Speaker 1: for many years, if not a lifetime, but many more
Speaker 1: fell upon art within weeks. The nineteenth century double standard
Speaker 1: enabled men to walk away from such attachments. By contrast,
Speaker 1: it often devastated the lives of the women who were
Speaker 1: left to bear the crying and gurgling consequences of these unions.
Speaker 1: Elizabeth has taken to the grave the name of the
Speaker 1: man who altered her life with his lust. It will
Speaker 1: never be known whether her first encounter with him was
Speaker 1: consensual or forced, where it occurred, or under what circumstances,
Speaker 1: But by March eighteen sixty five she was six months pregnant,
Speaker 1: and whoever had got her into that position was no
Speaker 1: longer present to shield her from the consequences. Until the
Speaker 1: eighteen sixties, in Sweden, extramarital sex and illegitimate pregnancy were illegal,
Speaker 1: punishable offenses. In fact, across all Europe and its colonies,
Speaker 1: sexual immorality was a source of anxiety, verging on para noia.
Speaker 1: In Gothenburg, the prostitution police charge placing women on the
Speaker 1: sex trade register, colloquially referred to as the Register of Shame.
Speaker 1: There were two lists, one containing the names of acknowledged
Speaker 1: prostitutes and the other of suspected women, pregnant, single women,
Speaker 1: women frequently seen alone with men or out at night,
Speaker 1: and mistresses. The chief concern was the spread of venereal disease,
Speaker 1: specifically syphilis, and bad women were seen as responsible for
Speaker 1: its spread. This belief was then used to justify the
Speaker 1: harsh treatment of women in legislation designed to prevent infection.
Speaker 1: When her pregnancy began to show, it was surmised that
Speaker 1: twenty one year old Elizabeth was guilty of lecherous living.
Speaker 1: She was ordered to appear at the Police Inspection House.
Speaker 1: On her first visit, she was entered into the official
Speaker 1: register as public woman number ninety seven. She was then
Speaker 1: further questioned and her answers included in the ledger age
Speaker 1: twenty one years, appearance, blue eyes, brown hair, straight nose,
Speaker 1: oval face, five foot two inches, slender build. I surmise
Speaker 1: that this woman has not been living a life of gluttony.
Speaker 1: The rules that were to govern Elizabeth's daily life would
Speaker 1: then have been explained to her a lecture intended to
Speaker 1: humiliate her. You will attend the inspection house twice a
Speaker 1: week on Tuesdays and Fridays, or face a rest and
Speaker 1: a fine, or three nights in prison on rations of
Speaker 1: bread and water. You will not be permitted outdoors after
Speaker 1: eleven at night. You must conduct a quiet and a
Speaker 1: silent life. You must not loiter in the windows or
Speaker 1: doorway of your home. You must dress in a decent
Speaker 1: way when appearing in public and not call attention to yourself.
Speaker 1: At the Police Inspection House, Elizabeth would have been subjected
Speaker 1: to regular examinations of her genitalia. This routine was designed
Speaker 1: as much to chasen the city's public women as to
Speaker 1: screen them against the dreaded syphilis. Syphilis is transmitted primarily
Speaker 1: through sexual intercourse, and it has three key stages in
Speaker 1: its acquired form, primary, secondary and tertiary. And Hanley is
Speaker 1: a lecturer in the History of science and Medicine at
Speaker 1: Birkbeck University of London. The primary stage is characterized by
Speaker 1: the presence of a soft saw or canker at the
Speaker 1: side of infection. So in most cases this would have
Speaker 1: been on a person's genitals. And you know this saw
Speaker 1: could appear a couple of weeks to several months after
Speaker 1: infection and it will last for a short period of
Speaker 1: time and then disappear, and when it disappeared, the patient
Speaker 1: moved into a period of disease latency. The secondary stage
Speaker 1: could occur anywhere from several months to several years. Later,
Speaker 1: patients would experience flu like symptoms, a fever, swollen glands,
Speaker 1: a sore throat, and then the eruption of a rash,
Speaker 1: as well as wart like growths and lesions on their genitals. Eventually,
Speaker 1: it would attack the person's central nervous system. Suffer might
Speaker 1: experience behavioral changes, including paranoia and mood swings, deterioration of
Speaker 1: the spinal cord, and seizures. There were other visible symptoms
Speaker 1: as well. The soft tissue in a person's face begins
Speaker 1: to break down. This type of necrotic deterioration where person's
Speaker 1: nose disintegrates essentially, as does their soft palate and parts
Speaker 1: of their frontal though, syphilis affected fertility too and could
Speaker 1: be passed on to a fetus before birth, so called
Speaker 1: congenital syphilis. In the days before antibiotics, this was a
Speaker 1: terrible disease. So as to avoid giving offense to Gothenburg's
Speaker 1: respectable citizens, all suspected and known public women were required
Speaker 1: to enter the police inspection house through a concealed rear
Speaker 1: passage jetty line. Once inside, they had to strip naked
Speaker 1: and form a line. Sometimes, if the weight was a
Speaker 1: long one, they were ordered to stand in the outdoor courtyard,
Speaker 1: shivering in the cold as the uniformed officers stood over them.
Speaker 1: For a young woman who had been raised in a
Speaker 1: religious community, the indignity of the experience would have been shocking. However,
Speaker 1: as Elizabeth was pregnant with an illegitimate child, she may well,
Speaker 1: like so many women of her era, have internalized her
Speaker 1: punishment as a justifiable one. Elizabeth can only have been
Speaker 1: subjected to this routine a handful of times before it
Speaker 1: was discovered that she was presenting the symptoms of syphilis.
Speaker 1: She was immediately admitted to the cahousit or cure house,
Speaker 1: the local venereal disease hospital. These treatment centers, also known
Speaker 1: as lack hospitals, were designed for poor people. A stay
Speaker 1: here carried profound stigma, and this was in part a
Speaker 1: deterrent as well, like the shaven stigma that accompanied entry
Speaker 1: into a workhouse. A similar stigma existed for the law hospitals,
Speaker 1: and these were institutions that were often seriously underfunded, understaffed,
Speaker 1: and lacked the facilities needed to be able to provide
Speaker 1: people with effective care even by Victorian standards. Patients at
Speaker 1: these institutions were effectively imprisoned, hence the name Lock hospital.
Speaker 1: Some women entered voluntarily, but many were incarcerated against their will.
Speaker 1: At Gothenburg's cure House, attendance and nurses used force to
Speaker 1: subdue patients. It was also overcrowded, and when the number
Speaker 1: of patients exceeded capacity, inmates were made to sleep on
Speaker 1: the floor. Mercury was the go to treatment for syphilis
Speaker 1: at this time. The standard forms were an ointment, pill,
Speaker 1: or tonic, but doctors also experimented with other modes of
Speaker 1: administration fumigation. I think it's the best way to describe it.
Speaker 1: So you'd sit essentially something that looked a bit like
Speaker 1: a steam room and mercury infused vapors pumped in and
Speaker 1: you sit there and just sort of absorb it through
Speaker 1: your skin. There was no standardized dosage for mercury. Doctor
Speaker 1: saw its administration as an art rather than a science.
Speaker 1: It was also highly toxic and potentially deadly severe. Mercury
Speaker 1: poisoning could result in everything from loosened to lost teeth
Speaker 1: and fettered breath all the way through to hair loss
Speaker 1: and changed mental state, very similar symptoms to what you
Speaker 1: might expect in the later stages of syphilis itself. Pregnant
Speaker 1: Elizabeth was spared mercury but treated internally with acid while
Speaker 1: her genital wartz would have been dehydrated or cut off.
Speaker 1: After receiving this cure for seventeen days, she went into
Speaker 1: premature labor. Elizabeth gave birth to a stillborn girl at
Speaker 1: seven months while under lock and key at the cure house.
Speaker 1: A birth certificate was still required. The space for the
Speaker 1: far this name was left blank. Methods of treating syphilis
Speaker 1: varied between countries, but they shared an underlying concept. Women
Speaker 1: should shoulder the blame for its transmission. If the state
Speaker 1: could control the morally corrupt woman the disease is spreaders,
Speaker 1: then the problem would be isolated. Sexually transmitted disease involves
Speaker 1: two parties, of course, but male carriers were exempt from regulation. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: the idea that women, specifically female sex workers, are solely
Speaker 1: responsible for the spread of disease and should be punished
Speaker 1: for it, is one that we haven't left behind. There's
Speaker 1: been a long history of sex workers being imprisoned under
Speaker 1: public health justifications. Grace is a sex worker from the
Speaker 1: UK who contacted me after reading my work on Elizabeth's life.
Speaker 1: People fear that we will be seen as vector as
Speaker 1: a disease, so unfortunately, these actually do still persist and
Speaker 1: clients let you know about it. Leave me there, will
Speaker 1: say things and you feel lange. In Elizabeth's time, as
Speaker 1: for Grace today, attitudes and fears around the spread of
Speaker 1: disease caused women real physical harm too. Syphilis inspections were
Speaker 1: brutally rapid. Fifty women might be examined using the same
Speaker 1: medical instrument in less than two hours, says Ann Hanley,
Speaker 1: and that speculum was then passed to the attending nurse,
Speaker 1: who sort of cursorily disinfected it the use of the
Speaker 1: next patient. There's no way that these diagnostic examinations were thorough,
Speaker 1: and there's no way that they were hygienic. In many cases,
Speaker 1: women who may not have had a anereal disease were
Speaker 1: being infected by the very process of examination to determine
Speaker 1: whether or not they were infected. Even if women seemed
Speaker 1: to respond to the rudimentary cures on offer and were
Speaker 1: released from the hospital. Their slate wasn't white clean. Criminal
Speaker 1: convictions followed those who had been inmates at lock hospitals,
Speaker 1: and once a woman appeared on a police register, she
Speaker 1: would not be able to secure respectable work. One of
Speaker 1: the only ways that she could actually sustain herself would
Speaker 1: be to resort to the profession she had been accused
Speaker 1: of practicing prostitution. Inside, Elizabeth joined the ranks of women
Speaker 1: who sold themselves on a notorious Gothenburg thoroughfare known mockingly
Speaker 1: as the Street of many Nymphs. As open solicitation on
Speaker 1: the street was forbidden, she would have traded discreetly indoors
Speaker 1: at a brothel, perhaps or in a coffee house. Elizabeth
Speaker 1: had been publicly denounced as a whore, had suffered the
Speaker 1: indignity of police examination, had discovered she carried a potentially
Speaker 1: deadly and disfiguring disease, and had been incarcerated and subjected
Speaker 1: to excruciating medical procedures. Estranged from her family and from
Speaker 1: respectable life, she had then been released onto the street,
Speaker 1: with no friend to whom she could turn in the city.
Speaker 1: It was now that the symptoms of syphilis returned and
Speaker 1: medical incarceration was ordered once more. But just when things
Speaker 1: looked to be at their bleakest, an opportunity appeared, one
Speaker 1: that would change Elizabeth's life forever. The ripper retold, will
Speaker 1: be back in just a moment. Sweden, like many European countries,
Speaker 1: was witnessing a swell of interest in rescuing prostitutes. Middle
Speaker 1: and upper class women sought to rehabilitate back into Christian life,
Speaker 1: those who would otherwise have been lost to God. During
Speaker 1: one visit to the Cahust, Elizabeth was picked out by
Speaker 1: Maria Weisner, the wife of a German musician. The Weasners
Speaker 1: were looking for a reasonably priced maid, and they offered
Speaker 1: Elizabeth the job. This was an exceptional stroke of good fortune.
Speaker 1: According to the law, employment and domestic service was the
Speaker 1: only way, outside of marriage, that a woman on the
Speaker 1: police register could have her name removed and thereby recover
Speaker 1: her life and her reputation. That process of having one's
Speaker 1: name struck from the register of shame required an employer
Speaker 1: to write a letter of surety to the police. Maria
Speaker 1: Weisner did just this. The servant maid, Elizabeth Gustafson, was
Speaker 1: engaged in my service on November the tenth, and I
Speaker 1: am responsible for her good conduct as long as she
Speaker 1: stays in my service. Public Woman number ninety seven was
Speaker 1: no more, and then Elizabeth received a further opportunity to
Speaker 1: reinvent herself. Trade links between Gothenburg and Britain meant that
Speaker 1: the city was home to a dynamic British community. It
Speaker 1: was likely through this expat enclave that Elizabeth learned of
Speaker 1: a position for a maid servant wishing to travel with
Speaker 1: a British family back to London. Although Elizabeth was no
Speaker 1: longer on the police register or working as a prostitute,
Speaker 1: there were reminders of her former life everywhere in Gothenburg.
Speaker 1: As long as she remained in the city, she would
Speaker 1: never escape her past, and so the possibility of beginning
Speaker 1: again in London as a housemaid to an affluent family
Speaker 1: must have seemed a gift from providence. Elizabeth was still
Speaker 1: just twenty two years old on the day she departed Sweden.
Speaker 1: Snow lay thickly along the streets, and the canals were
Speaker 1: slicked with ice. At the port dock, workers, sailors and
Speaker 1: passengers were swathed in wool and fir against the sharp
Speaker 1: cold as the peaks and domes of the city skyline
Speaker 1: diminished from view. She could not have felt much remorse.
Speaker 1: Gothenburg had left a cruel mark upon her, one that
Speaker 1: would always remain no matter where she called home. When
Speaker 1: she arrived in London, Elizabeth lived in an elegant townhouse
Speaker 1: near one of the city's royal parks, where she worked
Speaker 1: for a prosperous cosmopolitan. As a young woman in London,
Speaker 1: with an exotic foreign accent, a high forehead, and dark
Speaker 1: wavy hair, she would have caught the eye of many admirers.
Speaker 1: A policeman courted her for a while, but due to
Speaker 1: the long hours she worked, this relationship failed blossom. It's
Speaker 1: possible that an all too familiar scandal led Elizabeth to
Speaker 1: eventually quit or lose her job. She has been linked
Speaker 1: to her employer's brother, though we cannot be sure what
Speaker 1: occurred or who instigated it. Next, Elizabeth went to work
Speaker 1: for one Missus Bond, who ran a genteel lodging house
Speaker 1: near the furniture district, with a scent of freshly cut
Speaker 1: mahogany and oak perfumed the air. Missus Bond let furnished
Speaker 1: rooms through a respectable clientele as a well trained Swedish maid,
Speaker 1: Elizabeth would have conferred a certain sophistication on her establishment,
Speaker 1: though the drudgery of her chores would have been no different.
Speaker 1: One day, Elizabeth was noticed by a forty seven year
Speaker 1: old carpenter named John Stride. Perhaps they crossed paths on
Speaker 1: multiple occasions, on the street moving to and from work,
Speaker 1: or in the wooden stalls of the local coffee house,
Speaker 1: drinking a dark sugared brew, whatever the case. By the
Speaker 1: early months of eighteen sixty nine, the pair was engaged.
Speaker 1: Elizabeth was twenty five at this point, and her fiance,
Speaker 1: almost twice her age, was likely turning gray. John, who
Speaker 1: had been a bachelor for many years, would have had
Speaker 1: money put aside. He was also a teetotaler from a
Speaker 1: religious Methodist family. After Elizabeth's tumultuous past and her experiences
Speaker 1: of the harm that men could do her, he may
Speaker 1: well have seemed like a safe and solid choice as
Speaker 1: a woman, and one on her own in a strange country.
Speaker 1: Elizabeth knew she would have to marry soon. They wed
Speaker 1: quickly on the register. Elizabeth gave a false name for
Speaker 1: her father, a move typical of an immigrant who wished
Speaker 1: for no shadows of her former life to fall upon
Speaker 1: this new chapter. This fresh beginning was marked by a
Speaker 1: new adventure for the Strides. They opened their own coffee house.
Speaker 1: These establishments offered simple meals of chops, kidneys, bread and butter,
Speaker 1: pickles and eggs, along with cups of sugared coffee. No
Speaker 1: alcohol was served. One observer notes they are convenient to
Speaker 1: thousands of persons who have not the comforts of domesticity
Speaker 1: at home. The food, fire, the bright light, the supply
Speaker 1: of newspapers and magazines, and the cup of simple beverage
Speaker 1: are obtainable for a few pence. The strides hours were
Speaker 1: long ones, but for the first time, Elizabeth scrubbing, cooking,
Speaker 1: washing and serving would have been performed not for the
Speaker 1: benefit of an employer, but for herself. Sadly, the business
Speaker 1: failed to thrive. The Stride were likely to have encountered
Speaker 1: competition from pubs. In spite of the popularity of coffee houses,
Speaker 1: not every working man was prepared to abandon the alcohol
Speaker 1: and jolly camaraderie of the local public house, so they
Speaker 1: moved the location of their establishment, hoping to attract better trade.
Speaker 1: It's also likely that John was anticipating an inheritance from
Speaker 1: his wealthy but miserly father. However, when the old man
Speaker 1: passed away, John was written out of his will. The
Speaker 1: collapse of their first coffee house would likely have left
Speaker 1: a debt, and a second failing business would have only
Speaker 1: increased their arrears. In order to keep his concern afloat,
Speaker 1: John may have borrowed money, quite probably against the promise
Speaker 1: of inheriting property. When his father's will left him disappointed,
Speaker 1: there was nothing to be done but shut the door
Speaker 1: for good on their hopes and dreams of betterment. John
Speaker 1: and Elizabeth had no children in the years they were married.
Speaker 1: Elizabeth syphilis would have put her at high risk of
Speaker 1: miscarriage and stillbirth. She may also have been too ashamed
Speaker 1: to confide in John about the disease, simply wishing to
Speaker 1: bury her past. Bringing syphilis into the marital home was
Speaker 1: a social disgrace and a tragedy, says medical historian Anne Hanley.
Speaker 1: A woman who is seeking respectability and trying to put
Speaker 1: an unrespectable past behind her would not want to dredge
Speaker 1: up old ghosts when sort of embarking on their new life,
Speaker 1: So it wouldn't surprise me that she didn't tell him,
Speaker 1: And also when we think about the trajectory of syphilis,
Speaker 1: with those periods of latency, passing through the secondary stage,
Speaker 1: and then it disappearing for decades, it's possible that she
Speaker 1: would have assumed herself to be free of disease, or
Speaker 1: at least free of a disease that was communicable to
Speaker 1: other people, so she may not have even seen a
Speaker 1: need to tell him. There would have been social repercussions
Speaker 1: for both Elizabeth and John if her syphilis and her
Speaker 1: sexual past outside of marriage had been known. I think
Speaker 1: there was an assumption also that a woman who deviated
Speaker 1: from this standard role of sort of pure femininity was
Speaker 1: in some way deranged, and a man who wanted to
Speaker 1: marry a woman who had done this must also be deranged.
Speaker 1: You know. This is all tied up with the assumption
Speaker 1: that a woman's sexuality is very much bound to her
Speaker 1: reproductive capacity, and that if she's not having sex for
Speaker 1: the purposes of having children, there's something wrong with her.
Speaker 1: Elizabeth's failure to become a mother in an era when
Speaker 1: a woman's identity and purpose was defined by her fertility,
Speaker 1: would have been devastating to her. The Stride's marriage soured,
Speaker 1: the financial hardship wrought by the collapse of their business
Speaker 1: and their inability to produce children may have contributed to
Speaker 1: friction between them. It is also likely that Elizabeth had
Speaker 1: begun to drink eight years after their union. Elizabeth left John.
Speaker 1: She now had to use her wits to survive, and
Speaker 1: she alighted on a new method of supporting herself, fraud.
Speaker 1: The ripper retold, will be back in just a moment.
Speaker 1: On the deck of the Princess Alice, the ship's band
Speaker 1: played a rousing poker, and couples gathered to dance and sing.
Speaker 1: Children chased each other across the slippery wooden floors, and
Speaker 1: gentlemen read their newspapers. Lulled by the mild evening, others
Speaker 1: were retiring to the cabins below deck, but the Bywell Castle,
Speaker 1: a dark, hulking coal freighter, was closing first. Her iron
Speaker 1: bow cut into the pleasure boat, slicing her into the
Speaker 1: commuted water rushed into the Great yawned, and within minutes
Speaker 1: the Princess Alice had disappeared. Panic stricken survivors clung to
Speaker 1: any flotsam they could find, bobbing heads gasped for breath,
Speaker 1: and the putrid water and cried out to loved ones.
Speaker 1: Hundreds drowned or died later from the effects of their
Speaker 1: time in the Thames. Bodies littered the river and shoreline
Speaker 1: for days. But such chaos presents opportunities for some. There
Speaker 1: was no headcount taken of the people who went on
Speaker 1: the boat, so they were never entirely sure who had
Speaker 1: been on it, which made it easier for people to
Speaker 1: claim that, oh, my husband, my wife, they were on board,
Speaker 1: they drowned, because how would you disprove that Nell Derby
Speaker 1: is a crime historian. There were so many unscrupulous claims
Speaker 1: as a result of that disaster, you know, and so
Speaker 1: many claims rejected. And part of the issue is, of course,
Speaker 1: that the relief was widely advertised. People knew there was
Speaker 1: going to be money, There was going to be compensation.
Speaker 1: Survivors and the families of the dead were urged to
Speaker 1: come forward and claim that compensation. In the weeks that
Speaker 1: followed the calamity, many invented sorrowful tales of their own
Speaker 1: in an effort to cash in. Elizabeth, it seems, was
Speaker 1: among them. She spun an elaborate yarn, colored with detailed
Speaker 1: and drama, designed to beguile the listener. Elizabeth claimed that
Speaker 1: she had been aboard the Princess Alice with John and
Speaker 1: two of their nine children when the pleasure cruiser was struck.
Speaker 1: They were separated. John had attempted to save the children,
Speaker 1: but they were all snatched away by the river and drowned. Elizabeth,
Speaker 1: who found herself within one of the ships collapsing funnels,
Speaker 1: saw a rope that had been dropped by another boat
Speaker 1: and grabbed for it. In climbing to safety, she was
Speaker 1: kicked in the mouth by a man above her, which
Speaker 1: damaged her palette. It's possible that at this point, in
Speaker 1: telling her tall tale, Elizabeth revealed her syphilis ravaged mouth.
Speaker 1: She went on to say that life as a widow
Speaker 1: was fraught with hardship, and her remaining seven children were
Speaker 1: in an orphanage. Elizabeth's name does not appear on the
Speaker 1: list of survivors in the records of the relief Fund.
Speaker 1: It is more likely that she peddled her story to
Speaker 1: concerned individuals who might offer handouts. In the ensuing years,
Speaker 1: she would retell this tale enough times to convince everyone
Speaker 1: around her of its veracity. Alone, she moved to Whitechapel
Speaker 1: and began working as a charwoman or day servant for
Speaker 1: Jewish families there as recent immigrants who had escaped persecution
Speaker 1: and Russia, Prussia and Ukraine. Most of these families did
Speaker 1: not speak English, and so she learned to communicate with
Speaker 1: them in Yiddish. Working for Jewish families would have also
Speaker 1: offered Elizabeth some modicum of security. Fellow immigrants were not
Speaker 1: usually eager to discuss their pasts, and they were therefore
Speaker 1: unlikely to make any inquiries into hers. At this point,
Speaker 1: Elizabeth had learnt that shedding identities were simple. She was Swedish,
Speaker 1: but she could speak English well enough to fool people.
Speaker 1: She may also have claimed to be Irish at times,
Speaker 1: using the name Annie Fitzgerald. And then, in eighteen eighty three,
Speaker 1: fate through the thirty nine year old Elizabeth into the
Speaker 1: path of a woman named Mary Malcolm A Taylor. S
Speaker 1: years spent squinting over a needle had ruined missus Malcolm's eyesight.
Speaker 1: Her attraction to the bottle probably didn't help matters. One day,
Speaker 1: perhaps on the street or in a pub, she glimpsed
Speaker 1: Elizabeth's stride and was convinced it was her estranged sister.
Speaker 1: Mary had probably called out her sister's name, and Elizabeth
Speaker 1: had duly and conveniently answered. The mistaken identity stuck in
Speaker 1: part because Elizabeth was all too pleased to use this
Speaker 1: new relationship to her advantage. Knowing that her real, long
Speaker 1: lost sister had led a hard life, including at least
Speaker 1: two marriages and a period spent in an asylum, Mary
Speaker 1: was inclined to believe that the by now bedraggled and
Speaker 1: impoverished Elizabeth was this same person. Mary felt compelled to
Speaker 1: assist her, and for the next five years, the two
Speaker 1: women met at least once a week. Every Saturday. At
Speaker 1: four o'clock, Mary handed over two shillings the equivalent of
Speaker 1: over fifty dollars today. At one point, Elizabeth left a
Speaker 1: naked baby girl outside Mary's door. Mary naturally concluded that
Speaker 1: this was Elizabeth's child and therefore her niece, though it
Speaker 1: was more likely that Elizabeth had temporarily acquired the infant
Speaker 1: for the purposes of begging. Such begging scams were common.
Speaker 1: They were one of the many ways that destitute women
Speaker 1: made ends meet. Crucially, women tended to target other women.
Speaker 1: Prostitution was very much a last resort for these women
Speaker 1: if they could find another way. To get some money
Speaker 1: in then that's what they would do. So you've got
Speaker 1: women who go out claiming that their husband's broken, their leg,
Speaker 1: can't work anymore, and they need financial support. You've got
Speaker 1: women claiming that they've been left stranded in England and
Speaker 1: they need to get back to their country of origin.
Speaker 1: Can they have some money to help them do that?
Speaker 1: And these women tend to target other women who are
Speaker 1: just passing by. They'll see the women and they immediately
Speaker 1: start feigning illness or feigning some sort of situation to
Speaker 1: get those women sympathy. And as part of that, you've
Speaker 1: then got these begging scams where they kind of use
Speaker 1: a child or the pretense of a child to get sympathy.
Speaker 1: Get some women who go along with their own children
Speaker 1: and saying, oh, my son or daughter's ill, can you
Speaker 1: give me money. But then you've got women who also
Speaker 1: kind of bundle up rags, hide them under their shawl,
Speaker 1: and when they see a woman walking past, pretend to
Speaker 1: be talking to the child and saying, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: my poor child, they're really ill, they're really sick, can
Speaker 1: you give me money. Some women would even go out
Speaker 1: and hire sick children, particularly those were a bad cough,
Speaker 1: They would take the child with them and knock on
Speaker 1: doors asking for money. This was a well known ruse
Speaker 1: designed to tug on both the heart and the purse strings.
Speaker 1: Elizabeth eventually returned for the baby. Later, when Mary asked
Speaker 1: after the infant, Elizabeth lied and said that she had
Speaker 1: taken the girl to live with family in another city.
Speaker 1: Mary would meet Elizabeth in secret, and she never invited
Speaker 1: her into her home. Perhaps deep down, Mary had her
Speaker 1: suspicions about Elizabeth's true identity, but so long as she
Speaker 1: kept Elizabeth at arm's length, she could continue to fool herself.
Speaker 1: Elizabeth was secretive and deceitful. She'd learned how to milk
Speaker 1: human gullibility for financial gain. There may have been something
Speaker 1: else going on here too, see I wonder where Elizabeth,
Speaker 1: whether it's also about her identity, trying to find an
Speaker 1: identity for herself, trying to get sympathy or affection of
Speaker 1: other people in a way that she hadn't had in
Speaker 1: her earlier life. When she comes to London, she's always
Speaker 1: trying to seek that, trying to get sympathy for people,
Speaker 1: not just for monetary reasons, but she's trying to recreate
Speaker 1: herself in a way, trying to get herself an identity
Speaker 1: where people care about her and worry about her. Then
Speaker 1: Elizabeth lost one of the few people in her life
Speaker 1: who had cared about her. John's health had been deteriorating
Speaker 1: for some time. He was admitted to a workhouse infirmary,
Speaker 1: where he died of heart disease age sixty three. Over
Speaker 1: the years, John and Elizabeth had reconnected again and again,
Speaker 1: and then separated again and again too. After his burial,
Speaker 1: Elizabeth's life began spiraling rapidly downward. Desperate from money, she
Speaker 1: appears to have returned the type of labor she had
Speaker 1: abandoned so many years ago in Sweden, selling sex. Elizabeth's
Speaker 1: name appears on the ledgers of the magistrates court for
Speaker 1: soliciting sex on the street in eighteen eighty four. The
Speaker 1: court felt there was enough evidence to convict her, and
Speaker 1: she was sentenced to seven days hard labor. Shortly afterwards,
Speaker 1: Elizabeth met another man, a dock worker called Michael Kidney.
Speaker 1: Their relationship was a violent one. The pair rented a
Speaker 1: series of dingy rooms together in Whitechapel. Both enjoyed drinking
Speaker 1: to excess, and in the years leading up to her murder.
Speaker 1: Elizabeth was repeatedly arrested not for soliciting, but for drunken
Speaker 1: disorderliness an obscene language. Her erratic and violent behavior can
Speaker 1: be attributed in part to her drinking, but there may
Speaker 1: have been something else at work here too. It had
Speaker 1: been over twenty years since Elizabeth had contracted syphilis, and
Speaker 1: the disease may well have been attacking her brain and
Speaker 1: nervous system. As part of its final phase. She had
Speaker 1: also begun to suffer from epileptic seizures. Elizabeth had recognized
Speaker 1: that the world didn't care about her or about what
Speaker 1: happened to her, and she chose to use this to
Speaker 1: her advantage. She weaponized her anonymity, reinventing herself at will.
Speaker 1: Did anyone truly know Elizabeth Stride? As the summer of
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty eight turned autumn, the opportunities for anyone to
Speaker 1: forge a genuine connection with this sick and troubled woman
Speaker 1: were fading fast. Elizabeth's shadowy life on the margins was
Speaker 1: about to at her directly into the path of a murderer.
Speaker 1: Bad women. The Ripper were told is brought to you
Speaker 1: by Pushkin Industries and me Hallie Ribbinhold and is based
Speaker 1: on my book The Five. It was produced and co
Speaker 1: written by Ryan Dilley and Alice Fines, with help from
Speaker 1: Pete Norton. Pascal Wise Sound designed and mixed the show
Speaker 1: and composed all the original music. You also heard the
Speaker 1: voice talents of Soul Boyer, Melanie Gutridge, Gemma Saunders, and
Speaker 1: Rufus Wright. The show also wouldn't have been possible without
Speaker 1: the work of Mia LaBelle, Jacob Weisberg, Jen Guerra, Heather Fane,
Speaker 1: Carlie Migliori, Maggie Taylor, Nicole Morano and Daniella Lakhan were
Speaker 1: special thanks to my agents, Sarah Ballard and Ellie Karen
Speaker 1: Do