Speaker 1: Pushkin. A little girl races up the steps to number
Speaker 1: seventh Rall Street. She bangs on the front door and
Speaker 1: calls out to her neighbor. A policeman has sent her.
Speaker 1: He wants to see Eliza Edos down in the street,
Speaker 1: but Eliza is too ill to get up. She moans,
Speaker 1: rolls over in her bed, and sends the child away
Speaker 1: leave me alone. Moments later, the girl returns. This time
Speaker 1: the police officer has given her a grimmer message to convey.
Speaker 1: Eliza's sister, Kate, has been found dead, and she must
Speaker 1: identify the body or what remains of it. Kate Edo's
Speaker 1: killing is perhaps the most gruesome of the Whitechapel murders,
Speaker 1: yet it's also helped me to form a new theory
Speaker 1: about what really connects the Ripper victims, a theory that
Speaker 1: demolishes the myth that he was some kind of superhuman
Speaker 1: master criminal. I'm Halle ribbin Holt. You're listening to Bad
Speaker 1: Women The Ripper retold, a series about the real lives
Speaker 1: of the women killed by Jack the Ripper and how
Speaker 1: we got their stories so wrong. One side, money plenty
Speaker 1: and friends too by the sky. Then fortune smild upon me.
Speaker 1: Now one past my Domey and Notworth. We've traced Kate
Speaker 1: Edo's life from growing up as the child of a
Speaker 1: Union agitator to tramping around England with her Balladia partner
Speaker 1: Thomas Conway, selling songs and performing on street corners. When
Speaker 1: Conway became violent and the relationship ended, Kate came to Whitechapel,
Speaker 1: where she took up with John Kelly. Kate and Kelly
Speaker 1: were both drinkers. They lived a hand to mouth existence,
Speaker 1: wandering between different lodging houses and selling goods along the
Speaker 1: road between London and the surrounding countryside. We left Kate
Speaker 1: on the eve of her murder September twenty ninth, eighteen
Speaker 1: eighty eight. She and Kelly had just part ways, each
Speaker 1: on a mission to raise the fourpence to buy a
Speaker 1: bed for the night. In all likelihood, Kate didn't get
Speaker 1: very far before she encountered someone who owed her a
Speaker 1: drink or two, and she was not the sort of
Speaker 1: woman to refuse such a kind offer. By eight thirty
Speaker 1: that evening, Kate was sitting in a heap against a wall,
Speaker 1: paralytically drunk. She babbled and sang and cursed, which inevitably
Speaker 1: drew a small crowd of people the same gentleman. Some
Speaker 1: would have stared in amusement, others with genuine concern for
Speaker 1: this unfortunate soul. I reckon, that's John Kelly's missus. She's
Speaker 1: in a right staple creature. A passing police constable pushed
Speaker 1: his way through the gaggle of onlookers. This woman or
Speaker 1: where she lives? No one answered. The constable tried to
Speaker 1: lift Kate off the street, but her legs were as
Speaker 1: shambling as those of a foal ah, and she soon
Speaker 1: slipped sideways out of his hold. Finally, with the assistance
Speaker 1: of a colleague, he was able to lead the inebriated
Speaker 1: woman to the police station. As was routine, they recorded
Speaker 1: her details in their ledger. What is your name, the
Speaker 1: constable demanded, nothing, Kate slurred. They placed nothing in a
Speaker 1: cell while she slid into a drunken slumber, Yes the soul.
Speaker 1: After a couple of hours, Kate woke again, and she
Speaker 1: began to sing to herself. Eventually, the jailer came to
Speaker 1: see her in the cell. Where are you going to
Speaker 1: let me out? She asked, her voice tired and dry.
Speaker 1: When you're capable of taking care of yourself, I'm capable
Speaker 1: of taking care of myself. Now, this could not have
Speaker 1: been the case. Well, Kate may have seemed steadier on
Speaker 1: her feet, she would not have fully sobered up after
Speaker 1: just a few hours of sleep. Still, she was led
Speaker 1: from her cell to the police station office. What time
Speaker 1: is it too late for you to get a drink? Well?
Speaker 1: What time is it? Just on one? I shall get
Speaker 1: a damned fine hiding when I get home, she muttered,
Speaker 1: knowing this was all for show. Though when she lived
Speaker 1: with Thomas Conway, that would have been the truth. And
Speaker 1: serve you right, You have no right to get drunk,
Speaker 1: taunted the jailer, who, like Kate's family, would have held
Speaker 1: with the era's thoughts on such a matter. An errant
Speaker 1: wife deserved a beating. The police officers then handed back
Speaker 1: to Kate items that had been in her pockets when
Speaker 1: she arrived, an assortment of necessities that she would have
Speaker 1: always kept on her person, plus a teaspoon, a single
Speaker 1: red mitten, and parts of a broken pair of spectacles,
Speaker 1: said the jailer, pushing open the door. Right good night.
Speaker 1: Kate turned left out of the police station and disappeared
Speaker 1: into the night. At that same moment, a mile away,
Speaker 1: Louis Deemshutz had just discovered something blocking the path of
Speaker 1: his horse and cart. He poked the object with his
Speaker 1: whip and then moved closer. He struck a match, illuminating
Speaker 1: the corpse of Elizabeth Stride. Then the wind blew out
Speaker 1: the flame with just a handful of hissing gas lights.
Speaker 1: Most streets in the area would have been pitched black
Speaker 1: at one am, but Kate was accustomed to the dark,
Speaker 1: and she knew the byways and passages of Whitechapel as
Speaker 1: well as she did the bottom of a bottle. After
Speaker 1: about twenty minutes of searching for John Kelly, she must
Speaker 1: have concluded that she would not chance upon his familiar face.
Speaker 1: Likely exhausted by this point, she would have reconciled herself
Speaker 1: to sleeping roff. By now forty six year old Kate
Speaker 1: was familiar with this routine. She knew how to sleep
Speaker 1: in the open, how to find a less painful way
Speaker 1: of laying her head against a hard wall, how to
Speaker 1: ignore the muck that gathered in her skirts, or the
Speaker 1: trickle of wastewater that might roll over her feet. She
Speaker 1: found a spot in the dark far corner of Mita Square.
Speaker 1: Here she lowered herself down, her back against the wall
Speaker 1: as if it were a chair, supporting her. As she
Speaker 1: did so, the assorted objects in her peddler's pockets must
Speaker 1: have moved against one another. Tin boxes filled with sugar
Speaker 1: and tea, an empty cigarette case, and an old table knife.
Speaker 1: Figure for all of her good humor, her singing and jolliness,
Speaker 1: Kate's heart must have been heavy as she closed her
Speaker 1: eyes against the night, said the day a long still
Speaker 1: to us set. White light comes love, old song comes love,
Speaker 1: so sweet so Kate's sister, Eliza, arrived at the mortuary
Speaker 1: with a police inspector. When the cough and lid was
Speaker 1: drawn back, she let forth a stream of anguished whales.
Speaker 1: She was so distressed that she had to be led
Speaker 1: from the room. Kate's throat had been cut, but she'd
Speaker 1: also suffered horrific, almost ritualistic abdominal wounds. Kate's face had
Speaker 1: been disfigured, too, But when Eliza was steady enough to speak,
Speaker 1: she said that she could still recognize the lacerated corpse
Speaker 1: before her as her sister. In spite of their financial circumstances,
Speaker 1: the Eddo's family would not have their sister dropped into
Speaker 1: a pauper's grave, and neither would the residence of Whitechapel
Speaker 1: permit Kate to be laid to rest without a resounding
Speaker 1: send off. On the day of her funeral, the streets
Speaker 1: thronged with hundreds of friends and neighbors, who all gathered
Speaker 1: to pay their last respects as Kate processed towards the cemetery.
Speaker 1: At the inquest, John Kelly was pressed on how Kate
Speaker 1: had made her living. The coroner and jury were skeptical
Speaker 1: of his account, not just because Kelly provided a muddled
Speaker 1: version of events, but because they, like the police and
Speaker 1: the press, were convinced that the killer was targeting prostitutes.
Speaker 1: The manager of the Whitechapel lodging house, where Kate and
Speaker 1: Kelly were regulars, who claimed to have been acquainted with
Speaker 1: the couple for seven years, cited with certainty that he
Speaker 1: never knew or heard of Kate being intimate with anyone
Speaker 1: but Kelly. Kate's sister, Eliza, corroborated this testimony, and for
Speaker 1: his part, Kelly stated that he never knew of her
Speaker 1: going out for immoral purposes at night, nor had she
Speaker 1: ever brought me money in the morning after being out.
Speaker 1: In fact, he stated categorically that he would never have
Speaker 1: suffered such a situation. Nevertheless, journalists persisted in identifying Kate
Speaker 1: as a prostitute. After all, according to Victorian society, homeless
Speaker 1: women and women who sold sex were generally one and
Speaker 1: the same. The Daily Telegraph, for instance, noted that Kate
Speaker 1: regularly bedded down in a shed alongside what they called
Speaker 1: houseless waives penniless prostitutes like herself. Unfortunately, in the course
Speaker 1: of defending Kate's honor to the coroner, Kelly made the
Speaker 1: mistake of using a turn of phrase with a double
Speaker 1: meaning when he stated his concern over their lack of
Speaker 1: doss money. He claimed he didn't want to after see
Speaker 1: her walk about the streets at nine. Walking the streets
Speaker 1: was part of the experience of rough sleepers, a never
Speaker 1: ending nocturnal quest for some were quiet to rest before
Speaker 1: a patrolling constable moved them on. What do you mean
Speaker 1: by walking the streets? Well, so many a time we've
Speaker 1: not had the money to I for shower and evert
Speaker 1: to tramp about. But Kelly's clarification of the term did
Speaker 1: little to dissuade the papers from pursuing the salacious prostitution angle.
Speaker 1: In fact, many of them cut out Kelly's explanation altogether.
Speaker 1: The police and press were primed by the prejudice of
Speaker 1: their era to conclude that Kate Edos sold sex and
Speaker 1: that her status as a prostitute wrought her demise. It
Speaker 1: was of little consequence that the people who actually knew
Speaker 1: Kate said otherwise, respectable society knew better. But the thing
Speaker 1: is working backward from the conclusion you believe to be correct,
Speaker 1: and shoehorning the available evidence to fit your favorite narrative
Speaker 1: makes a deeply flawed investigation. As historian Ginger frost Well knows,
Speaker 1: that's not good historical inquiry. You let your sources tell
Speaker 1: you where to go. What does your evidence tell you?
Speaker 1: Look at the evidence first, and then you draw your conclusions.
Speaker 1: It's the orion's version of the scientific method. As with
Speaker 1: Polly Nichols and Annie Chapman, there is simply no reliable
Speaker 1: evidence that Kate Edos ever sold sex, and if at
Speaker 1: least three of Jack the Ripper's victims weren't involved in
Speaker 1: the sex trade, Jack the Ripper can't be a killer
Speaker 1: of prostitutes. So what is the evidence telling me? I
Speaker 1: read the witness accounts of the murder scenes. There was
Speaker 1: another common denominator, something else connected these victims, And when
Speaker 1: I examined their stories and the circumstances of their deaths,
Speaker 1: it hit me the ripper retold will be back in
Speaker 1: a moment. Polly Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride and Kate
Speaker 1: Edo's are not linked by the sex trade, but they
Speaker 1: are all connected by their precarious living situations. Polly, Annie,
Speaker 1: and Kate were all found in corners and crevices which
Speaker 1: were relatively quiet. This fact has been used to bolster
Speaker 1: the prostitution narrative, the assumption being that each of the
Speaker 1: women purposefully took their clients to secluded locations to engage
Speaker 1: and paid for sexual acts. Polly Nichols was discovered beside
Speaker 1: a recessed gate, Annie Chapman in a yard off a
Speaker 1: main street, and Kate Edos in a dark corner of
Speaker 1: mita square, away from the glow of any street lamps.
Speaker 1: But what if, in the absence of any other shelter,
Speaker 1: these women were just looking for places to sleep. We
Speaker 1: know that Polly, Annie, Elizabeth and Kate all drifted between
Speaker 1: lodging houses, the workhouse, and occasionally the odd rented room.
Speaker 1: Each woke daily without knowing where she would lay her
Speaker 1: head that night. The fourpence required for a lodging house
Speaker 1: bed was often unobtainable, and permanent shelter was a luxury
Speaker 1: that was simply beyond reach. After Kate Edos died, other
Speaker 1: women came forward and stated that she regularly bedded down
Speaker 1: with them in a shed. In London, rough sleepers were ubiquitous.
Speaker 1: There were an estimated seventy thousand homeless individuals in the
Speaker 1: city in the Victorian era. As is true today, homelessness
Speaker 1: went hand in hand with vulnerability to violence. Women who
Speaker 1: lived without male protection and a roof over their heads
Speaker 1: were outcasts, and outcasts were regarded as morally corrupt and
Speaker 1: sexually impure. It was generally accepted that such women would
Speaker 1: do anything for food and a bed, that they were
Speaker 1: available to be used for sex. Women who refused a
Speaker 1: man in these circumstances could expect to suffer assault. Victorian
Speaker 1: researcher Ellen Stanley documented the lives of homeless women, including
Speaker 1: the gray haired Cranky Sal, whose face had been disfigured
Speaker 1: by a stroke. One day, Stanley noticed Sal had a
Speaker 1: black eye. I would not let a man do as
Speaker 1: he liked. With me, it seems a decently dressed gentleman
Speaker 1: had offered to buy her a pennyworth of whelks and
Speaker 1: a twopenny pie. Then we strolled along and stopping at
Speaker 1: a doorway, he offered me a shillin. He said that
Speaker 1: would get me a lodging for the night. And he
Speaker 1: asked me if I was going to take his money,
Speaker 1: and I said, oh no, I don't do business like that,
Speaker 1: and he gave me a violent blow. When sal approached
Speaker 1: a policeman for help, he just laughed. He said that
Speaker 1: man must have a strong stomach to fancy such is me.
Speaker 1: She met with a similar response from another officer. He
Speaker 1: refused to listen and pushed me from the pavement enter
Speaker 1: the middle of the street. We all know that homes
Speaker 1: people get beating up, people piss on them, which I
Speaker 1: think is absolutely vile. Grace knows firsthand that even to
Speaker 1: this debt, homeless people are objects of scorn, disgust, and fear.
Speaker 1: Would that be acceptable to Chet to anybody else, Absolutely not.
Speaker 1: But people just see him as public property. We can
Speaker 1: do what we want to them. They're there, there's no accountability,
Speaker 1: They're not going to appall. Grace was previously homeless and
Speaker 1: now works for a charity. She sees the obstacles that
Speaker 1: homeless women face and the ways they are victimized. Just
Speaker 1: as Polly, Annie and Kate had varied experiences of life
Speaker 1: without permanent shelter in the Victorian era, homelessness today is
Speaker 1: rarely uniform and constant. A person with no fixed address
Speaker 1: might rotate between sleeping on the streets, lodging at a hostel,
Speaker 1: and staying with a friend or acquaintance. Grace herself became
Speaker 1: homeless after she left college. I tried to find a
Speaker 1: temper accommodation and I got it at first, and then
Speaker 1: it fell through, and then I started so for surfing.
Speaker 1: I was being with people simply for somewhere to stay,
Speaker 1: and then I ended up in our hostel, and then
Speaker 1: I got moved into my own place. I'm quite lucky,
Speaker 1: because you know, I still see these women that I
Speaker 1: lived with, and they're still there. They just get lost
Speaker 1: in the system. They're caught up in hotels, they're caught
Speaker 1: up in short stay accommodations. They're never given anywhere permanent.
Speaker 1: Kate Eddo's experience of violence at the hands of Thomas
Speaker 1: Conway also reminds Grace of the stories of some of
Speaker 1: the women she's encountered in her work. Unfortunately, a lot
Speaker 1: of the women I met along the way weren't homeless
Speaker 1: that they were fleeing domestic abuse. Their only option was
Speaker 1: to declare themselves homeless and end up in a hostel,
Speaker 1: which was really not the best environment for them. They
Speaker 1: needed help with domestic violence, not homelessness. Just like the
Speaker 1: women in Victorian Whitechapel, Today's homeless women sometimes except financial
Speaker 1: support or offers of accommodation from men whose motives are
Speaker 1: far from altruistic. He thinks she must do what I
Speaker 1: say because I've given her money, even though that's never agreed.
Speaker 1: People just assume consent and they end up rape naru
Speaker 1: in our Often these crimes aren't reported to the police.
Speaker 1: There is a huge trust issue of the police. Homeless
Speaker 1: people can expect the police to show them contempt, says Grace,
Speaker 1: not unlike the kind of scorn and disdain that Cranky
Speaker 1: Sal suffered when she reported assault. And because of all
Speaker 1: of this, they're more at risk of exploitation, They're more
Speaker 1: at risk of people taking a vanagement. Just in general,
Speaker 1: because they tend to be more despoted to just reach
Speaker 1: their basic needs such as foods, such as shelter. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: if you're not going to ring the place, you're already
Speaker 1: living a really chaotic lifestyle. The last thing you want
Speaker 1: to do is slap on a police investigation. You don't
Speaker 1: want to go for all that. People know this and
Speaker 1: they just take advantage of it. Sadly matching what Grace
Speaker 1: can tell me about the experiences of homelessness. With historical
Speaker 1: accounts from the eighteen eighties and my own research, I'm
Speaker 1: more convinced than ever that Jack the rippers modus operandi
Speaker 1: was to kill not working prostitutes, but sleeping or unconscious
Speaker 1: homeless people. This theory has of course drawn the ire
Speaker 1: of ripparologists, including former police officer Trevor Marriott, whose own
Speaker 1: pet ripper theory rests entirely on the discredited prostitution thesis.
Speaker 1: I don't know why Halley has chosen to suggest that
Speaker 1: these women were killed while they slept in the street.
Speaker 1: It's absolute ridiculousness to try to accept that that could
Speaker 1: have happened. Is it so ridiculous? Wouldn't it be riskier
Speaker 1: for a murderer to meet a sex worker on a
Speaker 1: busy street in front of witnesses, and walk with her
Speaker 1: until he found a secluded outdoor space. What if she
Speaker 1: were to scream or flee or fight back when he
Speaker 1: revealed his knife. Wouldn't a slumbering victim already curled up
Speaker 1: in a dark corner and away from prying eyes be
Speaker 1: an altogether more tempting option. But that would make Jack
Speaker 1: the River a very different kind of killer, wouldn't it.
Speaker 1: He'd be a creeping, tiptoeing sneak. He'd be a coward,
Speaker 1: and his victims wouldn't be brassy outcasts flying a dangerous
Speaker 1: and immoral trade, but women merely seeking sleep. And that's
Speaker 1: not a story. Some people will swallow more on that
Speaker 1: after this short break. There really is no more marginalizing
Speaker 1: science population than people who are sleeping rough people who
Speaker 1: live on the streets. That's criminologist Paul Bleakly. He thinks
Speaker 1: my theory holds water. These are people who don't have
Speaker 1: any voice for a range of reasons. They are easy targets,
Speaker 1: easy prey for people who are looking to do harm.
Speaker 1: There are so many examples of this spanning the decades.
Speaker 1: In twenty twenty, one in San Diego, John David Guero
Speaker 1: received multiple life sentences for beating three homeless people to death,
Speaker 1: dowsing others with gas and setting them on fire, and
Speaker 1: viciously assaulting yet more victims with a spike, often as
Speaker 1: they slept. One man who survived said that Guero had
Speaker 1: stated he was attacking him because he was a bum.
Speaker 1: According to Paul, this type of violence can be explained,
Speaker 1: at least in part by what criminologists call routine activity theory,
Speaker 1: which basically suggests that what we need for a crime
Speaker 1: to happen is essentially a motivated offender, a lack of
Speaker 1: a protector, and a vulnerable victim. For Paul, this offers
Speaker 1: us an insight into the Whitechapel murders and represents an
Speaker 1: important shift away from obsessing over the killer's motive and
Speaker 1: onto the kinds of social conditions that paved the way
Speaker 1: for people to become victims. Okay, yes, it doesn't tell
Speaker 1: you why person who's being victimized. It might be because
Speaker 1: someone's trying to rob them. It might be because someone's
Speaker 1: out for a thrill. It could be because someone has
Speaker 1: mental illness. It could be anything. But the fact is
Speaker 1: that people who are rough sleeping are especially vulnerable to it.
Speaker 1: My theory that the Ripper's victims are linked by homelessness
Speaker 1: is but now, compared to some of the outrageous tales
Speaker 1: that the Rippers inspired, it's hard to imagine that Jack
Speaker 1: the Ripper, slayer of the homeless, would have garnered the
Speaker 1: same degree of fame as Jack the Ripper, the killer
Speaker 1: of whores would. A murderer of homeless people draw tourists
Speaker 1: from all over the world, with the likes of Michael
Speaker 1: Caine and Johnny Depp, have brought them to life through
Speaker 1: TV and film. And yet the more I thought about it,
Speaker 1: the more I realized that this feature of the Jack
Speaker 1: the Ripper killings has been staring us in the face
Speaker 1: all along. So why are we still resisting it? And
Speaker 1: more than that, why does it make people so angry?
Speaker 1: Why would Katherine Edo's go with someone into a dark,
Speaker 1: secluded corner in Miter Square when she had lodgings to
Speaker 1: go to. Why was she there? What was she doing
Speaker 1: with a male person at that time in the morning.
Speaker 1: She wasn't out for us early morning stroll, that's for sure, Trevor. Again,
Speaker 1: my producer Alice spoke to him. I suppose the thing
Speaker 1: about about homelessness is that people often do end up
Speaker 1: sleeping in places that don't yep, I would totally agree.
Speaker 1: But the crime scenes and the crime scene photos are
Speaker 1: not conducive with anybody just suddenly saying, oh, I'm going
Speaker 1: to lie down in the middle of the road and
Speaker 1: have a sleep, and then suddenly a killer comes along
Speaker 1: and murders them in their sleep. I began to wonder
Speaker 1: if the refusal to acknowledge this obvious link might be telling,
Speaker 1: if our preference through outlandish theories might reveal something about
Speaker 1: our culture's appetite for murder stories, and in particular, about
Speaker 1: how we like our serial killers. He's smarter than the police.
Speaker 1: He manages to blend in like he's got an invisibility cloak.
Speaker 1: Here's Rebecca Frost, an expert on literature about the Ripper.
Speaker 1: He manages to convince these women to be alone with
Speaker 1: him for long enough for him to kill them. He
Speaker 1: can come across as normal and yet still be this
Speaker 1: criminal masterminds. It's a really yeah, he's like a super villain.
Speaker 1: I mean, he's like Lex Luthor or something. This serial
Speaker 1: killer as super villain cliche is everywhere When a serial
Speaker 1: killer remains at large in real life, it's often thanks
Speaker 1: to chance or the indifference of the authorities. Remember Samuel Little.
Speaker 1: He's believed to have murdered up to ninety victims from
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies onward, helped in no small part by
Speaker 1: a criminal justice system that didn't value the women he murdered.
Speaker 1: The world of fiction, on the other hand, is full
Speaker 1: of serial killers who are charming, cultivated, and staggeringly intelligent,
Speaker 1: from Hannibal Lecter to Dexter to the scheming John Doe.
Speaker 1: In seven with Jack the Ripper, that fictional troope spills
Speaker 1: over into real life crime. Novelist Patricia Cornwell definitely thinks
Speaker 1: the killer was a superman. This was this blonde, gorgeous
Speaker 1: guy who spoke seven or eight languages, genius IQ, extremely
Speaker 1: talented artist. He was somebody who hobnob was some of
Speaker 1: the highest levels of society. He was the apprentice to Whistler,
Speaker 1: friends with people like Degas Oscar Wilde. He gave painting
Speaker 1: lessons to Winston Churchill. Imagine that that Churchill was given
Speaker 1: art lessons by Jack the Ripper. I'm watching a video
Speaker 1: she made in twenty fifteen trying to fathom her complicated
Speaker 1: theory that Jack was in fact the famed artist Walter Sickard.
Speaker 1: In Patricia's theory, a celebrated painter swaps his brush for
Speaker 1: a knife, and his crime has become the expression of
Speaker 1: his intellect and brilliance. Jack the rip But is quite
Speaker 1: literally an artist, brutal, bloody, uncompromising, enacting his vision then disappearing,
Speaker 1: leaving the police and the public bewildered in his wake.
Speaker 1: But lionizing killers comes at the expense of the victims,
Speaker 1: says Rebecca. It's this fascination with him, why he did it,
Speaker 1: what drove him to do this. We don't want to
Speaker 1: feel empathy for the victims because then we can't feel
Speaker 1: a fascination for the killer. And it's really just become
Speaker 1: this over a century of who done it. We want
Speaker 1: to identify the killer, we want the motive, we want
Speaker 1: the reason, and we really have to push the victims away.
Speaker 1: If we're going to look at it as that sort
Speaker 1: of thought experiment, perhaps we prefer Jack the Ripper to
Speaker 1: be an extraordinary superhuman monster because the alternative is more threatening.
Speaker 1: Accepting that Jack the Ripper was an ordinary Joe, both
Speaker 1: a member and a product of regular society would mean
Speaker 1: it knowledging that we might have something in common with him,
Speaker 1: that in some ways the monster lies far closer than
Speaker 1: we would care to admit. Shortly after kate Edo's murder,
Speaker 1: a local businessman called George Lusk received a box in
Speaker 1: the post. Lusk had just helped to establish a vigilante
Speaker 1: organization whose members patrolled the area to hunt down Jack.
Speaker 1: Lusk opened the box and was baffled and then horrified
Speaker 1: by its contents. Inside was half a human kidney preserved
Speaker 1: an alcohol. It was accompanied by a letter addressed from Hell.
Speaker 1: I may send you the bloody knife that took it
Speaker 1: out if you only weigh a while longer, signed catch
Speaker 1: me when you can, mister Lusk. The parcel turned out
Speaker 1: to be another hoax. It was thought that the kidney
Speaker 1: had been procured by some medical students as part of
Speaker 1: a callous joke. Even so, it tends to be what
Speaker 1: people remember about kate Edo's story. In fact, the from
Speaker 1: Hell letter and its attendant organ have featured an elaborate
Speaker 1: theories about the killer for decades. In the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: they were part of a popular but convoluted story that
Speaker 1: implicated the British royal family Masonic ritual, and once again
Speaker 1: Walter Sicott published in a book rather tastelessly entitled Jack
Speaker 1: the Ripper The Final Solution. It suggested that an heir
Speaker 1: to the throne fell in love with and secretly wed
Speaker 1: one of Sictt's working class models. To cover up the scandal,
Speaker 1: Queen Victoria's own doctor was sent to Whitechapel to murder
Speaker 1: any witnesses to the marriage in the most gruesome way possible.
Speaker 1: A network of Freemasons then saw to it that the
Speaker 1: evidence was suppressed and the killer's true identity was never revealed.
Speaker 1: People seem to adore this kind of conspiratorial explanation of
Speaker 1: the murders. There's no evidence to back up any of it,
Speaker 1: but its adherents will tell you that's only because the
Speaker 1: government cover up was so thorough. Kate Edo's place in
Speaker 1: this farcical story is particularly wretched. Even the fantasist couldn't
Speaker 1: connect her to the supposed royal scandal, so they claim
Speaker 1: her murder was merely a horrific case of mistaken identity.
Speaker 1: The Ripper case is full of such confections. We'd rather
Speaker 1: believe the dramatic and fantastical over the mundane and obvious,
Speaker 1: far from the powerful conspiring to kill the women. The evidence,
Speaker 1: as I see it, points to society's utter indifference and
Speaker 1: neglect towards them, and the depressing reality the poverty and
Speaker 1: homelessness gave the ripper is terrible opportunity unity bad women.
Speaker 1: The Rippery Told is brought to you by Pushkin Industries
Speaker 1: and me Hallie ribbin Hold, and is based on my
Speaker 1: book The Five. It was produced and co written by
Speaker 1: Ryan Dilley and Alice Fines, with help from Pete Norton.
Speaker 1: Pascal Wise Sound designed and mixed the show and composed
Speaker 1: all the original music. You also heard the voice talents
Speaker 1: of Bencrow, Melanie Gutridge, Gemma Saunders, and rufus Wright. The
Speaker 1: show also wouldn't have been possible without the work of
Speaker 1: mir La Belle, Jacob Weisberg, Jenguerra, Heather Fane, Carlie mcgliori,
Speaker 1: Maggie Taylor, Nicole Maraino, The tal Mullad, Eric Sandler, and
Speaker 1: Daniella Lakhan. With special thanks to my agents Sarah Ballard
Speaker 1: and Ellie Karen Game.