Speaker 1: Pushkin. Benjamin Marshall is working alone in the wreckage of
Speaker 1: Vauxhall Baptist Chapel. This area of South London was badly
Speaker 1: bombed earlier in the Blitz, and the church is now unusable.
Speaker 1: A strange fire had then caused further damage, and now
Speaker 1: Marshall is part of the demolition squad tasked with clearing
Speaker 1: the charred debris. The July heat is already building, but
Speaker 1: the fifty year old continues shoveling dirt and rubble in
Speaker 1: this airless basement. Spotting a stone slab leaning up against
Speaker 1: a wall, Marshall decides to move it.
Speaker 2: I was mismeorized.
Speaker 1: Beneath the slab is the body of a women, naked,
Speaker 1: dismembered incomplete. Marshall carefully lifts these pitiful human remains with
Speaker 1: a shovel and calls out to his former It's been
Speaker 1: decades since the last burial here, and this corpse doesn't
Speaker 1: appear to have come from a disturbed grave. Could it
Speaker 1: then be the body of a victim of the Blitz,
Speaker 1: killed in the air raid that blasted the chapel and
Speaker 1: lain undiscovered ever since. That's the conclusion. The woman's killer
Speaker 1: seems to have hoped people would draw. In the chaos
Speaker 1: and carnage of war. Some men assume their crimes will
Speaker 1: go undetected and unpunished. But looking at the mutilated form
Speaker 1: of this woman, it's clear that this is not the
Speaker 1: work of a bomb. The efforts made to disfigure her
Speaker 1: and disguise her identity tell police immediately that this was murder.
Speaker 1: This is the seldom told story of women in World
Speaker 1: War Two who were killed not by the enemy, but
Speaker 1: my husbands, lovers, and strangers, wearing the uniform of their
Speaker 1: own side. It's also the tale of a particular string
Speaker 1: of murder victims that history has swept from view.
Speaker 3: I'm Halle Rubinholt and I'm Alice Fines, and you're listening
Speaker 3: to bad Women the Blackout River. Polly Dubinski is not
Speaker 3: the first to come to this little brick house in
Speaker 3: London's gritty East End in search of answers. Madame Nerva
Speaker 3: is expecting her.
Speaker 4: Did you bring what I need?
Speaker 3: Polly holds out a scarf and sweater.
Speaker 2: Here you are.
Speaker 3: They belong to her sister, Rachel Dobkin, who's been missing
Speaker 3: for three days. The clairvoyant ushers Polly inside and then
Speaker 3: takes hold of these items of clothing. They will be
Speaker 3: key to her work, for she practices psychometry. She claims
Speaker 3: that she can read these objects and thereby untangle the
Speaker 3: mystery of Rachel's disappearance. Polly had come to seventeen Underwood
Speaker 3: Road the day before frantically seeking help, but Hilda Nerva
Speaker 3: had been too busy cooking Sunday dinner to go into
Speaker 3: a psychic trance. Today, however, she is ready. Perhaps her
Speaker 3: breathing now grows deep and labored, for she is communing
Speaker 3: with another world.
Speaker 5: I see you fall in the countryside.
Speaker 4: I see missus Dobkin, and she looks, said.
Speaker 1: Then Madame Nerva feels a blow.
Speaker 3: To her head and a choking sensation, as though something
Speaker 3: is tightening about her throat, squeezing, crushing. Oh, she gasps
Speaker 3: for air.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 3: The vision is clearly not a hopeful one. But Madame
Speaker 3: Nerva isn't working totally blind. She knows the missing woman well.
Speaker 3: Rachel Dobkin is convinced of the psychic's powers, and she
Speaker 3: calls her home regularly. In fact, Rachel came here just
Speaker 3: days ago, asking Madame Nerva to read a piece of
Speaker 3: her jewelry. She was meeting the man who gave it
Speaker 3: to her, and she wanted advice. Sensing great sorrow in
Speaker 3: the gold band, the clairvoyant warned Rachel of grave danger.
Speaker 5: Will you promise me you won't go.
Speaker 3: Rachel pledged that she would not see the man. This
Speaker 3: isn't a story about the Blackout Ripper, to which we'll
Speaker 3: return next episode. Rachel Dobkin wasn't in the habit of
Speaker 3: frequenting Western nightclubs, but she faced a danger no less.
Speaker 3: Chilling in Madame Nerva's hand was her wedding ring, and
Speaker 3: the man she'd promised to avoid was her own husband.
Speaker 1: In the spring of eighteen eighty one, Russia's Czar Alexander
Speaker 1: the Second was returning from a military parade to the
Speaker 1: Winter Palace, taking his customary route, when revolutionaries at the
Speaker 1: roadside threw a bomb under his carriage. The Russian monarch's
Speaker 1: step down from seeming unhurt, only for a second explosion
Speaker 1: to tear through the Royal party and its bodyguards. The
Speaker 1: assassinations sparked a series of vicious anti Jewish riots pogroms.
Speaker 6: The Christians attacked the houses and shops of the Jews
Speaker 6: indiscriminately by smashing doors and breaking windows.
Speaker 1: Only one of the ten convicted plotters was actually Jewish,
Speaker 1: but the Jewish people as a whole were blamed. They
Speaker 1: were made to pay with their businesses and homes and
Speaker 1: in blood.
Speaker 6: One hundred houses were pinached, a quantity of furniture being
Speaker 6: thrown out into the street. Two hundred people were injured
Speaker 6: during the riots.
Speaker 1: Rachel Dobkins's parents, Barnet and Sarah Dubinski, were in the
Speaker 1: eye of the storm. Their province in what is now Ukraine,
Speaker 1: saw brutal violence, and in the decade that followed the situation,
Speaker 1: situation only grew worse. Imperial Russia imposed both petty restrictions
Speaker 1: and serious hardships on the Jewish population. For example, businesses
Speaker 1: could refuse to employ Jews, so many eked out of poultry,
Speaker 1: living in the poorest paying trades. Given the violence and
Speaker 1: economic hardships, its little wonder that by eighteen ninety two,
Speaker 1: Barnet and Sarah had joined the millions of Jews seeking
Speaker 1: a new life abroad.
Speaker 3: The refugees traveled overland, at first, mostly boarding and disembarking
Speaker 3: steam locomotives that puffed and shrieked their way west. At
Speaker 3: the German frontier. Some travelers were packed onto special sealed trains.
Speaker 3: Fearing the polluting influence of the migrant Jewish duch Underer,
Speaker 3: the Prussian authorities sought to limit their contact with the
Speaker 3: German population and assuade them from settling. Conditions on the
Speaker 3: journey could be abominable. Travelers were treated like prisoners and
Speaker 3: deprived of access to adequate food and water.
Speaker 2: It was very hot and close and altogether.
Speaker 3: Uncomfortable, said one voyager.
Speaker 7: I cannot see even now how the officers could allow
Speaker 7: such a thing.
Speaker 2: It was really dangerous.
Speaker 3: But eventually the travelers would have reached Germany's coast, where
Speaker 3: the train doors would have opened. Sarah and Barnet would
Speaker 3: then have bordered a steamship to cross the North Sea
Speaker 3: to Britain.
Speaker 1: When Barnet and Sarah arrived in London, they settled in
Speaker 1: the already bustling Jewish community of Whitechapel. According to social
Speaker 1: researcher Charles Booth, some ninety percent of London's Jewish population
Speaker 1: resided in the city's grim East End, and Yiddish was
Speaker 1: spoken on the streets. The quarter was also a reputed
Speaker 1: sink of misery and degeneracy. Filthy, overcrowded, and stinking of
Speaker 1: rot and refuse. Whitechapel was also notorious for the recent
Speaker 1: string of savage murders that had been perpetrated on its
Speaker 1: dingy narrow streets. In the time since Polly Nichols, Annie Chapman,
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Stride, Kate Eddos and Mary jen Kelly had been
Speaker 1: killed here, some of the most depressing slums had been
Speaker 1: cleared and change was under way, but the East End
Speaker 1: remained of grave concern to politicians and reformers. Studying the
Speaker 1: Jewish community in particular, Charles Booth noted that these immigrants formed.
Speaker 8: A permanent layer of poverty, verging on destitution.
Speaker 1: East End Jews worked in trades such as tailoring and
Speaker 1: boot making, but regular employment was hard to come by,
Speaker 1: and many of those who laboured in the garment industry,
Speaker 1: like catmaker Barnet, carried out peace work at home, were
Speaker 1: toiled and cramped workshops under terrible conditions and for little pay.
Speaker 1: The medical journal The Lancet investigated.
Speaker 6: The condition of Jewish tailors in the East End of London.
Speaker 1: Its findings carried anti Semitic overtones, attitudes not uncommon at
Speaker 1: the time.
Speaker 6: Our commissioners found them working in unwholesome, over crowded houses.
Speaker 6: Such people were wanting in even the more elementary habits
Speaker 6: of cleanliness, which are possessed by the poorest of English people.
Speaker 1: The Dubinskis themselves lived in a house were home life
Speaker 1: and work life melded. The building was divided into tailoring workshops.
Speaker 1: It was here, in August eighteen ninety two, amid rolls
Speaker 1: of cloth and spindles of thread, that Sarah gave birth
Speaker 1: to a baby girl. For Jewish women newly arrived in
Speaker 1: a foreign land and separated from the support of their families,
Speaker 1: childbirth could be a lonely and frightening experience. Sarah might
Speaker 1: have been attended by a bobba or a handywoman, a
Speaker 1: local not formally trained in midwifery, but who would have
Speaker 1: been trusted by the community. Nonetheless, the couple named their
Speaker 1: new arrival Rachel. More Dubinski children followed, and by the
Speaker 1: time she was nine, Rachel had four younger siblings. Although
Speaker 1: some decried the standards of sanitation and Jewish homes, others
Speaker 1: remarked that the children of Jewish immigrants were generally in
Speaker 1: better health than their gentile counterparts. One school board president
Speaker 1: thought that.
Speaker 8: The improved morality of Jewish parents and the care which
Speaker 8: their religion demanded as to food, was largely the cause
Speaker 8: of their superiority over English children.
Speaker 1: The disease rickets, which left many working class children with
Speaker 1: weak and deformed bones, was less common in Jewish homes.
Speaker 1: Medical experts suggested that this was because of diet. Jewish
Speaker 1: women often banded together to bulk by fish at the
Speaker 1: local market, herring in particular, a source of protein and
Speaker 1: bone strengthening vitamin D. Other observers noted the self sacrificing
Speaker 1: care and devotion that Jewish parents showed to their children,
Speaker 1: but illness could still devastate family life, and April nineteen
Speaker 1: o one, baby Hannah Dubinski contracted whooping cough. The sound
Speaker 1: of her gasping breath would have rung through their cramped dwelling.
Speaker 1: Starved of oxygen, her tiny body would have at first
Speaker 1: convulsed and then fallen still as her rattling breaths ceased.
Speaker 3: All together, Immigrant fortunes could rise and fall. A worker
Speaker 3: might switch back and forth between the roles of employee
Speaker 3: and employer over a lifetime, flush one year, bankrupt the next,
Speaker 3: but despite the hardships and tragedies they suffered. The Dubinski
Speaker 3: family moved on the whole upwards. They were among the
Speaker 3: deserving poor, granted a home in the Leylan Buildings, a
Speaker 3: new housing development that had risen on the ruins of
Speaker 3: an infamous slum. The red brick tenement complex radiated out
Speaker 3: from a central park and was intended to accommodate policemen, nurses, teachers,
Speaker 3: and other workers of good moral character. There were even shops, schools,
Speaker 3: and laundries on site. The Dubinskis and their lodger, A
Speaker 3: bram Vogel, took up residents in three rooms. Their quarters
Speaker 3: would have been compact for seven people, to say the least,
Speaker 3: but they would all the same have felt pleased with
Speaker 3: their new home. Rachel grew into a petite young woman
Speaker 3: with dark hair and a thoughtful, arresting gaze. She was
Speaker 3: quiet and anxious on occasion. By eighteen, she was working
Speaker 3: in the cat making trade, most likely alongside her father. Then,
Speaker 3: when she was twenty eight years old, she was introduced
Speaker 3: to Harry Dobkin. This match was arranged through a Jewish
Speaker 3: marriage broker. As summer turned to autumn in nineteen twenty,
Speaker 3: Rachel and Harry wed at bethnal Green Great Synagogue.
Speaker 7: The place is perfectly good. I don't see what's wrong
Speaker 7: with it.
Speaker 9: I can't do anything more exactly.
Speaker 2: Hurry.
Speaker 3: Their union, however, was not a happy one. According to Harry,
Speaker 3: the couple argued bitterly from the start.
Speaker 6: I quarreled with my wife over at the inconvenience of
Speaker 6: the lodgings we were in and told her I had
Speaker 6: rooms were week ago. She refused to go there on
Speaker 6: a left. The marriage has been a failure from the outset.
Speaker 3: This separation came just three days after their nuptials. Historian
Speaker 3: doctor Ginger Frost doubts that disagreements about accommodation alone would
Speaker 3: have caused such a split.
Speaker 9: That's really fast. There's something they're not saying about what
Speaker 9: happened there is what I thought. I don't know what
Speaker 9: it was, but something that bad within a few days
Speaker 9: could have been sexual incompatibility. Maybe there was just instant
Speaker 9: dislike that's possible.
Speaker 3: Perhaps Harry Dobkin was violent in those first few days.
Speaker 3: Perhaps two sex was an unpleasant, even traumatic experience for
Speaker 3: rachel Girls and young women generally received little by way
Speaker 3: of sex education, to the point that a pregnant woman
Speaker 3: might have no idea how the baby growing inside her
Speaker 3: would actually leave her body. Harry was gone, but the
Speaker 3: couple had been together long enough for Rachel to conceive
Speaker 3: a child nine months after they wed and then separated.
Speaker 3: Baby Stanley was born at the City of London Maternity
Speaker 3: Hospital under the eye of medical professionals. Such care was
Speaker 3: a luxury beyond the means of many women, so when
Speaker 3: Rachel was admitted, it was probably through a charitable scheme.
Speaker 8: Single women who are sufficiently recommended.
Speaker 5: Said the hospital rules, and are.
Speaker 8: Found to be deserving of the benefits of the hospital's
Speaker 8: charity will be eligible for admission for their first confinement.
Speaker 3: On Stanley's birth certificate, Rachel wrote that both she and
Speaker 3: Harry were residing at the same address, but her husband
Speaker 3: was who knows where, for he'd gone to see as
Speaker 3: a third class steward on an ocean liner. The couple
Speaker 3: may have separated, but their lives remain knotted together. Their
Speaker 3: meetings would become ever more acrimonious, and in the coming years,
Speaker 3: Harry Dobkin would wage an awful campaign of threats and
Speaker 3: violence against his ever more fragile wife. Bad Women, the
Speaker 3: Blackout ripper will be back after this short break.
Speaker 8: State your full name for the record.
Speaker 1: Harry Dobkin had clearly not been providing for his family
Speaker 1: and was summoned to the imposing Old Street Police Court,
Speaker 1: where he was ordered to pay the sum of one
Speaker 1: pound per week to his wife and child, a considerable
Speaker 1: portion of his earnings. Divorce was expensive, difficult to obtain,
Speaker 1: and carry the stigma, so the pair chose to remain married.
Speaker 1: According to Ginger Frost, such messy separations often crippled both parties.
Speaker 9: Usually separations come, it's usually years of marriage. The woman
Speaker 9: will do a lot to avoid it because the separation
Speaker 9: payments you get are not the same as having a breadwinner.
Speaker 9: They're not enough really to keep you in any children.
Speaker 9: So she has to work. That means somebody has to
Speaker 9: take care of the kids. It just doesn't work.
Speaker 1: Harry paid the sum for a few weeks perhaps, but
Speaker 1: then fell into arrears. He was again holed up at
Speaker 1: court and sentenced to six weeks in prison. This measure
Speaker 1: was ultimately intended to discourage nonpayment, but of course while
Speaker 1: Harry was in prison, his income was halted.
Speaker 9: I'm going to jow that happens all the time. Men
Speaker 9: can never make these payments because you can't keep two
Speaker 9: households on that. She can't keep her household on that,
Speaker 9: and he can't keep his on that. You got to
Speaker 9: live with somebody else. He didn't appear to want another relationship,
Speaker 9: but if he ever wanted to have another one, he
Speaker 9: couldn't afford it because he was paying so much of
Speaker 9: his pay to her. So conflict on that really common.
Speaker 1: When Harry left prison, he took a job aboard the
Speaker 1: s S. Pittsburgh of the White Star Line, sailed away
Speaker 1: and did not return for ten years.
Speaker 3: How Rachel made ends meet in Harry's absence is unclear.
Speaker 3: It's doubtful he sent money back. When Harry Dobkin finally
Speaker 3: returned from c he says relatives tried to engineer a
Speaker 3: rapprochemund to bring the husband and wife back together again.
Speaker 3: He even claimed he was offered money to reunite with
Speaker 3: Rachel eight pounds, So the unhappy pair lived together briefly
Speaker 3: for According to Harry, the arguments erupted again.
Speaker 6: And then discovered that all my seamen's discharge papers were
Speaker 6: missing and accused my wife of taking them. She accused
Speaker 6: me of taking a broach belonging to her.
Speaker 7: Go on, tell me where you put it. I've got
Speaker 7: right to the police.
Speaker 6: I was arrested and charged stealing. The following day, I
Speaker 6: appeared at Old Street police call, but a case was dismissed.
Speaker 3: The apartment was rented in Harry's name, but he said
Speaker 3: that he left and moved back in with his parents.
Speaker 3: He bemoaned that thereafter Rachel continually reported him for non
Speaker 3: payment of their maintenance agreement, and he spent several short
Speaker 3: spells behind bars. By Harry's account, Rachel was an exasperating nuisance.
Speaker 3: His sister Annie described how she would turn up at
Speaker 3: her home causing trouble.
Speaker 5: She called at all hours and kicked up a row.
Speaker 3: There is, however, another side to this story. In January
Speaker 3: nineteen thirty five, someone tried to set a fire on
Speaker 3: Rachel's doorstep at five am. An employee of the housing
Speaker 3: block was sent to survey the considerable.
Speaker 8: Damage from the lockdownwards. The door had been burned almost through.
Speaker 8: It looked as though someone had put some oily rag
Speaker 8: and paper against the door and had set light to him.
Speaker 3: Terrified, Rachel was convinced that Harry was behind the arsen attack.
Speaker 3: Perhaps it was an attempt to merely intimidate her, or
Speaker 3: perhaps it was a bid to end the union permanently.
Speaker 3: Rachel didn't pursue her husband through the courts, and no
Speaker 3: charges were laid against him.
Speaker 1: The residents of Whitechapel erected barricades and readied themselves to
Speaker 1: repel the invaders. In almost medieval scenes, cobbles and paving
Speaker 1: stones were lifted in preparation to pelt the approaching enemy,
Speaker 1: and those in upstairs windows boiled water to rain down
Speaker 1: on their foes. Mounted police charged the locals of this
Speaker 1: Jewish neighborhood, hoping the blows from their truncheons would clear
Speaker 1: a path through. The thousands assembled, a path that would
Speaker 1: allow Sir Oswald Moseley and his black shirted British fascists
Speaker 1: to stage a provocative months the police could make a
Speaker 1: little headway, the barriers were too numerous, the crowds too enraged,
Speaker 1: the hail of stones too thick. The fascist procession would
Speaker 1: have to take another wart. We are through street, complained
Speaker 1: the Blackshirts when they were denied the chance to struck
Speaker 1: past synagogues, Jewish homes and Jewish businesses, raising their stiff
Speaker 1: armed Nazi salutes. The black Shirt leader topped openly of
Speaker 1: expelling Jews from the country, and amongst his rabble rousing accusations,
Speaker 1: he blamed the Jewish garment workshops of Whitechapel for the
Speaker 1: woes of an industry hit by the Great Depression. Bloodied
Speaker 1: and bested, the Blackshirts at last retreated and marched away
Speaker 1: from the East End. Moseley had humiliatingly lost the Battle
Speaker 1: of Cable Street and went to Berlin to lick his wounds,
Speaker 1: where he also found time to marry his fiancee. Under
Speaker 1: the gaze of Hitler himself.
Speaker 3: The doctor examined the bruising on Rachel Dobkins's arms and face.
Speaker 3: What caused this, he asked his patient, my husband, she replied,
Speaker 3: When Rachel returned with a black eye, Doctor Murphy made
Speaker 3: a record of the assault.
Speaker 2: My sister's husband has been very cruel to her.
Speaker 3: Polly Dubinsky was eleven years younger than Rachel, but she
Speaker 3: kept a protective eye on her older sister.
Speaker 7: She has received severe blows from him at different times.
Speaker 3: Friend Sadie Zimbler also saw Rachel's black eyes and purple bruises.
Speaker 5: She told me that he was a violent man. And
Speaker 5: I advised her to keep away from him.
Speaker 3: Although they lived apart, Rachel's meetings with Harry could still
Speaker 3: flare into disagreement, and Harry would try to win these
Speaker 3: disputes with his fists. The abuse inflicted such trauma that
Speaker 3: Rachel became unable to work. It seems that Harry's attempts
Speaker 3: to silence his wife only made her even more reliant
Speaker 3: on his maintenance payments.
Speaker 2: Harry.
Speaker 3: In nineteen thirty seven, Rachel in the street so hard
Speaker 3: that she suffered a so called mental lapse. Unbeknownst to
Speaker 3: her family, she was sent to an observation board in
Speaker 3: nearby Saint Clement's Hospital. The treatment of mental illness was changing.
Speaker 3: Lunatics were now patience and no longer insane, but of
Speaker 3: unsound mind. Mental ill health was an ailment, and hopefully
Speaker 3: a temporary one, rather than an identity. Previously, doctors waited
Speaker 3: until people were so ill that they could be certified
Speaker 3: insane and sent to an asylum. But now observation wards
Speaker 3: welcomed patients like Rachel and then decided whether they needed
Speaker 3: more intensive treatment a period of convalescence, or had recovered
Speaker 3: sufficiently to be discharged. When Rachel's siblings, Polly, Mary and Nathan,
Speaker 3: marched through the doors of the hospital two days later
Speaker 3: to retrieve her. They were adamant that their sister was
Speaker 3: quite well enough to leave. Rachel was said to be frightened.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure I'm quite well, and.
Speaker 3: She described fiery feelings on the crown of her head giddiness.
Speaker 3: Though her time in hospital was short, the suggestion that
Speaker 3: Rachel was of unsound mind would haunt her in the
Speaker 3: coming years, prompting some to discount her growing concerns about
Speaker 3: her abusive husband.
Speaker 8: So that's one Russian tea will be wanting something to
Speaker 8: eat as well.
Speaker 1: Maud Air didn't know the agitated man ordering food at
Speaker 1: her son's case on an August day in nineteen thirty nine.
Speaker 1: The customer, Harry Dobkin, talked to waiting staff, then approached Maud.
Speaker 6: My wife is pregnant. She's threatened to have an illegal operation.
Speaker 6: Will you come and have a talk with her and
Speaker 6: persuade her not.
Speaker 2: To do it.
Speaker 1: Maud followed Harry Dobkin back to his nearby rented room.
Speaker 1: He was earning a living making and selling aprons, and
Speaker 1: the space was both home and workshop. Inside, she found Rachel.
Speaker 5: She then said, I'm pregnant. I have a boy of
Speaker 5: eighteen and I don't want to go through with another one.
Speaker 5: I've paid the money and I'm going to have an
Speaker 5: illegal operation tomorrow.
Speaker 1: Maud explained to the englishwoman that the procedure would be dangerous.
Speaker 5: I told her not to be silly and go through
Speaker 5: and have the child.
Speaker 1: Rachel, who admitted that she had already tried to end
Speaker 1: the pregnancy by swallowing anti malarial drug, seemed to listen
Speaker 1: to this advice.
Speaker 2: I will not have it done. Will you speak to
Speaker 2: my husband.
Speaker 1: Rachel's husband, however, had already left. He'd gone to report
Speaker 1: her to the police. Interviewed by officers, Rachel described how
Speaker 1: Harry's abuse had escalated during one of her visits to
Speaker 1: seek her overdue alimony.
Speaker 2: About a fortnight ago.
Speaker 7: My husband forced himself for me and had intercourse, although
Speaker 7: I did not wish it.
Speaker 1: This accusation of rape, denied by Harry, seems not to
Speaker 1: have interested the police. A wife couldn't deny her husband's sex,
Speaker 1: said the law, but seeking an abortion was an offense.
Speaker 1: They'd happily investigate. Husband and wife disagreed about who'd insisted
Speaker 1: on the termination, but Rachel was not, in fact pregnant.
Speaker 1: A doctor who examined her at the behesse of the
Speaker 1: police concluded that she was going through the menopause and
Speaker 1: suffering from menopausal neurosis that made her a borderline mental case.
Speaker 1: In their final report, police noted that Rachel was unreliable,
Speaker 1: rambling and suffering from bad nerves. Despite Rachel's accusations of violence,
Speaker 1: the police decided that Harry and Rachel were essentially as
Speaker 1: bad as one another.
Speaker 8: Both mister and missus Dobkins are very vindictive towards each other.
Speaker 8: There is no doubt Harry Dobkins tries to avoid payment
Speaker 8: of the maintenance order. She in turn molests him whenever possible.
Speaker 1: Homicide expert Professor Jane Mounkton Smith is familiar with such
Speaker 1: explanations of domestic violence.
Speaker 10: The six of one half a dozen of the other
Speaker 10: narrative I think is incredibly damaging to victims, especially of
Speaker 10: control and abuse.
Speaker 1: We sent Jane the files on Rachel DIDs and she
Speaker 1: felt that the police were wrongly dismissive of Rachel's plight.
Speaker 10: He wasn't living with her, so he's coming in from
Speaker 10: outside and forcing himself on her and this woman is
Speaker 10: left to deal with the consequences of his violence time
Speaker 10: and time and time again. And you do not see
Speaker 10: that being spoken about in any of the records. The
Speaker 10: violence is almost spoken about as if well, they had
Speaker 10: that kind of relationship. So that's what was going on,
Speaker 10: and she was a bit crazy anyway. So poor guy.
Speaker 10: She was on the road to losing her life, absolutely definitely,
Speaker 10: and not a single person was on her side.
Speaker 3: It wasn't long after this incident that Rachel started to
Speaker 3: visit the medium Madame Nerva. Spiritualism was immensely popular. Practitioners
Speaker 3: believed that the dead survived in another realm and could
Speaker 3: commune with the living. Sherlock Holmes creator Sir Arthur Conan
Speaker 3: Doyle had even been among spiritualisms celebrity proponents. For historian
Speaker 3: Ginger Frost, its popularity is linked to the upheaval and
Speaker 3: tragedy that unfolded in the first part of the twentieth century.
Speaker 9: So many people died in World War One, and the
Speaker 9: flu epidemic took out even more, and those two whammies
Speaker 9: within a couple of three years of each other. It
Speaker 9: was just disaster, and most people had lost multiple people
Speaker 9: in their lives. They wanted to be able to connect
Speaker 9: to them again. They wanted some hope that they were
Speaker 9: still somewhere. And I can understand that.
Speaker 3: And so seance circles and mediums proliferated.
Speaker 9: Most of them had like a spirit guide who would
Speaker 9: show up, and they'd speak in that guide's voice, and
Speaker 9: the guide would answer questions. Some of them transported things,
Speaker 9: of course, most of them are just concealed them on
Speaker 9: their bodies, but they would just suddenly spout flowers, or
Speaker 9: they would have a relic from another time that would
Speaker 9: be in their hand, or they were seeing things from
Speaker 9: other times. They were going other places without actually leaving
Speaker 9: the room. There were all of these kinds of psychic.
Speaker 3: Phenomen Hilda Nerva, a Polish emigray, told the Psychic News
Speaker 3: that since childhood she'd possessed a strange power that enabled
Speaker 3: her to help other girls with their problems. Rachel certainly
Speaker 3: came burdened with problems, and her relationship with Madame Nerva
Speaker 3: seems to have had a therapeutic quality. This wasn't uncommon.
Speaker 9: You talk out things with them, they're comforting. It's just
Speaker 9: if you think of it that way as kind of therapy.
Speaker 9: It seems like a very healthy to have someone to
Speaker 9: go to and talk to about the stuff and feel
Speaker 9: better when you leave.
Speaker 3: Rachel went to the Little Brick House every other Sunday,
Speaker 3: but April eighth, nineteen forty one, was a Tuesday. Rachel Dobkin,
Speaker 3: now forty eight years old, had a pressing question for
Speaker 3: Madame Nerva.
Speaker 2: Can you tell me something?
Speaker 4: Give me an article and I'll try and get through
Speaker 4: for you.
Speaker 3: Rachel handed over the wedding ring and Madame Nerva entered
Speaker 3: a semi trance.
Speaker 4: You are worried and full of trouble. You are planning
Speaker 4: to go in a few days on a journey to
Speaker 4: meet someone.
Speaker 5: Don't go.
Speaker 4: Leave it to the spirit, friends, and stay where you are.
Speaker 3: The psychic described a vision of Rachel entering a large
Speaker 3: building where she knew there was money for her.
Speaker 5: I see sadness for you. Will you promise not to go?
Speaker 3: Rachel made the promise, but Madame Nerva's words seemed to
Speaker 3: have weighed on her heavily. Bad women the Blackout Ripper
Speaker 3: will be back after this shortbreak.
Speaker 1: Two days after her meeting with Madame Nerva, Rachel called
Speaker 1: at the home of a friend who said she was depressed, anxious,
Speaker 1: and afraid of Harry.
Speaker 7: She told me that her husband would get her sooner
Speaker 7: or later, would finish her.
Speaker 1: Yet the following day day Rachel appears to have had
Speaker 1: a change of heart. On Friday morning, she met with
Speaker 1: her beloved son Stanley, and they arranged to go to
Speaker 1: the cinema later that afternoon. At lunch time, she crossed
Speaker 1: paths with Polly and told her that her husband had
Speaker 1: offered her a pound of onions as a present, food
Speaker 1: being scarce at this stage of the war, and she
Speaker 1: was going to meet him. Harry Dobkins said he encountered
Speaker 1: his wife on the street near his house. He was
Speaker 1: on his way out to sell some aprons.
Speaker 6: It was obvious she had been my infamy.
Speaker 1: Rachel was always trying to lure him back to live
Speaker 1: with her, he said, casting himself in the role of
Speaker 1: the beleagued victim.
Speaker 6: I said, please don't hang around here and cause trouble.
Speaker 6: My mother is very ill.
Speaker 1: They agreed to meet later at a local cafe. The
Speaker 1: proprietors remembered them coming in. She'd seen them together before.
Speaker 5: They sat at a corner table. The woman was very talkative.
Speaker 5: The couple appeared quite friendly and they were not quarreling
Speaker 5: or arguing.
Speaker 1: But Harry told a different story.
Speaker 6: She said, if you don't make peace with me, I'll
Speaker 6: make trouble for you. She was talking in low tones,
Speaker 6: but was a bit hysterical. After this threat, I said,
Speaker 6: I'll consider peace if you will calm yourself and go home.
Speaker 6: She drunk a cup of tea, and as we left
Speaker 6: the tea shop, she said she didn't feel well and
Speaker 6: she was going to her mother's to wear the wireless.
Speaker 1: Harry said. She boarded the number twenty two bus and
Speaker 1: he watched as it lurched away towards Shoredage.
Speaker 3: That evening, Polly finished work and went home early. The
Speaker 3: baby of the family, she hadn't followed her siblings into
Speaker 3: the garment trade, and had instead learnt shorthand typing and
Speaker 3: become a bookkeeper and clerk at a city office. Rachel
Speaker 3: never appeared a flat to rest and listen to the wireless,
Speaker 3: nor did she make it to the cinema with stat. Ordinarily,
Speaker 3: she would call round in the evenings and eat dinner
Speaker 3: with her family, but that night her place at the
Speaker 3: table sat empty. The following morning, there was still no
Speaker 3: sign of her, and Polly felt uneasy enough to let
Speaker 3: herself into Rachel's flat with the spare key. When she
Speaker 3: saw her sister's undisturbed bedsheets and realized that she hadn't
Speaker 3: slept there, Polly felt sure that something terrible had happened.
Speaker 3: At first, the flames licked at the old church ruins,
Speaker 3: dancing across its floorboards and wood paneling. Then they curled
Speaker 3: around what remained of the timber rafters, and soon the
Speaker 3: orange blaze lit up the night skies. Harry Dogkins supplemented
Speaker 3: his income as a part time firewatcher at the warehouse
Speaker 3: next door. Aprons sails had been poor, so he spent
Speaker 3: his nights protecting these premises from the ancendry bombs dropped
Speaker 3: by the Germans. He greeted the police in firefighters when
Speaker 3: they finally arrived, showing them the best route to reach
Speaker 3: the fire that gripped the bombed out ruins of Fauxhall
Speaker 3: Baptist Chapel. The stout little man in whose suit and
Speaker 3: trilby hat, seemed excited and claimed to have tried to
Speaker 3: extinguish the flames, though he hadn't raised the alarm. His
Speaker 3: very role as a fire watcher. One witness recalled a
Speaker 3: strange remark he made, I didn't do it.
Speaker 1: Across town. The Dubinskis were worried sick about Rachel. They
Speaker 1: hadn't seen her for over three days, and they'd alerted
Speaker 1: the police. The only clue was Rachel's handbag that had
Speaker 1: been found thirty miles from the city and which contained
Speaker 1: vital documents such as haration book. Officers searched for the
Speaker 1: missing woman had trained stations and in local hospitals, and
Speaker 1: they wrote extent reports, but they did not take Polly's
Speaker 1: suspicions or the prophecies of Madam Nerva particularly seriously. Instead,
Speaker 1: they pointed to Rachel's mental health history.
Speaker 2: The woman was.
Speaker 1: Clearly troubled, and she'd probably gone and drowned herself, they thought.
Speaker 1: But over the next year, Polly returned time and again
Speaker 1: to the police, imploring them to act now.
Speaker 7: In the character of her husband, I'm reporting this because
Speaker 7: I feel he has had some hand in her disappearance.
Speaker 1: Polly's unrelenting campaign for justice seems to have annoyed the detectives.
Speaker 1: One police file cast doubt on her mental health, saying
Speaker 1: she buckled under the sorrow of Rachel's disappearance and was
Speaker 1: experiencing her hallucinations. Officers did search the chapel, but hampered
Speaker 1: by bomb and fire damage, found nothing, and ultimately it
Speaker 1: was thought inconceivable that Harry Dubkin would have waited over
Speaker 1: twenty years to kill Rachel.
Speaker 8: There is not the slightest indication that Harry Dobkin has
Speaker 8: murdered his wife, as suggested by the missing woman's relations, but.
Speaker 1: Jane Monkton Smith says that to arrive at such a
Speaker 1: conclusion is to totally misunderstand intimate partner violence.
Speaker 10: One thing that we do know about this type of
Speaker 10: homicide is that there's a level of planning in most
Speaker 10: of them, and in some cases they will try and
Speaker 10: make it look like there's been a car accident or
Speaker 10: a strange fall, or even illness. Sometimes that goes on
Speaker 10: a lot, So sometimes these things are never found out,
Speaker 10: and sometimes, yeah, it can take a long time before
Speaker 10: they're uncovered.
Speaker 1: The police also tied themselves in knots to discredit accounts
Speaker 1: of Harry's violence. For instance, Polly may have noticed Rachel's
Speaker 1: bruises and been told how they've been caused, but officers
Speaker 1: noted that Polly had never actually seen Harry strike her
Speaker 1: sister or threaten her life in their questions to witnesses.
Speaker 1: The police also seemed to have been particularly interested and
Speaker 1: how often Rachel contacted Harry, as though this meant she
Speaker 1: could not have seriously feared he would do her harm.
Speaker 10: When I was reading the case notes for this, I
Speaker 10: actually got quite angry because she suffered a significant injury,
Speaker 10: which caused people to then be able to accuse her
Speaker 10: of having mental health problems. This poor woman probably couldn't
Speaker 10: open her mouth without somebody interpreting what she was saying
Speaker 10: or doing is crazy, which then tends to protect him.
Speaker 10: But he inflicted that injury, and then she's accused of
Speaker 10: chasing him for money and him having to spend time
Speaker 10: in prison because he hadn't paid the money. This is
Speaker 10: a violent, nasty man. He was the architect of all
Speaker 10: of the problems that she had, and there speaking about
Speaker 10: him as if she's the problem. What did they think
Speaker 10: she was going to do for money? She had no
Speaker 10: means of supporting herself. She was of a status of
Speaker 10: a single mother back then. Oh my goodness, that would
Speaker 10: have been so hard.
Speaker 1: As the months went by, there was still no sign
Speaker 1: of Rachel. Twice Polly was called in to identify bodies,
Speaker 1: neither of which turned out to be her sister. These
Speaker 1: experiences proved so traumatic that Polly refused any further invitations
Speaker 1: to the morgue. Harry Dobkin probably felt that he had
Speaker 1: got away with Rachel's murder, but Harry Dobkin was wrong.
Speaker 3: The forensic pathologists set to work examining the torso that
Speaker 3: Benjamin Whien Marshall had discovered in the basement of the chapel.
Speaker 3: It was so small and slight that at first he
Speaker 3: thought it might have belonged to a young girl. The
Speaker 3: hair and other parts of the body were missing, and
Speaker 3: what remained had been mutilated and partially burned.
Speaker 1: The perpetrator clearly thought.
Speaker 3: His grisly handiwork would frustrate attempts to identify the dead woman,
Speaker 3: but the murderer hadn't reckoned on the persistence and skill
Speaker 3: of the pathology team. They raked and sibbed through tons
Speaker 3: of rubble from the chapel looking for more clues, and
Speaker 3: the X rayed and photographed the remains in a lab
Speaker 3: at one of London's top hospitals, determined to find out
Speaker 3: who the dead woman was. Finally, Abraham Kopkin was summoned.
Speaker 3: He tended to teeth across the East End, fillings, extractions, dentches.
Speaker 3: A surviving section of jaw was set before the dentist.
Speaker 6: That's my patient, that's missus Dobbs.
Speaker 3: In August nineteen forty two, the police went to question
Speaker 3: Harry Dobkin. He was living with his aged parents in
Speaker 3: the front room of their house. The space was furnished simply,
Speaker 3: and there were boxes of leather and fabric straps everywhere.
Speaker 8: There's been a development in respect to your wife. I
Speaker 8: want you to accompany us to the police station for
Speaker 8: further inquiries.
Speaker 3: Harry protested that he knew nothing of any seller at
Speaker 3: the chapel, had never once been down there. He grew agitated,
Speaker 3: and then he took a bill from a leather merchant's
Speaker 3: firm out of his pocket, sprawled a note on the back,
Speaker 3: and handed it to a police officer. He was said
Speaker 3: to be in the habit of writing down his thoughts
Speaker 3: on scraps.
Speaker 6: Of paper, Divisional Inspector, Dear sir, It read, in respect
Speaker 6: to what you say that my wife has been found
Speaker 6: dead or murdered, and that you say I know something
Speaker 6: that I am holding back from the police. I am
Speaker 6: sorry to say that I cannot say anything different to
Speaker 6: my previous statements.
Speaker 3: But the police had said nothing about murder, nor had
Speaker 3: they suggested he was holding information back from them. They
Speaker 3: charged him, implying that Rachel had driven her husband to murder.
Speaker 8: We suggest that Dobkin had reason to be rid of
Speaker 8: his wife, as she had been a financial incumbrance to
Speaker 8: him for many years. The maintenance order was a constant
Speaker 8: drain on him. He'd been committed to prison several times
Speaker 8: for its non payment. He has also said that she
Speaker 8: pestered his parents, which did not improve matters.
Speaker 3: Jane Monkton Smith thinks that such a reading of Harry
Speaker 3: Dobkins's motive, one that paints Rachel as a shrew and
Speaker 3: to blame for her own death, badly misses the mark.
Speaker 10: That's the society we created for women. Men created for women,
Speaker 10: a society where they would be reliant on them, and
Speaker 10: they get annoyed about that when they don't want that
Speaker 10: woman anymore. And he wanted rid of her. I really
Speaker 10: believe that he wanted rid of her because he could
Speaker 10: see himself going back into prison again for not giving
Speaker 10: her money. How dare she? How dare she wreck his
Speaker 10: life by trying to get money off him when he's
Speaker 10: got other things to do and a life to lead,
Speaker 10: with no thought for how he has wrecked her life,
Speaker 10: and just expected that she would take it.
Speaker 3: The jury deliberated for only twenty minutes and they were
Speaker 3: unanimous on their verdict. Harry Dobkin had strangled his wife
Speaker 3: to death with his bare hands and then concealed her
Speaker 3: remains in the church cellar. He was hanged on a cold,
Speaker 3: foggy morning at once Worth Prison in South London. After
Speaker 3: the trial, a journalist visited the Dubinski family home. They
Speaker 3: kept a photo of Rachel atop the piano, she noted,
Speaker 3: and another over on.
Speaker 5: The wall, and very beautiful she looked.
Speaker 3: The reporter was intrigued by the role Madame Nerva and
Speaker 3: spiritualism had played in the case. Then, Rachel's mother, Sarah
Speaker 3: and her sister Mary confided that all the time that
Speaker 3: her body had lain concealed in the church ruins, they'd
Speaker 3: heard strange knocks at the door, only to find no
Speaker 3: one waiting on the step, and then in the dead
Speaker 3: of night, Sarah had repeatedly been woken by a voice
Speaker 3: from the playground outside the voice of her missing daughter Rachel,
Speaker 3: so tormented and ill served in life, now at least
Speaker 3: rested in a proper grave. On the headstone, the Dubinskis
Speaker 3: chose to end the heartfelt inscription with a wish.
Speaker 2: Peace to her dear soul, Bad Women.
Speaker 1: The Blackout Ripper is hosted by me Halle Rubinholt and
Speaker 1: me Alice Fines. It was written and produced by Alice
Speaker 1: Fines and Ryan Dilley, with additional support from Courtney Garino
Speaker 1: and Arthur Gomberts.
Speaker 5: Kate Healy of.
Speaker 1: Oakwood Family Trees aided us with genealogical research.
Speaker 3: Pascal Wise Sound designed and mixed the show and composed
Speaker 3: all the original music. The show was recorded at Ordoor
Speaker 3: Studios by David Smith and Tom Berry. You also heard
Speaker 3: the voice talents of Ben Crow, David Glover, Melanie Gutridge,
Speaker 3: Stella Harford, Gemma Saunders, and Rufus Wright. Much of the
Speaker 3: music you heard was performed by Ed Gocken, Ross Hughes,
Speaker 3: Christian Miller and Marcus Penrose. They were recorded by Nick
Speaker 3: Taylor Porcupine Studios. Pushkin's Bend Holiday mixed the tracks and.
Speaker 1: You heard additional piano playing by the Great Berry wise
Speaker 1: Hi Berry. The show also wouldn't have been possible without
Speaker 1: the work of Jacob Weisberg, Heather Fane, Carl Migliori, Maggie Taylor,
Speaker 1: Nicole Morano, Eric Sandler, and Daniela Lukhan. We'd also like
Speaker 1: to thank Michael Buchanan Dunn of the Murder Mile podcast,
Speaker 1: Lizzie Mckerroll, Katherine Walker at the Royal Pharmaceutical Society and
Speaker 1: the Earbe Historical Society. Bad Women is a production of
Speaker 1: Pushkin Industries. Please rate and review the show and spread
Speaker 1: the word about what we do and thanks for listening.
Speaker 9: And Hanny.
Speaker 2: Had Ann
Speaker 8: The