Speaker 1: Pushkin. Some one is watching Polly Nichols. He's skilled at
Speaker 1: keeping his distance and at remaining just out of sight.
Speaker 1: He follows her dog darkening streets. He knows which shops
Speaker 1: or pubs she enters. He knows what work she does,
Speaker 1: and when she leaves to return to her lodgings. He
Speaker 1: knows where she lives, and most importantly, he knows who
Speaker 1: she's been living with. He inquires about her in the neighborhood,
Speaker 1: but he does so subtly, in a way that won't
Speaker 1: raise any alarm, that won't give away his presence. I'm
Speaker 1: Hallie ribbin 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 smiled upon me. Now one pass
Speaker 1: my time anney, and not to have her seems to loney.
Speaker 1: I'm com free. London's Fleet Street and its network and
Speaker 1: narrow tributaries, was a hive of activity. The so called
Speaker 1: Street of Ink was home to authors, printers, newspapermen and booksellers,
Speaker 1: every profession dependent upon the written word. Charles Dickens himself
Speaker 1: frequented these byways, first working as a shoeshiner and then
Speaker 1: scribbling away in nearby rooms in workshops. All along that thoroughfare,
Speaker 1: cylinders turned, belts moved, gears clicked, and wood as type
Speaker 1: and ink pressed against paper. It's here that Edward Walker
Speaker 1: plied his trade as a blacksmith. He fashioned metal parts
Speaker 1: for the printing presses. He and his wife, Caroline also
Speaker 1: lived nearby, amid the warren of crumbling old buildings with
Speaker 1: leaking roofs and rotting floors. In their cramped and ramshackle dwelling,
Speaker 1: on August twenty sixth, eighteen forty five, they welcomed a daughter, Polly.
Speaker 1: The printing presses of Fleet Street offered Polly, her parents,
Speaker 1: and her two brothers a humble yet steady existence. Edward's
Speaker 1: wages as a blacksmith were constant but low. As a
Speaker 1: skilled tradesman whose income was better than that of a
Speaker 1: bricklayer or a dock worker, one might think the family
Speaker 1: would have enjoyed a comfortable life. Instead, they would have
Speaker 1: inhabited no more than two or three rooms, each about
Speaker 1: eight by ten feet in size. They would have cooked
Speaker 1: on a fire in their hearth and relieved themselves in
Speaker 1: a chamber pot in the corner of the room. It
Speaker 1: was not uncommon for the entire family to share a
Speaker 1: single bed. Privacy was almost unheard of. Nevertheless, Edward put
Speaker 1: a few pennies aside to send his children to school.
Speaker 1: Schooling would not be compulsory until eighteen seventy six, and
Speaker 1: Polly was unusually literate. We're all working class girl. This
Speaker 1: was one of the few advantages conferred by proximity to
Speaker 1: Fleet Street. Many dwellings here black plumbing, so residents scooped
Speaker 1: up dirty, stagnant water from puddles for cooking and cleaning.
Speaker 1: Block chimneys and poor ventilation trapped heavy sulfur at coal
Speaker 1: smoke and rooms, which contributed to a host of respiratory illnesses.
Speaker 1: Diseases such as bronchitis, dysentery, cholera, and typhus were ripe,
Speaker 1: especially in the warmer months, when the stench also became unbearable.
Speaker 1: Polly was not yet seven years old when her mother
Speaker 1: began to display the symptoms of what appeared to be flu.
Speaker 1: It began with a cough, which eventually grew worse, and
Speaker 1: as the illness settled in her lungs. Her dreadful racking
Speaker 1: became blood laced. At this time, tuberculosis went by the
Speaker 1: name of consumption. The sufferer was simply assumed by the
Speaker 1: disease and wasted away its bacterial infection that attacks the
Speaker 1: lungs and is spread by coughs and sneezes. Antibiotics hadn't
Speaker 1: yet been invented, and malnutrition and physical exhaustion, which were
Speaker 1: part of working class life, enabled the disease to take
Speaker 1: hold with ease. Consumption was a death sentence, and it
Speaker 1: quickly claimed Polly's mother. At this time, people didn't entirely
Speaker 1: understand how tuberculosis spread, and so women who usually nursed
Speaker 1: the ill often caught it and passed it on within
Speaker 1: their families. This was almost certainly how Polly's youngest brother
Speaker 1: contracted the disease. He quickly followed his mother to the grave,
Speaker 1: although she was still a child herself. The loss of
Speaker 1: her mother propelled Polly into a position of responsibility within
Speaker 1: what was now a household of three. Every Victorian household
Speaker 1: needed a woman to cook and clean. Men who were
Speaker 1: expected to go out and earn a wage did not
Speaker 1: lander the baked the bread at the same time, Polly
Speaker 1: found herself in an unusually fortunate position. Unlike most working
Speaker 1: class households, her family was now small, and once her
Speaker 1: elder brother was old enough to enter the workplace, there
Speaker 1: were two male earners and only three mouths to feed.
Speaker 1: This situation allowed Polly to continue her schooling into her
Speaker 1: early teens. It also helped to cement a strong bond
Speaker 1: between Polly and her father, one which would last until
Speaker 1: her murder. Living a short walk away from Polly's home
Speaker 1: was a man with a broad, sunny face and light hair.
Speaker 1: We know nothing about their courtship, but we do know
Speaker 1: that just before Christmas eighteen sixty three, William Nichols proposed
Speaker 1: to the blacksmith's daughter. They were married a month later
Speaker 1: at Saint Bride's Church. Planned parenthood did not exist for
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century working classes. Married couples didn't get to
Speaker 1: choose when they wanted to start a family. The making
Speaker 1: of that family began on the wedding night. Whether a
Speaker 1: couple was as comfortable as Queen Victoria and Prince Albert
Speaker 1: or penniless. A woman's entire duty in life was to
Speaker 1: marry and then to make and look after children. So
Speaker 1: life as a wife and mother began for Polly immediately.
Speaker 1: She bore her first baby just under eleven months after
Speaker 1: her wedding. Unfortunately, this child died after a year and
Speaker 1: nine months, but other pregnancies and berths followed at regular intervals.
Speaker 1: Each child stretched William's earnings further. The expanding Nichols family
Speaker 1: had been sharing a home with Polly's father and brother
Speaker 1: due to a housing shortage. The combined incomes of three
Speaker 1: male wage earners was still not enough to pay the
Speaker 1: rent on spacious, clean family accommodation. Instead, they were forced
Speaker 1: to make do with the usual cramped, noisy, and unhealthy
Speaker 1: living quarters. But then William and Polly learned of a
Speaker 1: new housing initiative. It looked as if this might solve
Speaker 1: all of their problems. In eighteen sixty two, the American
Speaker 1: expat philanthropist in financier George Peabody had wished to give
Speaker 1: something back to the people of his adopted city of London.
Speaker 1: He chose to gift the princely sum of five hundred
Speaker 1: thousand pounds to London's poor and needy, nearly five hundred
Speaker 1: million dollars relative to the wages of today, my object
Speaker 1: being to ameliorate the condition of the poor and needy
Speaker 1: of this great metropolis, and to promote their comfort and happiness.
Speaker 1: Peabody was himself from humble beginnings in Massachusetts, but by
Speaker 1: the end of his life he had amassed a vast fortune.
Speaker 1: With no obvious air, he decided to erect apartment buildings
Speaker 1: all over London. But Peabody's gift to London's working classes
Speaker 1: came with strings attached. He'd only housed the poor who
Speaker 1: displayed moral character and good conduct as a member of society. Essentially,
Speaker 1: Peabody's gift was only for the worthy poor, those whom
Speaker 1: he judged to lead a morally upright life. Peabody was
Speaker 1: very keen, and his trustees were very keen to make
Speaker 1: sure that you didn't attract people who seemed to want
Speaker 1: something for nothing. Historian Sarah Wise is an authority on
Speaker 1: nineteenth century social history and on how the Victorians classified
Speaker 1: some poor people as more deserving than others, people who
Speaker 1: could show that they were sober and quiet and kept
Speaker 1: themselves of themselves, that they understood the importance of cleanliness.
Speaker 1: The people they didn't want were those who they considered
Speaker 1: to be loafers, people who had no intention of earning
Speaker 1: their own living for themselves, or of even trying to
Speaker 1: do so. Habitual drunkards were disqualified, as was anyone who
Speaker 1: had been entangled with the law. Having more and four
Speaker 1: children was frowned upon. And while you had to be
Speaker 1: able to afford the rent at the Peabody buildings, you
Speaker 1: also couldn't have too great of an income. Entry requirements
Speaker 1: were narrow and the admissions process rigorous. The trustees would
Speaker 1: have called at the Nichols home, where they would have
Speaker 1: found William, Polly and their three children dressed in their
Speaker 1: Sunday best, the rooms swept and tidy. There would have
Speaker 1: been no indication of low morals or alcoholism, and William's
Speaker 1: employer would have endorsed him as an industrious family man.
Speaker 1: The Nichols application was successful, and the family took up
Speaker 1: residence in an apartment or flat at number three Stamford Street.
Speaker 1: They now had four rooms all to themselves and access
Speaker 1: to all kinds of modern conveniences, including laundry facilities, a
Speaker 1: stove to cook on, and a working indoor toilet in
Speaker 1: the basement or the ground floors. You had the baths,
Speaker 1: which was a real step forward, so you could have
Speaker 1: any amounts of baths that you wanted totally for free.
Speaker 1: That was all included in your rents. Unfortunately, these were
Speaker 1: cold water bath facilities, but that would have been seen
Speaker 1: as absolute luxury because there was always that struggle to
Speaker 1: obtain good clean water in which to do anything, let
Speaker 1: alone to wash on a daily basis. There were other
Speaker 1: innovations at these buildings too, things like rubbish shoots to
Speaker 1: keep trash away from the living quarters. So it really
Speaker 1: was kind of at the forefront of what the Victorians
Speaker 1: called sanitary science. Everything possible was built in to make
Speaker 1: sure that the residents could keep themselves and the block
Speaker 1: as clean as possible. Communal spaces were to be kept immaculate,
Speaker 1: Corridors and steps were to be swept every day and
Speaker 1: washed every Saturday. There was a perceived connection between moral
Speaker 1: purity and physical cleanliness. It was believed that peabodies residents,
Speaker 1: inspired by their own well scrubbed bodies and fresh smelling clothes,
Speaker 1: would wish to maintain their surroundings and keep them free
Speaker 1: of filth. William and Polly surely felt a sense of
Speaker 1: pride they were moving up in the world. Their new
Speaker 1: apartment marked a contrast with their previous and wretched living conditions.
Speaker 1: The private sector allowed very poor people to make their
Speaker 1: living in a wide range of ways which would be
Speaker 1: absolutely unthinkable in any philanthropic block. So all sorts of
Speaker 1: really smelly, unpleasant industries, such as chopping up bits of
Speaker 1: old horse to make cats meat, all sorts of fish smoking,
Speaker 1: actually very high skilled artisan trads that involved banging and
Speaker 1: hammering and varnishes and polishes and flames or machinery. Peabody
Speaker 1: housing offered the Nichols family peace, quiet and cleanliness, but
Speaker 1: there were also strict rules that the worthy poor had
Speaker 1: to follow. You had to agree to either have been
Speaker 1: vaccinated against smallpox or that you were going to be
Speaker 1: No hanging out of your laundry your own room. Children
Speaker 1: can't play on the stairs or corridors. No dogs, no lodgers,
Speaker 1: no trading, no intemperance or disorderly behavior. Intemperance meant indulgence
Speaker 1: in alcohol. Apparently that was immediate notice to quit. The
Speaker 1: gas goes off at eleven PM, and you can't put
Speaker 1: wall paper or any pictures up in your home. But
Speaker 1: the Peabody buildings didn't suit everyone. There was a real
Speaker 1: love of color and music and joy amongst every section
Speaker 1: of the working class, and many of them may have
Speaker 1: just psychologically thought, no, I can't hack this. Those who
Speaker 1: could hack it were said to quickly acquire decent habits.
Speaker 1: People like to be as good as their neighbors, remarked
Speaker 1: the superintendent of Polly and William's building, and although the
Speaker 1: move to the Peabody buildings significantly improved the Nichols family's
Speaker 1: quality of life, William's salary was stretched further by the
Speaker 1: arrival of a fourth child. This financial strain meant that
Speaker 1: in eighteen seventy seven the family was forced to downsize
Speaker 1: and exchange their four room apartment for a three room one.
Speaker 1: Their new abode was next door to a woman named
Speaker 1: Rosetta Walls. Rosetta had married a ship's cook. He spent
Speaker 1: more time at sea than with Rosetta, and the pair
Speaker 1: had drifted apart. She earned an income as a charwoman
Speaker 1: or a cleaning lady, and by also picking up odd jobs.
Speaker 1: In eighteen seventy eight, when Polly gave birth to a
Speaker 1: fifth child, a son, Rosetta stepped into a sister. The
Speaker 1: two households shared walls, a toilet, and a sink. The
Speaker 1: doors were always open, which fostered a sense of intimacy
Speaker 1: between the two families. We cannot know exactly when or
Speaker 1: why the arguments between Polly and William began. Perhaps the
Speaker 1: new closer quarters, larger family, and greater financial pressures all
Speaker 1: played a role. William Nichols asserted that his wife suddenly
Speaker 1: began drinking excessively and that this was the source of
Speaker 1: their strife. Polly's father, Edward, would offer another explanation. William
Speaker 1: Nichols had begun an affair with Rosetta Walls. Perhaps Polly
Speaker 1: was exhausted and suffering from postnatal depression. Perhaps she was
Speaker 1: jealous of Rosetta Walls. Perhaps both were true, and she
Speaker 1: just turned to alcohol to lighten these burdens. We cannot know,
Speaker 1: But on March twenty ninth, eighteen eighty, Polly was finally
Speaker 1: tired of arguing. She handed her children over to their
Speaker 1: father and walked through the gates of the Peabody Buildings,
Speaker 1: never to return. Everything about Polly's life was about to change.
Speaker 1: She could not begin to imagine what was coming. The
Speaker 1: Ripper retold will be back in a moment. Polly's decision
Speaker 1: to walk out on her husband in eighteen eighty, possibly
Speaker 1: because he was seeing another woman, was an unusual one.
Speaker 1: Most of the time, memen leave if they're being beaten
Speaker 1: to a pulp Historian Ginger Frost is witty and straight
Speaker 1: talking and an expert on Victorian family life. Sometimes they
Speaker 1: will leave if he's not providing. There really is no
Speaker 1: reason to stay. If he's a poor provider, or he's
Speaker 1: drunk all the time, or he gambles all the money away.
Speaker 1: If you're not being provided for, that's what the man
Speaker 1: brings to the table. If he can't bring that, there's
Speaker 1: no reason to stay. Walking out on your children, as
Speaker 1: Polly did, is even less common. That is very rare.
Speaker 1: Most women don't want to leave their children. They just stay.
Speaker 1: They put up with it. That's the main response of women.
Speaker 1: It's the men who usually leave. So it is a
Speaker 1: bit unusual for a wife to walk out, especially if
Speaker 1: they have children together. We discussed what might have been
Speaker 1: behind Polly's decision to leave, including the credibility of William
Speaker 1: nichols claim that his wife was an alcoholic. There are
Speaker 1: lots of nons here. I think if he's right now,
Speaker 1: this is self serving, So you never know if what
Speaker 1: he's saying is true. It could be that she was
Speaker 1: drinking and that he removed all the drink and wouldn't
Speaker 1: let her have it, and so she had classic alcoholism, right,
Speaker 1: you start trading everything you care about for the drug choice,
Speaker 1: and so that could have happened, but there's no way
Speaker 1: to know. I find those kinds of arguments by husbands
Speaker 1: so self serving. I have trouble believing them, but I
Speaker 1: guess sometimes they can't be true. I think it's possible,
Speaker 1: but I think then you have to take into account
Speaker 1: her father's side of the story, which is she and
Speaker 1: her husband were arguing and it was because he was
Speaker 1: carrying on with the woman next door, but she left.
Speaker 1: They could both be true. He could have been carrying
Speaker 1: on and she took to drink because of that. I
Speaker 1: think this may remain a mystery. I don't think we're
Speaker 1: ever really going to get to the bottom of this,
Speaker 1: other than to speculate, because you know, as with any dispute,
Speaker 1: there are always two sides, and the one thing that
Speaker 1: we're not hearing in all of this, and I think
Speaker 1: this is true of all five victims, and it's true
Speaker 1: in any murder case, really is the one person we
Speaker 1: don't hear from is the person who was killed. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The victim is always silent, yes, And the easiest way
Speaker 1: to get someone off is to make the victim the villain.
Speaker 1: Polly suffered financial, social, and emotional consequences for walking out
Speaker 1: on her family, striking out on her own. She had
Speaker 1: few choices. Ideally, she would have been expected to live
Speaker 1: with relatives, or she could try to make ends meet
Speaker 1: with grueling physical labor such as domestic service or work
Speaker 1: in an industrial laundry. But whatever she chose, she faced
Speaker 1: an empty existence in a society where a woman without
Speaker 1: a family or a husband was viewed with deep suspicion.
Speaker 1: Such a woman was an aberration and invariably also assumed
Speaker 1: to be sexually immoral. Culpability did not matter to Victorian society.
Speaker 1: If a woman left her family, she had failed. We
Speaker 1: cannot underestimate Polly's internal license of shame. At this point,
Speaker 1: she had lost her home, a husband, her dignity, and
Speaker 1: her very reason for being. There was no way of
Speaker 1: severing ties to William and starting afresh either. For a
Speaker 1: woman of police class and means, divorce was practically impossible.
Speaker 1: The English did not have divorce until eighteen fifty seven.
Speaker 1: You could get separated by the church before that, but
Speaker 1: it was not a divorce. You could not remarry. After
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty seven, they did have secular divorce, but they
Speaker 1: limited it in a number of ways, and it was
Speaker 1: very expensive. There was only one court and it was
Speaker 1: in London, so if you had witnesses then you had
Speaker 1: to pay their expenses to come in. There were court
Speaker 1: fees and solicitor's fees for this as well. And it
Speaker 1: was gendered. That gendered aspect of divorce was all about
Speaker 1: a double standard between men and women. So men could
Speaker 1: divorce for a single act of adultery of their but
Speaker 1: women had to have adultery and another ground, a ground
Speaker 1: such as cruelty, desertion, incest, bigamy, or my personal favorite, bestiality.
Speaker 1: The other thing to remember about English divorce was that
Speaker 1: it required what they called clean hands, which meant that
Speaker 1: the petitioning party that wanted the divorce could not have
Speaker 1: committed a matrimonial offense themselves. So for the most part
Speaker 1: it was a compromise. It was a compromise between people
Speaker 1: who didn't want women to be able to sue at all,
Speaker 1: who wanted divorce to be only for men, and those
Speaker 1: who argued that there should be equal grounds between men
Speaker 1: and women, so they did a compromise between those two.
Speaker 1: They allowed women to sue, but it was harder for
Speaker 1: women to sue. And this was, of course, if you
Speaker 1: had money. If you didn't have money, how would you
Speaker 1: effectively end your marriage. For the most part, working class
Speaker 1: people simply walked away. They divorced with their feet. There
Speaker 1: was no way to do it legally unless they somehow
Speaker 1: came into a fortune. Respectable society simply did not cater
Speaker 1: to men and women who are openly separated. Separation was
Speaker 1: judged to be a living death because married couples who
Speaker 1: split apart could never fully move on with their lives.
Speaker 1: Any future relationship would be considered adulterous. After Polly walked out,
Speaker 1: William's bond with Rosetta developed and she effectively became an
Speaker 1: adoptive mother to his children. However, as their extramarital relationship
Speaker 1: directly contravene Peabody's rules, the couple was forced to find
Speaker 1: another home. Any time that their irregular situation got exposed,
Speaker 1: they were going to face consequences social more than legal consequences.
Speaker 1: It's not illegal what they're doing, it's just socially problematic.
Speaker 1: What I find is people who live together but were
Speaker 1: not married, almost all of which are adulterous because they
Speaker 1: can't get divorced. They bump along, okay, they can tell
Speaker 1: their neighbors they're married, they act like husband and wife.
Speaker 1: It's when they run into trouble when it gets exposed,
Speaker 1: because no matter how long you've lived together, no matter
Speaker 1: how much you love each other, no matter how much
Speaker 1: of your children, you are not married in the eyes
Speaker 1: of the state, and the state will treat your children
Speaker 1: as illegitimate children, which means they don't have a legal father.
Speaker 1: They don't even really have a legal mother. She's just
Speaker 1: responsible for supporting them. There's far more consequences for the
Speaker 1: working class woman, but the man is not without them.
Speaker 1: For her part, Polly faced not only degradation, but also
Speaker 1: abject poverty. The work available to women at the time
Speaker 1: was deliberately designed to pay less than a male wage,
Speaker 1: because women were intended to be dependent on men. Ironically,
Speaker 1: Polly's only hope of securing an income was to prove
Speaker 1: she was completely destitute and to enter her local workhouse.
Speaker 1: The ripper retold will be back in a moment. Few
Speaker 1: places were more feared or reviled than the workhouse. This
Speaker 1: austere and foreboding institution was funded by taxes or rates,
Speaker 1: and offered accommodation and basic rations to those who are
Speaker 1: unable to support themselves. Men perform tasks such as stone breaking,
Speaker 1: Women did laundry work, prepared food and picked oakum the
Speaker 1: arduous process of separating out fibers from old ship's ropes
Speaker 1: to sell them on. One of the primary functions of
Speaker 1: the workhouse was to humiliate those who relied upon it,
Speaker 1: regardless of their circumstances. The old, the infirm, the sick,
Speaker 1: the abandoned, and the able bodied were treated with equal disdain.
Speaker 1: In the workhouse, Polly could expect to experience constant hunger,
Speaker 1: frequent illness, and broken sleep. Beatings and bullying at the
Speaker 1: hands of both staff and by fellow inmates were common.
Speaker 1: Restricted access to water, exposure to rats, light, and contaminated
Speaker 1: food ensured that inmates regularly suffered from diarrhea and infections.
Speaker 1: These grim conditions, well known to those outside the workhouse walls,
Speaker 1: were partly about deterrence. They highlight the Victorian belief that
Speaker 1: poverty was somehow a choice, a question of moral deficiency
Speaker 1: as much as one of material lack. Inmates were judged
Speaker 1: to be lazy and immoral. Paupers refused to do honest
Speaker 1: work and had to be broken into submission. When Polly
Speaker 1: approached Lambeth Union Workhouse, she would likely have been fearful,
Speaker 1: aware that once she passed through its gates she would
Speaker 1: be tainted. However, it was only with the approval of
Speaker 1: the workhouse guardians that she would be able to secure
Speaker 1: regular alimony or maintenance payments from William. The legal basis
Speaker 1: of it is that the rape payers are supporting her
Speaker 1: when her husband should be, and so she would go
Speaker 1: to the workhouse and then they would basically sue him
Speaker 1: to get the money for her maintenance from him, and
Speaker 1: they could bring a criminal case against him for a
Speaker 1: non support of his wife. But usually all you had
Speaker 1: to do will send a letter to the husband and
Speaker 1: say we or the guardians of this parish, and we're
Speaker 1: supporting your wife and you should be supporting your wife,
Speaker 1: so we expect you to remove her or to repay
Speaker 1: us for her maintenance. And at that point he has
Speaker 1: to decide how to respond to that. Usually men would
Speaker 1: offer money. They would say I can pay this much,
Speaker 1: and lots of times the parish would take the deal.
Speaker 1: I can't afford six shillings a week, but I can
Speaker 1: afford three. They'll take the three, usually to help offset
Speaker 1: the money. Even after the court started giving women maintenance payments,
Speaker 1: getting the men to pay it was what was hard.
Speaker 1: A man could even if you arrested him and he
Speaker 1: was found guilty, he'd get a couple of months in jail,
Speaker 1: and then he'd be out and the debt is wiped
Speaker 1: clean by the jail sentence, and then you'd start the
Speaker 1: process over, but you never get the money. Securing maintenance
Speaker 1: from William was far from easy. Polly had to claim desertion,
Speaker 1: and the guardians regarded women who declared themselves deserted with
Speaker 1: profound suspicion. Upon entrance, Polly underwent a verbal exam nation
Speaker 1: from one or more officials to determine whether she was
Speaker 1: worthy of aid. Their questions prodded and probed, and were
Speaker 1: steeped in judgment. They began by asking her her full name,
Speaker 1: her age, address, and her marital status. Then the questions escalated,
Speaker 1: do you have any relatives who are legally bound to
Speaker 1: support you? What is your husband's name? How many children
Speaker 1: do you have? Are they legitimate? That last question was
Speaker 1: designed to mortify Polly and prompt her to reveal the
Speaker 1: embarrassing details of her marriage breakdown. Next, William Nichols was
Speaker 1: made to account for himself. He was interviewed by the
Speaker 1: official handling Polly's case. Nichols likely told him that Polly
Speaker 1: was not a deserted wife at all, but that their
Speaker 1: marriage ended because of her drinking. He had a vested
Speaker 1: interest in sullying her name. The official was unconvinced, however,
Speaker 1: and he compelled William to pay five shillings per week,
Speaker 1: a pittance which Polly then collected from the workhouse. When
Speaker 1: a marriage breaks down in the working class, it's hard
Speaker 1: on both because the man can't afford two households. So
Speaker 1: if he's supporting his wife, his legal wife, and another woman,
Speaker 1: almost no working classman can afford that. They can barely
Speaker 1: get by with one household. So unless she can make
Speaker 1: her own money, or unless she hooks up with someone else,
Speaker 1: unless she ends up living with another person, that is
Speaker 1: not a viable financial situation for either party. If William
Speaker 1: could prove that Polly was living with another man, that
Speaker 1: she was someone else's financial problem, he could wriggle free
Speaker 1: of his obligations to her for a time. It seems
Speaker 1: Polly had taken up with another man, and it was
Speaker 1: around this point that William Nichols engaged the spying services
Speaker 1: of a private eye. Private investigation agents regularly advertised in
Speaker 1: London's newspapers. Procuring evidence for divorce cases was always listed
Speaker 1: prominently among the services offered. Private detective offices conducted by
Speaker 1: Messrs Cameron and Co. Divorce and all confidential cases investigated
Speaker 1: with secrecy and dispatch by experienced detectives. Evidence collected and
Speaker 1: witnesses found for any law cases and their evidence taken,
Speaker 1: foreign languages spoken and translated. A spy followed Polly, watching her,
Speaker 1: asking about her in the neighborhood, obtaining the necessary evidence
Speaker 1: and presenting it to William, who promptly ceased his payments. Eventually,
Speaker 1: William was summoned to the magistrate's court to explain himself.
Speaker 1: He was prepared and produced his proof. Polly denied that
Speaker 1: she was living with another man, but the judge sided
Speaker 1: with William and absolved him of his financial responsibilities. In
Speaker 1: all probability, Polly's relationship with the other man had ended
Speaker 1: by this point. If it hadn't, would not have found
Speaker 1: herself destitute when William's five shilling payments were terminated. If
Speaker 1: she had another viable means of supporting herself, such as
Speaker 1: sex work, as it has been suggested, she would not
Speaker 1: have had to surrender herself once more to the stony
Speaker 1: embrace of Lambeth Union Workhouse. Over the next few years,
Speaker 1: Polly was in and out of the workhouse. At one
Speaker 1: point she went to live with her father, brother, his wife,
Speaker 1: and their five children in their small home. She reportedly
Speaker 1: spent a lot of time at the local pub, and
Speaker 1: her drinking cost arguments. According to Edward Walker, his daughter
Speaker 1: did not stay out particularly late, and nor had he
Speaker 1: ever heard of her conduct being, as he said, improper. Nevertheless,
Speaker 1: in eighteen eighty four, Polly's behavior apparently rendered home life impossible.
Speaker 1: She thought she was better by herself, her father said,
Speaker 1: so I let her go. At this point, Polly had
Speaker 1: either a husband nor a family at her side. She
Speaker 1: was alone, with little possibility of supporting herself and placing
Speaker 1: a roof over her own head. In the following years,
Speaker 1: she oscillated between the workhouse, temporary lodging houses or doss
Speaker 1: houses and the cold cobblestones of the streets. In eighteen
Speaker 1: eighty seven, she was sleeping rough one of an estimated
Speaker 1: seventy thousand homeless people in London that year. The experience
Speaker 1: was a miserable one. Women like Polly who found themselves
Speaker 1: without shelter would even expect to become the victims of
Speaker 1: sexual violence. But this is not the point in our
Speaker 1: story where Polly meets her end. As had been the
Speaker 1: case throughout her life, there were choices and opportunities before her,
Speaker 1: and events that altered her trajectory. In the spring of
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty eight, the workhouse found her a job as
Speaker 1: a domestic servant. This was part of a scheme to
Speaker 1: rehabilitate inmates. She was dispatched to the Cowdrees, a Baptist
Speaker 1: couple who lived in a large house surrounded by gardens
Speaker 1: and trees. Polly arrived on May twelfth with nothing more
Speaker 1: than the clothes on her back. Missus Cowdrey supplied her
Speaker 1: with various necessities, including shoes, a decent bonnet, a night dress, caps, pinafores,
Speaker 1: and hair combs. After all, no middle class mistress wanted
Speaker 1: to her maid to appear ragged before visitors. In her
Speaker 1: first week with the Cowdrees, Polly gathered the courage to
Speaker 1: write to her father, who was now living with her
Speaker 1: eldest son. I just write to say you will be
Speaker 1: glad to know that I am settled in my new
Speaker 1: place and going all right up to now. My people
Speaker 1: went out yesterday and have not returned, so I am
Speaker 1: left in charge. It's a grand place with trees and gardens.
Speaker 1: Back in front all has been newly done up. They
Speaker 1: are teetotalers and very religious, so I ought to get on.
Speaker 1: They're very nice people, and I have not much to do.
Speaker 1: I do hope you're all right, and the boy has work,
Speaker 1: so good bye for the present. Yours truly, Polly answer,
Speaker 1: so please and let me know how you are. Polly's
Speaker 1: experiences at the Cowdreyes would have been more comfortable than
Speaker 1: life sleeping rough or at the workhouse. She had the
Speaker 1: use of the garden, eight three meals a day, and
Speaker 1: wore clean clothes. But perhaps she was also lonely, marched
Speaker 1: to chapel by the religious Cowdrees and shamed for the
Speaker 1: life that she had thus far led. There was no
Speaker 1: other servant with him to chat or share jokes. And
Speaker 1: separated from her family. The days and nights may have
Speaker 1: seemed painfully empty, whatever the reason. For a second time
Speaker 1: in her life, Polly made the decision to walk out.
Speaker 1: In July eighteen eighty eight, she took her new belongings
Speaker 1: with her and simply disappeared. This time she ended up
Speaker 1: in Whitechapel Jack, the Rippers Hunting Ground. In six weeks time,
Speaker 1: she would be dead and her story would cease to
Speaker 1: be her own. Society would pick at her carcass, breaking
Speaker 1: over not only the grim details of her demise, but
Speaker 1: also linking her murder to the supposed depravity of her existence,
Speaker 1: because in the end, bad women get what's coming to them.
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 Guttridge, Gemma Saunders, and
Speaker 1: rufus Wright. The show also wouldn't have been possible without
Speaker 1: the work of Mia La Belle, Jacob Weisberg, Jen Guerra,
Speaker 1: Heather Fane, Carlie Migliori, Maggie Taylor, Nicole Morano and Daniella
Speaker 1: Lacane were special thanks to my agents Sarah Ballard and
Speaker 1: Ellie Kron