Speaker 1: Welcomed, unobscured a production of I Heart Radio and Aaron Minkey.
Speaker 1: The story was already coming into focus. It was Friday,
Speaker 1: August thirty one. One of the newest papers in London,
Speaker 1: The Star, had an incredible report published on page three
Speaker 1: of its evening edition. Polly Nichols had been killed in
Speaker 1: the cold hours of that morning, but a journalist for
Speaker 1: the paper had already been allowed into the mortuary where
Speaker 1: her body was waiting to be examined, a day before
Speaker 1: the doctor would conduct Polly's full autopsy. The horror and
Speaker 1: sensation caused by Martha Tabram's death had just begun to
Speaker 1: calm when, in the words of the paper, another discovery
Speaker 1: is made, and one even more shocking. The paper had
Speaker 1: no qualms about blasting out the details of her murder either,
Speaker 1: Like other sensationalist stories of the day had meant to
Speaker 1: draw in readers by horrifying them by provoking outrage. The
Speaker 1: Star didn't publish the author's name, but the choice of
Speaker 1: words would leave a terrible legacy. It described the cut
Speaker 1: of Polly Nichol's throat, It described the bruises on her hands,
Speaker 1: It described the bruises on her body, and the missing teeth,
Speaker 1: but most significantly of all, the lower part of her abdomen,
Speaker 1: it wrote, was completely ripped open. There was so much
Speaker 1: more to who she was, but to the journalist, the
Speaker 1: important thing was that the story reached print as soon
Speaker 1: as possible. No one who examined the body had ever
Speaker 1: learned the woman's name, yet all they had to go
Speaker 1: on was her clothes. The article in the Star described
Speaker 1: what she was wearing, including her bonnet faced with black velvet,
Speaker 1: and her petticoat marked with Lambeth Workhouse on it. But
Speaker 1: it was the cuts that were described at length and
Speaker 1: in the most lurid terms. To the journalist, it was
Speaker 1: more important to turn the stomachs of middle class readers
Speaker 1: in Westminster than to tell the story of the woman
Speaker 1: who lived in Whitechapel. And if there was anything that
Speaker 1: could chill the spirits of London readers more than one
Speaker 1: horrible murder, it was three easy enough to draw a
Speaker 1: line from one to another. After all, the article declares
Speaker 1: such a terrible murder and a quote could only be
Speaker 1: the deed of a maniac. Same for the thirty nine
Speaker 1: stabs that killed Martha Tabram. What about the other woman,
Speaker 1: Emma Smith, who had been killed in Whitechapel that April,
Speaker 1: just two streets over from where Martha's body had been found. Yes, indeed,
Speaker 1: all this leads to the conclusion. The article ends that
Speaker 1: there is a maniac haunting Whitechapel and that the three
Speaker 1: women were all victims of his murderous frenzy. It was
Speaker 1: a terrifying claim, and it did its work too. From
Speaker 1: this moment forward, fear would ripple out to newsreaders around
Speaker 1: London and beyond. Everywhere that had been reached by sensationalist
Speaker 1: articles like Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon would find itself
Speaker 1: visited by the story of Polly nichols murder. The story
Speaker 1: would travel and fast. So it's probably worth noting that
Speaker 1: even from the very beginning, the truth of the story
Speaker 1: was mixed with dramatic lies. For instance, lies about Emma Smith.
Speaker 1: It was true that she was a woman who had
Speaker 1: been murdered in White Chapel in April, but the article
Speaker 1: published in The Star connecting her killing to the deaths
Speaker 1: of Martha Tabram and Polly Nichols by saying that Emma
Speaker 1: and I quote died without being able to tell anything
Speaker 1: of her murderer In fact, this was patently false. Emma
Speaker 1: had suffered a brutal attack in the street. Afterwards, she
Speaker 1: was able to make her way back to the lodging
Speaker 1: house where she was staying. There, she told other lodgers
Speaker 1: what had happened to her. They helped her to the hospital.
Speaker 1: Along the way, she told the women helping her that
Speaker 1: she was attacked by three men and one of them
Speaker 1: was only nineteen years old. Emma even pointed out the
Speaker 1: place where she was attacked as they passed by, and
Speaker 1: she talked with the doctors who treated her wounds. All
Speaker 1: of this had reached the papers within a week of
Speaker 1: her death, after the inquest held by coroner Win Baxter,
Speaker 1: was reported in major newspapers like The Times of London
Speaker 1: and the front page of Lloyd's Weekly News. Of course,
Speaker 1: almost five months later, it was more profitable for The
Speaker 1: Star to leave out those details and replace them with
Speaker 1: the suggestion of a mysterious killer who had already taken
Speaker 1: three lives. It conjured up the image of a figure
Speaker 1: haunting White Chapel who would never really leave. It didn't
Speaker 1: hurt the paper if it brought in some cash in
Speaker 1: the process of spinning up a false narrative of events.
Speaker 1: The thing is, though Emma's murder was horrible enough, there's
Speaker 1: no question that her death, along with Martha Tabraham's and
Speaker 1: now the murder of Polly Nichols, were a terrible sign
Speaker 1: of life in East London. No price can be put
Speaker 1: on any human life, but an evening issue of the Star,
Speaker 1: well that was just one halfpenny. This is unobscured. I'm
Speaker 1: Aaron manky Wind. Baxter looked refreshed. He was newly back
Speaker 1: home from his Scandinavian holiday when he walked into the
Speaker 1: large library of the Working Lads Institute of Whitechapel on
Speaker 1: September one, and it was certainly time to get to work.
Speaker 1: There was an inquest to supervise, after all, but he
Speaker 1: couldn't do that with thout a dash of style. The
Speaker 1: East London Observer reported the Baxter stroll to the inquest
Speaker 1: in a pair of black and white checked trousers, dazzling
Speaker 1: white waistcoat, a crimson scarf and a dark overcoat. It
Speaker 1: was one of the moments that would lead to the
Speaker 1: Corners slowly building a reputation for being something of a showman,
Speaker 1: something of a personality. After all, if you remember when
Speaker 1: Baxter from his role in solving the Brighton railway murder.
Speaker 1: His family had a history in the news business. If
Speaker 1: anyone could have known the power of the press to
Speaker 1: lift a Sussex corner to even greater heights, it would
Speaker 1: have been Win Baxter. But the family at issue in
Speaker 1: the inquest wasn't Baxter's. The doctor who had examined the
Speaker 1: body of Polly Nichols gave testimony at the inquest, so
Speaker 1: did the first constable who found her. But it was
Speaker 1: a man named Edward Walker who spoke first because he
Speaker 1: was Polly's father. Edward viewed her body and confirmed her
Speaker 1: identity with immense grief. He was a gray headed, gray
Speaker 1: bearded man, according to the papers, with his head lowered
Speaker 1: and his hands behind his back. He entered his testimony
Speaker 1: into Win Baxter's inquest records. Later that day, after the
Speaker 1: official statements, Detective Frederick Aberline brought Polly's husband to do
Speaker 1: the same. We can only imagine the weight of shock
Speaker 1: and grief that hung over both of them. Together, the
Speaker 1: two men began to provide Win Baxter and the Scotland
Speaker 1: Yard detectives with the outlines of Polly's life. Here's historian
Speaker 1: Paul Beg. Maryanne Nick was born in eighteen forty five
Speaker 1: near Fleet Street, which is where lots of newspapers were
Speaker 1: located until relatively recently. She was the middle of three children.
Speaker 1: The others were brothers, one older and the other younger,
Speaker 1: and she married a man called William Nichols in eighteen
Speaker 1: sixty four. He was a printer, and they would have
Speaker 1: five children, and they lived quite comfortably in a block
Speaker 1: are flats or apartments as you might call them, known
Speaker 1: as peabody buildings, which just was somewhat upmarket place. You
Speaker 1: had to have certain qualifications to be allowed to live there,
Speaker 1: and they had shared toilet facilities, they were cooking facilities,
Speaker 1: There was a close washing area. You could even book
Speaker 1: and have a hot bath every day if you liked so.
Speaker 1: There were facilities for personal hygiene, and most of those
Speaker 1: things were things that people in the surrounding houses didn't
Speaker 1: necessarily endure. So you can see that they were a
Speaker 1: little bit upmarket, paying a modest rent for this kind
Speaker 1: of establishment. But about the couple separated, the precise circumstances
Speaker 1: aren't properly understood, but William Nichols said that Mary Ann
Speaker 1: began drinking heavily, and had left him on several occasions.
Speaker 1: Then she left him for good. It was a picture
Speaker 1: of life that in some ways was very different from
Speaker 1: Polly's East End neighbors. When Polly moved into a Peabody
Speaker 1: building with her husband and five children, it was a
Speaker 1: sign that they were doing well, at least financially. He
Speaker 1: was a printer as machinist like the young man killed
Speaker 1: in the Regent's Park murder. And if he was employed
Speaker 1: by any of the newspapers whose presses were running day
Speaker 1: at night, well he probably had regular work. But money
Speaker 1: isn't everything. At the inquest on her death, Polly's husband
Speaker 1: emphasized that she was a hard drinker. In a counterpoint,
Speaker 1: Polly's father emphasized that her husband left her, took another
Speaker 1: woman to live with, he said, and turned nasty when
Speaker 1: the marriage fell apart. Polly lived with her father for
Speaker 1: a while, but things weren't happy in his home either,
Speaker 1: and Polly continued to drink. The four youngest children stayed
Speaker 1: with Polly's husband, the oldest went to live with her father.
Speaker 1: In the following years rather than live with either man,
Speaker 1: Polly was in and out of London workhouses. For a
Speaker 1: few years, she lived with the widower and his three
Speaker 1: children in Walworth, a bit south of the River Thames.
Speaker 1: But even if she saw the potential of starting a
Speaker 1: new family with this man beyond the reach of London
Speaker 1: central streets and East End alleyways, well, tragedy followed her anyway.
Speaker 1: Polly's brother died horribly in six On an ordinary evening.
Speaker 1: As he was talking with his wife and getting ready
Speaker 1: for bed, his paraffin lamp exploded as he tried to
Speaker 1: put it out. He was covered in severe burns and
Speaker 1: never recovered. If Polly was as devastated by her brother's
Speaker 1: death as we can imagine, then it's easy to see
Speaker 1: why things might have fallen apart again. She left her
Speaker 1: new partner within a year. At the beginning of eight
Speaker 1: Polly Nichols had a placement as a servant, but that
Speaker 1: didn't last long. In July and August, in the days
Speaker 1: leading up toward death, she was in the East End,
Speaker 1: scratching out what money she could and taking shelter in
Speaker 1: any place that would give her a bed for just
Speaker 1: a few pence. But on the night of her murder
Speaker 1: she didn't even have that. The Deputy keeper of a
Speaker 1: lodging house on Thrall Street found her in the kitchen
Speaker 1: an hour after midnight. He asked her for fourpence to
Speaker 1: pay for a bed, and when she told him she
Speaker 1: didn't have the money, he put her out on the street.
Speaker 1: He said, she looked at him and laughed. She pointed
Speaker 1: at her bonnet faced with black velvet, and said, I'll
Speaker 1: soon get my doss money. See what a jolly bonnet
Speaker 1: I've got now. The last time she was seen alive
Speaker 1: was at two thirty that morning. A friend ran into
Speaker 1: her in the streets and tried to get her to
Speaker 1: come back to a lodging house for the night, but
Speaker 1: Polly refused. I have my lodging money three times today,
Speaker 1: she told the friend, and I have spent it. It
Speaker 1: left her with nowhere to go, nowhere but the streets
Speaker 1: of Whitechapel. Let's be honest, true crime cells. It was
Speaker 1: as true then as it is today. But the publishers
Speaker 1: of London's papers weren't the only ones who saw the
Speaker 1: news of Polly's murder in terms of pennies and pounds.
Speaker 1: There were other east Enders who spent their time thinking
Speaker 1: about the bottom line as well. That included the clothing
Speaker 1: manufacturers L. M. P. Walter and Son. Their shop was
Speaker 1: on Church Street in spittle Fields and they were part
Speaker 1: of the industry that had been at the center of
Speaker 1: Britain's industrial expansion. In five they build themselves as the
Speaker 1: largest manufacturer of juvenile clothing in the Kingdom. They were
Speaker 1: selling clothes across Britain, but especially for every foreign and
Speaker 1: colonial market. They said they were hoping to sell their
Speaker 1: check trousers and white waistcoats to the wind baxters of Canada, Australia,
Speaker 1: India and South Africa. Now they saw all of that
Speaker 1: under threat because three women had just been murdered in
Speaker 1: their neighborhood. Tucked in the government records is a letter
Speaker 1: from those manufacturers that reached the Home Office on the
Speaker 1: day after Polly nichols murder. It begged for the government
Speaker 1: to take action. They explained how terrified they were. They
Speaker 1: had just hired a night watchman to protect their shops
Speaker 1: and their workers. After all, if a killer roamed the streets,
Speaker 1: their employees might not show up to work. They urged
Speaker 1: the Home Secretary to follow the same course that had
Speaker 1: led to the capture of the Brighton Railway murderer to
Speaker 1: issue a reward. They seemed to say that enough incentive
Speaker 1: could bring the hidden aspects of the mystery to light.
Speaker 1: After all, who better to know how far money could
Speaker 1: go in Whitechapel than the owners of its powerful and
Speaker 1: profitable businesses. People, that is, like the American businessman George Peabody.
Speaker 1: He had begun like the Bryant family, whose grocery business
Speaker 1: had turned into a successful match factory. George Peabody, though
Speaker 1: was actually from Massachusetts. His career started when he opened
Speaker 1: a dry goods store with his uncle in Washington, d c.
Speaker 1: By the eighteen eighties, though, he followed the Bryants on
Speaker 1: a path to power, from merchant to broker to international banker.
Speaker 1: And if you were an international banker, there was no
Speaker 1: better home than London. In the decades after he founded
Speaker 1: his London firm, George invested in all sorts of endeavors.
Speaker 1: He invested in American railroads. He gave thousands to a
Speaker 1: young explorer named Elisha Kent Kane, who set off in
Speaker 1: search of the lost Arctic explorer Sir John Franklin. George
Speaker 1: Peabody even served as the director of the Atlantic cable
Speaker 1: company that connected the United States and the United Kingdom
Speaker 1: in eighteen fifty eight. But George Peabody read the papers too,
Speaker 1: so he was confronted on a daily basis with the
Speaker 1: failures of a growing London to provide for its poorest citizens,
Speaker 1: and he started to think of ways to offer what
Speaker 1: he thought the city lacked. But his idea arrived at
Speaker 1: something of a bad time. You see, he wanted to
Speaker 1: make a charitable gift to London. In eighteen sixty two,
Speaker 1: during the American Civil War, and despite Britain's official declaration
Speaker 1: of neutrality, most British merchants and officials supported the Confederacy.
Speaker 1: They didn't care how cotton was produced, as long as
Speaker 1: it was cheap and reached British ports in high stacks
Speaker 1: suppressed bales. After all, clothing manufacturers like L. M. P.
Speaker 1: Walter and Son wanted to keep their British mills running.
Speaker 1: So George Peabody tiptoed carefully through the political minefield. He
Speaker 1: talked with his friends about the project and eventually abandoned
Speaker 1: his first plan to build public water fountains throughout the city.
Speaker 1: Then he thought of funding schools, but on the advice
Speaker 1: of the Seventh Earl of Shaftsbury. He landed on exactly
Speaker 1: what the poor needed most better. How's in Throughout the
Speaker 1: eighteen sixties, George Peabody poured millions into the model housing
Speaker 1: that would first be built in London's East End. It
Speaker 1: was supposed to create a kind of lifestyle for east
Speaker 1: Enders that would trim embarrassing situations from the national landscape.
Speaker 1: For his gift, George Peabody was celebrated in the London
Speaker 1: papers for unprecedented munificence. Queen Victoria even sent him a
Speaker 1: personal portrait in gratitude. But as Polly's life details show us,
Speaker 1: if the idea was to help the very poorest Londoners,
Speaker 1: that got lost somewhere along the way. Here's historian Dr
Speaker 1: Drew Gray. This is part philanthropy, but obviously you're making profit,
Speaker 1: hopefully but a small profit out of this. So there's
Speaker 1: the Rothschild Buildings in Florendine Stream which built but many
Speaker 1: of these places, whilst the emphasis is on rehousing the pool,
Speaker 1: they only really accommodate the working class who could guarantee
Speaker 1: to pay the rent, the check that the men are
Speaker 1: in work. They're checking that the children at school, that
Speaker 1: the rooms are clean and tidy. And if you fail
Speaker 1: in any of these areas or you can't pay your rent,
Speaker 1: then you're going to be evicted. So and that, and
Speaker 1: that's very difficult to guarantee for people at the very
Speaker 1: bottom end of society, people who are the casual poor,
Speaker 1: who don't have regular jobs, who are alive, for example,
Speaker 1: on work at the docks, on picking up work on
Speaker 1: a daily or a weekly basis. Now you can't guarantee
Speaker 1: that you can pay your rent, so you're not going
Speaker 1: to get into a models ready, and they are actually
Speaker 1: the people that really need is decent housing. And it
Speaker 1: was on the steps of a model dwelling in George
Speaker 1: Yard Whitechapel where Martha Tabram's body was found at the
Speaker 1: beginning of August. But if you'll remember, it wasn't because
Speaker 1: she lived there. Just like Polly Nichols, Martha Tabram was
Speaker 1: killed at a time in her life when even the
Speaker 1: buildings meant to help London's poor were still a class
Speaker 1: above her own. In response to their fears, the clothing
Speaker 1: manufacturers L. M. P. Walter and Son received a nice
Speaker 1: note back from the Home Secretary's office. It described in
Speaker 1: gentle terms that the practice of offering rewards had been discontinued,
Speaker 1: and in what would increasingly appear to be a deep
Speaker 1: misunderstanding of the situation, the Home Secretary said that the
Speaker 1: murders of women in the East End did not disclose
Speaker 1: any special ground for departure from the usual custom, as
Speaker 1: if there was anything usual about the murders. Of course,
Speaker 1: for some the killings in Whitechapel weren't just a threat
Speaker 1: to business or a minor administrative irritant. They were deeply personal.
Speaker 1: Polly's father and former husband both received some brief notoriety
Speaker 1: and some deeply galling attention when Baxter and Scotland Yard
Speaker 1: called them into the Inquest to come terribly face to
Speaker 1: face with Polly one last time, and that was where
Speaker 1: they divulged the details of their personal pain. Journalists ran
Speaker 1: back and forth between Polly's husband and father, collecting contradictory
Speaker 1: statements about the greatest griefs and losses of their lives.
Speaker 1: They were picked over and passed for anything useful, first
Speaker 1: by the corner, then by the police, and then by
Speaker 1: the papers, with the neighborhood gossips left to pick at
Speaker 1: the scraps. And that's how it was for most east Enders.
Speaker 1: Their contact with government officials didn't result in courteous correspondence.
Speaker 1: Not everyone in Whitechapel found their way into a Peabody building.
Speaker 1: The Peabody buildings helped the reputations of men who got
Speaker 1: their names put on city blocks and helped many of
Speaker 1: their bank accounts too. They did help the people who
Speaker 1: could already afford them, but for the truly desperate it
Speaker 1: was just one more example of a better life that
Speaker 1: was out of reach. Here's Dr Gray once again. The
Speaker 1: model dwelling movement is definitely a good thing, and you
Speaker 1: can see many of the model dwellings people of the
Speaker 1: buildings are still existent in London today. They built them
Speaker 1: very well, the beautiful examples of Victorian engineering building, but
Speaker 1: they weren't pace here. So many other people in the
Speaker 1: East End will have been forced into you know, poor
Speaker 1: crowded housing, and we see terrible examples of people living
Speaker 1: all the way down to two sellers where they're living
Speaker 1: in sort of stigen conditions in dark, unlit, damp basements,
Speaker 1: all the way up to living in attic spaces, whole
Speaker 1: families in one room and no sanitation. You know, you
Speaker 1: might have shared pilate facilities in the yard at the back,
Speaker 1: so very poor, very cold in winter, very hot in summer.
Speaker 1: So you see lots of images of white chapel, of
Speaker 1: people outside, people being outside, because you wouldn't want to
Speaker 1: be inside. Because also your inside space is also probably
Speaker 1: your workshop space. So people who are working piece workers
Speaker 1: and cobbling or building matchboxes are going to do that
Speaker 1: at home. So you've kind of got to get the
Speaker 1: kids out from under your feet in order to turn
Speaker 1: them your space into a into a workspace during the day,
Speaker 1: Families sharing beds. These these conditions were shocked the middle
Speaker 1: classes when they came to investigate. That shock was strong
Speaker 1: enough to launch the whole model dwelling movement. But the
Speaker 1: Model Dwellings were just one of the major efforts by
Speaker 1: well to do Londoners to reshape the East End and
Speaker 1: to change the people there in the process. But others
Speaker 1: took a very different approach to reforming life in the
Speaker 1: East End. They chose to send an army. Things hadn't
Speaker 1: exactly gotten better. Yes, Charles Warren had been a hero
Speaker 1: of the British Empire when he was selected in eight
Speaker 1: six to become the new Commissioner of London's Metropolitan Police
Speaker 1: and that wasn't just because of his excavations on the
Speaker 1: Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The engineer had also proved himself
Speaker 1: to be a warrior and an investigator too. As an
Speaker 1: engineer and a surveyor, he had been sent to South
Speaker 1: Africa to draw the lines of the British crowns claim
Speaker 1: to the land and of course the diamonds that had
Speaker 1: been discovered there in eighteen sixty eight, and then to
Speaker 1: keep both. The people who resisted English control were killed.
Speaker 1: For some of that fighting, Warren commanded a regiment of
Speaker 1: volunteers aptly named the Diamond Fields Horse. One historian writing
Speaker 1: about the period put it in stark terms, white man's dreams,
Speaker 1: black man's blood, and Warren spilled some of his own
Speaker 1: blood too. After that, Warren was appointed Special Commissioner to
Speaker 1: investigate what they called native questions. It was the first
Speaker 1: inkling of that future period when he would become the
Speaker 1: Police Commissioner of London in his own native land. His
Speaker 1: greatest achievements in crime solving, though, came when he was
Speaker 1: sent to the Sinai Peninsula in search of a lost professor.
Speaker 1: The man who had disappeared was an archaeologist who has
Speaker 1: served with the Palestine Exploration Fund, just like Warren had,
Speaker 1: making him an agent of the Crown. Warren was able
Speaker 1: to pick up the man's trail and find his bones too.
Speaker 1: They were just covered in a gully, along with the
Speaker 1: remains of five others. Then Warren criss crossed the desert
Speaker 1: until he had built a case against a group of
Speaker 1: Bedouin men, getting them convicted for murder. Five were executed
Speaker 1: and eight more were imprisoned. Warren was heralded as a
Speaker 1: hero detective. Along his way to his post with the
Speaker 1: London Police, Warren was made a Fellow of the Knight Society,
Speaker 1: a Night Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael
Speaker 1: and St George, and a Knight of Justice of the
Speaker 1: Order of St John of Jerusalem. A mouthful, I know,
Speaker 1: but if a police career could be built on imperial
Speaker 1: titles and accolades, while Warren had them in spades. Of course,
Speaker 1: when he stepped into the role of London's Police Commissioner,
Speaker 1: he found himself handling a delicate situation. After the previous
Speaker 1: commissioner had failed to stop those West London riots in
Speaker 1: eighteen eighties six, Warren knew that he was expected to
Speaker 1: bring something different his military style, his military discipline, and
Speaker 1: his ability to beat down rebellious people and bring them
Speaker 1: under control. Here's historian at would when Warren was appointed,
Speaker 1: immediately brought an increased drill training to get the Bobbies
Speaker 1: in the Beating better shape. He wrote to the government
Speaker 1: asking for better uniform and boots because he realized from
Speaker 1: his military pass that the men needed to be equipped
Speaker 1: as best as possible. So Warren increased of fitness and
Speaker 1: the efficiency of the uniformed officers an effectively molded them
Speaker 1: into a kind of army. He left the detective department
Speaker 1: to his assistant commissioners and his appointment was where received
Speaker 1: at first. But the problems began when Childers lost his
Speaker 1: post as Home Secretary following a general election and a
Speaker 1: man named Henry Matthews was appointed. And whereas Warren and
Speaker 1: he joined Shilders backing right from the start, the commissioner
Speaker 1: would be unsure whether he could rely on Matthews for support. Yes,
Speaker 1: it seems that in eight eight Charles Warren found that
Speaker 1: he was often treated like the clothing manufacturers of Whitechappel.
Speaker 1: The new Home Secretary developed a habit when it came
Speaker 1: to Warren and the London Police polately yet firmly telling
Speaker 1: the military man that he could not have his own way.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like he was alone, though there were plenty
Speaker 1: of officers in the Metropolitan Police who wrote Imperial military
Speaker 1: experience to their posts. The senior post in the right
Speaker 1: from the start were usually filled by the military or
Speaker 1: legal men who had never served in the police, and
Speaker 1: the first commissioners actually were Charles Rowan, who had fought
Speaker 1: in the Napoleonic Wars and at Waterloo, and Richard Maine,
Speaker 1: who was a barrister. Mains eventual replacement, Edmund Henderson, who
Speaker 1: we just spoke about, was lieutenant colonel in the British Army,
Speaker 1: and all the assistant commissioners were also military men, because
Speaker 1: it was generally believed that this was required to maintain
Speaker 1: discipline over the rank and file police officers. And of
Speaker 1: course Warren knew exactly why he was picked the hands
Speaker 1: off approach of the last police commissioner in eighteen eighty six,
Speaker 1: so Warren determined that he would not make the same mistake.
Speaker 1: London under his watchful gaze would be different, and in
Speaker 1: eighteen eighties seven he had a chance to show exactly
Speaker 1: what he meant because despite model dwellings and more, there
Speaker 1: were still throngs of Londoners left to starve. Here's Dr
Speaker 1: Louise Rath. As somebody said on observing the dockers at work.
Speaker 1: There's this huge contradiction because they're unloading the wealth and
Speaker 1: the riches and the silks and the spices and the
Speaker 1: teas and all this wonderful, luxurious stuff, and they're touching
Speaker 1: all things and tasting none. They're dealing in these goods
Speaker 1: they can never ever afford them. Their unloading tea that
Speaker 1: they will never taste. They're unpacking spices that they will
Speaker 1: never be able to enjoy, silks that their wives will
Speaker 1: never be able to wear. So there's this immense it
Speaker 1: seems to modernize, immensely hypocritical division. Here we are this
Speaker 1: incredibly rich, I mean mostly because we stole and stuff
Speaker 1: from other people around the world. But you know, that
Speaker 1: is how the British do things. It's a little tradition
Speaker 1: of ours to do that. But we have become incredibly
Speaker 1: rich off the backs of other people, including our own
Speaker 1: poor people. So they are the engine of our prosperity,
Speaker 1: and they're not getting to share in it whatsoever. We
Speaker 1: treat them almost like machinery. You can process things, you
Speaker 1: can produce our wealth, but it's nothing to do with you.
Speaker 1: You don't get a share in it whatsoever. London's poor
Speaker 1: and working people had made it clear that this arrangement
Speaker 1: wasn't up to snuff, but that message hadn't gotten through,
Speaker 1: so they had to send it again and again. Socialists,
Speaker 1: trade unionists and Irish workers advocating for Home rule, all
Speaker 1: of them marched regularly through London streets. But when Charles
Speaker 1: Warren arrived, the Home Secretary was quick to set expectations.
Speaker 1: He declared, I think you have seen the worst of
Speaker 1: the socialist meetings. Warren was determined to live up to
Speaker 1: that promise. For months, he sent his newly drilled troops
Speaker 1: to arrest public speakers, cracked down on homeless Londoners, and
Speaker 1: break up meetings. Think about that for a moment, a
Speaker 1: community crying out for justice and dialogue with its leaders,
Speaker 1: only to have the police sent in like troops in
Speaker 1: a military campaign. Although the government could have responded by
Speaker 1: listening and making changes, they chose to defend their flaws
Speaker 1: with force, and in November of eighteen eighties seven, Charles
Speaker 1: Warren put an all out ban on public meetings in
Speaker 1: Trafalgar Square. The thing is these arrests and the band
Speaker 1: that followed were explicitly illegal. British law protected the rights
Speaker 1: to assembly and public speech. After the eighteen eighties six meetings,
Speaker 1: the government had tried to prosecute the public speakers at
Speaker 1: the park rallies, but they had failed and the protesters
Speaker 1: had been vindicated in arrest after arrest, the cases against
Speaker 1: public speakers and organizers were dismissed in court, which made sense,
Speaker 1: after all, nothing they had done was illegal. But Charles
Speaker 1: Warren was determined to put a stop to these meetings anyway,
Speaker 1: the law be damned, and he had the authority and
Speaker 1: the forces to do it. So when a group of
Speaker 1: demonstrators rallied at Trafalgar Square on November thirte of eighteen
Speaker 1: eighties seven, they met a fearsome sight. One thousand, five
Speaker 1: hundred troops of the London Metropolitan Police already occupied the square,
Speaker 1: and as the marchers came near, they realized that there
Speaker 1: were also another two thousand constables in the nearby neighborhoods
Speaker 1: and three hundred horsemen to Warren was there, of course,
Speaker 1: once again he was on horseback and ready for bloodshed.
Speaker 1: So when the march arrived at the square, the police
Speaker 1: were ordered to charge. They lead with their batons, beating
Speaker 1: and battling the marchers as they arrived, and as the
Speaker 1: ten thousand demonstrators scattered, they were met in the surrounding
Speaker 1: streets by more waiting police. They were beaten there as well,
Speaker 1: in Piccadilly, Covent Garden, Bloomsbury and beyond. Hundreds were badly injured,
Speaker 1: some of them trampled by police horses. By the end
Speaker 1: of that night, fifty had been arrested, seventy five had
Speaker 1: been admitted to the hospital, and three of the marchers
Speaker 1: were dead. And with so many killed and wounded, the
Speaker 1: day would take on an infamous name, Bloody Sunday. The
Speaker 1: radical press condemned the police violence. For instance, W. T.
Speaker 1: Stead turned his pen from the conditions of the Maiden
Speaker 1: Tribute to the predatory violence of the powerful, and under
Speaker 1: his direction, the pall Mall Gazette targeted Charles Warren and
Speaker 1: the Home Secretary for an all outlashing. After all, they
Speaker 1: had been willing to del uge London with blood in
Speaker 1: an illegal act of militant assault on the city citizens
Speaker 1: at least that was how instead put it, and they
Speaker 1: published eyewitness accounts of mounted police running down people on
Speaker 1: the streets without provocation. But papers like The Times, which
Speaker 1: circulated among upper class readers, were happy to cheer lead
Speaker 1: the bloodshed. They praised Warren for using a firm hand.
Speaker 1: The Daily News called the mounted police gallant. The wounded
Speaker 1: and dead were simply the price to pay for a
Speaker 1: little more quiet between the city's grandest buildings. Warren marked
Speaker 1: it down as a military victory. Others did the same.
Speaker 1: In the spring of eighteen eighty eight, he was honored
Speaker 1: with admittance to an elite London club, the Athenaeum. He
Speaker 1: was also admitted to another order of Knighthood. All in all,
Speaker 1: he was generally praised and petted by those with power,
Speaker 1: at least for a while. That's why when the Regent's
Speaker 1: Park murder sent a chill across London, it wasn't enough
Speaker 1: to shake Warren's reputation. But then came Martha Tabram's murder,
Speaker 1: and then Polly Nichols. Things were becoming unsettling. Many readers
Speaker 1: were happy enough for Warren's police to kill poor demonstrators
Speaker 1: when they stepped out of their place. That idea came
Speaker 1: from the general belief that London would be all right
Speaker 1: if the poor just stayed where they belonged. All of
Speaker 1: these dead women were telling a different story, though, and
Speaker 1: radical papers like The Star were happy to speculate about
Speaker 1: what that story was. But their guests relied less on
Speaker 1: the evidence that the coroner and detectives would uncover and
Speaker 1: more on something else, London's oldest and deepest prejudice. The
Speaker 1: inquest wasn't over after the first few days. Much of
Speaker 1: Polly Nichols's life had become clear to Win Baxter, and
Speaker 1: it was clear that she had been viciously murdered, but
Speaker 1: the question of who had done it and why hadn't
Speaker 1: comment to focus after interviews with women who had known
Speaker 1: her in the London workhouses and lodging houses, so Baxter
Speaker 1: postponed the inquest for two weeks. When Polly's coffin rolled
Speaker 1: down the street, followed by coaches carrying her father, her
Speaker 1: ex husband, and her children, thousands lined up to watch
Speaker 1: them pass. A tight police escort was commanded to make
Speaker 1: sure that no one in the crowd got too close.
Speaker 1: The reporting in the newspaper and the talk in the
Speaker 1: streets had already put all eyes on Whitechapel. If Win
Speaker 1: Baxter thought that a couple of weeks would give time
Speaker 1: for Scotland Yard to do more digging and come back
Speaker 1: with all the questions answered, his hopes were set too
Speaker 1: high even for someone like Detective Inspector Frederick Eberlin, and
Speaker 1: those weeks when the inquest wasn't in session were also
Speaker 1: eventful ones. While Baxter wasn't at work putting together the
Speaker 1: official account of what happened to Polly Nichols, the writers
Speaker 1: publishing stories in The Star were only too happy to
Speaker 1: start filling in the gaps with some investigating of their own.
Speaker 1: And this is the point where things start to get
Speaker 1: really dark, because of course the writers at the Star
Speaker 1: already had an operating theory the maniac at large in Whitechapel.
Speaker 1: The London Coroner might have wanted more investigation to be done,
Speaker 1: but the journalists from the Star went out through the
Speaker 1: neighborhoods in Whitechapel and started collecting their own reports the
Speaker 1: rumors and anxieties of the people they met there. So
Speaker 1: on September fifth and sixth they published a series of
Speaker 1: stories about a man they called Leather apron and the
Speaker 1: story was chilling. They said he was a strange character
Speaker 1: who prowls Whitechapel after midnight, a more ghoulish and devilish
Speaker 1: brute than can be found in all the pages of
Speaker 1: shocking fiction. Here's historian Paul Beg once again. He was
Speaker 1: portrayed in The Star as a Jewish criminal, almost sort
Speaker 1: of in the in the tradition of Dickens Fagin. The
Speaker 1: Star reported that he moved through the streets at night.
Speaker 1: He was strangely silent, very menacing and threatening the prostitutes
Speaker 1: with a sharp leather knife as a knife to cut leather,
Speaker 1: not a knife made out of leather, as the Star
Speaker 1: reported his uh It said, his expression is sinister and
Speaker 1: seems to be full of terror for the women who
Speaker 1: described it. His eyes are small and glittering. His lips
Speaker 1: are usually parted in a grin which is not only
Speaker 1: not reassuring, but excessively repellent. I mean, so that they're
Speaker 1: really going overboard in their description of this sort of
Speaker 1: nightmare creation. And they also described features which are ster
Speaker 1: up stereotypically Jewish, so it was quite obvious what they
Speaker 1: were aiming at. It's obvious to us now that the
Speaker 1: star was claiming the maniac killer was Jewish, but it
Speaker 1: would have been even more obvious to readers at the
Speaker 1: time because these vicious racist lies have a dark history
Speaker 1: in England, reaching back hundreds of years well into the
Speaker 1: Middle Ages, like in eleven eighty nine, when rumors of
Speaker 1: Jewish counterfeiting led to a wave of massacres in which
Speaker 1: British Christians killed ten percent of their Jewish neighbors, or
Speaker 1: in twelve seventy eight, when rumors that Jewish money changers
Speaker 1: were cheating on the weight of their pennies led to
Speaker 1: a mass execution. Nearly three hundred Jewish Londoners were drawn,
Speaker 1: hanged and burned, men and women alike. Another six hundred
Speaker 1: were imprisoned. In some places, these attacks were led by
Speaker 1: angry peasants, while others, like an assault on the Jewish
Speaker 1: community in York, were led by the Yorkshire gentry. And
Speaker 1: all of that violence was in a context in which
Speaker 1: English Jews were the subjects of a royal charter that
Speaker 1: made them the property of a king. A twelve seventy
Speaker 1: five law even required every Jew in England to wear
Speaker 1: a large, yellow felt badge. Sounds familiar, right, The thing
Speaker 1: is this government racism was based on popular racism against
Speaker 1: English Jews. There were plenty of medieval Christian stories that
Speaker 1: marked Jews as less than human, tales that made their
Speaker 1: Jewish neighbors out to be devils, animals, vampires, exactly the
Speaker 1: kind of descriptions being published about Leather Apron in The Star.
Speaker 1: The worst of these stories said that English Jews were
Speaker 1: taking young Christian boys and re enacting the torture of
Speaker 1: Christ on them. It was a lie, of course, but
Speaker 1: such a popular one that historians today have even given
Speaker 1: it a name, the ritual murder libel. When a Christian
Speaker 1: boy was found dead in a well and twelve fifty
Speaker 1: five nine English Jews were arrested and nineteen of them
Speaker 1: were executed in retribution. In twelve ninety, when there were
Speaker 1: fewer than two thousand Jews in England, the hate was
Speaker 1: so deep that Parliament and the King got together and
Speaker 1: wrote a law expelling all of them. That's a dark,
Speaker 1: dark history of fear and violence. And for some reason,
Speaker 1: it was that racist history of anti Semitic fear that
Speaker 1: The Star decided to print on its pages. It was
Speaker 1: all too easy for English Christians to believe that a
Speaker 1: Satanic cabal of monsters and vampires was murdering English women
Speaker 1: and children. And yes, Charles Dickens had revisited those fears
Speaker 1: in the eighteen thirties when he made his predatory ringleader
Speaker 1: of child thieves a Jewish fence named Fagin. It was
Speaker 1: just a new twist on an old prejudice. So deep
Speaker 1: seated racist hatred was turning the press again in the
Speaker 1: eighteen eighties. It was a medieval fantasy of Christian martyrdom,
Speaker 1: fueled by new sensationalist stories and mutating into the shape
Speaker 1: of a modern day conspiracy theory. Here's Dr Drew Gray
Speaker 1: to add some context. English people weren'tess You're associated with knowledge.
Speaker 1: You associated foreigners with knives, Portuguese sailors, um Jewish barber's shoemakers,
Speaker 1: Native Americans escaping from buffalo bills, Well West traveling show.
Speaker 1: So it was easier for people in London in the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century to believe that Jack the Ripper was a foreigner.
Speaker 1: He was a crazed immigrant, someone identified as other, rather
Speaker 1: than an indigenous resident of White Chapel. I think those
Speaker 1: are all things which it's the presence of large numbers
Speaker 1: of Jews in that area, and the prejudice and the
Speaker 1: anti Semitism which is definitely rife in Victorian London, which
Speaker 1: helps to concentrate, which helps to allow someone like the
Speaker 1: Style to point the finger at another ape. And as
Speaker 1: we've seen, there were plenty of Londoners who were just
Speaker 1: fine with the police treating the East End like military
Speaker 1: forces occupying a foreign country. That was at least partly
Speaker 1: because the East End was the Jewish side of town.
Speaker 1: The story is flogged by the Star were nothing more
Speaker 1: than shous gossip based on rumors collected in the neighborhood.
Speaker 1: It was nothing the police could go on. And in
Speaker 1: the middle of all of that, on September seven, the
Speaker 1: day after Polly Nichols was buried, two detectives wrote a
Speaker 1: report on the state of the police investigation and their assessment. Yes,
Speaker 1: they wrote, they knew about the rumors against a man
Speaker 1: named leather Apron, and yes they were working to find
Speaker 1: someone who used that nickname, But they continued, at present
Speaker 1: there is no evidence whatsoever against him. In fact, no
Speaker 1: evidence had been found to connect the crime to any suspect.
Speaker 1: But even though they were left without leads, their report
Speaker 1: offers a glimmer of hope, almost as if to say,
Speaker 1: don't worry. The report concludes that Inspector Frederick Aberline from
Speaker 1: Scotland Yard Central Office was on the case. He would
Speaker 1: assist the White Chapel detectives and sorting things out. It
Speaker 1: was true that they hadn't found evidence yet. The rest
Speaker 1: assured that the best minds were already at work and
Speaker 1: that would satisfy people for a while. But if the
Speaker 1: lack of ev was a concern to those Whitechapel detectives
Speaker 1: on September seven, it was only the shadow of things
Speaker 1: to come. Soon enough, it would snowball into an overwhelming
Speaker 1: crisis because the murders were far from over. He was
Speaker 1: already on Hanbury Street. It was in the cold morning
Speaker 1: hours of September eight, just as daylight was breaking into
Speaker 1: the White Chapel streets. One of the divisional inspectors for
Speaker 1: Whitechapel was taking stock of what the morning might bring
Speaker 1: when he saw men running. To his surprise, they were
Speaker 1: pounding the street toward the police station on Commercial Streets.
Speaker 1: He waved them down and when he asked them what
Speaker 1: they were doing, he got a startling reply, another woman
Speaker 1: has been murdered. They led him to number twenty nine.
Speaker 1: The inspector had to press through a group of onlookers
Speaker 1: in the passage before he was then led into the backyard.
Speaker 1: That's where he saw her body. The site was so
Speaker 1: terrible that he immediately asked for some sackcloth to cover
Speaker 1: her and set about clearing away the crowd that had gathered.
Speaker 1: He also sent someone for the Divisional Police Surgeon, Dr.
Speaker 1: George Baxter Phillips, whose medical office was just a few
Speaker 1: blocks away at two Spittle Square. More officers arrived to
Speaker 1: help control the scene, and an ambulance was on the way.
Speaker 1: The surgeon arrived at six thirty am, pulled back the
Speaker 1: sacking to examine the body and got to work. His
Speaker 1: observations and the inspector's notes together give us a gruesome
Speaker 1: picture of the scene. The body of the woman was
Speaker 1: left lying on her back at the bottom of the
Speaker 1: stairs that led to the house's back door. A jagged
Speaker 1: cut had split her throat, blood was pooled around her shoulders.
Speaker 1: Her legs were pulled up, and her abdomen had been
Speaker 1: opened wide. Her stomach and intestines had been partially removed.
Speaker 1: The surgeon, Dr. Phillips observed that it looked like she
Speaker 1: had been choked to unconsciousness before her killers started cutting.
Speaker 1: Her tongue was sticking through her teeth, and her face
Speaker 1: was swollen. Feeling the temperature of her body, Dr Phillips
Speaker 1: estimated that she had been dead for roughly two hours
Speaker 1: before he arrived. On the back of the house, blood
Speaker 1: had splashed on the wall, and blood had been smeared
Speaker 1: at the base of the fence that separated the yard
Speaker 1: from the property next door. By the look of it,
Speaker 1: they guessed that the woman had entered the yard alive
Speaker 1: and had been killed right there where they found her.
Speaker 1: The other thing they noticed a few small items were
Speaker 1: laid out in a line next to her body, a
Speaker 1: scrap of cloth, two small combs, and a piece of
Speaker 1: envelope stamped with the mark of a military regiment containing
Speaker 1: two small pills, oh and something else. A short distance
Speaker 1: away in the yard, near a water tap, they found
Speaker 1: a leather apron. When he questioned the residence of the house,
Speaker 1: the inspector learned that one of the men who lived there,
Speaker 1: John Davis, had been the first to spot the body.
Speaker 1: The clock chimes woke him at five am, and he
Speaker 1: had a cup of tea and then went downstairs. The
Speaker 1: front door had been left open all night, which he
Speaker 1: said was typical, so nothing disturbed him, that is until
Speaker 1: he went through the house and opened the back door.
Speaker 1: He spotted the dead woman's dark shape at the bottom
Speaker 1: of the steps. Even in the dim pre dawn light,
Speaker 1: it was easy enough to see the violence she had suffered. Terrified,
Speaker 1: he ran for help. Three men in the street heard
Speaker 1: him calling and followed him back to look at the
Speaker 1: body in his yard. When they noticed the blood on
Speaker 1: her face, they scattered for the police. One of them, though,
Speaker 1: had stopped at a pub for a glass of brandy.
Speaker 1: All four men who saw the body before the police
Speaker 1: arrived would later describe the terror that had overtaken them.
Speaker 1: Not all of them found constables, but they certainly told
Speaker 1: anyone they could find about what they had seen. By
Speaker 1: the time the ambulance arrived, really nothing more than a
Speaker 1: stretcher to carry the body away, there was a crowd
Speaker 1: of curious east Enders pressing in around twenty nine Hanbury Street.
Speaker 1: They had to be held back by a line of constables.
Speaker 1: Writers and journalists who had caught the scent were in
Speaker 1: the muddle of ts and later illustrations printed in the
Speaker 1: papers showed a row of helmets over grim mustaches pressed
Speaker 1: back against the door of the house. Another drawing shows
Speaker 1: an officer in turn pressing back the eager onlookers with
Speaker 1: an outstretched arm while the shrouded corpse is carried away.
Speaker 1: Dr Phillips ordered the body taken to the same mortuary
Speaker 1: where Polly Nichols had been a few days before on
Speaker 1: Old Montague Street. He would arrive later in the day
Speaker 1: to conduct a full postmortem examination. As the police set
Speaker 1: out on their hunt for traces of the killer, the
Speaker 1: other residents of the street were told to appear at
Speaker 1: the inquest to give statements. Constables were sent to various
Speaker 1: lodging houses and pawnbrokers in the neighborhood. They asked about
Speaker 1: anyone who had come in smeared with blood or blood
Speaker 1: stained clothes, but none of these efforts turned up any leads.
Speaker 1: A report file that day said that every possible enquiry
Speaker 1: is being made with a view of tracing the murderer,
Speaker 1: but up to the present without success. Again and the
Speaker 1: White Chapel Inspectors requested that Frederick Abberline assist them. He
Speaker 1: was already at work on the bucks Row murder. The
Speaker 1: death of Polly Nichols, and at the very least the
Speaker 1: police were sure of one thing. This new killing was
Speaker 1: by the same hand. But when it came to finding
Speaker 1: even the smallest clue to lead them forward, the police,
Speaker 1: just like the rest of White Chapel, found themselves at
Speaker 1: a loss. It was not his first examination, but it
Speaker 1: may have been the worst. Dr George Bagster Phillips had
Speaker 1: been a surgeon in Whitechapel for twenty three years. If
Speaker 1: the pictures are anything to go on, he was slightly jolly,
Speaker 1: with wavy sideburns and a short beard running under his chin.
Speaker 1: One of the police officers who knew him said that
Speaker 1: he looked, for all the world as though he stepped
Speaker 1: out of a century old painting. An old fashioned man,
Speaker 1: they said, in both his personal appearance and his dress.
Speaker 1: Despite being the opposite of Coroner when Baxter in his
Speaker 1: approach to fashion, Doctor Phillips was nevertheless charming and popular
Speaker 1: with his colleagues, and by all accounts with the public too,
Speaker 1: who came into his office for surgery. But in the
Speaker 1: afternoon of September eighth, he could only have looked grim,
Speaker 1: and his office that day was the mortuary, where he
Speaker 1: made a thorough examination of the woman who had been
Speaker 1: killed just hours before. He considered the wounds and began
Speaker 1: to think about what would lead someone to act this way.
Speaker 1: It was true that the stomach and intestines had been
Speaker 1: divided and moved out of the body, but there was
Speaker 1: something else too. Doctor Phillips noticed that while the cut
Speaker 1: on the throat was jagged, the cuts through the abdomen
Speaker 1: were clean and deliberate. And what's more, the woman's uterus
Speaker 1: was missing. He guessed that the same knife had been
Speaker 1: used to make all the cuts, something very sharp with
Speaker 1: a thin, narrow blade. He thought of the kind of
Speaker 1: knife that he used when performing a post mortem. Thinking
Speaker 1: about his own skill as a surgeon, Dr Phillips guests
Speaker 1: that he could not have performed all of the mutilations
Speaker 1: to the woman's body in less than a quarter of
Speaker 1: an hour. He began to guess that, just maybe that
Speaker 1: was the whole object of the operation, That these injuries
Speaker 1: to the woman's dead body were signs that the killer
Speaker 1: had anatomical knowledge, that possessing a certain portion of the
Speaker 1: woman's body was the murderer's goal. In short, he began
Speaker 1: to piece together what we might call a criminal profile.
Speaker 1: The Star and other London papers had their own ideas
Speaker 1: about who the killer might be, and those notions were
Speaker 1: sweeping through their London readership. From the body of the
Speaker 1: dead woman on the mortuary table in front of Dr Phillips,
Speaker 1: a different kind of story had emerged. In the days
Speaker 1: to come. These two competing stories, the journalistic monster and
Speaker 1: the experienced surgeon, would compete in the public eye. They
Speaker 1: would tangle and wrestle for the upper hand, just as
Speaker 1: Scotland yard detect times wrapped their brains and scoured the
Speaker 1: streets of Whitechapel looking for leads, and the winner would
Speaker 1: become the face of a killer. That's it for this
Speaker 1: week's episode of Unobscured. Stick around after this short sponsor
Speaker 1: break for a preview of what's in store for next week.
Speaker 1: The papers across London trumpeted the murder scene at the
Speaker 1: end of Act one as the most powerful and horrible
Speaker 1: thing ever seen on the modern stage. The Star proclaimed
Speaker 1: the show's Mr Hyde and odious monster, with brutality in
Speaker 1: every line and look and gesture. By the time a
Speaker 1: woman in the real London was actually killed in the
Speaker 1: yard behind Hanbury Streets, the play had been drawing London
Speaker 1: crowds for a month, getting people out of their homes
Speaker 1: for a night of voyeuristic pleasure. And when the papers
Speaker 1: turned around and started reporting a real murderer in the
Speaker 1: same terms, well it started to blur the lines between
Speaker 1: fiction and reality. And if the killings were in a
Speaker 1: sense Jackal and Hyde brought to life, well why shouldn't
Speaker 1: eager thrill seekers flocked to that scene as well? It
Speaker 1: was our first glimpse of a pastime that would endure
Speaker 1: all the way to modern times ripper tourism had begun.
Speaker 1: Un Obscured was created by me Aaron Manky and produced
Speaker 1: by Matt Frederick, Alex Williams, and Josh Thane in partnership
Speaker 1: with I Heart Radio. Research and writing for this season
Speaker 1: is all the work of my right hand man Carl
Speaker 1: Nellis and the brilliant Chad Lawson composed the brand new soundtrack.
Speaker 1: Learn more about our contributing historians, source material and links
Speaker 1: to our their shows over at history unobscured dot com
Speaker 1: and until next time, thanks for listening. Unobscured is a
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio and Aaron Monkey. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts for My Heart Radio, visit i Heeart Radio app
Speaker 1: Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 1: H