Speaker 1: Welcomed, unobscured a production of I Heart Radio and Aaron Minki.
Speaker 1: Dr Phillips looked down at Alice's corpse. The cries that
Speaker 1: Jack the Ripper was back to blood letting were ringing
Speaker 1: in his ears. It was the summer of eighteen eighty
Speaker 1: nine and Dr Phillips had a john to do. He
Speaker 1: had to clear his head, He had to examine the
Speaker 1: evidence the evil marks left on Alice Mackenzie's body, and
Speaker 1: he had to determine, like before, who might have guided
Speaker 1: the vicious blade that killed her. The first thing he
Speaker 1: noticed was how shallow the cuts were. In fact, Dr
Speaker 1: Phillips said in his report that, after careful and long deliberation,
Speaker 1: I cannot satisfy myself that the perpetrator of all the
Speaker 1: White Chapel murders is our man. The mode and procedure
Speaker 1: of the cutting seemed to be different. He had witnessed
Speaker 1: the terrible brutality visited on East End women in the
Speaker 1: fall before. No one who had seen Mary Kelly's body
Speaker 1: would miss the difference, or so thought Dr Phillips. But
Speaker 1: just to keep things interesting, Scotland Yard once again requested
Speaker 1: that Dr Thomas Bond come in to confirm the judgment.
Speaker 1: But what he said started in an argument that has
Speaker 1: never quite finished. By the time Dr Bond arrived, Alice
Speaker 1: mackenzie's body had started to decompose, and it had been
Speaker 1: washed and handled since the first examination. Even so, Dr
Speaker 1: Bond said with confidence that the cuts across her body
Speaker 1: he saw the design of the Whitechapel murders, and he
Speaker 1: stated plainly for the police the murder was performed by
Speaker 1: the same person as usual. Dr Bond convinced his friends
Speaker 1: at Scotland Yard, or at least some of them. James
Speaker 1: Monroe wrote to the Home Secretary that he had received
Speaker 1: word the very moment Alice's body was found at three
Speaker 1: a m. He had rushed to the scene of Alice's
Speaker 1: murder and immediately taken personal control of the investigation. As
Speaker 1: the evidence was gathered, including Dr Bond's statement, James Monroe
Speaker 1: was convinced that the murder was identical with the notorious
Speaker 1: Jack the Ripper of last year. Along with his report
Speaker 1: to the Home Secretary, Matthews, the new Police Commissioner, sent
Speaker 1: on a map. On it, he marked the places where
Speaker 1: White Chapel murders had taken place. But here's where the
Speaker 1: next argument lies because yes, that map showed the murders
Speaker 1: that Dr Bond had considered back in October, Polly Nichols,
Speaker 1: Annie Chapman, Liz Stride, Katherine Eddoes and Mary Kelly. That's five,
Speaker 1: but the map had eight murders marked. It included two
Speaker 1: women killed earlier in eighteen eighty eight, Emma Smith and
Speaker 1: Martha Tabram, along with the new case of the murder
Speaker 1: of Alice Mackenzie. It seems the police, under James Monroe's direction,
Speaker 1: were still considering whether all of these women were killed
Speaker 1: by the same man. His map, though completely left out
Speaker 1: the Torso murders, and in the following days, it seems
Speaker 1: that Monroe's mind changed when it came to imagining the
Speaker 1: White Chapel killer, the legendary Jack the ripper behind the
Speaker 1: death of Alice Mackenzie. Monroe's conclusions swung from a green
Speaker 1: with Dr Bond to agreeing with Dr Phillips. At least
Speaker 1: that's what Monroe told the head of Scotland Yard. It
Speaker 1: was a flip flopping attitude that would follow every East
Speaker 1: and murder investigation for a long long time. Whenever a
Speaker 1: new body turned up, the question had to be asked
Speaker 1: was this the work of Jack the Ripper? In a
Speaker 1: year that followed Autumn of Terror, everyone responsible for governing
Speaker 1: life and death in Whitechapel was caught in a fog
Speaker 1: of uncertainty. At Alice Mackenzie's inquest, Win Baxter intoned for
Speaker 1: The Times of London that there is great similarity between
Speaker 1: this and the other class of cases which have happened
Speaker 1: in this neighborhood. And if this crime has not been
Speaker 1: committed by the same person, it is clearly an imitation
Speaker 1: of the other cases. There is nothing to show why,
Speaker 1: he said the woman is murdered or by whom this
Speaker 1: is unobscured. I'm Aaron manky h who was responsible? It
Speaker 1: was the question now set before every mind that wanted
Speaker 1: to solve the Whitechapel murders and unmasked the killer. How
Speaker 1: many of the women killed in the East End were
Speaker 1: the victims of a single brutal murderer And did either
Speaker 1: approach truly lead to the identity of the murderer. It
Speaker 1: was the question that faced the police too, and men
Speaker 1: like Melville McNaughton. It's true that McNaughton was not yet
Speaker 1: on the forest during the Fall of eight but the
Speaker 1: new Metropolitan Police Commissioner. His friend James Monroe wrote, I
Speaker 1: always had a high opinion of his qualifications and abilities,
Speaker 1: but he has shown an aptitude for dealing with criminal
Speaker 1: administration and a power of managing and dealing with men.
Speaker 1: It was a recommendation that sound close to the kinds
Speaker 1: of compliments given to Donald Swanson for his synthetical turn
Speaker 1: of mind. So maybe we can't be surprised that McNaughton
Speaker 1: would turn his powers of analysis to the Whitechapel murders.
Speaker 1: After all, how many thousands of us have done the same.
Speaker 1: But McNaughton's hindsight was more informed than most, and what
Speaker 1: he wrote had the benefit of coming from inside Scotland. Yard.
Speaker 1: Here's Dr Drew Gray to tell us about the mark
Speaker 1: that McNaughton left on the investigation. In February he wrote
Speaker 1: a report on the case, and that was prompted by
Speaker 1: a speculation in the Sun newspaper of the day that
Speaker 1: the murderer was a man named Thomas cut Plush, and
Speaker 1: he was kind of refuting that. I think in McNaughton's
Speaker 1: writing we see the way that a serious police investigator
Speaker 1: was still devoting time to the hunt for the Whitechapel murder,
Speaker 1: even long after the cases went cold. Let's have Adam
Speaker 1: would tell us how he sorted through that evidence. What
Speaker 1: I find interesting about the McNaughton report is that he
Speaker 1: names the same five victims as the genuine Ripper victims
Speaker 1: as Thomas bonded his report. And this is where we
Speaker 1: get the so called canonical five victims, from Maryann Nichols
Speaker 1: through to Mary Kelly, and the victims before these five
Speaker 1: and afterward a genuine regarded as probably not by the ripper.
Speaker 1: But that's certainly changed in certainly the case of Martha Tabram.
Speaker 1: But McNaughton had a reason for describing which victims he
Speaker 1: thought were truly killed by the ripper, and that was
Speaker 1: to identify a suspect. But just one suspect wasn't good
Speaker 1: enough for mcnaton. In fact, he named three. Here is
Speaker 1: more from Dr Drew Gray. The report itself is quite
Speaker 1: short and in it but no names three possible Ripper
Speaker 1: suspects and three people that were supposedly known to the
Speaker 1: police part of the investigation at the time. And these
Speaker 1: were Monsty, John Drewitt, Michael ostrog and a guy just
Speaker 1: known as Kosminsky not given a first name, but generally
Speaker 1: has been given the name Aaron Kazmitski, but Kauseminski a
Speaker 1: police Jews. McNaughton rights. And when we look at mcnorton's
Speaker 1: trier of suspects, my problem is that they broadly fit
Speaker 1: the typology of who the Victorians thought ought to have
Speaker 1: been the killer. I someone who was considered to be
Speaker 1: a social other. So we have an upper class gentleman,
Speaker 1: we have a psychotic doctor, and we have a deranged
Speaker 1: Jewish immigrant. They're all the people who are drew it
Speaker 1: or struggle and Kosminski. And I think it's rather convenient
Speaker 1: that McNaughton identifies those three as the people that the
Speaker 1: piece we're looking for, because those are the sort of
Speaker 1: people the press were telling the police they ought to
Speaker 1: be looking for. Not only was Melville McNaughton's report a
Speaker 1: simple product of the way victorians saw the world, it
Speaker 1: was also a strange document for the very fact that
Speaker 1: it named multiple suspects. It tells us that even as
Speaker 1: the years passed, the police around White Chapel had not
Speaker 1: been able to narrow down their list of men who
Speaker 1: might have committed the crimes. Some officers believed one of
Speaker 1: the men might be responsible, others in their ranks could
Speaker 1: only come to a different conclusion. The fact is, even
Speaker 1: in examining McNaughton's report, we don't know much about who
Speaker 1: else in the Metropolitan Police agreed with his opinions. McNaughton
Speaker 1: submitted his report up the line. It was marked confidential
Speaker 1: and put into the police files, but during his lifetime
Speaker 1: it was never published. Victorian London was often a killer,
Speaker 1: and its disasters and diseases led to many more deaths
Speaker 1: than any one person. But the thrill and terror of
Speaker 1: murder has a hold on our mind that far outweighs
Speaker 1: the mere numbers. The stories of neglect and the awful
Speaker 1: ordinariness of fatal outbreaks are easy to overlook when there
Speaker 1: are newspapers like The Star whipping up a fearful frenzy
Speaker 1: about the danger that our neighbors pose. They're not unrelated, though,
Speaker 1: and to understand the ways that a government and a
Speaker 1: police force failed to hunt down a serial killer, we
Speaker 1: need to understand the world in which those failures take place.
Speaker 1: Here's more from Paul Beg. Chat Ripper is a mystery,
Speaker 1: an understanding, perhaps even sold being it. You have to
Speaker 1: study the evidence. You have to know how people lived
Speaker 1: and so on, because all of how they lived could
Speaker 1: have a bearing on what they did and therefore ultimately
Speaker 1: lead to perhaps a discovery of who the murderer was,
Speaker 1: or getting close to that. You have to read books,
Speaker 1: which is no bad thing. You've got to learn about sources,
Speaker 1: which ones are and which ones aren't reliable, all sorts
Speaker 1: of things that historians do. That's part of their job,
Speaker 1: and many of those things have applications in our world,
Speaker 1: such as now there is an increasing need to distinguish
Speaker 1: between trustworthy and untrustworthy news stories and blogs and web pages,
Speaker 1: and goodness knows what else. The White Chapel murder has
Speaker 1: demanded the attention of London during their own day, and
Speaker 1: it's never stopped bringing more eyes and more minds to
Speaker 1: the mystery of a case. So after the folk us
Speaker 1: has been on the gaps in our knowledge, the things
Speaker 1: we don't know or never can. But when it comes
Speaker 1: down to it, there's so much that we do know,
Speaker 1: and the obsessive drive to uncover the identity of the
Speaker 1: killer has often allowed the speculations and fabrications of times
Speaker 1: past to cover over the real lives and real pass
Speaker 1: to the place where the killings happened. Even in though
Speaker 1: Whitechapel was much bigger than just the story of its
Speaker 1: infamous killer, Darkest England. That was the smear used against
Speaker 1: London's East End to accuse it of being just like
Speaker 1: so called uncivilized parts of the world, the parts of
Speaker 1: the world that had just a few too many diamonds
Speaker 1: in their fields according to people like Charles Warren, the
Speaker 1: parts of the world that needed civilizing missions, according to
Speaker 1: people like James Monroe, the parts of the world that
Speaker 1: could be put to work if you had some matches
Speaker 1: to make. But what if you were all three and
Speaker 1: you had a missionary army ready to make some matches.
Speaker 1: That's what the East End looked like to the Salvation Army.
Speaker 1: The leaders of that movement saw the ways that Bryant
Speaker 1: and May were making hay from the East End poor,
Speaker 1: and they saw an opportunity to compete. So they opened
Speaker 1: a rival match factory in hopes of lifting people out
Speaker 1: of poverty, and the Darkest England Match Company started right
Speaker 1: down the road from Bryanton May. To their credit, the
Speaker 1: entrepreneurial mission left the toxic white phosphorus behind, and they
Speaker 1: paid their workers twice what Bryanton May offered. For a
Speaker 1: while it seemed like they were succeeding too, and they
Speaker 1: were putting out six million boxes of matches each year.
Speaker 1: Members of Parliament and journalists with ready pens came through
Speaker 1: on tours led by the Salvation Army generals. But as
Speaker 1: the match women knew all too well, matchmaking was a
Speaker 1: ruthless business. The Darkest England Match Company only lasted a
Speaker 1: few years and when it closed it was gobbled up
Speaker 1: by a competitor. That's right, it was taken over by
Speaker 1: none other than Bryanton May. But that's not the end
Speaker 1: of the story for working people in London's East End, because,
Speaker 1: as you probably remember, when we last left Mary Driscoll
Speaker 1: and the match women, they weren't done with their own work.
Speaker 1: They were still agitating. But in eight nine it wentn't
Speaker 1: beyond that too. Here's Dr Louise Raw to tell us more.
Speaker 1: I found that strikes shut up, shut up right after
Speaker 1: the match from a strike. And there's no other way
Speaker 1: to explain it. Because I looked, I went right back
Speaker 1: and looked at averages on years. Everyone in the East
Speaker 1: End is going on strike, the tailors, the seamstress, as
Speaker 1: you know, the jam Factress, the fur place. Everyone's going
Speaker 1: on strike, you know, because working people aren't stupid. They
Speaker 1: seeing an example here. Oh look, they are workers like us.
Speaker 1: They're supposed to be powerless, blind me. They're now trade
Speaker 1: union leaders and they've got better conditions. You know, how
Speaker 1: dumb do we think working people are that this would
Speaker 1: be lost on them. Of course it wasn't lost on them.
Speaker 1: And one of those groups who looked at what Mary
Speaker 1: Driscoll and the other women had achieved was none other
Speaker 1: than the muscle that made the empire flourish. The dock
Speaker 1: workers they wanted with the match women had won, and
Speaker 1: they decided to make demands of their own. After all,
Speaker 1: they could only be envious of what the women in
Speaker 1: their family had won. Here's Louise raw once again. Match
Speaker 1: for married docers, Match for me and the mothers of doers,
Speaker 1: their sisters, their friends of doctors. You know, working people
Speaker 1: do inspire each other. They do tool of course, well.
Speaker 1: Armed with the match women's example, the poorest dockers, the
Speaker 1: Irish laborers who were hired for casual work on a
Speaker 1: daily basis, got together and wrote a letter to the
Speaker 1: directors of the dock companies Where they wanted was clear,
Speaker 1: a penny raise in their daily wage and something more
Speaker 1: for overtime. But the DOC directors were deaf to their demands,
Speaker 1: and so the strike began. First it was men who
Speaker 1: marched off the West India Dock on August and they
Speaker 1: put out a call for all the workers on all
Speaker 1: the docks along the river to support the poorest men.
Speaker 1: By August one, twenty men were marching, but they took
Speaker 1: their cues from the match women. Their protests and marches
Speaker 1: weren't dull. They were accompanied by a royal clamor. The
Speaker 1: sounds of brass bands and the rolling rattle of pipes
Speaker 1: and drums filled the East End streets. Every dock was
Speaker 1: shut down. Even the police wanted to get in on
Speaker 1: the union action. After all, other public servants like postmen
Speaker 1: were also taking steps to unionize. It was a strange
Speaker 1: turn of events when you think about it. The men
Speaker 1: who had been beating the socialists with batons in London's
Speaker 1: Trafalgar Square were coming around to their ideas. At one point,
Speaker 1: when the strike leaders heard that five hundred more police
Speaker 1: were going to meet their lines, they welcomed them in
Speaker 1: and rather than beating the strikers back. The constables joined them.
Speaker 1: After all, the Home Secretary was refusing the pay raise
Speaker 1: that Charles Warren and then James Monroe had asked for.
Speaker 1: The massive strike only gained strength. And this strike is
Speaker 1: on questionably a huge event, but it is unsuccessful at first.
Speaker 1: The doc company really fight back and John Burke, it's
Speaker 1: one of the key leaders who goes on to bing MP, says,
Speaker 1: drew the strike to a mass meeting and hundreds of
Speaker 1: thousands of men don't give up, stand shoulder to shoulder.
Speaker 1: Remember the match girls who won their fight and formed
Speaker 1: their union. Well, I mean wow. And he says that
Speaker 1: kind of thing constantly. By the way, he doesn't say, oh,
Speaker 1: some match women. You probably haven't heard of them. They
Speaker 1: were from Bryan to May, down the road. They apparently
Speaker 1: had a strike. He says, they're match girls, and he
Speaker 1: knows everyone knows. Hundreds of thousands of men listening, they
Speaker 1: all know, damn well who the match were. Enough, that's
Speaker 1: how inspiring they are. When the leaders read their memoirs,
Speaker 1: they said things like it was the match women that
Speaker 1: started it. They were the first signs. They were the
Speaker 1: first encouragement, the first inspiration. They were the start of
Speaker 1: new unions of Soon enough, Monroe was in a furious
Speaker 1: battle with Home Secretary Matthews. The Dark owners and the
Speaker 1: Home Office had wanted the police to beat back the strike.
Speaker 1: Monroe replied that he believed in impartial policing. His view
Speaker 1: was that the police were not simply the servants of
Speaker 1: London's employers or the tools of the city's wealthiest aristocrats.
Speaker 1: His dispute with Matthews would never resolve, but the strike
Speaker 1: would come to an end. By November. The doc directors
Speaker 1: had given in and the longshoremen were drawing their new
Speaker 1: higher wages. And that wasn't the only effect. Echoes of
Speaker 1: the dark workers shouts were heard elsewhere in Britain and
Speaker 1: around the world, from the Liverpool doctors strike the next
Speaker 1: year to the men unloading freight in the ports of Australia.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't just rising workers in other lands who
Speaker 1: heard John Burns rallying cry to remember the match. Girls
Speaker 1: the East End remembered it too. A descendants that I
Speaker 1: talked to, we're really good at explaining how these notions,
Speaker 1: these received, notions that were forced on them from above,
Speaker 1: were rejected and were turned around. And he said I'm
Speaker 1: really glad you're writing about my grant and her friends
Speaker 1: because they were wonderful and nobody thinks they were. And
Speaker 1: I had to grow up with that, had to grow
Speaker 1: up with these incredible powerhouse women, strong characters, brave, amazing,
Speaker 1: you know, did the impossible on a daty basis, fed
Speaker 1: huge families, and people treated them like dirt. And people
Speaker 1: would say they weren't ladist, but to us they were.
Speaker 1: They were East End Ladist. A bigger lesson, I think
Speaker 1: would be hard to find. The tables had turned. Now
Speaker 1: it was not James Monroe celebrating McNaughton, but the other
Speaker 1: way around. Instead, McNaughton was celebrating the man who got
Speaker 1: him into the police. You see, James Monroe had lost
Speaker 1: his job. That might seem to be a strange time
Speaker 1: to celebrate someone, but think about it, when else would
Speaker 1: someone need more of a pick me up? So the
Speaker 1: date was set for a dinner party that brought together
Speaker 1: the usual suspects. Donald Swanson was there, so was Frederick Eberline.
Speaker 1: James Monroe was the guest of honor, surrounded by eight
Speaker 1: other officers from the top of Scotland Yard and Melville
Speaker 1: McNaughton hosted them all. Monroe was done with policing for now.
Speaker 1: Like Charles Warren, James Monroe had resigned the struggle to
Speaker 1: administer the police under a controlling Home Office was more
Speaker 1: than he could take, especially when all the forces that
Speaker 1: wanted to use the police to literally beat the London
Speaker 1: pour into their place. We're winning the argument. When he
Speaker 1: left his post, James Monroe had served as Metropolitan Police
Speaker 1: Commissioner for the shortest time on record. But what does
Speaker 1: a police commissioner do when he leaves his position of
Speaker 1: enormous power in the world's largest city. He sets his
Speaker 1: sights on the place where he has learned his craft,
Speaker 1: and he decided to go back to India. He would
Speaker 1: be welcome, he said, as a medical missionary. And Monroe
Speaker 1: wasn't the only officer to turn his mind back to
Speaker 1: the horizon of the empire. Charles Warren too returned to
Speaker 1: something familiar, the British Army. But for Warren it didn't
Speaker 1: mean a return to his former glory, far from it. Instead,
Speaker 1: it took him to an even worse mess than his
Speaker 1: failure to capture the Whitechappel Killer. Here's Paul beg to
Speaker 1: tell us more Warren. Unfortunately, after he resigned, he was
Speaker 1: sent out to fight abroad. There was a battle that's
Speaker 1: at a place called spied on Cop, and it was
Speaker 1: an absolute disaster. And that's basically stuck with Warren and
Speaker 1: has damaged to his reputation for the rest of his
Speaker 1: life and right down to today. Andrew Gray agrees. Eleven
Speaker 1: years after the Ripper Case, serving in the South African
Speaker 1: War what sometimes owned as the Boar War, and he
Speaker 1: has to lead the assault on spine Cop, which is
Speaker 1: an unmitigated military disaster. I think it's interesting that Paul
Speaker 1: Beig describes him as a man to whom fate certainly
Speaker 1: dealt to cruel hands. Leadership of the police during the
Speaker 1: Ripper Case, which is probably impossible for them to solve.
Speaker 1: And leadership of soldiers at the Battle of spine Cop
Speaker 1: where they were rudely defeated by the Boors. In fact,
Speaker 1: at spion Cop, the troops under Warren's command were absolutely massacred.
Speaker 1: His lines were ripped apart by Boar artillery that his
Speaker 1: own officers couldn't locate on the battlefield. In fact, that's
Speaker 1: his own small contribution to history, an early use of
Speaker 1: what came to be known as indirect artillery fire. Warren
Speaker 1: saw his men torn apart, but he couldn't see where
Speaker 1: the attack was coming from, so he didn't know how
Speaker 1: to respond. It was a cruel irony that wasn't the
Speaker 1: first time an unidentified attack or worked devastation before his eyes.
Speaker 1: The battle was such a disaster that Warren was even
Speaker 1: called arguably the most incompetent commander of the whole Second
Speaker 1: Boer War, and those criticisms bit deep. For a man
Speaker 1: who had dedicated himself to advancing Britain's imperial power, he
Speaker 1: couldn't stand to have failed so spectacularly again. In eight
Speaker 1: Warren had attempted to refute the criticism of the Metropolitan
Speaker 1: Police by publishing his ill fated article in Murray's magazine.
Speaker 1: After costing thousands of British lives at Spion Up, he
Speaker 1: answered his critics in a book he entitled Sir Charles
Speaker 1: Warren and Spion cop of Vindication. He changed his approach
Speaker 1: this time. Though he published this self congratulatory rant under
Speaker 1: a false name. He made sure to quote the best
Speaker 1: things the Home Secretary ever said about him, that Charles
Speaker 1: Warren was a man not only of the highest character
Speaker 1: but of great ability. Looking back, it might have been
Speaker 1: more convincing if it was someone else reminding the reading
Speaker 1: public that this had ever been said about Charles Warren.
Speaker 1: Donald Swanson also found his later reputation tied up with
Speaker 1: the violence and the excesses of the British Empire in
Speaker 1: South Africa. Although his role was something like the opposite
Speaker 1: of Warren, in fact, Swanson had done everything he could
Speaker 1: to avoid the conflict that later led to Warren's disgrace.
Speaker 1: Take for instance, his role in prosecuting what became known
Speaker 1: as the Jamison Raid. Here's Adam Wood to fill us
Speaker 1: in basically n domand Magnets and British naturally, Sir Cecil Rhodes,
Speaker 1: who had been basically annexing large areas of South Africa,
Speaker 1: had his eye on the South African Republic, which is
Speaker 1: a large independent country formerly known as a transfile. Large
Speaker 1: quantities of gold have been discovered, which caused thousands of
Speaker 1: many British immigrants called outlanders, who were tolerated thanks to
Speaker 1: the tax as they had to pay on any gold
Speaker 1: that they uncovered. But Rhodes was envious and wanted this land,
Speaker 1: and he devised a plan whereby arms and money would
Speaker 1: be provided to the outlanders in order to provoke an
Speaker 1: armed uprising by these settlers with the result of the
Speaker 1: overthrown of the South African Republic government and an armed
Speaker 1: force of around seven hundred men under control of Dr
Speaker 1: Leander Jameson was to be placed on the Transfile border,
Speaker 1: ready to assist and support this insurrection. But things went
Speaker 1: badly wrong because Jameson badly ignored orders to retreat, and
Speaker 1: the result was that more than four hundred of his
Speaker 1: men were captured. That's where Donald Swinson stepped in, because
Speaker 1: once his crowd of men returned to Britain, the question
Speaker 1: was how they should be handled. What crimes had been
Speaker 1: committed it on the outer reaches of the Empire. Could
Speaker 1: Jamison be charged with smuggling guns through a chartered company
Speaker 1: and attempting to overthrow the government of a neighboring country.
Speaker 1: Swanson knew there had to be consequences for such an
Speaker 1: outrageous provocation. He made sure that those consequences were felt too.
Speaker 1: Together with the officers under his command, Donald sorted through
Speaker 1: the testimonies of all the men involved, and he untangled
Speaker 1: the conspiracy. When he was done, Swanson had the thirteen
Speaker 1: ring leaders charged with unlawful military expedition against the South
Speaker 1: African Republic. Seeing the evidence that Swanson collected, the magistrate
Speaker 1: judging the case said that there cannot be a graver
Speaker 1: offense than that these men are accused of committing that
Speaker 1: might lead to war between two friendly countries. They were
Speaker 1: convicted and jailed, and for a time it cooled the
Speaker 1: tensions on the border of the Dutch and British empires.
Speaker 1: It was the sort of thing that Donald Swanson was
Speaker 1: capable of stepping into a snarl of confusing details and
Speaker 1: wrestling control of the story. He was up against entrenched forces.
Speaker 1: Though other storytellers loved what Jamison had done, men like
Speaker 1: Rudyard Kipling, the infamous cheerleader of British imperial power, wrote
Speaker 1: poems in Jamieson's honor. Even an investigator as capable as
Speaker 1: Donald Swanson could only hold back imperial violence for so long.
Speaker 1: But investigating outrages at the frontier of the Empire wasn't
Speaker 1: Donald Swanson's last contribution to history, because his synthetical mind
Speaker 1: still had one more insight to give. Swanson's last contribution
Speaker 1: was marginal, and I mean that literally. It wasn't published,
Speaker 1: It wasn't even reported to his superior officers. In fact,
Speaker 1: it was his personal notes scribbled in the margins of
Speaker 1: a book by Sir Robert Anderson, Swanson's boss at Scotland Yard.
Speaker 1: Swanson had a habit of writing comments on the margins
Speaker 1: of whatever he was reading. That included the books by
Speaker 1: other policemen. Swanson himself decided not to cash in on
Speaker 1: the hunger for police memoirs, but he made sure to
Speaker 1: buy the books by his colleagues, and that included Anderson's
Speaker 1: memoir called The Lighter Side of My Official Life. But
Speaker 1: just because Donald didn't publish his own perspective, it didn't
Speaker 1: mean he had nothing to say. Of course, we can't
Speaker 1: be surprised that even in his retirement, Donald Swanson had
Speaker 1: strong opinions about police work, so when he picked up
Speaker 1: Anderson's memoir it inspired quite a few comments. Today, we
Speaker 1: might remember Anderson as the man who went on leave
Speaker 1: in September of eighty eight when Polly Nichols and Annie
Speaker 1: Chapman were killed in Whitechapel. Officers like Swanson and Aberline
Speaker 1: were left behind at Scotland Yard to coordinate the investigation
Speaker 1: until Anderson returned, it would have been Donald Swanson who
Speaker 1: filled in for him and brought him up to speed
Speaker 1: when he came back. In later years, Anderson would write
Speaker 1: that when it came to summing up the investigation of
Speaker 1: the White Chapel murders, he was tempted to disclose the
Speaker 1: identity of the murderer, but no public benefits would result.
Speaker 1: In fact, he believed his officers had actually arrested the killer,
Speaker 1: but they couldn't prosecute him. Why Because, he wrote, the
Speaker 1: one person who had ever had a good view of
Speaker 1: the murderer unhesitatingly identified the suspect the instant he was
Speaker 1: confronted with him, but he refused to give evidence against him.
Speaker 1: That passage in Anderson's book inspired a rush of commentary
Speaker 1: when Swanson read it, but the thoughts he wrote down
Speaker 1: would not be discovered for decades, not until well after
Speaker 1: Donald Swanson's death. In Donald's books filled with his notes
Speaker 1: were passed down through the family until night when a
Speaker 1: relative was sorting through papers and discovered them once he
Speaker 1: had read them. Though he knew that the discovery was
Speaker 1: significant because Swanson hadn't just commented on the margin of
Speaker 1: that page. He had flipped to the end of the
Speaker 1: book and written out his thoughts. Here's Adam Wood to
Speaker 1: say more. Elaborating on the end paper, Swanson wrote, after
Speaker 1: the suspect had been identified at the seas at home
Speaker 1: where have been sent by us with difficulty in order
Speaker 1: to subject him to identification him, he knews identified. On
Speaker 1: the suspect's returned to his brother's house he whitechap Or.
Speaker 1: He was watched by police CTC I D by day
Speaker 1: and night. In a very short time. The suspect, who
Speaker 1: was hands tied beyond his back. He was sent to
Speaker 1: Stephanie workhouse and then to Colney Hatch and he died
Speaker 1: shortly afterwards. Kause Minski was a suspect. Kazminski one of
Speaker 1: the three names from Melvin McNaughton's unpublished report written in
Speaker 1: the eighteen nineties. If there's one man then that attracted
Speaker 1: the most suspicion from the detectives at Scotland Yard, it
Speaker 1: seems that he was the one. It just leads me
Speaker 1: to believe that Swanson probably also believed because Minsky to
Speaker 1: beach at the Ripper rather than just another suspect. After all,
Speaker 1: he was the one officer who saw every scrap of
Speaker 1: evidence and report, and you have to assume that he
Speaker 1: knew more than anybody. When Swanson's marginal notes came to light,
Speaker 1: they were put under enormous scrutiny. Was the handwriting genuine?
Speaker 1: Did Swanson's opinion reveal the true identity of the murderer?
Speaker 1: If so, who was this Kosminski? Let alone the other
Speaker 1: things mentioned in Swanson's notes, like the seaside home. The
Speaker 1: comments offered one resolution to the case, but of course
Speaker 1: questions remained. Research into the Polish Kasminski family commenced, though
Speaker 1: traces were scarce. Even for those who believed that the
Speaker 1: truth had finally been revealed, like Swanson's family, there was
Speaker 1: still so little to go on. Did believing that Swanson
Speaker 1: and Anderson had identified the suspect really bring the quest
Speaker 1: for the Whitechapel murderer to a satisfying conclusion? Here's Paul Beg.
Speaker 1: What Anderson wrote and how seriously he can be taken
Speaker 1: depends to a very great extent on what we know
Speaker 1: about Sir Robert Anderson and what kind of man he was,
Speaker 1: and how things that we know about may have influenced
Speaker 1: the way he believed and the things that he said.
Speaker 1: So We really need to study people like Anderson and
Speaker 1: mcnaughtman sponson in great depth. The trouble is there's not
Speaker 1: an awful lot of information out there that enables us
Speaker 1: to do Their history now is becoming really important. We
Speaker 1: can't just theorize Willie Nilly. We we really do have
Speaker 1: to get down to the serious level of history. Serious study,
Speaker 1: serious scholarship can keep bringing the details and the texture
Speaker 1: of the past to light. But the painful truth is
Speaker 1: that it won't ever be possible to fully live in
Speaker 1: the past. What do we conclude in the absence of evidence.
Speaker 1: It's the question that plagued Win Baxter. It's the question
Speaker 1: that haunted the police. It's the challenge that has bedeviled
Speaker 1: historians and writers who have gone back to look at
Speaker 1: Whitechapel in And it's even harder when there's so much
Speaker 1: speculation thrown into the gaps in what we know. Even
Speaker 1: when some of those gaps were filled in by new information,
Speaker 1: like when the Metropolitan Police files were finally open in
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies, the false leads and the ex the
Speaker 1: nations that had been spun up around the case made
Speaker 1: it more difficult for new information to break through especially
Speaker 1: when that new information didn't offer the kinds of revelations
Speaker 1: that we might hope for. After all, they confirmed at
Speaker 1: least one thing that we already knew. The police simply
Speaker 1: didn't know who the killer was. There were fears and suspicions,
Speaker 1: and there were records of all the arrests and internal
Speaker 1: reports on police action, but little more. Here's Paul Beg
Speaker 1: once again. Knowing who Jack the Ripple was largely depends
Speaker 1: on who the police at the time thought Jack the
Speaker 1: Ripple was, and the only clues to that that we
Speaker 1: have are the names provided in the Norton memoranda, and
Speaker 1: to a slightly lesser extent, to Francis Tumblete and maybe
Speaker 1: one or two others. But that's basically it. What do
Speaker 1: we do when there's such gaping hall in our history?
Speaker 1: What we're left with is legend. The story here is
Speaker 1: Dr Drew Gray once more. There's no such person as
Speaker 1: Jack the Ripper. He never existed. Of course, there was
Speaker 1: a serial killer or possibly serial killers at loose, and
Speaker 1: that person was responsible for the murder of several very
Speaker 1: poor and vulnerable women. But the monster that's come down
Speaker 1: to us as Jack the Ripper is in many ways,
Speaker 1: an invention of popular print culture, and then subsequently a
Speaker 1: century or more of amateur sleuthing and speculation about the killer.
Speaker 1: So Jack is a sort of dark fantasy figure that
Speaker 1: was created in and has developed ever since. So since
Speaker 1: we don't know who Jack was, we can continue to
Speaker 1: offer up suspects that reflects our own fears and our
Speaker 1: own prejudices, the things that bother us in our own ages.
Speaker 1: And this prosy starts right at the beginning of the case,
Speaker 1: in the autumn of when the murderers first sort of
Speaker 1: to be possibly a sort of top hatted top a
Speaker 1: slumming Burlington bertie, or a psychotic doctor carrying a gladstone
Speaker 1: bag full of sharp knives, or perhaps even a crazed
Speaker 1: immigrant do an anarchist revolutionary bent on destroying English society.
Speaker 1: And then we need to throw in dark alleyways covered
Speaker 1: in fog from which a murderer can sort of emerge
Speaker 1: raith like clutching a knife and then vanished just as easily,
Speaker 1: leaving the police behind looking baffled. You've got the kind
Speaker 1: of perfect recipe for a Gothic horror story, and the
Speaker 1: fact that this bears very little resemblance to the truth
Speaker 1: is kind of immaterial. But we don't have to settle
Speaker 1: for the story, if we can instead allow ourselves to
Speaker 1: come to grips with truths that are much more uncomfortable,
Speaker 1: If we can give ourselves permission not to know. What
Speaker 1: we can always do is try to clear away cobwebs
Speaker 1: and at least be honest with ourselves. There will always
Speaker 1: be some people and entire portions of the past that's
Speaker 1: sadly get left in the dark. Why should we care
Speaker 1: about Jack the Ripper? Why does this one story carries
Speaker 1: so much power? It's not like it died away with
Speaker 1: the end of the press accounts. No, we know that
Speaker 1: the stories of that brutal murder stuck around, terrifying readers
Speaker 1: and even inspiring vicious mimics. And when it hasn't been
Speaker 1: taken seriously, it's been left at Here's Paul beg Chack
Speaker 1: the Ripper now is part of our popular culture known
Speaker 1: around the world. You still can, i believe, go to
Speaker 1: a burger bar in Singapore where you can have an
Speaker 1: anti burger. You can see how the name has been
Speaker 1: used in everything from advertising, which virtually began as the
Speaker 1: murders were being committed right through. There's everything. There was
Speaker 1: a World War Two bomber called Jack the Ripper. There's
Speaker 1: everything from a toilet spray to a computer game bmat
Speaker 1: to a novel or a movie or even an opera
Speaker 1: all about check the rippon. Obviously, some of that goes
Speaker 1: beyond the bounds, and no, we're not talking about taking
Speaker 1: the violence of these crimes lightly. But there's something that
Speaker 1: made it an enduring sensation, and that's worth considering. Why
Speaker 1: does the story of the Ripper remain an open wound
Speaker 1: in the imagination of the British Empire and the history
Speaker 1: of true crime. It's a reminder that the institutions that
Speaker 1: were bringing Britain into the modern era didn't extend their
Speaker 1: rewards to everyone. In the end. There's a whole list
Speaker 1: of ideas that the Whitechapel murders up end. The police
Speaker 1: keep us safe, for instance, following the news helps us
Speaker 1: understand our world. The charity of the middle class can
Speaker 1: meet the needs of the working poor. The courts and
Speaker 1: governments we create will bring criminals to justice. Us that
Speaker 1: the modern empires of trade replaced the rot of an
Speaker 1: old aristocratic world with a new era of equal prosperity.
Speaker 1: All of these ideas were challenged by the stories we
Speaker 1: learn When we go back in time and study the
Speaker 1: Whitechapel murders, we find a police force acting like an
Speaker 1: occupying army. We find middle class missionaries looking down their
Speaker 1: noses at their poor neighbors. We find the press inventing
Speaker 1: sensationalist narratives out of whole cloth and demonizing vulnerable people
Speaker 1: to sell halfpenny sheets. Jack the Ripper matters because it's
Speaker 1: a story that resists blind faith in the modern world.
Speaker 1: But if that modern way of doing business actually neglects
Speaker 1: the people it impoverished, how can we defend it. If
Speaker 1: the modern methods of policing are the product of colonialism,
Speaker 1: how can we trust it. If Jack the Ripper can
Speaker 1: commit a string of atrocities on the bodies of women
Speaker 1: and escape capture, how much has modern life really improved
Speaker 1: over the past. The lesson here isn't that all of
Speaker 1: these moves to the texture of modern life are false
Speaker 1: or frauds. No, it's that none of them can be
Speaker 1: taken for granted. A rigorous and honest press, a functional government,
Speaker 1: an equal society, all of these are things that need
Speaker 1: to be fought for, not once, but always it's work
Speaker 1: that's never truly done, but it's the work worth doing.
Speaker 1: If we're tempted to follow the Ripper stories into the
Speaker 1: embrace of human darkness, we can leave this history with
Speaker 1: a deeper despair about what humans are capable of. We
Speaker 1: can make an all too common mistake. We let fear win.
Speaker 1: We let the most vicious outliers like the Whitechapel murderer,
Speaker 1: control the story. And when we do that, it's easy
Speaker 1: to fall into what some scholars call veneer theory, the
Speaker 1: idea that civilization is only the thin glossy of veneer
Speaker 1: over the deep, monstrous hunger that lies beneath. And sure,
Speaker 1: that's one way of telling the story of Jack the
Speaker 1: Ripper monsters around every corner, under every top hat and mustache,
Speaker 1: but it's a short trip toward the destination of deep
Speaker 1: cynicism about what kind of life is possible and what
Speaker 1: humans can achieve by working together. But the way I
Speaker 1: see it, the truth is the opposite, because when we
Speaker 1: look at the history of London in the eighties, the
Speaker 1: monstrous crimes of the so called civilized Empire aren't buried
Speaker 1: there right there on the surface. Diamond mines cutting into
Speaker 1: Africa military police trained in Ireland and then imported home
Speaker 1: to brutalize England. How about the deep disregard for the
Speaker 1: lives of poor and working women by the city developers
Speaker 1: and factory owners and bankers demolishing their homes to usher
Speaker 1: in a new era of industrial power. There's no real
Speaker 1: veneer over it is there. The gloss itself is an
Speaker 1: imperial fist squeezing riches from the vulnerable people near and far.
Speaker 1: The murderer, called Jack the Ripper, became just another layer
Speaker 1: to that all too ordinary violence. And the records of
Speaker 1: disease and industrial disaster in the Victorian era far outstripped
Speaker 1: the numbers of people murdered in Whitechapel. Cholera alone was
Speaker 1: a far deadlier killer. But in eighty eight the press
Speaker 1: and the police allowed themselves to be sucked into the
Speaker 1: monstrous imagination of a misogynist murderer and made their careers
Speaker 1: and sold their writing on that story. But we can't
Speaker 1: forget that underneath that violent layer, a stronger, more decent,
Speaker 1: more courageous human spirit was always burning. As Louise raw
Speaker 1: has reminded us before, life was always dangerous for East
Speaker 1: End women. Victorian London was a place where horrifying violence
Speaker 1: against women became a global spectacle. But it's also a
Speaker 1: place where the poorest and most exploited women got together
Speaker 1: one a landmark victory and moved history forward. The fire
Speaker 1: lit in the subterranean communities of London's poor caught on
Speaker 1: and spread. So in looking at the legacy of the
Speaker 1: Victorian East End and the year of eighteen eighty eight,
Speaker 1: we ultimately must look to Marry Driscoll, Irons and me
Speaker 1: in the match Women's Union. Here's Louise r one last time.
Speaker 1: This is a chain of events. This is hundreds and
Speaker 1: thousands of the most exploited workers who have been completely
Speaker 1: left out of any kind of consideration of unions, and
Speaker 1: before on the whole saying we're going to do what
Speaker 1: they did. They used strikes to force the right to
Speaker 1: form their own unions and there were hundreds and hundreds
Speaker 1: and hundreds of them formed across the country as far
Speaker 1: away as Ireland too. It's incredible how news traveled in
Speaker 1: those days, and Irish seems just as unions wrote and said,
Speaker 1: we've heard about the match women, please come and tell
Speaker 1: us how to do it. We want to unionize as well,
Speaker 1: so it really was striking a light, you know, it
Speaker 1: really went like a fire. It just spread and spread
Speaker 1: and spread. And it's out of that modern labor movement,
Speaker 1: that modern trade union movement that the Labor Party of
Speaker 1: course began. So yes, there was one hell of a
Speaker 1: lot more going on in this period it than one,
Speaker 1: you know, inadequate psychopath measuring women. As much as the
Speaker 1: stories of Jack the Ripper have endured to terrify and
Speaker 1: entertain generations, what the match Women did has come down
Speaker 1: to us right beside it, if we're willing to look
Speaker 1: past the sensationalism to the truly significant. And like the
Speaker 1: stories of murder and mutilation, the story of the match
Speaker 1: women's courage and unity and self respect has built not
Speaker 1: just enduring political parties, but many more victories for working
Speaker 1: people over a century and more. That's something to hold onto.
Speaker 1: It's a reminder that when the horrors of life step
Speaker 1: out of the shadows and threaten the things we hold dear,
Speaker 1: the important thing is not to give in to that fear. Instead,
Speaker 1: remember the ways that vulnerable people have stood shoulder to
Speaker 1: shoulder against it. The thing is, we have a choice
Speaker 1: about who we allow to tell the story of a
Speaker 1: place like London's East End. We could listen to the killer,
Speaker 1: or the racist press, or even the militant police memoirs.
Speaker 1: Or we could instead look to the margins, listen to
Speaker 1: the striking dock workers, take their advice, and rally to
Speaker 1: their cry. Remember remember the match girls. Today's episode was
Speaker 1: the final leg of this season's exploration of the Whitechappel murders,
Speaker 1: which brings our journey to an end. If you've enjoyed
Speaker 1: the results of our team's hard work, you're written reviews
Speaker 1: and star ratings would be incredibly welcome over at Apple Podcasts.
Speaker 1: Your kind words go a long way toward helping newcomers
Speaker 1: tap that subscribe button, and it all helps the show grow.
Speaker 1: It's been an honor to be your guide over the
Speaker 1: past few weeks, and I look forward to our next
Speaker 1: tour through the darkest corners of history. But we're not
Speaker 1: quite done with season three. Starting on January six, will
Speaker 1: be releasing all four of our incredible historian interviews in full.
Speaker 1: These are powerful conversations with the leading scholars in the
Speaker 1: world of Jack the Ripper, and the insights and details
Speaker 1: they bring to the topic are perfect for those that
Speaker 1: want more. Just leave your podcast apt subscribed to the show,
Speaker 1: and those interview episodes will arrive automatically every week, as
Speaker 1: well as future news about season four. In fact, if
Speaker 1: you stick around after this brief sponsor break, I'll give
Speaker 1: you a test of what's to come. I think the
Speaker 1: mid to late Victorian era is extremely important in terms
Speaker 1: of studying police history, particularly because the Metropolitan Force had
Speaker 1: only been formed forty years before Swanson joined in eight
Speaker 1: they were still senting officers for Cutler's training in response
Speaker 1: of the Fenian bombing campaign, which is ongoing at the time,
Speaker 1: and the Detective Department was only twenty five years old.
Speaker 1: And by contrast, when Swanson retired, the met had just
Speaker 1: started using fingerprint evidence. So the thirty five years of
Speaker 1: Swanson's career covering the late Victorian period saw an enormous
Speaker 1: development in forensics and methods of detection. We can carry
Speaker 1: that evolution through to more recent times introduction of the
Speaker 1: photo fit, chemical composition forensics of course. DA and I
Speaker 1: Unobscured was created by me Aaron Manky and produced by
Speaker 1: Matt Frederick, Alex Williams and Josh Thane in partnership with
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio Research and writing for this season is
Speaker 1: all the work of my right hand man Carl Nellis,
Speaker 1: 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 other shows over at history unobscured dot com,
Speaker 1: and until next time, thanks for listening Unobscured as a
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio and Aaron Monkey. For more
Speaker 1: podcast for My Heart Radio, visit i heeart radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple podcast, USTs, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.