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The Canonical Five: Jack the Ripper’s Overlooked Victims · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: So I want you to imagine London in 1888. Oh,
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: the smog. Yeah, exactly. The air literally tastes like coal
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: and sulfur. The gas lamps are barely cutting through this
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: thick fog rolling off the Thames. And there's a shadowy
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: figure loose in the streets of Whitechapel. Right.
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: And everybody listening to this already knows his fake media
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: invented name.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: Absolutely. But today we are completely erasing him from the story.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: Which I love, by the way.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: Right. Because we are not doing a true crime glorification
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: of some phantom. We're just not. Because the real story,
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: I mean, the story is how five human beings were
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: pushed to the absolute extreme edge of survival before they
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: ever crossed paths with a killer. It's just, well, it's
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: hiding in plain sight.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: It really is. I mean, it is the ultimate hijacked narrative.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: We are looking at five women, right? Marianne Nichols, Annie Chapman,
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, and Mary Jane Kelly.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: The so-called canonical victims.
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: Exactly. History just lumped them all together as these canonical
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: victims of a singular murderer. But, you know, their individual
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: paths to those dark streets, it reveals a completely different
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: horror story.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: It's a structural horror story. Yes.
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: We are talking about the brutal machinery of the 1880s,
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: the legal traps of Victorian marriage, the sheer devastation of
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: untreated illness, and, you know, an economy that just methodically
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: ground vulnerable people into dust.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: You know, it makes me think about how we treat
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: a massive natural disaster.
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: Okay, how so?
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: Like, say a Category 5 hurricane hits the coast, right?
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: We give the storm a human name, we track its path,
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: we print its radar image on magazine covers.
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: Oh, right, yeah.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: And we talk about hurricane whatever for the next 50 years.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: But meanwhile, we completely forget the names of the people
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: whose houses were swept away.
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: That is such a good way to put it.
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: We reduce the people to statistics, and we elevate the
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: destructive force to, like, A household name. So today, in
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: this deep dive, we are looking at the houses.
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: I think that framing gets right to the heart of
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: the tragedy, honestly, because these women, they were enduring catastrophic
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: structural damage to their lives long before the storm ever hit.
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: And the very first house to be swept away, Marianne Nichols,
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: she gives us this masterclass in just how fragile the
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: legal safety net was for a woman in that era.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: Let's look at the actual mechanics of Marianne's life, because
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: she was born in 1845, gets married in 1864, and
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: she has five children. Platicus, yeah. And then in 1880,
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: the marriage just collapses. Now, you know, as a modern listener,
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: you might think, OK, divorce is terrible, but people rebuild. Right.
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: They move on.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah. But in 1880s London, the structural reality of separation changes.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: Was entirely different, wasn't it?
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: Oh, it was radically different. I mean, a working class
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: woman couldn't just, you know, hire a lawyer and file
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: for divorce. Right.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: That wasn't a thing.
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: No, the courts were effectively closed to the poor. So
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: instead they had these informal separations. And when Marianne and
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: her husband William split, she basically became a nomad.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: Just wandering.
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah. The historical record shows her bouncing between her father's house,
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: cheap lodging houses, briefly living with other men. And it
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: was entirely because women of her station had almost zero
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: economic autonomy.
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: But wait, she did have some kind of allowance from
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: her ex-husband, right? Like, how did that system actually work
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: if they weren't legally divorced in a modern court?
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: So it operated through the poor law system.
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: If a separated woman became utterly destitute, she would apply
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: for relief from the parish.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: Which is essentially the local welfare board, right?
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: Exactly, yeah. But the parish, of course, they didn't want
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: to pay for her.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: Obviously.
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: So they would legally compel the husband to pay the
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: parish an allowance to cover her upkeep. So William was
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: ordered to pay five shillings a week.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: And that was it. That was her absolute lifeline.
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: That was her lifeline.
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: Five shillings a week to keep her off the streets.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: But then he just stops paying it in 1881. Yeah.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: How does a man just decide to stop paying a
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: legally mandated allowance? Like what is the loophole there?
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: The loophole was Victorian morality.
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: Oh, boy.
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: Right. A husband was legally exempt from maintaining his wife
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: if he could prove she had committed adultery or, you know,
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: if he simply convinced the parish that she was living
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: in a quote-unquote immoral life.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: Wow. Just like that.
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: Just like that. So William discovered Marianne was living with
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: another man. He immediately notified the parish authorities, claiming she
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: was immoral.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: And they just took his word for it.
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: Pretty much. The parish agreed. And the payments stopped instantly.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: See, that dynamic is just infuriating. Her financial life was
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: like a steam engine operating with a completely broken pressure valve.
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: That's exactly what it was.
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: She is balancing all this weight, relying on those five shillings,
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: and literally all it takes is one accusation of immorality
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: from the man who used to be her husband to
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: blow the whole thing apart.
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: And she loses everything.
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: She loses the parish support, and she is pushed entirely
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: into this desperate survival mode.
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: And it's a mode that forces impossible choices because without
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: that money, she sought out these grueling, incredibly poorly paid jobs. But,
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: you know, in April of 1888, she actually managed to
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: secure a position as a domestic servant.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: Right. Which is huge.
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: It's a crucial moment. A domestic servant job meant a
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: steady roof over her head, regular meals and a small wage.
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: It's like the gold standard for. A woman in her
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: position trying to claw her way back to stability.
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: But wait, so she lands this stable job, but she
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: only stays for three months.
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: She abandons the house and steals three pounds worth of
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: her employer's clothing on her way out.
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: I know, it sounds crazy.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: It totally defies logic. Why trade a steady roof and
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: food for a pile of clothes?
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: Well, to a modern observer, you know, sitting in a
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: comfortable room, it seems totally irrational. But this requires us
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: to understand the psychology of extreme poverty and, you know,
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: potentially addiction.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: Because William claimed she was an alcoholic, though she claimed
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: he was unfaithful. The truth was likely this bitter mix
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: of both.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: Sure.
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: But when you are in the deepest trenches of poverty,
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: the future just doesn't exist. Wow.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: A steady wage next month is a phantom. It's not real.
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: Three pounds worth of stolen clothes, however, is a tangible asset.
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: Because she could pawn them immediately.
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: Precisely. The Victorian pawn shop was the engine of the
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: underground economy. She could walk into a pawnbroker, hand over
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: those clothes, and walk out with hard currency in minutes.
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: So it's survival math.
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Survival math. You are trading long-term security for the
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: immediate overwhelming need for a payout today. Whether that payout
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: goes to food, a bed, or, you know, gin to
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: numb the reality of having lost your five children.
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: Because you can't eat a promise of next month's wages.
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: No, you can't.
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: Man, that's heavy. And that brings us to August 1888.
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: She is burned through the pawn money. She is scraping
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: by in Whitechapel, and we arrive at the night of
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: August 30th.
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: Right. So she spent that evening at the frying pan pub.
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: She drank away the few coins she had managed to
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: scrounge together.
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: And we know this because of what happened at the
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: lodging house, right? Yeah.
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: When she returned to her lodging house at 18 Thrall
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: Street to sleep, the deputy turned her away. She didn't
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: have the four pence required for a bed.
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: Four pence.
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: Four pence.
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: That is what stood between her and safety. Just four pence.
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: And she is standing in the dark. She's turned away
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: at the door. But instead of despairing, she points to
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: her hat.
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: Oh, the hat.
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: It's a straw bonnet trimmed with black velvet. And she
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: tells the deputy, quote, never mind. I'll soon get my
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: DOS money. See what a jolly bonnet I've got now.
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: It is arguably the most heartbreaking detail in the entire
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: historical record of these events. The Jolly Bonnet.
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: The psychological armor of that moment is staggering to me.
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: She is destitute. She's locked out into the smog and
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: the cold, facing an incredibly dangerous night on the streets
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: of the East End. And she is finding a shield
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: in a velvet-trimmed straw hat.
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: It's amazing.
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: She believes this hat makes her look presentable enough, you know,
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: pretty enough, to attract a client and earn her bed money.
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: And I think it completely dismantles the one-dimensional label of victim.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: She wasn't just a victim. She was a woman who
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: liked her hat, who was trying to project confidence in
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: the face of absolute despair. So she walks off into
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: the night to find a client.
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: And she runs into someone she knows. Right. Yeah.
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: At 2.30 a.m., she runs into a fellow lodger, Emily Holland. Now,
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: Emily is horrified to see Marianne out that late, clearly intoxicated.
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: And she tries to convince her to come back to
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: the lodging house.
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: Oh, Marianne refuses.
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: She actually tells Emily she had made her lodging money
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: three times that day and she had spent it all.
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: And that admission points so heavily toward the grip of
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: alcohol dependency. I mean, she had the four pens.
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: She had it three times.
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: Three separate times. And the pub took it every single time.
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: So Emily Holland watched her walk away down Whitechapel Road.
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: And about an hour later, at 3.40 a.m., two cart
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: drivers walking down a dark cobbled street called Buckrow found
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: Marianne Nichols' body.
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: Her throat had been severed. And the medical reports also
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: note severe stab wounds to her abdomen and vagina.
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: And lying in the dirt nearby was the straw hat,
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: the jolly bonnet.
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: It's brutal. But here's the critical context for that morning.
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: London did not wake up and declare a serial killer
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: was on the loose.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: Whitechapel was a place of immense daily violence.
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there were no sirens. There was no immediate panic.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: Why did society brush it off so quickly?
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: Because of how the lives of sex workers and destitute
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: women were valued, a woman murder in the East End
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: was viewed by the broader public and, frankly, the press
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: as a tragic but relatively mundane hazard of the streets.
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: Like it just comes with the territory.
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: Exactly. And the police assumed it was a gang extortion
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: gone wrong or, you know, a violent client. The poorest
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: women were entirely disposable in the eyes of Victorian society.
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: It wasn't an anomaly. It was Tuesday.
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: It was Tuesday. Wow. So Nichols' death showed us what
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: happens when the legal safety net fails, right? When a
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: woman is discarded by marriage laws and parish relief. Yes.
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: But what happens when the medical safety net fails on
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: top of it? Because that is what we see with
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: the second woman, Annie Chapman.
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: Annie's story layers profound physical illness and untreated grief right
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: on top of the economic ruin we saw with Marianne.
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: It's so tragic.
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: She was born in 1840 and the trauma began early.
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: Her father, who was a soldier, died by suicide.
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow.
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: And she reportedly began drinking heavily at a young age,
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: which is a classic presentation of someone self-medicating untreated childhood grief.
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: Makes total sense.
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: Yet she tried to build a conventional life. She married
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: a coachman named John Chapman in 1869.
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: They try to build a family, but the medical reality
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: of the 1870s just absolutely decimates them.
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: It does.
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: They have three children. One of them is born disabled.
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: And the family eventually has to surrender that child to
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: an institution. What did institutionalizing a child actually mean in
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: this era? Because I can't imagine it was good.
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: Oh, it was awful. It meant surrendering them to an
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: asylum or a workhouse infirmary. These were places characterized by
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: severe overcrowding, harsh discipline... And the absolute severing of the
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: family unit.
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: They just take the kid away.
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: Pretty much. The guilt and trauma associated with sending a
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: child away to state care in the Victorian era was immense.
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: You were essentially admitting total failure as a parent and
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: handing your flesh and blood over to a system notorious
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: for its cruelty.
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: And as if that trauma isn't enough, another of their
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: children dies at the age of 12. The psychological weight
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: there is unimaginable. You have a father's suicide. You're giving
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: up a child to a grim institution. And you're burying
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: a 12-year-old.
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: It's a cascade of immense loss.
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: It really is. And both Annie and John begin drinking heavily.
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: And their marriage completely unravels by the mid-1880s.
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: And here is where the Victorian double standards of morality
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: become glaringly apparent.
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: Oh, I know where you're going with this.
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah. The police records and social workers at the time
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: explicitly blamed Annie for the divorce. They cited her, quote,
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: drunken and immoral ways. As the primary reason the family
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: fell apart.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: Okay. I have to push back on the official record
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: here because this is where the hypocrisy is just staggering
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: to me.
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: Go for it.
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: They blame Annie's drinking. But John, the husband, died shortly
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: after they separated. And what did he die from? Cirrhosis
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: of the liver and dropsy.
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: Exactly. He drank himself to death.
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: He literally destroyed his liver with alcohol. But the police
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: and society at large, they look at this broken couple
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: drowning in grief and they point the finger at the woman.
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: His drinking is viewed as a sad medical failing or
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: like the unfortunate burden of a working man. But her
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: drinking is a profound moral failure that ruined a family.
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: And that double standard had devastating practical consequences. Because when
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: John died of cirrhosis, Annie lost the 10 shillings a
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: week he had been providing her.
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: Just like Marianne.
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: Just like Marianne Nichols. She was pushed off a financial cliff.
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: So by 1888, she is living at Crossingham's Lodging House
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: at 35 Dorset Street.
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about 35 Dorset Street, because the witnesses who
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: lived there with her described Annie as inoffensive. But they
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: also noted she was terribly sick, likely suffering from tuberculosis
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: and syphilis.
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: Right. And syphilis in the 1880s was a death sentence.
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: It was treated only with these highly toxic mercury remedies
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: that often made the patient feel worse. And tuberculosis meant
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: you were slowly drowning in your own lung fluid. She
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: is walking around the East End with a failing body,
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: and yet she had to fight for survival every single day.
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: A few days before she died, she got into a
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: physical altercation with another female logger.
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: Over a bar of soap.
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: Well, possibly a man, but the soap is the detail
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: that lingers in the records.
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: I mean, if they were fighting over soap, it really
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: highlights the absolute degradation of a lodging house existence.
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: It's like fighting for oxygen in a sinking submarine. It
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: is a zero-sum life. If you have the soap, I
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: don't get to wash.
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: In 35 Dorset Street, you are stripped down to the
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: most animalistic defense of basic resources. You have a woman
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: dying of TB, grieving her children, brawling for a sliver
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: of soap.
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: It is the absolute bottom of the social ladder. And
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: on the morning of September 8th, Annie's timeline mirrors Marianne's
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: in an eerie way.
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: How so?
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: She didn't have her DOS money. She was turned out
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: of the lodging house into the pre-dawn dark. She promised
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: the deputy she would be back soon and went out
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: to earn her bed.
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: And at 5.30 a.m., it's just starting to get light.
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: A witness in a backyard at 29 Hanbury Street sees
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: Annie talking to a man. They're standing near the fence.
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: 30 minutes later, another resident walks into that same backyard
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: and finds her dead.
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: And the physical evidence here shifts the entire narrative, doesn't it? Like,
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: the police realize they aren't dealing with a gang extortionist anymore.
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: Oh, completely. The methodology escalated horrifically.
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: Annie's throat was severed, but the killer didn't stop there.
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: He laid her abdomen entirely open. He lifted her intestines
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: out and placed them on her shoulder. And then he
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: surgically removed her uterus, the upper portion of her vagina,
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: and the posterior two-thirds of her bladder. And he took
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: them with him.
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: Taking them with him. It's so clinical. It's not just
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: violence for the sake of violence. It is a desecration
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: of the human body, an obsessive compulsion.
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: And the surgical nature of the removal... sent a wave
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: of absolute terror through the police and the medical examiners,
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: and that terror leaked into the press. This was the
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: moment the local tragedy became a mythical media spectacle.
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: Because the letter arrives.
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: Because the letter arrives. On September 27th, a letter arrives
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: at the Central News Agency, and it's forwarded to Scotland
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: Yard on the 29th. The writer mocks the police, promises
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: to keep killing, and he signs the letter with a
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: name that would echo for a century. Jack the Ripper.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: You know, whether that letter was from the actual killer or,
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: as many historians suspect, a cynical hoax cooked up by
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: a journalist to sell papers, it didn't even matter.
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: No, the damage was done.
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: The media had their hurricane name. The brand was established.
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: The real flesh and blood women were instantly overshadowed by
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: this phantom in a top hat.
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: And the arrival of that letter coincided with a weekend
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: of unprecedented chaos. The night of September 29th tipping into
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: the 30th is known in the historical record as the
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: double event.
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: The double event.
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: A night where two completely different women had their lives
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: intersect with the same blade within an hour.
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: Of each other. Okay, let's set the atmosphere for that night.
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: Because the name Jack the Ripper is just starting to circulate.
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: The city is suffocating in panic. Women are terrified to
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: go out. Police are patrolling the streets with lanterns, listening
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: for screams.
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: Just absolute tension. Right.
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: And out in that fog, we have Elizabeth Stride and
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: Catherine Eddowes. So let's look at Elizabeth first, because she
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: didn't quite fit the profile of the previous two women.
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: No, Elizabeth was an anomaly in several respects. She wasn't
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: born in England, for one. She was a Swedish immigrant,
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: born Elizabeth Gustav's daughter in 1843. Okay. She came to London,
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: married a carpenter named John Thomas Stride, and ran a
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: coffee shop with him. But the relationship was highly volatile.
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: They separated for good in 1881. And he died of
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: tuberculosis in 1884.
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: Her husband dies of TB, which, as we've established, was
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: a staggeringly common, mundane, brutal reality of the 1880s.
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: Extremely common.
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: But Elizabeth doesn't accept that reality. She starts telling people
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: an entirely fabricated story about her past.
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: She wove this massive, dramatic lie. She told people that she,
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: her husband, and their child had been passengers on a
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: steamship called the Princess Alice, which famously sank in the
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: River Thames in 1878, killing hundreds of people.
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: The Titanic of its day.
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: Essentially, yeah. Elizabeth claimed her husband and child drowned in
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: the disaster, and she survived by clinging to the wreckage,
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: suffering an injury to her mouth that caused a permanent stutter.
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: Wait. There was no shipwreck for her family. They weren't
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: on the boat.
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: No.
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: And she didn't even have a child with John.
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: No child.
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: She invented an imaginary dead kid and placed them all
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: in one of the most famous maritime disasters of the era.
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: Why?
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: Why? Why go to such elaborate lengths to invent a
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: tragedy when your real life is already tragic enough?
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: It speaks volumes about the Victorian hierarchy of sympathy.
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: The hierarchy of sympathy. Tell me about that.
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: Think about how society categorizes the poor. There were the
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: deserving poor and the undeserving poor. If your husband dies
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: of a common lung disease after you separated and you
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: subsequently fall into poverty and are arrested for public drunkenness,
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: which Elizabeth had been. Multiple times society views you as undeserving.
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: You are a moral failure. You are a nuisance.
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: Exactly. But if you survive a shipwreck. Right. If you
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: are the tragic, miraculous survivor of a grand maritime catastrophe
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: and the cruel river swallowed your beloved husband and innocent child,
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: you are a victim of fate.
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: It completely slips the script.
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: Society views you with romantic sympathy. A grand cinematic tragedy
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: was far easier for Victorian society to digest than the mundane,
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: grinding reality of disease and divorce. Elizabeth was writing her
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: own narrative to try and buy a little bit of
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: empathy from a deeply cold world.
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: That is a brilliant survival mechanism. She's hacking the cultural
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: empathy system.
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: She really was.
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: And despite her struggles, people who knew her at the
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: lodging house remembered her as a relatively calm, quiet person
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: when she wasn't drinking.
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: But the economic reality remained. She was forced into sex
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: work to survive. However, on the night of September 29th,
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: she wasn't broke.
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: Well, she wasn't.
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: No, she had earned six pence cleaning rooms at her
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: lodging house. She was dressed relatively nicely, wearing a black
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: jacket and a crepe bonnet. She went out and multiple
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: witnesses saw her talking to men, even hugging and kissing
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: one companion in the street.
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: And this brings us to the tightest timeline in the
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: entire case. Because at midnight, a witness named Israel Schwartz
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: is walking down Burner Street and he sees a man
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: grab Elizabeth and throw her to the ground.
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: And Schwartz didn't intervene.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: Really?
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he realized how dangerous the situation was, he heard
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: another man shout a warning, and he fled the scene
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: in fear for his own life.
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: Less than an hour later, a man driving a pony
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: cart pulls into Dutfield's yard, right where Schwartz had seen
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: the struggle.
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: The pony shies away from something in the dark. The
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: driver strikes a match and finds Elizabeth Stride's body.
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: Her throat had been cut so deeply she was nearly decapitated.
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: But this scene was vastly different from Annie Chapman's.
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: No mutilation, right?
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: Exactly. There's no bodily mutilation. Her clothes were relatively undisturbed.
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: So what's the police theory? Did the killer change his pattern?
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: The overwhelming consensus is that the killer was interrupted.
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: By the pony cart.
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: The pony cart pulling into the yard, or perhaps the
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: earlier approach of Israel Schwartz, forced the killer to abandon
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: his work. He slashed her throat to silence her and
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: melted back into the dark.
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: He's interrupted? The pressure valve hasn't been released. He is
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: flush with adrenaline. His horrific compulsion hasn't been satisfied. And
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: he is loose on the streets of London. Yes. Which
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: brings us to the second half of the double event,
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: the path of Catherine Nettos.
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: Catherine's life gives us a window into an entirely different
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: facet of the Victorian underclass.
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's hear it.
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: She was born in 1842. She didn't marry, but she
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: lived for 20 years with a man named Thomas Conway.
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: And she was so committed she had his initials, T.C.,
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: tattooed in blue ink on her left arm.
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: A permanent marker of devotion. How did they survive economically
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: before they split?
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: They were hawkers. They traveled around selling cheap items, but
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: specifically they made money selling gallows ballads.
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: I find the concept of gallows ballads utterly fascinating.
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: Oh, they're so interesting.
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: For a modern listener, you know, these were essentially the
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: 19th century equivalent of true crime podcasts printed on cheap
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: broadside paper.
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: Very true.
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: They were poems or songs detailing the gory particulars of
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: recent murders and the subsequent executions. People would buy them
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: for a penny on the street.
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: It is a bitterly dark irony that Catherine spent decades
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: making a living selling stories of gruesome murders, only to
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: become the subject of the most famous one in history.
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: The irony is unavoidable. It really is. By 1888, she
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: and Thomas had separated. Her daughter claimed Catherine's drinking was
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: the cause.
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: Which seems to be a theme. It is.
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: But Catherine didn't immediately fall into the despair we saw
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: with the others. She met a man named John Kelly,
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: moved into a lodging house with him, and even took
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: his last name. Her friends described her as a jolly,
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: fiercely independent woman who was always singing, and they firmly
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: denied she was a sex worker.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: But the poverty was absolute.
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: Oh, absolute poverty.
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: In the weeks leading up to September 29th, she and
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: Kelly were so desperate they left London entirely. They walked
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: out to the countryside in Kent to pick hops. which
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: was a common seasonal work migration for the East End poor.
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: But the harvest was terrible. They made barely any money
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: and had to endure the long walk back to London.
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: They arrived with absolutely nothing. Kelly scraped together enough for
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: a bed and a lodging house, but Catherine had to
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: turn to the absolute last resort for a Victorian pauper,
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: the casual ward.
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: We need to clarify what a casual ward was, because
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: the name makes it sound like a walking clinic or,
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: you know, a chill shelter. It wasn't.
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: Not at all. The casual ward, often called the spike,
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: was a punitive shelter attached to the workhouse.
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: Punitive? Yes.
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: You went there only when you had exhausted every friend,
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: every penny, and every pawnable item. You were given a bed,
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: which was often just a hammock or a plank, and
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: in the morning you had to pay for it with
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: brutal physical labor. Women were often forced to pick oakum.
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: Picking oakum. Explain the physical reality of that job, because
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: it sounds awful.
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: Oh, it was medieval. You were given old, hardened ropes
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: from naval ships, thick with black tar.
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: You had to sit on the floor and untwist these
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: ropes using a heavy metal spike, shredding the fibers apart
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: with your bare hands until your fingers literally bled.
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: Just ripping tarred rope apart with your fingers.
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: Exactly. And you had to produce a certain weight of
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: shredded fiber before they would let you leave or give
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: you a crust of bread. It was designed to be
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: agonizing so that the poor would do anything to avoid
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: coming back.
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: It's state-sanctioned torture disguised as charity.
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: It really is.
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: And while she was enduring this at the casual ward
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: in late September, she has this bizarre exchange with the superintendent. Oh, right.
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: She casually mentions the Whitechapel murders. The superintendent warns her
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: to be careful, and Catherine reportedly laughs and says she's
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: going to earn the reward money for catching the killer.
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: She says, quote, I think I know him.
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: And that statement has fueled decades of conspiracy theories. Did
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: she know something? Did she cross paths with the killer
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: during her hot-picking travels?
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: What do you make of it? Was she holding on
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: to actual intel?
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: When we view it through the lens of Victorian poverty,
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: a much more tragic explanation emerges.
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: A hustle.
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: It was likely a hustle. When you are picking tarred
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: ropes until your hands bleed just to eat, you leverage
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: whatever currency is in the air. Right. The whole city
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: was vibrating with fear over Jack the Ripper. Information was valuable.
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: By claiming she knew his identity, she was likely hoping
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: to trade that bluff for a few shillings from a
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: journalist or, you know, at the very least, a free
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: pint of beer from someone wanting to hear her story.
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: It was a bluff born of total desperation.
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: That makes so much more sense. But the hustle doesn't
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: pan out. She leaves the casual ward. On the evening
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: of September 29th, she gets incredibly drunk. At 8.30 p.m.,
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: a police constable finds her lying in a heap on
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: Aldgate High Street, surrounded by a crowd.
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: The police pick her up and haul her to the
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: Bishopsgate police station to sleep it off.
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: And this is where the timeline becomes agonizing to trace.
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: She is placed in a holding cell. She goes to sleep.
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: At that moment, she's perhaps the safest woman in the
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: East End.
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: Safest woman in London, really. Truly.
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: She is locked behind thick brick walls, surrounded by police officers.
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: The killer is out there, enraged and interrupted from Elizabeth's stride,
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: and Catherine is completely insulated from him. So why on
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: earth did the police let her go?
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: It was standard procedure. The police stations weren't equipped to
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: hold drunks indefinitely. Once a person sobered up enough to
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: stand and walk, they were released.
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: Unbelievable.
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: So shortly after midnight on September 30th, Catherine wakes up.
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: She asks when she can leave. The jailer assesses her,
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: sees she can walk. And at 1 a.m., he opens
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: the heavy doors of the station and sends her back
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: out into the freezing fog.
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: It's an unbearable irony. Yeah. At 1.35 a.m., Three men
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: leaving a club see a woman matching Catherine's description, talking
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: to a man at the entrance to a dark alleyway
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: leading into Mitre Square.
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: And ten minutes later, at 1.45 a.m., a patrolling police
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: officer shines his bullseye lantern into Mitre Square and discovers
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: Catherine Eddowes' body.
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: We are barely 45 minutes since Elizabeth Stride was found.
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: What does the crime scene in Mitre Square tell us
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: about the killer's state of mind?
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: It tells us he was in a state of absolute,
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: overcompensating frenzy.
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: Because he was interrupted before.
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: Exactly. He had the time and the isolation he was
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: denied with stride. Catherine's throat was severed. Her abdomen was
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: completely ripped open. Her intestines were flung over her right shoulder.
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: Her face had been violently mutilated. Her eyelids and cheeks
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: were slashed. And again, he performed surgical extractions. He removed
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: her left kidney and the majority of her uterus, taking
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: them away into the night.
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: The contrast is chilling. He was thwarted at Dudfield's yard,
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: so he unleashes hell in Mitre Square. And this time,
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: he leaves the trail.
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: He does. As the police furiously search the surrounding streets,
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: they find a piece of Catherine's blood-soaked apron in a
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: doorway on Golston Street.
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: It was clear the killer had used it to wipe
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: his hands or his knife. But what was above the
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: apron caused a massive controversy.
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: The graffiti.
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: A graffiti.
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: Scrawled in chalk on the black brick fascia of the doorway.
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: It read, The Jews are the men that will not
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: be blamed for nothing. The spelling of Jews was completely mangled.
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: The police find this message directly above the bloody apron.
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: It is the closest thing to physical evidence they've had.
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: And the head of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Charles Warren,
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: orders his men to wash it away.
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: Just washes it away.
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: He destroys the evidence. Why?
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: Well, to understand that decision, you have to understand the
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: geopolitical tension of the East End. Whitechapel was flooded with
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: Jewish immigrants fleeing violent Russian pogroms. Tensions between the English
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: working class and the new immigrants were already boiling. There
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: was immense anti-Semitic prejudice. Sir Charles Warren looked at that
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: graffiti and made a terrifying calculation.
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: What was it?
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: He believed that when the sun came up, if the
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: public saw a message trying to link the Ripper murders
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: to the Jewish community... the East End would explode into
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: full-scale bloody anti-Semitic riots.
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow.
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: He believed thousands would die. So he chose to wash
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: away the evidence before it could be properly photographed to
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: preserve public order.
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: It's a staggering moment of crisis management destroying forensic evidence.
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: It really is.
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: And so the fog of the investigation thickens. And then
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: a few weeks later, the killer reaches out again.
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah. On October 16th, George Lusk, The head of the
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: Whitechapel Vigilance Committee, which was a group of citizens trying
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: to patrol the streets, receives a small package.
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: Inside the package is half of a human kidney preserved
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: in wine. Accompanying it is the infamous From Hell letter. Okay.
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: And medical examiners at the time noted that Catherine Eddowes
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: suffered from Bright's disease. And the kidney sent to Lusk
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: showed signs of the same disease. It wasn't the medical
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: student's prank. It was genuine. And the arrival of that
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: kidney induced a kind of mass hysteria in London.
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: I can imagine.
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: Windows were bolted. Vigilante mobs roamed the streets. The police
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: were completely out of their depth. And that suffocating panic
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: brings us to the grisly crescendo of 1888. The final
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: canonical victim, Mary Jane Kelly.
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: Mary Jane Kelly's narrative diverges from the others in significant ways,
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: doesn't it?
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: It really does.
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: First, she was the youngest. Born around 1863 in Ireland.
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: Travels to Wales. Marries a coal miner. But he is
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: killed in a mine explosion when she is only 19
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: or 20.
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: So young.
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: So she is a young widow. And like the others,
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: the economy forces her into sex work. But she doesn't
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: start in the gutter.
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: No, she doesn't. When she moved to London around 1884,
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: historical records suggest she was actually working in an upscale
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: brothel in the West End.
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: The West End.
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and we need to distinguish between the West End
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: and the East End sex trade.
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: How different were they?
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: The West End was patronized by gentlemen... The women had
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: nice clothes, warm beds, decent food, and a degree of
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: physical safety afforded by the house management.
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: So it was a heavily protected environment compared to walking
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: the cobblestones of Whitechapel.
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: Very much so.
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: But she doesn't stay in the West End.
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: The record is murky on exactly why, but she begins
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: a steady descent down the economic ladder. She moves to
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: the East End, and by 1886, she is living in
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: a cheap lodging house, and she meets a fish porter
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: named Joseph Barnett.
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: Okay, here is a detail that always stops me. What's that?
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: They meet on a street corner, they go for a drink,
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: and they agree to move in together on their second meeting.
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: To a modern listener, that sounds incredibly reckless.
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: But what is the mechanical reality behind that speed?
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: It is the absolute brutal reality of housing insecurity. We
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: call it survival cohabitation.
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: Survival cohabitation. Yeah.
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: When you are paying for a bed by the night
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: and failure to pay means you sleep in the freezing
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: rain or go to the casual ward to pick oakum,
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: Finding someone to split the rent with is a matter
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: of immediate life and death.
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: It's not a grand romance.
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: No, it was an economic merger. They pool their meager
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: resources to secure a room.
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: They move into 13 Miller's Court, which is a tiny
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: single room located off Dorset Street. But the merger fails.
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: Barnett loses his job at the fish market.
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: And with Barnett unemployed, the rent falls entirely on Mary Jane.
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: She is forced to return to streetwalking to keep a
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: roof over their heads. Barnett, who is frustrated and humiliated,
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: moves out after a bitter argument in early November. However,
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: they remain on somewhat friendly terms. He visits her on
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: November 8th just to check in. They talk for a bit,
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: and he leaves around 8 p.m.
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: So she is alone in this tiny room in Miller's Court.
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: Later that night, she goes out to the local pubs.
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: Witnesses see her drinking with a man. Around 1 a.m.
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: on November 9th, A neighbor in the courtyard hears Mary
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: Jane in her room singing an Irish folk song.
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: It's a haunting echo of Catherine Eddowes.
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: It really is.
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: Singing in the dark, behind a closed door, the neighbor
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: hears the singing stop shortly after 1 a.m.
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: The next morning, November 9th, the landlord's assistant comes around
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: to collect the overdue rent. He knocks on the door
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: of 13 Miller's Court at 10.45 a.m. There's no answer.
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: He goes around to the side window. pushes aside the curtain,
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: and looks inside.
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: Oh, God.
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: What he sees is, I mean, it's difficult to even
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: articulate the level of violence.
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: It is the most catastrophic crime scene of the 19th century.
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: The key differentiator here is the location. Every other victim
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: was killed out in the open. The killer had to
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: work quickly, constantly looking over his shoulder for a police
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: lantern or a passing cart.
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: Mary Jane Kelly was murdered inside her own locked room.
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: That door gave him the one thing he didn't have before. Time.
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: He had hours. And he used them to engage in
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: an absolute unchecked frenzy of butchery.
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: It's so disturbing.
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: When the police finally broke down the door, they found
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: Mary Jane Kelly on the bed. Her abdominal cavity had
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: been completely emptied out. Her breasts had been amputated. Portions
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: of her face were carved away beyond recognition.
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: Jesus.
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: Slabs of flesh from her thighs and abdomen were arranged
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: on the bedside table. Her organs were draped over the
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: picture frames on the walls and her heart was completely
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: missing from the room.
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: It is the physical manifestation of pure, unadulterated hatred.
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: It is.
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: It wasn't just murder. It was the total deconstruction of
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: a human being. The public reaction must have been apocalyptic.
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: It was. The police and the public realized that if
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: this monster could spend hours inside a locked room performing
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: this level of systemic butchery without anyone hearing a scream,
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: no one in London was safe.
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: Everyone is a target.
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: The escalation suggested a killer who had entirely lost his
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: grip on reality, fully surrendering to his compulsions. Everyone assumed
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: the murders would only get faster and more violent.
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: But then, the exact opposite happens.
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: The canonical murders just stop.
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: The killer seemingly vanished into the fog of history. After
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: the absolute fever pitch of Mary Jane Kelly, there are
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: no more bodies attributed to Jack the Ripper.
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: It is one of the most baffling, abrupt ends in
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: criminal history. The police investigated dozens of suspects from a
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: Polish barber named Aaron Kosminski to wealthy doctors. But the
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: mystery was never definitively solved. He stopped and the phantom
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: was born.
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: Which brings us back to the core mission of why
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: we are talking about this today. Because the real tragedy
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: of this history isn't that Scotland Yard failed to solve
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: a puzzle.
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: No. The tragedy is what these five women's lives tell
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: us about the meat grinder of the 1880s. These women
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: were not born as victims. That is a label we
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: applied to them after they were dead.
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: They were mothers who mourned their children. They were wives
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: navigating impossible legal traps. They were domestic servants, hawkers, singers,
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: and storytellers.
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: They were human beings who were systematically destroyed by a
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: society that offered zero safety nets.
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: Zero.
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: They were decimated by Victorian marriage laws. They were crushed
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: by untreated diseases like tuberculosis and forced into the horrific
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: conditions of casual wards and lodging houses just to avoid
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: starving to death.
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: They were fighting incredible battles for their lives long before
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: they ever stepped into the fog with a killer.
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: Their vulnerability wasn't an accident. Society engineered it.
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: That's a great point.
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: The laws and the economy made them vulnerable, and the
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: killer simply exploited what society had already discarded.
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: So as we wrap up this deep dive, I want
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: to leave you listening with a thought to mull over,
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: something that builds purely on the facts we've explored today.
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: Consider the phenomenon of the killer's sudden disappearance after the
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: indoor murder of Mary Jane Kelly. If he indeed stopped
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: killing after reaching that horrific peak, it forces us to
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: ask a deeply uncomfortable question about how we as a
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: society process history. We have spent over a century obsessing
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: over a phantom. We have built an entire true crime
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: industry memorializing a monster, trying to guess his name. But
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: the very real, very human struggles of Mary Ann, Annie, Elizabeth, Catherine,
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: and Mary Jane, the realities of housing insecurity, the lack
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: of health care, the desperate reliance on pawnbrokers, and the
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: punitive nature of welfare. Those struggles were allowed to fade
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: entirely into the background. So the question is, why does
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: history so often prefer the thrilling myth of the monster
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: over the mundane, urgent reality of the vulnerable?