After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - Jack the Ripper

Episode Date: April 4, 2024

What is it about this case that holds the imagination after all these years? When did that fascination with it begin? How early on did the myths of Jack the Ripper evolve?Anthony and Maddy look at how the newspapers and showmen were quick to pounce on this case, turning these tragic murders into the most infamous true crime story of all.Written by Anthony Delaney. Edited by Tom Delargy. Produced by Freddy Chick. The Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code AFTERDARK sign up at https://historyhit/subscription/ You can take part in our listener survey here.

Wendy's Small Frosty is the ultimate summer refreshment. And not because it's cool and creamy and made with fresh Canadian dairy. It's also refreshingly cheap. Just 99 cents until July 14th. It's a treat for you and your wallet. Hello and welcome to After Dark. I'm Maddie. And I'm Anthony.

And this episode, we're heading to Whitechapel in 1888. Now, this is an episode that's been, I think it's fair to say, our most requested one. We've taken our time in getting to it, and we wanted to offer something a little bit different. So to set the scene, over to Anthony. It's Thursday, November 8th, 1888. Walk with me now through the gloomy streets of Whitechapel in the east end of London. According to the official copy of the report issued by the Meteorological Office, the weather tonight, it is particularly stormy and wet. Even to the hardened Londoners about us, the rainfall feels excessive.

On we go through these wet, busy, dirty streets then, where darkness has taken hold, and as experts have noted, bright sunshine was deficient. This darkness forewarned of a great danger that stoked these very streets. For here, on these cobbles, an unidentified serial killer, just last month the press had nicknamed Jack the Ripper, was on the loose. Now that evening, Joseph Barnett, a fish porter, met with his former partner Mary Jane Kelly at their old lodgings at 13 Millers Court.

They had a shared room until Joseph had lost his job and Mary Jane had no choice but to return to sex work to earn some money. And when Mary Jane started bringing other sex workers back to these rooms too, Joseph felt he had to move on. That night Joseph left Mary Jane's company at about 8pm. Often when they parted he'd give her a few shillings to keep her going but that that night he had nothing to give. Then, at 12.30am, Mary Jane Kelly was next seen at the Ten Bells pub with her friend Elizabeth Foster. After that, she was spotted having a drink with two others at the Horn of Plenty on Dorset Street, not far from the Ten Bells, but not far from her accommodation. Now, an unemployed labourer, George Hutchinson, who knew Kelly quite well,

reported that the two had met at about 2am in the morning on Flower and Dean Street and that Kelly asked him for a loan of sixpence. He later stated that as Kelly walked in the direction of Thrall Street, she was approached by a man of, quote, Hutchinson claimed he was suspicious by a man of, quote, Jewish appearance and aged about 34 or 35. Hutchinson claimed he was suspicious of this man because, although Kelly seemed to know him, this individual's opulent appearance made him an unlikely character to be in that particular neighbourhood. These are the last known sightings of Mary Jane Kelly, But she must have made her way back to 13 Miller's Court

at some point because the next time she was seen was there, just before noon on the 9th of November 1888, by her landlord's assistant Thomas Bower. Mary Jane's customary rebellious tenacity, her intelligence and her resourcefulness had all been robbed however. Her lifeless, unrecognisable body lay on her bed, the final canonical victim of Jack the Ripper. The cause of her death was recorded as hemorrhage due to severance of the carotid artery. She now rests finally at peace in St. Patrick's Roman Catholic Cemetery in Leytonstone, London. there's lots to unpack in that opening but let's talk about the jack the ripper case more generally because it's something that people when we've invited listeners to write in and give us suggestions for episodes they'd like to hear it's an episode that we get requested a significant amount,

possibly more than anything else, because it's still very much alive in people's imaginations. And I think it's fair to say in the historical conversation that we're still having about the Victorian period, about violence against women, about how we tell history, how we deal with historic misogyny, we must mention, I think up front, the very famous work by Hallie Rubenhold that's really myth busted a lot of the history or so-called history around the Jack the Ripper case. We're talking about The Five, of course, which I think for me is a book that I find hugely inspiring as a historian, as a reader, as a female reader. And it's something that I often return to,

actually, I've read it multiple times. There's so much history that's been told. And I think there's still things to say. And it took us a while to come to this episode, didn't it? Because we were thinking, what do we want to say about this case? How can we say something new? How can we look at it from a new angle? We want to deal with the horrendous violence of the crime, because I do think it's important to acknowledge that, you know, violence against women is something that has happened in the past and continues to happen today. And I don't want to look away from it. But also, we want to bring the lives of the women who were the victims of so-called Jada Ripper to the fore as well and how do we respect that and so the conversation that we're going to have today

is really building on a lot of that foundation I think. And it's also asking another question which is really pertinent to our time turns out it's not pertinent to our time exclusively we think it is we've covered this in After Dark before. But why does this and many other cases like it fascinate us so much? Number one. And number two, how do we approach these histories? How do we tell these histories, as you mentioned, when you were talking? Because people have been telling this specific history since day one, since the first victim's body was discovered. Yeah, yeah. So it's grappling with some of those things. There's a whole industry. There's a Jack the Ripper industry that's very much still making money.

Yeah. But then we have to own up to the fact that this conversation is part of that too. The only thing that we have to possibly try and do is do that responsibly. And because, as you say, it's important that these types of histories are told because they're worthwhile histories. And they're also histories we would not necessarily encounter in another context because of the types of people that they involve and the types of people and archives that we meet. So often working class, although not exclusively, much due to Hallie Rubenhold's work. So today we want to, yes, we're going to do a little bit of a recap of what this case was,

because potentially some people may not know, although I'd say most people are familiar. But we're also going to talk about the storm it caused at the time in the media and how it was told and how people in 1888 and 1889 immediately exploited it. And that's what we hope we can offer to this conversation. It was immediate. It was straight away. It's not unique to our time. an offer to this conversation. It was immediate. It was straight away. It's not unique to our time. Before we look at the media attention around the case, let's just get our bearings a little bit. So you've set the scene wonderfully in Whitechapel in the East End of London. And it's an area today that if you walk around sort of brick lane, expanding outwards into that area, that it feels very historic still. It's a place that you can

go and walk and you can really immerse yourself. And of course, walking tours are a huge part of the industry we've been talking about. But in 1888, give us a little bit of context. What's happening in Britain? What's happening in London, in Whitechapel in particular? What's the atmosphere like? So as we know, Queen Victoria is on the throne. That's a real iconic part of this Victorian history. This is very much a Victorian history. And she sits on the throne as all this is unfolding. And she's aware that these events are unfolding as well. Such big news do they become. We also have, in less direct correlation to the events that are unfolding in Whitechapel,

in Glasgow, we have Celtic FC, who are playing their first official match in 1888, winning 5-2 against Rangers. The London match girls' strike of 1888 as well is interesting in the context of this. I didn't know that was 1888. So that's a really interesting history. And we can maybe do an episode on that at some point. But are girls or women working in a factory making matchsticks and they're being poisoned right by the chemicals in the factory and they're suffering all kinds of effects the pay is terrible the working condition is terrible and they they're pioneers really of workers rights and women's rights they unionize and they strike

against the the factory owners yeah so this is really important context, I think, about what's about to unfold in our story, what's about to unfold in Whitechapel. It's also December 1888. So after the initial spate of murders by who we now recognize as Jack the Ripper is when the infamous Vincent van Gogh ear chopping off incident also occurs. Not in Britain. No. vincent van gogh ear chopping off incident also occurs obviously not in britain no um but it's it's an iconic piece of again gruesome history though you know it's not exactly like that's a light subject either in 1889 so a year after the murders the women's franchise league is founded they have their first meeting and this is really the start of what becomes the suffragette movement, the campaign for women to get the vote, first of all, amongst many other rights. And just thinking

about the matchstick girls there as well, there's an atmosphere, obviously, in the 1880s. Women are starting to look at their lives differently, starting to, I mean, for the whole of time, they've been asking questions and demanding better things. But they're starting to do that in a formalized way that's legitimized through setting up a league, an institution, using the language of the society they're in to empower themselves. And of course, trying to get the vote is very much part of that. So that's the context for some of the things that are going on in women's lives, some women's lives in Britain in this moment. But let's get into the basics of the case. And let's hear a little bit more about the women themselves who are killed, because we're not necessarily going to speculate a huge amount

on who Jack the Ripper was. Well, we'd waste our time, wouldn't we? We'd waste our time. And let's not give whoever he was any more airtime than he's already had, I think is fair to say. So tell me a little bit about these victims. And I suppose the first thing maybe to mention here is that canonically, until Hallie Rubenhold's work, at least, it's been understood that they were all sex workers working in the east end of London and she's very much myth busted that straight away one or two of them had sold sex had been in that situation but the routes that each of these women take are quite different into the moment of being in the east end and their deaths when they meet their deaths

let's hear about Mary Jane Kelly first because she's the woman that we hear being in the East End and their deaths, when they meet their deaths. Let's hear about Mary Jane Kelly first, because she's the woman that we hear about in the opening of the episode. So tell me a little bit about her. So Mary Jane Kelly is the last of the five canonical victims of Jack the Ripper. And there are arguments to be made that there are other victims, potentially. Yes, yeah, yeah. Some people would argue that there's others. So we're in the East End of London, Whitechapel specifically. It's autumn 1888. And I think it's important to realise that this is not out of the blue. There is constant violence against women happening in this particular location and in other locations across London and Britain and across the world, of course. And most of that meted out by men they are in intimate relationships with, either sexual relationships or men in their family, right? Yes, yeah. And so we have this context happening in the background. However, the first victim, Marianne Nichols,

is a rather shocking case because the bodies of these women are found in very public areas. They are discovered by members of the public or in some cases police officers. We're not going to go into details. That's not the point of this episode. But the brutality that's been exacted upon them is so shocking, even in the context of the wider brutality that's being meted out against women, that it makes headline news across the world. This is not something that later becomes huge in the 20th century. No. In the 19th century, in 1888, and we'll discover this as we go on, this is filling the newspapers, this is the talk of the town, there is fear, there is palpable fear, and yet there are people who are still going about their daily lives with all of this happening

around them. And we are looking at women who have, regardless of their backgrounds, and as you say, not necessarily all of them involved in sex work, but all of them in some way engaged in poverty at this point in their lives. They weren't all from working class backgrounds either, it's important to say. But at this point in their lives, they are down on their luck often, and they are struggling with maybe addiction, or they are homeless to a certain extent and they find themselves in this part of London because that's where a lot of that working poor or even homeless poor are around this time so that's the that's the general world that we're entering into so you mentioned Marianne Nicholls there as the first victim then we have Annie Chapman

then Elizabeth Stride then Catherine Eddowes and then we have Annie Chapman, then Elizabeth Stride, then Catherine Eddowes, and then we have Mary Jane Kelly as supposedly the final victim. Tell me a little bit about her because she's from Ireland, right? Is she from Ireland? This is one of the things I find really fascinating about her and really intriguing about her because I think she is. So apparently she's from Limerick. She was born in around 1863. So Limerick is a county in Ireland. But on her travels, as she's going through England, because it's not always London, but as she's going through England, she's leaving other stories behind too. So there's times when she says she's Welsh.

There's times when Liverpool is attached to her at some point as well. So she is inventing this identity for herself that we're not even 100% sure that her name is Mary Jane Kelly because she gives other names as well. She uses, Mary comes up a lot, but she uses different surnames often. So she has these different personas, but apparently the Wales connection comes because her family moved to Wales from Ireland when she was a child. Therefore, you could understand her claiming Welsh heritage as well. And it says something about women, working class women's identities in the 19th century. We think of the Victorian era as an era in which record keeping was presumably getting better than it had been in previous centuries. For example, the law changes about registering births and deaths

in, I think, the mid-century. But even then, it's not enforced for another 20 years into the 1870s. And if you're a working class woman, especially an immigrant, if she has come over from Ireland, or indeed if she's come from Wales into England, that there's something there about movement, about shapeshifting who you are, because there's nothing fixed in stone you don't have necessarily a place in society or your place in society changes depending on the men around you for example you might your identity might be built on your father and then on a husband or a lover and whatever it is and that actually in order to survive in this world if you are poor and if you're a woman you maybe do need to change who you are quite regularly I'm not saying

that all women in the working class were doing that but this seems to have been the case for Mary Jane Kelly and of course it's not surprising that she ends up in the East End which was as it is today a melting pot of all different immigrants different cultures coming together people from all over the world in the 1880s lots of my Jewish ancestors who'd come over from Germany, I think the early 19th century, and they'd come through to Edinburgh and then to Manchester, and then they'd ended up in the East End. And they were there in the 1880s at the time of these murders. And they would have been just one family of many Jewish families,

but also families from all over Europe, if not the world. And it seems to be a place where people could lose their identities and reinvent themselves. So it's not surprising to me that Mary Jane Kelly, who is apparently constantly reinventing herself, that she is drawn to a place like that, where there is maybe opportunity to a certain extent to survive, to, I mean, she's certainly not thriving. She's living in dire poverty by the time she is in Whitechapel. But it may have been circumstances, including having to reinvent herself, which had led her there. Yeah, and we know she goes through some actual iterations

in that she marries when she's 16. So, you know, these are recorded iterations of her identity. And she marries when she's 16. Her husband is killed in a mining accident, an explosion. And that's when she leaves Wales. It's thought things get a bit murky again. And her landlord at the time, whose agent discovered her body, like I said at the beginning, he knows that she was getting infrequent correspondence from Ireland.

So that then calls into question the Welsh thing again, because there's no correspondence coming from Wales, it's coming from Ireland. So maybe her family didn't go to Wales, but she was in Wales because she married a Welshman. So, you know, we're left with a lot of questions about who she actually was. But it is thought that she was very likely from a middle class background, very well to do. Her manners and her behaviour and her, class background very well to do her manners and her behavior and her the way she spoke the way she was able to conduct herself marked her out in the context of the area that she was living in but some of the names she went by when she was wandering around some of these places are marie jeanette kelly so she's keeping just quite close there yeah yeah exactly um fair emma now isn't this interesting because i'm gonna say these names but they don't all match up.

They don't sound like they're describing the same person. So Fair Emma would often be the type of name that a sex worker might get themselves because of their description. I'm thinking Fairhead, Pretty. Right. Yeah, exactly. She was potentially known then as well at the same time as just Ginger. Yeah. So now we're we're saying well i'm guessing she has red hair ginger hair then dark mary the inference there is that she has dark hair so the hair is changing mary again obviously and then black mary this dark hair this red hair this fair hair i wonder if she is changing her she may well be but i think to that extent

it's unlikely given the context of this time not that it was impossible because it wasn't but that's a lot of change i wonder as an alternate theory is she maybe using these names as disguises if she's moving around a lot maybe she's not changing her appearance but if she's working in the sex trade she's renting rooms her life is very sort of transient maybe she's coming into contact with people that she'd really rather not see again or that she needs to escape maybe she's using these different names to advertise her trade but also to disguise herself to cover her tracks maybe i think that's definitely playing a part in this i think the other side potentially then is names that men are imposing on her as part of the trade we know in other accounts of sex workers from earlier in the 18th century, let's say, but this persisted into the 19th century, that there was often

shorthands invented for some sex workers so that people knew what they were buying and could look for these people by reputation or by name. Well, I'm thinking, as I think you are, of Harris's List, which is another London-based catalogue, essentially, from the 18th century of sex workers. And if you were looking as a client to engage the services of a woman or indeed a man working in sex trade, you could look through the catalog and there'd be descriptions, names, but also descriptions of the services that they offered. And you could then send out someone to go and find them

in the local area and pay them. How old is she when she died? So she's 25 when she dies. So she's young. You know, she's very much still at the beginning of her life in that sense, or beginning of her adult life, at least. One of the most fascinating things, and I stumbled across this when I was a teenager, just when I was looking up something for a school project,

because I was doing a school project on Jack the Ripper. Well, we can talk about that in a moment as well. The fact that most people come to this story at school age. I was like, we can't talk about that project. I don't remember what it was about. I have no idea. Yeah, we have it here. I remember doing some research on that

and seeing that image and just thinking how easily accessed it was. The crime scene. The crime scene, yeah. Is what we're talking about. Yes, yeah. And it was of firstly. The image of the crime scene. The crime scene, yeah. Is what we're talking about. Yes, yeah. And it was of this particular case. But she is the only victim that's killed inside. So it's different to the other four canonical victims because of the location. It strays a little bit from the pattern that has gone before. Let's talk a little

bit about media representation of these killings then, because I would say most people probably know of the existence of the crime scene photographs, and they are, unfortunately, very available online. These were photographs that were published in the newspaper at the time. Yes, they were certainly available. Not, as far as I'm aware, Mary Jane Kelly's particular one. That would have been deemed too much and the other victorian standards which were not high yeah the others are after the post-mortem examination is being carried out so they're a little bit more in a medical setting so

whereas the image we have of mary jane specifically is at the scene. But instantly, like I said at the top of this, the headlines are eating this up. And you could argue that it's headlines based in fear, because this community, and it's so interesting to hear about your family being there, because imagine being caught up in that fear about going, I need to be indoors by this amount of time. Because it's a relatively small community around Whitech you know you think london you think big vast spaces but actually white chapel at this time is relatively small hugely overcrowded mind small alleyways and you know it's a place that's not vast you're going to be coming into contact i mean your ancestors probably would have seen some of these women on those streets they may have very well have passed them. Yeah, so I know that some of my ancestors who were there,

and I think there were a few different families, but some of them had several daughters who were, you know, in their late teens, early 20s, and presumably would have walked around in this community. And there must have been a real feeling of fear. The other thing to say is, specifically with my ancestors who were Jewish, that talking about the fear and the sort of cyclone of news and reporting and rumour mongering that happens in the wake of the first killing

and certainly by the time we get to Mary Jane Kelly, is that the Jewish community in the East End are particularly demonised. We heard in the opening scene that you said that, that there's a figure who is Jewish-looking, whatever that means. And there's huge anti-Semitism in the newspapers, in the community. And actually, I think I'm right in thinking that at one point a Jewish man is either arrested or certainly accused of the murders. It's let off later on. And then there's the graffiti, of course,

of the Jews are the men who will not be blamed for nothing, I think is that I'm paraphrasing. But yes, this is a piece of chalk graffiti. And of course, this is something I'm very interested in. You have to remember that the surfaces of this world that we're in in the 1880s would have been just absolutely teeming with these kinds of notes. However, this note stood out in this context because someone wrote in huge letters, the graffiti that you just mentioned,

that was, yes, anti-Semitic and was thought by the police and by the press at the time to be left maybe by Jack the Ripper, or if not accusing a Jewish man of being Jack the Ripper, it's not particularly clear. But it's very much part of the canon of Jack the Ripper or if not accusing the a Jewish man of being Jack the Ripper it's not particularly clear um but it's very much part of the canon of Jack the Ripper law now and it's one of the pieces of evidence that you know is always kind of and because people think it's it's potentially more important than it was because it was removed very quickly from the crime scene once the police arrived because they thought that this would sight, hatred towards the Jewish community that were living in that area. So they wanted to get rid of it.

And that is absolutely something that people by the 19th century would understand that graffiti had a huge power to absolutely whip up mobs and to drive violence. We see it throughout the 18th century. You can buy my book to read about it. But, you know, this very much has a power out on the streets streets and it's no surprise to me that the police got rid of that as quickly as possible that it was rubbed away washed away yeah and dealt with as quickly as possible but of course graffiti aside there are more permanent words that are being set into press the printing

presses at this point are absolutely churning out story after story. Reporters are rushed to the scene, put on the ground, and they basically don't leave Whitechapel for several weeks, if not months, while these crimes are unfolding. And we get real facts to do with the case coming to light, but we also get this narrative that is set down in print in newspapers, but also in police reports. So we get the idea, for example, comes in really early on in the police paperwork that these women are all sex workers because some

of them are homeless, they're killed on the street. And the assumption is that they have been killed by someone who's engaged their services in that way. There are all these kinds of narratives that come in and they have real, real cultural resonance for the next hundred years. And it's something that has still persisted today. Wendy's Small Frosty is the ultimate summer refreshment. And not because it's cool and creamy and made with fresh Canadian dairy. It's also refreshingly cheap. Just 99 cents until July 14th.

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Subscribe to and follow Not Just the Tudors from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. there's this formula that starts to come into play of the character and i'm using that word deliberately of jack the ripper he is named during this time as jack the ripper there is a bit of debate amongst what is known as ripperologists as to where that term comes from. There was a dear boss letter that apparently Jack himself wrote, although that's later been kind of debunked as not being from the person at all. But either way, it's appearing in the press during these murders as they're unfolding. So we already have an identity, although we don't know the true identity identity but we already have a caricature of this mysterious character i think is jack to me is a victorian character i mean obviously the reality is he was a real person who did truly horrendous

things to other human beings but he becomes larger than life immediately. Yeah, absolutely. He takes on this mythic quality, which is one of the reasons why he endures so much because of that character that's being created on the ground at the time. And he's elevated while these women are described as being, by Victorian standards, the lowest of the low. Well, let's take a look at that, actually, because the Telegraph at the time described Mary Jane Kelly and after she had been killed, and this is how they described her.

They said, The poor woman who had been foully done to death was by no means among the lowest of her fallen class. Fallen being interesting there because they don't necessarily mean poor. They mean, they're associating sex work here, where they're saying that she has fallen yeah and the word fall and also insinuating fault oh absolutely yeah yeah yeah um her partner they say was in they don't say the word partner i'm i'm putting that in there was employed about the

fish and fruit markets and when the work was plentiful the pair seemed to have paid their way honorably so now we're looking at the working poor even if we think that mary jane kelly may have come from a middling background at least for some of the time when she's in london she is identified as part of the respectable working poor i mean that respectability has been put on them the insinuation there that it's because she is with in a relationship with a man that she's respectable they they team up and have this respectability together but that she has fallen even lower by the time she's killed yes and it's according to the telegraph in 1888 that it's really her fault something's happened in her life

yeah messed up well and this is what has happened it goes on to say but earnings were often irregular and then it was feared that the woman resorted to the streets so that is as blatantly as you can in a 19th century newspaper saying she was selling sex basically um so yes they're saying well they're almost implying what else could you expect if you are if you're selling sex but this whole newspaper industry is seriously growing at this time like hugely so i mean the star i think had a circulation of 300 000 copies a day which is you know that's really big yeah yeah yeah at the time so people are consuming these things the illustrated police news which we're going to talk about in a minute because that has and that's a huge driving force in this case yes and has left us with a lot

of the imagery that is invented based on the crime scenes, but invented nonetheless. But that was founded in 1864. So we're talking 20 plus years before this case. And it was the first and most long lasting Saturday Penny newspaper that was giving hugely popular Victorian invented scenarios, but based in kernels of truth as well. So we have this idea, again, of true crime coming through and how true crime is being manipulated. George Perkis, who was the founder, was already specialised in the publication of this true crime stories. So he's now bringing that demand together into this. So this is a genre that very, I mean, we've seen it being born in the 18th century, certainly by the early 19th century, think of the Red Barn murder, for example.

This is big business already. And the industry is just ready and poised to go when the Jack the Ripper killings happen. One thing that I find so interesting thinking about the illustrated police news is just the absolute sensationalizing of every element of the case, not just the crime scene not just the murders themselves the discovery of the bodies all of that high theater as it's presented in the papers but also things like the reception in the local area so they report for example i think this is

mary jane kelly's funeral the moment that she's buried. And it describes almost hysteria out on the streets. It says, men and women struggled desperately to touch the coffin. Women with faces streaming with tears cried out, God forgive her. And every man's head was bared in a token of sympathy. The sight was quite remarkable and the emotion natural and unconstrained. And I think this is so interesting because it gives this heightened sense of emotion, but it also has a sentimentality about the working class that the women are saying, God forgive her, i.e. she's been selling sex. She's a sinner.

Not how terrible that she's been murdered, but she sunk so low. Look what happened to her as a result and the men bowing their head in a token of sympathy it's sort of gentlemanly gesture to a woman who by the illustrated police news standards is below them yeah give you for what you've done yeah despite how bad you were you didn't deserve this of course yeah like they concede this has gone quite far yes yes yes but it is also kind of your fault yeah that you were in this situation yeah yeah so let's take a look at one of the covers now i will preface this by saying this is the cover of the illustrated police

news from where are we saturday october 27th 1888 so this is right in the middle as this is all unfolding. And it's priced at a penny. So I think that's important because we're saying that this piece of literature has a mass appeal. It is for a mass audience. They want this to be purchased far and wide. This is not an exclusive thing. So let's establish that going into it. The other thing to say before we start describing what we're seeing is that these are not accurate descriptions of the crime scenes or the women or who people perceive to be Jack the Ripper. It is an invention based on some of the material, yes, that's coming out in, let's say, some of the more credible newspapers, shall we, or through some of the police contacts that they may have, but it is not an accurate description of what's necessarily happening.

There's imaginings going on here very, very purposely so. And the other thing to say in terms of the context of this front page is that Jack the Ripper, although it is the biggest headline and it's taking up the most space by far, it is not the only murder that's on the front page of this. So we're in a genre very much. We're in a genre. So this is, yeah, the front page of the police news and we've in a genre very much we're in a genre so this is yeah the front page

of the police news and we've got the words the illustrated police news police and big block letters at the top as you would expect and this is the era for anyone who gets frustrated by this imperial dramas this is the era where you start to get the newspaper name in really big letters and sometimes the headlines and big letters you don't get that in the 18th century i'm not really a stickler for accuracy imperial drama but that one that's the one really gets me right the important thing to say about the police news as well we've said it's it's cheap and that it's for everyone to buy it's absolutely for the masses these are pictures not words there are words in the pictures but these are images on the front page. Think about the literacy levels in the 19th century and the people, particularly amongst the community of

people who could afford this. They're growing all the time, but they are low. So there's that to bear in mind. There's many, many images here, all in kind of little windows and boxes. Quite overwhelming, actually. It is. It's really busy. A lot, yeah. It's a real exciting promise of all this action, these incredible stories. So the top, almost like a cartoon strip, I think is how you'd describe it. In the top, we actually have another news story, which says sketches of the Tunbridge Wells crimes.

And as you say, Anthony, that's taking up a much smaller part of the front page and the rest is dedicated to Jack the Ripper, but it shows something of the new cycle. You think maybe the previous issue, the Tunbridge Wells crimes, was the big feature. Yeah, on another day. Exactly. And so you get a sense of the sensationalization of all crimes and that it is really a sort of merry-go-round of stories. So if we move down to the main section, which is all about Jack the Ripper, we have got, I mean, there are so many scenes, I can't even count them. One of the biggest figures in the centre is a man wearing a bowler hat and a suit. And underneath him, it says Jack the Ripper as described by Mr. or Miss Packer and others. So this is straight away, we are confronted with a version of Jack the Ripper. From the time as well from the time based on descriptions of real people in that area supposedly having seen him out and about so we have this character straight away that we can get behind and it's not who we

envisage when we think of jack the ripper because our character has evolved from this yes and i think the thing to say here i mean he's he's got a moustache, he looks... But he's got a bowler hat on. He looks respectable. He's dressed very neatly. He looks like he's maybe from the sort of upper working class or lower middle in this period. He looks like any other man out on the street.

And I think that's the terror. That's the terror. He doesn't look necessarily like the sort of gothic monster that you'd expect. And we get that later on. But it's interesting here that he is more generic and then around him there's all the different scenes what i will say about this is that the police are in most of these scenes yes i mean this is the illustrated police news but the story very much here is you know the good old police are going out onto the streets speaking to people um there's a gentleman just below jack

the ripper who is on the beat talking to some women in doorways asking them questions have they seen anything on the left of that we've got a scene with a man i think he's in a butcher's and underneath that it says the mysterious man with the black bag so there's basically this idea that people are seeing jack the ripper around the corner every term. Everyone's suspecting everyone else. And there's all these different reports. And basically what this newspaper has done is just mash them all up together. There's images of the police taking witness statements. There's images of the things people have witnessed. We have a version of Jack the Ripper. And at the bottom of the scene, we've got, well, an image that is subtitled another discovery in white chapel by a dog and it's a street scene and there's many men one who looks like he's holding a shovel and some policemen

and they're pointing at something on the ground the details of it thankfully are not very clear but the insinuation is of course that it's a body of one of the victims. And we get a sense of the violence, the absolute shockiness of this, I think, but also that it lends itself so well to narrativization. All of these little cartoon strip windows, they're like scenes in a graphic novel or a play. They feel theatrical. This is a story that, although it's presented almost as chaos, is absolutely being organised and narrativised in a really conscious way, I think. This is a story within a story. The reporters are taking what they are hearing on the streets and they're making it into something else. They're reworking it for mass appeal and entertainment. And this is part of a series because if you just scroll

down a little bit, there is another newspaper front page from a few weeks earlier in September, September 8th, I think, 1888. Yes. And what we have in the middle of that section is another less chaotic scene, but very, very official heavy, shall we say. So we're seeing constables, we're seeing detectives, we're seeing committees and inquest of men, medical men, etc. There's a lot of men in this image. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Like predominantly men in this image. Then there's in the bottom left-hand corner of this bit, there's the finding of the body. So there's a policeman's torch shining a light on a woman who's on the ground. And then if you are aware of some of the post-mortem imagery, the mortuary imagery, there is an image here that you will recognize as being definitely based on this artist has definitely visited this body or else has seen the photo of the body because it lines up with some of those photos that we know and that as you described earlier is available online and this is in this image she's in a coffin yes we can see that her

throat has been cut and that obviously she's you know about to be laid to rest but it's and yeah there's all these images of men all the different characters this is a cast of characters these are the male heroes who are coming in restoring order investigating everything because of course the victorians love an investigation and they love an armchair investigation they love to sit at home and read part of it yeah exactly and to feel that they can contribute something and we we know that people wrote in to the police detectives responsible for um looking into these murders and also to the newspapers to say you've missed this incredibly important clue or i have a theory blah blah i know who oh yeah i know who it was it's my neighbor or you know things like that something that i find interesting about this image is so this paper that this is another illustrated police news, but it's dated to September 1888. So this is one of,

I think this is the first victim, Marianne Nichols. And we see that it's starting to become a big story. It's the kind of central block of the images on the front page. It's alongside a host of other violent crimes. There's a scene at the top with a woman pushing a man out of what looks like a pub. And then at the top, it says to the other side, attempted murder and suicide in Wales. And there's a man bursting into a bedroom and shooting a woman with a pistol in bed. And then underneath it says an entire family murdered. And there's a man riding by on horseback and he shot everyone. And then on the bottom left, there's another murder. So there's a sense that when the Whitechapel murders begin, yes, they are shocking, but they are very much part of a canon

in terms of media representation. And it's only when more and more bodies, when these women start to be found and discovered on the streets, that people start to really panic. And that's when the fever sets in. And eventually it goes beyond that media focus and eventually that you can definitely argue and very forcefully I think that this is already a level of exploitation but that becomes more personalised and individuals rather than these newspaper organisations start to try to capitalise on the deaths of these women even within six months of them happening and that brings us to the next part of our story. organisations start to try to capitalise on the deaths of these women, even within six months of them happening. And that brings us to the next part of our story.

The following article appeared in St James's Gazette on Wednesday, the 6th of February 1889, approximately three months after the death of Mary Jane Kelly. At the Old Bailey yesterday, after the death of Mary Jane Kelly. At the Old Bailey yesterday, Thomas Barry was indicted for committing a nuisance by exhibiting figures illustrating the Whitechapel murders, and thereby causing idle people to assemble and remain in the Queen's Highway. The defendant occupied numbers 106 and 107 Whitechapel Road, where he carried on the business of a showman. And this case had been taken up from the inhabitants of the district, complaining of the nuisance which his exhibitions caused. The exhibition consisted of waxwork figures and monstrosities of various kinds, and in the autumn of last year, the defendant added figures of the poor women murdered in

Whitechapel. He sought to attract people by exposing a large picture outside the premises representing one of the mutilated victims, but the inhabitants became so indignant that they threatened to pull it down. Then a figure of Jack the Ripper was added to the show. A great deal of noise was created by the yelling and shouting which went on to induce people to enter, and the result was that a vast number of disorderly persons assembled in front of the premises. There have been a number of robberies there. After the Whitechapel horrors ceased to attract, the defendant had a bearded woman who was half gorilla and half woman, a fat French woman eight feet round the shoulders, and the female champion boxer of the world.

A man named Lindley pleaded guilty to a similar offence committed in the same neighbourhood. So we've just heard an extract from a Victorian newspaper, and the language is a little bit dense there, but essentially what I think we're dealing with is a man who has been brought up in court for setting up an exhibition of waxworks exhibiting the murders, a figure of Jack the Ripper. And the thing that people seem to have objected to is the shouting in the street the drawing in of customers this is a theatrical spectacle and people in white chapel in this area are calling him out for it it's hard to know where to start with this isn't it i mean obviously if you think about this wax work attraction there's the white chapel victims being put on display. And then later on, there's this bearded woman, there's a fat French woman and a female champion boxer. There's so much to say about putting

different types of women's bodies on display. And women who are living are put alongside depictions of women who've been murdered as equal commodities, oddities. It's very grim. I want to say something a little bit here as well about wax as a medium, because wax as a medium is so uncanny. It's lifelike. It can depict flesh like nothing else, actually. And we as human beings seem to be drawn on a morbid level to seeing the details of those injuries, to seeing what human beings can do to each other when it's played out in wax and it feels like it's at least one step removed that we allow ourselves and i'm using we very broadly here i wouldn't go and necessarily look at this but we allow ourselves to look at that without feeling that we are looking at the reality of it

the real violence yeah yeah exactly somewhat kind of for want of a better word sanitized i suppose but it also doesn't it maybe not sanitized but it's made palatable it's made into entertainment yeah yeah you're you're not on the cobbles looking at actual blood and you know that but at the same time you're getting and therefore your moral responsibility is diminished removed to a certain extent yeah and of course jack the ripper in this exhibition that's put on in when's this 1889 the year after the murders three months after let's just say in the same community these are people who've been traumatized and they're being re-traumatized by the way he's taken up it's reported three months after. So my reckoning is it's happening while the murders are happening.

Like he has these wax figures brought in first when the murders are still unfolding. I mean, that's not surprising, you know, given the very quick response of not only the police, but the media to this. It's not surprising that human nature is to swoop in and make money off of this. So it wouldn't surprise me if that was going on at the same time. And that's so interesting because then you get the theatricality of the streets themselves. And, you know, people often talk about the Whitechapel murders in terms of that theatricality, that there is an argument to be made that the murders are very performative. The bodies are left in places to be found.

Whether that is the reality of what the killer whoever they were thinking was thinking we don't know and i'm i'm not particularly interested but there's a sort of mirror image theatricality happening here with a shop front with the waxworks and you know there's people out on the streets and it seems to be interestingly not the exhibition of these waxwork victims that offends not at all it's the nuisance that the business is making out in the streets disrupting things you know you think jack the ripper is disrupting the streets by meeting out this violence on women and people are complaining about a little bit of shouting it's fascinating the other thing i suppose to say is that jack the ripper here

as a character makes his appearance in wax. And of course, I think I'm right in saying that he's been in the Madame Tussauds. I don't know if he still is, but certainly he was. I remember going as a child. He was in the Chamber of Horrors with all, you know, Crippen and all the other famous serial killers. And let's be honest, celebrated serial killers, because that's what wax as well as being this lifelike thing. It's a form of sculpture. It's making a statue and statues really celebrate people. It elevates people. It's a way of remembering them and depicting them in a certain

way that is attached to a certain kind of narrative. And that's what's happening here, that we've got, come and look at the gruesome details of the injuries these women suffered. And they're reduced to objects and things of curiosity. And then we've got Jack the Ripper, the character, come and meet the mysterious man we have. This is as close as you're going to get in the flesh, you better hope, to this real person. And it feeds into this Victorian freak show phenomenon that's happening kind of between the 1840s right into the beginning of the first decades of the 20th century. But and I think this is fascinating in this case, like who is this aimed at? Because the freak show is aimed at the organized freak show is aimed at the middling classes because they've got the money to spare on this.

So this is not a middle class neighborhood. So I'm interested to know if people were and we don't know the answer to this but people must have been coming yeah the beginnings while this was happening people are coming in and looking at this surely and this is kind of one of the things i was not aware of that this was that there was an element of tourism and attraction growing up around these murders as they were unfolding i didn't know that and that's why when we stumbled across this obviously we're not the first people to know about this particular display, but I didn't know about it

and I'm sure a lot of people don't. So I had read about this before and it's something that's always stuck in my mind. And I think it's partly because I'm interested in waxworks more generally and I just think it's such a weird and fascinating medium that deserves more attention really

as a strange art form and sort of cultural phenomenon. But it just seems it's so obscene. It's so obscene. And it's really stuck with me. And I think it captures like nothing else, the beginning of that celebration of Jack the Ripper and the entertainment value that people have found in these murders. of Jack the Ripper and the entertainment value that people have found in these murders. And not even past tense, right? People, murder is still big business. And again, you know, I think we have to be really present in our condemnation here, in that we present a show called After Dark, and we talk about historic murder. And we try as much as we can to bring that element of historic analysis to us so that we're giving a context around these

true crimes where people's lives were actually affected at the time. But there's obviously very modern iterations of that that are hugely popular on every platform that exists today. We are all complicit in this. And the kernel of the question for me is not necessarily a question of judgment of what these people are doing. But, of course, it is not a very laudable thing that's happening. But the question for me is why? Why do we need to get close to these things? Why do we need to get as close as possible to these things? Because people say it's something that has to do with solving.

I think that's an element. But it's also something I think has to do with being as close to the mystery of death as we possibly can be and observing it when it's not directly on us. I think for me, what the 1880s reaction and representation of these murders shows us is the origins of this treatment of the story that we are still dealing with today we're still dealing with the fallout of this and if you look at how Hallie Rubenhold's book has been received on the one hand it's been hugely praised but she's also received so much abuse from people who don't want her to question the narratives that have been handed down to us by a Victorian press and the fact that we're still having those arguments and we're still

having to advocate for the basic dignity of these women, these five women, possibly more, who were killed by Jet the Ripper and many, many women like them throughout history who've been killed in this way or who faced domestic violence or violence of any kind. We're still having to deal with that. We're still debating it it should it be a debate i don't think so i think it's kind of obvious where the moral line is but apparently that's not necessarily the case and i yeah i think it's important not to look away from this yeah i think we should look at it with scrutiny we should look closely at the details not necessarily wallow in them, because it is

grim and these were real human beings. But I think to turn our eyes away from this case and including the women's murders, the moments of their murder, I think it's so important that we do that and that we take note of it and we look at how people reacted to it and how people continue to react to it. I think that's a good place to leave it because we're never going to solve this. And I don't mean the crime. I mean, the ongoing cultural discussions because they will also date. I think we need to be really aware of that. What we are talking about now won't be how people talk about this case because they will still be talking about it in 50 or 100 years time.

It's an ongoing conversation. Absolutely. Thank you for joining us on the podcast. This has been, as Maddy said at the beginning, one of the ones we've been intrigued to get into because it's so multifaceted. It goes beyond the crimes, as we've been discussing, to just being this whole other thing onto itself, an industry in many ways, onto itself. Do leave us a review.

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