After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - Who was Jack the Ripper? The Doctor (Suspect 4)

Episode Date: October 7, 2024

Part 4/4. By looking at the men accused of being Jack the Ripper, we uncover dark truths about Victorian society - and our own. Why were these men, most of them almost certainly innocent, singled out as monsters?Today Anthony Delaney tells Maddy Pelling about how quack doctor Francis Tumblety, an American, became a prime suspect in the case. He is a shining example of medical malpractice but does that make him a murderer?Written by Anthony Delaney. Edited by Freddy Chick & Tomos Delargy. Produced by Freddy Chick and Charlotte Long. With thanks to the Little Dot Studios team for their voices.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Sign here for up to 50% for 3 months using code AFTERDARKYou can take part in our listener survey here.After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal is a History Hit podcast.

Buried in the depths of the internet is The Kill List, a cache of chilling documents containing hundreds of names, photos, addresses and specific instructions for their murders. Kill List is a true story of how I ended up in a race against time to warn those whose lives were in danger. Follow Kill List on the Wanderer app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Kill List and more exhibit see true crumb shows like morbid. Early and ad free right now by joining Wondery+. We begin with a poem.

This poem was written by Dr. Francis Tumblety, and if you've listened to the three episodes that came before, it will come as no surprise that he is the suspect of our fourth and final deep dive into the men who would be Jack the Ripper. Tumblety wrote this poem as part of a larger self-aggrandizing tract, which was humbly entitled, A Sketch of the Life of the Gifted, Eccentric, and World-Famed Physician Francis Tumblety. It was published in New York in 1889, the year after the Whitechapel Murders. Tumblety wrote the tract because, you see, his reputation needed rehabilitation following a slew of serious allegations that had followed him across from Europe. Most noxious of all being that he had been arrested in connection with the White Chapel murders. In the text, he detailed his life with a strange, arrogant nonchalance, then provided

personal endorsements from people who reportedly knew him well. Edward P. Doherty, for example, the man famous throughout America for capturing and killing President Lincoln's assassin, claimed that Francis was an honest and worthy fellow. In his poem, Tumulty didn't address any of the rumours that had attached themselves to him directly, but the piece offers an insight into his thinking on the subject. It goes like this. Among the loathsome vices of the age, the most revolting to the saint and sage is that of

slandering an honest name and robbing virtue of her spotless fame. The slanderers and scandal mongers are more to be dreaded than the scourge of war. Their poisoned tongues, like to the serpent's fangs, fill many a heart with sad and bitter pangs. And yet these vile colluminators try, their guilt to hide, their deeds to justify. They feign a grief would rather not reveal their awful secrets which they can't conceal.

The flying rumours fathered as they rolled, scarce any tale was sooner heard than told. And all who told it added something new, and all who heard it made enlargements too, in every ear it spread, on every tongue it grew." So without trying to add anything new to the rumours that already dominate his history, we present to you the final episode in our four-part special exploring the men who would be Jack the Ripper. Our final suspect, Dr. Francis Tundelty. Hello Hello and welcome to After Dark, I'm Maddie. And I'm Anthony.

And this is the final episode in our mini-series on Who Wasn't Jack the Ripper. In episode one, we looked at Prince Albert Victor. In episode two, we looked at the Jewish barber Aaron Kosminski. And in episode three, we looked at the artist Walter Sickett. If you haven't heard those, I suggest you go back and listen to them all immediately and catch up and then join us back for this episode. So, Anthony, we're diving into this final case, this final suspect, and we have this time a doctor. Can you tell us a little bit more about this individual? Yes. Now, Tumulty's history is potted with blind spots. We know an awful lot about him,

but we're also missing some crucial details. I think that's one of the reasons why he becomes such a focus for us in our own time, particularly. But what we do know, well, we think we know, is that he was born in around 1833, which would make him 55 at the time of the White Chapel murders. Now, already we have a question about his origins. There is a story that he's an Irish person born in America, but he also could be Canadian. It's difficult to pin it down. We do know that he's moving around quite a lot as a child with his family. By the time he gets to New York, we know that he's certainly living in an immigrant community there. So once we get to America, he definitely has immigrant status. Has he come from Canada or was he Irish and born in America? It's unclear, but those are two of the options

that might be in the background. He gained employment working at a drug store and he was apprenticed to a doctor. He became a physician as he entered adulthood, but he had no real qualifications to do so as far as we can see, despite his apprenticeship. That's not unusual for the 19th century, right? In terms of medical practice. Yeah. So at this time, quack doctors, as they became known, outnumbered legitimate ones three to one. So legitimate doctors were outnumbered. And this all comes about, I think, because there's this growing interest in science, and it's trying to capitalize on that interest. There's a

health market growing up. I mean, we're really familiar with some of the same concepts in our own time in terms of wellness and what's happening at the shady edges of that marketing campaign that is the wellness industry. It also happened to coincide with the professionalization of medicine in the United States. So, for example, the American Medical Association is set up in 1847. So there's a formalization happening on one side and it makes perfect sense then that this kind of quackery is going on around the sides.

And Tumblety is feeding into that. He's selling things like, he's coming up with these concoctions that are Tumblety's pimple destroyer, for instance, or Dr. Morse's Indian root pills. What I will say is take note of that Dr. Morse's. Throughout this, we will find that Tumblety doesn't always use his own name. So Dr. Morse is one of the aliases that he goes by, but it's just one of them. That's so interesting. Also, the pimple destroyer, it makes me think of, you know, this is sort of ongoing conversation people have about the marketing of men's products versus women's products.

You have like, you know, women's products, they smell beautifully like flowers and they make your skin soft and gentle. And then men's things are like English bulldog, destroyer of pimples. And like this, this clearly nothing changes. This was the same in the 19th century. I love it. Yeah. And he's he's a showman in his own, to a certain extent. He's described as eccentric. He wears ostentatious clothing, often in the military style. And he has no military background, as far as we're aware. So he really stood out. He was moving around America a lot, because that's what a lot of these quack doctors did at this time.

But people were aware of him because he was so eccentric. Now, why is he moving about? Well, as this is After Dark, there is a trail of crime in his wake. We think, well, some experts think, others disagree with this, and you'll find this a lot in Tumbleday's tale, but that he had potentially been carrying out illegal abortions in Canada, and he had to move from there because the authorities started to grasp on to what he was doing. So he fled. Then we next see him in Boston and he's connected with to the death of a man there, a patient he was treating. So he fled again. We next encounter him in St. Louis in May 1865 and he's arrested on the 5th of May and taken to Washington, DC. arrested on the 5th of May and taken to Washington DC. This is slightly unbelievable, but the reason he is taken there to Washington DC is because he is arrested in connection to

the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. What? Yeah, yeah. But when I read that myself, I was like, hold on a second. This guy is becoming quite notorious, but the reason he was arrested is because he was going under the name of Dr. Blackburn at the time. And there was a Dr. Blackburn associated with some of the suspects or well, one of the suspects that was involved in the assassination attempt. So actually, by using an alias, he had just implicated himself, but he had no as far as we can tell, he had no actual connection. Okay, so we know he wasn't connected. But even so, I mean, he's making quite a reputation for

himself. And I suppose that reputation is following him. As you say, there's this stream of crimes. He's possibly carrying out illegal abortions, not unusual for the time. You mentioned that he's connected to the death of a patient. I mean, I'm not surprised if he's selling quack products and not actually administering any medical care, but that seems like a huge leap to be arrested in connection with the assassination of the president. That's, that's a bit big. Yeah, I think it all comes down to that alias, you know, and we see more alias as we go through

this story that he's just happened upon or maybe he was trying to replicate the reputation of this particular Dr. Blackburn who was suspected, although not convicted of helping in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. And we see that so many times in the episodes that we do set in 19th century America, right, where it's so hard to prove someone's identity and it's so easy to change identities and to shed them as you go. And we see it with serial killers in this period, we see it with all kinds of petty criminals moving through those transient communities. You mentioned that he's an immigrant and you think about, especially

on the East Coast of America, all those cities with huge communities of immigrants coming and going and changing constantly and it's a whole country in flux. And it always, always amazes me, the ease with which people could slip in and out of those places unseen reinvent themselves in a new place. And he seems to me that he's fitting that pattern wonderfully. Oh yeah, he's excelling at it kind of until he gets himself arrested with it. You know what I mean? He's like, oh sorry, no, that's not who I am. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He gets arrested. So let's fast forward into the 1880s then, because we're heading towards Whitechapel in 1888, as you can probably imagine. He's arrested again in 1881 in New Orleans for pickpocketing. So it's very, you know, it's a real mixture of crimes, like some very, very serious crimes, and then

pickpocketing seems a little bit... It's a bit basic. ...every day, right? I'm going to introduce something here, and I think there, I think people have maybe... Look, I'll tell you what it is and then we can discuss it. Tumble T is thought to have hated women. And in all of the ripper suspects that we have looked at over the course of this miniseries, that comes up again and again, doesn't it? In whatever way, like that, that there was some kind of hatred for women. The reason people say that Tumble T had a hatred for women is because in Washington, D. DC, he was involved in displaying a collection of uteruses that had been preserved in a jar, which he had kept in a study. And he had displayed this to his guests at apparently an all male dinner party.

Now there is a lot of, there is a lot of local rumor involved in that particular story. And so much of it comes out after the Ripper case comes to light in 1888. So I can't fully the primary source material that I've seen about this is all after 1888. So I think let's just bear that in mind. It might be some filling in the blanks afterwards, but there may be something to it. But it's the sources I've seen and if listeners are aware of any earlier sources prior to 1888, do let us know. But the two that I've seen that detail this are all post 1888. So it to me that suggests there might be some backfilling there making sense of a story that doesn't make sense, you know.

It's really interesting, isn't it? I think if we take it at face value and say that, yes, he had these uteruses in glass jars, and that's not unusual for medical practitioners to have body parts preserved, all kinds of body parts. We know as well that medicine was primarily a male practice at this time, women weren't allowed to practice medicine, even to operate as quack doctors, was presumably a little bit of a challenge. So there's a real fascination in the 18th and in the 19th century with the female reproductive system, with childbirth. I'm thinking we've talked, I think, before on this podcast about those really quite horrendous anatomical models

of women in various stages of pregnancy or giving birth are made of like cloth that's padded, and you can pull the baby out and then pop it back in and there's like an umbilical cord and stuff in it, you know, and these were used to teach and for sort of curiosity in, as I say, the 18th and 19th centuries. And so I don't see that as being particularly unusual. It seems to us today to be gruesome and voyeuristic. I wonder if actually the element that's been added in later on is this idea of the voyeurism and the all-male dinner party, and that these things would have been presented in this social setting rather than a medical setting. But even there though I wouldn't be surprised

if he did have those items as part of a collection, I don't think that would be unusual. And I don't, I mean, it points to, I suppose, like a general 19th century treatment of women as body parts and the complete lack of medical care. I don't know if it speaks to specifically his misogyny. I'm Professor Susanne Lipscomb, and on Not Just The Tudors from History Hit, we do admittedly cover quite a lot of Tudors, from the rise of Henry VII to the death of Henry VIII, from Anne Boleyn to her daughter Elizabeth I. But we also do lots that's not Tudors, murderers, mistresses, pirates and witches. Clues in the title, really. So follow not just the Tudors from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts.

Antony, there's an obvious elephant in the room here, which is that all this is taking place in America. The Whitechapel murders take place in Whitechapel in London, England. What's the connection? Presumably, at some point, he's got to cross the Atlantic. Yeah. And we think he didn't just make one crossing. We know that he was in Liverpool in 1874 operating as a herbal doctor. But if you think back to a supposed arrest that happened in

1881, he's in New Orleans. So he has the archive would show the ability to move between both countries relatively easily for this time. And feedback into this idea we'll encounter later that Tumulty was actually quite well off. We're not entirely sure how he was as well off as he was, but he certainly had money at his disposal. But he is in Liverpool in 1874, operating as a herbal doctor. He is claiming to have recipes that used to belong to Indigenous American people, and they have healing powers. And so he's selling himself on this. But then come January 1875, a dock worker called Edward Hanratty died as a result of taking Tumulti's medicine. So here we are again with another suspicious death based on his administering.

As he was doing in America, he then flees from Liverpool to London. I will point out that fleeing from Liverpool to London is maybe not as much of a safe bet as it is fleeing from, you know, New York or Canada to New Orleans. You know what I mean? We're going worlds apart there, but Liverpool to London is ours apart. But fleas he does nonetheless. Okay, let's, what his back and forth movements are between the, between London and America we then don't know. But what we do know is that on the 7th of November, 1888, so now we're right bang in the middle of the Whitechapel murders, right? So on the 7th of November, 1888, Tumblety is arrested in London for gross indecency. LAR What? related, this is not clear from the archive, but it's possibly related to same-sex activity.

But that's been inferred afterwards again, but it is people on the ground at the time telling us that this might have been one of the facets to his arrest on the 7th of November 1888. LAR and gross indecency as a term could cover same-sex activity, right? Absolutely. That's how it was policed at the time. Now, for some people who look at this case, they say, right, well, that rules him out because Mary Jane Kelly was killed on the 9th of November. Tumbley is arrested on the 7th of November, so he can't have killed Mary Jane Kelly.

However, his bail was set at £300, which today is equivalent to about £42,000. And Tumblety was able to pay it and was out on bail on the 9th of November. You mentioned that he's, yeah, potentially wealthy. This is so interesting to me that he's so hard to pin down. I have no idea who this man is. He's arrested at one point in America for pickpocketing and now he's paying a bail bill that's the equivalent of 42 grand today. What?

I will, I will say, I had to say this to myself as I was going through this, bear in mind that idea of filling in the blanks afterwards. So these, you know, we get newspaper articles and we're just about to come to one of them now. We get newspaper articles that come to us after the fact in 1888, but after the fact that he's been linked to the White Chopper murders. And what happens as we know so well in so many cases we've covered is the newspapers are filling in some of the blanks. And I wonder if they have not slightly mythologised him somehow in the aftermath of him being linked to the White Chopper murders. I can't say for sure, but we are missing elements of his archive. For instance, we don't have a lot of the documentation relating to his arrests.

This is why the gross indecency charge is so muddled where people say, well, it could have been same sex related or it could have been whatever. So it's he's he's a murky individual. And I wonder sometimes if blanks have not been filled in after the fact. OK, so we have him being arrested for gross indecency. He pays his own bail. So he's out back on the street. We know that Mary Jane Kelly is killed by the so-called Ripper on the 9th of November. I'm still not seeing this connection. Is this a connection between the Doctor and between Tumble T and

the Ripper? Is this being made in this moment or is this all conjecture that happens later on? I think the answer is both, you know. I was asking myself that very question. I was like, wait, when is this happening? But let's turn our attention to one of the newspaper articles that appears in November 1888, but in America that relates to Tumble Tea. Numerous articles appeared in quick succession across the states. They all read something like this. Something about Dr. Tumulty. San Francisco, November 22nd. Chief of Police Crowley has lately been in correspondence with officials of Scotland Yard, London,

regarding Dr. Tumulty, who is at present under arrest on suspicion of being implicated in the Whitechapel murders. The chief, in pursuing his investigations, discovered that the doctor still had quite a balance in the Hibernia Bank, which he left there when he disappeared from this city and which has never been drawn upon. Mr. Smythe of that institution says that he first met the doctor in Toronto, where he was practicing medicine in July 1858. He next met him in this city at the Occidental Hotel in March or April 1870. Tumulty rented an office at 20 Montgomery Street, where he remained until September 1870, and then disappeared as suddenly as he came.

In 1871, the doctor turned up in New York. On October 29th, Chief Crowley sent a dispatch to the London detectives, informing them that he could furnish specimens of Tumulty's handwriting. And today he received an answer to send the papers at once. The New York Times, November 1888. Buried in the depths of the internet is the Kill List, a cache of chilling documents containing hundreds of names, photos, addresses and specific instructions for their murders. Kill List is a true story of how I ended up in a race against time to warn those whose lives were in danger. Follow Kill List on the Wanderer app or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can listen to Kill List and more Exhibit C Truecrime shows like Morbid early and ad free right now by joining Wanderer Plus. So we're getting a much clearer picture of this man's life now, of Tumulty's life. But also interesting is that according to the American papers that you've quoted here, Tumblety is coming under the interest of the White Chapel police force and actually, as this paper in San Francisco claims, has been arrested not for gross indecency, but under suspicion. I'm just looking at the actual primary source here. It says under suspicion of being implicated in the White Chapel murders. What is going on?

How has this connection been made? It's super confusing, isn't it? Right, let's look at the timeline a little again, because it is very strange the ways in which America is so sure that this is the Ripper or the man that becomes known as the Ripper, whereas in England that surety doesn't exist. So unfortunately, Tumblety's file regarding his arrest has been lost, as I say. And it's a problem because the nature of the facts are unclear. There is a rumor that, yes, there was an arrest on November the 7th,

but apparently that Tumblety was subsequently re-arrested on November the 12th and held specifically on the suspicion of murdering Mary Jane Kelly, the final canonical victim of the man who became known as Jack the Ripper. And she had died three days before that arrest. She had. And he was out on bail at that time. But apparent, and this is what, this doesn't add up for me, right?

So he was arrested potentially, they say on the 12th again, for the murder of Mary Jane Kelly, and then was released on bail once again on the 16th of November. Now, some experts say that this sequence is true, that the 12th and the 16th are part of the facts that surround Tumulty's case. I've only been able to find those details in secondary source material. I haven't seen them in primary source material. So to me, they don't add up as truth. I don't think, from what I can see from the primary source material, I don't think he was arrested in connection with the Mary Jane Kelly murder. It's also interesting that he's appearing in the paper in America and presumably not

in England. I've never heard about him being connected to this case. It's so fascinating that in America, they're like, absolutely, this is the guy. Lean in everyone, we're going to tell you a story. Here's all of his life and his backstory and his other crimes. It's already being filled with, as you say, mythologizing. There's a legend around his life that's building up. Do we know anything of his movements beyond this moment of arrest, the sequence of arrests, if we take them as fact? What concrete evidence do we have of his movements in Britain? Okay, so we know that he leaves England for France on the 20th of November under a false name and that name is Frank Townsend. So another alias. Suspicious immediately.

Frank Townsend. So another alias. Suspicious immediately. Yeah. So he's leaving. Now, the only thing that's maybe less suspicious, right, is that any time Tumblety attracts the attention of the authorities for whatever reason, be it even gross indecency on the seventh, let's say, which we know happened, he flees, doesn't he? We've seen that again and again. So his fleeing doesn't necessarily link him to the Mary Jane Kelly

or the other four murders. But if we were to believe that he was rested on the 12th in direct connection to Mary Jane Kelly's murder, then it's, you know, that's, it's literally less than 10 days later. I just don't think they would have released him on bail. You know, it just, they know he, yeah, I just, I can't see that they would release him on bail on the 16th. If that's, if they really thought he was the murderer, you know, it just, they know he, yeah, I just, I can't see that they would release him on bail on the 16th. If that's, if they really thought he was the murderer, you know, this was a huge case. This is a huge case and the police were under so much pressure. And don't forget, as we've explored in another episode, at the same time in London, the Thames torso killings are going on.

Women's body parts are washing up along the river. One of the torsos is left outside Scotland Yard. We're led to believe from the primary source material and the commentary by historians that's followed that these were two separate serial killers operating in the same city at the same moment. The police are under enormous pressure. If they're arresting anyone for this murder, surely they're going to hold on them. I just, I don't buy that he was arrested in connection with this. I just don't see how he would have then been offered the option of bail. But certainly he's not going to make it to France without someone stopping him. No. Ah, well, if that's your criteria, then I might be able

to help with that because he definitely ends up back in America quite soon after he's left England. What the exact dates are, I think are definitely up for debate, but he ends up back there, right? And hot on his heels, kind of, is an English police inspector called Walter Andrews. Now, he has come in relation to another case in Canada, but he's also come partially to trace Tumblety and in an attempt to extradite him. Now, there was a member of the police force from England who followed him there. We could say that primarily he was there on another case, but he was interested in Tumblety

and there was this idea that he might be extradited back to England. That seems pretty big. Right. This to me is one of the most interesting parts of the case. And the New York police force, and we have this, that they had him under surveillance, but they said that, quote, there is no proof of his complicity in the Whitechapel murders and the crime for which he is under bond in London is not extraditable. So look at both. There's two clauses in that sentence. There is no proof of his complicity in the Whitechapel murders. Number one, that means people were saying that he was complicit in the Whitechapel murders in 1888, in November 1888. But then look at the next thing. And the crime for which he is under bond in London is not extraditable. Now, if that was murder, i.e. the arrest in connection to the murder

of Mary Jane Kelly, then that would be extraditable. So he's not been arrested for that? I don't think so. So he's obviously arrested for gross indecency, which is presumably not extraditable. Yeah, no. So that to me says there was no direct link to the Mary Jane Kelly murder, despite this filling in of information afterwards. He maintains his kind of suspect status, however, because in a letter to the journalist George R. Sims, which is dated the 23rd of September 1913, Detective Chief Inspector John Littlechild

of the Metropolitan Police did point to Tumblety as, and Littlechild is involved in the Ripper case directly, and he did point to Tumblety as one of the people who were under investigation at that time. One of the things that apparently linked Tumble-T is that he had enough medical knowledge to carry out some of the attacks and take some of the organs that were removed during some of those attacks. And that means, despite all this kind of grey area that you and I have encountered in this particular history, and there is a lot but he does remain and a lot of ripper ologists would claim that he is the primary suspect. In the jack the ripper murders but let me what do you think maddie what's what's your feelings on this. I think he's a really interesting figure he someone who.

It's hard to pin down it's hard to get to the truth. hard to get to the truth of who he was and what crimes he actually committed. He is potentially arrested for things like pickpocketing. We know he's a crack doctor. So we know he's practicing medicine and averted commerce really with very little ethical, moral consideration. We know that there are deaths that occur because of his treatment of patients. There are, I think you've mentioned, at least two people who die as a result of coming into contact with him and being treated by him. So in some ways he is a murderer, or he's certainly guilty of manslaughter, if nothing else, I would say. Does that mean that he is capable of the kind of violent misogyny that the ripper meted out on the world? I don't know. I don't think it's enough. I think the arrest for gross indecency is

really, really interesting. And thinking about throughout this series, we've been talking about what these cases can tell us about 19th century ideals of masculinity and what happens when people deviate from that. And sexuality has come up again and again. We've looked at potentially in episode one, the prince, the grandson of Queen Victoria and his possible homosexuality, or at least bisexuality, and how people othered him because of that. And I wonder if there's an element of this going on, that he's arrested for gross indecency and therefore is viewed by the press and by the police on both sides of the Atlantic as involved in criminality. He's in London at the time. The arrest is made around the time of the last canonical killing

by the Ripper. I wonder if he's an easy target and I don't mean to strip him of his own culpability in other crimes. He obviously sounds like a very, as I say, morally dubious person and very slippery and very good at taking on, well, kind of very good at taking on disguises. He seems to get caught out all the time, but he's not someone I would want to encounter. Do I think he's the Ripper? I've seen no evidence to suggest that, although it is interesting that he's linked in his own moment and we can't deny that. Certainly in the American press he's named almost as the Ripper. I mean, I don't think they explicitly say that, but they're saying he's been arrested in connection to the case. And the fact that the British policeman, the policeman from London,

goes all the way to America, possibly with a view to extradite him. Although for what is unclear, I think that's interesting. And I think he was certainly on the police radar. I don't buy that he because he had medical knowledge, and there's a big question mark over whether he had medical knowledge, right? I mean, all we've seen is that he makes up remedies and kills his patients. I don't think that's a particularly good demonstration of any actual anatomical understanding whatsoever. But I just don't think that's enough to then say, well, he could have done those crimes. You could say that of any doctor anywhere in history, including our own moment, oh, you have medical knowledge, so you could commit these crimes. I just don't think that's enough. I also don't necessarily buy

the idea anyway that the Ripper had medical knowledge. We don't need to dwell too much on the terrible things that that particular person did. But I think for my money, they come from a place of hatred and violence and anger and complete horror and not any kind of precision, really. So I'm going to say no, I really don't buy him. And I think actually of the four that we've talked about, I think he seems the least likely. What about you, Anthony? What's your view? Oh, less likely than the Prince.

I don't know. The Prince is the one I rule out immediately. OK, OK. Yeah, that's to be fair. That's yeah. Look, I think if we've learned anything over the course of these four episodes, it is that we do not know who Jack the Ripper is. And that will be like my sister when I told her we were doing this mini series, she was like, am I going to find out who Jack the Ripper was at the end? I was like, no. And that and she's like, oh, well, but that was never the reason for this,

because we can never do that. As in you and I certainly can't unless something significant like Tori King pointed out when she was talking about the DNA evidence that's involved in these cases. Right now, we don't have the proper DNA evidence to solve this case. Right now, we don't have the archival evidence to help us solve this case. Right now, the evidence is just not there. So what we do instead is we have to use the case, if we can use the case for good, to contextualise the violence against women in the Victorian times and in our own time. If we can use it to understand the lives of the working women, as Rubenholde has done so

eloquently in her book, if we can use it to understand the mechanisms through which men exercise power, aggression, violence in the 19th century and how some men did not, then that's what this case is good for now. It's good for trying to teach us something about the Victorian era and about our own time. I think unless something else comes to light, we will never know who Jack the Ripper was, and that's fine. I don't care who he was. I actually don't. I don't need to know. I don't think he's an interesting person. I think whoever he was, he was obviously a terrible, awful man. But I agree. I think this case, one of the best ways, and I think this is what true crime

gives us, one of the best ways to understand what makes a community, what makes a society tick, how it operates, what values it holds, is to see how it reacts to things that happen outside of those parameters. What scares that society? What horrifies that society? What fascinates that society? I think this case does give us all of those things. It shows us how the Victorians reacted to it. As you say, Anthony, it brings the case into our own moment. We are still talking about Jack the Ripper, the Whitechapel murders, the victims themselves. We're still debating it. There's still huge divided opinion and people feel very strongly at both ends of the spectrum and throughout this gray area in between. Now, Anthony is going to round off

the conversations that we've been having across these four episodes in just a moment, but I just wanted to say that for my money, I have learned so much doing these and I feel that Anthony has shouldered the responsibility of taking on this case and talking about it in a sensitive way really beautifully. So I want to thank him for that. If you want to get in touch with us about these episodes or any other episodes of After Dark, if you have suggestions for topics you would like us to cover or you want to discuss these cases further, then email us at afterdark at historyhit.com. That's afterdark at historyhit.com. Now over to Anthony.

Over to Anthony. If you've been listening along, you'll know that by now we've encountered a prince, an immigrant pauper, a middle class painter and a quack doctor as four of the principal suspects in the unsolved Whitechapel murder case. At first glance, they're a very disparate group with little or nothing in common. So what marked or marks them out as suspected in this case? Some say it was that one or more of them was gay and hated women. Others say that certain suspects were impotent, sexually dysfunctional, mad, bad, odd. None of this really adds up, though.

Many complex psychological theories, all too often offered by lay folk just like ourselves, are put forward to explain the Ripper's modus operandi. But it's just all speculation. A waste of time, in many ways. But there is something they all have in common. They are all men. And if you were trying to identify a suspect in the brutal murder of women, the very first place you ought to start is with a man.

Now I know that this will make some of you squirm, I can hear you reaching for your key pads right now to declare that not all men, etc. But the facts are undeniable. They were during the reign of Queen Victoria and they are now. According to the BBC, between April 2020 and March 2021, 177 women were murdered in England and Wales. Of these women, where the suspects are known, 92% were killed by men. 92%. 92% were killed by men. 92%. Of course we all know good men.

Most men want to be good men. But these are the facts. Ultimately, despite the best intentions of most of us, we are failing. Whatever the various psychological reasons the man, or men, who was Jack the Ripper, took the lives of at least five women in the autumn of 1888, it shows the fragility of Victorian masculinity. The pathetically muscular invention fed by power and authority that's linked in no small way to ideas of empire, industry and control. Those ideas of empire and authority are being slowly but surely torn asunder.

We see them for what they are. Exploitative mechanisms instigated to dominate. And so it must be with the idea of what makes a man. Now is the time in which we must remake ourselves anew, just as the Victorians did. Our responsibility, however, is to get as far away from the toxic ideals of Victorian manhood that continue to haunt us today. In so doing, we must be conscious of the destruction we have wrought and compassionate enough to face the consequences of our collective actions. Saying, not all men just won't cut it, I'm afraid. But as we work towards that change, there are countless women across centuries for whom it is too late. Too many to name here.

But perhaps we might call them to mind as we speak the names of the Whitechapel Five. Call them into being once more. May their names remind us of the long history of violent injustices wrought against women, yet may they form a chorus of defiance and hope. A hope for generations to come, a hope they were denied. Mary Ann Nicholls Annie Chapman Elizabeth Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, Mary Jane Kelly. Mary Ann Nicholls, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride,

Catherine Eddowes, Mary Jane Kelly. Mary Ann Nicholls, Annie Chapman. Elizabeth Stryd. Katherine Eddowes. Mary Jane Kelly.