Morbid - The Unsolved Murder of Jeannette DePalma

Episode Date: February 17, 2025

On the afternoon of August 7, 1972, sixteen-year-old Jeannette DePalma left her house in Springfield, NJ and was never seen alive again. Six weeks later, Jeannette’s remains were discovered when a neighborhood dog returned to its owner at a newly built apartment complex, carrying Jeannette’s badly decomposed arm in its mouth.The news of Jeannette’s death spread quickly around the small town and the rumors about the circumstances were not far behind. According to witnesses, the girl’s body was surrounded by occult symbols and objects, and within a few weeks news outlets began reporting that Jeannette had been the victim of ritual human sacrifice.For more than five decades, the murder of Jeannette DePalma had fascinated New Jersey residents and has even captured the attention of news outlets from around the country and occasionally around the world. Yet the more coverage the case receives, the more the rumors of occult murder and Satanism seem to grow, obscuring the more relevant facts and the tragedy at the heart of the case.Thank you to the Incredible Dave White of Bring Me the Axe Podcast for research and Writing support!ReferencesAssociated Press. 1972. "Police probe death of girl." Asbury Park Press, October 3: 11.—. 1972. "Witchcraft seen possible in teen-age girl's death." Central New Jersey Home News, September 30: 3.—. 1972. "Was girl black magic victim?" Courier-News (Brunswick, NJ), September 30: 1.Burks, Edward. 1971. "'Satan cult' death, drugs jolt peaceful Vineland, N.J." New York Times, July 6: 35.Chadwick, Bruce. 1972. "Priest's theory: devil's disciples killed girl." Daily News (New York, NY), October 4: 399.Hughes, Sarah A. 2021. American Tabloid Media and the Satanic Panic, 1970-2000. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.Lenehan, Arthur. 1972. "Springfield cops find girl's body." Star-Ledger (Newark, NJ), September 21: 10.—. 1972. "'Witchcraft' implicated in DePalma murder." Star-Ledger (Newark, NJ), October 3: 8.Muscavage, Nick. 2019. "What happened to Springfield teen found dead near Watchung Reservation in 1972?" Courier News, August 23.Pollack, Jesse, and Mark Moran. 2015. Death on the Devil's Teeth: The Strange Murder That Shocked Suburban New Jersey. Gloucestershire, UK: The History Press.Schwartz, Art. 2015. "Conspiracy or serial killer?" Hudson Reporter, January 25. Cowritten by Alaina Urquhart, Ash Kelley & Dave White (Since 10/2022)Produced & Edited by Mikie Sirois (Since 2023)Research by Dave White (Since 10/2022), Alaina Urquhart & Ash KelleyListener Correspondence & Collaboration by Debra LallyListener Tale Video Edited by Aidan McElman (Since 6/2025) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey, weirdos, I'm Ash. And I'm Elena. And this is morbid. It is morbid and it's going to get really morbid in here today. See, I like to do the Hey Weirdos, especially now because we were saying it, I think last episode, whenever you finish saying and this is morbid and then I have to comment, I'm like, it is. Every time, it is. We're both like, yeah. It is. That's all I got to say. But today it really is. because we are starting what is going to be a four-part series on Jack the Ripper. All right, wait. Four-part series. So you know me. You know-me relationship with brevity. You know me. This case, like, just sucked me right in.

I have about five or six books to share with you guys already. and I'm not even done. I'm going to try to keep it to four just so that you don't get like an entire month of Jack the Ripper, which I don't know if anybody would be down for. Like I could do like an entire like season about this if I really wanted to. I feel like some people would definitely be down, but I think my psyche and others like my,

who share the psyche that I have would be like, please stop trying to break me physically and mentally. And I feel like, you know, Albert Fish was for, Everybody reached their breaking point at that point. I think it was a nice reprieve when it was done. Four for these ones is the sweet saw. So with that being said, are you just kind of like yeat yourself right into it? Yeah, we're going to yeat right into it.

It's the first one. Have you ever even said yeep before? Hold on a second. Have I? I feel like I have. I feel as though I've never felt this much happiness in my life, though. Wow. I don't think you've said yeep before.

I don't know. Let us know. Have I said yeat before? I feel alive, so let's go. Whatever I can do to make you happy, you know? Yeah. Eat. Now we get into it.

this. Well, I know. I was going to say, sorry about what's coming next. I just want to mention a few of the books that I have used for this series so far. I'm sure to be adding more by the fourth one, but I, by the fourth episode, but I will let you know when there's other ones. These are really good books. You can get them on the Kindle. They're, you know. Are you old? Yeah, you know. The Kindle. The Kindle app. Get them up. The Kindle Cloud Reader. Whatever, man. You can get them on the, you can get them on your old scroll. Get them on the internet and then get off my lawn. Get them on the World Wide Web.

So the first one is Jack the Ripper in the case for Scotland Yards Prime Suspect by Robert House. Okay. The second one is the hidden lives of Jack the Ripper's victims by Robert Hume. Okay. That's a good one because it really focuses on the victims. The third one, which I think right now is my favorite comprehensive look at the case, is the complete Jack the Ripper, and that's by Donald Rumbolo. And then we have The Five, which is a really good book and a really interesting one,

because it's another one that really focuses on the victims. Nice. Their stories, you can get a lot of background. It's by Haley Rubenhold. She does an amazing job. And the next one I'm going to talk about, the last one for now, is called The Ripper Code by Thomas Tuffill. I believe it is, Tough Hill. they're all really great.

They all give, you know, different point of views. They all give really comprehensive looks at all the evidence, and they're fascinating, and I think you should read them, but I will link them all. Cool. And again, I'm going to be adding to that list, so stay tuned for that. So what we're going to do with this episode is I want to talk to you about Whitechapel, the stand at the time, which is in the late 1880s. We're going to talk about workhouses because a lot of these women were spending

a lot of their time in workhouses, and it gets mentioned a lot, and you should know what those are. We're going to talk about the first victim. We're going to be talking about Marianne Nichols or Polly Nichols, as she was known. We're going to talk about some of the victims that they thought are still thought to this day, although I don't really think so. They thought may have been pre-Ripper victims, like pre-what they call the canonical five, which are the ones that most people know their names. But they think that they're true. A lot of people try to like connect a lot of other cases to this, which I'm sure. I'm sure there was more than five. I'm sure there could be some. I wouldn't say I'm positive there's more than five. Yeah. But I could see that being a possibility. It's entirely

possible that there's more outside of the canonical five. But I don't think the two that I'm going to, or maybe three that I'm going to present to you are in any way connected. I just want you to know that they happened, that they were talked about to be connected to this case. and they kind of influenced how they looked at a lot of it. Okay. So in this one, we'll be covering that one, for sure, canonical victim, that first one going through the background, all that. So here we go.

Okay. Let's talk about Whitechapel, the East End at the time. So the East End of London was not great at the time. I was going to say, I'm already cold and I need a rain jacket. Not great. And some mace. I was going to say, honestly, the weather is the very least of your problem. The very least.

The West End at the time was where the wealthy elite were hanging. And it seemed that the East End was just kind of left to suffer, basically. It's always like the Upper West Side. Yeah. Or like the Upper East Side, you hear, but it doesn't really work here. Which one was Gossip Girl? As soon as I said that, I just... Probably the Upper East Side, I would think.

I think it was. I don't know, though. Not here. So in these times, the East End, there was rampant crime, violence, homelessness. There was alcoholism. was a widespread issue, drug use, disease. It was, I mean, there were kids running around with no shoes on, no clothes on, barely fed till the middle of the night when, you know, parents would be stumbling home from pubs and whatever

else they were doing. It was just wild. It was dank and it was bleak. It was. Actually, an English author, Arthur Morrison wrote that the East End was, quote, an evil plexus of slums that hide human creeping things. That's a writer. Which, whoa.

That's a writer right there. What a like, beautifully crafted sentence. That's just like, what a, what a statement to put on one place. It's just like, yep, this is what that is. That's the blanket statement of Whitechapel. It's unfortunate because Whitechapel was right at the center of the east end. And it was where crime was just normal and just constant. It was also dark.

And I don't mean dark. It was very dark, like emotionally. And, you know, just like it was dark. But physically, it was dark. It was only lit by sparse street lamps. So think about how dark those alleyways and streets were. Like, we don't recognize a lot of us. Like, we don't recognize how dark it can get outside.

Yeah. Until you're outside of, like, you know, suburban areas and heavily populated areas. If you go out to, you know, like going out to the Berkshires or something. Or like upstate New York. And you're out in, like, a cabin in the, woods, that's when you see dark. That's when you know what dark is. And these people were living in it constantly. Oh, yeah. I remember going to Maine for the first time when I was little and being like, oh, this is the dark that people are scared of. I get it now. Like, I don't know dark. Yeah.

There were tenement homes where many, many, many families would cram together in one room to live and sleep. There were workhouses. Like I mentioned, we're going to talk about those later. I'm going to explain all about those. And there were also Doss houses where poor and homeless could pay a few pence for a bed for a night. In a survey done by Charles Booth that covered the years between 1886 to 1903, which is the Ripper murders happened in 1988. They started in. So this covers that time period. 1888, excuse me. I will say 1988, probably a million times. I do that. Anytime I have the case from the 1800s. I don't know why. My brain just won't say it. But he found, that 22% of people in Whitechapel were living below the poverty line, and another 13% were living

and struggling to survive, quote, where a decent life was not imaginable. There were families, like I said, living in one room with people suffering from every disease you can imagine, like smallpox, tuberculosis, of all manner of things. Kids, like I said, were running around barefoot, sometimes nude because clothing was a luxury, many couldn't afford. They lived in and this is awful. They lived in literally like beds that were covered in black beetles and cockroaches. And rats would run all over everything because they were never cleaned because these play like all these lodging houses. They were like, yep, there's a bed. And it was just, you just had to deal with it. Filthy. And it was just to have some kind of roof over your head for a handful of hours before they would kick you out.

And just thinking about like little kids and these living conditions, thinking about anybody in this living condition is awful. Then you think about like kids that can't even wear clothing. Yeah. And they're just getting like bitten by bugs. Yep. And the thing is that these lodging houses, you would have to leave during the day. So if you were ill or you were old or you were hurt, they would turn you out in the freezing cold until the night when you could pay again to come sleep in these horrific conditions. Wow. I didn't realize that. You did not get to stay there during the day, get the hell out in the morning, earn your lodging money and come back in and pay me for another night. And you couldn't even keep your stuff there either. I'm assuming. So it's like everything you have is just in one place.

Because as we can see, even when like some of these women knew these managers of these DOS houses and workhouses like really well after a while because they were there for so long. Right. And they wouldn't even hold a bed for them or anything. Even knowing them for so long, they'd be like, no, I'm going to earn my money. If someone comes to pace for that bed, that's theirs. Wow. Robbing, stabbing, mugging, drunken brawls. They were literally a minute-by-minute occurrence here. It was mayhem. There were strict. streets here where police wouldn't go down or they would only walk in groups. Police.

Wow. Yeah. Thomas Arnold, the police superintendent of H Division in the 1880s, said, quote, there can be no doubt whatever, that, whatever that vice in its worst form exists in Whitechapel. Yeah, I would say so. It was a night like any other. We ate some dinner. We chatted for a bit about school and work and everything seemed normal.

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You'll even get $5 worth of in-game rewards when you reach Level 5. That is Best Friends Without the R. Best Fiends. Mostly for men at the time, you know, slaughterhouses were a massive market here. butchers and they were just men walking around covered in blood all the time. So, because animals are being slaughtered like right out in the open. Just like over there. Like very brutal. So they're just walking around.

Remember, covered in blood a lot. Right. With aprons on. That's why some of this was a little tough because we look at it and we're like, how's this guy committing as we're going to talk about? Like we'll get at least a good taste of it here. These atrocities. Right.

That he would be covered in blood. And no one's noticing him. Because everyone was covering in blood. A lot of people didn't bat an eye at it. I mean, people were beating the shit out of each other and drunken brawls and walking down the street with blood coming out of their face. And like no one's really thinking about it. There's slaughterhouses, butcher's, all that stuff walking around covered in animal blood.

Well, and I'm sure this was like the kind of place too where because everything is so violent and scary, you mind your damn business. That's what it is. And you don't pay too much attention to anybody. You got your eyes straight ahead. Yeah. So a lot of people were like, like, yeah, I wouldn't have noticed. Right. I don't think I would have noticed this person walking

away covered in blood, or if I did, it wouldn't have stuck in my brain because I see it all the time. And because these people were just so focused on survival. Yeah, exactly. And for women, sex work was also very ramped in the East End because it was really all they had at that point. Like, they didn't get a lot of other opportunities. They were called Unfortunates. And it was either a full-time gig where that was where their money was being made. That was the only way they were making their money, or it was something that women would find themselves having to do on the side while also doing things like being a dressmaker, a tailor, a laundress of other people's laundry, but they were only able to do that if they had a place to launder other people's laundry.

If they didn't have a roof over their head, they don't have a lot of options. And even a tailor, a dressmaker, they had to buy the stuff to do that. Right. Some of them couldn't do it. So you can't just start that business if you have to have like a little money set aside first. Exactly. And then, like, they would also, a lot of them would sell, like, paper and fabric flowers that they would make. Like, a lot of them were really adept at sewing and crocheting and all that.

Because you had to be. And women at that time wore big, fancy hats that had a lot of artificial flowers and stuff, like the fancy women. And so these women would buy these artificial flowers. So they would travel into these, like, wealthier areas to try to sell them. Right. But then again, it's probably a means of traveling even. Exactly. There's so much against them.

It was intense. And once, so when it came to sex work back here, once a client was secured, the act would take place literally anywhere in alleys, in doorways, against walls. Right. Usually, like I said, people didn't have anywhere to bring a client back. Because they can't go back into those houses. Yeah. And it's like sometimes they can bring them back into these DOS houses, but most of the time not. And it's like, all right, do it and get the money and leave.

That's it because you're doing it to get your lodging. And then you think about like the filth that that adds to society. I mean, sanitation. Sanitation was real bad back then. So it's like all this is happening in very unsanitary conditions. You would not want to go with a black light into Whitechapel during this time. Definitely not. Now, according to Jack the Ripper in the case for Scotland Yards Prime Suspect by Robert House,

in 1868, there was a survey that showed there were a hundred and twenty-eight brothels in Whitechapel at the time and 623 active sex workers. Wow. Stepney, another part of the East End, had 932 active sex workers and 350 brothels. Wow. So as you can see, it was a big business. Now, any person would look at this and say that, obviously, the severely horrific living conditions and rampant poverty were likely the reason sex work was so rampant at the time

because there was really no, there was no other choice. Yeah. It was desperation. It was how you were going to get your next meal. It was how you're going to feed your kids. Right. They were doing it for usually just basic human needs that everybody deserves. But at the time, the social reformers were like, no, women are just, these like women's sex workers are just morally bankrupt sex fiends.

Oh, yeah, definitely. And that they're doing it just because they like to. Can you just give them an opportunity maybe? Yeah, I don't know. Give them any opportunity to have. any other job if they want to? So even at the time of the Ripper murders, police commissioner at the time James Monroe said this about the victims.

Quote, the only wonder is that the Ripper's operations have been so restricted. There is no lack of victims ready to his hand for scores of these unfortunate women may be seen any night muddled with drink in the streets and alleys, perfectly reckless as to their safety and only anxious to meet with anyone who will help them implying their miserable trade. Wow. Yeah, it's definitely, it has nothing to do with the fact that there's no opportunities outside of this. Honestly, it's just on them. He's like, that's a you problem. Not a me problem. You're like, cool, cool, cool. I'm like, all right. So I think it's time to get into,

now that we've like set the background, at least for what is going on here, let's talk about Marianne Nichols, better known to her friends as Polly. So sometime around 3.40 a.m. on August 31st, 1888, Charles Cross was on his way to work as a carman, which is somebody who drives a horse-drung carriage for, like, fancy people. Cool. A show four. Exactly. A jibes. A jibes. Get it? That's what I used to say. I know, chives. A chives. Ash used to think it was chives. Yeah.

So he worked in Bucks Row, which in Whitechapel. And as he passed some gates and fencing along the road, right in the middle of the road, he noticed what he initially said he thought was a tarpaulin, which is a big waterproof tarp essentially. But when he got closer, he saw that it was a woman lying on her back. Oh. She was laying very close to a locked gate. And what we'll see is that because how.

Whitechapel was. Almost all of this, so many of these women, people saw them at first and were like, oh, it's a drunk woman just passed out on the ground. Like, no one thought twice about it. Just the fact that that was like, oh, whatever. Yeah, there's not. That was the first thing that popped into their head. Like, if you or I saw that, like, you would never think, oh, that's just a drunk

woman on the ground. Just must be a drunk woman. It's like, no. And she was laying very close to the locked gate. He took a closer look and saw that she was still and her skirt had been hiked up closer to her hips. Another man named Robert Paul, who was also on his way to home from work, or to work, it varies. He noticed this as well, and he came to help. So they felt her. She was cold in her face and hands. It was still dark out, so they couldn't see details. Paul immediately said he was like,

by the way, she was positioned and her skirt was hiked up. I was worried she had been raped. So he said he pulled her skirt down to cover her. Because he was like, I just didn't want to leave her out in they open like that and they ran to grab a police officer. Now at 3.45 a.m. PC John Neal, which is police constable. He was walking his beat through Bucks Row and Whitechapel when he came across this woman in the street as well. At this time, Paul and Cross had found PC George Meisen and had told him what they had seen. He went straight to the scene as well and he met PC Neal there. So PC Neil sent another police officer who showed up at the scene for Dr. Reese Well

Louan, I think it's Loueline to come. Okay. There was usually just like one doctor that they would go and have come for this. He arrived very close to 4 a.m. on scene. At this time, workers from the surrounding butcher shops and other shops were coming on scene as well because everything's opening up. People are going to work. All of a sudden, they're seeing this crowd.

It was clear to the doctor, Dr. Luillin, that this woman's throat had been cut deeply from ear to ear. Oh, man. In fact, there were two distinct slashes to her throat, one that was eight inches long and cut so deep that it cut the vertebrae. Jesus. All the tissues and vessels had been savaged in her throat. Later, he made very sure to state that he was completely sure that her injuries were in no way self-inflicted. Her eyes were wide open staring at the sky, but not seeing anything.

When the doctor felt her, her upper half was beginning to get cold, but her legs were warm. So they estimated she had been dead less than a half hour before they got there. Wow. Now later in a report, PC Neal said, quote, I examined the body by the aid of my lamp and noticed blood oozing from a wound in the throat. She was lying on her back with her clothes disarranged. This woman was about five foot two with hair that was brown but turning gray. She was missing five of her front teeth.

She was wearing a brown, red ulster coat, black ribbed wool stockings, two petticoats and a black velvet bonnet that looked into. On the bands of her petticoats were the markings of the Lambeth Workhouse. So obviously she had been staying at a workhouse. Right, right. With the Lambeth Workhouse markings on her petticoats, they decided to look there first to try to identify this woman. It was someone from the Lambeth Workhouse.

A friend Polly had made while living there named Marianne Monk, who came down to the morgue and identified the body as that of Marianne or Polly Nichols. So Polly was born August 26, 1845. At the time of her death, she would have been around 42 years old. Her father, Edward Walker, was a blacksmith, and her mother's name was Carolyn or Caroline, and she was a laundress. Her mother died when she was young, and so did her younger brother Frederick, who died when he was only two years old. This was very common back then. Kids did not last past two around this area.

I mean, think about the conditions we're talking about here. Just disease alone. She was one of three children with two brothers, Edward who was older and Frederick who was younger. At 19, she married her husband, William Nichols. He was a Fleet Street printer for Messer Perkins Bacon and Company in 1864. He worked there where they printed books, posted stamps, anything that needed to be printed, they printed. At one point, the couple lived with her father for, I think it was like 12 years. They lived with him.

And during this time, they had the first of what would later be five children to. together, raging in ages from 8 to 21 at the time of her death. Luckily, after a lot of hustling in the printing business, they were able to afford their own home in 1876 where they were accepted to live in the Peabody buildings, which were a new set of tenement housing units. And they were like pretty upscale. They looked really nice. They only accepted working class people of high moral character.

Okay. Now they live together in like okay harmony, you know, whatever for a while. with their children. At one point, a widow moved in next door to them with her adult daughter, Rosetta, who had separated from her husband recently. Rosetta helped with the kids while Polly was pregnant. I bet she did. Yeah, there were rumblings that William took a liking to Rosetta, and Polly noticed. After their child, Eliza was born in 1876, Polly began drinking gin, and the couple started fighting a lot. Yeah, gin will do that. Gin became her poison of choice. Now, there were several times when Polly would leave, but she went to live with her father for a while, and then

she returned back to William in 1877. Again, the fighting continued until she walked out again while very pregnant and ended up at Lambeth Workhouse for the first time. Oh, no. She spent some time there working towards the end of her pregnancy, but once she was reaching that end of her pregnancy, she was worried she would be separated from her baby. Yeah. If she stayed there, so she went back to Williams, or excuse me, William. And again, we're going to get into workhouses for sure because her fears were not unfounded that she might be separated from her baby. In 1879, she gave birth to a son Henry, but things turned sour again with William

when they started fighting over his possible infidelity at this point. Things got really bad between them, and she just packed and left, left all her children, including baby Henry with William. Oh, no. So she just up and left. Which is like, you know, you want to be mad at that. But at the same time, it's like, where were she going to take all these kids? It's a very, it's a hard one to judge.

And that's why I'm not going to judge it. Exactly. Because it's my initial, of course, my initial thing is like, how could you ever leave your kids? Because I don't get it. No. But I also didn't live in that time. Exactly. So I'm not going to say that I understood it.

I'm not going to say I get what was going through her head. I just, you know, that's it. Dyer streets. It is. This is everything that has. happens in the story of Jack the Ripper boils down to desperation and hopelessness, really, which is really sad. But you know what?

In her desperation, like we said, she went to stay at Lambeth Workhouse again. This is a good time to get into exactly what a workhouse was and how they came to be. So it's important because many of the Ripper victims, like I said, were bouncing between these establishments, Doss houses, lodging houses, or they had at least spent time in one of these workhouses. Now, in 1834 in England, a law referred to as the poor law was introduced. This law was introduced as a way to help and bring poverty-stricken people back into work and hopefully housing with the creation of workhouses.

It was supposed to be sort of a leg up. That's what they were advertising it as. But it was proposed as the only way to get aid if you found yourself poverty-stricken. Otherwise, you get nothing. Yikes. So it was built on desperation. already the power dynamic is fucked here. With this law, workhouses would be established where poverty-stricken people could be housed, closed, and fed.

But in return, they would work extremely hard doing manual labor. Things like breaking stones and shit. What the fuck did they need people to break stones? Breaking them up into like gravel, literally. Children could also be put to work. One common thing that they would make workhouse inmates do as work was both. crushing. What?

They would have to manually crush the bones of dead horses, cats, dogs, all to use as fertilizer. What? There were a ton of rumors that there were grave robbing happening as well, and that these people were unwillingly crushing human remains as well. What the fuck? These workhouses were feared and avoided by many. You don't say.

They were sometimes referred to as prisons for the poor, and mistreatment was rampant. That's what it sounds like. it literally sounds worse than prison. Yeah, families would be pulled apart and forced to live in different parts of the workhouse. They had to wear uniforms and basically eat prison slop. Also, immediately upon entering a workhouse formally, the person would lose all voting rights.

What? Yeah. These workhouses were mandatorily set up in different parishes around, and these parishes were formed and broken up into unions for this. The unions would meet and all of, and what they called unions. they would meet and all of the parishes in that union would help decide what kind of facility they intended to use and intended to build, excuse me. For example, how many inmates would be housed in a particular workhouse? Each union was assigned a guardian of that particular workhouse parish, and these guardians were supposed to visit the workhouses and make sure everything was up to code and that the conditions were not terrible.

Totally. So what I found was a particular crazy scandal involving workhouses around this time. It was the Andover Workhouse scandal. And it changed the way that workhouses run. For good? Yeah. Okay. It was run by what was referred to as a Master of the House.

This one was run by Colin McDougal, who was a sadist. Because that's the thing I was just going to say. As soon as you give somebody the title of Master of the House, look out. Yeah. Never give somebody the title of Master. Too much. Too much. Just not going to work out.

He intentionally treated the poor like shit, and he actually took the food intended for his workhouse and just gave it to his own house. What? Like he would just feed his own family with that food. He was violent. He liked watching poor people suffer. He also refused to allow guardians to come into the workhouse for a time, citing some loophole in the law that he was able to get away with it.

Really? Yeah. Later, sexual assault accusations were lodged against him. He knew that was coming. And soon it was clear that people living in this particular. workhouse were so starving that they were skin and bones. He was literally starving them all. Then rumors began to swirl that people would fight for the job of bone crushing in this particular workhouse just so they could eat the marrow from the bones and pick the rotting flesh off of them to eat.

So this is a prison camp. They were that hungry. This is literally a prison camp. This was confirmed. Wow. A man named Hugh Monday who was a magistrate and member of the overseers on the Andover board. He actually testified that this was true when he investigated it. He testified under oath, and I quote, When a beef bone or chine bone was turned out of the heap, there was a scramble for it, described like a parcel of dogs, and the man who got it was obliged to run away and hide it until he had an opportunity of eating the marrow. One man fetched two bones, which he had eaten that very morning in wet ashes.

A portion of muscle, very offensive, was adhering to the ends of the bone. The med said that it was a considerable time before they could make up their minds to do so, but after they had once taken to it, they preferred that description of labor to any other because they could get bones to pick. Wow. This got everything moving because they were like, oh, this is not okay. Like the thought of people doing this, like and being described as like a pack of animals. Yeah. Fighting for bones to crush so that they can hide some to eat the marrow and the rotting. flesh off. Like fighting for sustenance. Yes.

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Just dropped. But luckily, this did make people look closely at what the fuck was happening here. The poor law commission was basically running itself and had no parliamentary oversight at all. This was unacceptable and it wasn't working, clearly. A bunch of newspapers reported about it and this brought at least the removal of Colin McDougal in Andover, the master of the house there. But another asshole just took his place. Right. Now, during the investigation, Home Secretary, Sir James Graham, was found to a

have basically told the commissioners to get the whole Andover scandal quieted and concluded quickly. He was like, just make it go away. All of this led to a committee being formed to take action and investigate the endover workhouse situation for real this time instead of just dropping the inquiry. Like, why would you just drop that? Because they just didn't, they didn't want to deal with it. How do you drop that? Yeah, because they don't care. These people didn't care. I just don't understand. Again, I think we said this last time, but the lack of empathy. Yeah. They were horrified at the findings. This horror and mistreatment unfortunately ended up being an almost across-the-board situation

when they started looking into other workhouses as well. They completely dismantled the poor law commission at this time and changed it into a board that would have to have parliament oversight. It slowly got better. And eventually, around 1930, the entire law and system was abolished. And that was in 1930. Good. So remember this while we speak about what these women were living through.

It just kind of paints a bigger picture of where they were in life. And the fact that it took from like this is the 1880s we're talking about and it took until 1930 to have this abolish. Like that's fucking wild. Yeah. And they were, I mean, there was something called like picking Oakham and it meant like picking the, you would have to like untangle old like ropes from ships and you would make your fingers bleed. Of course.

Yeah. And that was, it was insane. The kind of manual labor they had to do was so tedious and so harsh and so intense, just for a meal. And it would just drive you insane after like a month or so. And just for a meal and a bed for the night. And then you'd be separated from your family because men and women were also separated from each other. They had to eat in separate places, work in separate places, sleep in separate places. It's like why.

As long as they're getting their work done and like, yeah, like, I mean, this is like ridiculous. Oh, you know why? I can tell you why. Because they didn't want them to have more babies. Yeah, they didn't want them to breed more poor people. Right. That's what their reasoning was that they would openly say. So fucked. Yeah.

Wild. So this is why we're going to, now we're going to go back to the separation from Polly's husband. Okay. And her going and moving back into Lambeth Workhouse around 1880. And do you know how bad Lambeth was? Lambeth, I think, was like just on par with shittiness with workhouses, especially in 1880. Like, shit was still really awry there. Kind of sounds like a workhouse as a workhouse.

It really is. It's not great. You're not going to have a good time there. You're not going to get rest there. It's just not good. So after the separation from her husband, he allowed nickels five pence per, or five shillings per week, excuse me, which was actually required by law of him. Once you separated from your spouse, like the husband would have to pay a weekly allowance. It's like a, what's that called? I know what you're talking about for my brain. I don't think of it. It just is. So you just you pay him money. So there you go. That's what it is. Now, at the time of her death, he said he had not seen her in about three years. Oh, wow. Now, in 1882, he found out through some channels that she had been living life as a sex worker since their separation.

And so he said, I'm not paying anymore. So he stopped paying the weekly allowance. Her friends told her that she needed to get a summons to force him to pay again. And so she contacted the guardians of the parish of Lambeth, who you would go to, if you were, living in that workhouse, and they were able to then summons William to come testify as to why he stopped paying her weekly allowance. But after a bunch of witnesses were asked to testify about her quote-unquote street life and now quote-a-quote a moral character, the guardians agreed with Williams' reasoning for stopping his required payment, and that was it. That sucks. Kind of shows you

how the guardians looked at the poor. They kind of wanted to keep them desperate so that they were forced to work in that workhouse. Yeah, they needed their work to get done. Now, interestingly, later in 1896, this is just like a little side thing. This was after the Ripper murders. A seven-year-old boy named Charlie Chaplin would show up at the door of Lambeth Workhouse with his mother and brother after their father abandoned them. You're telling me that is this Charlie Chaplin? Yeah. What?

They found themselves on very hard times after his dad had abandoned the family. Yes, that Charlie Chaplin lived at Lambeth Workhouse for a spell. Wow. Isn't that wild? That is. But back to Mary Polly Nichols. After losing her allowance from William, she tried to retain lodging in many different places around the area, but nothing stuck. She could get it for a night here and there.

She stayed with her father for another stay, but her drinking caused him to, them to have some issues. He said later he never threw her out. But there were times where it just got too bad and she would leave. So by this time, William had actually moved on with Rosetta. Yeah. I knew that all along. She was pregnant with his child. Fuck William.

She bounced again around to different workhouses and lodging houses. And in 1886, her brother Edward actually died from a fire. He died in a fire. His funeral was the last time her father saw Polly alive in 1886. Also, just to back up for a second, fuck William for cheating on his wife and then saying, I'm not going to continue to pay her even though I'm the reason why she left. Yeah, it's like a real bad. situation. That's just that's a dick move on a dick move. Exactly. It's it's sadness on every level

because it's like and just betrayal. She was drinking because she was depressed because he was being unfaithful and she was feeling like this Rosetta was this younger pretty thing and she was having all these babies and probably like that can fuck with your hormones everybody. Of course. And it can make you feel. They didn't know what postpartum was back then of course. And it can when he's looking at this younger woman, you're sitting here. thinking like what the hell is going on here, she starts drinking. It's bad decision making on every level in everybody's corner. I mean, you don't, turning to drinking in that scenario is not the right choice. Of course not. It happened and there were circumstances that led to it. And

it's just, it's just bad choices in every single arena of this whole story. Well, and it just sounds like he was gaslighting the shit out of her. Yeah. It's just, it's bad. It's just bad. It's just bad. It's just bad. scenarios. It's just really bad. So in 1887, she had been kicked out of a living situation she had for a little bit of a time with a man named Thomas Drew. They had lived together for a little bit, but she started drinking again. He got tired of it and kicked her out. It was October, but she had to sleep outside in Trafalgar Square, which is where a lot of them had to like, yeah, huddled together to sleep. After a bit of time there on October 29th, 1887, a bunch of people were arrested in the square.

I found an article in the people's newspaper from the time listed it and listed them under the headline Trafalgar Square vagrants and said Nichols and five men and two other women were arrested there and charged with, quote, sleeping in the open air and wandering without visible means. Yeah, because they don't have anywhere to go because your city sucks. They got through the others. So they got through to the others and they say that most of them agree. to go to workhouses or they had somewhere work-like to be, so they were let go after they arrested them. But Nichols is stated in the article to be, quote, the worst woman in the square and labeled, quote, very disorderly. Oh, man. She was, however, released on her own recognizance. She went before the magistrate and was let off with a warning, but was forced to go back to Lambeth Workhouse.

So she went back to her old stomping ground at Lambeth, but only lasted 10 days before being kicked out of there. Oh my goodness. As we'll see, a lot of these women are very feisty, very fiery women. They had to be. Well, that's what I was going to say. It sounds like they didn't have a choice. There's a lot of getting kicked out of places. There's a lot of brawling. There's a lot of real tough lifestyle because they had to. Because it's fighting to stay alive. Yeah. Now, here's another interesting tidbit. We're going to be full of those during this. It's an interesting time. So at this time, rooms for lodging were anywhere from six to seven pence usually. Like that's what you would pay for one room for one night.

And you had to share with multiple other people. And like I said before, you left the next morning. But there were a couple of things you could do if you paid less than that and they were pretty awful. For one pence, homeless people could enter some lodging houses and sit on a bench all night, but they were not allowed to sleep. You could sit up and awake on a bench all night. Why can't they just sleep on the bench? Like, why? Yeah.

That's the dumbest shit. For two pence, they could do something called a two-penny hangover, which meant you could sit on the bench in a row next to other two-pensers, like a whole row of them. And they would string a rope in front of all of you, and you could hang over that rope to sleep. But you could only sleep if you were slung over that rope. What the fuck is history? And a lot of people think the term hangover came from that. Oh, yeah, I mean, that makes sense. So for four pence, there were things called coffins that you could sleep in.

Legit, you slept in a wooden box with a tarp over it. What the fuck? And it would have a ton of bugs and shit in it. It was because it was not protected from the elements. It was just like in a wooden box as essentially a coffin. So those are the choices you would have. And also just like the mind games that that, like that just fucks with your brain. It is.

It's a lot of mind games. It's a lot of sadness at this time. There was just a lot of sadness. It's like psychological warfare. Yeah. So after Gay and kicked out of Lambeth again after those 10 days, Polly bounced around again, ended up sleeping in the square outside again in December. Oh, no, Polly.

And then she finally stumbled into Mitchum Workhouse in Holborn on January 4, 1888. At the time, she had a nasty cough and was very ill after sleeping outside in December, so that when she came into the workhouse, they sent her right to the infirmary. because they did have infirmaries here. Okay, that's good. I'm shocked. Yeah, I know. She spent a good amount of time there, and in April she was sent back to Lambeth because

that was her home parish, and apparently Holborn didn't want to pay to take care of her in their parish anymore. Wow. Yeah. She did pretty well this time around, and the matron of Lambeth Workhouse actually ended up recommending her for a job working as a domestic servant for a couple, Francis and Martha Cowdry, who lived in a newly built home called England. side and Wandsworth Common.

Okay. This is beautiful looking like brownstone kind of thing. And like a really great opportunity for the time. Opportunity to get at least a leg up. You'll have a place to sleep. Yeah. On May 12th, 1888, she left Lambeth and took this opportunity. So Martha and Francis, according to her, she wrote letters to her father explaining

us, were very kind to her. Good. They were good people. I'm getting excited and I know what happens. And it's like a really bad ending. But they expected her to work very hard. She was the only quote, quote, servant in the home. And she was like, she was the only person on staff. She was expected to cook,

clean, keep the fires going, keep the chimneys clean, polished silver, run errands, do sewing work, needlepoint, litter, laundry. She was run the house. The type of shit that will make you go crazy. Yeah. It seemed for a while that she would at least attempted to throw herself into this kind of life. She was like, you know what, maybe this is my chance. And she had said that to her father. She wrote in an email. I almost said. She emailed him. She emailed him real quick. She opened her MacBook and said,

type, type, type, type, Gmail. She wrote a letter, because we are talking about the 1880s. She wrote a letter to him and said, you know, like,

I'm really going to try to get this going. I think this is my opportunity. It's really hard work, but it's also very tedious. I'm very bored, but like we can do this. And again, it was hard work,

but it looked, it was looked at his honest work. And she was looking, you know, I'm going to get myself up in the ranks of society. Unfortunately, this life was not for Polly. Who knows what the reasoning really was, but she ended up just up and leaving exactly two months after she started to work there.

She is feisty. I feel she's been bouncing around now for years. Yeah. In workhouses, lodging houses, she's been on the street. She slept in the square. She's been arrested. She's been embroiled. Her life is a constant fight.

And I feel like this. I imagine, again, I have not been in this position, so I cannot say for sure. I imagine after you have gotten used to that kind of fight or flight existence, settling to this. It's hard. Doing the same thing each day and every day and then just sitting by yourself too. Must be lonely and must be a very hard transition to go through because she was never alone in the streets and all these workhouses and lodging houses. She had people around her. She had people that she knew.

She at least had people that were friends of hers. She's really alone here. So who knows, though? She just two months after, up and left. Unfortunately, she left with stolen linens that were valued at over 300 pounds today. Damn. Mrs. Cowdry immediately reported her to Lambess Workhouse, because after all, they recommended her, and she now made them look bad.

She took the linens, immediately pawned them, and she used the money for gin. She said, nah, nah, na, na, na, na, no, sheets of Egyptian cotton. You won't get that because you've never seen uptown girls. No, I definitely don't know what that is. But there you go. Yeah, that's what she did. I want a word from our sponsor, Better Help. Let's talk about your mind in different ways that we can take care of our mind.

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at this point. She could manage to stay at some lodging homes or Doss houses on both Thrall Street and Flower and Dean streets around this time. but apparently according to the hidden lives of Jack the Ripper victims, Thrall Street was so dangerous that this was the street that police would only walk in, I think, groups of threes. Wow. Yeah.

She was staying in a Doss House on Therall Street the night she was murdered. What was a Doss House? I think you said it before, but I think I'm sorry. A Doss House, this is where you could get a room for like four pens, three pens. You basically could just stay there. Kind of like a motel. It was a bed. Okay.

That's it. You're getting to bed. You don't pay for your bed. Get the fuck out. If you pay for your bed. You can stay here until the morning and then get the fuck out. Gotcha. Basically.

And again, you could get some of these for four pence, three pence if you shared and even two pence at the time. But that was rare. These were not you getting a room. It was you getting a bed. Yeah. It's like a shelter. It was literally like a hostel kind of thing. Like we're all staying in the same kind of like a really gnarly hostel.

Yikes. You would all be staying in the same room. It was rough. Now, between August 24th and August 30th of 1888, Polly definitely had a room at White House, which was at 56 Flower and Dean streets in Spittal Fields. This area was a place where people were servicing clients in alleyways and doorways, right in the open. People, like the Spittal fields are very known. People were openly robbing passerbyes and stabbings were in everyday occurrence. The streets around it were called things like Blood Alley.

Do as you please street? For real? Yep. At this time, she was sharing a room at 18th, Rall Street in Spittlefields with a woman named Ellen Holland. Okay. Now, August 30th, 1888, witnesses saw Polly leaving the frying pan, which was a pub that a lot of people frequented at the time. She left around 12.30 a.m. And at 1.30-ish in the morning, witnesses saw her try to enter the Doss House that she had been staying at,

But the owner said, no way, because she didn't have her four pence. And again, she'd been staying there for a while, but they did not give you that, like, yes. She was heard laughing in his face and saying, quote, and this is a quote that is like across the board that people said they heard. She said, quote, I'll soon get my DOS money. See what a jolly bonnet I've got now? And she was showcasing a black velvet bonnet that appeared to be new. No one had seen it before on her.

So nobody really knows where it came from. But it was like, I guess it was like, had like the almost that wicker look on part of it, but it was black velvet on the inside. It was black like that wicker stuff. Right, right. Now, a bit after this, she ran into Ellen, who was her roommate at that Doss House.

She ran into her around Osborne Street. And they just chatted for a bit. Ellen said Polly seemed very happy, very drunk. And Ellen was like, hey, like, why don't you come back to the Doss House with me? Like, you need to get off. the street. And Polly responded, quote, I've had my lodging money three times today and I've spent it at the frying pan or the 10 bells. I won't be long before I'm back. So she was literally like, oh, I've made it three times today and I've spent it. And she was like, okay. So she left Ellen towards

Whitechapel Road. Her plans were very clear. She was going to get a client, make her four pence, and she was going to head back to the DOS. That's what she told Ellen. Okay. It was a very short time later, around 3.45 a.m. that Polly Nichols was found brutally murdered on the street in Bucks Row Whitechapel. It's so sad because she was so close to just going in for the night. And she seemed to be having like, like, she was just joking with people to just be like, ah, fuck it. I've spent all my lodging money, but I'm just going to go make some and I'll be back. Like, she just seemed like she was just having like a whatever night. Like, yeah. And then she just leaves her friend, her roommate, and there it is. And it was right around her birthday. It was, yeah, which is really sad.

Now, after the initial examination after she was found, the doctor on the scene ordered that she be taken to the mortuary that would be for the workhouses. Mortuary's were definitely not the morgues of today. So they waited and they left her there before, they just left her in the open, before summoning two workhouse inmates, quote unquote. That's what they would call workhouse people. So it was prison. Basically, to come and move her. So they were like being, that was part of their workhouse job. Yikes.

So they came and immediately took her to the very crude mortuary that was where she was going to be examined. It's like a hut on the side of the road. It's literally like a shed in like next to a workhouse basically. There she was stripped of all of her clothing. And while this was happening, they noticed that besides the gaping and obvious neck wound that they saw, there was a hidden and rather large and very jagged gash on the lower left side of her abdomen. Her intestines were literally spilling out of this wound. Now, according to the complete Jack the Ripper by Donald Rumbolo, quote,

the abdomen had been cut open from the center of the bottom of the ribs along the right side. Under the pelvis to the left of the stomach, there the wound was jagged. The omenum or fatty membrane, which covers the front of the stomach, was cut in several places. And there were two small stab wounds on the vagina. Just a warning for all four of these. There's a lot of shit that you're going to hear. in these, they are gruesome, they are graphic. I'm going to give it all to you, so just know that ahead of time.

There's a lot of like, you know, what appears to be sexual mutilation and brutality, so just so you know. Jack the Ripper had a lot of issues. Yeah, obviously. There were several incisions made in her abdomen. Many of them were very deep. When she was moved to take off her clothing, they saw that blood had soaked her clothes and the pavement beneath her. immediately they thought that this weapon was a blade around six to eight inches long, and they believed it could have been something like a shoemaker's knife.

Marianne Monk, who was Polly's friend who identified her, was also the one who connected police with Polly's father and husband. She was like, you should probably let them know. Yeah. Now, William, her estranged husband, came right down to the mortuary, and witnesses said when he laid eyes on her, he was silent and just stunned for a while. I thought he felt a little guilty. Well, and after a long time, he said, quote, seeing you as you are now, I forgive you for what you have done to me.

He then turned and said to the doctors, well, there is no mistake about it. It has come to a sad end at last. Okay. Which is sad. It seems like it's a sad. You know, you just like look at this and you're like, both of you are just sad. Yeah, and like you screwed each other over. It was a toxic relationship that began as not a toxic.

relationship and that's sad. Yeah. And I think it was like... It's like you both had the best of intentions, but it really didn't end that way. What did they say? The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Exactly. Now, this case was already flummoxing because she was laid right out in the open and also right under the windows of two women who were Mrs. Green and Mrs. Perkis, who were both home, and at least one of them was awake at the time of the murder. Damn. And nobody heard anything. So this killer must have been fast and must have been efficient to sever that windpipe so, quickly. So that she couldn't scream. To render her silent while he mutilated her.

Right. Now, Thursday, September 6th, 1888 was Polly's funeral. William paid for it, but did not come. Six years later, he married Rosetta. I'm done. I'm done with Rosetta. Yeah. I mean, six years later, at least, he didn't just run out and marry her, but like that's a thing. That is a thing. That is a thing. Now, interestingly, like I said, they were at a loss because this man or group of people,

They were pretty sure it was one man. Had done this quickly, very efficiently, and was able to run away without being seen and would have been covered in blood, at least on his hands. But who wasn't? The only thing they could point to, like we talked about earlier, would be the various butcher shops in the area and slaughterhouses, which would make it easy for someone to go around on notice with blood all over them. It's so crazy to think about that. Yeah, especially in the early morning when everything's getting set up.

Yeah. Of course they would be coming in it. They're all setting up, exactly. So, yeah, it's a little weird, but, you know. It's a lot weird. It's a little weird. Don't keep it that weird. But we have a couple of other murder victims that I mentioned before, before Marianne Nichols that made investigators quirk their eyebrows a bit and wonder if they were connected.

So what we are trying to, so what a lot of people who look into this case say is they believe there are 11 murders that people end up trying to connect together. I didn't realize there was 11. Yeah, they try to form those together with the canonical five, and this is one of them. So there is hot debate about whether there were two victims before Nichols that seemed to be connected or just one or any before her at all. I am on the none before her at all. Oh, okay. So you don't think she is definitely Jack's first. I believe she's the first one that we know about.

But if I find another one, I will eat my hat. So the Newcastle Chronicle and then the Hall Daily Mail wrote articles claiming that there were six Whitechapel murders. as we know, canonical five. Emma was the first that they cite, this woman named Emma. So they were at least at the time claiming that she was part of this canonical set. They looked at her as part of this five. Okay. We know the name of one victim for sure was Emma Elizabeth Smith.

This is one of the victims that they tried to claim. She was attacked April 3, 1888, which was only a few months before, Polly. She was 45 at the time of her death and was working at the time. as a sex worker at the time and was living in a Doss House at 18 George Street Spittlefields. Not Alon is known about her, but she's often described as a widow who had two adult children. She had a tendency to drink a lot, and when she did, she often got herself into fights. She was seen many times with black eyes and other injuries, which she would say was because of a bar fight or a fight in the street over some silly nonsense. It was 12.15 a.m. April 3rd that her friend and fellow lodger at the Doss House,

Margaret Hayes or Hames, different and different sources. Margaret saw her speaking to a man dressed in a black suit with a white handkerchief around his neck. She said he was average to medium build, and unfortunately she could not identify him if she had seen him. She was like, I don't think I could pick him out of a lineup, to be honest. Which, like, good for her for being honest. Yeah, I know. I'm just like, sorry, I can't do that. We appreciate it.

You know, she was seen speaking to this man in the area of Farrant Street, Limehouse. It was shortly after this that something terrible happened to Emma. She survived it, but she was badly injured. Oh, shit. Yeah. So around four or five in the morning, she now, she initially survived it, is what I should say. I had a feeling that that's what you meant. Yeah, I was going to say.

Around four or five in the morning, she stumbled back into the lodging house at 18 George Street. And the deputy of the lodging house, Mrs. Mary Russell, immediately saw that she was in terrible shape. She saw her face was a bloody mess, and her ear had almost been completely cut off. She told her that she had been beaten, raped, and robbed on her way home to Osborne Street. She said she was in a lot of pain in her lower half of her body, and with that she was taken to London Hospital. This is where it's really bad, and I'm going to warn you ahead of time. It was found that she had walked a quarter of a mile to the lodging home from where she was attacked by herself. Wow.

It had taken her four hours. Oh. And she had passed multiple police officers, none of which she asked for help and none of which they asked to help her. Jesus Christ. This is just so sad. And it's like she would have, when you find out what her injuries are, it would have been very clear that she was in pain. And I know it was in the, it's dark. And I understand that you couldn't see that she was covered in blood. You're a police officer. But she had to have been moaning in pain. There's no way she was silently walking this for four hours. And I'm sure she's walking like shuffling basically. Oh, yeah, because when you find out what her injuries are, there's no way she was walking normally. It was discovered by Dr. George Haslip, who was the surgeon on duty when she arrived at the hospital, that aside from her facial injuries, she was suffering from incredibly horrific internal damage because a blunt instrument had been forcibly inserted into her vagina, hard enough to cut the perinium,

which is the skin between the vagina and anus. Also, the peritoneum had been ruptured. This is the tissue that lines the abdominal wall and also lines most of your internal organs. Oh, my. She had torn a length of fabric from her shoulder strap and used it to hold between her legs and soak up the blood. So she walked the entire four hours with that between her legs soaking up the massive amounts of blood she was losing. Like she's hemorrhaging. Yeah.

Unfortunately, she died the following day from secondary peritonitis, which is an infection and inflammation of the peritoneum from rupture. That's what they thought happened to Virginia Repa. Yeah. But before her death, she had told those around her what had happened to her. She was like, I got to tell you what happened. Now, an inquest was ordered into her desk desk death April 7th, and apparently the police weren't even told about any of this until April 6th. So they didn't hear about this crime that had been committed against her until after. Right. So they already lost a ton of investigation time. Right. Now, According to the inquest of which the transcript was posted in the Times in April 1888, Mr. Wyn E. Baxter, the East Middlesex coroner, held an inquiry on Saturday the 7th of April at the London Hospital,

and it says respecting the death of Emma Elizabeth Smith, age 45, a widow, lately living at 18 George Street Spittlefields, who, it is alleged, had been murdered. Chief Inspector West of the H Division of Police attended for the commissioners of police. It says Mr. George Haslip, house surgeon, stated that when the deceased was admitted to the hospital, she had been drinking but was not intoxicated. She was bleeding from the head and ear and had other injuries of a revolting nature. Witnesses found that she was suffering from rupture of the peritoneum, which had been perforated by some blunt instrument used with great force. The deceased told him that at half-past one that morning, she was passing near Whitechapel Church, when she noticed some men coming towards her. her. She crossed the street to avoid them, but they followed, assaulted her, took all the money

she had, and then committed the outrage. She was unable to say what kind of instrument was used, nor could she describe her assailants, except that she said that one of the youths was of 19 years old. Death insured on Wednesday morning, April 4th, through peritonitis set up by the injuries. It says Chief Inspector West H Division stated that he had no official information on the suspect and was only aware of the case through the daily papers. Jeez. Imagine like you're reading the daily paper as the police chief and you're like, oh, cool, maybe somebody should have called me.

He had questioned the constables on the beat, but none of them appeared to know anything about the matter. The coroner said that from the medical evidence, which must be true, it was clear that the woman had been barbarously murdered. It was impossible to imagine a more brutal and dastardly assault, and he thought the ends of justice would be better met by the jury recording their verdict at once. than by adjourning to some future date in the hope of having more evidence brought before them. When police did investigate the scene and the crime, it was tough because, again, it was reported days after.

When they looked at the scene, they found there was no blood on the pavement, so they assumed her clothing and especially the cloth she ripped from her shoulder strap had soaked it all up. They had no physical descriptions of the men or man, other than the notion that she kind of believed one of them was around 19 years old. Yeah. So this one, because she stated in no uncertain terms that it was men, I don't think this is it. That's what I was thinking, too, because she said it was a few. Yeah. And it's the robbing thing.

I think that most of the time when there was any kind of robbing associated with the Jack the Ripper case, it was fake staged. Or just, it just, I don't know. It doesn't ring true to me. And I don't think he would leave a victim alive. Yeah. I don't think that's. that chance. Yeah, I don't, he's, he's too efficient and he's too quick. He's too, as we'll see, most of these, some of them are done in under 15 minutes. Right. I mean, they're, and he severes

the windpipe. He severs the windpipe so no noise happens and so that you bleed out. He wants that carotid artery done so that he can just do his, he likes to do the mutilations post-mortem. So I don't think it fits. I don't think so either. I don't think Jack the Ripper is men. I think it's same man. Yeah, from what I know, I agree as well. That's just me. And I don't know, it's just like an entirely different attack. Yeah, that's the thing. It just doesn't feel the same to me. But I mean, that's just my opinion. Now, there is one mythical type case that doesn't really have a name attached to it. It's like an unknown victim. And this is before Emma's murder around October or Christmas in 1887. So the year before. I love that they're like, maybe Halloween,

maybe Christmas. Well, because we don't even know if this happened. It might just be a total mythical thing. It's just like a rumor. But I had to look into it because it is mentioned so often that I was like there has to be something here. With my schedule and how I am always on the go, I don't have a ton of time to do the things like I love to do. And one of those things is reading. I used to be such an avid reader. But that is exactly why I love Audible because now I still can be. Audible offers an incredible selection of audiobooks across every genre. They've literally got everything. They've got bestsellers, new releases, celebrity memoirs, mysteries, thrillers, motivation, wellness, business.

Maybe someday they'll even have the butcher in the run. You'll discover exclusive Audible originals from top celebrities, renowned experts, and exciting new voices in audio. Like Alainas. No, I'm just kidding. As an Audible member, you can choose one title a month to keep from their entire catalog, including the latest bestsellers and new releases. All Audible members get access to a growing selection of audiobooks, Audible Originals and podcasts that are included with the membership.

You can listen to all you want and more get added every single month. Something that I think you might want to listen to is one of the 400 book recommendations that Elena has for Jack the Ripper. So once you're done listening to this episode, you can go see if any of those are on Audible. And guess what? I think some of them just might be. Let Audible help you discover new ways to laugh, be inspired, or be entertained. New members can try it free for 30 days.

Visit audible.com slash morbid or text morbid to 500,500. That's audible.com slash morbid or text morbid to 500, 500 to try audible free for 30 days. Audible.com slash morbid. So it's an unknown woman who was also said to be found on Osborne Street or around Osborne Street. She was later referred to as Fairy Faye. That was her nickname. But in an article in the New York Tribune, so another country, remember, we're over here now. So take this with a giant grain of salt because news is like a giant telephone.

As we well know. It said this. The history of the reign of terror, which now paralyzes all London with the panic of fear, reaches back for a year. The mutilators first, because they used to call this the mutilation series, and him the mutilator. Yikes. The mutilator's first success was achieved early in the month of our. October 1887, when in the dark hours of the morning, the frightfully lacerated body of a woman was found lying in the passageway of a narrow alley in the immediate vicinity of Bishop's Gate Street

East. The victim was an elderly woman, gin soaked, degraded, and lost. No one appeared to be aware of her real name, her friends, if any, had long ago disappeared. She stood alone among her kind, a homeless, shameless wanderer. Nobody cared about her. Nobody made the least effort to find out why she was murdered or to discover her murderer. They regarded it as the most natural and fitting kind of death under the circumstances, shoveled her body underground and forgot the case within two days. Wow. Now, that's, so that kind of thing, that kind of statement, that kind of description of this particular case is mentioned in a lot of newspapers, but they don't have a name for her. And there's a lot of debate since no real name is attached to it, and it has so many similarities

when you really look into it to Emma Smith's case. The one we just talked about, a lot of researchers wonder if these two cases are actually just a jumbled misrepresentation of Emma's case. And this second case is just pieces of the real Emma case that changed a bit to represent another fictional victim. Okay. Because you, I can't, I couldn't find reports of it in the year 1887. I'm, there might be some. Right. But it's just interesting. Well, you have to wonder too, like, was that a filler article? Yeah, you don't know. Because, well, that's the thing. They're in a lot of newspapers, though. And in London. They're in, it's, she's mentioned that that case is mentioned in a lot

of different newspapers all over the place. Do you think it could have just been like the hype about the case and like, well, there's another one. And it definitely could have. That's the thing. But then I was like, why is it getting mentioned so much? I can believe that like we jumbled Emma into another fictional victim just because of the hype. I can get that. But then I came across because I was like really obsessed with this and I really went crazy one night. And I came across this parliamentary debate from November 14th, 1888, where a guy named Mr. Pickergill, who was a member of parliament at the time brought up the existence of a woman being brutally mutilated and murdered the Christmas before Emma Smith.

So Mr. Pickersgill brings up, he's like talking about Sir Charles Warren, who was, this is really funny, Sir Charles Warren, I had to talk to John about this because he was a criminal justice major too. He was an answer to many of my criminal justice tests in college. Like as soon as I saw that name, I was like, oh, that guy. Yeah. He, so what they're doing in this debate, he talks about the metropolitan police force and how he is running it amid what they refer to as the mutilation series. And in this debate, it states, quote, two, at least of the murders in the East End did not belong to what we might perhaps call the mutilation series. So long ago as Christmas week last, a woman was murdered in the streets of Whitechapel, and again on Easter Tuesday, another unfortunate,

woman, while passing by White Chapel Church, was done to death by a gang of three men. She lived long enough to state her story so far. It was perfectly clear that these crimes did not belong to the abnormal series, which was now baffling our detective system, but they rather pointed to that disorderly condition of the public streets. So this, to me, this is a member of parliament in 1888, talking about Emma and talking about one other case that happened sometime around Christmas the year before. Yeah, that's a valuable source.

It feels like he's mentioning that fairy, fay. Yeah. And this also illustrates how people in the press were likely trying to connect these murders to Jack the Ripper at the time. But even they state that it was like even the parliament debate, they're stating these are clearly not connected. But instead, just show how terribly dangerous the East End was at the time. Yeah, exactly.

So as far back as the. Then they were being like, no, I don't think these two are part of the mutilation series. I think they're just showing how shitty things are and how we're not investigating these crimes properly. I mean, there you have it. So that to me shows me, Emma's not part of this series to me. And neither is potentially. And neither is Fairy Faye. So bringing us back to August 30th, there's also another woman named Martha, who is like the third one after Emma, I believe.

They try to connect her a lot to it. That one has no connection to me. So I didn't even go into it because it doesn't connect to this case even slightly, in my opinion. Okay. I also wish that instead of Jane Doe, we said Fairy Fay for everybody. I know it's a really pretty way to describe someone. It is. It's like more, it just like feels better than Jane Doe.

It's just nice, you know. So bringing us back to August 30th when Polly Nichols met her unfortunate end. There were cries for justice and the police wanted a suspect, obviously. They began speaking to sex workers in the area and women who, who they would have been friends with the victim, to ask if they knew of any terrible men who could have done this, like, have you run into any bad clients? Many of these women had one name to say.

And it was John or Jack Pyser. Better known for his nickname, Leather Apron. What? He was a boot finisher, which is why he often wore a leather apron, and that's what they called him. That sounds so intense. I'm a boot finisher.

I'm a boot finisher. He was a true asshole. He used sex. sex workers, but also blackmailed them and physically assaulted them brutally. Fuck this guy. They were scared of him and conveyed this to the police. One newspaper described him as, quote, a more ghoulish and devilish brute than can be found in all the pages of shocking fiction.

Whoa. Inspector Joseph Helson of Scotland Yard said, quote, a man named Jack Pizer, alias leather apron, has for some considerable period been in the habit of ill-using, and they referred to them as prostitutes in this and other parts of the metropolis. He went on the on, he actually went on the run when he heard that he was a person of interest. I will say right now, I don't believe leather apron is the guy. You don't, I don't think a lot of people believe leather apron is the guy. He's just an asshole. I'm sure some people do, but I do not. Now, meanwhile, the police were a mess at this time. In August 1888, the head of the criminal investigation department of the Metropolitan Police Force

resigned right before Nichols was killed. So it was right before she was killed. Not good. The criminal investigation department, or CID, were run by detective inspectors, and their job was to investigate crimes that had already occurred, as opposed to the other side of the Metropolitan Police Force,

which the police constables patrolling beats, were there to prevent crime from happening in the first place. So one side was preventing crime. The other side was the, we deal with it after it happens. So the head of the criminal investigations department resigned right before Nichols was murdered and in stepped a guy named Robert Anderson. So Anderson worked for years in Secret Service and spy circles and was placed into the role of chief of the CID in August 1888. Now, as luck would have it, and the Ripper case is full of that luck, as we will see in further installments of this. Anderson was a fucking mess in August 1888 too.

He was so over-exhausted from his various dealings and work that he was on the brink of a nervous breakdown and a possible physical breakdown. Because he was like, he had a hundred different jobs. He was the head of all these different departments. He was like strong out to the furthest. Right. So it got so bad that his doctor at this time told him, you need to take a couple of weeks off and rest. Or like, they were literally like, you need to separate from your work. for two full weeks or you may die.

Like literally, you might die. So he listened. It's like it's exhaustion. Yeah, he listened and he left for Switzerland to take a vacation for two weeks. Perfect place to go. It really is. On the brink of a mental collapse, go to Switzerland. Head to Switzerland.

He left on September 7th. So now the new head of the criminal investigations department in charge of investigating this heinous crime and whether it was the work of a killer who'd strike again is in Switzerland. Switzerland. Great. And the day after he leaves, another murder occurred. No. And that's where we're going to leave you for part one.

All right. With the head of the criminal injustice, the criminal investigations department in Switzerland on a doctor-ordered holiday so he doesn't die from stress. Whoie. What did they say in Hannah Montana? You do doggy. I was going to say, I do not know. Yeah, I wasn't asking you. I wish I should have known that.

I wasn't asking you. You don't know. Oh, my goodness, dude. So that is, that's the beginning of Jack the Ripper. We are going to talk about Annie Chapman next, Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddows. We're going to, we're going to get into it. And I think, hopefully, if this is four parts, the fourth part will be us going deep into suspects and theories and all that. So don't worry, we're going to take the time on that.

But, yeah, that's our first victim. Mary or Polly is what she was known to as people who loved her. Polly Nichols. There's like so sad overall. It's really sad. This whole thing is sad. Like devastating. There's a lot of like really getting into Annie Chapman next to like it's just really sad, sad a life basically.

All these women I feel just had like the saddest lead up to the most brutal end. Yeah. It really is. It's just like all of it is really brutal. But I'm going to link all five of those books that I mentioned. And I'm sure by part two, I will have added more to your reading list on top of that. People are going to have to get new bookshelves after this. You're going to have to get an entire shelf that's just for Jack the Ripper stuff.

I mean, people are Ripperologists. People absolutely, like, dedicate their lives to this. So I get it. I used to not get that. I get it. Oh, I get it. When you become, like, so enthralled. And especially with a unsolved case that has so many theories,

I get it. Well, that's the thing. I used to, like, I always thought it was an interesting case, but I was like, how can you really be a riparologist? How much evidence can you really be looking at and all this? And then when you start diving into it, you're like, holy shit. It's like overwhelming. I remember my sophomore or junior year writing like a silly paper about it, you know, just a high school paper and being like, oh my God, like, how am I going to get all this information in one paper? And I very much did not. I very much did not. I did not use it. Well, the amount of witnesses that are involved, the amount of people who saw these women at different times and could state what they saw is really interesting.

Newspaper.com, I'm telling you, is like, woo. It's a gold mine. I have been, and they're not, they don't pay us just so you know. Like, I'm just like. No, we pay them. Yeah, I pay them and I will continue to. Because it's a great research source. And finding these old newspapers that were written at the time.

I know. And in the panic and in the vernacular that was used, it's just all like, I couldn't get enough. I was printing out so many of them and Jem was like, please stop. It puts you there. Oh, it's wild. Like you said, like with the vernacular and everything. And it's real.

It is, yeah. It makes it real because sometimes it's hard. You know, over 100 years ago, it's hard to put yourself in this as like a reality. And then when you start reading the newspapers and reading these witness statements and the coroner's reports and coroner's inquests, there's, you're like, holy shit, this really happened. Yeah. This is a real thing that happened.

And it's really fucking. brutal and really awful. And these women, it's so sad. But there's also, there's a couple of websites I'm going to link to that are just like fascinating and you guys will get just taken down the rabbit hole with them. There's like Ripper Casebook and a couple of other ones that I really want you to go see because they're just wealth of information. They have a lot of the inquests and all that. So, and actually one of them, after I found that parliamentary debate, I was kept searching further. And I found that this other website had also found that parliamentary debate. So I was like, cool, okay, so it's real. I was like, that's fun. But yeah, I'll link all of those, link all the books,

and get ready, because it's going to get worse and worse. I apologize. In the meantime, we do hope that you keep listening. And we hope you keep it weird, but not so weird is Whitechapel in 1880, baby. It got better, guys, I promise.