625. Jack The Ripper: Horror in Whitechapel (Part 2)

17:55Dominic Sandbrook:So all of this means that it's a tough case to solve. Police forces today find such cases very difficult to solve. But in 1888, the CID, the Criminal Investigation Department, they are only 10 years old. They can't test blood. There's no fingerprint bureau. That doesn't get opened until 1901. and they don't have a science laboratory. They don't have any form of laboratory and they won't have one for another 40 years. So as Philip Sugden, to quote him, says, the odds were in favour of Jack the Ripper from the very beginning. You don't have to believe there's a cover-up or a conspiracy. It would have been a very difficult case to solve.

18:32Tom Holland:But also, just to throw into the mix, there's also the evident fact that the murder is incredibly audacious, very opportunistic, and clearly, I think, very lucky. Yes, I think so. These are all factors that are making it more difficult for the police.

18:46Dominic Sandbrook:Exactly. So now at this stage, the police, I think, it's just two murders as far as they're concerned, if you count Martha Tabram, and they see no great cause for alarm. So Sir Charles Warren has been on holiday in France, and they've just brought in a new guy, Dr. Robert Anderson, as assistant commissioner and head of CID. But on the 7th of September, he leaves for a month's holiday in Switzerland. When he takes the job, he says, sure, I'll take the job, but I'd like to go on holiday in Switzerland first. And they later get a lot of stick for this. But of course, it never occurs to them at the time that these, you know, apparently inconsequential killings in the East End will become defining stories of late Victorian Britain.

19:29Dominic Sandbrook:Why would it? As far as they're concerned, these are two kind of homeless women or whatever had been murdered. So what? They've gone on holiday. But the newspapers, I think it's pretty clear, are itching for the next installment because they can see that this is going to be a big story.

19:42Tom Holland:Because this is how the Victorian publishing industry works, isn't it? Through installments.

19:48Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah.

19:48Tom Holland:And if you're kind of waiting for the next chapter in the story, then when it happens, you're going to go massive with it. Of course.

19:58Dominic Sandbrook:And you get a sense of them. They're desperate for it to happen. So the East London Advertiser, we've quoted that already. This came on the streets, this newspaper, on the morning of Saturday, the 8th of September. Throughout the week, the interest in the Whitechapel murder has been kept at fever heat. The murderer must creep out from somewhere. He must patrol the streets in search of his victims. Doubtless, he's out night by night. Every woman in those parts goes in nightly danger of her life as long as he remains at large. So here's a thought. Yeah. What if it's a newspaper editor? To improve circulation.

20:33Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah. That's a good thought, actually. Throw that into the mix. Listeners can let Tom know what they think of that suggestion. No need to let me know. Just let Tom know personally.

20:41Tom Holland:I think I might have contributed what is very unusual in Ripperology, an original theory there.

20:47Dominic Sandbrook:Wow, that's exciting. Well, listen, even as people were reading those words in the East London Advertiser, that the murderer must creep out, he must strike again, on that Saturday morning, the news is spreading that just as predicted, the Ripper has struck again.

21:03Tom Holland:Well, Dominic, the Whitechapel murderer.

21:05Dominic Sandbrook:Yes, of course, you're right. He's not yet the Ripper. so the scene is 29 Hanbury Street in Spitalfields and it's on the north side of the street we're in a dilapidated three-story house at number 29 almost every room of this house is rented by a different family and that tells its own story so it's a real warren of people and to picture the house at the back of the house there are three stone steps that go down into a little yard and in the yard there is an outside toilet and there's a woodshed and the whole thing is enclosed by a wooden fence. It's very tight. It's very narrow. And that Saturday morning, the 8th of September, some of the people living in the house get up very early because it's market day and they're going to work.

21:48Dominic Sandbrook:As you said before, this is going to be a theme of this whole story. Yeah. And one of them is a guy who's a carman, which is a kind of cart driver, called John Davis. He's a little man with a stoop and he rents the attic and he lives in the attic with his family. And he gets up when the Spitalfield church clock strikes 5.45am. His wife makes him a cup of tea because he's going off to the Leadenhall Market. He goes downstairs and he notices that the door to the street is wide open. Now that's nothing unusual. There's so many people living in the house. They're coming and going. They're working odd hours and things.

22:24Dominic Sandbrook:So he shuts that door. Then he goes to the back door. The back door is closed. He goes out of the back door into the yard because he just wants to take some air before he goes off to work. And he steps outside and he sees something terrible. It's the body of a woman sprawled on her back between the steps and the fence. And he rushes back through the house and into the street. He hails some workmen. The workmen come and look. They're very shaken. They go off to find a policeman. And by the time the policeman, Inspector Joseph Chandler, arrives, the place is packed. So the house is suddenly alive.

22:58Dominic Sandbrook:There's loads of people in the corridors and the hall and stuff. But no one's gone out into the yard. They've left it alone. So he pushes through and he goes into the yard. He's the first person to inspect the body. And to quote his written report, and of course this will be very gruesome, so if you're listening to this in the car with small children, I mean, frankly, why are you listening to a podcast about Jack the Ripper with small children? But anyway, you've been warned. He said, I at once proceeded to number 29 Hanbury Street, and in the backyard found a woman lying on her back, dead, left arm resting on left breast, legs drawn up, abducted, small intestines and flap of the abdomen lying on the right side, above right shoulder, attached by a cord with the rest of the intestines inside the body.

23:42Dominic Sandbrook:Two flaps of skin from the lower part of the abdomen lying in a large quantity of blood above the left shoulder, throat cut deeply from left and back in a jagged manner right around throat. So it's a hideous spectacle and it's confirmed by the police surgeon, Dr. George Baxter Phillips, who's very highly respected and in his 50s, and he's an important person. Some of his thoughts about who might have done this kind of run right through this case. Phillips thinks that it's possible that the victim was strangled first and then there was this terrible savage cut in her throat. And that is one of the factors that would have stopped there

24:20Tom Holland:being kind of excessive blood loss.

24:23Dominic Sandbrook:Exactly. And then the really shocking thing, the really gory thing, the abdomen was cut open and basically the intestines were taken out and placed by the victim's shoulder. And then Dr. Phillips finds that the victim's uterus, most of her bladder and part of her vagina were completely removed with a kind of clean cut and taken away. now of course I've called her the victim but this was let's remind ourselves a living breathing woman with an inner life of her own and her name was Annie Chapman and we will be talking about her life and what brought her to this position on our bonus episode for club members along with the lives of Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes two of the other victims so if you're not a member of the Restless History Club you can sign up at therestlesshistory.com and you'll find out about these lives and what they tell us about the late Victorian world.

25:18Dominic Sandbrook:But a quick summary, just for now, about Annie. She was 47. She'd had a very tragic life. Her father was a soldier and then a kind of a manservant. She'd been born in West London. She'd married a coachman. And as actually with Polly Nichols, the curse is alcoholism. She's been a drinker from a young age. she has three children but she ends up separating from her husband because of drink because of disorderly conduct and whatnot by the time she gets to 1888 she's very badly off she's ill with tuberculosis as well isn't she yeah tuberculosis she's kind of drifting from one dos house to another we can discuss in the bonus episode whether or not she is a prostitute what we do know is on the afternoon of the 7th of september she'd run out of money she said to a friend of hers i need to go and get some money otherwise i shall have no lodgings so very like polly nichols i mean almost identical exactly she did get some money whether through begging or through selling sexual services we don't know but then she spent the money on drink instead of lodgings and that decision cost her her life so again like polly yeah because she was kicked out of her lodging house on 35 dorset street she goes out just before 2 a.m onto the streets probably to earn the coppers for a bed and her last words I shall soon be back don't let the bed

26:41Tom Holland:I said Dominic right from the moment that Annie Chapman's body is discovered the police recognise that they are dealing with the same killer who had dispatched Polly definitely and probably Martha before her yes and they assigned to the case the same inspector who is handling the investigation into Polly Nicholls' death and this is a guy called Frederick Abberline who is age 45 he's from Dorset the son of a clerk and he is often produced isn't he in um kind of popular versions of the ripper story and he's kind of portrayed as an alcoholic or weirdly obsessed with prostitutes or being comically incompetent although um in the the film from hell uh he's portrayed by johnny depp as an opium addict who sees glimpses into the truth of the actual case um and you know johnny has his very fine features and his cheekbones and everything.

27:38Tom Holland:In reality, Abiline had the appearance of a bank manager. So he's very stocky. He's very round-faced. And he has an absolutely colossal Victorian moustache.

27:51Dominic Sandbrook:He does. Yeah, we like a good moustache on this show. And that dears Abiline to me, I have to say. I think Abiline is really, really hard done by in the sort of pop history versions of this case. because all the evidence we have is that he was a very, very good policeman. He had risen through the ranks precisely because he was competent, efficient, reliable. And he knows Spitalfields at the back of his hand, doesn't he? He genuinely does. He's an old East End hand. He'd been in charge of the CID in Whitechapel in the late 1870s and early 1880s. He is the obvious man to put on this case because he knows the area, he has contacts there, and he will go on to work incredibly hard on this case.

28:32Dominic Sandbrook:He goes for days without sleep and he's drowning in paper and stuff and he's doing his absolute best. So it's really harsh to portray him as this sort of prostitute-crazed drug addict. It's bonkers.

28:48Tom Holland:Yeah, and I think he is highly regarded by his peers and he does come up with two quite influential theories as to who the Ripper might have been, which again we will be exploring in due course.

29:00Dominic Sandbrook:So the problem that he faces, as before, is that there are no clues. The local tenants, the people living in 29 Hanbury Street have seen nothing. This body has just appeared in the yard overnight and they don't know how it got there. None of the neighbours, of course the police talk to every single neighbour, none of them have seen anybody acting suspiciously or with bloodstained hands or clothes or whatever. However, there are three important witnesses, so we should take a bit of time to look at what these people say. The first one is a market porter called John Richardson, and his mother rented the ground floor rooms at number 29.

29:38Dominic Sandbrook:Now, she'd had a break-in, very common in this area, and so every market morning he would go to look, just check the door of her cellar to see that it was locked. And he'd done so this morning. he'd actually gone out into the yard just before five o 'clock in the morning to fix his boot and he didn't see a body so that means that annie must have died after five o 'clock unless he did it well unless he did it i suppose so we've got quite a narrow window of time now because that bloke who found the body remember he heard the spitalfields clock toll 5 45 so we're narrowing down the window second witness is a local woman called elizabeth Long.

30:22Dominic Sandbrook:And at about 5.30 in the morning, she'd been walking along Hanbury Street to Spitalfields Market, and she'd seen a man and woman talking outside number 29. And she later went to the mortuary, and she positively identified the woman as Annie Chapman. I mean, that's a very narrow window then. Yes.

30:42Tom Holland:It's only 15 minutes, isn't it? I mean, less than 15 minutes.

30:45Dominic Sandbrook:So if she's right, and I think she probably is right, then the murder must be committed between about 5.30 and 5.45. and not only does she say this woman was Annie Chapman, she gives us a pretty good description of the man that was talking to Annie. And I'll quote her. He was dark complexioned and wearing a brown deer stalker hat. I think he was wearing a dark coat. He was a man over 40 as far as I could tell. He seemed to be a little taller than the deceased. Now Annie was quite short. She was five foot tall. He's only a little taller so he's maybe 5 '3", 5 '4", 5 '5", something like that. he looked to me like a foreigner as well as I could make out hard to say what that means he looked what I should call shabby genteel Philip Sugden in his brilliant book on the Jack the Ripper case says this man was the murderer this is what the murderer looks like and actually in the next couple of episodes we'll be describing other witnesses and other murders who see similar looking men short moustache deer stalker hat you know This is a common kind of description, isn't it?

31:51Dominic Sandbrook:It's a common profile, Tom. Yeah. And one thing that he is not, by the way, he's not tall. And there's no sense whatsoever, really important and probably disappointing for the conspiracy theorist community among our listeners. He's not an aristocrat. He's not wearing a top hat or an opera cloak. He's not carrying a medical bag. No, he's not carrying a medical bag.

32:12Tom Holland:He is none of those things. Although witnesses will, in due course, claim to have seen such a man.

32:18Dominic Sandbrook:They will indeed. Yes, we will be coming to that. Now, I said there were three witnesses. The third witness is a carpenter called Albert Kadosh. He lived next door to number 29, number 27. He got up early and he said at about 5.20 or so, he couldn't be sure, he went out into the yard and he heard low voices from over the fence and the only word he could make out was no. And then a few minutes later, he said he heard a noise like, and I quote, something falling against the fence. then he left for work and as he passed spitalfield's church he looked up and he saw the clock and he noted that it was 5 32 so that would seem to sort of tally you know mrs long sees the couple talking round about 5 30 then he similar time hears people talking in the yard and then he hears someone falling against a fence and then at 5 32 he looks up and sees the clock you know they're probably out each of them is out probably by a couple of minutes because people can never be precise about these things, but it seems to tally.

33:18Dominic Sandbrook:So remember that Annie had gone out to earn some money just around 2am. So there are two possibilities. Possibility number one, Hallie Rubenhold in her book, The Five, she believes all the women were killed as they slept. So she thinks Annie just went into the yard of number 29. She lay down in a corner, went to sleep and was murdered as she slept. Philip Sutton, on the other hand, she went out to solicit to get customers sometime around 5.30, just before 5.30, she fell in with the killer. He took her into the yard, or she took him into the yard rather. Then he probably strangled her, lowered her to the ground, cut her throat, and then started the ripping process.

33:57Tom Holland:Mrs. Long's testimony would suggest that is probably more feasible, wouldn't it?

34:03Dominic Sandbrook:Definitely would. And I don't think Hallie Rubenhold mentions Mrs. Long's testimony in her book, The Five, but I find it quite convincing. So a couple of quick observations from this before we take the break. Number one, as you've said, Tom, the killam is incredibly daring. I mean, there's no doubt about that. The sun rose that day at 5.23. So it is light when he is going about his business. And it is a market morning. There are loads of people moving around. Even as he and Annie are in the yard, people are getting up in the house and moving about.

34:37Tom Holland:Yeah, which makes the question of motivation all the more striking. I mean, what is so desperate that he would take such incredible risks? Are the risks not the thrill? Is that not the thrill of it for him, do you think? But I'm just thinking in terms of the police.

34:50Dominic Sandbrook:Yes.

34:51Tom Holland:I mean, these are kind of dimensions of psychology that they're not really attuned to as yet.

34:57Dominic Sandbrook:Of course not. They don't employ psychologists or anything like that. No. Number two, the killer is incredibly quick and he obviously knows the area. so if he did this crime you know and did the disemboweling and stuff he's done it in a matter of moments you know no hesitation or anything he's very fast and then he gets away so quickly and there's a really interesting little clue there was a tap in the yard with a pail of clean water underneath and it was still there after he had left in other words he didn't clean himself he didn't turn the tap on because it would have had blood in it so in other words he has left covered presumably in blood.

35:34Dominic Sandbrook:I mean, I know you don't bleed that much if you've been strangled and then stabbed, but the disemboweling would be gory work, right? Yeah. He's got away through the Warren of Streets carrying some of Annie Chapman's internal organs without being spotted. So he must know the area, right? Here's a spoiler alert. I think if you're a member of the royal family, you're going to get lost in that area and you're going to be spotted pretty quickly,

36:01Tom Holland:frankly or a distinguished former prime minister or whatever yeah or if you're the elephant man

36:06Dominic Sandbrook:frankly people are going to spot you yeah right finally the killer knows what he's doing this is really really important thing dr phillips said to take out those internal organs would have taken me an hour you know to do the surgery to find them all of this the killer must have done it in moments in minutes, you know, five minutes, three or four minutes. The coroner at the inquest said he must have been somebody who had considerable anatomical skill and knowledge. You know, he basically knew what he wanted, where to find it, and how to use his knife. No unskilled person could have known where to find it, this is the victim's uterus, or could have recognized it when it was found.

36:50Dominic Sandbrook:Now, that doesn't mean the victim must be a doctor or a surgeon, but it does mean it's somebody who knows a fair bit about anatomy and knows how to use a knife.

37:02Tom Holland:So perhaps a butcher or a medical student or perhaps a slaughter man working in one of the knackers yards or whatever.

37:11Dominic Sandbrook:Exactly. So all interesting clues. Anyway, Annie is buried in secret on the 14th of September. And by this point, Whitechapel is in a state of near hysteria and will come back to the heart of the East End. Off to the break. Zootopia 2 has come home to Disney+. Let's go!

37:31Tom Holland:Get ready for a new case. We're the greatest partners of all time! New friends. Kelly the Snake. And your last name? The Snake. Dream Team. And new habitats. Zootopia has a secret reptile population. You can watch the record-breaking phenomenon at home. Zootopia 2, now available on Disney Plus Rated PG. And right now you can get Disney Plus and Hulu for just$4.99 a month for three months with a special limited time offer. Ends March 24th. After three months, plan auto renews at$12.99 a month.

37:57Dominic Sandbrook:Terms apply.

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38:13Tom Holland:Uber isn't just a ride or a meal delivered. It's showing up no matter what. Like for your long distance friends, bringing soup when they're sick, sending flowers when they're down.

38:25Dominic Sandbrook:When it really matters, whatever it is, you show up. Where there's a will, we're on our way.

38:32Tom Holland:Uber, on our way. Download the app today.

38:41Tom Holland:Hello and welcome back to The Rest is History. We are in Whitechapel, East London, and people on the streets of the East End and beyond are coming to terms with the fact that a second, perhaps even third, gruesome murder has been committed by the man who is not yet called Jack the Ripper, but is already a massive star of the popular press. And the news breaks during the course of Saturday the 8th and journalists, editors go berserk. And we were talking in the first half, Dominic, I mean, this essentially is their dream scenario. You've got another murder and it seems to be even gorier than the previous one.

39:25Tom Holland:So in our first episode, I quoted the Evening Star, which is the stuff about a ghoul stalking the streets of London and so on. This is when it runs. And the headline of that article was horror upon horror. Whitechapel is panic stricken at another fiendish crime. And again, you can see that is absolutely calculated to fly off the newsstands. And it has to be said that the slightly posher, more quality broadsheets, as they would describe themselves, you know, they're piling in as well. So the Daily Telegraph, still going strong today, at the time the best-selling newspaper in the world, it also buys into this kind of notion of the Gothic, of the supernatural.

40:12Tom Holland:It tells its readers that the East End is haunted by, and I quote, beings who look like men, but are rather demons, vampires. And the result is exactly what the press wants. Mass hysteria, mass excitement. I demand to know more because there is a huge mystery. Who is doing this?

40:35Dominic Sandbrook:There is absolutely. So there are huge crowds at the murder sites or all the murder sites. There were crowds outside the mortuary, outside police stations. Reporters said that the crowds were particularly made up of women, and women would bring their children with them. And that's actually a phenomenon that you often see. I mean, we've seen it in recent British history, crowds of women outside murder sites and police stations and so on.

41:00Tom Holland:Well, I think also, I gather that women are overwhelmingly the consumers of true crime podcasts.

41:07Dominic Sandbrook:They are indeed, yeah. Yeah, and going back to the golden age of detective fiction, largely read by women, exactly so. Right to this day, true crime shows are watched or listened to by women. Interesting. I don't really have an answer for why that is, but it just is what it is. Some locals saw this as an opportunity to make money. So as ghoulish as it sounds, the neighbours on Hanbury Street opened up their houses and they would charge visitors a penny ahead to come and look at the yard, to peer out at the yard of number 29. There was a man on Whitechapel Road who ran a sort of despondent little waxworks exhibition.

41:41Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah, the poor man's Madame Tissords. Yeah, and he got some red paint and daubed it on three waxworks and he charged people a penny to come and see the George Yard, Bucks Row and Ambry Street victims. And there are loads of stories of kind of copycats and false alarms and people almost being lynched. So that very first evening, a man punches a policeman in the pub or something and is basically taken to the police station. And the word gets around, we've got the Whitechapel murderer. And so people pile in and they're desperate to lynch this bloke. Basically, he's just had a fight in a pub.

42:14Tom Holland:That's all it is. And there are some kind of properly suspicious people as well that the police are feeling their collars, right?

42:22Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah, there are. So in the next sort of week or two, the police arrested nine different people and interrogated them on the suspicion that they might be the killer. And it's tempting to laugh at the police and say, oh, they got it wrong, which they did with all of these men. But it's instructive to look at who they arrested because it shows you how their minds are working. So to give a couple of examples, there's a German barber called Charles Ludwig who was arrested with a prostitute. And he was carrying a clasp knife, a razor, and a pair of scissors with him. Yeah, that's suspicious. You could say the tools of his trade, or you could say she was terrified when police finally found them and she was worried that he was going to murder her.

43:05Dominic Sandbrook:And, you know, he fits, to some extent, he fits the bill, right? It makes sense. Then there's a butcher, a pork butcher from Switzerland called Jakob Eichenschmidt. He was a drinker. He suffered depression. He would often sort of meaningfully sharpen his long knife at people, which I think didn't inspire great confidence.

43:25Tom Holland:Again, suspicious behavior.

43:27Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah. And also he'd been in and out of lunatic asylums. and he had a strange habit of, he would sometimes get hold of Bullock's entrails and post them to his old shop as a sort of threat.

43:39Tom Holland:I think the evidence is stacking up. And it's also interesting that both of those men are foreign. Yes. And Mrs. Long had said that the person that she'd seen talking to Annie Chapman, he looked to me like a foreigner. Yeah. And this sense of whether the Ripper is a foreigner or not becomes quite important to editorials and so on because there's a kind of assumption that no Englishman could possibly be doing this, that it must be someone from abroad.

44:05Dominic Sandbrook:Absolutely right. Absolutely. And the most significant of these early suspects is also somebody with an overseas background. And he is a shoemaker, a Jewish shoemaker called John Pizer, who was arrested on the 10th. And he is the man who was mentioned in the last episode because his nickname was Leather Apron. and in the days and weeks since the Polly Nichols murder his name or his nickname had appeared a lot in the press and the press had said there's this bloke apparently called Leather Apron who goes around harassing prostitutes and threatening them and beating them up.

44:40Tom Holland:It's such a terrifying name isn't it? And I do think that in these cases a suspect with a terrifying name ramps up the tension massively.

44:48Dominic Sandbrook:Oh definitely it does. So there was a hunt for this bloke Leather Apron they find him at last and he does tick a lot of boxes. He's five foot four. He has a very strong Polish accent and he has a history of violence with a shoemaker's knife. And the police genuinely, I think at first think, this is the guy. This is him, yeah. But unfortunately, he has a pretty cast iron alibi for Polly Nichols' murder because he'd been staying at a lodging house and he'd gone outside with the owner of the lodging house to watch a fire at London Docks. They'd watched it in the distance and the bloke from the lodging house said, I absolutely know for sure I spent the evening with this bloke because we stood together watching the fire and talking about it.

45:29Dominic Sandbrook:And with all of these people, with almost all of these people, they were still in custody when future murders happened so the police could be certain that it wasn't them. But people start to mock the police so that the humorous magazine Punch produced a kind of parody called A Detective's Diary, and they said, you know, oh, we heard that there's a rumor that sat there wore a blue coat so he arrested everybody who wore blue coats the blue coat people were innocent we heard it might be a soldier we found a small drummer boy we arrested him and all this kind of thing which is sort of mildly amusing but it's not really fair because actually there is definitely method in their madness

46:06Tom Holland:yeah I mean I think that if you're kind of going around thrusting daggers and knives in the face of prostitutes

46:13Dominic Sandbrook:right yeah I would arrest them yeah correct exactly so actually of these people they arrested three of them had been in asylums. Three of them were widely regarded as being of unsound mind. Five of them knew about anatomy. There might be butchers or slaughter men or whatever. Interestingly, only three of them actually had been born abroad. So the element about being a foreigner, she's vague about that. She can't really explain why she thinks he's a foreigner. So the police clearly don't put as much weight on that as they do on other elements of her testimony.

46:48Tom Holland:Because obviously the police know that English people are perfectly capable of doing murders because they're arresting murderers all the time.

46:55Dominic Sandbrook:Yes, I think that's fair actually. Now, this business about being a foreigner though, it is incendiary because it's so dangerous for one group in particular. And this takes us back to the social background of Whitechapel. Whitechapel has been transformed in the last 10 years in particular by Jewish immigration. so in 1881 czar alexander ii was assassinated inst petersburg and that kicked off wave upon wave of repressive anti-semitic legislation and then pogroms in the russian empire and people are fleeing that and fleeing to britain in particular on the united states so in 20 years the russian and Polish population of London went from less than 9 ,000 people to almost 54 ,000 people, concentrated above all in East End neighborhoods like Spitalfields or Mile End or Whitechapel.

47:52Dominic Sandbrook:And if you read Jerry White's brilliant book on 19th century London, he talks about how there's an undercurrent of antisemitism all through this period. In some ways, quite small scale stuff, it's kind of broken windows, it's graffiti, it's newspaper cartoons, it's kind of punch ups on the street and stuff. But, you know, I said in the previous episode, there's been an economic depression really since the early 1870s. So there's a lot of job competition. There's a lot of anxiety about people coming over here and stealing our jobs and whatnot. And so it's not surprising that straight away some of the newspapers and some people on

48:28Tom Holland:the streets say the killer must be a Jew. And that's one of the reasons why Leather Apron is such a kind of popular candidate to have been the murderer, isn't it? Because he is Jewish. Yes, exactly. Exactly.

48:40Dominic Sandbrook:It's not surprising either that prominent Jews are then keen to push back. So the very first reward that was put up for the killer's capture was put up by Whitechapel's MP, who was a liberal, who was Samuel Montague, who was an Orthodox Jew and was a kind of proto-Zionist. And he put up£100 for the killer. And he was then backed up by a group called the Mile End Vigilance Committee, which will play a bit of a part in this whole series. The Mile End Vigilance Committee was set up by local, largely Jewish traders and shopkeepers. And as we will see, they became nationally famous because they were to receive a letter and a hideous gift from somebody who may well have been the killer himself.

49:24Dominic Sandbrook:From hell. From hell, exactly. Now, the police are not terribly keen on groups like this. First of all, the Home Office don't like rewards. Arguing about rewards, whether or not to give a reward, is a big, big part of the kind of police investigation. The Home Office hate rewards because they say, basically, if somebody knew who the killer was, they'd tell us because his crimes are so horrible. And almost by definition, anyone who gives us information hoping for a reward is probably a hoaxer, and it's probably a false lead. And actually, the weird thing is that Abilene and his colleagues, I mean, on the one hand, they wish they could have more clues.

50:02Dominic Sandbrook:But on the other, they actually have too much information. Yeah. They have so many false leads and so many rumors and allegations and stuff.

50:13Tom Holland:Well, I suppose, Dominic, that the fact that, you know, you were saying how there's a mass market now for the press means that there are vastly more numbers who can read these stories and say, oh, it could be this or it could be that. Or I've got this idea or I've got that clue. So the letters just keep coming in, right? Of course.

50:29Dominic Sandbrook:And, right, their filing system collapses under the strain. They have no computers. I mean, it's actually the same story, oddly, as what happened in the 1970s in West Yorkshire with the Yorkshire Ripper. Again, a pre-computer world where they were totally overwhelmed by too much information. So the days go by, there is no breakthrough, and the pressure begins to build on the authorities. So by the 14th of September, the star is calling the Home Secretary, Henry Matthews, and I quote, a feeble manta bank who would pose and simper over the brink of a volcano. It's really like reading one of my old columns, actually.

51:05Dominic Sandbrook:Well, I mean, it's amazing to know that Home Secretaries

51:07Tom Holland:were getting abuse back then, as they do now.

51:10Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah. And even the Telegraph, a Tory paper, which should be supporting him, said of Mr. Matthews, we've had enough of Mr. Matthews, who knows nothing, has heard nothing, and does not intend to do anything. I mean, plus ça change. even so you get to late september and there is a sense i think that maybe the panic is easing the authorities have weathered the storm things are you know the killer has not yet struck again it's a fine summer you know the weather has been dry people are out and about some of the fear has dissipated and then on the 22nd of september another murder grips the public imagination Another woman has been killed.

51:52Dominic Sandbrook:Her name is Jane Biedemore. But she has been stabbed and killed on a fell outside Gateshead in the northeast of England. They're a long way from the East End. A long way, hundreds of miles away. Now, at first, there is speculation she's another victim of the Whitechapel murderer. As it turns out, she was actually murdered by her ex-boyfriend. She dumped him. It was a crime of passion, and he killed her. So like Mariah Martin in the Red Barn. Right. But at the time, people said, well, maybe this killer has moved north. So again, there's a sort of slackening of tension in the East End. And on the 27th of September, the Daily News sent a reporter to Whitechapel, and he wrote a long feature about the atmosphere.

52:38Dominic Sandbrook:And he said, you know, a few days ago, he said, people seem very, very shocked and very frightened. But now he says things are back to normal. And he paints, like, you can look it up online. It's on the kind of casebook, Jack the Ripper casebook website, this story. And he paints a really vivid picture of Whitechapel, the steaming cookshops, the flaring gin palaces and noisy shows, the cheap jacks and shooting galleries, the streaming lights and roar and rattle and hurrying throngs and noisy groups.

53:05Tom Holland:Dominic, we mentioned that it's the entertainment capital of the entire East End. So lots to do.

53:11Dominic Sandbrook:And a lot of eccentric entertainment, shall we say. So he finds people crowding around a performing boy with no legs, for example, or a huge crowd around a trader who's selling trousers for nine shillings. And he stops in Hanbury Street, which is where Annie Chapman had been found. He stops an elderly passerby and he says to this bloke, people don't seem very anxious about these murders. And the guy says to him, no, there's very little anxiety. People, most of them, they think he's gone to Gateshead. But has he gone to Gateshead? because that same day, the 27th, the editor of the Central News Office in London gets a letter written in red ink.

53:53Dominic Sandbrook:And that is the letter, Tom, with which we began the first episode. Do you want to read us a couple of extracts to remind people?

54:00Tom Holland:Yeah, so just to remind people what he said. I keep on hearing the police have caught me, but they won't fix me just yet. I'm down on oars, and I shan't quit ripping them till I do get buckled. Grand work, the last job was. I gave the lady no time to squeal I love my work I want to start again you'll soon hear of me with my funny little games and he said that he'd saved blood from the last job so Annie Chapman to write with but it went thick like glue and I can't use it and then he says the next job I do I shall clip the lady's ears off and send to the police my knife's so nice and sharp I want to get to work right away if i get a chance so we said this is the most notorious letter in the entire history of crime um and the reason for its fame is the sign-off because it ends yours truly jack the ripper don't mind me giving the trade name yes and the reaction of uh the editor at the news agency to begin with is a hoax because obviously there have been lots of other letters that have been obvious hoaxes and so there is the you know this question hanging well was it a hoax or is it real

55:17Dominic Sandbrook:we'll come back to this in the next episode but most experts think it's a hoax the killer never did cut off a victim's ears so he did mutilate a future victim Catherine Eddowes and cut off the lobe of one of her ears but that was a minor thing compared with the other mutilations he carried out Philip Sugden points out that this letter, people can Google it, they can see lots of examples of it online. The punctuation is all over the place, but there is not a single spelling mistake. So Sugden says it seems like the work of an educated man pretending to be an uneducated one. He thinks it's revealing that it's sent to a news agency, not the police.

55:55Dominic Sandbrook:In other words, it's a letter sent not to taunt the police, but to get the maximum possible publicity. And Sugden also notes the postcode, the East Central Postcode, which covered Fleet Street, the offices of the major newspapers. And he thinks this is probably the work of a young reporter who is having a bit of fun and is hoping to generate a story. And that would tally with the Jack the Ripper nickname. Because first of all, the ripping bit of it, the ripper. The newspapers had used the word ripping and ripper a lot. They described the ripping open of the bodies. So for somebody who's immersed in the world of newspapers, that would make sense.

56:40Dominic Sandbrook:And then the second thing, Jack. Jack is the most common name for criminals in the Penny Dreadfuls that I mentioned in the first half. And, of course, monkeys. And monkeys. Well, that occurred to me as well. So when we did our episode about history's greatest monkeys, a lot of them were called Jack. Jacko Macaco, Jack the Signalman, Corporal Jackie, and so on. Jack was a standard name that you reached for, you know, if you were creating a character, should we say. Yeah.

57:07Tom Holland:And there's a hint of a kind of a rogue, a lad, an adventurer as well, isn't there?

57:11Dominic Sandbrook:Jack the Lad, exactly. So one of the most popular figures on the Victorian stage was the 18th century burglar, Jack Shepard. And there was also a kind of urban legend. I mean, it seems mad now that there would be such an urban legend, but it was very popular in the sort of middle of the 19th century. An urban legend of somebody called Spring-Heeled Jack who would kind of leap out and attack young girls and young women. Yeah, and kind of vanish in a blaze of fire. Yeah, and the sort of rumours of this character is the kind of thing kids would tell each other in the playground. There's this boy called Spring-Heeled Jack who kind of leaps out and then vanishes again.

57:47Dominic Sandbrook:The nickname is precisely the kind of nickname I think that a young journalist who goes to the stage a lot, goes to the theatre, reads Penny Dreadfuls, would choose. And it's an exciting, newsworthy name. Yeah, and the evidence for that is that it goes viral, doesn't it? It does go viral, exactly, based purely on this, right? So the editor of the Central News Agency doesn't think it's real, but two days later, he passes it to Scotland Yard anyway and says, you know, you might want to just check this out. And then that very evening comes the most dramatic episode of the whole story, one of the most gruesome nights in London's history.

58:24Dominic Sandbrook:So we'll start in Berner Street in the heart of Whitechapel. It's the evening of Saturday, the 29th of September. And we are at specifically a sort of courtyard called Dutfield's Yard. And it was enclosed by a row of cottages, by a print workshop, and by the International Working Men's Educational Club, which was a socialist club for Russian and Polish Jews. And every Saturday night, this club had debates about socialism and whatnot. and it breaks up the debate breaks up at about 11 30 most people go but a few of them stay upstairs in the reading room to chat now in the other buildings around the yard people are still working so the print workshop people are coming and going the lights are kind of burning at about 12 40 the chairman of the socialist club who's a guy called morris eagle he comes into the yard he's been walking a lady friend home and he can hear someone singing in russian upstairs at the club perfectly normal he goes through the gates he goes through the yard he doesn't notice anything strange in the yard at all so this is i'm telling you this because it gives people a sense of the wind over time then 20 minutes later a man riding a little cart comes into the yard and he's a russian jew called lewis deemschutz he's the steward of the club and he lives there with his wife and he's been out selling jewelry all day and he turns his cart into the yard and almost immediately the pony shies away and he looks down to the right and he sees something huddled by the wall of the club in the darkness and he prods this thing with his whip and it doesn't move and he lights a match and it's a human body and he runs upstairs to the club to get help from his wife and so on and then he runs back and as his wife later told the press i at once recognized it as the body of a woman while to add to my horror i saw a stream of blood she was lying on her back with her head against the wall and the face looked ghastly and a crowd gathers and they lift her head they light a match and they see a gash in her throat they go and get the police the police arrive they bring a doctor the doctor is there by about 1 15 and he says she's been dead for about 20 minutes or half an hour so in other words once again this has happened very very quickly and then um about half an hour later detective inspector reed of the metropolitan and police arrives.

1:00:46Dominic Sandbrook:And eventually they identify this woman. Her name is Elizabeth Stride. We'll tell her story in the bonus episode for our club members, just very briefly. She's an immigrant herself. She's from Gothenburg in Sweden. She'd been a domestic servant. Then almost certainly in Gothenburg, she was a prostitute. She came to England. She married a bloke called Stride. They set up a coffee house which collapsed. Her marriage fell apart. It's a very familiar story. the spiral of poverty, homelessness, and so on. She had cleaning jobs, but she also definitely worked as a prostitute. And she'd probably gone out soliciting that night, hoping to get some money for lodgings.

1:01:28Dominic Sandbrook:Again, a very familiar story. And there are intriguing witness reports that describe her talking to a man. And we'll talk about them next time. But for now, let's rewind to the discovery of the body in Dutfield's yard. So that was just before one o 'clock in the morning, right? but the drama is not yet over so if we move the camera now three quarters of a mile to the west 12 minutes walk away and we're now in another enclosed space mitre square just off all gate which is close to the eastern edge of the city of london and this is a very different field it's not that far away it's only 12 minutes walk but the atmosphere is different this is much more respectable it's a square lined with offices and warehouses and it's pretty empty and it's in the

1:02:15Tom Holland:city of london so there is a different police jurisdiction there it's a much older center of habitation and the name mitre derives from the fact that a priory had stood on the site oh nice

1:02:26Dominic Sandbrook:so it's this dull lonely spot surrounded by offices and warehouses and at 1 30 so we're talking about just over half an hour after Elizabeth Stride's body was found. At 1.30, Police Constable Edward Watkins entered Mitre Square as part of his regular nighttime beat. And he walks into the square and there's no sound but his own footsteps. And he looks around the square and there's nothing. Seems completely deserted. So he leaves the square at the far end and he carries on his beat and it takes him 15 minutes to come round. So now he's come round and he comes back into the square and it's 144 and again he hears nothing and then by his own account I turned sharp round to the right and flashing my light I saw it in front of me a more dreadful sight I never saw it quite knocked me over and he runs towards the nearest lit window which is a warehouse on the far side and there the night watchman is sweeping up and PC Watkins runs in and he shouts, for God's sake, mate, come to my assistance.

1:03:34Dominic Sandbrook:There's another woman cut to pieces. Because for the second time in barely an hour, Jack the Ripper has struck again.

1:03:44Tom Holland:But who, Dominic, has he slain? And what further horrors may lie ahead? And Rest is History Club members can find out right away because the next three episodes, including the final episode in which we will be unmasking the identity of the murderer are available to hear right now and if you would like to hear them too and you're not signed up to the rest of history club then you can go to the rest is history.com and do so there thank you very much dominic thank you everyone for listening goodbye bye-bye

1:04:29Tom Holland:Throughout time, celebration has meant giving. So the Romans at Saturnalia handed out all kinds of gifts. The three Magi handed out gold, frankincense and myrrh. And the Victorians absolutely loved wrapping things up in paper and then tying it up in string.

1:04:47Dominic Sandbrook:John, those are lovely gestures, but I wonder if they're a little bit too extravagant for the typical Christmas morning. So this year, here's my suggestion to our listeners and our viewers. Why not give something a little bit more enlightened? Why not give the gift of the Rest is History Club membership? It's the discerning choice for anybody who prefers a Hannibal to a hamper.

1:05:09Tom Holland:It's ad-free listening. You get a weekly bonus episode. You get early access to live shows and you get exclusive deep dive series.

1:05:18Dominic Sandbrook:Also, on top of that, this year's special gift edition of Rest is History Club membership comes with a sensational exclusive T-shirt. It will make you the envy of all your neighbours and all the cool people in your neighbourhood. If such people exist, will admire you and want to spend more time with you. So just head to therestishistory.com and click on Gifts. That is therestishistory.com and please click on Gifts.

1:05:51Tom Holland:Did Nero really fiddle while Rome burned? Did Oedipus actually have a complex? And how did a quarter of a million spectators at the Circus Maximus get by with only one loo? Welcome to Instant Classics. I'm Mary Beard, historian and contrarian. And I'm Charlotte Higgins, guardian journalist and classicist on the side. Instant Classics is a podcast with one foot in the ancient world and one foot in the present. Each week we dive into the myths, the dramas and the characters of classical Greece and Rome to discover what they still mean to us now, from Greek myth to gladiators and from togas to tragedy.

1:06:29Tom Holland:And if you're as excited about Christopher Nolan's forthcoming Odyssey movie as we are, you may want to join the Instant Classics book club. We're making our own Odyssey through Homer's masterpiece, one book at a time. Instant classics, ancient stories, modern twists and no degree in classics required.