Transcript

Jack The Ripper: History's Darkest Mystery

From The Rest Is History · Episode page · Watch on YouTube

· 1 h 1 min · 10,766 words · 88 timestamped sections

This is the full, timestamped transcript of "Jack The Ripper: History's Darkest Mystery", an episode of The Rest Is History published December 8, 2025 (1 h 1 min, about 10,766 words). It mentions 215 people, works and ideas, including Jack the Ripper, London, Polly Nichols, Polly Nichols, Polly Nichols.

What this episode is about

The narrative delves into the chilling saga of Jack the Ripper, exploring the lives of his victims and the societal context of Victorian London in 1888. The content also sets the stage for revealing a potential identity for the infamous killer, emphasizing the mystery's ongoing intrigue and historical significance.

Key takeaways

  • Jack the Ripper: A Victorian ghoul, weaving through shadows, evading 19th-century crime-fighters like a sinister Houdini.
  • Killer branding: Unsent letter births infamous nickname, embedding Jack in pop culture; authenticity still sniffed out by skeptics.
  • Miller's Court murder: Heart of horror, public's nightmare, killer's vanishing act—scarier than any urban legend.
  • Ripper's mystique: Phantom-like murderer becomes a timeless icon, inspiring stories as twisted as London fog.
  • Victorian duality: Era of innovation masked grotesque underbelly; London's grimy past shadows its gleaming industrial dawn.

Who speaks in this episode?

What is discussed, and when

  1. – 10:00: Jack the Ripper, London, Serial Killer, East End of London
  2. – 20:00: Jack the Ripper, London, White Chapel, Spittlefields
  3. – 30:00: London, East End, White Chapel, Spitalfields
  4. – 40:00: White Chapel, London, inquest, Hotels.com (company)
  5. – 50:00: White Chapel, Mary Ann Nichols (Polly Nichols), London, Polly Nichols
  6. – 1:00:00: Workhouse, Ellen Holland, Wilmont's Lodging House, Ellen Holland
  7. – 1:01:25: Polly Nichols, Polly Nichols, Bucks Row, The Five

Notable quotes from "Jack The Ripper: History's Darkest Mystery"

  • Hive makes the most of the sun with solar panels turning sunlight into greener electricity and enabling you to sell excess back to the grid. And Hives thermostats make it possible for you to.
    about Hive (company) · at
  • And this is the letter Tom that gives the name to somebody who at that point had killed probably two possibly three possibly more women on the streets of White Chapel in an area of the east end of London that was notorious for poverty.
    about Jack the Ripper · at
  • He's actually the first serial killer we know about. I mean presumably there were serial killers before him but he is the first person who is identified as a serial killer in…
    about Serial Killer · at
  • Talked a lot about Jack and of the in the context, but we haven't named, Polly Nichols or Katherine Edos or Hannie Chapman or whatever. And that's something that we will be…
    about Polly Nichols · at
  • Megalopolis that people find both disturbing and fascinating. London at this point, I think, is indisputably the capital not just of the British Empire, but of the world.
    about London · at
  • Aura frames let you relive these memories every day or give them to someone you love. That is our beloved producer Theo pointing at a kebab in Sarah Yeeo. Preload the photos before it.
    about Aura Frames (company) · at
  • Hotels.com just rolled out a game-changing feature called Save Your Way. And it's as simple as it sounds.
    about Hotels.com (company) · at
  • A of a Dickens novel hangs over as you say completely hangs over her story. So Polly Nichols let's call her that. She was born in 1845 just off Fleet Street, which today, it's so grand that very few people can afford to live there. Very.
    about Mary Ann Nichols (Polly Nichols) · at

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

  • Jack the Ripper — Person · Main topic · 15 mentions · first at
    The most notorious serial killer in history, central figure of the podcast episode.
  • Polly Nichols — Person · Primary victim focus (episode case study) · 5 mentions · first at
    The episode reconstructs her identity, last movements, and social context; she is presented as emblematic of late-Victorian poverty and vulnerability.
  • Polly Nichols — Person · Primary victim focus (episode narrative) · 5 mentions · first at
    The episode reconstructs her life, last night, identification, and how her murder catalyzed the Ripper panic.
    Talked a lot about Jack and of the in the context, but we haven't named, Polly Nichols or Katherine Edos or Hannie Chapman or whatever. And that's something that we will be…
  • Polly Nichols — Person · Primary victim discussed (canonical victim) · 4 mentions · first at
    Her murder (31 Aug 1888) is narrated in detail as the first widely recognized 'Ripper' killing; her life story is used to illuminate poverty, homelessness, and vulnerability in late-Victorian London.
    Talked a lot about Jack and of the in the context, but we haven't named, Polly Nichols or Katherine Edos or Hannie Chapman or whatever. And that's something that we will be…
  • Polly Nichols — Person · Victim focus (series emphasis on victims’ lives) · 4 mentions · first at
    Polly Nichols is named as a key victim whose life story is explored to illuminate poverty, homelessness, and social conditions in late-Victorian London.
    Talked a lot about Jack and of the in the context, but we haven't named, Polly Nichols or Katherine Edos or Hannie Chapman or whatever. And that's something that we will be…
  • Polly Nichols — Person · Primary victim focus (episode case study) · 3 mentions · first at
    The episode reconstructs her life and death (Mary Ann Nichols, known as Polly), using her story to illuminate poverty, homelessness, and Victorian social attitudes.
    Talked a lot about Jack and of the in the context, but we haven't named, Polly Nichols or Katherine Edos or Hannie Chapman or whatever. And that's something that we will be…
  • Mary Ann Nichols (Polly Nichols) — Person · Victim · 5 mentions · first at
    One of Jack the Ripper's victims, discussed in detail in the podcast.
  • Polly Nichols — Person · Victim · 3 mentions · first at
    One of Jack the Ripper's victims, discussed in detail in the episode.
    A of a Dickens novel hangs over as you say completely hangs over her story. So Polly Nichols let's call her that. She was born in 1845 just off Fleet Street, which today, it's so grand that very few people can afford to live there. Very.
  • Dr. Rhys Llewellyn — Person · Referenced medical witness (surgeon/doctor at autopsy) · 1 mention · first at
    Named as the doctor who conducted the post-mortem on Polly Nichols and testified to the brutality, feeding into debates about the killer’s possible anatomical knowledge.
    Of the inquest, two small stabs on private parts apparently done with a strong bladed knife. And the surgeon who conducted the autopsy, a doctor called Rhys Llewellyn, he said…
  • Sir Charles Warren — Person · Historical figure · 2 mentions · first at
    The chief commissioner of the Metropolitan Police during the Jack the Ripper murders.
    A focus for middle class indignation and there is pressure on the police to do something about it. And so on the 8th of November, Sir Charles Warren, the head of the…
  • Martha Tabram — Person · Victim · 2 mentions · first at
    An early victim possibly linked to Jack the Ripper, discussed in the episode.
    Another murder wouldn't create any great stir. I mean that's that's not entirely true because there is a particularly horrible murder that takes place in White Chapel on the…
  • Ellen Holland — Person · Witness · 5 mentions · first at
    A witness who shared a room with Polly Nichols, providing insights into her life.
    Know, would be important to her. And so this is where she meets with Ellen Holland because Ellen Holland is one of three women who is sharing a room in this doss house with…
  • Jioati / Jivati / Jivvati (Victoria) — Person · Historical figure · 3 mentions · first at
    The reigning monarch during the Jack the Ripper murders, mentioned in relation to the social context.
    Government home secretary Henry Matthews. He comes close to following Sir Charles Warren. And even the prime minister, Lord Salsbury, by the end of the case, he's getting kind…
  • Jerry White — Person · Referenced expert · 3 mentions · first at
    A historian mentioned in relation to the social conditions of London during the Jack the Ripper era.
    There's a sense that even at its height, Britain, British establishment opinion is still very jittery. Jerry White in his book on late 19th century London, he's he's got a…
  • Katherine Edos — Person · Referenced victim (name-check in victim list) · 2 mentions · first at
    Mentioned as one of the victims whose life stories the hosts intend to foreground, countering victim-erasure in Ripper narratives.
    Series, we will be unveiling our candidate for the Ripper. But first, we'll be exploring the lives of the victims. taking you into the wreaking streets of the east end of…
  • Charles Lechmere — Person · Witness · 2 mentions · first at
    A witness who found Polly Nichols' body.
    Okay. So, the body had been found by a delivery man car man as the Victorians called it. and he worked for Pigford's in Covent Garden and he'd been heading to work from Bethyl.
  • Robert Paul — Person · Witness · 2 mentions · first at
    A witness who found Polly Nichols' body.
    They find that the woman is lying on her back. Her skirts have been hitched up over her hips and Lechmere can't bring himself to touch the body but Robert Paul does and he…
  • Edward Walker — Person · Victim's relative · 2 mentions · first at
    Polly Nichols' father, mentioned in relation to her life story.
    Alive and she has a husband. And the following day on the 1st of September, Edward Walker, Pauliey's father, and William Nichols, her husband, are brought to inspect her body.…
  • William Nichols — Person · Victim's relative · 2 mentions · first at
    Polly Nichols' husband, mentioned in relation to her life story.
    A of a Dickens novel hangs over as you say completely hangs over her story. So Polly Nichols let's call her that. She was born in 1845 just off Fleet Street, which today, it's so grand that very few people can afford to live there. Very.
  • Annie Chapman — Person · Referenced victim (name mentioned; variant) · 1 mention · first at
    Mentioned among the victims’ names; appears to refer to Annie Chapman, one of the canonical five victims, reinforcing the episode’s stated intent to focus on victims’ lives.
    Actually named any of the victims. We talked a lot about Jack and of the in the context, but we haven't named, Polly Nichols or Katherine Edos or Hannie Chapman or whatever.…
  • Karl Marx — Person · Historical figure · 1 mention · first at
    A philosopher mentioned in relation to the social conditions of the East End of London.
    Yeah. And Karl Marx, of course, is a refugee in London, and he is very familiar with the East End. He describes it as a pool of stagnant misery and desolation. But he sees in that pool of.
  • Hallie Rubenhold — Person · Referenced expert · 2 mentions · first at
    Author of a book about Jack the Ripper's victims, mentioned in the podcast.
    Hal's suggestion in the five is that Polly had found a kind of dark corner and had curled up there and had gone to sleep and he killed her while she was sleeping. I would say the.
  • Leonard Matters — Person · Referenced expert · 1 mention · first at
    An Australian journalist who wrote one of the first big studies of the Jack the Ripper murders.
    People have written I mean people have written about him they never stopped writing about him so there's an Australian journalist in 1929 isn't there called Leonard Matters who…
  • Dr. Jackekal — Person · Referenced fictional character (mis-extracted / pun) · 1 mention · first at
    Used as a cultural reference to Victorian gothic imagery ('Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde'); in the transcript it appears as 'Dr. Jackekal' and is not a real person.
    Quite large in our collective imagination because of, as we'll see, Dr. Jackekal, Mr. hide and Sherlock Holmes and the sort of the image of the Dracula, the image of the gas…
  • Henry Matthews — Person · Historical figure · 1 mention · first at
    A politician mentioned in relation to the social context of the Jack the Ripper murders.
    Police to catch the Ripper, the Ripper case is definitely a contributory factor to that resignation. You've got a Tory government home secretary Henry Matthews. He comes close…
  • Lord Salsbury — Person · Historical figure · 1 mention · first at
    A politician mentioned in relation to the social context of the Jack the Ripper murders.
    Government home secretary Henry Matthews. He comes close to following Sir Charles Warren. And even the prime minister, Lord Salsbury, by the end of the case, he's getting kind…
  • Hi Rubenhold — Person · Referenced historian/author (victim-centered reinterpretation) · 1 mention · first at
    Mentioned as author of a prize-winning 2019 group biography of the victims, used to correct misconceptions about the women.
    Their lives and what they tell us about the world of late Victorian England. And actually, Hi Rubenhold, who's been on the show in the early days, she wrote a book called The…
  • Elellanena Marx — Person · Historical figure · 1 mention · first at
    A socialist mentioned in relation to the social unrest in London during the Victorian era.
    Socialists, by Irish nationalists. KL Marx's daughter, Elellanena Marx, is a speaker there. and they try to occupy Trafala Square and to hold it against the police. But the…
  • Rhys Llewellyn — Person · Witness · 1 mention · first at
    A doctor who conducted the autopsy on Polly Nichols.
    Of the inquest, two small stabs on private parts apparently done with a strong bladed knife. And the surgeon who conducted the autopsy, a doctor called Rhys Llewellyn, he said…
  • Mrs. Emma Green — Person · Witness · 1 mention · first at
    A witness mentioned in relation to the Jack the Ripper murders.
    Woman called Mrs. Emma Green who lived directly above the scene of the murder who she said she was a light sleeper and had a scream been given she would have heard it you know but not a peep.
  • Mrs. Cowry — Person · Historical figure · 1 mention · first at
    A person mentioned in relation to Polly Nichols' life.
    I think she wants drink and there's no drink in the house. and so she abscon and Mrs. Cowry then wrote to the workhouse, this is how we know about it, saying that Polly had…
  • George Wilmont — Person · Historical figure · 1 mention · first at
    A person mentioned in relation to the doss houses in the East End of London.
    Was named after a guy called George Wilmont who'd run it in the 1860s and '7s. And it is, I think, well known on the streets of Spittlefield as a place that accommodates all…
  • Christine Corton — Person · Referenced expert · 1 mention · first at
    A historian mentioned in relation to the social conditions of London during the Jack the Ripper era.
    Point he had for her. So to quote Christine Corton in her book London Fog, any female who was kept by a man for however long or short a period of her life without benefit of a…
  • Lord Salisbury — Person · Historical figure · 1 mention · first at
    Prime Minister during the time of the Jack the Ripper murders, mentioned in the podcast.
    Sir Charles Warren. And even the prime minister, Lord Salsbury, by the end of the case, he's getting kind of irate telegrams from Queen Victoria. so the day after the…
  • Eleanor Marx — Person · Historical figure · 1 mention · first at
    Daughter of Karl Marx, mentioned in the context of social unrest in London.
    November, there are kind of a series of rallies. So they are organized by socialists, by Irish nationalists. KL Marx's daughter, Elellanena Marx, is a speaker there. and they…
  • Rees Llewellyn — Person · Medical professional · 1 mention · first at
    Surgeon who conducted the autopsy on one of Jack the Ripper's victims.
    Strong bladed knife. And the surgeon who conducted the autopsy, a doctor called Rhys Llewellyn, he said he confessed himself to be appalled by what he had been examining. I…
  • Ellen Holland — Person · 5 mentions · first at
    Few hours of her body being found, the police have a name, Polly. And their source is an elderly woman called Ellen Holland. So maybe an ancestor, who knows? I don't know. And…
  • Jerry White — Person · 3 mentions · first at
    End up there, then you know that you have pretty much plumbed the bottom. So to quote Jerry White in his great study of London in the 19th century, successful thieves like…
  • Polly Nichols — Person · 3 mentions · first at
    Talked a lot about Jack and of the in the context, but we haven't named, Polly Nichols or Katherine Edos or Hannie Chapman or whatever. And that's something that we will be…
  • Leather Apron — Person · 2 mentions · first at
    Just yet. I've laughed when they look so clever and talk about being on the right track. That joke about leather apron gave me real fits. I'm down on horse and I shan quit ripping them till I do get buckled.

Books & papers

  • The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper — Book · Reference material · 1 mention
    Provides biographical context for Jack the Ripper's victims
    Their lives and what they tell us about the world of late Victorian England. And actually, Hi Rubenhold, who's been on the show in the early days, she wrote a book called The…
  • The Five — Book · Reference in discussion about Jack the Ripper victims · 2 mentions · first at
    Provides a group biography of the murdered women, offering insight into their lives and the social context of late Victorian England
    Actually, Hi Rubenhold, who's been on the show in the early days, she wrote a book called The Five, didn't she? in 2019, a prize-winning book which was a sort of group…
  • Case Book Jack the Ripper — Book · Referenced work · 1 mention · first at
    Mentioned as a website and repository of information about Jack the Ripper.
    So, not only did I read lots of books about this, but there's a website called Case Book Jack the Ripper, and it's the world's largest repository of Ripper Rihanna. And when…
  • London Fog — Book · Referenced work · 1 mention · first at
    A book mentioned in relation to the social conditions of London during the Jack the Ripper era.
    Point he had for her. So to quote Christine Corton in her book London Fog, any female who was kept by a man for however long or short a period of her life without benefit of a…
  • Oliver Twist — Book · 2 mentions · first at
    There is a kind of welfare and anyone who's read Oliver Twist will know what that welfare is because it's comes in the form of the workhouse. and if from this point on if Pauly's story is Denzian, it's in that.
  • Dracula — Book · 1 mention · first at
    Dr. Jackekal, Mr. hide and Sherlock Holmes and the sort of the image of the Dracula, the image of the gas lamps and the the fog and the streets of London and so on. London at…
  • London Fog — Book · 1 mention · first at
    Responsibilities that up until that point he had for her. So to quote Christine Corton in her book London Fog, any female who was kept by a man for however long or short a…
  • Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde — Book · 1 mention
  • Little Dorrit — Book · 1 mention
  • London in the Nineteenth Century — Book · 1 mention
  • The Mystery of Jack the Ripper — Book · 1 mention

Companies & orgs

  • Hotels.com (company) — Company · Sponsor · 2 mentions · first at
    Sponsor of the podcast episode, promoting their hotel booking services.
  • Hive (company) — Company · Sponsor · 1 mention · first at
    Sponsor of the podcast episode, promoting their energy solutions.
  • Aura Frames (company) — Company · Sponsor · 1 mention · first at
    Sponsor of the podcast episode, promoting their digital photo frames.
  • Metropolitan Police — Company · Organization · 3 mentions · first at
    The police force involved in the investigation of the Jack the Ripper murders.
    So the chief commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, the London Police Force, a guy called Sir Charles Warren, who was originally a military man, served in South Africa. He ends up resigning. And although that is not.
  • Scotland Yard — Company · Organization · 2 mentions · first at
    The police force involved in the investigation of the Jack the Ripper murders.
    Banter. And it was sent on the 27th of September 1888 to the Central News Agency of London. and they sat on it for two days unsure whether it was authentic and then forwarded it to Scotland Yard.
  • Wilmont's Lodging House — Company · 4 mentions · first at
    Yeah. And probably kept some money, to keep a roof over her head because she ends up in a doss house on Thraw Street in Spittlefields. And this is Wilmont's lodging house…
  • Frying Pan — Company · 3 mentions · first at
    Of black straw and trimmed with black velvet that the was described by the coroner. And she'd also had enough money to get incredibly drunk that evening in the Frying Pan…
  • The Central News Agency — Company · 2 mentions · first at
    It's so chilling because of the mocking sadistic tone, the tone almost of banter. And it was sent on the 27th of September 1888 to the Central News Agency of London. and they…
  • Daily Telegraph — Company · Media · 2 mentions · first at
    A newspaper mentioned in relation to the coverage of the Jack the Ripper murders.
    People reported in London. So, it's a place where you can fall through the cracks really quickly, but also if you're one of the middle- class people reading your copy of the…
  • Central News Agency — Company · Key organization · 2 mentions · first at
    News agency that received the infamous 'Jack the Ripper' letter.
    It's so chilling because of the mocking sadistic tone, the tone almost of banter. And it was sent on the 27th of September 1888 to the Central News Agency of London. and they…
  • Central News Agency of London — Company · Media · 1 mention · first at
    A news agency mentioned in relation to the Jack the Ripper letters.
    Banter. And it was sent on the 27th of September 1888 to the Central News Agency of London. and they sat on it for two days unsure whether it was authentic and then forwarded it to Scotland Yard.
  • London Hospital — Company · Key organization · 1 mention · first at
    Hospital in Whitechapel mentioned in the context of the Jack the Ripper murders.
    Specialist knowledge. And there's been no consensus about that. But it matters because in White Chapel you have the London hospital so full of surgeons, full of people who are…
  • Times — Company · Media · 1 mention · first at
    A newspaper mentioned in relation to the coverage of the Jack the Ripper murders.
    THR street or Dorset Street or whatever that this will kind of spread and infect the entire city. The sense of it as a breeding ground for a kind of moral pestilence is a…
  • Illustrated Police News — Company · Media · 1 mention · first at
    A newspaper mentioned in relation to the coverage of the Jack the Ripper murders.
    Illustrated Police News ran six pictures of the Martha Tabum murder on its front page, and the East London Observer ran two columns about the crime. a unique and mysterious crime, it said because of course, as you say, violence is common.
  • East London Observer — Company · Media · 1 mention · first at
    A newspaper mentioned in relation to the coverage of the Jack the Ripper murders.
    Illustrated Police News ran six pictures of the Martha Tabum murder on its front page, and the East London Observer ran two columns about the crime. a unique and mysterious crime, it said because of course, as you say, violence is common.
  • Pigford's — Company · 1 mention · first at
    Okay. So, the body had been found by a delivery man car man as the Victorians called it. and he worked for Pigford's in Covent Garden and he'd been heading to work from Bethyl…
  • Metropolitan Police — Company · 3 mentions · first at
    Right through this story. So, we'll be spending as much time with the sort of the Metropolitan Police and the establishment as we will on the streets of White Chapel.
  • The Daily Telegraph — Company · 2 mentions · first at
    Pairs. And to readers of newspapers in the West End, it's a synonym for violence. So here is the Daily Telegraph. In these squalid parts of the metropolis, aggravated assaults…
  • The Frying Pan — Company · 2 mentions · first at
    Coroner. And she'd also had enough money to get incredibly drunk that evening in the Frying Pan, which was a notorious pub on the corner of Brick Lane and Thr Street. and if…
  • The Rest is History — Company · 1 mention · first at
    Hello. Today on The Rest is History, we begin the story of Jack the Ripper, the most notorious serial killer in history and probably history's most enduring and fascinating mystery. At the end of this.
  • Central News Agency of London — Company · 1 mention · first at
    Sadistic tone, the tone almost of banter. And it was sent on the 27th of September 1888 to the Central News Agency of London. and they sat on it for two days unsure whether it was authentic and then forwarded it to Scotland Yard.
  • East London Advertiser — Company · 1 mention · first at
    Yes. Exactly. So, there's a quote, isn't there, from the East London advertiser?
  • London Hospital — Company · 1 mention · first at
    No consensus about that. But it matters because in White Chapel you have the London hospital so full of surgeons, full of people who are very proficient with a knife. But it is…
  • Barber's Horse Slaughterhouse — Company · 1 mention · first at
    With a knife. But it is also full of yards and slaughter houses of which the barber's horse slaughterhouse was the foulest. So throughout White Chapel there are, the scent of…
  • Home Office — Company · 1 mention · first at
    People to express something that is rotten in the the state of policing and the home office and so on.
  • The Times — Company · 1 mention · first at
    Breeding ground for a kind of moral pestilence is a recurrent theme in the press of the times. So to quote the times, We have long ago learned that organic refuge breeds…
  • Grenadier Guards — Company · 1 mention · first at
    The police. But the police are there in mass force. They've been supplemented by the Grenadier Guards and they succeed in clearing Trfalga Square and this is commemorated as…
  • Illustrated Police News — Company · 1 mention · first at
    Particularly if you're in the newspaper industry, that could bear fruit. So, the Illustrated Police News ran six pictures of the Martha Tabum murder on its front page, and the…
  • Casebook: Jack the Ripper — Company · 1 mention
  • Pickfords — Company · 1 mention
  • Wilmot's lodging house — Company · 1 mention

Products & tech

  • Case Book Jack the Ripper — Product · Referenced work · 1 mention · first at
    A website mentioned as a repository of information about Jack the Ripper.
    So, not only did I read lots of books about this, but there's a website called Case Book Jack the Ripper, and it's the world's largest repository of Ripper Rihanna. And when…
  • Save Your Way — Product · 2 mentions · first at
    Hotels.com just rolled out a game-changing feature called Save Your Way. And it's as simple as it sounds.
  • solar panels — Product · 1 mention · first at
    Hive makes the most of the sun with solar panels turning sunlight into greener electricity and enabling you to sell excess back to the grid. And Hives thermostats make it possible for you to heat your home without lifting anything.
  • Hives thermostats — Product · 1 mention · first at
    Solar panels turning sunlight into greener electricity and enabling you to sell excess back to the grid. And Hives thermostats make it possible for you to heat your home without lifting anything more than a thumb and an impressed brow.
  • heat pumps — Product · 1 mention · first at
    Their heat pumps draw warmth from the air and they keep it exactly where you want it. No smoke, no waste. Hives EV charger lets your car charge quietly overnight, recharging while you do, too.
  • Hives EV charger — Product · 1 mention · first at
    Their heat pumps draw warmth from the air and they keep it exactly where you want it. No smoke, no waste. Hives EV charger lets your car charge quietly overnight, recharging while you do, too.
  • Hive app — Product · 1 mention · first at
  • Carver matte frame — Product · 1 mention · first at

Concepts & topics

  • Serial Killer — Concept · Core topic · 4 mentions · first at
    Central theme of the episode, discussing the phenomenon of serial killers.
  • Victorian age — Concept · Key argument · 3 mentions · first at
    The historical period during which the Jack the Ripper murders occurred, providing context.
    A very big part in this story. And right from the start, there was a sense that the Victorian reading public, the people who were the first consumers of the Jack the Ripper…
  • Prostitution — Concept · Key argument · 5 mentions · first at
    Discussed in relation to the victims of Jack the Ripper and the social conditions of the time.
    Point he had for her. So to quote Christine Corton in her book London Fog, any female who was kept by a man for however long or short a period of her life without benefit of a…
  • Poverty — Concept · Key argument · 6 mentions · first at
    Highlighted as a major social issue in Whitechapel during the time of the murders.
    Frying Pan Alley, Shovel Alley, these places. These were reolent of extreme poverty. the sort of poverty that was you would not associate with the richest and most, powerful…
  • Workhouse — Concept · Key argument · 6 mentions · first at
    Institutions where the poor were sent, mentioned in relation to the victims' lives.
    And Polly makes one last desperate attempt to kind of redeem herself from homelessness and alcoholism. and she is found a placement by the workhouse with a very religious couple in.
  • Alcoholism — Concept · Key argument · 3 mentions · first at
    Discussed in relation to the victims of Jack the Ripper and their living conditions.
    Slip their police escort. And Polly and the other 10 women all end up back in the workhouse. By now we're into 1888.
  • Crime — Concept · 2 mentions · first at
    So this point about crime I think is really important because in the 1880s there's a huge moral panic about crime.
  • Class Conflict — Concept · Key argument · 1 mention · first at
    Discussed as a significant social issue in Victorian London.
    That it has the extremes of wealth and poverty, doesn't it? Privilege and deprivation. The kind of the theme of class conflict and class tension runs right through this story.…
  • Industrial Revolution — Concept · Historical context · 4 mentions
    Mentioned in relation to the social and economic conditions of the Victorian era.
    Of Jack the Ripper perhaps he is some mysterious and awful product of modern civilization. So people are wondering what is it about our industrial society that is producing…
  • Immigration — Concept · Key argument · 2 mentions · first at
    Discussed as a significant social issue in Whitechapel during the time of the murders.
    Which we'll come on to in the next couple of episodes is immigration specifically from the western part of the Tsarist Empire of the Russian Empire. So Poland and Russia itself and that's particularly Jewish immigration.
  • Case Book Jack the Ripper — Concept · Referenced work · 1 mention · first at
    Mentioned as a resource for Jack the Ripper research.
    So, not only did I read lots of books about this, but there's a website called Case Book Jack the Ripper, and it's the world's largest repository of Ripper Rihanna. And when…
  • Slum Clearance — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    So that's one thing that's changed White Chapel. There's also been a lot of slum clearance hasn't there. So that people who have been basically decanted from the slums have ended up being pushed into the back alleys and doss houses of.
  • Brothel Crackdown — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Into the back alleys and doss houses of Spittlefields. So in the heart of White Chapel, the other thing has been an attempt to crack down on brothel. So in 1885, an act to make…
  • workhouse — Concept · 6 mentions · first at
    When the police investigate Paulie's pettic codes they find that they are stamped with the mark of a workhouse and to be precise the workhouse in Lambbeath in South London and…
  • inquest — Concept · 5 mentions · first at
    Dominic, just one week after the coroner has announced his verdict on her death at her inquest, on the 31st of August, news breaks of another murder. And this is even more…
  • prostitution — Concept · 4 mentions · first at
    White Chapel in an area of the east end of London that was notorious for poverty and crime and prostitution.
  • Titanic — Concept · 4 mentions · first at
    Well, I think it reminds me of the series we did on Titanic, which was like this, a drama, replete with horror and with tragedy and has essentially become a myth. again something that everybody knows about,.
  • doss house — Concept · 4 mentions · first at
    Holland. So maybe an ancestor, who knows? I don't know. And Ellen had shared a room with Polly in a Doss house on Thraw Street, which is one of the kind of the notorious…
  • coroner — Concept · 3 mentions · first at
    Unable to have any clues as to who could have done it or why. And so on the 23rd of August, when the coroner formally announced her cause of death, it was described as being willful murder against some person or persons unknown.
  • Bloody Sunday — Concept · 2 mentions · first at
    The Grenadier Guards and they succeed in clearing Trfalga Square and this is commemorated as Bloody Sunday. in due course, revolutionaries in Russia will kind of see it as one…
  • SEG tariff — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Suitability. Hive app compatible with selected technology. Paid for surplus requires SEG tariff.
  • double event — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Of the 30th of September, the killer struck again, not once but twice, the so-called double event. one of the most dramatic nights in the history of London. And then we come to…
  • Sherlock Holmes — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Quite large in our collective imagination because of, as we'll see, Dr. Jackekal, Mr. hide and Sherlock Holmes and the sort of the image of the Dracula, the image of the gas…
  • abortionists — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Which is expressive of all kinds of anxieties about medicine, about vivction, about abortionists, as we'll see. And there's an abiding question that runs throughout the…
  • Tory government — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Police to catch the Ripper, the Ripper case is definitely a contributory factor to that resignation. You've got a Tory government home secretary Henry Matthews. He comes close…
  • rookeries — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    The richest and most, powerful country on earth. They're the last what were called rookeries in the Kenzian period in the 18th century. They, they're kind of tangles of streets…
  • global capitalism — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Empire. It's the city of London is there the kind of financial nerve center of global capitalism of shipping. It's still a port. It's a manufacturing city at the time. So there…
  • Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Know, the criminals, the radicals, all of that kind of thing. So, 1887 is the year of Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee. So you know tremendous pomp and circumstance but in that…
  • Irish nationalists — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    November, there are kind of a series of rallies. So they are organized by socialists, by Irish nationalists. KL Marx's daughter, Elellanena Marx, is a speaker there. and they…
  • proletarian revolution — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Examples of how an advanced industrial economy might conceivably be overthrown by a proletarian revolution. It isn't.
  • Tsarist Empire — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Couple of episodes is immigration specifically from the western part of the Tsarist Empire of the Russian Empire. So Poland and Russia itself and that's particularly Jewish immigration.
  • Jewish immigration — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    The Tsarist Empire of the Russian Empire. So Poland and Russia itself and that's particularly Jewish immigration.
  • slum clearance — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    So that's one thing that's changed White Chapel. There's also been a lot of slum clearance hasn't there. So that people who have been basically decanted from the slums have ended up being pushed into the back alleys and doss houses of.
  • willful murder against some person or persons unknown — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    23rd of August, when the coroner formally announced her cause of death, it was described as being willful murder against some person or persons unknown.
  • Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885 — Concept · 1 mention
  • Georgian period — Concept · 1 mention
  • Panic of 1873 — Concept · 1 mention
  • Ripperology — Concept · 1 mention
  • slumming — Concept · 1 mention
  • TB — Concept · 1 mention

Places & events

  • London — Place · Setting · 28 mentions · first at
    The city where the Jack the Ripper murders took place.
  • East End of London — Place · Setting · 3 mentions · first at
    The impoverished and crime-ridden area where Jack the Ripper's murders took place, central to understanding the social context of the crimes.
    Had killed probably two possibly three possibly more women on the streets of White Chapel in an area of the east end of London that was notorious for poverty and crime and prostitution.
  • White Chapel — Place · Setting · 21 mentions · first at
    The area in London where Jack the Ripper's murders occurred.
    Mutilated. And then after the letter reached Scotland Yard in the early hours of the 30th of September, the killer struck again, not once but twice, the so-called double event.…
  • East End — Place · Setting · 11 mentions · first at
    The part of London where the Jack the Ripper murders took place.
    Sense at the end of the Victorian period when Britain is at its imperial apage that the East End is the dark shadow not just of London's greatness as an imperial capital but of…
  • Spitalfields — Place · Setting · 7 mentions · first at
    A specific area within the East End of London, mentioned in relation to the murders.
    Successful thieves like successful prostitutes did not stay in Flower and Dean Street and Flower and Dean Street is the kind of the epitome of the horrors of Spittlefields if…
  • Spittlefields — Place · Setting · 8 mentions · first at
    Area in London closely associated with the Jack the Ripper murders.
    And I think that is fundamentally true because it is a center of street crime and of prostitution. And if you end up there, then you know that you have pretty much plumbed the bottom. So to quote Jerry White in his great.
  • Miller's Court — Place · Setting · 4 mentions · first at
    The location where one of Jack the Ripper's most horrific murders took place.
    Devil than of a man. But as it turns out, almost certainly, although maybe not, but almost certainly, the horror of that murder, the horror of Miller's court seems to have been…
  • Bucks Row — Place · Setting · 4 mentions · first at
    The location where Polly Nichols' body was found.
    Okay. So, the body had been found by a delivery man car man as the Victorians called it. and he worked for Pigford's in Covent Garden and he'd been heading to work from Bethyl.
  • Scotland Yard — Place · Setting · 3 mentions · first at
    The headquarters of the Metropolitan Police, involved in the investigation of the Jack the Ripper murders.
    Served in South Africa. He ends up resigning. And although that is not directly because of the failure of the police to catch the Ripper, the Ripper case is definitely a…
  • Flower and Dean Street — Place · Setting · 4 mentions · first at
    A street in the East End of London mentioned in relation to the social conditions of the time.
    To quote Jerry White in his great study of London in the 19th century, successful thieves like successful prostitutes did not stay in Flower and Dean Street and Flower and Dean…
  • Frying Pan — Place · Setting · 3 mentions · first at
    A notorious pub in the East End where one of Jack the Ripper's victims was last seen before her murder.
    Coroner. And she'd also had enough money to get incredibly drunk that evening in the Frying Pan, which was a notorious pub on the corner of Brick Lane and Thr Street. and if…
  • White Chapel Road — Place · Setting · 3 mentions · first at
    A road in the East End of London mentioned in relation to the Jack the Ripper murders.
    Her mouth or whatever. He'd done his terrible work with incredible speed. And then before Lechmere arrives, he must have kind of vanished into presumably the early morning…
  • Dorset Street — Place · Setting · 2 mentions · first at
    A street in the East End of London mentioned in relation to the social conditions of the time.
    Victorian middle classes is precisely you know what they most dread that the misery and the violence that they see as being incubated in places like THR street or Dorset Street…
  • Thrawl Street — Place · Setting · 2 mentions · first at
    A street in the East End of London mentioned in relation to the social conditions of the time.
    Source is an elderly woman called Ellen Holland. So maybe an ancestor, who knows? I don't know. And Ellen had shared a room with Polly in a Doss house on Thraw Street, which is…
  • Trafalga Square — Place · Setting · 2 mentions · first at
    A location in London mentioned in relation to social unrest during the Victorian era.
    Jubilee. So you know tremendous pomp and circumstance but in that same year there had been a massive focus for middle class panic in the place in London that is synonymous with…
  • Bloody Sunday — Event · Historical context · 2 mentions · first at
    An event mentioned in relation to the social unrest in London during the Victorian era.
    And so Polly is one of a number of women who are moved on by the police to a workhouse and the police are kind of marching through the streets to be processed. But Polly and 10 other.
  • Fleet Street — Place · Setting · 2 mentions · first at
    A street in London mentioned in relation to Polly Nichols' early life.
    Polly Nichols let's call her that. She was born in 1845 just off Fleet Street, which today, it's so grand that very few people can afford to live there. Very few people live there at all. but back then it was again a little bit like.
  • Trafalgar Square — Place · Setting · 1 mention · first at
    Significant location in London associated with social unrest during the time of the murders.
    And so Polly is one of a number of women who are moved on by the police to a workhouse and the police are kind of marching through the streets to be processed. But Polly and 10 other.
  • Thr Street — Place · Setting · 4 mentions · first at
    A street in the East End of London mentioned in relation to the social conditions of the time.
    Of crumbling decrepit tenement houses and doss houses and lodging houses and the very names of the streets to people at the time reading this in the newspapers. Flower and Dean…
  • West End — Place · Setting · 2 mentions · first at
    A part of London mentioned in contrast to the East End.
    The conventional take is that the police only enter this area in pairs. And to readers of newspapers in the West End, it's a synonym for violence. So here is the Daily…
  • Blood Alley — Place · Setting · 1 mention · first at
    A street in the East End of London mentioned in relation to the social conditions of the time.
    Of crumbling decrepit tenement houses and doss houses and lodging houses and the very names of the streets to people at the time reading this in the newspapers. Flower and Dean…
  • Frying Pan Alley — Place · Setting · 1 mention · first at
    A street in the East End of London mentioned in relation to the social conditions of the time.
    Of crumbling decrepit tenement houses and doss houses and lodging houses and the very names of the streets to people at the time reading this in the newspapers. Flower and Dean…
  • Shovel Alley — Place · Setting · 1 mention · first at
    A street in the East End of London mentioned in relation to the social conditions of the time.
    Of crumbling decrepit tenement houses and doss houses and lodging houses and the very names of the streets to people at the time reading this in the newspapers. Flower and Dean…
  • Golden Jubilee — Event · Historical event · 1 mention · first at
    Event during Queen Victoria's reign, mentioned in the podcast.
    Out there in the East End. And, the criminals, the radicals, all of that kind of thing. So, 1887 is the year of Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee. So you know tremendous pomp and…
  • Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee — Event · Historical context · 1 mention · first at
    An event mentioned in relation to the social context of the Jack the Ripper murders.
    Out there in the East End. And, the criminals, the radicals, all of that kind of thing. So, 1887 is the year of Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee. So you know tremendous pomp and…
  • Covent Garden — Place · Setting · 1 mention · first at
    A location in London mentioned in relation to the Jack the Ripper murders.
    Victorians called it. and he worked for Pigford's in Covent Garden and he'd been heading to work from Bethyl Green through White Chapel and he was off to Covent Garden in central London and he found the body around 3:40 a.m.
  • Bethyl Green — Place · Setting · 1 mention · first at
    A location in London mentioned in relation to the Jack the Ripper murders.
    Okay. So, the body had been found by a delivery man car man as the Victorians called it. and he worked for Pigford's in Covent Garden and he'd been heading to work from Bethyl.
  • Lambbeath — Place · Setting · 1 mention · first at
    A location in London mentioned in relation to Polly Nichols' life.
    But this will come very shortly because when the police investigate Paulie's pettic codes they find that they are stamped with the mark of a workhouse and to be precise the…
  • Walworth — Place · Setting · 1 mention · first at
    A location in London mentioned in relation to Polly Nichols' life.
    A of a Dickens novel hangs over as you say completely hangs over her story. So Polly Nichols let's call her that. She was born in 1845 just off Fleet Street, which today, it's so grand that very few people can afford to live there. Very.
  • Wsworth — Place · Setting · 1 mention · first at
    A location in London mentioned in relation to Polly Nichols' life.
    And Polly makes one last desperate attempt to kind of redeem herself from homelessness and alcoholism. and she is found a placement by the workhouse with a very religious…
  • Brick Lane — Place · Setting · 1 mention · first at
    A street in the East End of London mentioned in relation to the social conditions of the time.
    Of black straw and trimmed with black velvet that the was described by the coroner. And she'd also had enough money to get incredibly drunk that evening in the Frying Pan…
  • Lambeth — Place · Setting · 1 mention · first at
    Area in London associated with one of Jack the Ripper's victims, mentioned in the podcast.
    Stamped with the mark of a workhouse and to be precise the workhouse in Lambbeath in South London and they find an inmate of that workhouse who is brought to inspect Pauliey's…
  • Bucks Row — Place · 4 mentions · first at
    And he was walking to work down Bucks Row, which is I mean it's it's no longer called Bucks Row, but it's still there. You can still walk down the street, very narrow in White Chapel.
  • West End — Place · 2 mentions · first at
    Police only enter this area in pairs. And to readers of newspapers in the West End, it's a synonym for violence. So here is the Daily Telegraph. In these squalid parts of the…
  • South London — Place · 2 mentions · first at
    Stamped with the mark of a workhouse and to be precise the workhouse in Lambbeath in South London and they find an inmate of that workhouse who is brought to inspect Pauliey's…
  • Fleet Street — Place · 2 mentions · first at
    Polly Nichols let's call her that. She was born in 1845 just off Fleet Street, which today, it's so grand that very few people can afford to live there. Very few people live there at all. but back then it was again a little bit like.
  • Blood Alley — Place · 1 mention · first at
    At the time reading this in the newspapers. Flower and Dean Street, Dorset Street, Thr Street, Blood Alley, Frying Pan Alley, Shovel Alley, these places. These were reolent of…
  • Frying Pan Alley — Place · 1 mention · first at
    Newspapers. Flower and Dean Street, Dorset Street, Thr Street, Blood Alley, Frying Pan Alley, Shovel Alley, these places. These were reolent of extreme poverty. the sort of…
  • Shovel Alley — Place · 1 mention · first at
    Newspapers. Flower and Dean Street, Dorset Street, Thr Street, Blood Alley, Frying Pan Alley, Shovel Alley, these places. These were reolent of extreme poverty. the sort of…
  • City of London — Place · 1 mention · first at
    Excitement and the modernity of London because it's the heart of the British Empire. It's the city of London is there the kind of financial nerve center of global capitalism of…

Media & podcasts

  • The Rest is History — Media · Host · 2 mentions · first at
    The podcast where the discussion about Jack the Ripper takes place.
    Hello. Today on The Rest is History, we begin the story of Jack the Ripper, the most notorious serial killer in history and probably history's most enduring and fascinating mystery. At the end of this.
  • Daily Telegraph — Media · Referenced media · 2 mentions · first at
    Mentioned as a newspaper that covered the Jack the Ripper murders and Victorian London.
    People reported in London. So, it's a place where you can fall through the cracks really quickly, but also if you're one of the middle- class people reading your copy of the…
  • East London advertiser — Media · Referenced media · 1 mention · first at
    Mentioned as a newspaper that covered the Jack the Ripper murders.
    Yes. Exactly. So, there's a quote, isn't there, from the East London advertiser?
  • The Times — Media · 1 mention · first at
    Breeding ground for a kind of moral pestilence is a recurrent theme in the press of the times. So to quote the times, We have long ago learned that organic refuge breeds…
  • Illustrated Police News — Media · Referenced media · 1 mention · first at
    Mentioned as a newspaper that covered the Jack the Ripper murders.
    Particularly if you're in the newspaper industry, that could bear fruit. So, the Illustrated Police News ran six pictures of the Martha Tabum murder on its front page, and the…
  • The Rest is History — Media · Host · 2 mentions · first at
    Podcast where the episode is hosted, mentioned in the podcast.
    Hello. Today on The Rest is History, we begin the story of Jack the Ripper, the most notorious serial killer in history and probably history's most enduring and fascinating mystery. At the end of this.
  • Casebook: Jack the Ripper — Media · Referenced work · 1 mention · first at
    Website mentioned as a resource for Jack the Ripper research.
    So, not only did I read lots of books about this, but there's a website called Case Book Jack the Ripper, and it's the world's largest repository of Ripper Rihanna. And when…

Sponsors

  • Aura Frames — Product · Sponsor · 2 mentions · first at
    Sponsor of the podcast episode, promoting their digital photo frames.
    Gosh. Well, come back after the break and we will explore the circumstances of this new crime. This episode is brought to you by Aura Frames. History is full of gifts, but the…
  • Hotels.com — Product · Sponsor · 2 mentions · first at
    Sponsor of the podcast episode, promoting their hotel booking service.
    Save your way is available to loyalty members in the US and UK on Hotels with member prices. Other terms apply. See site for details.
  • Hive — Product · Sponsor · 1 mention · first at
    A sponsor of the podcast episode, promoting their home energy products.
    Hive brings it all together. Heating, charging, and solar, managed from one simple app in a quiet revolution. In the long history of power, Hive helps you finally know yours. Head to hivehome.com.
  • Hotels.com — Product · Sponsor · 2 mentions · first at
    A sponsor of the podcast episode, promoting their hotel booking service.
    Save your way is available to loyalty members in the US and UK on Hotels with member prices. Other terms apply. See site for details.
  • Aura Frames — Product · Sponsor · 1 mention · first at
    A sponsor of the podcast episode, promoting their digital photo frames.
    Unlimited storage, no subscription, just memories. For a limited time, visit auraframes.co.uk and get £35 off Ara's bestselling Carver matte frame named the top frame by the independent and use the promo.
  • Hotels.com — Sponsor · 2 mentions · first at
    This episode is brought to you by hotels.com.
  • Aura Frames — Sponsor · 1 mention · first at
    And we will explore the circumstances of this new crime. This episode is brought to you by Aura Frames. History is full of gifts, but the best are those that last. Because…
  • Hive — Sponsor · 1 mention

Full transcript with timestamps

Hello. Today on The Rest is History, we begin the story of Jack the Ripper, the most notorious serial killer in history and probably history's most enduring and fascinating mystery. At the end of this series, we will be unveiling our candidate for the Ripper. But first, we'll be exploring the lives of the victims. um taking you into the wreaking streets of the east end of London in 1888 and exploring what this story tells us about the Victorian age. Enjoy. This episode is sponsored by Hive. Britain revolutionized the future with the might of industrial power. But now you can transform your own energy future and take control with the power of Hive.

Hive makes the most of the sun with solar panels turning sunlight into greener electricity and enabling you to sell excess back to the grid. And Hives thermostats make it possible for you to heat your home without lifting anything more than a thumb and an impressed brow. Their heat pumps draw warmth from the air and they keep it exactly where you want it. No smoke, no waste. Hives EV charger lets your car charge quietly overnight, recharging while you do, too. Hive brings it all together. Heating, charging, and solar, managed from one simple app in a quiet revolution. In the long history of power, Hive helps you finally know yours. Head to hivehome.com to find out more. Subject to survey and suitability. Hive app compatible with selected technology. Paid for surplus requires SEG tariff.

Dear boss, I keep on hearing the police have caught me, but they won't fix me just yet. I've laughed when they look so clever and talk about being on the right track. That joke about leather apron gave me real fits. I'm down on horse and I shan quit ripping them till I do get buckled. Grand work, the last job was. I gave the lady no time to squeal. How can they catch me now? I love my work and I want to start again. You will soon hear of me with my funny little games. I saved some of the proper red stuff in a ginger beer bottle over the last job to write with, but it went thick like glue and I can't use it. Red ink is fit enough. I hope the next job I do, I shall clip the lady's ears off and send to the police officers just for jolly. Wouldn't you keep this letter back till I do a bit more work, then give it out straight. My knife's so nice and sharp. I want to get to work right away if I get a chance.

Good luck. Yours truly, Jack the Ripper. Don't mind me giving the trade name. P.S. wasn't good enough to post this before I got all the red ink off my hands. Curse it. No luck yet. They say I'm a doctor now. Ah. Ah. So that's the most notorious, the most infamous letter in the history of crime. And of course, it's so chilling because of the mocking sadistic tone, the tone almost of banter. And it was sent on the 27th of September 1888 to the Central News Agency of London. and they sat on it for two days unsure whether it was authentic and then forwarded it to Scotland Yard.

And this is the letter Tom that gives the name to somebody who at that point had killed probably two possibly three possibly more women on the streets of White Chapel in an area of the east end of London that was notorious for poverty and crime and prostitution. And both of these women had had their throats cut and both had been hideously mutilated. And then after the letter reached Scotland Yard in the early hours of the 30th of September, the killer struck again, not once but twice, the so-called double event. You know, one of the most dramatic nights in the history of London. And then we come to the most horrific murder of all, which was on the 9th of November, wasn't it?

Yes. And that was again a woman eviscerated, but this time not on the streets as the other victims of the White Chapel murderer had been, but in um a cramped and mean room in a place called Miller's Court in the dark heart of White Chapel. And to those who saw that victim, it seemed, even compared to the previous victims, a vision of hell. So one of the witnesses was a woman who had lived above the victim. So directly above the murder scene, and she said, "I could bear to look at it only for a second, but I can never forget the sight of it. If I live to be a hundred." Um, and another the man who had forced the locked door of the victim's room. He said, "The sight we saw, I cannot drive away from my mind. It looked more like the work of a devil than of a man. But as it turns out, almost certainly, although maybe not, but almost certainly, the horror of that murder, the horror of Miller's

court seems to have been the climax of Jack the Ripper's reign of terror. And the thing that people found eerie about that reign of terror wasn't just the brutality, but the ability of the murderer always to be one step ahead of the police to avoid apprehension, to avoid almost being seen. And now with this terrible murder in Miller's court, he kind of vanishes as though into thin air. and he leaves behind him what I think is undoubtedly the most enduring mystery in the annals of crime. Would you agree?

Definitely. He's the one serial killer whose name is known across the world who appears in films and video games as we shall talk about and novels and all sorts of things. And I guess even at the time there was something otherworldly about him wasn't there to people in London. So um people would describe him right from an early stage. This isn't sort of back projection. People would talk about him as a as a ghost slipping through the streets of the East End as a ghoul or a vampire kind of feeding on the blood.

Yeah. They literally use the word vampire. Yes. Exactly. So, there's a quote, isn't there, from the East London advertiser? What couldn't be more appalling than the thought that there's a being in human shape, stealthily moving about a great city, burning with a thirst for human blood, and endowed with such diabolical astuteness as to enable him to gratify his fish lust with absolute impunity. It's the sort of combination of the horror but also the stealth that he is I mean especially the night when he kills two people that he is moving from one scene to another like a wraith in the night you know completely undetected he must know the area like the back of his hand he's always one step ahead of the police and for people at the time that was both horrifying but also kind of darkly fascinating wasn't it

I mean in that the thirst for human blood I mean there's something vampiric but there's also a kind of a hint of almost cannibalism because organs are being excised and there are rumors that they're they're being eaten by the killer. So it does seem something very primordial, but at the same time there is a feeling that this is something perhaps expressive of of modernity. So there's another newspaper that says of of Jack the Ripper um perhaps he is some mysterious and awful product of modern civilization. So people are wondering what is it about our industrial society that is producing such a monster. And we've said that Jack the Ripper is the most famous serial killer. I think almost the most intriguing thing about him from the historical point of view is he's actually the first serial killer we know about. I mean presumably there were serial killers before him but he is the first person who is identified as a

serial killer in the sense that we understand it today in 2025. Yeah, there were people previously who' killed an awful lot of people. So in middle ages or whatever, but there was not the sense of a serial killer phenomenon. And he he invents the phenomenon, doesn't he? Or rather the newspaper editors who write about him invent the phenomenon or the psychiatrists who kind of home in on what he represents as a particular kind of of monster and they classify what he might be in scientific terms. And I think that's also a part of the story.

Um, so for all these reasons he's notorious, but I think there are two obvious reasons why he remains such a notorious figure still almost 150 years on. The first most obvious is that he was never caught. So his identity remains a mystery to this day. Um, and we will be exploring the range of possible suspects in our final episode of this five-part series.

Surely solving the mystery and unveiling the killer. Yes, we will. But also, I think that name Jack the Ripper, I mean, it's so horribly, brilliantly memorable. We will be returning to that letter and other letters that were thought by the police at the time perhaps to have been sent by the murderer asking whether they really were, were they authentic or were they fakes. So, lots to come.

Yeah, absolutely. So, we've got lots of episodes to come, but just on the sort of history of the study of Jack the Ripper. So Jack the Ripper was um a literary phenomenon right from the beginning as much as he was a kind of a physical one because most people experienced the Ripper story through the newspapers and ever since you know people have written I mean people have written about him they never stopped writing about him so there's an Australian journalist in 1929 isn't there called Leonard Matters who wrote one of the first big studies of the murders and he said if a journalist cannot sell anything else in London he can always sell a story about Jack the Ripper and it's interesting he's Australian because It's a reminder that Jack the Ripper is a properly a global story. People are fascinated by this and you know huge topic of fascination in the English speaking world but even beyond the English speaking world as

well. And to this day the idea that if you want to sell a book you come up with a theory about who Jack the Ripper was. I mean it remains the case and there's this entire field riperology. It's a kind of subgenre of the the true crime genre. And I guess that we by doing this um this podcast are, you know, we're standing in that tradition, aren't we?

So, not only did I read lots of books about this, but there's a website called Case Book Jack the Ripper, and it's the world's largest repository of of Ripper Rihanna. And when you fall into that hole, there is always a danger that you'll never ever climb out again. There were moments researching this where I just thought, I'm absolutely drowning in kind of theories and stuff here.

Yes. It's not another kidney. Exactly. Right. Not quite. But uh but yeah, but the thing about Jack the Ripper, so for those people who are thinking, hold on, this isn't the rest is true crime. The Jack the Ripper story is a brilliant window onto 1880s London, isn't it? I mean, that's the appeal of it. It's a fascinating melodrama in its own right, but it also allows us to do all kinds of social and cultural and political history of a period that looms quite large in our collective imagination because of, as we'll see, Dr. Jackekal, Mr. hide and Sherlock Holmes and the sort of the image of the Dracula, the image of the gas lamps and the and the the fog and the the streets of London and so on. London at this imperial height and I think that's another element to this story. So that's the that's the appeal of this for us, isn't it, as historians?

Well, I think it reminds me of the series we did on Titanic, which was like this, a drama, you know, replete with with horror and with tragedy and has essentially become a myth. again something that everybody knows about, but it does simultaneously provide a brilliant window onto the social history of the age. So if you look at that letter, the famous Jack the Ripper letter with which we opened this episode, you've got hints of all kinds of aspects of late Victorian life that we will be talking about in this series.

So there's the police, you know, Jack the Ripper is mocking them for being useless. You've got the press. That letter gets sent to a press agency first. to what extent are they creating the image of the Ripper? The hints of immigration because um leather apron that Jack the Ripper mentioned, he was a a Polish Jew who'd been an early suspect. And then there's that kind of final mocking payoff. They say I'm a doctor now. Which is expressive of all kinds of anxieties about medicine, about vivction, about abortionists, as we'll see. And there's an abiding question that runs throughout the inquests and which is still a very live issue today among people who study the murders as to whether the mutilations that the Ripper inflicted on his victims betrayed specialist knowledge. And there's been no consensus about that. But it matters because in White Chapel you have the London hospital so full of surgeons,

full of people who are very proficient with a knife. But it is also full of yards and slaughter houses of which the barber's horse slaughterhouse was the foulest. So throughout White Chapel there are, you know, the scent of blood, piles of awful, and of course people walking the streets with aprons perhaps, you know, spattered with drops of blood. And I think that in that context, the red ink that the Ripper, if he is the Ripper, is using when he writes that letter, I mean, it's a gruesome kind of knowing joke. It's a hideous, malevolent wink.

And I guess the other thing that this has in common with the Titanic story that we did a couple of years ago is that um it has the extremes of wealth and poverty, doesn't it? Privilege and deprivation. The kind of the the theme of class conflict and class tension runs right through this story. So, we'll be spending as much time with the sort of the the Metropolitan Police and the establishment as we will on the streets of White Chapel.

Yeah. So I mean it it is absolutely a topic of obsessive interest in the corridors of power and it does seem to people to express something that is rotten in the the the the state of policing and the home office and so on. So the chief commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, the London Police Force, a guy called Sir Charles Warren, who was originally a military man, served in South Africa. He ends up resigning. And although that is not directly because of the failure of the police to catch the Ripper, the Ripper case is definitely a contributory factor to that resignation. You've got a Tory government home secretary Henry Matthews. He comes close to following Sir Charles Warren. And even the prime minister, Lord Salsbury, by the end of the case, he's getting kind of irate telegrams from Queen Victoria. Um, so the day after the climactically hideous murder at Miller's court, she telegraphs

him, "This new ghastly murder shows the absolute necessity for some very decided action. All these courts must be lit and our detectives improved. They are not what they should be." So Queen Victoria there sounding eerily like Mrs. Thatcher.

Yeah. And yet on the other hand, I mean the place where we'll be spending most of our time, it's probably the single grimmst place in London, arguably, you know, one of the grimmst places in certainly in England, if not in Britain. And this is White Chapel, the East End is centered on spittle fields. It is it's really important for listeners to get this into their heads. It is not like it is now. It is an absolute kind of wreaking, stinking, crowded labyrinth of little uh a sort of warren of little alleys and courts lined with these kind of crumbling decrepit tenement houses and doss houses and lodging houses and the very names of the streets to people at the time reading this in the newspapers. Flower and Dean Street, Dorset Street, Thr Street, Blood Alley, Frying Pan Alley, Shovel Alley, these places. These were reolent of extreme poverty. You know, the sort of poverty that was you would not associate with

the richest and most, you know, powerful country on earth. They're the last what were called rookeries in the Kenzian period in the 18th century. They, you know, they're kind of tangles of of streets that are seen as being literally poisonous, full of sewage and rubbish and vermin and also incredibly violent. And so whether it's true or not is debated, but but the kind of, you know, the the conventional take is that the police only enter this this area in pairs. And to readers of newspapers in the West End, it's a synonym for violence. So here is the Daily Telegraph. In these squalid parts of the metropolis, aggravated assaults tended by flesh wounds from knives are frequently met with and men and women become accustomed to scenes of violence.

And I think that that is fundamentally true because it is a center of street crime and of prostitution. And if you end up there, then you know that you have pretty much plumbed the bottom. So to quote Jerry White in his his great study of London in the 19th century, successful thieves like successful prostitutes did not stay in Flower and Dean Street and Flower and Dean Street is the kind of the epitome of of the horrors of Spittlefields if only because they would not long remain immune from the depradations of their fellows.

However, having said that, it is important to emphasize that not everyone who is living in Spittlefields by any means is a a career criminal or a career prostitute. Lots of people are there because they have nowhere else to go because they are absolutely at the bottom. So, this brings us to the to Jack the Ripper's victims who be playing a very big part in this story. And right from the from the start, there was a sense that the Victorian reading public, the people who were the first consumers of the Jack the Ripper melodrama, are much more interested in Jack the Ripper than they are in his victims. And actually, I guess a telling sign of this, you know, we're complicit in this as well so far because we haven't actually named any of the victims. We talked a lot about Jack and of the in the context, but we haven't named, you know, Polly Nichols or Katherine Edos or Hannie Chapman or whatever. And that's

something that we will be trying to remedy in this series because we will we'll also have a special bonus episode for our club members. I'm looking in more depth at three of the victims and their lives and what they tell us about the world of late Victorian England. And actually, Hi Rubenhold, who's been on the show in the early days, she wrote a book called The Five, didn't she? in 2019, a prize-winning book which was a sort of group biography of the murdered women. And as she, you know, pointed out, you know, people wouldn't write books about their stories were it not for the way in which it ended. It's the kind of horror of their deaths that has made them, you know, if you if you reel off the names of the victims. A lot of people will recognize them, but they won't know much about the victims. And probably what they do know may well be wrong because people tended to see them purely as prostitutes rather than as

human beings with kind of backgrounds and inner lives of their own. Yeah. I mean that's why Hal's book was so revelatory and and why it was deservedly prizewinning. But I mean as she acknowledges they are only remembered because they all shared the same terrible fate. So she wrote the courses their lives took mirrored that of so many other women of the Victorian age and yet were so singular in the way they ended. And again, I think that is another comparison with Titanic that it's the horror of their deaths that enable them to serve us as exemplars of a class of society that normally doesn't enter the history books. Um, and the the class of person who is being killed by Jack the Ripper, they are even more lost to poverty than those who are traveling in the steerage of of of Titanic. They are indigent. they are absolutely the bottom and they are women and it does give us an opportunity to to kind of focus on

the lives of people who as I say don't normally feature in in our podcasts but when Victorians are reading about these women's lives I mean they're not terribly interested I think in the personal stories of the women but they are interested in the background aren't they in the East End more generally and

I say they're obsessed by it actually. Yeah, because I guess there's an excitement and a sort of weird glamour about somewhere that is that has fallen so far from the standards of Victorian morality and Victorian prosperity. Well, there's White Chapel High Street, which the slums kind of go off White Chapel High Street, but that street is the entertainment capital of working-class London. So, it's it's full of taverns and music halls. And for people who who kind of want to plunge into the back alleys, there's always the prospect of kind of illicit sex there. So it does attract people from across the east end, but also people from the west end as well who want to go slumbming because what's dangerous is also exciting. And so the site of young bloods going up east, you know, it is a common sight in White Chapel, but it's not just, you know, rakes and rules who are to be seen in uh in White Chapel and kind of

touring the Warren of Flower and Dean Street and Thraw Street and so on. There are also of course humanitarians and moralists and there is definitely a sense at the end of the Victorian period when Britain is at its imperial apage that the East End is the dark shadow not just of London's greatness as an imperial capital but of Britain's status as you know a a great power and it seems to embody something about a megalopouloolis an industrial megalopolis that people find both disturbing and fascinating. I mean, London at this point, I think, is indisputably the capital not just of the British Empire, but of the world.

It's the biggest city that's ever existed. 4 million people or so. I think possibly. I think that's actually an underestimate. I think, you know, if you go bigger, greater London, you're looking at more like 6 million people. I mean, it's a it's an to people at the time, it is a jaw-dropping spectacle. the the sprawl and the crowds and the excitement and the modernity of London because it's the heart of the British Empire. It's the city of London is there the kind of financial nerve center of global capitalism of shipping. It's still a port. It's a manufacturing city at the time. So there are lots of factories. So it's full of smoke and the smoke blends with the the famous fog, the notorious fog. And I think because of this you have a sense that what happens in London matters for the entire world. Um and this is kind of partly propagated by the fact that London as well as being the center of everything

else is also the center of the world publishing industry. So the newspapers that are printed in London have a reach that um perhaps the American media today would have globally. But it is also because people come to London from across the world to see what their own future is going to look like. It's a vision of the cities of the future. And so again, there is a sense that what happens in its darkest corners, you know, has a relevance for for everyone pretty much. If you're on the left, if you're a radical or a socialist or whatever, the spectacle of the poverty in London is a reminder of the iniquities of capitalism, but it's also the chance of, you know, a new dawn, isn't it? Because you're hoping that from this darkness, some new light will come, that it will be the breeding ground for revolution and rebellion, right? That's what Karl Marx and co think.

Yeah. And Karl Marx, of course, is a refugee in London, and he is very familiar with the East End. He describes it as a pool of stagnant misery and desolation. But he sees in that pool of stagnant misery and desolation the prospect as you say of a brighter future of a revolutionary utopia. Uh and this of course for the vast majority of the Victorian middle classes is precisely you know what they most dread that the the misery and the violence that they see as being incubated um in places like THR street or Dorset Street or whatever that this will kind of spread and infect the entire city. The sense of it as a breeding ground for a kind of moral pestilence is a recurrent theme in the press of the times. So to quote the times, "We have long ago learned that organic refuge breeds pestilence. Can we doubt that neglected human refu as inevitably breeds crime? that crime reproduces itself like germs in an

infected atmosphere and becomes at each successive cultivation more deadly, more bestial and more absolutely unrestrained. So this point about crime I think is really important because in the 1880s there's a huge moral panic about crime. There had been an economic downturn since 1973 since the panic of 1973. So there's a sense that even at its height, Britain, British establishment opinion is still very jittery. Jerry White in his book on late 19th century um London, he's he's got a brilliant section about crime and he says, you know, you might think it's an ordered safe city, but actually there are dozens of murders every year. There's a gun crime panic.

In 1887, so the year before these murders start, there were 18,000 missing people reported in London. So, it's a place where you can fall through the cracks really quickly, but also if you're one of the middle- class people reading your copy of the Daily Telegraph, you're in a, you know, a sort of lowlevel state of anxiety the whole time about precisely what is being bred out there in the East End. And, you know, the criminals, the radicals, all of that kind of thing. So, 1887 is the year of Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee. So you know tremendous pomp and circumstance but in that same year there had been a massive focus for middle class panic in the place in London that is synonymous with British greatness namely Trafalga Square where Nelson's column stands because it had become a vast squatter camp so that the homeless had moved in and had set up kind of shacks and tents there and this becomes

a focus for middle class indignation and there is pressure on the police to do something about it. And so on the 8th of November, Sir Charles Warren, the head of the Metropolitan Police, bans all public assemblies from gathering in Trafala Square. And on the 13th of November, there are kind of a series of rallies. So they are organized by socialists, by Irish nationalists. KL Marx's daughter, Elellanena Marx, is a speaker there. and they try to occupy Trafala Square and to hold it against the police. But the police are there in mass force. They've been supplemented by the Grenadier Guards and they succeed in clearing Trfalga Square and this is commemorated as Bloody Sunday. You know, in due course, uh revolutionaries in Russia will kind of see it as one of the examples of how an advanced industrial economy might conceivably be overthrown by a proletarian revolution. It isn't.

In this case, however, Trafalga Square is held for the establishment and the homeless are cleared out from their their camps and many of them end up heading to the only place really where they can hope to find shelter which is the Warren of Streets off White Chapel High Street.

And White Chapel has been changed actually by three things. So one of them which we'll come on to in the next couple of episodes is immigration specifically from the western part of the Tsarist Empire of the Russian Empire. So Poland and Russia itself and that's particularly Jewish immigration. So that's one thing that's changed White Chapel. There's also been a lot of slum clearance hasn't there. So that people who have been basically decanted from the slums have ended up being pushed into the back alleys and doss houses of Spittlefields. So in the heart of White Chapel, the other thing has been an attempt to crack down on brothel. So in 1885, an act to make further provision for the protection of women and girls and that basically means that people have been kicked out of their establishments and they too are now sort of been been packed into the East End.

So it's a sort of it's a it's a powder keg Tom. It is a powder keg. Yes. Uh well, I mean kind of this mood of um seething desperation, I guess, in the streets, even worse than normal. And so when you have people crammed into terrible housing, I suppose it's unsurprising that recorded incidents of crime have been going up throughout 1887 and then into 1888. To the degree that you might think that, you know, another murder wouldn't create any great stir. I mean that's that's not entirely true because there is a particularly horrible murder that takes place in White Chapel on the 7th of August 1888. And locals are shocked because it's the body of a woman called Martha Tabram. And this body has been found crumpled on the landing of a block of tenement flats just off White Chapel High Street. And Martha had been stabbed 39 times. And there's no clue as to who had done it. And the local press covered

the case in considerable detail. So they say that Martha had been butchered, that her asalent had displayed a virulent savagery and so on. But the police are unable to to have any clues as to who could have done it or why. And so on the 23rd of August, when the coroner formally announced her cause of death, it was described as being willful murder against some person or persons unknown. So they don't know who did it. And that is a verdict that people will be hearing a lot over the weeks and months that are to follow. And there's just the odd hint, isn't there, that there could this could be the beginning of something, particularly if you're in the newspaper industry, that could bear fruit. So, the Illustrated Police News ran six pictures of the Martha Tabum murder on its front page, and the East London Observer ran two columns about the crime. a unique and mysterious crime, it said because of

course, as you say, violence is common. But it's unusual to have a case where of such savagery coupled with no clues, right? With no, it's not, it doesn't seem to be leading anywhere. I guess the one thing is that Martha Tabram is not the kind of victim to excite the attention of the press because she's not I mean, it sounds a horrible thing to say, but she's not terribly glamorous.

No. So she's 39, but she looked a lot older because she she'd had a life on the streets. So one W witness diplomatically described her as a woman who would rather have a glass of ale than a cup of tea. So I think she was probably an alcoholic. She seems to have made a living by kind of hawking trinkets that she kind of made or whatever. And perhaps she, you know, when absolutely desperate, she would sell her body for a few pennies. Um unclear. So her fate is hideous, but she is not, as you say, the kind of person who would necessarily be remembered. She lacks the glamour of the kind of victim who would remain in the newspapers for week after week after week. And so it seems like her name will very quickly be forgotten as the weeks pass. But then, Dominic, just one week after the coroner has announced his verdict on her death at her inquest, on the 31st of August, news breaks of another murder. And this

is even more terrible. And it has happened just a short walk from where Martha had been found. And this time with this murder, people really will sit up and notice.

Gosh. Well, come back after the break and we will explore the circumstances of this new crime. This episode is brought to you by Aura Frames. History is full of gifts, but the best are those that last. Because photographs have become our modern heirlooms. They're like fragments of the present already turning into history.

Aura frames let you relive these memories every day or give them to someone you love. That is our beloved producer Theo pointing at a kebab in Sarah Yeeo. Preload the photos before it leaves the box. Add a message and you can keep updating it from anywhere. Unlimited storage, no subscription, just memories. For a limited time, visit auraframes.co.uk UK and get £35 off Ara's bestselling Carver matte frame named the top frame by the independent and use the promo code history at the checkout. That's a frames aura.co.uk promo code history. This exclusive Black Friday Cyber Monday deal is their best of the year. So, order now before it ends. Support the show by mentioning us at checkout. Terms and conditions apply.

This episode is brought to you by hotels.com. Make your next trip work for you. Hotels.com just rolled out a game-changing feature called Save Your Way. And it's as simple as it sounds. When you book a trip as a hotel.com member, you decide how to use your savings. Choose to take the instant savings now or to bank the savings as rewards for later. It's your call. Envision converting discounts on this week's stay into rewards for a luxurious beach getaway next year. No complicated maths, no blackout dates, just you choosing how to make your travels work harder for you. Only at hotels.com.

Save your way is available to loyalty members in the US and UK on Hotels with member prices. Other terms apply. See site for details. Scarcely has the horror and sensation caused by the discovery of the murdered woman in White Chapel some short time ago had time to abate than another discovery is made, which for the brutality exercised on the victim is even more shocking and will no doubt create as great a sensation in the vicinity as its predecessor. The affair up to the present is enveloped in complete mystery and the police have as yet no evidence to trace the perpetrators of the horrible deed. So that was the central news agency reporting on the 31st of August 1888 the news of what it headlined a horrible murder in White Chapel. So Tom take us through the story of this new murder.

Okay. So, the body had been found by a delivery man um car man as the Victorians called it. Um and he worked for Pigford's um in Covent Garden and he'd been heading to work from Bethyl Green through White Chapel and he was off to Covent Garden in central London and he found the body around 3:40 a.m. This was a guy called Charles Lechmere. Uh, and he was walking to work down Bucks Row, which is um, I mean it's it's no longer called Bucks Row, but it's still there. You can still walk down the street, very narrow um, in White Chapel.

And as he's doing so, he sees this object lying beside the entrance to a stable yard and it is now one of the entrances to White Chapel Tube Station, but at the time it was um, what was called a yard crossing. So, a kind of narrow alleyway leading off the main street into a stable yard. And so he stops, he goes to inspect it and he finds that it is the body of a woman and he stands there resolutely wondering what to do. And as he does so he's joined by uh another car man called Robert Paul who is also on his way to work and one of the themes I think of this entire series will be the number of people who are either coming back or going to work throughout the night. The streets of White Chapel are very very busy. So they both approach the body um which is huddled in the shadows. It's still you know it's still nighttime and they find that the woman is lying on her back. Her skirts have been hitched up

over her hips uh and Lechmere can't bring himself to touch the body but uh Robert Paul does and he finds that her skin is cold to the touch but he presses his ear to her to her mouth and he fancies that he can hear her breathing. Now both men are late for work so they smooth down the woman's skirts and they head on their way and a short distance on they run into a policeman and they tell him what they found and Lechmere says she looks to me to be either dead or drunk but for my part I think she is dead and so she is she is very very dead

and they haven't noticed the details um I guess because what time did you say it was? It's 3:40 in the morning, so dawn is not yet broken, so it's dark. But when the police arrive and they they do notice the details and the details which are rehearsed at the inquest are, as they will be throughout this series, I mean, no surprise, they are really gruesome and really, really shocking, aren't they? They are. So, listeners should be warned. So, the victim's throat had been cut almost from ear to ear. Um the abdomen had been savagely ripped open um exposing the the intestines. The lining of the woman's stomach had been cut in several places.

There were also, and I quote the details of the inquest, two small stabs on private parts apparently done with a strong bladed knife. And the surgeon who conducted the autopsy, a doctor called Rhys Llewellyn, he he said he confessed himself to be appalled by what he had been examining. Um I have seen many terrible cases, but never such a brutal affair as this.

Yeah. And I think that's important to bring across right from the beginning. I mean, we don't want to wallow in the details of these crimes, but it is important to convey how horrific they are to explain what the public reaction is. You know, these are not murders like any other. I mean, there are stabbings are not uncommon in London in the 1880s. You know, there are dozens every year of people stabbed to death, but there is something uniquely savage and bestial about Jack the Ripper's murders.

Literally visceral. Yeah. Visceral. Exactly. So the obvious questions are, you know, why would you do such a thing? Um, who could do it? And actually, who's the woman? Like who is the victim? Because it's very hard for them to identify who the victims are. So to start with the killer, they are completely bewildered right from the beginning. Like why would anyone do this in such a savage and bestial way? And also the fact that it's been done in streets down which people could be walking at any moment. Well, we talked about this sense of the killer being a ghoul or a phantom or a spectre. And there is from the beginning something strange about his ability to inflict these terrible murders in a public place even though it is a kind of you know a street in the middle of of the night. So a policeman on his beat had walked down Bucks Row half an hour before Lechre and Paul discovered the body. So that's uh

well that's 10 3 in the morning and he hadn't seen anything and no one had heard anything either. And there was a woman called Mrs. Emma Green who lived directly above the scene of the murder who she said she was a light sleeper and had a scream been given she would have heard it you know but but not a peep. And there were watchmen too nearby. They had heard nothing. So, it's evident to the uh to the inquest that the murderer must have slit his victim's throat before she'd been able to make a noise. So, either he'd strangled her or clased her mouth or whatever. He'd done his terrible work with incredible speed. And then before Lechmere arrives, he must have kind of vanished into presumably the early morning traffic on White Chapel Road and you know become part of the crowd and and as you say he must have been covered with blood. There's an awful must have been an awful lot of blood and yet

you know he hasn't gone no no no one has spotted him and that may be because he has a modus operandi that allow allows him to escape the worst of the blood spattering from the the body or it may be because as you said at the beginning there are a lot of slaughter houses and butcher shops and so on and a man walking down the street in an apron you know in the dark with blood stains will actually go relatively unnoticed. I mean, just on that topic, we're not we're not the uh the rest is true crime and um my knowledge of uh details of autopsies is not great, but I gather that if someone is strangled and then the throat is cut, there is much less blood. I mean, of course, there is blood, but but I I I gather this as a detail and perhaps people with more medical knowledge than us can confirm that for us.

Tom, I can't believe you're being so uh so hesitant. Anyway, tell us about the victim. As you say, to begin with, the police are worried it's going to be difficult to identify her. She is examined by uh Dr. Llewellyn. In his report, he says that she's a woman of of small stature, that she's middle-aged, she has graying hair, she has a scar on her forehead, and he specifies one tooth deficient front of upper jaw, but that's nothing unusual. Lots of of people in, you know, in White Chapel have have lost a tooth or two. She has very few possessions on her. A comb, a looking glass, a handkerchief. None of these give any hint as to her identity. And her clothing too is very anonymous. It's shabby. It's stained. The only exception is that she has a new bonnet. Dr. Lynn specified it's made of black straw and it is trimmed with black velvet. So, is that enough to identify her? Well, as it turns out, it is because within only a

few hours of of her body being found, the police have a name, Polly. And their source is an elderly woman called Ellen Holland. So maybe an ancestor, who knows? I don't know. And Ellen had shared a room with Polly in a Doss house on Thraw Street, which is one of the kind of the notorious streets in the heart of Spittlefields. So that's one clue. Um they still don't have a surname but this will come very shortly because when the police investigate Paulie's pettic codes they find that they are stamped with the mark of a workhouse and to be precise the workhouse in Lambbeath in South London and they find an inmate of that workhouse who is brought to inspect Pauliey's corpse and this person provides the police with Pauliey's real name which is Mary Anne Nicholls and the police go and they find that Maryanne Nichols Polly has a a father who's still alive and she has a husband. And the following day on the 1st of September,

Edward Walker, Pauliey's father, and William Nichols, her husband, are brought to inspect her body. And William Nichols, the husband, he gazes down at the corpse of his dead wife, horribly mutilated as it is, and he breaks down. And he has to be comforted by the the police inspector. And through his tears, he stammers, "I forgive you as you are. I forgive you on account of what you have been to me."

Golly, I mean, that's a very it's a very denzian scene. And actually the whole story as it unfolds of poly Nichols does have a kind of Denzian um arc to it although a denzian arc in which you know they don't live happily ever after but the heroine plunges into the abyss and never ever recovers.

Yeah. I think the the kind of quality of a of a Dickens novel hangs over as you say completely hangs over her story. So Polly Nichols let's call her that. She was born in 1845 uh just off Fleet Street, which today, you know, it's so grand that very few people can afford to live there. Very few people live there at all. Um but back then it was again a little bit like Spittlefields in 1888. Um a kind of warren of alleys and courtyards lined with dilapidated housing. So verging on a rookery. But her parents, I mean, they're they're poor, but they're certainly not indigent. So her father was a locksmith. Her mother was a lawn dress and they belong to the ranks I guess of what Victorians would have called the respectable poor. They have careers. As is very usual in this period, Polly loses a mother early on.

So, she dies of of TB, but Edward Walker continues to provide for his family. And this is very Dickens. Polly um steps into her mother's shoes even though she's still just a young girl and essentially takes over the maternal role. So looking after her father in the way that little Mel looks after her her grandfather or little Dorret looks after her father. It's kind of very, you know, very reminiscent of that. And the tone of a morally improving Denzian melodrama seems to continue when at the age of 18, Polly meets um a printers machinist because Fleet Street, of course, is the center of the the press. And so that's exactly the kind of person that that Polly might hope to meet, someone working in the in the for the newspapers. And this is the this is her husband, William Nichols, the guy who comes and sobs over her mutilated corpse in due course. Uh, and they move out of Fleet Street. They move to Warworth in

South London. Pauly's father goes with them. They start a family. Polly ends up having five children. And it's a seeming model of domesticity. A mother, a father, you know, a grandfather, children, very kind of like something out of Dickens. So then in 1880, Pauliey's by now 35. There is a a spectacular bust up and Polly walks out on her husband on her out on her five children. Um, one of them's just very very young, barely an infant, and she never returns. And that that's her her family broken up.

And there the different accusations, aren't there? And actually, so family breakdown is a theme of almost all the victim stories one way or another, the collapse of a relationship. But another theme is alcohol. I mean, in almost all of the cases, alcohol is a huge factor. And William later claimed that Polly had become an alcoholic, didn't he? and which may well have been true. Polly her it seems that she thought he'd begun an affair with a younger woman who'd been helping with the child care. That's right, isn't it? And both those things may have been true that she a she was drinking and b he was having an affair.

And either way, what we will see again and again with the lives of these women is that something goes horribly wrong and you end up in a spiral. And in this world of late Victorian Britain, you know, no welfare state or or or not one worthy of the name, once you're in the spiral, it is very very hard to get out of it and to clamber back. And it basically, you know, it's like a game of snakes and ladders and you're on a snake that is leading all the way to the bottom, i.e. to White Chapel.

I mean, there is a kind of welfare and anyone who's read Oliver Twist will will know what that welfare is because it's comes in the form of the workhouse. Um, and if if from this point on if if Pauly's story is Denzian, it's in that Oliver Twist sense. She is plunging into a world of workhouses, of dossous, of a kind of desperate struggle on the streets to survive. And she understandably to cope with the horrors of this, she turns to drink more and more. Um, and her every attempt to kind of claw her way back up to to try and find a solid footing again kind of found us on the fact that she is becoming more and more of an alcoholic. And by December 1887, you know, she is homeless. Um and she joins the ranks of the homeless in Trafala Square, but she's moved to Trafala Square a month after Bloody Sunday. So, you know, when the police had had cleared Trafala Square and so the police are in no mood to allow the

homeless to reoccupy that public space. And so Polly is one of a number of women who are moved on by the police to a workhouse and the police are kind of marching through the streets to uh to be processed. But Polly and and 10 other women manage to slip away and kind of melt into the side streets and they return to Trfalga Square. And there they are formally arrested. And by this point, Polly is drunk and she's described by the arresting officer as having been the worst woman in the square. And this time they are unable to slip their police escort. And Polly and the other 10 women all end up back in the workhouse. By now we're into 1888.

and Polly makes one last desperate attempt to kind of redeem herself from homelessness and alcoholism. Um, and she is found a placement by the workhouse with a very religious couple in in Wsworth who are called the Creies. And it's an expression of their uh I guess their kind of um their religion that they are willing to take a chance on an alcoholic from the workhouse as a kind of domestic servant in their house. and they encourage her to write to her father. And this is Pauliey's first communication with her father for at least a couple of years. And it sounds like things are okay. So Polly writes, "It is a grand place where she's staying with trees and gardens back and front.

All has been newly done up. They are tea toters and very religious, so I ought to get on." So she's got a room and there's no alcohol in the house. So, if she was ever going to have a chance,

it's like the bit where Oliver Twist is taken in by the Kindly family or whatever. But unfortunately, this isn't a novel and it again it doesn't work out, right? She doesn't get on with them for some reason.

I think she she she wants drink and there's no drink in the house. Uh and so she abscon um and uh Mrs. Cowry then wrote to the workhouse, this is how we know about it, saying that Polly had gone and that she had taken clothing with her worth um just over £3. And that clothing presumably was the clothing that Mrs. Cowry had provided to Polly, you know, her kind of work uniforms or dresses or whatever,

which she probably pawned for money for booze right? Yeah. And probably kept some money, you know, to keep a roof over her head because she ends up in a doss house on Thraw Street in Spittlefields. And this is Wilmont's lodging house, uh, which was named after a guy called George Wilmont who'd run it in the 1860s and '7s. And it is, I think, well known on the streets of Spittlefield as a place that accommodates all women. I imagine that the experiences that Polly has been having on the streets would make that something that she would really um, you know, would be important to her. And so this is where she meets with Ellen Holland because Ellen Holland is one of three women who is sharing a room in this doss house with Polly. And sometimes she and Ellen would save money by sharing a bed. And Ellen, you know, she told the police that she she'd liked Polly, but unsurprisingly had found her

quiet and withdrawn, to quote Ellen, as if some trouble was weighing upon her mind. And I would guess that there were, you know, there were many many troubles.

Well, those troubles get worse, don't they? Because she she runs out of money. I mean, she she burns through this money. So, by the end of August, she's kicked out. Again, this would be a theme of a lot of the Ripper victims. They end up running out of money and being kicked out onto the streets and somehow, you know, we can only speculate how, but there are some obvious possibilities. She gets the money for more drink and also she finds uh a doss house on Flower and Dean Street, a very grim doss house. And actually this question of how she gets the money, this is at the heart in many ways of the whole story of Jack the Ripper and his crimes and his victims.

Because the thing that has hung over his victims from the very beginning, from the very first reports and from the inquests is the notion that they were all prostitutes. Right.

Yeah. And so Ellen Holland at the inquest was asked um directly if Polly had been a prostitute and she denied it and said she did not think the deceased was leading a fast life. Uh in fact she seemed very afraid of it. I think there are two things to say about this. The first is that Ellen had really liked Polly and was griefstricken by her death and so obviously would have been reluctant to to speak ill of her. And the other thing is that Polly clearly clung to memories of her lost respectability and so she would absolutely have dreaded becoming a fast woman, you know, a a prostitute. Um, she clearly preferred to take lodgings away from men. So that's why she was in uh in in Wilmont's lodging house. But I don't think that any of these things necessarily prove that she was never reduced by desperation to prostitution.

And in fact, you might you might almost say the opposite. And we certainly know that by the standards of the age, she was accounted a prostitute. And this was because one year after walking out on her husband, she'd been recorded in the census as living with another man. And this had enabled William Nickel, her husband, to be legally absolved of the financial responsibilities that up until that point he had had for her. So to quote Christine Corton in her book London Fog, any female who was kept by a man for however long or short a period of her life without benefit of a marriage ceremony was categorized as a prostitute. And this is why in this period working-class women are always desperate to keep hold of their marriage certificates because in a sense it's the it's a testimony to their respectability.

without it there is always the risk that they will be labeled a prostitute even though it's not in the sense that we would use it today you know as a sec a professional sex worker um it is it is a much more embracing term yeah it's a really really slippery term this and so I think the only honest answer is it's impossible for us to sort of pin this label definitively on people even if we we wanted to in his book about London in the 19th century Jerry White says quite explicitly no one knows how many prostitutes there where in London, estimates varied from 8,000 to 80,000 and sometimes more. All these numbers were clueless. Most were influenced by self-interest. Even the definition of a prostitute was unclear. It's enlarged by some to include any woman living with a man out of wedlock, which is what you've just said. There were few objects of social inquiry that cause more muddle and dishonesty than the prostitute. In

other words, it is an immensely amorphous label. The police themselves are actually quite honest about this when they're talking to each other about it. They say we don't we don't really know what it means and we don't really you know because we use different definitions. So there are some definitions that are you're a prostitute if you've been convicted of prostitution and there are others that are like no no no you're a prostitute if you're sleeping with men and you're not married. You know a woman can resort to selling herself once or twice because she's desperate because she's homeless.

But it doesn't mean that she's a career prostitute does it? and Polly Nichols clearly wasn't.

So, the police have a phrase common prostitute, by which they mean a career prostitute. And it's evident that Polly was not that. But, you know, we just don't know, you know, to what desperate straits was she reduced by by her poverty, by her homelessness, by her desperation. And certainly, you know, there would have been no lack of clients in White Chapel because it's where laborers and dockers and slaughtermen and porters from across the whole East End habitually go to sex. So, it would always have been an opportunity. We just can't say, but we certainly know that by the 30th of August, she had somehow made enough money to buy her new bonnet, you know, the one that that um fashioned out of black straw and trimmed with black velvet that the was described by the coroner. And she'd also had enough money to get incredibly drunk that evening um in the Frying Pan, which was a notorious pub on the corner of Brick Lane and uh

Thr Street. Um and if you go there, you can still it's it's a Chinese restaurant now, but the um the image of the frying pan is up there above above the the Chinese restaurant. And so she leaves the pub about half midnight and she's skint again. And so she goes to um Wilmont's lodging house to try and get a bed there. And she's turned away and she tells the doorkeeper, "I'll soon get my doss money. See what a jolly bonnet I've got now." And she goes back out and clearly she does manage somehow to get some money. And listeners can, you know, make up their own mind about how she does that. But she doesn't spend it on a bed. Instead, she goes back to the frying pan and gets even more drunk. and she leaves the the frying pan um shortly before 2:30 a.m. and she heads southwards towards White Chapel Road.

And on the corner of White Chapel Road, she she runs into Ellen Holland. And Ellen Holland remembers that she was uh you know, she was staggering um that she was so drunk that that when Ellen stopped her, Polly slumped against the wall. and Ellen tried to persuade her to come with her back to to Wilmonts. But Polly said, "You know, I can't because I don't have the money. So, I need to go and get money. I've had my lodging money three times today and I've spent it. It won't be long before I'll be back." And so, um, Ellen says good night to Polly.

She knows it's 2:30 because there's a church on the other side of the road and and um she hears the chime striking and Ellen watches Polly staggering eastwards along White Chapel Road which is in the direction of Bucks Row and Ellen Holland is the last witness to have seen Polly alive but not of course the last person to have seen her alive. And how that person, the murderer, came to be with her perhaps half an hour after she'd parted from Ellen beside the yard crossing on Bucks Row, we don't know. Um, so there are various suggestions.

Hal's suggestion in the five is that that Polly had found a kind of dark corner and had curled up there and had gone to sleep and he killed her while she was sleeping. I would say the the kind of the broad consensus is that she needed her doss money and she had gone there to have sex to earn the money that would enable her to join Ellen in in in the bed back in in uh on Thr Street. Or maybe maybe it was neither of those. Maybe it was just opportunism. Maybe she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. You know, a drunk defenseless woman. We will never know for sure. But Dominic, there is one thing we can be certain of, and that is that the the murderous predator who uh Paulie Nichols had met with around 3:15 a.m. on the 31st of August, 1888, that his reign of terror had only just begun. Criggy, a chilling cliffhanger to end on there, Tom. So, next time we'll be back with the investigation of the

murder of Poly Nichols and the next uh link in this terrible chain. Tom, thank you very much. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "Jack The Ripper: History's Darkest Mystery"?

Dominic Sandbrook (Host), Tom Holland (Host), Hallie Rubenhold (Guest).

What is "Jack The Ripper: History's Darkest Mystery" about?

The narrative delves into the chilling saga of Jack the Ripper, exploring the lives of his victims and the societal context of Victorian London in 1888. The content also sets the stage for revealing a potential identity for the infamous killer, emphasizing the mystery's ongoing intrigue and historical significance.

What is mentioned in this The Rest Is History episode?

215 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Jack the Ripper, London, Polly Nichols, Polly Nichols, Polly Nichols, Polly Nichols. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "Jack The Ripper: History's Darkest Mystery"?

The episode runs 1 h 1 min; the transcript is about 10,766 words in 88 timestamped sections.

More from The Rest Is History

About this transcript: the episode's spoken words as captioned on YouTube, split into timestamped sections. Reclip.Me locates every person, work and idea in the text, keeps the time it is first named, and quotes the words around it verbatim. Last updated February 24, 2026.