BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//InvisionCommunity Events 5.0.18//EN METHOD:PUBLISH CALSCALE:GREGORIAN REFRESH-INTERVAL:PT15M X-PUBLISHED-TTL:PT15M X-WR-CALNAME:RMCommunityCalendar NAME:RMCommunityCalendar BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:Europe/London TZURL:https://tzurl.org/zoneinfo/Europe/London X-LIC-LOCATION:Europe/London BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:+0000 TZOFFSETTO:+0100 TZNAME:BST DTSTART:20250330T020000Z RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=3;BYDAY=-1SU END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:+0100 TZOFFSETTO:+0000 TZNAME:GMT DTSTART:20251026T020000Z RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=10;BYDAY=-1SU END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VEVENT SUMMARY:Lucy Worsley on Jack the Ripper -January 14th 2025 DTSTAMP:20250118T181530Z SEQUENCE:0 UID:139-7-c3fe8195a3dde498d013e477e2142422@aalbc.com ORGANIZER;CN="richardmurray":noreply@aalbc.com DESCRIPTION:\n Lucy Worsley on Jack the Ripper -January 14th 2025\n\n ht tps://aalbc.com/tc/profile/6477-richardmurray/?status=2826&\;type=statu s\n\n\n\n \n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n MY THOUGHTS\n\n\n\n Learned some things abou t the killer who got away with it commonly known as Jack the Ripper. The e nvironment of London where the murders happened I didn't know. The genesis of the Ripper murders for true crime is well explained. Very nicely done. For True Crimes... The blunt bloody mess of a crime is hidden underneath the media construct of motives and actors in the murder\, the common popul ace financial or viewing endearment to stories that have real elements whi le laced with attention getting aspects to discuss safely in their homes\, the ease of marketability to fantasy with a bit of truth keeps producers of content rehashing or reimagining the event until the murderer is the on ly element that has any truth.\n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n TRANSCRIPT\n\n\n\n  \n\ n\n\n ♪ Lucy Worsley: On the 7th of October\, 1888\, London was in the m iddle of a media frenzy.\n\n[Bell dings\, hoof beats clopping] A tabloid n ewspaper had published a murder map.\n\n♪ It showed the locations where\ , just days earlier... several women had been brutally murdered.\n\nSpecta tors flocked like tourists to London's East End to visit the killing sites .\n\n♪ True crime is now a modern-day obsession.\n\nBut how did the case of Jack the Ripper\, back in 1888\, set the template for this dark world of entertainment based on violence?\n\n♪ In this series\, I'm re-investi gating some of the most dramatic and brutal chapters in British history.\n \nOh\, yes.\n\nHere we go.\n\nMan: And now you're face-to-face with Willia m the Conqueror.\n\nWoman: They know that sex sells and that violence sell s.\n\nLucy: These stories form part of our national mythology.\n\nThey har bor mysteries that have intrigued us for centuries.\n\nIt turns very dark here.\n\nWoman 2: Clearly showing us-- Lucy: Refugees.\n\nThey're such gra phic images of religious violence.\n\nBut with the passage of time\, we ha ve new ways to unlock their secrets\, using scientific advances and a mode rn perspective.\n\nHe was what we would now call a foreign fighter.\n\nLuc y: I'm going to uncover forgotten witnesses.\n\nI'm going to reexamine old evidence and follow new clues...\n\nThe human hand.\n\nto get closer to t he truth.\n\nMan: It's like fake news.\n\nLucy: You're questioning whether we can actually take that seriously as a piece of evidence?\n\n♪ In the autumn of 1888\, it seemed everyone was talking about one story.\n\nA mur derer was on the loose in these streets in East London.\n\nThe killer had already targeted and butchered several women\, and the press could not get enough of the story.\n\nHere's that exact\, same murder map from 1888.\n\ nWe're talking about a serial killer.\n\nOf course\, we're talking about J ack the Ripper.\n\nThe entire nation-- in fact\, the world-- was gripped b y this unsolved case.\n\nThese murders are now more than 130 years old\, a nd we're still obsessed.\n\nI should make it clear that this isn't yet ano ther search for the identity of Jack the Ripper.\n\nInstead\, I'd like to investigate how this case became the prototype for all the true-crime stor ies to follow.\n\n♪ I've come to the other side of London\, to Kensingto n Palace\, the childhood home of Queen Victoria.\n\nThis might seem like a n unusual place to begin my investigation\, but I've long studied Victoria 's life\, and there's some evidence in her personal diary I want to get my hands on.\n\n♪ This is a page of her diary from the 4th of October\, 18 88.\n\n\"Dreadful murders\,\" she writes\, \"of unfortunate women of a bad class in London.\"\n\nI wonder what she means by \"unfortunate women of a bad class.\"\n\nThat sounds like a euphemism to me.\n\nBut the case was c learly on the Queen's mind.\n\n♪ Victoria even telegraphed her Prime Min ister\, Lord Salisbury\, with some strongly worded advice.\n\nHer words we re sent in code to prevent messengers reading the top secret information e nclosed.\n\n♪ Here\, the Queen is scribbling in her own writing what she wants the telegram to say.\n\n\"This new\, most ghastly murder \"shows th e absolute necessity \"for some very decided action.\n\nAll these courts\" -- she means the little streets of Whitechapel-- \"must be lit \"and our d etectives improved.\n\nThey are not what they should be.\"\n\nAnd then she goes on to give the Prime Minister a telling-off.\n\n\"You promised\,\" s he said\, \"when the first murder happened\, to consult with your colleagu es.\"\n\nBut\, she says\, these things have not been done.\n\nQueen Victor ia is applying serious pressure on her Prime Minister to track down and ca pture the killer.\n\nShe was appalled by these heinous crimes.\n\nBut just how were these murders catapulted into the diary of a Queen?\n\nHi.\n\nCa n I come on?\n\nThank you.\n\n[Air brakes hiss] From the 1860s\, newspaper circulation expanded as more people learned to read and the tax on paper was abolished.\n\n♪ Fleet Street was where the nation's news was crafted and debated.\n\nThe top papers were all based here\, and a new mass reade rship was born.\n\n[Printing press clanking] ♪ The case of Jack the Ripp er would begin with Mary Ann Nichols\, also known as Polly\, and she knew this vibrant newspaper world very well.\n\nHer husband William got a job a s a printer's machinist in Bouverie Street\, just off Fleet Street.\n\n♪ Just around the corner from Bouverie Street is the Church of Saint Bride' s\, the journalists' church\, and it was here in 1864 that William Nichols and Mary Ann got married.\n\nI've got here a copy of a page from the pari sh register.\n\nLet's have a look.\n\nOh\, here we go.\n\nA marriage at Sa int Bride's.\n\nThere's William Nichols\, profession printer\, and there's Mary Ann Walker.\n\nIt was her friends who called her Polly.\n\nShe was j ust 18 at the time of this wedding\, and it's curious to think that Willia m Nichols had no idea that one day his new wife was going to become part o f perhaps the biggest story that these Fleet Street journalists would ever see.\n\nPolly and William were married for 16 years\, but after five chil dren and accusations that William was having an affair\, Polly walked out. \n\nBy 1888\, she was scraping by on the streets of Whitechapel.\n\nShe wo uld be brutally murdered there on the 31st of August.\n\n♪ Today\, Polly Nichols is recognized as the first victim in this notorious case.\n\nI th ink I can maybe get an insight into our true-crime obsession by tracking h ow the press portrayed Polly's death.\n\nI've come to the British Library\ , which holds a massive newspaper archive.\n\n♪ Some of the police files from this case are missing.\n\nIn fact\, some of them were stolen\, which means that newspaper accounts are one of the key sources that I need to c onsult.\n\nThere's so much information here.\n\nIt's incredibly detailed\, but there is a problem.\n\n♪ I am all too well aware that you can't alw ays rely on journalists for balance and accuracy.\n\nThey're more than cap able of spinning a story.\n\n♪ [Crank squeaking] This is the \"Pall Mall Gazette\" from the 31st of August.\n\nThat's the day that Polly was kille d.\n\nI think this is one of the very first mentions of her death\, but sh e's not named.\n\nThere didn't seem anything particular about Polly's deat h at first.\n\nSee what happens in the paper the next day.\n\nOh\, yes.\n\ nAnd here\, she's actually named.\n\n\"Mary Ann\, or Polly\, Nicholls.\"\n \nAnd they've dug a bit into her story\, who she was.\n\nAnd this is not w ithout judgment.\n\nIt says here she was \"the worse for drink.\"\n\n♪ T his is \"The Star\" newspaper.\n\nMore sensationalist coverage\, and they' ve called their article \"The Whitechapel Horror\" and they say\, \"These are the crimes of a man who must be a maniac.\"\n\n♪ By the 8th of Septe mber\, there's a real sense of the story escalating.\n\nIt's made the fron t page of \"The Illustrated Police News\,\" and this is just extraordinary .\n\nThere's been a reconstruction visually of everything that's happened so far.\n\nSo here's the finding of the body.\n\nWe've got the\, uh\, the doctors in the mortuary\, the inquest\, and here is poor Polly\, laid out dead in her coffin.\n\n\"The murdered woman at Whitechapel Mortuary.\"\n\n It is incredibly distasteful.\n\n[Scoffs] But this was a-- a really low-br ow newspaper\, and at the back\, you'll find adverts for how to buy porn.\ n\n[Whooshing] Newspapers were now competing to provide the most lurid cov erage they could.\n\nAnd look.\n\nWe've got gory illustrations of Polly's injuries on the front page.\n\nBlood and gore continue to characterize the true-crime genre today\, but what drove the papers towards this sensation alism in 1888?\n\nMedia moguls had invested heavily in the new rotary pres ses.\n\nThese ones could churn out 10\,000 newspapers in an hour.\n\nBut m argins were tight in this business.\n\nFor anyone to make a profit\, there had to be huge sales\, so this meant that proprietors were after really s plashy stories.\n\n[Clanking] To discover the vital ingredients of a reall y splashy story\, I've enlisted a former crime reporter who's very familia r with the business.\n\nLucy: Paul\, why was it that the press got obsesse d with this particular case?\n\nThe Ripper case had all the kind of classi c elements of a salacious tabloid story\, didn't it?\n\nBecause it had the element of sex to it\, it was a whodunit\, obviously\, the murderer was o n the loose.\n\nThere was the conspiracy-theory element to it\, that it co uld have been somebody from the elite\, and then you just got this whole s ense of moral outrage that something so vile could take place in London.\n \nDo you think it was quite new in the 1880s to read about this kind of st ory in the mainstream papers?\n\nThe mainstream seemed to be working off t he back of the popularity of the shilling shockers and the penny dreadfuls \, those salacious fictions that were sold for a penny on street corners.\ n\nAnd so they saw how popular they were\, and crime started getting more into the mainstream press.\n\nMm.\n\nThat's a bit of a new development.\n\ nNow\, as a crime reporter today\, how do you know what's ethical to print ?\n\nWell\, today\, it's a lot easier because the press broadcasters\, the y have regulators\, so they have rules to follow on accuracy\, privacy\, h arassment\, and things like that.\n\nIt's not the kind of wild west that i t was in the 1800s\, and they were just thinking about\, \"How can we gene rate more readers?\"\n\nIt just seemed like a free for all if you look bac k on it.\n\nI guess there was so much here that was novel and exciting and \, in a horrible sort of a way\, thrilling to Victorian readers.\n\nIt wou ld have been thrilling.\n\nIt would have been shocking.\n\nMore people bou ght these newspapers when they led on these stories.\n\nAnd then\, if you fast-forward to now\, look at the popularity of true crime\, the true-crim e genre.\n\nThere's still this sort of thirst for this kind of story.\n\nL ucy: Here was one of the first unsolved cases to connect with a mass audie nce.\n\nThe Victorians already enjoyed mystery novels\, and now this real- life case tapped into their fears about violence and kept the reader guess ing.\n\nHaving talks to pull\, it does seem significant that this almost \ "perfect\" crime story came along at a time when the newspaper business wa s changing and expanding.\n\nFor the journalists involved\, it must have b een a really fast-moving\, exciting world.\n\n♪ And just nine days after Polly was killed\, the journalists had another murder to write about.\n\n ♪ In 1869\, Annie Chapman had married John\, a coachman.\n\nJohn's job m eant that Annie had a comfortable life.\n\nThat's how they could afford to have this studio portrait taken.\n\nBut Annie's relationship would turn s our.\n\nCaring for a disabled son and losing a 12-year-old daughter\, Anni e fell deep into alcoholism.\n\nWhen John died\, any support Annie had was gone.\n\n[Flash powder whooshes] ♪ I think what I take away from the st ory of Annie is just how easy it was in Victorian London to fall far and f ast.\n\nIn 1888\, there was no safety net for women like Annie-- no financ ial support\, only the workhouse\, and that was so grim that many women pr eferred living on the street.\n\n♪ Annie was murdered in the early hours of the 8th of September\, 1888.\n\nHer body was found around 6 a.m. in a backyard in Hanbury Street\, Whitechapel.\n\nRumors that these killings we re linked intensified in September.\n\nHere's the \"Pall Mall Gazette\" on the 8th.\n\nThey say\, \"Another murder\" and \"More to follow?\"\n\nThey 're basically hinting that there's a serial killer on the loose.\n\nPolly and Annie's murders had troubling similarities.\n\nBoth women were murdere d after midnight in the same part of the East End\, and both had had their throats slashed.\n\nI'd like to do some detective work of my own.\n\nWhat seems to link Polly and Annie is Whitechapel.\n\nWhy do all roads lead he re?\n\n♪ Whitechapel today is a vibrant\, diverse area on the edge of Lo ndon's financial district.\n\nBut according to the newspapers\, at least\, Victorian Whitechapel was a distinctly dangerous place.\n\nOvercrowding w as common.\n\nRiots often happened.\n\nPeople poured in\, desperate for jo bs\, though\, as Whitechapel was near to the factories and the docks.\n\nW e can safely assume that one of the reasons Polly and Annie came here was to look for work.\n\n♪ This is where Polly was living in the summer of 1 888-- number 56\, Flower and Dean Street-- and...this is where she was kil led-- Buck's Row\, that was called.\n\nAnd Annie lived at Crossingham's Lo dging House\, which was at Number 35\, Dorset Street\, and her body was fo und in Hanbury Street\, over here at number 29.\n\n♪ When you look at th e map of Whitechapel like this\, it's only a mile across.\n\nThere's somet hing so intriguing about how such a small area of town managed to create s uch an enormous nationwide panic.\n\n♪ This archway is all that's left o f Flower and Dean Street\, where Polly was staying.\n\nBut don't be fooled by the street's floral name.\n\nIt was said it was too dicey for a single policeman to go in there on his own.\n\nThey had to patrol in pairs for p rotection.\n\nThe newspapers named Flower and Dean Street as the foulest a nd most dangerous street in London.\n\n♪ These sensational headlines abo ut Whitechapel were meant to grab attention\, but could mislead.\n\nAs a h istorian\, I want to check them against other sources.\n\nThere's a set of groundbreaking maps which might give me an insight into the social condit ions at the time.\n\nLet's just unfold them here.\n\nSo these were done be tween 1886 and 1889\, and the first section to be done was the East End\, including Whitechapel.\n\n[Gasps] Here we go.\n\nHere we are.\n\nAccording to Charles Booth\, who created this map\, he says\, \"I am sick \"to deat h of novelists and journalists painting these very lurid pictures of life in the East End.\"\n\nHe says\, \"My work\, my volumes are going \"to stri p it all back to sober facts and numbers and statistics and nothing else.\ "\n\nWho was Booth?\n\nCan you tell me a bit about him?\n\nYes.\n\nHe was a very\, very successful captain of industry.\n\nHe was an absolutely bril liant employer.\n\nHe ran the Booth Shipping Line\, and he could not under stand why there was so much unemployment in London and why all the charita ble donations that are poured in for the unemployed just weren't hitting t he target\, so that's how his survey gets going.\n\nThey're really rather beautiful with all the different colors.\n\nI think so.\n\nQuite sophistic ated for the 1880s\, I have to say.\n\nWhat do the colors mean?\n\nNow\, s tarting at the bottom\, black is a very unusual designation for a work of social science.\n\nNot only is it an indicator of chronic poverty\, it als o brings the angle of morality or character into it\, which means \"viciou s\, semi-criminal.\"\n\nHere is Dorset Street\, jet-black.\n\nOh\, where's Flower and Dean Street?\n\nThey're here\, and Thrall Street and Fashion S treet.\n\nThat's another jet-black region.\n\nWhy do you think that the vi ctims of Jack the Ripper were drawn to live in this Whitechapel area\, par ticularly these black streets?\n\nMm.\n\nAll of these streets were filled with common lodging houses\, and Whitechapel has more than any other distr ict.\n\nIt is the place with the greatest concentration of this very cheap form of a roof over your head\, and so it absolutely attracted people who were just\, you know\, financially not able to manage.\n\nWould we call i t a hostel today\, do you think?\n\nThat's what I think.\n\nPeople lived o ut on the street a lot more in the poorer parts of London because you didn 't want to have to be indoors unless you had to.\n\nSo\, when you're walki ng through it as a stranger\, like Booth was\, you're seeing life out on t he street.\n\nBut of course\, living your life out on the street like that also puts you at risk.\n\nAbsolutely right\, which\, of course\, leads in to the Ripper killings.\n\nHow do you think the people who lived in the ye llow-- upper-\, middle-\, and upper-class areas-- how do you think they fe lt about the people who lived in the black areas?\n\nI think a significant number of people in the upper-class streets headed east to do what would become known as slumming.\n\nSo\, after a night at the opera\, for example \, or a splendid meal in a restaurant\, they would hire their carriages an d ask to be taken into the sort of very darkest heart of East-End poverty. \n\nAnd we have quite a few anecdotal snippets from people saying that the se tiny little streets and alleys ended up after hours being filled with t he most intolerable people\, braying and laughing in their sort of fantast ic clothing\, just treating the poor locals as they were--like they were a nimals to be looked at in a zoo or perhaps in the old days of Bedlam\, whe n people went to laugh at the patients.\n\nSo that was deeply resented.\n\ n♪ [Trotting hooves clopping] Lucy: It wasn't just the press whipping up the story.\n\nNewspaper readers were also complicit.\n\nVictorians wanted to experience London's underbelly for themselves and get a thrill out of its perceived dangers.\n\n♪ True crime in general gives us that same thr ill.\n\n[Horn honks] It's not just entertainment.\n\nIt explores our deepe st fears and anxieties about society.\n\n[Clock tower bell chimes\, flash powder whooshes] [Siren wailing] By the 10th of September 1888\, panic in London was rising.\n\nThere had been a marked escalation in the level of v iolence inflicted by the killer\, and he was still on the loose.\n\nLike h ad been done to Polly Nichols\, Annie Chapman's throat had been cut.\n\nIt 's horrible.\n\nAlso\, her body had been disemboweled\, and some of her or gans were missing.\n\nThe police were struggling to make any progress with the case\, but there was something new that they could draw upon for help --science.\n\n♪ As Annie's death was considered suspicious\, a full auto psy was conducted.\n\nThe information from this autopsy was revealed in op en court on the order of the coroner\, Dr. Wynn Baxter.\n\nDr. Baxter was keen for transparency\, but this meant the reporters put virtually every s ingle salacious detail straight into the press\, uncensored.\n\n♪ He was of the opinion \"that the person who cut the deceased's throat \"took hol d of her by the chin\, and then commenced the incision from left to right. \"\n\nIt's interesting about what was in her stomach\, which was nothing.\ n\nShe was hungry.\n\nPoor lady.\n\nIt's so intriguing to see the authorit ies grappling with this new situation.\n\nOn the one hand\, releasing so m uch medical information to people who weren't doctors would have increased the horror and the fear.\n\nOn the other hand\, though\, it also unleashe d in the general public a fascination with this wonderful new world of for ensic science as a means of potentially catching killers.\n\nAnd that's so mething that's still with us to this day.\n\n♪ It's no surprise that the newspapers took full advantage of this openness from the authorities\, an d sales rocketed.\n\nThe Central News Agency in London began sending the s tory across the Atlantic via telegraph.\n\nReporters now swarmed into Whit echapel in search of new stories to feed the wires.\n\nThe press was start ing to do something different.\n\nThey were not just reporting on the crim es themselves.\n\nThat was no longer enough.\n\n♪ By the 10th of Septemb er\, the story was dominating the Victorian equivalent of 24-hour rolling news.\n\nThere were the morning\, the evening\, the Sunday editions of the papers to be filled.\n\nThe police hadn't made any official statements\, but journalists rushed in to fill that vacuum.\n\nThey were now using Pitm an's shorthand\, invented earlier in the century\, so they could very quic kly take down the statements of any witnesses.\n\nAnd they were competing to get scoops-- another new word of the 19th century.\n\nThe whole busines s had become a contest between the journalists to get their own exclusive angles and to put forward a convincing motive for the killings.\n\nSo if t he journalists were desperate to suggest a motive for the crime\, I think I should examine how they and the police combed over Polly and Annie's per sonal lives.\n\nCould I have\, uh\, a pint of that one\, please?\n\nI don' t just want to visit the places these women died\, but also where they liv ed.\n\nI've come to the Ten Bells Pub in Whitechapel\, a place they used t o visit.\n\n♪ I'm meeting the author of \"The Five\,\" a biography of th e lives of the five victims\, and an expert on historical sex work.\n\nHal lie\, what I've learnt so far is that Polly and Annie were vulnerable.\n\n They had no fixed address.\n\nthey had addiction issues\, but this isn't n ecessarily how society saw them at the time\, is it?\n\nWell\, society saw them in a number of different ways.\n\nI have here the police reports tha t were written up when the bodies of Polly\, or Mary Ann Nichols\, were fo und\, and Annie Chapman.\n\nAnd it's very interesting because the police o fficer who filled in this document\, under the heading of professional cal ling\, wrote the word \"prostitute\,\" OK?\n\nThere it is\, in black and w hite.\n\nYes\, absolutely.\n\nProstitute.\n\nSo why--why did the policeman who completed this form call her a prostitute?\n\nYou're questioning whet her we can actually take that seriously as a piece of evidence\, are you?\ n\nWell\, a lot of assumptions were made-- [chuckles]-- at the time about what a dispossessed woman actually was.\n\nIt's a real sliding scale at th is time.\n\nIf she was actually engaged in selling sex\, if she was engage d in\, you know\, living with a man who was supporting her who she wasn't married to\, you know\, and Victorian society just liked to tar all of the se women with the same brush.\n\nThey were all the same thing.\n\nThere wa s really no nuance applied.\n\nI mean\, and there is--this word\, \"prosti tute\" was used so loosely\, including by people who claimed to be experts in it.\n\nSo\, in the 1870s\, somebody sort of published this supposedly authoritative treatise on prostitution in London and claimed there were 80 \,000 prostitutes in London.\n\nBut if you read it\, if you go beyond that statistic\, which gets repeated over and over again\, you see that he inc luded in that estimate any woman living out of wedlock with a man.\n\nNo w ay.\n\nSo\, you know\, that-- and that number then gets repeated by histor ians through time\, saying\, \"This is how big the prostitution problem wa s in London\,\" but it's taken totally out of context.\n\nThat's a very br oad definition.\n\nRight?\n\nHa ha ha!\n\nExactly.\n\nIt was impossible to tell who among the lodging-house community of women were prostitutes and who were just ordinary\, poor women.\n\nIt was just so blurred.\n\nHallie\ , how was this issue probed in Polly's inquest?\n\nWell\, it's very intere sting because-- and we have here Polly Nichols' inquest\, and the coroner' s court was very keen to put her under moral scrutiny\, as if to blame her for her own murder.\n\nAnd so they had her father\, obviously\, testify\, and a number of questions were asked of him\, and one of the questions wa s\, \"Was she fast?\"\n\nSo was she immoral?\n\nWell\, did she run around with bad people?\n\nAnd he said\, \"No\, I never heard of anything of that sort.\"\n\nBut the coroner was really intent on kind of proving in some w ays that she sort of got what she deserved.\n\nJulia\, do you think that V ictorians were \"keen\" to think of these women as sex workers?\n\nBecause do you think that\, in the Victorian mind\, explains the crime that other wise seemed motiveless?\n\nJulia: In a way\, yes.\n\nIn the 1880s\, it's t his moment when more and more women are on the street\, and so the police and moralists are going\, \"Oh\, how do we tell the difference\, you know\ , how do we now know?\"\n\nWe used to know\, if you're on the street at a certain hour\, that means you're a woman of ill repute.\n\nNow that more a nd more women are coming to the West End for theater\, for restaurants\, f or pleasure\, these things that women weren't really allowed to do\, those old rules don't apply anymore.\n\nSo we jumped right into the middle of t his culture war about what prostitution means.\n\nI think \"culture war\" is\, you know\, it's-- it wouldn't be a word they'd use\, but I think it's a word that we could--yeah...\n\nIt certainly makes sense\, yeah.\n\ndefi nitely apply to this moment.\n\nLucy: What started as a news story about t wo murders had become a story about moral outrage.\n\nThe press\, taking t heir lead from the authorities\, were all too keen to attach blame to the victims.\n\nSo it seems that all too quickly\, Polly and Annie got reduced to this one little word of \"prostitute.\"\n\nAnd\, sadly\, I feel like t his way of looking at women hasn't been left behind in the Victorian age.\ n\n♪ From the 10th until the 29th of September 1888\, there were few dev elopments in the case.\n\nEven in this age of sensational journalism\, the re was a limit to how long newspapers could spin things out.\n\nThe story was running out of steam.\n\nIt might have become just a footnote in histo ry... but then everything changed.\n\n♪ On the 30th of September\, 1888\ , what became known as the \"Double Event\" unfolded.\n\nIt involved a Swe dish woman\, Elizabeth Stride.\n\nShe'd been shunned for having an illegit imate child and wanted a fresh start.\n\nBut by 1888\, Elizabeth found her self in Whitechapel and reliant on charity.\n\n♪ As an immigrant\, Eliza beth had registered at the Swedish church\, which today is here in Harcour t Street.\n\n♪ Now\, the church often gave financial assistance to Swedi sh people in London who found themselves in need\, and one of those people was Elizabeth Stride.\n\nThis is a record from the archives of the church of payments made\, and it's for the third quarter of 1888.\n\nOh\, yes.\n \nHere she is.\n\n\"Stride\, Elisabeth.\"\n\nShe's received... a shilling. \n\nOoh\, and look at this.\n\nHere's a coincidence.\n\nA very strange one .\n\nDown at the bottom\, this page of the accounts has been signed off by the priest ten days later\, on the 30th of September... and that was the very day Elizabeth was killed.\n\n♪ Elizabeth wasn't the only woman in d anger that night.\n\nHaving left an abusive relationship\, Catherine Eddow es found herself dependent on alcohol\, and in and out of the pawn shop.\n \n♪ On the evening of the 30th of September\, within the same hour and l ess than a mile apart\, both Elizabeth and Catherine were killed.\n\nEliza beth Stride was last seen at 12:45 a.m. in a narrow street called Dutfield 's Yard.\n\nShe was murdered about 15 minutes later.\n\nCatherine Eddowes was last seen at 1:30 a.m.\, and her body was found just before 2:00.\n\nI t was under a mile from Elizabeth's in Mitre Square.\n\nFour women had now been killed within a single month in the vicinity of Whitechapel.\n\n♪ Before the double murder of Elizabeth and Catherine could even reach the f ront page\, something else shocking had taken place.\n\nA letter\, purport ing to be from the killer\, arrived at the offices at the Central News Age ncy.\n\nThis letter would be a turning point in the legacy of this story a nd the true-crime genre.\n\n♪ Now\, this letter is such an important pie ce of evidence in this case\, and I've got a really rare opportunity to se e it.\n\nYes\, the real thing\, here at the National Archives.\n\n♪ This is one of the most famous letters in history.\n\n[Gasps] Wow.\n\nLucy\, v oice-over: I'm showing this letter to a criminologist who works with viole nt offenders.\n\nIs he convinced that this letter is really from the pen o f the killer?\n\n\"Dear Boss\, \"I keep on hearing the police have caught me\, \"but they won't fix me just yet.\n\n\"I have laughed where they look so clever \"and talk about being on the right track.\n\n\"I am down on wh ores and I shan't quit ripping them till I do get buckled.\"\n\nHang on.\n \nThat's so powerful.\n\n\"I am down-- I am down on whores\,\" he says.\n\ nWhat the writer's doing here is giving us something that this case did no t have\, which is a motive: \"I'm down on whores.\"\n\nIn my own work\, on e of the things that people ask all the time: \"Why did they do it?\"\n\nT hat the assumption is that the individual had some issue with prostitutes. \n\n\"My knife's so nice and sharp \"I want to get to work right away if I get a chance.\n\nGood luck.\n\nYours truly...\" [Scoffs] \"Jack the Rippe r.\"\n\n\"Jack the Ripper.\"\n\nThe first time in history those words appe ar.\n\nYup\, he wants to say\, \"Yeah\, \"I'm probably walking around you\ , I'm there.\"\n\nYes.\n\n\"You can see me all the time.\"\n\nYeah.\n\nBut actually\, nobody knew who he was.\n\nWhat do you think the significance of the red ink is\, Martin?\n\nIt's quite simple.\n\nIt becomes symbolic o f blood.\n\nThere's a line here.\n\nIt says\, uh\, \"I saved some of the p roper red stuff in a ginger beer bottle.\"\n\nThat means the blood from th e supposed killing.\n\nYeah\, what--my thing is\, if you mutilated someone in the way that the autopsy reports are\, I'd like to know\, how do you s uddenly stop and scrape a lot of blood\, or a vial of blood into--it says \"a ginger beer bottle...\" \"to write with\, but it went thick like glue and I can't use it.\"\n\nWell\, even if it was glutinous\, if it was fairl y--you'd still be able to write with it.\n\nDepends on the implement you'r e using.\n\nSo you think this description of what the killer is supposed t o have done\, it doesn't stack up.\n\nIt doesn't ring true to you as somet hing that would have really happened\, putting blood into a ginger beer bo ttle with a plan to write a letter with it later?\n\nIn terms of my work\, having worked with people who have done horrendous things\, what tends to happen is when the crime happens\, the emotional impact of witnessing wha t they've done has significant impact.\n\nThey don't satirize what they've done because if you really want to tell someone you've killed someone\, y ou don't have to really go out of your way to write it in red...\n\nTrue.\ n\nunless you're going to make a point with it.\n\nDo you think it's a bit odd that they've sent it to the Central News office\, rather than the pol ice?\n\nOf course I do\, because you and I both know the moment you send a letter to a newspaper boss and they read it\, they're just looking at sal es.\n\nSo the moment you get this\, you're thinking\, \"I can make a lot o ut of this\,\" and then the police will start thinking\, \"Well\, how come we didn't know about this first?\"\n\nThat still happens to this day.\n\n It's like fake news.\n\nSo whoever did this knew that they were going to g enerate publicity.\n\nHmm.\n\nThey knew.\n\nYou think the letter is basica lly a fake?\n\nWriters are very\, very good at fabricating the truth to ma ke you believe it\, and we're looking at this retrospectively\, but I shou ld imagine they could get away with it because there wasn't the forensic a wareness to be able to prove it\, because if they did\, we wouldn't be sit ting here talking about it now.\n\nWhat are the repercussions?\n\nThis is a very\, very clever way to fuel the kind of obsession with dangerous indi viduals.\n\nWe get caught up in \"Who is it?\n\nWhat did they look like?\" \n\nWhen we look at crime fiction\, we love the bad person.\n\nActors love the bad person.\n\nEverybody loves the bad person.\n\nIf you presented th e reality about what victims went through\, as a society\, we'd have to re spond differently to their act.\n\n♪ Whoever wrote it came up with this really potent brand of The Ripper.\n\nIt's impossible now for us to even t hink about a serial killer without thinking about Jack\, and all that from a letter that was written by somebody who I believe had nothing to do wit h the actual deaths of Polly and Annie.\n\n♪ Today\, most people agree t hat the Jack-the-Ripper letter is a hoax\, sent by a Central News Agency j ournalist named by a former Scotland Yard detective as Tom Bulling.\n\nBut every time there's a serial killer on the loose\, the name Ripper still g ets trotted out.\n\n♪ So\, between the 1st and the 4th of October\, 1888 \, both the deaths of Elizabeth and Catherine and the letter purporting to be from Jack were reported in the papers.\n\nThe case was now notorious w orldwide\, and the manhunt for Jack the Ripper was now on\, and anyone cou ld join in.\n\nLots of these newspaper readers now turned armchair detecti ves\, and they did the Victorian equivalent of wading into debates online. \n\nThey wrote in letters with suggestions about the case to the police an d to the papers.\n\nI've asked the National Archives to send me some examp les so I can get an idea of where these armchair detectives were going to take the Ripper story next.\n\nHere we go.\n\nThese are good.\n\nSome peop le were trying to help and were well-intentioned.\n\nThis letter from Thom as Blair of Scotland-- [chuckles]--has what he thinks is a good plan.\n\nH e proposes that police officers \"be selected \"of short stature\, \"and a s far as possible\, \"of effeminate appearance\, but of known courage.\"\n \n\"And they are to be dressed as females \"of the class from whom the vic tims are selected\, \"and sent out onto the streets at night to entrap the murderer.\"\n\nNot sure that's a very sensible plan.\n\nThen others were just malicious\, kind of copycats\, fearmongering.\n\nThere was one letter from somebody called \"George at the High Rip Gang.\"\n\nHe said he was g oing to get to work in the West End\, cutting up gilded ladies and duchess es\, the posh women there\, while his pal Jack continued his work in the E ast.\n\nAnd here's a letter clearly intended to cause trouble and fear.\n\ nThis person obviously knows about the \"Dear Boss\" letter.\n\nThey've wr itten in the same red ink\, and it begins\, \"Dear Sir\, \"I shall be in W hitechapel on the 20th \"of this month-- And will begin some very delicate work.\"\n\n\"Yours till death\, \"Jack the Ripper.\n\nCatch me if you can .\"\n\n♪ The public's investment in solving this crime mirrors the way t hat modern audiences engage with unsolved cases today.\n\nBut these self-a ppointed Sherlocks flooded the Victorian police with false leads and trigg ered public hysteria.\n\n♪ [Woman exhales] Lucy: By the end of October 1 888\, the newspapers were reporting that women traveling at night were hal f-mad with fear and carrying knives and guns.\n\n♪ A woman named Mary Ja ne Kelly\, concerned about the murderer\, offered up her home to the vulne rable sex workers she knew in Whitechapel.\n\nTen days later\, she herself was murdered.\n\n[Woman exhales] Lucy: Because of the victim's profile an d the way she was killed\, she's believed to be the final victim of Jack t he Ripper.\n\n[Woman exhales] ♪ Mary Jane's remains were discovered at 1 3 Miller's Court on the 9th of November\, 1888.\n\nShe could only be ident ified by her ear and her eye.\n\n♪ Attention shifted to Shoreditch Town Hall\, as it was announced as the location for Mary Jane's coroner's inque st.\n\n♪ Reporters were poised to revel once again in the hideous forens ic evidence\, but they would be disappointed.\n\nI can see here from the t ranscripts that the new coroner\, Dr. Macdonald\, wasn't happy with having all the gory details of what had been done to Mary Jane revealed in the o pen court.\n\nThat was quite unlike his predecessor\, Dr. Baxter.\n\nIt sa ys here\, \"Dr. Macdonald's own opinion is \"that it's very unnecessary to go through \"the same evidence time after time.\n\nHe felt it ought to be discussed in a closed police court.\n\nSo this meant that unlike the inqu est of Polly Nichols\, which lasted for five days\, the inquest into the b ody of Mary Jane Kelly only lasted for one.\n\n♪ After Mary Jane's funer al on the 19th of November\, the police tried to stifle media coverage by withholding further details\, but with the papers not getting what they wa nted\, some of them turned their attention on the police themselves\, and the women of Whitechapel were getting desperate.\n\nThis article in the \" Morning Post\" perhaps explains why Queen Victoria knew so much about the case.\n\nIt's a report of a petition that's been sent to her by 4\,000 wom en\, and they have written\, \"Madam\, \"we\, the women of East London\, \ "feel horror at the dreadful sins that have been lately committed in our m idst.\"\n\n♪ The newspapers' justification for their blood-and-guts appr oach to the Ripper story was that it would attract more readers\, raise aw areness\, and generate change.\n\nBut did this approach actually work?\n\n Lucy: Which cell do you fancy\, Roz?\n\nRoz: Ooh\, I think maybe Cell 4.\n \nOK. Looks like a good bet.\n\nLucy\, voice-over: My cellmate for the day is the author of the book \"Violent Victorians.\"\n\nI hope she has the a nswer.\n\nRoz\, what did the journalists say that the detectives hadn't be en doing or had been doing wrong?\n\nNow\, they were highly critical of th e detectives and the way the whole investigation was run.\n\nOne paper in particular was the \"Pall Mall Gazette\"... Oh\, yes.\n\nwhich I have with me here.\n\n\"Police not available.\"\n\nIt says that the detectives are at fault\, hopelessly at fault because... what's the explanation?\n\nYeah. \n\nIt just says that they're--they're useless.\n\n\"The comment of a Whit echapel costermonger\, 'The police can't find nothink.'\"\n\nTo be honest\ , they were doing all they could with the resources that were available to them.\n\nWhat we've also got to remember is the police had a lot of inter ference\, outside interference with their investigation.\n\nAh.\n\nSo\, as well as the vigilante groups that were established\, who'd roam around th e East End\, they also got thousands of letters from members of the public \, people pretending to be Jack or giving them information.\n\nThey had to sift through all of those.\n\nSo one thing the journalists were doing was criticizing the police.\n\nThat filled up column inches.\n\nWhat else was there?\n\nSo the newspapers at this time\, they were already running this kind of critique of both the police and the investigation\, as well as so ciety.\n\nIt's because this is the era of New Journalism\, and the idea of social reform in New Journalism is very\, very important.\n\nAnd I have t his wonderful cartoon here from \"Punch\" to show you... that just sums it all up beautifully.\n\n\"The Nemesis of Neglect.\"\n\nNeglect.\n\nYeah.\n \nGosh.\n\nThis figure is called Crime\, and he's holding a knife and he i s kind of saying Jack the Ripper is this--this specter of crime that's ari sen from poverty-stricken\, dirty conditions at the East End.\n\nJack the Ripper was representative of everything that was wrong with the East End o f London.\n\nOnce the story of Jack the Ripper shines a searchlight onto W hitechapel\, and all these middle-class people get concerned about conditi ons in the area\, does anything change?\n\nIt does\, Lucy.\n\nThere are a number of things that the reformers want as a result of the Jack the Rippe r murders: they want better lighting\, they also want more police supervis ion\, they want more police patrolling\, and finally\, what they want\, th ey want to get rid of those common lodging houses that they see as being t he center of the slum\, being where all of the misery and the problems of the East End emerge from\, and so\, to do that\, they-- they suggest a pro gram of slum clearance and in their place to build tenements.\n\nNow\, of course\, the problem there is that the new tenements they build are not ne cessarily for the people who were using the lodging houses in Flower and D ean Street.\n\nSlum clearance in the 19th century tends to just exacerbate overcrowding and slum conditions in other neighborhoods as people are pus hed out.\n\nAh\, so you build some fancy new buildings\, and no one can af ford the rent\, so they go--where do they go?\n\nFurther east.\n\nLucy\, v oice-over: Exploring social justice is still a theme of true crime today.\ n\nWe often justify the pleasure we take in the gory details by arguing th at this has a higher purpose.\n\nThe Victorian Ripper coverage did draw at tention to the harsh realities of life in the East End.\n\nBut none of our five women-- Polly\, Annie\, Elizabeth\, Catherine\, or Mary Jane-- would have qualified for the new social housing.\n\n♪ I believe the story of Jack the Ripper in 1888 set the template for a new kind of entertainment b ased on murder: how a crime story is constructed\, commercialized\, and th en consumed.\n\n♪ All the ingredients are here: the unknown killer\, the dark city\, the fallen women\, the forensics\, the police failings.\n\nBu t I've learnt that this isn't the truth.\n\nIt's a kind of dark media fant asy\, and it concentrates our attention on the anti-hero of the story--the killer\, at the expense of the humanity of his victims.\n\n♪\n\n\n\n   \n\n DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20250114 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;INTERVAL=1 END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR