Pushkin. It's a bad habit we have we tell the tale of the murderer and not the murdered. The clock on Whitechapel Church was striking half past two when Ellen Holland watched her friend Polly Nichols sway off into the darkness. Polly was drunk, penniless and broken. She was inconsequential in the minds of most people she met, but she was about to cross paths was someone who would give her
a grisly, unenviable place in history. In the autumn of eighteen eighty eight, Polly and four other women were rutally killed in a slum neighborhood of London. Their unsolved murders were so violent, so cruel, that their killer earned a nickname that has still known the world over. I'm down on halls and are shawnt quick ripping them Jack the Ripper? But in the greatest cold case in history, few of us have stopped to question the basic facts. One fact
that you know about Chactor Ripper. They never got caught and who did he kill? Prostitutes? I'm Hallie rubbin Hold. As a historian interested in the stories of women, I'd assume the lives of the five victims had been thoroughly researched long ago. I was wrong when I dug into the records. I began to reveal rich and interesting lives. Most of the time nomen leave if they're being beaten to a pulb or he put out an eye, lives blighted by problems and prejudices. Most women today would recognize.
There wasn't a great deal of sympathy for alcoholics, so one had to sign a temperance pledge saying I will not drink. If only it were so simple. I identified with the women, sympathized with the tough life choices they made, and admired their determination. She gets on a boat and comes to England. She seeks wider horizons. I came to know them and like them. She wants more than she's being born into. But I also discovered something else, something new,
something troubling. It was just so obvious to me the very first time I looked at this file. How could we have gotten this this wrong for this many years? And something that chips away at the foundations of the ripper myth nam. Sure, all of you here today, do you know that Jack's victims were ladies of the night, weren't they They were forced to choose the myth still served up by two a guy to visitors who flocked the murder scenes each evening and ladies. You might be thinking, well,
I'd never think that work ever, but didn't. Okay, Well, sadly, the answer is yes, Polly, Annie, Elizabeth, Catherine, and Mary Jane were not killed while selling sex. It was other, no less troubling factors that put them in the path of their murderer. In this podcast, I'll tell you how I know that and why it still matters very much even today. Halley has upset the world of rippology by
her general attitude towards ripparologists. I'll also explain why my research has enraged so many people who claim to be experts in the Ripper case. The attacks have just been relentless and malicious, But actually I think they just don't really want other people talking about the murdered women and
challenging their views in any way. If you want to know how we got the Ripper story so wrong, what those mistakes tell us about ourselves, and why putting the record straight make some people so very angry, join me, Hallie Ribbin Hold for bad Women The Ripper Retold starting October fifth, wherever you get your podcasts,