BONUS: Hallie Rubenhold and Julia Laite on We Have Ways...

might like to hear their conversation. So here it is Acting Act and welcome to we have ways to make you talk with me, James Holland. And today we've got two very special guests. We've got Hallie rubin Hold and Professor Julia Late. And Hallie the little introduction to He, of course, is the award winning best selling author of

five about the Ripper Victims. And Julia you are professor at the History and Archaeology Department at Buback University and an expert in prostitution at that aspect of women's lives. And you've just started a new podcast series, Haven't You, which is The Blackout Ripper produced by Pushkin Productions, and you also called it so that the title is also subtitled, Well, the main title is bad Women, isn't it, and then

colon the blackout Ripper? So why why bad women? Because I kind of thought women are supposed to be the good ones in this. I mean, it's kind of an ironic title. So the first season was off the back of my book The Five, which was the five victims of Jack the Ripper, and looking at their lives and looking at how women historically have been demonized for crimes that were perpetrated against them, so they were victim blamed.

And so if a woman strayed off the path of virtue, if she wasn't a perfect wife, perfect mother, perfect daughter, she didn't do what women was supposed to do during that time, she was called a bad woman. And that's often how we have remembered them historically, and especially in

true crime, that's how women are often remembered. So we're kind of turning this idea of bad women on its head and in this sense, Well, and that you did that brilliantly be fived in you, I mean, And that was sort of the whole point, was to turn these people that would always just been the victims and turning them back into kind of flesh and blood and real people. Again, Yes, absolutely, And you know, and I think history really deserves that

sort of treatment. You know, the people who have been demonized the most deserve really the most examination, and we need to ask, well, why have these people have been demonized and what else can be said about them? And how can we help to understand their story in another context.

And that's what we're doing with this second season of the podcast, which is set in London during the Blitz in February nineteen forty two, right and June, just before we get into the d you know, into the into kind of that's that sort dark story, both actual and metaphoric. I mean, how did you two get together and how

do you know each other? Hally and I actually got to know each other being interviewed, I believe for a BBC radio show about sexual labor, and we both realized that we had very similar opinions about its place in history, about the importance of it as a social phenomenon, and about the women involved. And but tell me how many how did you get drawn into this subject in the first place. I got drawn in probably by thinking about

all the different depictions of prostitution in Victorian Britain. Yeah, that's where I got started thinking about the role of the quote unquote prostitute in Victorian popular culture and how that image got recycled in the histories that followed you. And so I started thinking about, you know, what was what was the real experience of women who sold sex

in this period? And then I started working on it, and I realized that there was a story to be told going from the late Victorian period when they first started cracking down on prostitution, going right up to just pass the Second World War when the modern laws that we live with today were passed. Right. Well, I mean, obviously Second World War is very much my field, and this and the kind of the backdrop to this podcast.

I mean, it's interesting because I'm doing I'm doing some work on the Italian campaign at the moment, and the levels of prostitution are are jaw dropping, lee awful. And I've come across this account by the medical the chief medical Officer of the US fifth Army, writing in the middle of nineteen forty four, and he says, says, our estimation is a fifty percent of all available women have VD fifty percent of all available women, but so what what's that that's sort of sixteen to sixteen let's say,

there's so much to unpack there. I have absolutely promised you we're going to get onto the black out ripper. But but but you know what I've got you I mean, that's that's I mean, that's some statistic, isn't it. And of course you know, a lot of the Italian blokes are away. They're either in prison of war, they've they've ended up in Germany as as effectory slave labor of the of of of the Germans, or they're dead or

wounded or whatever. So there's not many men around. Um, there's rapid inflation, there's huge black markets going on, and you know, they've got no choice. They've got you know, what what do you do? I mean, you know, and they're doing it in returns for kind of tins of of of fruit and syrup, you know, I mean, because they've got to make ends meet. They've got to they've got to feed their children, they've got to they've got

to survive. That's definitely part of the story. The amount of what you know, modern day commentators would call survival sex work during this World war. But and it's important I think to distinguish that from women who are selling sex more regularly, kind of as part of their their main job. But what the word that really struck me was available available women. I would really love to get inside the head of whoever wrote that and ask what do you mean by available? Yeah, well, I don't know

what you mean our married women? Does he mean the women who are hanging around the military barracks? Is? Does he mean the women who he deems to be a quote unquote available? And what's also really interesting there is that the commentary is on how many women have venereal disease rather than on how many men, because of course it takes two to ten. Well, yes, and it's a massive problem. It is a massive problem. And how accurate that statistic actually is. I mean, I don't think anything.

I don't think it is accurate. I think it's a it's a ballpark. But but even if he's remotely close. You see, when I read that, I just thought that is absolutely horrific. That's horrific. And you know, your first thought is those poor women who are in that situation where they're they're getting VD from I mean, my major actors, they're getting it all from from the American troops and British troops and Allied troops that are out there that you know, I mean, I mean you talk about victims.

I mean, that's what I was thinking. That was my immediate reaction when I came across that was what what what an absolute horror story? And how in the narrative of the Second World War, it's it's it's civilians have always come out least well in terms of their story being told. And obviously that that's improved as as years have gone by, and we now think about the displaced people and all the bombings in Europe and all the

rest of it, and obviously the Holocaust. But the point is is that Italian part of the Italian population, these are the bits behind the Allied dines, are not in the behind the access lines, are behind the Allied dines. You know, the Allies are supposed to be the good guys. You know, they're supposed to be the guys who are liberating Europe, and yet actually what they're bringing is this typhoon of steel in terms of kind of destruction and

bombardments and all the rest of it. But they're also bringing another kind of misery, which is rife, black markets, rampant inflation, you know, bad exchange rates with the Italian lira, vast amounts of veneral disease and sexually transmaritent diseases, and and and so on, And it's a kind of an aspect that one doesn't think about too often, and I think, you know, should be thought about more. James, are you

familiar with Regulation thirty three B? I think Jewish should school you in this and give you some a little bit of perspective of what was going on here at

that time. Okay, Well, I was going to start actually picking up on a few of the points you made about about Italy and about you know, the way we tell the story of the Second World War and who gets remembered as the victims, who gets remembered as the villains, To make the point of, you know, how little we write about the absolute integral kind of connections between commercial sex and militarism and warmaking, and how how completely entangled

these things are, because when the military officers are writing, be they based in London or based in Italy or based in the United States, when they're writing about venereal disease, and how worried they are it's not with the well being of the women in mind. They implicitly understand, or they think they understand, that sex is part of war and that if they don't allow their soldiers to access quote unquote available women, then then you know, all hell's

going to break loose. And so this is you know, the First World War, the Second World War, even later wars. It's just part of the sort of thought process of commanding officers. We have to let prostitution happen, and in order to let it happen, we have to pass regulations and rules that try at least to make it quote unquote safe for men. And that's where all of these regulations about passing you know, contact tracing, about criminalizing the

spread of VD come in. Hm. Wow, okay, yeah, well, I mean I'm you know, it's it's a part of the the book I'm doing at the moment. I mean, you know, I'm trying to unpick this and trying to get to the bottom of where the arts and more reliable statistics and all the rest of it. I mean, it's it's it's a it's a tricky one to unpick.

There's absolutely no question about it. Um, But you know, I've been fortunate enough to interview people, and one of the people I interviewed was was an Italian lady whom her son was killed in the crossfire, four year old son, and she was so grief stricken that she couldn't face going to the the She lives on a farm in the mountain, couldn't face going to the funeral in the town below, so she stayed at home, kind of you know, in pieces. And while she was at home in the

farm for m Moroccan soldiers came in and gang raped them. Yeah, I mean, sexual violence was an inherent part of war, and there was so little attention paid to it. It was so low down on the priority list of any of the sort of commanding officers of the War Office. If they were concerned about sex and sexual violence, it was through the prism of venereal disease. And if they were worried about vineerial disease, it wasn't the Italian women

who were contracting it. It wasn't the englishwomen who contracting it. It was the soldiers. And it was seen as one of the biggest causes of troop loss. So at any given time, one in ten men would be on leave due to venereal disease. Wow, that's amazing. The rates that they're estimating are incredibly high. It's I'd be really careful with statistics. It's kind of impossible to know the exact statistics because not least because diagnostic procedures were still you know,

fairly fairly new, unreliable, especially for goneria. They were getting a little bit better at syphilis. But opportunity, you can, you can quite the statistics as long as you have the caveat. Yeah, I think I think they give an indication a of just how worried everyone was, so even if they're not true, they certainly indicate the level of concern, right, And they also give I think a slight indication of the epidemic of gonorea and syphilis in particular during this period.

Other statistics, you know, one in ten fighting men thirty percent suspected. But the other thing with the statistics is it's important to notice who they're talking about. So if the statistics come along with sort of demonizing a particular population, my alarm bells start ringing and I start thinking, you know, is this a really a reliable, you know, medically informed, epidemiologically informed statement. Or is somebody hauling a number out of their ass to make a point about available women.

So I think there's a lot mixed up in there. Yeah, no, sure, but but it's it's but whether he's being alarmist, whether he's being concerned about his men, or whether he's being concerned about the women of Italy. It is indicative of a of a huge level of prostitution, which which the

entire statement is totally shocking. I mean, whichever way you're looking at it, whether you're looking at the use of available a quote unquote, or whether you're looking at the number just you you know, through today's prison one can't possible or even the prism of nineteen forty four. You can't think of anything, I don't think other than what a truly horrific statistic, can you? I mean, yeah, I mean,

I guess I'm not. I'm not particularly surprised by it because of the research that I do and how inherently part of war prostitution is. Yeah, I think that people did become more aware of it in the Second World War.

I also think the levels of civilian poverty we're probably extremely high, and extremely high south in Italy, exactly in southern Italy in particular, and so um, the rise in survival sex work would have been striking, especially because it's also a hub for so many different troops um kind of moving through that area. Um, so it's not surprising, but I think it says quite a lot about an

immense hidden history of misery and work. Yes, during the Second World War, Yes, yes, yes, yes, well yeah, well we're we're absolutely on the same page on that, I'm going to assure you. But but let's get back to to to the blackout Ripper, because this is, this is this is an extraordinary crime, and it's a crime of opportunism, isn't it because of the peculiar circumstances of London during the during the war. I mean, obviously when there is

no light makes it much easier to corner people. We're looking at Gordon Cummings and we're looking he's he's the we're looking at well, we're not looking at him particularly, but we are looking at the crimes that he committed in London under these circumstances, but also at other crimes that we're committed against women during the Blitz and how the Blitz was used as a sort of mask for crimes to occur, and how war also distracted people from

crimes against women that were occurring. I mean even even within the ATS. So I mean, what kind of police force have you got at that stage? I mean the police lots of people are joining up. They might be in the police, but they're still joining up now. So that means that the older policeman is staying there. They're still recruiting, of course, but police got there. You know, they've got other matters to worry about as well, such

as sort of bombs falling. And obviously the blitz only last from September nineteen forty to the middle of May nineteen forty one, and then there's a long period where there aren't bombs falling every single night, and then there's other little kind of you know, you've got the v ones from from middle of June nineteen forty four and later. The V two is right pretty much right through at the end, but there's there's a lot of a lot of period where there aren't bombs ruling every night. So

all the police still active? Is there still you know, the met is still there, and you know, and what are they doing and how much does is the war getting in the way of the kind of normal routine stuff that police do. So the police during the Second World War, we're definitely shorthanded, um, you know, they were. They were policing a city that had grown in size, especially grown in troops size, as well as a lot of women and other people coming coming into the city

for work, for excitement. Right now, where there's young people, there's going to you know, and drink, there's going to be fights, and so you've got your handsful of that in a way that you wouldn't normally. So the police were definitely definitely shorthanded, and in general weren't huge fans of policing commercial sex or policing nightlife. Um. But in particular during the Second World War found it extremely difficult

to police troops. So there was a real sort of reluctance on the part of the Metropolitan Police to intervene in any situation that involved troops unless it was egregious, because they knew that they'd be pushback and they just didn't They just didn't want to get involved. So they tended to turn blind eyes left, right and center to the misbehavior and mischief of troops in London, and that kind of peppers through all of the files, their extreme

reluctance to get involved in adjudicating these cases. Often they'd say that's a job for the military police, it's not us. And so it kind of creates this atmosphere, especially in C and D Division, which is what I call Piccadilly and Soho. Those are the two police divisions that would have been in charge. It really doesn't have C and D Division. Yeah, so C Division is South is sort of what we would have today called Soho, and D Division is what we would today call Fitzerovia, but at

the time was known as North Soho. And those are the areas where the nightlife is really rocking. It's where the Rainbow Club is, where the American troops are stationed after forty two, and it's where the bottle parties are,

so the sort of underground bars. They don't have signs out front that just flick a light on when they're open to get around the defense of the Realm Act regulations against sales of liquor, etc. And so there's this real kind of hedonistic nightlife in the center of London at the precise time when the police are shorthanded and they're not particularly interested in policing it. Yeah, yeah, Yeah,

it's a perfect storm, isn't it. And then you've got you know, you've got the blackout and presuming compounded by smokes as well. At a certain points, I haven't noticed any direct connection between the London fogs and sort of this kind of discussion about misbehavior, but I'm sure it was part of it. I'm sure it was lending to this atmosphere of alterity, of liminality, of this sort of sense that you know, all all bets are off, all rules are gone. Yeah, life is cheap, and so is

the drink. I think the other thing is about, you know, I mean, even if you want a round fitz rov or soho. Now it's still even today in a city of you know whatever it is, eleven million or whatever, and when it's absolutely polylating, literally all times, you can still find yourself down alleyways and little streets where there's hardly anyone, and particularly late at night. I mean I've

done it. At night you're coming out of a bar or something, and you know it's it's getting on and suddenly you're taking a little shortcut and sudden you can hear the sort of echo of your steps down the street and you kind of feel, you feel a little bit vulnerable. You can imagine how people must have felt, you know, in the middle of the war years, when you've got the black out there as well, and the and the bomb shelters too. I mean, so one of

the murders took place in a bomb shelter, in a bombshelter. Yeah, you know. One of the things that we also look at is just like how safe were women actually going into bomb shelters. One former servicewoman talks about how she felt that she had probably saved her life by not going into a bomb shelter one night during the blitz, because as she went to go down into the shelter, this very very creepy, awful man kind of reached out at her, and she said she would rather stay on

the surface than go down. And so there's lots of stories like this which I think we've we've missed, you know, because right we focus because we got swept up in the story of the blitz and blitz spirit and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, yeah, exactly, kind of we've we we almost don't want to look at the darker side, do we, Because it's a story of defiance and the nation coming together and say, someone who's opportunistically performing, you know,

despicable crime. So that doesn't fit with the narrative, does it? No, exactly? And you know, and again I think a lot of what we're doing with this series is mythbusting. I mean,

historical mythbusting is so important. And you know, there were a lot of myths obviously around Jack the Ripper, and there a lot of myths around the blitz and how we as a nation responded and what it was like in the bomb shelter is you know, the old kind of go down to the bomb shelter and sing, roll out the barrel and you know, yes, exactly, you know,

and everyone everyone coming together. So community is coming together and people being neighborly and helping one another and all the rest of it, and any kind of crime jars against that, doesn't it. Yeah, absolutely absolutely. So. One of the cases that we look at is a case where a woman, Rachel Dobkin, was murdered by her husband was a case of domestic violence, and this occurred in the East End and he buried her remains in the rubble of a church that had been bombed, hoping that the

air raids would be a cover for his crimes. That's a very opportunity. Why did he do it? Why did he do it? He was a violent man and they had been estranged and she was left without any support for her son. The marriage was bad from the very outset. He abandoned her and she couldn't survive. She couldn't she couldn't make ends meet. He was legally obligated to pay her money and he wasn't doing that. And he was violent, and he threatened her and it was a case of

course of control and eventually he murdered her. And of course today we know much more about these types of things and this type of violence, but in the past not so much. The police did ask questions like what does she what does she do to deserve it? You know, and and you know, kind of demonizing her for her own murder. Tell you what, We're going to take a short break and we'll talk some more when we come back.

Welcome back to We have ways of making you talk with me James Holland and with Hallie Rubenhall and Professor Julia lat And we're talking about crimes against women in London. In the Second World War and god, it's it's it's it's uncomfortable, isn't it thinking about all this, Um, you know, I'm sitting here being a bloke and you know, I kind of you know, all those the opportunism of these despicable characters in the time of a blackout and a time where I don't know, you expect more, don't you,

from your from your civilian population. It's it's it's it's really, it's really making me think. I have to say. I think the other thing as well that's important to point out is that a lot of the men who perpetrated this violence, Yeah, I guess they were despicable, but they weren't extraordinary, and that this violence was quotadian and unfortunately accelerated by the trauma of war. And you know, we

talk a lot. We're much more aware now of the way that that war affects the mental health of soldiers. But even though they weren't as aware of it in

the Second World War, it of course did. And you see so many cases of men who are fighting and then of course coming back to London on leave and they're messed up there are you know, they get drunk, they have underlying traumas they live in an environment where violence against women is quotidian, where they see lots of examples of their commanding officers and their superiors buying sex, encouraging others to buy sex. Right, and you know, all too often it's it's not the sort of despicable maniac

who's perpetrating this violence, right, it's the average soldier. And I'm in no way suggesting that every soldier did this in any way, shape or form, but it was absolutely part of the culture, whether we like it or not. And quite a number of the crimes you've been investigating and looking into, they are just these ordinary soldiers that

are coming back and losing the plot. So we look at, for example, a couple of ATS women, a woman called Lillian Welsh who was knocked off her bicycle and murdered deliberately by a man driving a truck back from a base one evening as she was riding home. And that was just his thing. He liked to knock women off

their bikes. You know, you put a man in uniform and suddenly he's got an extra layer of defense around him during a period of war because he's unassailable, you know, because it's really important that we don't do down our boys. We're in a national crisis. We all have to pull together. You know, people become a little bit more incredulous about the crimes actually taking place, and they're more apt to not believe the victim and not to question the man

in uniform. Also because it's bad, it's bad for the nation, it's bad for everybody. So a lot of people are just getting away of it. Yeah, we were able to find cases where they didn't get away with it, but you know, there were a lot of really terrible consequences. We also look at the children who were born to white British women who had relationships with African American gis who were here, and what happened to their children, the so called brown babies. I mean, racial aggression is another

type of violence. And African America and gis who came to this country experienced a type of freedom, especially if they were from the Southern States and subject to Jim Crow laws. Here, it was quite liberating. But then also they were subject obviously on their basis, to their own racial segregation laws that in many cases we're quite uncomfortable reinforcing in this country. But then the children who were

born to these relationships. We interviewed two of them, and they were caught between this terrible place where they didn't feel like they belonged anywhere. They didn't feel like they were accepted in this country, and they didn't feel that they were accepted by their father's families in the United States either. This is another legacy of a type of

violence as well. It's fascinating to look at all of these things, all of these sub stories, all of these things that happened as a result of the war on the home front here and so many like these these injustice is tend to go under the radar, No absolutely, So the Ripper to talk about the blackout Ripper, who were the women who were murdered by him? Then, so he actually murdered for and attacked to others. He tried to murder them unsuccessfully, and they were Evelyn Hamilton, Evelyn Oatley,

Margaret Lowe, and a woman called Door Chuane. And then he attacked to other women who survived, called Katherine mccauughey and Margaret Hayward. A number of them were sex workers, except for Evelyn Hamilton, who was She was a chemist and she was an independent woman, and she just happened to be out at a Maison Lions that evening, dining alone when he was out on the prowl looking for a woman who was by herself in the dark, in the middle of the blackout. So what do you did?

She's in the in the Lions house, the Lions Corner shop or whatever, Maison Leon and then and then leaves. He follows her. What happens, Yeah, and he attacks her and murders her in a bomb shelter. So there's no sexual motive for this. There may be a sexual motive, you know. I like to say with Jack the Ripper, there was a crime that was motivated against women. It was a sex crime in that it was a gender crime.

Without wanting to go into too many details, because one of the things that we were very careful to do in this particular podcast is not really to go into a lot of the details about the murders. One of the things that was apparent was overkill, which demonstrates a certain type of rage, a kind of sexually extreme violence, extreme violence, sexually motivated rage. Wow, and he's caught, is

he eventually? Yes, he is caught. The rather annoying thing is that he's he's caught, but he is only tried for the murder of Evelyn Oatley and not the others. And he may have killed others as well. So he was an Air Force cadet. And again because he's wearing the uniform, you know, people tend to not that's not the first thing you're thinking about when you encounter a man in uniform. Yeah, because you think he must be upstanding, he's doing his bit, That's right. He was a very

unpleasant character. And also he liked to pretend that he was of some sort of aristocratic or gentry background. And you know, he had this whole persona and he stole money, he embezzled money in order to support this this lifestyle that he had, and the RAF obviously really appealed to him because of its social status. I mean, you you mentioned Evelyn. He was in the in the in the Lions house, having a money or MPs and keys and being a chemist. But these other women, I mean, I mean,

who are they? I mean you were saying the others of a sex workers. I mean, but but who are these people? What's their story? Well, that's that's a very good question. And in fact, that's what we're talking about. We follow the lives of all of these women as much as we possibly can, as much as the records allow. You know, we can use these women as a as a lens to really tell the story of women in the first half of the twenty dream what their experiences were.

So Evelyn Oatley, whose life I find just so fascinating and so haunting, grew up in Yorkshire, in Keighley, and in fact she was the daughter of a German immigrant, so her mother was German, and who faced a tremendous amount of germanophobia in the First World War and was right in the center of some local attacks on the German community in Keighley. She came from a broken home. People liked to try to find a way of escaping from their very unpleasant circumstances, and often I think cinema

and theater was the way in which people did. And you know, she was obsessed with glamor and the West End performance and eventually ended up going to play. We can understand that anyone who's wanting to sort of better their lives a glamor of the silver screen and the rest of it, the dazzling lights and all the rest of it, of course, it's it's like a sort of a moftwa light bulb. Absolutely, and I think there's there's

a certain amount of pathos in it. There's a certain amount of when you you know, you know that these people escaped into the cinemas to get away from their lives, and how grueling and difficult their lives were, and and and you know, Evelyn Oatley's life was that her background was from you know, she was from a broken home, she was from an area which was poor, and she

worked in a mill for a time. And so she went to Blackpool and she met the man who would become her husband, Harold, and he was a poultry farmer. And it's such a weird pairing. So this Evelyn is not the chemist, it's the other evelence. She ends up We're marrying a poultry farmer, ends up in London. Well,

she ends up marrying a poultry farmer. But like their marriage is so bizarre, So like he is just he says, look, you know you want to go and live a glamorous life in London, I'll stay here on a poultry farm. You go to Piccadilly, you go work in the Windmill Club, which is what she wanted to do, or at least that she said she did that. And and Julie, do you want to tell us a little bit about the Windmill Club during the nineteen thirties and nineteen forties. It

is such a great story. Yeah. I mean, these these spaces like the Windmill Club become just the center of all kinds of imagination and they're you know, for racy performances and kind of cabaret style performances, So they're the they're the kind of far end of the music hall. Just as music halls are starting to kind of spruce themselves up and become family friendly, places like the Windmill Theater are becoming a kind of adult only entertainment venue, right.

But but it's more nudity, is it. It's it's kind of stockings and legs and stuff, isn't it. Yeah, for the most part, but it's it's very very racy for the time, and they they're they're constantly in danger of losing their license, of course, but they really become places where where people like Evelyn Oatly would would dream of working and performing because they're you know, they're the do you meet some rich bloke who's going to be your ticket.

That's absolutely part of it, the idea that you might achieve some kind of social mobility through through meeting some Yeah, I think there's those dreams, but I also just think that they were a lot more fun to work in than poultry firms. Yeah. I guess it depends what your vibe is, but yeah, I guess probably. Um. I think, you know, because we talk a lot. I mean I work a lot about you know, and and there's a lot of evidence to suggest that Evel and Otely did

eventually end up selling sex at least part time. And um,

I work a lot on these topics. And there's a lot of conversations about you know, women being you know, forced by poverty or lack of other choices into into selling sex, and that's absolutely valid, um, But I think we also need to make space for the fact that women had dreams and ambitions of their own and sometimes saw this kind of labor, like sexualized labor or sex work, as a way to achieve those dreams and enjoyed that kind of work, and they were drawn to the statement

of the West End, especially during the war. You know, the Americans called them good time girls. Ye, the British police called them amateur prostitutes in a slightly less euphemistic but just the Windmill Club is it is? The Bag of Nails is another famous one is, Yeah, there's there's a load of them, aren't there. And then there's the more kind of slightly upmarket marketplaces like you know, the Criterion and yeah, the Cafe Royale, Cafe Royale and the

Cave to Parry and all that kind of stuff. But but was she murdered because she was working at the Windmill Club or was she murdered because she was walking back late at night and it was dark. My understanding is even an Oatly had picked up Cummings as a client. So she was murdered in her own room, Yes, in

her own room. And so it's a really good question in terms of what made Evelyn and Doris and the others, with the exception of the very opportunistic murder of the other evil in in the bomb shelter, what made the other women so vulnerable to comings is that they're soliciting, and they're selling sex at a time when it's becoming more and more dangerous. And that's kind of for two

main reasons. One is because it's being criminalized, it's being forced underground, and women are forced to solicit alone, they're forced to work alone. There's nobody looking out for them. There's no sort of form of public surveillance. Um, nobody knew that Evelyn had taken Comings back. There was nobody there but Jee if you if you'll, if you're you're evil in or some other guy at that time, I mean, and you're thinking, Okay, this is this is the route

I'm going to go down. Do you think you're aware that the danger levels have been heightened because of the circumstances of the war, because of the lack of interest in the police, because they've got that handsful, because of the number of servicemen, because it's dark, because because because I mean, do you think that's part of the calculation? Yes? I do, And I think do you think that's part of the allure in a funny sort of way, No,

I don't think it's part of the allure. I think they were doing it because they wanted to be part of that that sort of space potentially, but mostly they were doing it for money, and they were making really difficult decisions about how they were going to make money. At a time when they were often the only ones keeping themselves right, so they didn't have anybody giving them money they wanted they wanted to. So for most people, they're still doing it out of necessity rather than because

they want to. I think we have to be careful with like the kind of binary there, because you can, you can choose to sell sex as a choice amongst other worst choices. Yeah, and so I think, yeah, so I think it's important to I'm think about all those Italian women, you really have no other alternative ways of of of feeding themselves. Yeah, and that's the reasons in late nineteen forty three, for example, the only way they're going to get food is by by by prostituting themselves

and return for food from from from Allied troops. Yeah. And I think that's why it's really really important to draw a difference between sex work as a form of labor that women do in alternative to another form of labor which may not pay them anything or much, and survival sex work, which is really really different and and and so I think in the case of Evelyn Oatley, it she's she's doing sex work, she's she's selling sex

because she wants money. But there's a lot of evidence in her case that she really also loved to the West End, that she loved the culture there, that she loves the atmosphere there, and a chicken farmer. Yeah, definitely. She she goes back every now and then, but she'd never stay. But she also sometimes she brings she brings another man back. I mean, she has other relationships with other men and takes them back to the chicken farm

with her husband, who doesn't seem to mind. Yeah, And so the other thing is, you know, he asked about whether or not she would have been aware of the dangers, and there's fair amount of evidence that that she and others were part of a community of people, so there would have been people, you know, giving them tips, warning them about dangers. But there's only so much you can do in an an atmosphere that makes it illegal to

work together. So the safest thing to do would have been for two women to solicit together, bring men home together, and watch out for each other. But from eighteen eighty five on, that's illegal. You can't you can't work together if you're selling sex, and that continues to be illegal into the present day. And that is like the simple fact that renders so many of these women vulnerable to violence because there's no no one in the wrong. That's extraordinary,

what a what a terrible decision. And in terms of I mean, do we I mean, presumably we do have pretty detailed crime statistics for London in the nineteen forties, doing I mean, you know, I mean how much how bad was it and how much did the crime rate, particularly of kinds of murders and rape of women in London in the nineteen early part of the nineteen forties, How how much did that climb? We don't actually have super reliable statistics, do we? Not thought like that? I

thought that they would be there. Yeah, I mean part of the problem is it's a mess, right, So states of total war aren't particularly great for civilian bookkeeping. And this is this is this is one of the ways in which you know, yes, they're obviously the police, right, there are dick indicative trends and I think overall it doesn't go up severely, but you have to remember the enormous amount of underreporting, not of murder, but of of

violence against the person. Yeah, so I think so many of these are being perpetrated by men in uniform you know, women know all too well what's going to happen to them if they allege a crime against a man in uniform. I mean, it's it's hard enough. You know, the sort of conviction rates for sexual offenses are abysmally low in this period. And it's hard enough to get a conviction in peacetime against the civilian man, getting a conviction in wartime against a man in uniform. You know, women know

the score. They're not going to put themselves through it. And I think there's actually one point, is it Evelyn who says, you know, she's getting she's getting assaulted left, right and center by angry, angry clients. And at one point somebody says, you know, well, why didn't you go and report him? And she's just why didn't she'd basically laughs it off. You know why I didn't go and report exactly well, both of you. That's that's absolutely fascinating

and has given me lots to think about. I have to say, goodness, but Judia, there is one thing that you mentioned that we haven't actually talked about, and that's Regulation thirty three B. So what is regulation thirty three B? So? Regulation thirty three B is part of the Defense of the Realm Act, that kind of omnibus legislation that comes through during the war, and there was another version of it, Dora as it's often called, in the First World War

as well. And thirty three B, I think is just a really meaningful indication of just how worried everyone was

about venereal disease. And it came about largely because of Canadian, American, Australian and New Zealand troops, but most of all American troops who were coming to London and catching sexually transmitted infections, and the commanding officers of those troops insisted that it was the fault of English women, that they're good, innocent boys from Mahio, Yeah, Oklahoma, had never seen the like of the debauchery in London, and they just couldn't control themselves.

They were being seduced and that they were they were catching diseases. And so there's a lot of pressure put on the military in London. There's a lot of pressure put on the mat to try to control these women, and of course there's very little that they can actually do other than criminalizing sex workers. And so thirty three

B comes into forest. I believe in nineteen forty two, and it states that if a man or a soldier contracts sexually transmitted infection, he's then asked to report the names of who he thought he got it from to the doctor, and the doctor would then report those names to the medical officer of health, who would then engage in a kind of form of criminalized contact tracing, finding the suspected infectants and compelling them to undergo treatment for

vineeral disease. And what's really striking about this is from nineteen seventeen on Britain had obstensibly operated a voluntary system of vineerial disease control, right, so they said, no, no, no, it's not right, we should never criminalize this, it doesn't work. But they completely go back on that during the Second World War and they start criminalizing people who are quote

unquote spreading venereal disease. But of course you can probably place your bets on who were the targets of this legislation. It wasn't the men giving vineal disease to women. It was the women who theoretically were giving vineal disease to men, and they had their medical histories revealed. If they refused

to comply, they were dragged into court. It was a really quite shocking actually, and a lot of people at the time spoke out against it, lawyers, civil rights campaigners, feminists, but they, you know, kind of fell on deaf ears because the war effort was more important than anybody. But but who was instigating was this? Was this a British government or was this pressure from the US government? This is the War Office being pressured by the US military? Wow, yeah,

I had no idea. Yeah, really, Jars, doesn't it? It It really sits uncomfortably goodness. Well, listen, both of you, thank you so much for coming on. Really good luck with the podcast. Fascinating thought provoking stuff and obviously your series is out now, The Bad Women, The Blackout River and um and listen, thank you both. I mean really gosh,

well that that's just been really really really interesting. As I say, loads to think about there and let's think about for me and as I try and sort of pick through some of this in the blighted war in Italy. But anyway, thank you both very much. Into Thank you, Bi Rubinhald and Julia Late, thank you, thank you, You're very welcome. It's from the Pleasure Fish