Pushkin. Mary Jane Kelly is hiding. A man from her troubled past has come looking for her. Stalking the dark and miserable neighborhood she calls home, asking after her in its dingy pubs, making sinister inquiries among the young women who work these streets by the dogs. This middle aged man seems determined to find Mary Jane. He tells people he is her father. Whoever he really is, his presence means danger for the young woman. Hiding is familiar to
Mary Jane, and she's good at it. Whenever acquaintances and companions ask her for her life story, she offers up misty half truths. Even her friends and lovers don't really know her. The enigmatic Mary Jane holds her cards close to her chest, and for good reason. She may be young, but in her twenty three or so years, she's made some fearsome enemies. Perhaps the sudden presence of this unwelcome
pursuer prompts her to move on. For Mary Jane soon packs her bags and heads to a new address, each move taking her closer and closer to Whitechapel and closer and closer to her murderer. I'm Hallie rubin Holt, you're listening to bad women. The Ripper retold a series about the real lives of the women killed by Jack the Ripper, and how we got their stories so wrong. One side mane plenty, and friends too by the score. Then fortune smilder upon me. I now one pass my door alone,
and not to have Harne seems to lonely. I'm compliever broken. By the eighteen eighties, a discreet sort of party was becoming fashionable in certain rich London circles. Wealthy gentlemen would clamor to receive an invitation to a private ball, health and smart function rooms in the city's affluent west End. There, forty men would meet forty women. The men alone would be charged an admission fee to cover the cost of
the room, higher the band and the supper. To the casual observer, this gathering of gentlemen in top hats in evening dress and beautiful young women in ballgowns and jewels would have hinted at nothing untoward. In fact, as an anonymous sexual adventurer known only as Walter wrote in his memoirs, there was little about this type of hall that might be described as immodest or irregular, except that no introductions were needed, and men asked any woman to dance, and
women did not hesitate to ask men to dance. However, following supper the tone changed. The men kissed the women's shoulders as they waltzed. One or two couples would even dance a boardy poker. The dancing became romping, and concupissance asserted itself. Suggest of talk was now the order of the night. Eventually, the evening came to an end. Couples peeled off and departed in their carriages, only to continue their rebels and private at the women's lodgings in the
city's leafy suburbs. This was the face of high class vice in London. Mary Jane Kelly, or a woman calling herself Mary Jane Kelly, entered this demimonde of silk dresses, champagne and oysters at some point between eighteen eighty three and eighteen eighty four. The luxuries of this existence may have been familiar to her, but then again they may not. According to one version of Mary Jane's tail, she was born in the West of Ireland in around eighteen six three.
Her father took the family across the Irish Sea to settle in Wales when she was very young. She claimed to have been one of nine children. At sixteen, she said she'd married a coal miner that he died a year or two later in an explosion. Such a tale would have been readily believed, since mining disasters took an awful toll un Welsh pit villages. One blast in the summer of eighteen eighty killed every single worker at the
New Risker Colliery in an instant. The shockwave claimed the lives of around one hundred and twenty colliers, woodworkers and masons, even the thirteen year old boys who sat alone in the dark opening and closing the pit's many doors. The explosion tore off the men's clothes and ripped apart the dozens of pit ponies that worked alongside them. Widowed, Mary Jane went to the city of Cardiff, where she had family. She stated that she fell in with a female cousin
who followed a bad life. Only then came her move to London. Sometimes, though Mary Jane offered a variation on this origin story, she was Welsh and her parents, who had discarded her, still resided at Cardiff. To confuse matters Further, some of those who knew Mary Jane said that she was originally from a well to do family. One of her neighbors believed she had a female relation in London.
It was on the stage. Mary Jane also told acquaintances that she had a two year old child who would have been born around eighteen eighty three, when she was also supposed to have spent eight or nine months in an infirmary in Cardiff. No trace of this child has ever been found, nor is there any record of its fate.
An extended stay at a publicly funded general hospital was highly unlikely at this time, so if Mary Jane did indeed spend several months in an infirmary Indiff, this probably would have been at a private establishment, perhaps reformatory for fallen women or an asylum, which would have been the appropriate recourse for a middle class daughter who had transgressed
the social norm by engaging in sex outside marriage. Mary Jane's life before her arrival in London amounts to a collection of disconnected snapshots, none of which has ever been verified. No Kelly's or Mary Jane's matchup in censuses or parish records in Wales or in Ireland, nor has any record of her minor husband ever been found. The only conclusion that might be drawn is that the tales of Mary
Jane Kelly's life, even her name, were fabrications. She may have borrowed real components of her identity from someone she knew, or even dreamt them up entirely herself. This phenomena was fairly common for women who practiced her profession sex work. It's so easy for people to hide and to completely reinvent themselves in this period. It's before official identity documents, it's before any kind of state surveillance. Really, Julia Late is an expert on the Victorian sex trade, and it's
incredibly easy to change your identity. People picked up names and took them back off like clothes. This might be aided by a move to another town and an alteration in dress and manners, but certain features of one's history were more difficult to conceal. A higher quality of education, for instance, left an indelible mark an individual. Schooling came across not only in their ability to read and write, but in their speech, they're bearing their interests, and often
in their artistic or musical accomplishments. While the poor had access only to the most basic instruction. The rising middle classes sought to distinguished themselves socially by investing in the education of their children so that their progeny might bear the stamp of respectability. According to those who knew her, this distinction seems to have made itself apparent in Mary Jane. One of her landladies in London remarked on her high level of scholarship, while also commenting that she was a
capable artist. At this time, training and drawing was only given to girls at fashionable young ladies schools, lending weight to the idea that Mary Jane hailed from a respectable, well to do family. More interesting, still, no one who knew Mary Jane noted any regional accent, possibly as a result of elocution lessons, and those who inquired about her origins had to be told she was Welsh or Irish.
You would not have supposed, if you had met her on the street, that she belonged to the miserable class as she did, remarked a missionary who knew her in East London. Was always neatly and decently dressed, and looked quite nice and respectable. Of all the holes in Mary Jane's account none is so gaping as that which explains how or why she left Cardiff to join the sex trade in London's West End. At roughly twenty one years old.
The sex trade was present in most parts of the metropolis, and by the early eighteen eighties it also began to move nearer to train stations, areas with transient populations and lodging houses. But the West End comprised the highest concentration of commercial sex in London, which was also entangled with a growing entertainment industry. London's theater land was located here, too.
Newly illuminated by twinkling electric lights, people from all walks would come to enjoy nightlife in the West End, making
it a popular circuit for soliciting. As a newcomer, it would have proven difficult for Mary Jane to negotiate an immediate entry into the upper ranks of the sex trade without the help of personal contacts, but perhaps a friend gave Mary Jane the name of a madam, because she was soon working under the auspices of a French landlady whose boarders were offered opportunities to make the acquaintance of
middle and upper class gentlemen. These lodgings were in the chicest part of town, which had acquired a reputation as a haven for the so called artistic set, who indulged in sin discreetly behind shutters and dark velvet drapery. Assignations might occur by chance meeting. On one occasion, the anonymous memoiist Walter gained an introduction to a discreet London brothel
by exchanging classes with its madam while on train. After he struck up conversation, she informed him that she was a dressmaker and employed only the prettiest girls at her place of business. Before disembarking, she handed him a card for her dress shop and invited him to call and try on like gloves. Walter was certain that she drummed up a good amount of trade by approaching men in railway carriages and on public transport. Other meetings might be
arranged through an exchange of letters. A very rich man would write to the brothel madam. A lot of these brothels catered to what was called flagellation, so what we would today call s and m. There was this real trend in England that posh Englishmen really liked flagellation, and women made quite a lot of money doing it. Mary Jane would likely have had a high class clientele. As a young woman in her twenties, with blue eyes and long, luxuriant hair, she would have found no obstacle to making
a good living in the center of town. There's a range of things she could have been doing, but she definitely would have been making a fair amount of money. Then, who sought the company of women like Mary Jane through a landlady procurus would have expected to commit to an evening of entertainment in addition to receiving sex. A client would have paid the sum of five pounds up front and then taken her to dinner the following evening. Compared to the wages of the time, five pounds would translate
to over three thousand dollars today. At venues like Saint James's restaurant known as Jimmy's or the Cafe Deller Europe, women and their male companions sat down to dine in smoke filled, mirrored and palm fronded rooms where they were tended by French and Italian waiters who were noted for their discretion. After gorging on oysters, deviled kidneys, and roast beef,
all washed down with champagne. Mary Jane and her client would have traveled by hackney cap or carriage, either to an equally discreet hotel or back to her own bed. Such liaisons might also involve a trip to the theater, music hall, or races. In exchange for the pleasure of Mary Jane's company, her client would expect to be billed accordingly. The price generally involved the purchase of trinkets as well as cash. Women also made themselves known to potential clients
through public display. They would appear in the galleries of certain music halls and theaters, in addition to promenading in the streets. The Alhambra Theater catered to every rank of women in the sex trade. On any given night, there might be over a thousand women present. Access to the promenade encircling the ground floor of the auditorium cost a shilling.
It cost more to get closer to the stage, but according to one visiting American author, catching the performance wasn't the prime attraction, for the space was choked, with men and women walking past each other, looking the stage, drinking of the bars, chafing each other in a rough way, and laughing loudly. He ventured into the other sections of the theater, too, rising higher and higher until he reached
the cheapest seats far above the stage. When a woman goes to the sixpenny gallery in the Alhambra, she is indeed lost, beyond all hope of rescue. I came down, disgusted. The sixpenny gallery was not for Mary Jane, who referred to herself as Marie Jeannette and accumulated numerous expensive dresses, she would have been accustomed to elegant gentlemen making her proposals and promises, buying her gloves and jewelry, and spoiling
her with fine food and drink. The savviest women in the sex trade understood that their youthful allure was fleeting, and that in order to capitalize on their worth, it was essential to seize every opportunity put before them. So when a mysterious gentleman offered to take Mary Jane to Paris, she agreed. Unfortunately, this visit to France would turn out to be no vacation. The ripper retold, will be back
in just a moment. Victorian travelers sent their lugger John separately, so Mary Jane packed most of her expensive wardrobe into a trunk, expecting it to be forwarded to her new address in Paris. But the baggage was never sent, and perhaps its failure to arrive alerted Mary Jane to the possibility that she had been deceived. The trafficking of women between Britain and continental Europe was a lucrative enterprise, aided
by the expansion of the rail and shipping networks. Just as London became a receiving hub for young women from France, Belgium and Germany to meet a domestic appetite for variety, so English girls were shipped out to brothels abroad. Those involved in international sex trafficking worked discreetly and carefully, so that a woman destined for overseas trade would not guess
what awaited her. It's probable that Mary Jane's French landlady had some role in sending her to Paris, and that she colluded with the mysterious gentleman to place her in a brothel. Fare whatever the scenario, she seemed certain enough that Mary Jane would have no need for her trunk of pretty gowns when she arrived at her destination, likely
a state sanctioned brothel or meison close. Some women were duped into foreign prostitution, but others who were already in the sex trade and looking for a change, went abroad to such establishments willingly. However, once at a maison close, a woman's own belonging might be taken away and replaced with new silk dresses and other finery, adding to an
impossible debt she now owed her employer. Such ruses had been common practice in brothels for centuries and would just as likely to catch seasoned sex laborers off guard as they were to entrap the novice. They would get their room, they would get their clothes, they would potentially get their ticket to Paris. But it was all money's owing, and that debt could be manipulated to be greater than what
it originally was. These forms of debt bondage affected migrant people all over the world in the late nineteenth century, who would have to pay migration agents, pay the steamship ticket off, pay off the person who found them their job. This was a kind of exploitative system in which many many people were caught, including women who were selling sex life at a maison close was tightly regulated in order to keep the streets free of the evils of prostitution.
The law restricted women's movements in and out of the brothels where they worked. They were only permitted in public during certain hours. Even then, they were not allowed to congregate in groups, loiter near their doors, or even make themselves visible through their windows, which were to remain shuttered. What's more, all new recruits were expected to register with the police demur or Morality Police, and to submit to
twice weekly examinations for venereal disease. If indebtedness for a brothel was not enough to break a traffic to woman's will, the strict laws governing her personal freedom would complete the process. Once caught within the rigid jaws of a foreign maison close, a woman on her own, without friends, and unable to communicate in French would have had little hope of escape.
By Mary Jane Kelly's day, the trafficking of women had become something of a cause celeb However, only certain victims were deemed deserving of sympathy and of protection under the law. The idea that innocent women were being compelled into the sex trade and forcibly shipped overseas, gripped the public imagination, and was extravagantly sensationalized in the press. Adeline Tanner was in some ways the original victim of trafficking, in that
it was her story that launched the whole thing. In eighteen seventy eighteen eighty, nineteen year old Adeline was a recently unemployed domestic servant when a respectably dressed man struck up a conversation with her in a railway waiting room. He plied her with drink and introduced her to a man named Eduard Roger. After a short conversation, Roget told her he had taken a great fancy to me, that he would like to take me to Paris, and if, after seeing his grand house I would like to be
his wife, he would marry me. A more experienced young woman might possibly have sensed the direction of travel, but nineteen year old Ada Lene was a virgin and sheltered one. Dazzled and intoxicated, she enthusiastically agreed. Of course, Adeline had been tricked. Roget wouldn't be her husband, but her pimp. She was not destined for Paris, but for a brothel in Brussels. Before departing England, she was issued with a
false identity. Upon her arrival in Belgium, she was informed that her papers were in fact illegal and she would be immediately arrested if she attempted to flee. Adeline eventually escaped her traffickers and spoke about her experiences as part of an investigation into this illicit trade. And it's really interesting reading her testimony in which she does appear as a very innocent victim and she is being asked by a panel of men to narrate her abuse and victimization
for the sake of proving that it existed. They craft her story and encouraged her to craft a story as this kind of performance of ideal victimhood, ignorance and innocence and vulnerability and guilelessness and naivete. The controversial journalist W. T. Stead, whose Crusading newspaper we've mentioned often in this series, published a powerful investigation into the commercial exploitation of children for sex.
All those who are squeamish and all those who are prudish, and all those who prefer to live in a fool's paradise of imaginary innocence and purity will do well not to read the Powell mal Gazette of Monday and the three following days. This series of articles was entitled The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon. Stead invoked hyperbolic subheadings like the violation of Virgins and how girls are bought and ruined.
These virgins are mostly of tender age, being too young in fact, to understand the nature of the crime of which they are the unwilling victims. These outrages are constantly perpetrated with almost absolute impunity. Instead, wanted to show how young girls could be bought from their parents and dispatched to brothels, so he staged just such a transaction himself. He orchestrated the purchase of a thirteen year old virgin girl named Eliza Armstrong, who he called Lily in his
newspaper expose. Because he was always one for heavy handed metaphors, and he used the story of Lily or Eliza Armstrong to prove this buying and selling of young virgin girls in Britain was rife and very possible. But then, for the sake of his metaphor, he insisted on having Lily or Eliza, I should say he insisted on having Eliza forcibly inspected for virginity. He arranged her assault in the name of protecting girls, and it makes me so angry
whenever I think about it. When it came to light at rather than just reporting on a tragic case, Stead had actually arranged for the purchase of Eliza, rival newspapers called for his head. He was found guilty of abduction and procurement and sentenced to three months in prison. Even though Lily's story was pure fabrication, Stead's articles proved incredibly popular, stirring a moral panic that British girls were being sold
into so called white slavery. But by English law, women like Mary jen Kelly were not to be classed as victims of trafficking. Only women and girls who had previously been ignorant of sex could hold the identity of victim. I fully believe that she was defrauded to Paris, that she ran into a very coercevie, potentially even abusive situation when she arrived, and that she found it difficult to get out. This is, by any definition, what would call trafficking.
For the law to say that it was impossible to traffic a woman who was already a prostitute rendered the law itself practically obsolete. But it also tells us again a great deal about who gets to be an ideal victim and who doesn't get to be a victim at all. Mary Jane somehow managed to wriggle free from the snare that had been laid for her, and spent no more
than a fortnight in Paris. If she was well educated, as has been suggested, she would have possessed at least a basic grasp of French, enough perhaps to communicate with an amenable client or with the police. According to French statute, any customer who suspected illegal trafficking might make an appeal to the police Demurs, who were bound by law to release any English girl detained an abroadl against her will,
even if she has not paid her debt. Setbacks such as this would not have been taken lightly by the traffickers who lost money when their so called human parcels escaped, nor would they have liked knowing a young woman was at large who could attest to their crimes. Pimps and trafficking gangs were not people with whom to trifle. They felt no compunction at removing and inconvenient witness if it
helped them escape the law. Mary Jane had somehow outrun her captors in Paris, but her new life in London would be neither tranquil nor safe. The rippery told would be back in just a moment. At first glance, the Ratcliffe Highway, close to London's docks, offered an innocent mercantile impression. The first stretches of the street were stuffed with every shop and outfitter a mariner might wire. However, further down
the highway, its truer character was revealed. Cheap lodging houses, music halls, pubs, and opium dens replaced the ship's chandlers, and the thrumming sound of sin grew ever more audible. The Ratcliffe Highway had its own identity and economy, driven by the steady influx of sailors who stalked at streets in search of drink and sex. Rousing polka melodies hung in the air, punctuated by the smashing of glass and jaws. The spilling of drink and blood were regular occurrences among
its salty visitors. It was in this neighborhood that Mary Jane washed up, had it been safe for her to return to the West End to show her face in Piccadilly or the Haymarket, she might simply have continued in her previous luxurious existence. Instead, she had little choice but to turn eastward. Luckily for her or the east ends of London, the Ratcliffe Highway and the Haymarket were just
universes away from each other at this time. If Mary Jane was hiding from her traffickers, they were unlikely to start looking for her. In this grim and desolate district. She took up lodgings in the house of Elizabeth Bocou, who rented rooms to women who sold sex. How much of her past she revealed to her new madam is unknown, but if Kelly was not Mary Jane's real surname, then it may have been at this point that she adopted it.
If her pursuers were hunting for a welshwoman, it might have been sensible to assume a common Irish name for Mary Jane. The clientele and practices on the Ratcliffe Highway would have been rather different to those she had been accustomed to in the West End. One social reformer observed the particular protocols of the area when a ship arrives in the docks, so many of the women as are disengaged, go down to the entrance and there and then endeavor
to invague or the seamen. These attachments would last for days. A sailor's chosen girl would accompany him hither and thither, always in the neighborhood, carousing by night and sleeping by day. When a seafarer's purse was empty or his shore leaf had ended, there was always the next shipload to greet, unless a replacement could be found in a pub or
on the street. More of this noted that women from the Ratcliffe Highway appeared to tout for trade more brazenly than those in the West End or other parts of the city. The demand for commercial sex quite literally swelled with the tide, so that even the police found it difficult to regulate prostitution. Women who sold sex walked the streets openly without much fear of the authorities. Mary Jane may well have spent her evenings in the public singing
rooms in order to drawn seafaring custom. Most of these smoke filled drinking dens were decorated with a nautical theme, their walls dauged with crude seascapes, anchors and mermaids. As singer's belted out tunes about lovely lasses left ashore. Most of the audience spoke Swedish, Danish, German, Portuguese, Spanish or French and didn't understand a word of what was being sung. Still, they were happy to slump on the wooden benches, drink the bar dry, and fondle their girls until a fight
broke out. Perhaps desperate for money, Mary Jane seems to have enlisted missus Boku to help her reclaim that missing trunk of expensive dresses, which had failed to follow her to Paris. Mary Jane could not have felt easy about returning to a part of town where she was known, and a sense of trepidation must have gnawed at her as she traveled west with her new procurus for support.
It's unlikely that this risky trip paid off. In all probability, mary Jane's trunk would have been sold off long ago. Worse still, the visit seems to have attracted unwanted attention, for shortly afterwards, a man pitched up on the Ratcliffe Highway, seeking Mary Jane and claiming to be her father. Although they were almost certainly not related. She seems to have avoided him successfully, but his presence must still have been
a source of intense anxiety. Adding to this strain, Mary Jane began quarreling with her landlady the dispute mary Jane's drinking habits, as in the more expensive West End, an evening's entertainment along the Ratcliffe Highway revolved around drink. However, savvy women in the sex trade would tipple with care. Unfamiliar customers could be dangerous. To fill one with booze was like playing Russian roulette. A woman could never predict what sort of client a man would be once intoxicated.
If she was fortunate, he might slip into a stupor. If she was less so, he might beat her senseless. Her best defense was to remain as sober as possible. But drink also offered a convenient escape from a miserable existence. It obliterated the horrors of intimacy with a man who was physically repellent, and it quieted, even for a short time, feelings of self loathing, guilt, pain, and traumatic memories of violence.
Mary Jane was likely to have drunk throughout her career in the sex trade, but after her return from France, her usage became problematic. Missus Bocu's sister in law said Mary Jane was one of the most decent and nicest girls when sober, but she became very quarrelsomilar, you see when in toxic head. Missus Boku would have been accustomed to drinkers. Even so, Mary Jane's indulgence in intoxicance soon made her an unwelcome friend. Mary Jane left, however, she
did not go very far. McCarthy's, a nearby establishment, was almost identical to missus Bocu's concern, except that its offer of a legal drink and female company was used to lure in unwary sailors and rob them. Sometime between late eighteen eighty six and early eighteen eighty seven, a plasterer called Joseph Fleming fell in love with Mary Jane. A construction worker, was no match for the rich gentleman who so recently must have swooned for her, but she seems
to have returned Fleming's affections. Marriage might even have been discussed. At any rate, Mary Jane left the environs of the docks and moved in with him, but Fleming's powerful protestations of love were no assurance of his kindness. It is said he ill used Mary Jane, prompting her to uproot once again. But where to go. Nearby was a neighborhood full of cheap housing and densely populated with people who
didn't pry into anyone's past that closely. So packing up the tatters of her once fine wardrobe, Mary Jane moved to the edge of Whitechapel. Surely there she might hide safe from any pursuers with murder in mind. Bad women. The Rippery Told is brought to you by Pushkin Industries and me Hallie Rubinhold, and is based on my book The Five. It was produced and co written by Ryan Dilley and Alice Fines, with help from Pete Norton. Pascal Wise Sound designed and mixed the show and composed all
the original music. You also heard the voice talents of Bencrow, Melanie Gutridge, Gemma Saunders and Rufus Wright. The show also wouldn't have been possible without the work of miel La Belle, Jacob Weisberg, Jenguerra Heather Fane, Carla mcgliori, Maggie Taylor, Nikolemarino, The Tal Mullard, Eric Sandler, and Daniella La Khan. With special thanks to my agents Sarah Ballard and Ellie Karn