S2 E11: The Killers and The Hangman

judge by finding the serviceman not guilty of murder. Mister Justice Charles doesn't seem to delight in sending criminals for execution. Indeed, it's been noted a previous sentencings that he's visibly affected when telling convicts that the law offers him no other choice than to send them to be hanged by the neck until dead. But today the judge is wrathful, and his angry indignation is aimed at the jury. The murder case against the defendant is watertight. The serviceman was caught

red handed. He was drenched in the blood of his female victim. He told witnesses what he'd just done to Kathleen Patmore. And he didn't deny carrying a knife with the express purpose of using it to hack and mutilate the woman. And yet, and yet the jury had found him not guilty. The judge is livid. This was not the sort of justice he is used to presiding over at London's Central Criminal Court. The famed Old Bailey wasn't the law of the land as he knew it. It was, instead,

mister Justice Charles Bellowed, the law of the jungle. In wartime London, it seems there were some women you could murder and no jury would willingly convict you. This is the seldom told story of women in World War Two who were killed not by the enemy but my husbands, lovers and strangers wearing the uniform of their own side. It's also the tale of a particular string of murder victims that history has swept from view. I'm Hallie Rubinhold and I'm Alice Fines, and you're listening to bad women.

The blackout River flat it out times against As a letter had arrived for Prisoner one six four four at his Majesty's prison, Onsworth, bloggings A proper nerd a dun colored brick and stone Victorian Jale in Southwest London. Gordon, my dearest love, it began. I want you to know that nothing can alter my feelings for you. Marjorie Cummins had heard the prosecution case against her husband when he was tried for the murder of Evelyn Oatley in her

Soho flat. She'd heard that a cigarette case, the one inscribed with the initials of Evelyn's showbiz alter ego Leta Ward, was found at cummins raf accommodation. Furthermore, she'd heard how her husband's fingerprints were left on a kitchen implement that had been used in a depraved and sickening attack on Evelyn. As her life ebbed away. It was, the judge said,

a sadistic sexual murder of the ghoulish type. The police had amassed other equally damning evidence linking Gordon Cummins to the grisly murders of Evelyn Hamilton, Margaret Lowe and Doris Joanne, and the airman had all but admitted to police that he'd strangled Greta Heyward in a Piccadilly doorway. I am the man he told his arresting officers, though he added that he'd been too drunk to fully recall the incident.

No detail in this catalog of revolting violence could turn Marjorie Cummins against her husband, nor shake her deep affection for him. Marjorie, you see, still didn't believe he was the blackout ripper. I shall always believe you innocent. I love you so much it breaks my heart to see

you suffer. So why you've got you Amy. As Cummins sat in his narrow prison cell, with its whitewashed brick walls, its bucket for a toilet, it's small barred window too high up to afford him a view, awaiting his date with the hangman, Marjorie continued to think of her husband as a hero. I'm sure men have been awarded the Victoria Cross for going through less than you have endured.

The Victoria Cross is Britain's very highest award for bravery, and even in the vast conflict then underway, it was given out only rarely to men whose single handedly stormed Nazi bunkers or piloted burning aircraft through a hail of enemy fire, all who paid no heed to their own mortality to save the lives of wounded comrades. Marjorie felt that her husband's resolved that he would clear his name was an act of bravery to equal all of these.

You have been wonderful all through the difficult time, and you have our admiration as well as our love. This letter was signed off every scrap of my love and a million kisses from your adoring wife. It was delivered to the prison just before Comin's final roll of the dice, an appeal to have his murder conviction quashed and his

death sentence lifted. The following Tuesday morning, Marjorie would sit in court as the airman's lawyers argued that the pioneering fingerprint evidence was flawed, that Evelyn Oatley's possessions had been planted in the raf billet by the police or by the real killer who was trying to cover his tracks, and that have Cummins were really the perpetrator of such frenzied crimes, how come no traitors of blood were found

on his clothing. If Cummins could unpick the case against him and introduce sufficient doubt, might the man Marjorie loved so very much yet brought free The morning's persistent rain had grounded the attack aircraft, but eventually it lifted. Bad luck for the men on the ground. As their column of trucks trumbled forward, two bombers dived down on them,

releasing canisters a deadly poisoned gas. Men could be seen falling on all sides, reported one newspaper, noting that the ambulance drivers coming along to ten the survivors of the now burning convoy had to work glass masks to enter the lethal FuG and fumes. The delighted crowd, no doubt cheered their arrival and applaud in my whole chet point definitely. This reenactment wasn't the only attraction that Saturday afternoon at

r F Henlo's Empire Air Day celebration. Like air bases up and down the country, and Henlo had been thrown open to the general public, partly to benefit charity, partly as a pr exercise for the Royal Air Force. The thousands of civilian visitors on May twenty third, nineteen thirty six were treated to aerobatic displays and demonstrations of daring parachute jumps. They were so free to roam the base, allowed to peer into the hangars, barracks and dining halls incredible.

Twenty one year old Marjorie Stevens was among the throng, and it was on this day that she first met Airman Gordon Cummons. Cummins was on the very lowest rung of the RAF and his duties involved the maintenance and upkeep of the aircraft. He was quite literally no high flyer, but Marjorie seems to have been smitten with him all the same. He's very cultured and well spoken. Within months

of their first meeting, the couple had wed. Other women might not have seen lowly aircraftman Cummins as much of a catch. A life with such a man would mean either long separations or trailing round after him from air base to airbase, but Marjorie was a tune to the life of a surfaceman's wife. Marjorie's father, Ernest Stevens, had been a career soldier serving with the kilt wearing Seaforth Highlanders, stationed in India to defend Britain's occupation of the colony.

Ernest had risen up the ranks till he finally attained officer status. His elevation came as the Highlanders swapped the balmy cricket matches, swimming gallers and regimental concerts, at which Ernest excelled for the mud and blood of the trenches. At the start of the First World War, the British Army had little choice but to push its most experienced soldiers into frontline duties to hold back the Germans until sufficient civilian volunteers could be trained up to join them.

Ernest unit was thus plucked from India and sent to the front. On February first, nineteen fifteen, just weeks after becoming a second lieutenant, Ernest was out at night supervising a party of soldiers digging trenches. Tried to keep the noise down boys when he was struck by a German bullet a head wound. He lingered for a day before dying.

His wife, Ethel, was pregnant with Marjorie. Ethel had followed her husband to Europe, but her roots were firmly in Britain's imperial possession in South Asia, so as soon as the war was over, she boarded the SS city of Karachi to take her three young daughters home to India. The liner was packed with the colonial ruling elite Christian missionaries, engineers, bankers, but there were also army officers sailing east. They would perhaps have been a stinging reminder that she was returning

to India as a war widow. Despite their strong ties to India, all three Stephens girls drifted back to Britain, and when Marjorie wed Cummins in London just after Christmas nineteen thirty six, she said she opted to rent apartment with her eldest sister, Frieda in order that my husband would have a flat to come to for spending his leave. The Air Force sent Cummins to bases right across the British isles north, southeast and west in Scotland for one posting,

then distant Cornwall for another. It's not clear if Marjorie closely shadowed these moves or exactly when she moved in with Freda. At the outbreak of war, Marjorie was living slap bang in the middle of England, perhaps the best compromise given her husband's geographically erratic postings. She lodged for the middle aged couple the Hipwards, and was listed as being incapacitated, though her normal occupation was as a theatrical secretary.

The limitations of her long distance marriage seem not to have saddened or worried Marjorie. We have been very, very happy, and he has never been anything but kind and tolerant in every respect. It was not his habit to consort other women. Cummins, however, seems to have made the very most of the separation. Cummins gave me and everyone else the idea that he'd more or less cut away from

his wife. Flight Lieutenant William Pete, an officer at one of cummins postings, thought the airman behaved far more like a bachelor than a married man. Cummins used to boast of his conquests of women, and when he had a few days leave, he'd boast of his being with his West End friends and used to say he didn't go home to his wife. Beyond this, he never made any reference to his wife in my presence. It also seems Cummins wasn't sending much money home either. According to Pete,

the airman was the very image of profligacy. Every so often he would be flush with cash and appear in the local pub, and there he would treat all, what are you having, bill? Very kind of you Gordon just a kind of sludge. I'll take my usual Canadian rye a double. Naturally, I have simple tastes, not your yearning

for the finer things. Such ostentatious displays of generosity would cost come Ins the equivalent of several hundred dollars, and usually within a couple of nights he'd be broke and would not be seen again at the bar until he was once again flashing of bulging Billfolt. Was he carefully husbanding his military salary so that he could indulge in such grandstanding, or tapping up Marjorie for cash? Look here, I'm on the rocks. Perhaps he was getting money from

the women he boasted of conquering flight. Lieutenant Pete claimed to have seen him in the company of wealthy women at fine hotels in the nearby city of Bath, with these women giving the air and money. Or was he simply stealing it from them? If he did, he was never caught. There was not a single black mark in his RAF records. Cummins's own explanation of the source of

his wealth was more fantastic. In reality, he was the son of the principle of a school for delinquents, but he would tell anyone who would listen that he was the scion of an aristocratic family, complete with a title. When Cummings told me he was the Honorable Gordon Cummins, I and others accepted that he was owing to his manner and speech, he tried to create the impression that he was the black sheep of a good family. Cummins probably bridle that his humble status in the air was hierarchy.

He was said not to associate with his fellow rank and file airmen, and he instead tried to cultivate relationships with officers such as Flight Lieutenant Pete. His attempts to impress his commanding officer, a revered aviation pioneer called George Stainforth, seemed to have paid particular dividends. Just as in Marjorie's father's day. The coming of conflict enabled ordinary servicemen to advance.

Wing Commander Stainforth now pushed for Cummins, who had spent so long on the lowest rung of the Air Force, to be allowed to join the RAF's officer cadet program and train for duties in the air. That training would see Cummins transferred to lodgings in London, not too far from where Marjorie had now set up home with her sister Frieda. But if Marjorie was hoping to see more of her husband in his free time, she was to

be sorely disappointed. She believed that he chose to stay at his barracks during the week and not at home because he was conscientious about rising through the ranks of the Air Force. Of course, far closer to cummins billet than Marjorie, his home and fireside were the brasseries, bars and women of Piccadilly. Cummins entered the dock at the Criminal Court of Appeal and scan the public gallery. Newspaper reporters saw him lock eyes with a woman. He smiled.

Marjorie deserved this tiny show of appreciation. From the moment of his arrest and through his initial conviction, she tirelessly agitated for her husband's release. She felt their original lawyer had made a hash at the defense. Surely, in a land where the law is supposed to be so just, an innocent man cannot be hanged because his counsel didn't

know his case properly. The prosecution held that the small fingerprints on a mirror in Evelyn Oakley's room and on the cutting blade of a can opener conclusively linked Cummings to the crime scene and the murder. Cummings original lawyer had failed to shake the jury's faith in that argument. The twelve men had put great stock in the evidence of the nation's top fingerprint expert, Cheryl of the Yard.

According to Superintendent Cheryl, only five or six points of agreement were needed to match a fingerprint to the digit that had left it, and in the case of Cummings and the prints left at Evelyn Oatley's home, there had been at least twenty five such points of agreement. Surely the judges would be independent minded and skeptical of such cockshure testimony the incriminating fingerprint with tiny and incomplete ventured Cumming's new defense lawyer. He fingerprint evidence is vital, Judge,

Mister Justice Humphrey, retorted, end of deadly significance. The guilty verdict stood and Cummins would be returned to Wandsworth Prison to await execution. Marjorie burst into tears as her husband left the dock. He stopped to wave at her. Are you missus Cummings Final chance? The senior detective asked Marjorie as she stood alone in a corridor. Why, yes, yes, I am. I'd like to offer you my congratulations. Whatever do you mean? I'd like to offer you my congratulations

on your lucky escape. The detective's words infuriated Marjorie, and she complained bitterly about the officer's conduct to the very highest authorities. But to his seasoned i perhaps the thought that violent men invariably turn their attention to their wives did not seem far fetched. Such cases were, unfortunately legion, especially as those violent men returned home from war. The

blackout Ripper will return in a moment. The men of the first Battalion of the Royal Scots Fusiliers were feeling hard done by fighting the merciless Japanese and the merciless heat in the fetid jungles of Burma. They suspected that their sacrifices were of little interest to those back home. They grumbled that they had no British cigarettes to smoke, and pointedly called themselves the forgotten Army. The message that

arrived the Fusiliers, Cyril Patmore, compounded their misery. Such correspondents could bring military units to their knees, spreading disquiet from man to man like a raging infection, until their commanders reckon morrale was so low that the men couldn't be sent back into battle. Kathleen Patmore was expecting a baby, and of course Cyril wasn't the father. This thunderbolt was delivered as an air graph, a short message shrunk down on microfilm so as to save vital space in aircraft

heading to the war zone. It wasn't a particularly private way of imparting sensitive news, nor did it allow the writer to go into great detail. Heavily pregnant, Kathleen, cath later wrote more fulsome letters. These were pages of sorrow and remorse, My darling. I am wondering if you're caring to get letters from me any more, but I feel I must keep writing until I see you again, or

you tell me not to. Kathleen explained that in Cyril's absence, she'd been out celebrating their wedding anniversary and his birthday, which fell a week apart in November. The evening out had meant a long walk home. Evidently I didn't make it. I didn't go into it cold sober, Otherwise it would never have happened. It had taken a full seven months for that airgraph and this news to come. Shame, remorse, frightened, call it what you like, but each time I attempted

to write to you, I just had the nerve. I didn't mean to do it, sweetheart, Please believe me and don't start a divorce. I just couldn't stand that fusilia. Pat Moore showed these letters to the welfare officer of his unit. In cases of marital infidelity, it was common for soldiers to ask for the allowance paid to their spouse to be immediately halted and for the process of

drawing up divorce papers to begin. War had brought upheaval, tearing the fabric of society into pieces, and with so many partners separated from each other, adultery on both sides wasn't uncommon. Some tens of thousands of British servicemen had initiated divorce proceedings, with one estimate suggesting it would take something like fifteen years to clear the backlock. But Cyril pat Moore didn't ask to join the tail end of that melancholy queue. He just wanted to be allowed to

go home. I feel ashamed for you to see me in this condition. Yet, how I wish I could see you, to talk to you. It wouldn't matter what you did to me. Afterwards. The clock was ticking down to the berth and after three years away, Private pat Moore was finally granted passage a ship heading home. That voyage, it seems, was broken in the Mediterranean, and Patmore went supernir shopping at an Italian market, where he purchased a six inch knife.

Behind looked, if anything, more like an aristocrat's stately home than a hotel. The ironstone building, topped with a golden statue of a deer, dated back hundreds of years, but the hind was moving with the times. Parking for motor cars had been added to compliment the ample stabling for guests. Horses Behind had other attractions too. In nineteen thirty four, its restaurant employed a dapper little waiter, Cyril pat Moore, was no more than five feet tall, but he made

a big impression on missus. Kathleen Shore, the married mother of one, entered into an association with Patmore and promptly left mister Shaw, a shoemaker, and her home in the Shires. Sixty miles north of London. This act of desertion was sighted in Alfred Shaw's petition for divorce, and Cyril Patmore was named in Kathleen's adultery. A daughter, Chrissie, was born before the divorce. The record of this birth is missing from the archives, but Patmore certainly thought of the child

as his and was there at the birth. I remember when I was in your arms. After Chrissy was born, wrote Kathleen, I was the happiest woman in the world. The pain and suffering was soon forgotten. As early as nineteen thirty five, Kathleen had assumed her lover's surname and official documents, even though the pair didn't actually wed until late nineteen thirty seven. They lived together at the very

heart of London. Patmore no longer waiting tables for the horse riding set, but instead working at the Embassy Club. This was a legendary private member's establishment, and it was so exclusive that, according to one regular, even a duke with an income of a quarter million, a great townhouse, a yacht, a lovely wife, and one or two pensioned off ones might have to wait at the door for

a table to become available. Despite the eyewatering membership fees he'd already stumped up, but the merrymaking was coming to an end. Kathleen gave birth to a boy just as war was declared, and Pat Moore took a government post as an air aid warden, perhaps out of civic duty, or perhaps simply to supplement his income and provide for

his growing family. The couple also admitted a lodger into their home, Frank Tobin, aged thirty two, and apparently following a quarrel with Kathleen Patmore, volunteered to join the army. When he went off to fight, first in Africa and then the Far East, his wife stayed on in the house with Tobin. The lodger was said to write to his friend Pat and keep him abreast of events at home. He also regularly gave Kathleen large sums of money. Two

more Patmore children were born. Some observed that the new arrivals resembled Tobin, who was described as being too friendly for a mere lodger. For many who had endured the Blitz, with wave after wave of bomber aircraft coming to London night after night, the new onslaught of pilotless rocket bombs, brought a new kind of terror. The v Ones, the so called doodle bugs or buzz bombs, were jet propelled craft packed with explosives launched from far away Nazi based

They would burble their way towards their targets. When their fuel ran dry, the engine would cut out, and those on the ground would have just seconds to find cover before the eerie silence was violently rent apart. At once malevolent and inhuman, these new weapons unnerved many Londoners who'd assumed that by nineteen forty four the worst of the war was over. They proved too much for Kathleen Patmore. She left London and her lodger to return to her

roots in rural Oxfordshire. Kathleen was descended from a line of agricultural laborers, and she moved into a rented cottage

with her sister May. Her other siblings and relatives were dotted around the farms nearby, and some of them were already housing Kathleen's older children, As is sometimes the word with families, Kathleen seems to have set up home amongst her very fiercest critics her behavior in this idyllic corner of England, safely away from the deadly buzz bombs would prompt their ire, and that disapproval and their willingness to

gossip would have appalling consequences for Kathleen. In the summer and autumn of nineteen forty four, the harvest in this quaint part of England was reached by the Sons of Napoli, Palermo and Brindisi. As many as one hundred thousand Italian prisoners of war had been shipped to Britain following their defeat and surrender in earlier campaigns. When Italy switched sides and joined the Allies, all except the most fervent fascists in their ranks were designated as cooperators. They weren't really

the enemy any longer. Those some Britons remained uncon vince that they were reliable Allies. In any case, Italian men performed a valuable service. Was so many farm hands away at war and women increasingly taking up jobs in the factories, who else was there to gather in the crops and tender livestock. Italian cooperators could visit cinemas, but not pubs

or dance halls. They could only use trains or buses as part of their work duties, and they had to observe a curfew, though some communities grumbled that the Italians were still allowed out too late. Raio its Ice fraternization with locals was another saw point. You ain't insanni itarly now mates. The cooperators could enter private homes if invited, but women seen entertaining Italian men were treated with the utmost suspicion. Kathleen's older brother, Horace, kept a beady eye

on her and on her sister May. I've seen both of them going out at night with Italian prisoners of war in the woods and returning to the house separately as late as seven am. A laborer on the farm where the sisters leased their cottage corroborated similar accusations. Their landlord, meanwhile, was so scandalized that he reported two of his Italian workers to the authorities and stopped taking any rent money,

hoping that the women would pack up and leave. Curiously, May joined this chorus of disapproving voices, recounting stories of Kathleen sleeping with other men. She even went as far as to write anonymous letters to those in charge of Italian cooperators, informing them that Kathleen had close ties to one man in particular, I was afraid she was getting

too friendly with one named Fronzo Antonio. That though I don't know if anything was happening between them, I made this Italian understand that missus Patmore was a married woman with children and a husband in Burma. In the spring of nineteen forty five, Kathleen's pregnancy began to show, and she was, perhaps unsurprisingly reluctant to take May into her confidence. I thought she was pregnant, and she admitted she was,

but declined to discuss the matter with me. She was very secretive in nature and told me very little about her men friends. The bombs were no longer falling on London, and soon the blackout would end, so Kathleen returned to the capital. She left behind her children and a country community roiling with rumor and gossip about the identity of her next baby's father. Was it a yank or a truck driver called Bill? The prime suspect was forty year

old Soldato Friendzo Antonio. Kathleen's new lodgings in London were close to where the Italian had been sent following the scandal at the farm. Sailing back from the war. It's unclear if Cyril Patmore knew any of these salacious tales. His letters to his calf seemed to have been optimistic. Roll on the day when I can straighten things out and settle down to the second chapter of married life.

That's going to be hard at first, However, we should be able to get a little home together and live happily. Ever after, Patmore's confidence seems to have evaporated on arriving home from the Far East. A visit to see his children in the Oxfordshire countryside opened up the floodgates to the vicious and score settling gossip about his wife. With her husband now in their midst, Kathleen's family spared not a moment in apprising him of their views of her

total moral lag. May even produced a written list of men she said her sister had slept with, and twelve year old Chrissie was called as a witness to her mother's infidelities, recounting how she'd walked in on Kathleen in bed with the truck driver Bill. Patmore even began to suspect that Frank Tobin had indeed been overly friendly for a lodger and to doubt the parentage of his youngest children.

They're just like the bastard. The final straw was the naming of Soldato Antonio as the likely father of the child growing in his wife's belly, if it had been anyone else but not our enemies. Kathleen's brother, Horace, witnessed Patmore's growing confusion and anger and fueled it with his own tittle tattle. But with Patmore planning to return to London to confront his wife, Horace makes no mention of trying to warn Kathleen of the soldier's grim mood, nor

Patmore's chilling and vengeful parting words. I will do her in and I will hang for it, fusela Patmore was. It turns out half right. The blackout ripper will return in a moment. The soldier who approached Frederick Keeling's car was covered in blood and holding a six inch knife. The chauffeur was waiting for a fair just a few doors down from Kathleen Patmore's new digs. Call the police.

I've done my missus. When officers arrived, Cyril Patmore directed them towards the body of his wife and held out the knife slick with her blood. I did it with this. The kitchen of number twelve Green Hill Road was also a wash with Athleene's blood. Her lifeless body lay face down in it. She could not have survived such an attack. But then a police detective saw a movement rolling the heavily pregnant corpse over. He witnessed the final kicks of

her unborn child. The officers arrested pat Moore and drove him to the police station, noting that he was keen to tell them of his troubles. He repeated one lament over and over to think it was an Italian she's been going with. If this was the second chapter in Patmore's marriage, it was a bloody Shakespearean tragedy. The soldier had kept his word and done Kathleen in, But would he hang the law of the jungle Cyril. Patmore wasn't

going to the gallows after all. The jury didn't think he deserved it, and mister Justice Charles, the Old Bailey judge presiding, was incensed with the twelve I am bound to tell you. The liver man comes back, finds his wife unfaithful, stabs her and she dies. He is guilty of stark murder. The jury had heard witness after witness outline Kathleen's supposed marital wrongdoings. In the witness box, her sister May was asked if Kathleen had been consistently and

persistently immoral. Yes, she practically lived with the Italian prisoners billeted in our area. Pat Moore had gone to Kathleen's London home armed with the list of men's names May had happily supplied, and with this Italian knife. I only meant to scar her so nobody else could have her but me. Kathleen's face did indeed bear the mark of one disfiguring slashing cut, but she struggled, and I stabbed

her in the wrong place. He plunged that souvenir knife deep into her neck, going as far as the lung, a wound which would have proved rapidly fatal. He viewed this woman as a possession and would not accept the humiliation of its loss. For years, I've been waiting for this moment to return and have you for my own again,

he told her, and I'm robbed of everything. Though peeved that the jury had returned the wrong verdict, mister Justice, Charles wasn't going to take his frustrations out on Patmore. If the jury decided he was guilty of manslaughter instead of murder, then the judge could show the soldier leniency, after all, his unfaithful wife had behaved abuminably. As your counsel has said, you were a solid tried, he told

the prisoner. If you had not been so solid tried, I would have been bound to give you a very very heavy sentence. Private Patmore, who the judge described as a good man and a good husband, only got five years. The murder of Kathleen Patmore in the final months of World War Two was not, of course, an isolated case. Doctor Mark Roothouse from the University of York is an

expert in wartime crime. Although the increase in domestic violence is not reflected in the crime figures, there is plenty of anecdotal evidence, particularly in oral testimonies, in memoirs and autobiographies, that there was an increase in these things as individuals who were processing very traumatic experiences turned in on themselves

but also outwards on others. Men who'd been exhorted to sacrifice themselves and fight for home and family were being demobilized from the armed forces, and many had the feeling, like Cyril Patmore, that they'd be robbed of the homecoming that they'd imagined that they felt they deserved. The very same week as the Patmore verdict, another soldier stood in the dock at the Old Bailey. Frederick and Lillian Hooker had had eleven children together when Frederick joined the Pioneer

Corps and had been sent away. Missus Hooker was said to have struck up a friendship with an Irish soldier, something to which their fourteen year old son, Thomas, attested in court. On leaving the army, Frederick Hooker said he found his wife to be culled towards him, but despite this difficult homecoming, he still worshiped her. That is until he stabbed her. She drove me to it. She was carrying on with other men, and I asked her not to for the children's sake. I su I've done it again.

The jury rejected the judge's guidance that the offense was murder and found Hooker guilty of the lesser crime of manslaughter. Summing up mister Justice Tucker chided the twelve that their verdict was sending a dangerous message. That is murder and nothing else. If Parliament thinks fit to pars an act that soldiers returning and finding their wives unfaithful may kill them and that is manslaughter, it will be the law of the land. Until that is done, it is not

the law of the land. These twin verdicts showing sympathy for wife killers in England's most famous court, prompted much comment in the newspapers, with one legal expert of pining it is inevitable will be more such cases of killing. One hears of so many wives who have misconducted themselves. The refusal of these juries to send such defendants to the hangman had deep roots in the prevailing culture. One of the important things to note about the nineteen forties

is that physical violence is part of everyday life. Here's Mark again. He says that from the beatings handed out by school teachers to husbands clouting their wives, recourse to brutality wasn't frowned upon, even by the police. The police did not want to get involved because it got them into difficult negotiations about what was acceptable what was not acceptable. If the violence took place in a public space, then the police would take an interest if it was causing

some kind of disturbance and complaints from neighbors. They would also take an interest if the violence within the household overstepped the mark and someone ended up being seriously injured or worse than the police would take an interest. But run of the male physical chastisement would be the kind of thing the police would be very cautious about getting

involved with. In such a society where violence was a permissible, even expected part of family life, Inflicting physical harm on women was only wrong if the severity of the injury outweighed the provocation. Kathleen Patmore had sorely tried her husband, and Lilian Hooker drove hers to take her life. They weren't bad men, thought the jurors. They'd just been pushed to breaking point. They'd snapped. The crime of passion has been around for millennia. Professor Jane Monkton Smith is an

expert on homicide and particularly on domestic violence. She rejects the crime of passion defense, the idea that lover may, in a fit of jealousy or after an appalling betrayal, lose control of themselves and kill Jane's research has shown that the crime of passion, though an established feature of our cultural script, is nothing more than myth. It kind of acts to defend, especially men who kill their partners

allegedly spontaneously. So there's some kind of dreadful provocation. They in the moment react to that and things go a bit far. Nobody could really have predicted it, and it's a terrible situation. But of course that's not the way these things play out at all. There is nothing, no fact anywhere to suggest that the crime of passion narrative has anything to support it, because all the research that has been done in this area shows that there are

levels of planning. These homicides, despite what everybody really wants to believe, are not spontaneous. Indeed, Cyril Patmore had time enough between Oxfordshire and London to think about his marriage several days. In fact, even if we believe his story that he took a six inch knife to threaten and

to scar Kathleen, Cyril Patmore did not simply snap. He thought about the grievous harm he wanted to inflict on his wife, and then he settled on a determined course of action to echo those judges that is murder and nothing else. Had say the cuckolded poultry farmer Harold Oatley finally run out of patience with Evelyn and her soho lifestyle and taken his razor to her, or indeed, had on rue Jouanne bickered with his wife Doris about her return to the sex trade and choked her to death.

Would they have been sentenced to hang or just given a light sentence. Would a jury have perhaps looked sympathetically on leading aircraftman Cummings if he'd offered his wife Marjorie then spun a defense in court detailing her immoral, unreasonable, or nagging ways. As it was on June twenty fifth, nineteen forty two, with all legal avenues exhausted, all appeals from reprieved denied, Cummings was taken from the condemned cell where he played distracted games of chest with his warders,

to the nearby gallows and the drop. The man dubbed the most notorious killer since Jack the Ripper was no more and his swordid crimes, far from growing in notoriety, quickly slipped into obscurity. And this suited the families of the dead and the survivors too, when the murders of February nineteen forty two occasionally resurfaced in the newspapers, often when one of the investigating detectives had a memoir. Note,

the victims were invariably referred to as prostitutes. When we approached the relatives of the dead women for this series, they politely decline to be interviewed. The shame associated with the crimes has even suppressed conversations within families. Cummings not only rob these women of their lives, his depravity has also meant that their very memories have been erased. We don't have any information about any of this, wrote one relative in reply to us, as I'm sure you can understand.

It's not something we discussed. I was fascinated to learn about this case that almost doesn't exist. It's not in the press, you don't see it on tally. Michael Buchanan Done is a London to a guide, an host of Murder Mile UK podcast. He's done much to uncover the truth about the valuable lives Cummings snuffed out. Hlne fits should be that one shouldn't always exactly criss crossings, soho

Piccadilly and Paddington. Michael shows visitors the streets the women walked, the bars where they drank and met friends, the places they called home, and in so doing, Michael hopes his tool groups will come to know the women as he does, as real, rounded people and not simply as victims of a killer. Evelyn Hamilton left in a freezing, dank air aid Shelter was no mere corpse. She was someone who'd known poverty and then dedicated herself to improving both a

lot of other working people and her own mind. Through determination, she became a pharmacist. I mean, that's amazing for today, but we're talking a hundred years ago. She's clearly smart, she's clearly educated. She's quiet. But I think that's the problem is that people of think about her shyness and they equate that to loneliness, and I think that's a big mistake when you look at her life. She liked herself,

she liked her world, she liked what she did. The Soho home of Evelyn Oatley, who was so cruelly dismissed as a mere good time girl, was demolished long ago. But Michael's tour groups can still get a flavor if the edgy, creative and bohemian neighborhood that drew Evelyn from the gritty industrial north to the place where she became hopeful starlet Lta Ward. Where she grew up, there was nothing. She's got dreams of going to London to become an actress and a dancer, and you want her so much

to succeed. She's not a good time girl. I think there's an inherent loneliness there, and she's trying to find out who she is and what she wants. Michael has retraced the route widowed and bankrupt Margaret Lowe would have taken selling sex in the area. She walks the perimeter, the filthy square mile, as they call it around Soho. But the secretive aloof woman that others dubbed the Lady

seemed an especially reluctant participant in the trade. Weighed down with grief for her former married life and always afraid of losing her daughter. And it's almost as if she doesn't want to be there, but she knows that she has to be. I find it tragic, but also I understand her. I understand why she's holding onto those few moments of her past, especially her daughter. Who she loves, and she wants her past to return, the good past.

North of Hyde Park, Michael takes his tour groups into the world of Doris Joanne, the provincial girl without a father who counted societal prejudice against so called bastards by never backing down, never taking orders, and always cutting a striking figure. She's stylish. Everyone always looked at her and

you could see her coming. She always looked immaculate. Michael, pounding the pavements amid the traffic and bustle of modern London does in real life what we've tried to do in audio over the series, give those long dead women a chance to reach across the decades and be heard. Michael's guiding ethos also sums up what we've tried to do in Bad Women, and we think his words are a fitting way to draw this season to a close. Sodd Gordon Frederick Cummings. He's an asshole. I hate him.

He's arrogant. He does not deserve to live, and I hate to say that about anyone. Whereas the women, I fell in love with them, every single one of them. I sympathized with them, what they were about, what their struggle was, the amount of times have done a live presentation then burst into tears because I think when you see the victims not just as name age collection of injuries, but you learn about all the quirks in their life, You learn about the sadness, you learn about the joy.

It makes them real and whole, and you kind of want to meet them and hope, hope that they survive, but you know that they won't. Bad women. The Blackout Ripper is hosted by me Hallie rubin Hold and me Alice Fines. It was written and produced by Alice Fines and Ryan Dilley, with additional support from Courtney Guarino and Arthur Gomperts. Kate Healy of Oakwood Family Trees aided us with genealogical research. Pascal Wise Sound designed and mixed the

show and composed all the original music. The show was recorded at Wardoor Studios by David Smith and Tom Berry. You also heard the voice talents of Ben Crow, David Glover, Melanie Gutridge, Stella Halford, Gemma Saunders and Rufus Wright. Much of the music You Had was performed by Edgarchan, Ross Hughes, Christian Miller and Marcus Penrose. They were recorded by Nick Taylor at Porcupine Studios. Pushkin's Ben Holiday mixed the tracks and you heard additional piano playing by the great Berry

Wise Hi Berry. The show also wouldn't have been possible without the work of Jacob Weisberg, Heather Fane, Carlie Migliori, Maggie Taylor, Nicole Morano, Eric Sandler, and Daniella Lukhan. We'd also like to thank Michael Buchanan Dunn of the Murder Mile podcast, Lizzie McCarroll, Katherine Walker at the Royal Pharmaceutical Society and the Earb Historical Society. Bad Women is a

production of Pushkin Industries. Please rate and review the show and spread the word about what we do and thanks for listening.