S2 E2: The Death of a Quiet Druggist

her male employers have taken against her manner. After a busy evening which included a tetchy exchange with a hotel worker over a room, Evelyn is perhaps just now especially appreciate of this window of solitude. Her gold wristwatch shows that it's almost midnight, so she readies herself to leave. She has a train to catch first thing in the morning to start a new job in the distant city

of Grimsby, but she will never make that train. For donning her coat and setting out into the black February night, Evelyn Hamilton will not even make it back safe to her night's lodgings. This is the seldom told story of women in World War Two who were killed not by the enemy, but by 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 black out Ripper. It's nineteen oh one and Britain is bearing its queen. Victoria has sat on the throne for sixty three years, reigning over four hundred million subjects and an empire that covered a quarter of the globe. As an empress at the head of a vast, conquering army, she is instructed that her funeral be a full military affair, and so her coffin is conveyed by gun carriage, accompanied by her admirals

and generals in their great plumed hats. Thousands of ordinary people line the processional route, hoping to catch a final glimpse of the only sovereign most of them have ever known. Victoria, whose reign exalted the moral perfection of the traditional family, isn't heard next to her beloved and long dead husband, Prince Albert. She wore the austere black of widow's weeds for forty long years, but she is buried and a

white gown and her wedding veil. The Victorian era is over, and an empire on which the sun never set is about to begin its slow decline. That spring against a backdrop of national mourning. Evelyn mark at Hamilton was born in England's northern coal mining country. A wave of social reform has been sweeping Britain. Recent improvements had been made in the areas of social housing, education provision, and welfare for workers, but there was still much to be done,

particularly to help women. Not far from Evelyn's birthplace, a branch of the Women's Liberal Association invited their local political representative, their member of Parliament to speak. He first lamented the Queen's death, and then thanked the women in attendance for

instilling liberal principles and to their families at home. He also commended the Association for its work inviting women to such meetings so that they might take an active part in what is going on in the politics of the country. Of course, that active part was somewhat limited. In nineteen oh one, none of the women in attendance could actually vote, let alone be elected themselves, but movements to gain suffrage

were well underway. Selina Cooper, a textiles worker from the North, had just presented a petition to Parliament signed by thirty thousand women, demanding the vote. Evelyn Hamilton was born into a rapidly changing world, and her story epitomizes the struggle many women face to fight for reforms that would improve their lives and allow them to tread a path beyond

the realm of placid domesticity. When Evelyn was born, her parents, Robert and Mary Hamilton, were renting a room at the house of a Mexican born tailor and his British wife in Newcastle, a city burgeoning with heavy industry. In the eighteen seventies. The British government had imposed a legal duty on parents to ensure that their children were educated, so, unlike many of their forebears, working class Robert and Mary

would have been able to read and write. Robert in particular, would have had some numerousy skills and drawn on these in his work as a collector for the Anglo American Zither Company. In the late nineteenth century, the zithera had become popular with the middle classes as a novelty parlor instrument. Vendors would even throw in lessons when they sold the

harplike device learnt in few minutes. Promised the adverts, customers of the Anglo American Zither Company might buy their instruments on an installment plan, and collectors like Robert would have visited them to take their payments until the debt was cleared. And there was good money to be made in this zithi craze on the streets of one genteel town. Rival zither vendors even came to blows in a literal fist fight over this lucrative trade. The police had to intervene.

They grappled together and both fell to the ground. They were both bleeding from the nose and mouth. But eventually public interest in the zither waned, perhaps prompting Robert to leave newcast By the time a second daughter, Edith, was born, they had moved to the nearby village of Wryton, where willow trees bend to brush the waters of the River Tyne. Wryton relied on agriculture and coal miner and here the seller of zithers became a more prosaic colliery laborer, doing

unskilled work at one of the local mines. He eventually became a banks in charge of loading and unloading coal and workers from the mine shaft elevator. More Hamilton children arrived, and their mother, Mary, for whom no occupation is recorded on the census, likely stayed at home to raise them. Evelyn was the oldest of three brothers and four sisters, and the family lived in a small, two roomed cottage. One room would probably have been a kitchen and living space,

and the other a shared bedroom. The Hamilton's were a typical working class family. They were far from a fluent and they lived in cramped quarters, but they wouldn't have been pitied or considered to be extremely poor, and the tragedies that befell the family wouldn't have seemed unusual to their peers either. When Evelyn was seven, her little brother caught scarlet fever, a bacterial illness that produces a distinctive

pink red rash. Although there was some understanding about how the disease spread and about just how susceptible infants and small children were to it in the days before antibiotics, it could still be a death sentence. The boy passed away with his father at his side. Scarlet fever outbreaks returned without respite and The illness then claimed the life of five year old Edith. In nineteen eleven, Robert Hamilton was asked to fill out the census form and name

all his children. Heartbreakingly, he wrote first the name of his dead daughter Edith. Then he realized his mistake and crossed it out. The death of children, though tragic, was an ordinary part of working class life. Even so, sorrow must have pierced Robert's heart as his pen struck out young Edith's name. Another son would later die of diphtheria and heart failure in the same infectious diseases hospital where Edith had perished, And cruel fate had not yet finished

with the Hamilton family. Playing with other children. On the banks of the River Tyne, Evelyn's four year old brother John slipped into the water. A passer by attempted to resuscitate the child, but to no avail, and so in just a few short years, Evelyn lost four younger siblings. The family home would surely have been an emptier, quieter,

and sadder place, haunted by these deaths. Tiny writing cricket team as thrashing the county professionals against the odds in the high summer sun, the men of Evelyn Hamilton's village are humbling the visiting side. This sensational performance would have been a source of huge excitement, and thirteen year old Evelyn may well have been on hand to cheer the victors on. It is July nineteen fourteen, and this peaceful village,

i'll is about to be shattered. Soon. These players may well be swapping their cricket writes for Army Khaki, some never to return to the pitch. In one short week, the threatening war clouds have settled down over Europe and the long ridicule German menace has become a reality. The Kaiser's troops are at war with England, Russia and France. At forty Robert Hamilton was at the upper age limit

to fight, but he appears not to have volunteered for combat. Instead, he became a munitions worker, helping to produce the guns, bullets and bombs kneaded at the front. Still, teenage Evelyn would have watched as the young men of the village and those who had worked in the pits with her father, register their names and droves for the local battalions. They were dispatched to the trenches France and Flanders to the horrors of war and to death. The dangers and hardships

of war were entirely absent from the home front. German airships, the dreaded Zeppelins were sent on bombing raids against civilian targets. One cruised over Evelyn's community in nineteen fifteen. Those on the ground switched off all the lights, halted all the trams and trains, and held their breath into the raider floated away again. The war altered the worlds of the women left behind in other profound ways too. Their working lives changed as they took on new roles on farms

and in factories. At home, food shortages placed additional strain on families whose main earners had gone away to war. Survival became a struggle for many. State pensions for women widowed by the war were pitiful, at just five shillings per week in nineteen fourteen. This was far less than the amount needed to provide proper nutrition to families with children.

Sylvia Pankhurst, a suffragette and socialist, observed scorchingly that in Newcastle, close to the Hamilton's home soldiers, wives were given food tickets instead of the money due to them, and were permitted to obtain household commodities only from a prescribed list which comprised the cheap inferior qualities of food. Evelyn would

no doubt have witnessed such struggles in her community. She would also have followed the growing women's suffrage movement, itself fueled by aspirations to bring about the kind of social changes that a male dominated parliament was ignoring and alleviate women's hardship and suffering. As the guns fell silent, women were finally granted the vote, but seventeen year old Evelyn

wouldn't yet benefit. The reform came with an age restriction, women had to be thirty or over and a property qualification. Women voters had to be registered to a home of certain value. Full suffrage was still some years away. Clever and hard working Evelyn was studying chemistry at Scarry's College

in Newcastle, a technical training school. According to Pat Thane, visiting professor of History at Birkbeck University of London, Robert and Mary would likely have supported their daughters ucational aspirations for the tendency for young men to emigrate to places like Australia, Canada or New Zealand had skewed the marriage market. Families were quite often quite keen to encourage education for their daughters because it wasn't obvious they'd be able to

get married. Because women were a majority of the population and quite often couldn't marry, and unless they came quite a well off family that could be sure it could support them, than they needed to be socially educated to get a job that would enable them to support themselves. Aside from voting reform, new legislation had just given women

access to a greater number of professional jobs. They were still paid less than men, and they had fewer opportunities for promotion, but they could now become lawyers or go into architecture or accountancy. Evelyn was the child of a coal mine worker, but education and hard work appeared to have enabled her to leap frog into a higher social class,

and she now embarked on her chosen career pharmacy. This was a respected and fulfilling profession, but it would also prove to be a tricky and sometimes solitary path for Evelyn. As a woman entering a man's profession, Evelyn would have been expected to prioritize the comfort of her male colleagues and managers to flatter their feelings and egos, to mold herself to their whims and ways. But Evelyn was cut from very different cloth, and instead she clashed with her employers.

Their gripes and groans about the independent and implacable woman in their midst would dog her career, jeopardizing everything that she had worked for, and pushing her to the edge of breakdown. Bad women, the Blackoutripper will be back in just a moment. Pharmacy had come a long way since the heyday of quackery and snake oil remedies. In eighteen forty one, the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain was established.

Mission to this body was by examination. The exams were taken fairy seriously and the threshold for passing them was high. Pharmacists created medicines from scratch, and they had access to deadly poisons too, placing them in a position of privilege within many communities. Their work required highly specialized knowledge and it was not to be entered into lightly. In Evelyn's day,

the landscape of pharmacy was full of possibilities. One could work in a hospital, while the more entrepreneurial could open a Druggers store. Crucially, it was also a respectable profession. It involved brainwork, but it was genteel enough to be suitable for a woman. In fact, as Evelyn was growing up, dispensing drugs was heavily marketed to parents and guardians. One newspaper advert called it the right career for women. Training,

short cost, moderate work, pleasant future assured. Throughout the nineteen twenties, Evelyn worked part time as a chemist's assistant at a shop in Newcastle called Milburn's, presumably to help fund her studies at a nearby college. The teaching staff said Evelyn was older than many of the other students and described her manner as distinctive. While Evelyn's sister Kathleen had entered nursing, a traditionally feminine profession, pharmacy remained a male dominated world.

Perhaps the challenge inherent in this exclusion was part of the appeal for someone as distinctive and single minded as Evelyn. There may have been another reason that Evelyn chose pharmacy over nursing, too, As caregivers, nurses would constantly interact with their patients, whereas pharmacists might spend all day in their laboratories, or safely behind a large wooden counter. If they had

a shop assistant, they might speak with customers only rarely. Evelyn, said to be reserved and pensive, may well have found such distance appealing. After passing her Chemists and Druggists qualifying exam, Evelyn began practicing as a pharmacist in nineteen twenty eight, the same year that equal voting rights were finally granted to all men and women in Britain. For the next twelve years, Evelyn managed a drugger's shop, Messrs. A. Wilson,

in the village of Ryton, where she'd grown up. Wilson's promised the finest quality medicines at the lowest prices, and peppered local newspapers with adverts for herbal cough candy, vitamin cream and cod liver oil emulsion. Evelyn lived in a flat above the shop. She appears to have remained single, living a quiet, even reclusive existence. I do not know any of her friends, said her sister Kathleen. I've never known her to court anyone, and as far as I know,

she's never had a man friend. Most other acquaintances painted a similar portrait of Evelyn. Local woman Florence Shiver's described her as a lonely girl of studious nature who was rather conversed in sex matters and did not associate with men. The landlady of one of Evelyn's lodgings did, however, remember having occasional male visitors, and Evelyn confided to one female acquaintance that she gone to dinner with a male colleague and even had an a there with a man in

her youth. But to most observers, the pharmacists seemed contentedly free of romantic entanglements. According to historian Pat Thane, it wasn't uncommon for women at this time to embrace single life, and this wasn't just about the dearth of available men, but also quite a lot of women chose not to marry that they didn't happen to find a man they really wanted to marry, and they were an occupation that

they liked. Women were generally forced to leave their professions when they wed, irrespective of how much time they'd invested in their training. Then as now, domesticity didn't appeal to everyone, so women who enjoyed their careers may simply have led more fulfilling lives by staying single. For her part, Evelyn appears to have been independent and conscientious. Her one hobby in life was to improve her knowledge and mind on

all subjects. According to Kathleen, she was also a keen socialist and studied very deeply the problems connected to the subject. This is too broad a statement to shed real light on Evelyn's actual political views as a socialist. Evelyn may simply have been in favor of social reform in general. She might have actively supported her local left wing Labor Party, or she may have even drawn inspiration from the Russian

Revolution of nineteen seventeen and held genuine communist sympathies. Evelyn appears, at the very least to have been committed to helping democratize education. Her sister stated that she was a member of the Workers Educational Association, an organization that had been set up in nineteen oh three. It provided evening classes

enabling working class people to further their studies. Evelyn's brand of socialism may equally have been directly connected to the awful diseases that had carried away her siblings, as well as to her daily work as a pharmacist in the depressed Northeast, where unemployment rates were high, public health was poor,

and doctors were expensive. She may have encounter a lot of working class people who couldn't afford decent healthcare because there was no decent free healthcare before the National Health Service in nineteen forty eight, and left wingers were in favor of having a free health service. If evelynce politics indeed included a vision of universal healthcare, they may also have been shaped by a further tragedy in the family. In nineteen thirty one, her twenty four year old sister

Mary died with epilepsy at the County Mental Hospital. If Mary had spent any length of time in that institution, the medical bills may well have represented a financial strain for the family as well as an emotional burden. In nineteen thirty eight, on the eve of yet another World War, Robert Hamilton, a man who had seen so many of

his offspring die, himself, succumbed to heart failure. Evelyn was now approaching forty and still working at the pharmacy in her home village, but then something snapped and she quit. According to Kathleen, she had mentioned for a considerable time previously that she would like a change, and was in fact seeking one. Evelyn's manager told a different story, describing

how her sour attitude had made her continued employment untenable. Resourceful, Evelyn soon found another job as a traveling representative for a company making a tonic wine that claimed to ward off anemia, influenza, and menopausal symptoms. But perhaps the social activity of meeting and greeting druggists and shop owners bore her down, because by late summer she was experiencing symptoms

of depression and insomnia. Just a few weeks into her new role, her manager, mister Blackwell, who described Evelyn as abrupt in speech, formed the opinion that she was mentally disarranged, and also that she was fully aware of this. Blackwell quickly terminated Evelyn's contract, paying her a month's wages in lieu of notice. Kathleen again offered a slightly different account of events. It was Evelyn who had chosen to resign

and return home to Newcastle. Evelyn sought professional help from Professor Frederick Natras of the Newcastle Infirmary, a respected expert in nervous diseases, and after two months recuperating in the home of her recently widowed mother. Her health was said to greatly improve enough that she was soon packing her bags once more. This time Evelyn was heading south, a decision possibly implemenced by her father's death and its impact

on the family's finances. People in the South were richer than their northern counterparts, meaning greater demand for pharmacy services and probably higher wages too. This would have enabled Evelyn to better support her widowed mother. She took a post at a psychiatric hospital south of London, but here she found herself understimulated and without enough work, and so in late nineteen forty one she took up the post of manageress at Yardley's Pharmacy on the eastern edge of London.

Evelyn appears to have seen Yardley's a little more than a temporary job, perhaps a stock gap before returning to the North, but any plans would soon be brought to an abrupt and violent end. Bad Women, the blackout Ripper will return shortly. Evelyn Hamilton was quiet, dignified and studious. She maintained close links to her family, but to most

other people she seemed self sufficient. Marching to the beat of her own drum, she apparently issued typical leisure activities like dance halls, preferring instead to take long nighttime walks in the countryside. It was this self contained figure who arrived in the unfamiliar suburb of Hornchurch, where people's accents

and outlooks were different to those back home. At Yardley's, Evelyn earned around three pounds per week, roughly equivalent to a weekly wage of over a thousand dollars today, and she would send money to her mother. She appears to have been guarded from the word go solitary taciturn. Even aloof missus Eva Lever, who rented a room to Evelyn, found her to be withdrawn. Miss Hamilton never took me into her confidence while staying with me, and no person

visited her at my house. She did not discuss matters with me. Evelyn's new colleagues also found her somewhat curious. Her manager suggested she was a rather eccentric type of person, always looks sort of frightened, and I should think she

suffered with her nerves. He felt she seemed bored there, and suggested that apart from occasional cinema visits, she found little with which to occupy herself at Hornchurch, but Tina Gray, the fourteen year old shop assistant, agreed that Evelyn was eccentric. I was not very happy with miss Hamilton, as she was unsociable and grumbling and did not speak to me except to give orders. Frequently, after approaching customers, she would

walk away without serving them. Bettina observed other oddities and Evelyn's behavior too. I know from what she told me that she went back to the shop most nights, and on one occasion she said, I suppose you wonder why I came back, but I cannot be bothered to explain. Now about four times during the cold weather, she filled a hot water bottle just before I left the shop and put it on the bench, and I could not say why she did. Was Evelyn sleeping in the shop?

Bettina did not believe so, and missus Leaver confirmed that the pharmacist returned to her lodgings each night. So was Evelyn restless and agitated? Had a depression in insomnia perhaps returned? Did she go back to the empty shop rather than toss and turn in her bed? Today we might view Evelyn's behavioral traits and mental health troubles with a little more simpathy. But in nineteen forty two. Disdain, exasperation, and the shop unkindness of fourteen year old Bettina Gray would

not have been uncommon responses. It's so oppressive being not typical, and so many of us don't feel typical. Who's applying all this pressure to be exactly like everybody else because everyone has a sack of rocks and everyone is a total weirdo, And yet we're like, you have to be like this, you have to be like this. Lauren Ober is a journalist. She was recently diagnosed with autism, and her podcast, The Loudest Girl in the World tells the story of her journey to understand what it means to

be autistic. We shared Evelyn Hamilton's story with Lauren. A colleague characterized her as unsociable and grumbling and did not speak to me except orders, and I thought that is relatable. People have said that I come at them if I need something, like my hair is on fire, and I forget to say hi, how are you are you? Having a good day? Great? Me too? Anyway, I need this thing. You know, there's great pain in not getting the socializing or the sort of human interaction right in the way

that everybody expects you too. There's a particular way that you should interact and if you're not doing just that thing, And particularly in the forties, I imagine it was a million times worse there because we didn't have names for things. We had a much narrower view of how people should act, So people describing your presence as grumbling. I felt for Evelyn, I felt like boy, it was probably a really hard road for her. Lauren says that for women, the pressure

to get social interaction right can be particularly onerous. Women bear the vast majority of the weight in social situations. Yes, the pressures put on women and girls and people who are not men to sort of smoothly and gracefully and

elegantly navigate social situations, it's just oppressive. It's so oppressive. Well, her employers, colleagues, and even the stranger she encountered each and every day might have found Evelyn exasperating an odd From a distance of eighty years, Lauren has huge admiration for her. This woman's life was so hard, and it's amazing that she got as far as she did. It's amazing that she was able to carve out a career for herself being sort of reserved or pensive or solitary.

Those are not the qualifiers that make for a successful, like social person in the world. Though Evelyn was by nature detached, she could also crave interaction. At times, she would speak freely with total strangers. Maud Yoxel remembered meeting the pharmacist at Yardley's for the first time. They chatting and she informed me that she had no friends in Hornchurch and stated she was mensely starved. I invited her

to my house as she appeared lonely. Maud said that they met again on several occasions, but on the whole Evelyn never described having any sort of social life. By nineteen forty two, Yardley's appears to have run into financial difficulties. Other druggers' shops complained of the toll that limited supplies, uncertain deliveries, and high wartime taxes was placing on profits.

It's possible that Yardley's faced similar struggles, and in mid January it was decided that the Hornchurch outlet, among others, should close. Evelyn was fired, but quickly found another position in the northern port of Grimsby. She told her family of the move. This was the last they ever heard from her. February eighth, nineteen forty two, was Evelyn's final day in Hornchurch. She might have lain in bed until

late that morning, as was her custom on Sundays. Reading the paper, she might have noted an impassioned opinion piece predicting social catastrophe unless women left the workplace after the war was over. And as for the ultra emancipated young woman, the writer of this column is yet to meet one who is happy or who is capable of making any

other person happy. Elsewhere, it was reported that soldier Cyril Johnson had just been charged with the murder of a young bank clerk, Maggie Smail, in her home near London. Johnson reportedly killed Maggie because he hated women. That evening, after packing, Evelyn braced herself against the bitter February weather by donning a green woolen jumper, full length camel coat, and small turban hat. The time on her gold wristwatch read six pm. As she departed missus Leaver's house in

the evening gloom. Maud Yoxall observed Evelyn heading south towards the train station and pausing to linger a moment in the doorway of yard Lease. She carried a suitcase and a polished, dark brown handbag. At seven twenty pm, Evelyn met with a clerk at the station and arranged to have the bulk of her luggage collected from missus Levi's house and sent on to Grimsby. She then hopped on

a train to spend the night in London. A taxi driver, Abraham Ash, collected Evelyn at the train station at around ten pm and dropped her at a hotel, where an altercation ensued. A maid answered the door and there was a slight argument, the maid saying she had no beds. The woman, who was well spoken, although she spoke slowly, then returned at the cab slightly perturbed, and said they must put me up somewhere. I have got the money

to pay for a room. Evelyn's train the next morning would be from King's Cross, but she told Ash that she did not wish to stay in this area, after all, it had an insalubrious rough reputation. At her request, they drove on to the Three Arts Club, a west End establishment where she had stayed at least once before, Housed in a tall brick and stucco fronted Georgian terrace, typical of the area. The club provided both short and long term accommodation to women only. Guests were subject to a

long list of rules. For example, they couldn't introduce literature of a controversial character into the communal spaces, nor could they bring with them wines, spirits, or provisions of any kind. Above all, this accommodation was intended to be a safe space for women. It was here that Evelyn chose to spend the night. The manageress who showed at her room and gave her key, thought Evelyn seems agitated, though she

could not say why. At some point between ten thirty and eleven PM, Evelyn went out into the darkened streets to find some supper. She walked for fifteen minutes or so to Maison Lyons at Marble Arch on the edge of Hyde Park, a twenty four hour restaurant that she could rely on to still be serving meals. Maison Lyons was consciously designed to appeal to will the evening madame table.

Inside it was sleek, clean and glass walled. It even boasted a lady's boudoir and hairdressing salon, and had been fitted with so called sunshine lighting to create the effect of continuous indoor daylight. Maison Lyons sought to provide food fit for gourmets at popular prices. Evelyn sat alone at a table covered in starched linen. She ate some beetroot, and she may have ordered a drink for herself too.

Perhaps it was here that an raf cadet noticed her, marking her out as a solitary soul who would not be immediately missed. Perhaps you approach her and struck up an exchange. Perhaps he offered to see her safely through the dark night back to her accommodation. Or maybe Evelyn walked home alone and heard a man's footsteps trailing her. Her route back to her lodgings would have passed the grand houses of Montague Square, their windows blacked out, their

white stucco reflecting the beam of her flashlight. At the end of the square was a squat air raged shelter, a dank structure of brick and concrete, damp, musty cold. It's inconceivable that Evelyn would have entered such a dark and squalid place willingly when she was just minutes from the safety of the Three Arts Club. But whether by force or by deception enter that freezing shelter she did Bad Women. The Black Out 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 Guerino and Atha Gomperts. Kate Heay 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 Wardoors Todos by David Smith and Tom Berry. You also heard the voice talents of Ben Crow, David Glover, Melanie Gutridge, Stella Harford,

Jemma 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 Tolliday 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 Faine, 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 Earbe 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.