THE BANK HOLIDAY MURDERS-Tom Wescott

sign up now at Chumbuck Casino dot com. That's Chumbuck Casino dot com.

eighty eight, in what is dubbed the Autumn of Terror. However, the grizzly ripping of Paully Nichols on August thirty first was not the first unsolved murder of the year. The April murder of Emma Smith and the August murder of Martha Tabram both occurred on bank holidays. They baffled the police and press alike, and were assumed by the original investigators to have been the first murders in the series.

Were they correct? In this provocative work of literary archaeology, author Tom Westcott places these early murders in their proper historical context and digs to on earth new evidence and hard facts not seen in over one hundred and twenty five years. The Bank Holiday Murders is the only book of its kind. It issues the tired approach of unsatisfying final solutions in favor of solid research, logical reasoning, and

new information. The clues followed are not drawn from imagination, but from the actual police reports and press accounts of the time. The questions asked by Westcott are ones first suggested by the original investigators but lost to time until now.

The answers provided are compelling and sometimes explosive. Among the revelations are new information linking the murders of Smith and Tabrum to the same killer or killers, Proof that the police did not believe key witnesses in either case, proof that at least one of these witnesses working with the murderer. New evidence connecting men of the victims that may lead to their actual slayers. Information on Emily Horsnell, the actual

first Whitechapel murder victim. The hidden truth of leather Apron and its rule in unraveling the Ripper. Mystery proof of a corrupt police sergeant who forwarded the investigation was he protecting the Ripper. The book that we're featuring this evening is The Bank Holiday Murders, The true story of the First Whitechapel Murders, with my special guest, journalist and author Tom Wescott. Welcome to the program, and thank you for

agreeing to this interview. Tom Wescott, Hello, can you hear me? Absolutely? Welcome to the program, Tom.

unique perspective on this. Before we start for our audience, and I did want to call you a ripperologist, because I don't really know who wants to be called that and exactly what that means, but exactly tell us your background involving all things Ripper and Jack the Ripper, And tell us your background and how, without giving anything away, how you came to write this book with this particular perspective surrounding Jack the Ripper.

the nineties. Uh, just just by accident. I think it's you know, it says bug that bite you, is what it is. And I picked up a book in a used bookstore, a ripper book that happened to be misplaced in the horror fiction section, and which is what I went there looking for. It was a horror fiction book. And I found this nonfiction book on the Ripper and just grabbed it on a lark, and I went home and I read it, and I said, you know, is this really the solution? And and then I it was

the burgeoning days of the internet. I looked on there found the Casebook website, which is the big Ripper website, one of two big Ripper websites, and saw there were all these other books. So I started checking them out at the library or buying them and uh, and it was just one thing after another. What happens when you do this? And and people who read ripper books will will recognize this in themselves. The more you read, the

more naturally you're going to learn. You're going to remember details, and then you're going to notice when authors make mistakes or when they get a detail, you know, look at it from a different angle from someone else. And you start developing your own opinions and thoughts and ideas along the way, And next thing you know, you're researching those

to see if you're right and they're wrong. And then that's kind of how this thing and it just snowballs from there until you know, eventually you've got a room of your house filled with Ripper books and magazines and old you know. One hundred and twenty six year old newspapers, and then at some point in my case, it was, you know, my research led me into certain avenues that were new because I didn't want to just be there's a lot of Ripper books out there that are crap.

That's just there's so many of them that that's just by nature, there's going to be a portion of them that are just a waste of money. I personally think that's probably about seventy percent of the books out there into that category, and then another twenty percent are decent, you know, they're harmless, and then maybe five to ten percent are you know, really you gotta have them books. And so I wanted to put something out that fit into that five percent. Whether I succeeded or failed, you know,

will be up to the individual perspective. I think I succeeded because the majority of stuff in my book does not appear in other books in terms of how I interpret it, and also new evidence presented that hasn't appeared in books before the first Ripper or the first Whitechapel Murder, which Emily Horsnell. I don't believe her name has ever appeared in a Ripper book until mine. So but anyways, there you go that. The short answer to your question

is I got into it, not really by choice. It's just a bug that bit me and has stayed with me, and by accident and luck. More than anything else, I've stumbled on some things that I thought other people who interested in the case should know. And that's where this came from.

He was a pimp. He instigated himself into the Ripper investigation following the murder of Elizabeth Stride. He fabricated evidence through the police off track, almost certainly, wrote the what's called the from Hell Letter, and was cited by a certain member of Parliament as being the man most likely in London to have been Jack the Ripper. And yet you know, he didn't have a book about him. So I'm going to write that book because I've got a

lot of cool stuff on him. But so anyways, I decided I'm going to write this book on Charles Lagrant. But before I my idea was this, I didn't want to do another suspect book. I never wanted to do that.

So my idea was, I'm going to start at square one, the first murder, which at that time I thought was Emma Smith, and I'm going to research without bias scratch, starting at square one, and work my way forward through all the murders, putting Charles Legrand out of my mind, leaving myself open to any new avenues or interpretations, and

lo and behold. You know, by the time I hit Martha Tabram, the second of the official Whitechapel murders, I'm noticing things, and chiefly surrounding this character Pearly Paul, who was allegedly a friend of Martha Tabram's. Things weren't adding up in her statement and in the evidence, and so

I said, well, let me follow this. And I started following this, and it led me to the landlords, the guys who really held the power in the East end of London back in eighteen eighty eight, you know, probably more so. They had more sway over the public than the police did. So that's power. That's power right there, and so it led me back to them. I started looking at them and just kind of I said, wait

a minute. What was supposed to be a couple chapters of a book is my notes and all of this were I'm like, I can't cover this in like two, you know, ten page chapters. I've got about two hundred pages in front of me. This is a book in its own right, and it needs to be considered in its own right aside from anything else I want to talk about. Those can wait for other books. And so

that's that's I started. That's when I started writing The Bank Holiday Murders in a fever pitch back in October of twenty thirteen, and actually finished it in January of twenty fourteen, just a few months later, and then published it the following month. And at that time I thought, well, this is just this is just a little book, you know,

it'll just devotees to the case we'll purchase it. And it's actually become It's done very well for me, actually surprisingly so over the last year, it's performed very well, and the feedback I've gotten has been tremendous and it's just been an utter joy, an utter joy for me.

the basic story. But really what I found most fascinating about your book is how sucked in I got into this book due to the descriptions you have of the East end of London in eighteen eighty eight and surrounding years, and you talked about you alluded to the which is very very important to your whole story is the lodging houses.

So tell us about the lodging houses, and tell us about the owners, some of the names like John McCarthy and some of the names of the lodging houses, and how it worked with people that were managers of those houses. Tell us, I want to really set the stage for to describe London at this time, what these people were

living in, the circumstances. So tell us first with the lodging houses, and then we'll get to the character of some of these men and just the conditions that these people lived in in these lodging houses.

but in the lodging houses. Just to put it into a context that a modern American could quickly grasp just think, you know, the projects, project housing. And today in our society the slum lords are the government because the government owns these housing, they run it, and they profit from it. But that wasn't the case in eighteen eighty eight line. The government did not step in and do anything at

all for these people. So the landlords were essentially low rent businessmen who came in bought these old, dilapidated houses and rented out beds, not rooms, but beds. You might have a room with fifty beds in it all. You know, the sheets and the clothing may not get washed regularly. They're they're just completely covered in vermin and lice blood, you know, and that's what you're going to sleep in.

And then you're going to track this and you're going to carry this to the next house with you, and it's just over and over and over again. There would be a communal kitchen with a fire where you could roast your potatoes. Surprisingly, people didn't really starve back then. Food was cheap and plentiful. It really was, you know what money. You know, you didn't really have to set aside too much money for the food. In fact, you could probably get a lot of it for free, because

your money was going for beer. But wherever there is poverty and desperation, there will always be those who want to come in and capitalize on it and profit from it. And in this case it was the landlords who not only made money off of their rent because these were homeless people essentially who were coming and paying a nightly doss as it was called, to sleep in one of these beds, but you were also a fence for stolen property.

These people would often say, Hey, Dan, I don't have money for my bed, but I have this that I stole today, So you would take that instead, and you would then sell that to the pawnshop or sell it through a pawn shop that you owned. A lot of these landlords also owned local pubs, and the East End of London was crawling with pubs at that time. Alcohol was the crack and the meth of its day. That's what everyone was addicted to in the East End. That

was the predominant drug. So if you owned a pub boy, you were never out of money. And so were these bad men. Not all of them, A lot of them were a lot of them just maybe had less scruples than you or I would. But at the same time, the other way to look at it is if they weren't their running these homes, these people had nowhere to sleep because there was no one else to help them.

The Salvation Army, which by the way, was given birth by Jack the Ripper more or less, it was beginning just at that very time, and they were just opening up rooms. And the Salvation Army was born from the East end of London eighteen eighty eight. And Jack the Ripper brought attention to the plight of the people in this area, and so everyone started giving money to the Salvation Army, and that's how it got its original funding and got its footing and became what we know today.

So that's a little interesting tidbit. But all the victims of Jack the Ripper or the White Chapel murderer, you know, lived in these houses. And anyone who's read my book or goes to read it will notice that I discussed some startling coincidences. And I say that with quotation marks such as that the first you have a number of women in a row who are attacked and or murdered, who all lived in neighboring houses. Two houses on George

Street numbers eighteen and nineteen. You have Emily Horse now murdered.

a murder, it was typically domestic. It was a man killing his wife nine times out of ten, that's what it was. Stranger murders such as this were exceedingly rare. And to have that many violent attacks and murders occur to women living in two neighboring houses, I thought, okay, that's just pushing coincidence a little too much. And I noticed one character who was living in one of these houses at the time was Parley Paul, which was a

thirty five year old prostitute, manly looking husky. She was described suffered from chest complaints her whole life and just you know, basically a criminal well known to the police. Anyway, she presented herself to the police following the murder of Martha Taberman told a wild story which they believed at first but then came to understand was a lie. And the thing is is she went to the police and

identified the body correctly. The body had not been identified yet as Martha Tabram, but somehow she knew that's who was murdered and already had a fake story made up. And I thought, okay, this is highly suspicious. This is something somebody does if they're wanting to either get themselves or someone else off the hook by casting the police as suspicion in a different direction, which is what she did.

She tried to claim that Martha Tabram spent her last hours in the company of herself and two soldiers, and all these identity parades followed to try and find these men. Of course, they never existed, and that's what I discussed in my book. So then I have the question of okay, who was Pearly Pole lying to protect And that's what led me to the landlords. Now Pearly Paul moves from

that house following the murder of Martha Tabram. She moves to another house, thirty five Dorset Street, and you know, within it a couple of weeks, Nichels is murdered. Who resides at thirty five Dorset Street, Paula Nichols being the first of the what's called the canonical Ripper victims. She's not the first White Chapel murder victim, She's the first Ripper victim, and then the next murder victim, Annie Chapman,

also residing at thirty five Dorset Street. And so I said, okay, well, imagine you're Pearly Paul, and now you know what six women or I think we're up to six women either murdered or nearly murdered in less than a year, and you know them all, you live with them. And then it goes on from there because she also knew Mary Kelly, the final Ripper victim, and possibly probably was at least acquaintance with all of them. Now do I argue that Pearly Paul was the Ripper? Absolutely not. I do not

believe for a moment that she was. I have no evidence that she could do any more than cuttle over bread. I know she was also unhealthy. Does she possibly know who the Ripper was or have an idea. Yeah, I think quite possibly so. I think quite possibly so. And that's the stuff I'm exploring in my book. It's not just another one of those ooh, look, I picked a name out of a hat. I'm going to write a book and make some money. It's a pure research piece,

is what my book is. And because I couldn't identify one guy with a knife in his hand as being the most likely person associated with I don't end the book with that big reveal of here's the name of Jack the Ripper. Frankly, those books, I think they had their day in the eighties and early nineties, and you know, the serious students of the case we kind of scoff at him. Now, there are exceptions. There are suspect books like Rob House's book on Aaron Coosminsky, which are afforded

a lot of respect. There's also a recent thing of looking at books coming out that look at suspects from the perspective of here's why this man was not Jack the Ripper. And that's too. I mean, I think that's that's really important in my research. Over the years, I've looked at all the suspects and pretty much eliminated almost all of them in my mind, but there are a few that I still say. Okay, I can't eliminate this guy,

so that he has to stay and frame. And one of the things we all must remember too is Jack Ripper may not have been one man. He may have been two men working together, may have been two or even three men murdering separately and unrelated. But who are and were believed to have been the same person? Does that make sense what I'm saying?

At Chumbuck Casino dot com you'll.

I don't necessarily personally believe that. I think that the five canonical Ripper victims were in fact killed by the same man or men. And I also think that the early murderers are related. I think that Emily Horsnell, Emma Smith, Martha Tabraum, and then the five canonical crimes are all related, possibly even some of the later murders, because the evidence

just really suggests that that's the case. And that's again, that's kind of what I discussed in my book, and in upcoming books I will probably go into that in more detail as it relates to the actual Ripper murders.

But with an a Smith, you talk about how the police are notified a couple days after she is killed, and you talk about the decorum at the time for a medical doctor when he would be testifying in public. So tell us about the description of the murder m a Smith and how possibly in history, how you have unraveled how they might not have described the murder exactly the way it really did happen.

run for the position of coroner. Oftentimes lawyers would win post, and so the coroners were never the doctors in question, but they would hold the inquest, the primary purpose of which was to determine the death and to record certain information that could be referred back to later to kind

of just correl you know, correlate that information. And so in the case of Emma Smith, who was a middle aged alcoholic prostitute, she it was bank holiday night, which also for our American listeners, a bank holiday is, which is the title of the book. What that means is is like to think of a holiday when the banks are closed. Martin Luther King Day, President's Day, Christmas, those are bank holidays, and that's the term used in England.

So but anyways, she was walking around, it was just it was just easter right at Easter time, on a bank holiday all the soldiers would get their pay and the sailors and they would be on leave and they would hit the East End pubs looking for beer and women. And so this was a time to make some money. So that's what she was out doing. Apparently quite a ways from home. She had walked quite a distance from

home on a rainy, cold night. She was a couple miles from home, supposedly, and at some point she was set upon an attacked. Now, the story she told to her lodging housemates and to the doctor who tended to her, was that she was set upon by two or three men who she didn't recognize, one of whom was roughly nineteen years of age. They chased her, they abused her, they beat her, and then she walked home. What we

know is that she was in a bad stated. She was hit across the head so bad that it split one of her ears, almost cutting half of the ear off. She had other injuries to her head. More importantly, a blunt instrument of some sort had been inserted inside of her and ruptured the sacks surrounding her internal organs, as well as the area of flesh. Well, I don't want to get too much into that it's pretty gross, but

she was damaged pretty badly, bled profusely. She took her shawl off and put it between her legs to catch the blood. And she had to be talked into going to the hospital. Back then, you know, that was just a sheer terror too. We don't like going to the doctor today. Imagine back then, you know, when you know three people going to the hospital, one might come out alive. So she goes to the hospital. They check her in within for twenty four hours, she was dead of peritonitis

which had set in. An infection had set into her eternal organs and killed her. But she had told this story to the doctor. Now, the question is wasn't true because she was a prostitute.

to her home until hours later. So what I believe happened is she was attacked and set upon, not necessarily by three people. Though she was rendered unconscious left for dead. I believe that whoever attacked her left her for dead, but she came awake and stumbled home and then was taken to the hospital where she died the next day, where she claimed she pointed out on the way to the hospital, she pointed out to her friends that's where I was attacked. Well, the police never found any blood

there when they learned about it. The hospital authorities also did not report this to the police, nor did any of her friends. No one reported this to the police. The police did not find out about this until they received the summons from the coroner to appear at the inquest, and they were like at the inquest for what they're like, Well, this woman was murdered, and so the police were very frustrated. When they talked to the constables in the area. The

constables all said, oh, I didn't see nothing. Well they should have. They should have seen this bloody woman walking around from wherever she was attacked to her home, and then a half mile from her lodging house to the hospital. There were constables everywhere, but none of them claimed to have seen her. I don't think their inspector believed that. But because there were no witnesses, no one was willing to talk, they never got anywhere in the investigation, and

no one was ever arrested for it. And then you skip forward to August and you have the next bank holiday, and you have your next murder, and that's Martha Tavern and this time the killer or killers. But absolutely, I mean no doubt whoever attacked Emma Smith, whoever it was, had to have after the fact, realized how lucky they were to find out that the woman they left for dead was actually alive and had spoken to numerous people,

and yet they were still not captured. So I think when that person took their next victim, they wanted to make absolutely certain before they left that that woman was that this could not happen again, and in Martha's case, they did that. They stabbed her thirty nine times, one of those wounds with a very long blade right through her heart. So she wasn't going to talk to anyone. But I'll go and stop because you're asking about Emma Smith. So did I answer that question? Should I? Or is

there somebody? Well?

blunt instrument. Doctor Haslip's conclusions and if he makes any connections between the two murders, tell us about him and his conclusions.

be the surgeon in charge at the London Hospital. Which what was remarkable to me is that he was twenty two years old and he was the surgeon in charge at that time that Emma Smith was brought in at the London Hospital twenty two years old, so times have changed. You would not seize that today. So but he, you know, he looked first of all, again when Emma Smith came in, he probably didn't assume her injuries were fatal. He only knew what he could see from the outside, and her

injuries were all internal. Her potentially fatal ones were internal. She was lucid, she was conscious, She was probably not very forthcoming with what had happened to her down there, and he discovered that during the autopsy that he performed.

But now when he took the stand at the inquest, he did not, nor should he have been expected to detail every injury that was inflicted upon her, because the purpose was to determine how she died, and he had to discuss that the injuries that you know were inflicted on her through her vagina and possibly through into her anus as well, because the skin that separated the two was completely was ripped, or was torn, not ripped, It

was through just sheer blunt force. Whoever inflicted those injuries on I'm as Smith, it with just great force and presumably with a lot of anger. They really wanted to hurt this woman and so. But doctor Hasselip, you know, that's pretty much the extent of it, other than he appeared in the press following the murder of Pauli Nichols stating that he did believe the murders were related. He didn't say why, but he believed they were related.

and obviously he didn't or was never caught. But in numerous interviews he gave years later, right upon his retirement, because only at retirement could he openly talk to the public about these cases. So once he retired, he spoke about them, and he was clear on the point that he believed the ripper was or that one man was responsible for like eleven murders or now I think he

attributed nine murders to one man. And I don't know that I agree with him on all those and I don't agree with all of his conclusions and all of that. But what seems clear to me is that he did not believe the story that Emma Smith was killed by three men, and that's the story that Emma Smith allegedly told herself to the doctor and to her friends. He did not believe that. He believed that a single man who we know as Jack River killed Emma Smith. And

I'm intrigued by that. Why would he throw out this from Mimmas Smith? What did he know? What did he learn? But it's not just what he knew about the people at the time, or I mean about these specific people in the specific incidents. It's what he knew about the East end of London, how it operated, how the lodging house is operated, and how people would lie to authorities.

So my point being that here's the inspector in charge of the case and he doesn't buy him a Smith's story, So why should I and so I look at it from that perspective. I don't know that the story she told was false, but I have to consider that it may have been because Inspector Reid did. Does that make sense?

to sleep. Visit squarespace to see Jeff bridges amazing website, dreamingwijeff dot com. Now with Squarespace, you can create a unique, one of a kind website. Squarespace features an elegant interface and beautiful templates with dedicated twenty four to seven customer support. Every website comes with a free online store in a

free domain name. With your first annual plan, your website will scale to look great on any device, and with cover pages, you have a gorgeous one page online presence in minutes Now, whether you want to create a fantastic website or blog, an e commerce store, portfolio, or all of the above, you can express your ideas powered by an elegant yet intuitive platform. Start a free trial today, no credit card required, and when you sign up at squarespace dot com, use the offer code true Murder for

a ten percent discount off your first purchase. I want to thank Squarespace very much for the support of this episode of True Murder. Squarespace Build it Beautiful. So when we last left off, Tom, we were talking about Edmund Reid.

So tell us a little bit about how a little bit more about the invest Your investigation into some of the people that worked at these lodging houses very interesting, how you again you don't really come up to conclusions, but the conduct of some of these in these two stories, the Emma Smith and the Martha Tavern, that you do point out these inconsistencies with witnesses that came forward us a little bit more about what you allude to, basically

is that talking about the bouncers and the muscle that were at these lodging houses, and the people that were managers, and some of the motivation for people to look the other way if they were to know somebody that were assaulting these women. Tell us a little bit more about that investigation into the likelihood that these lodging houses and the men that the center of them might have something to do with these murders.

young attractive women prostituting themselves in the East End. They could charge more money, they would steal away the custom and so these middle aged women were also thieves and engaged in other criminal activities as well to make money and you know, to keep their room and all of this. But as the landlords, you held the power, not just because you owned the places they got food, you owned the places they drank, and you owned the places they slept.

And through my research I identified a small small group of men, most of them Irish or of Irish descent, who were either great friends or interrelated by marriage. And I mean we're talking a real small group here of men. And all the victims across the board, all of them, every one of them came from the lodging houses owned by these men. Many of them lived in various lodging houses. Mary Kelly, I believe, lived in the same lodging houses that Emma Smith, Emily Horsnell, Martha Tabram, all of them

stayed in. At one point Mary Kelly was living there as well. So I thought, what a curious connection this little group of men who also happened to be police informants, so they had a relationship with the police. They would and some of the police were on the police were on their payroll basically, you know. And again if you were a constable in that area that might have been. In some cases it was just out of sheer necessity because then is now the police in London didn't carry guns.

They didn't carry you know, weapons, They had a truncheon at the time. But their life was made hell. It's not like today where you see a coppin you you know, we wouldn't think of walking up to a copin sitting on him or punching him or hitting him or chasing him down the street. But that's what he dealt with on a nightly basis in the East End of London. And it was made all the worse if you weren't willing to work with the guys who controlled all the

criminals in the East and that being the landlords. If you did work with him, they worked with you, and they would give you tips, help you make a risks off the books. Of course, you could also make money from them through the gambling. You know, if you turned a blind eye to an illegal boxing match or some illegal gambling, hey, you know, you got a little piece on the back end. So all of that was going on.

And so if you're a you know, a forty five year old woman alcoholic dependent upon you know, and here's the guy who runs the police in your neighborhood, then that man is close to God to you. So you're going to do whatever he says and however he says it. And so that's the kind of of power they had. So in the case of Emma Smith, one of the things that rubbed me wrong was the idea of how she came back to the lodging house and the deputy keeper,

whose name was Mary Russell. She was basically the on site manager of the house, the owner, but the on site manager, and she says, oh, well, you know, we talked to him into going to the hospital and then we escorted her to the hospital. So I'm thinking, wait a minute, so this woman leaves the lodging house she's in charge of to walk this woman to the hospital. That doesn't sound right to me. She actually she can't do that. She's not allowed to do that and keep

her job. What must have happened is the owner, Daniel Smith had to have been who lived nearby, would have been summoned to come over look at Emma and agree that Emma should go to the hospital, and then at that point would have told Emma, here's what you tell the doctor, and that's when the story would have been concocted as to what actually happened to Emma. And then Emma went to the hospital and told the doctor what she was told to tell him, again, not knowing her

injuries were fatal or anything. She was going to heal and be out in a few days, and would have to return back to her normal life. In truth, Emma may have very well known exactly who attacked her, known his identity, but she couldn't say that because she'd have to deal with this person in a few days when she got out and came back. So, I mean, that's just the reality of the times and the place they

lived in. But Daniel's name was kept out of it. Again, the same thing had just happened November with Emily Horsnell in the lodging house next door, owned by Daniel Smith's friend John Satchel, a young woman beat to death died

of paraitonidis. Remarkably, no autopsy was performed. The coroners asked the cops are you planning to investigate this or like not really, we don't have a clue, and they're like, okay, well, if you're not going to investigate, then I'm not going to bother with the expense of having an autopsy performed. And it's shocking, but that's what happened, and as a result,

her murder did not go down as a murderer. It was given a verdict of open and that's the only reason why she's not considered the first of the White Chapel murders is because officially she wasn't murdered, but realistically, the doctor stated, this woman was beat to death. She was kicked, beaten, her belly was extended, her organs were ruptured, and she was allowed to languish for days in the lodging house, not being taken to a doctor. Never was

taken to a doctor. And then the only one who would speak up to tell her story was John Satchel. None of the lodgers who would have been the people she actually spoke with came forth and were because John wuldn't allow it. He was the one who appeared at the inquest. He was the one who said, oh, well, she said that she was beaten up by some strangers a few nights ago and that was the end of it.

And the police are like, we're not touching it. And then this exact same thing happened with Emma, and so I'm like, Okay, something's going on here, you know, what is this? What's going on here? What's the I don't want to say cover up. I mean, since the JFK thing worked like conspiracy and cover up had taken on a real fringe meaning. But you know, realistically, what we're talking about here is more like a proto mafia. That's what the lodging housekeepers were, and that's that's a fact.

You know, they were a group of guys kind of loosely organized. They ran the show, they ran a legal gambling. I'm not saying they were went around putting out hits on people. I don't think they These were certainly not mafia murders, these women who were butchered in the streets, But that doesn't mean that they weren't protecting somebody or protecting their own interests somehow by shielding the identity of

the murder from police for whatever reasons. There is a lot of evidence that suggests something like that was going on.

parts of your book. Again, just what I have this thought in my mind is that you know, we're in twenty and fifteen, and we think we understand the decay that has happened in our cities and in our countries, I guess. And we see all the news obviously, and I've sort of the lots of people kind of reveling in sort of the gore, I guess, in sort of graphic detail and sort of misery of others. I would say, but you know, in eighteen eighty eight, it wasn't that

much different. It looked like marauding gangs and prostitutes with people really just you know, a widow that was had an alcohol problem ends up being on the street, like you say, the vermin that the sheets weren't washed for three months. They have a bounce re at a lodging house, and if they didn't have a lodging house, they would have slept rough, which means outside. Again, vulnerable to all these elements. And alcohol was a drug choice, but certainly

people weren't real sedate drinking. This circle had all the problems inherent of today's society. I thought that was amazing that things, as much as they changed, don't change that much.

to you because you know, part of this comes. You know, we read hundreds and hundreds of newspapers from that time, and you're reading just about daily life, you know, not just about these murders, but just life in general, the good stuff, the bad stuff. And you know it's funny because people would be in the newspaper talking about, oh, kids these days, they don't have the respect that we had in our day, and blah blah blah, and all the in kids these days reading their penny dreadfuls and

blah blah blah. And it's the exact same stuff that I find myself saying now, you know, kids these days, and that adults were saying when we were kids. And this goes back to the beginning of time. So it's actually a self perpetuating myth that there was something better about your generation than about the current generation. That is a self perpetuating myth in reality. If you want to talk, if I were a woman, I would much rather be alive today than back in eighteen eighty eight. When I

mean the newspapers, you should read them. They were absolutely littered with nothing but domestic murder of the most brutal kinds, far in excess of what we see today. I mean a lot of people don't realize they're familiar with the term the rule of thumb. You always hear people say, well,

the rule of thumb is blah blah blah. The rule of thumb is actually a law here in America that was in effect up well into the nineteen fifties that stated a man could beat his wife, but he had to use a switch that was no larger than his thumb. Then it became abuse. But if it was the size of his thumb or less, it was not abuse. And that was the rule of thumb. You know, we live in a society today, you know that talked that we our wife beat her t shirts and that's how okay

it is in our minds. Still. Well, one hundred years ago, that was the norm. A woman couldn't own land, she couldn't divorce her husband unless she proved numerous things. You know, he had to be cheating on her and physically abusing her, and this and that, whereas a man could divorce his wife if he just kind of felt like it. That's you know. So are we better today than back then? Absolutely, and virtually almost every way you can think of, Not to mention dentistry.

forth and said, well, that's that's Martha Tabram. She used to live with me before she moved out, And they came to realize that Emma and Martha were the same person. That Martha had just taken the name Emma when she moved into nineteen George Street, which is also fascinating considering

the woman murdered prior was named Emma. But Pearly Paul said, yeah, on the night of her murders, she and I were hitting the pubs and there were these two young soldiers, private and the corporal who escorted us around from pub to pub drinking, And just on the surface, this story is hard to believe because these, you know, were very unattractive, dirty East end women, and these young soldiers, with their paychecks, would have presumably gone for a younger, more attractive seke.

And there were women like that all over the place, And even if they just wanted a quickie, that's that's not what Pearly Paul tells us happened. She tells us that they go around spending all their money in the bars, drinking and getting them drunk, and then go to their dark corners to have sex and presumably pay for that as well. But then so she tells them this, and so naturally the soldiers become prime suspects. They have to be found. They have to be a These were the

last men known to be seen with Martha Tambern. So Inspector Reid has identity parades at the local barracks at the Tower of London Proley. Paula is brought in and she goes into the first one and she's like nah, and she's acting like she's all a hot shot and a superstar, and she's just like, no, they're not here, They're not here, and she goes, oh, I remembered something else. They had white bands on their caps, and he's like, oh, well,

that's a totally different group of guardsmen. So he has to call Pimlico and have their soldiers on the ready and go down there for a viewing of them. And she just pretty much picks out the first two men she sees that's them, and of course, you know, and these men must have been sweating profusely, but their alibis checked out. They couldn't have been the soldiers, and Inspector

read none of the cops believed her anymore. She then disappears. Oh, in between these two identity parades, she disappears off the map. She goes into hiding, saying I'm gonna go kill myself, but they track her down and kind of force her against the will to keep going to these identity parades. And so something something changed there for her. Who was she hiding from? What was she hiding from? Why was

she thinking of killing herself? Why did she was she anxious to cooperate with the police one minute and then not the next, And she never answered. She also wouldn't do an interview with the press. There's not a single interview with her in the press. And keep in mind, they would have paid her a lot of money to do that, you know, she she could have had a bidding war from the various newspapers, and she didn't. I

always thought that was interesting. She doesn't because so because some people have argued, well, she lied to get publicity, she was trying to get her name in the press. I'm like, well, then, then, why is she the only person associated with this case who was not interviewed, who refused interviews, who the press couldn't track down. They tried to, but she would refuse to speak to them. So no, none of this was for a ten and she had something else motivating her to light to the police, to

throw them off the track. To make them think some soldier killed Martha. Well, if it wasn't a soldier, then who wasn't you know? And that's again what led me back to the lodging. I'm like, who holds this kind of sway over this woman? Well, the only person I could think of was her lodging housekeeper who she was close to, and his And then when she moves from his house to another house, it's one of his friend's houses, and it's the spitting distance of where Mary Kelly would

later be murdered. You know, Parley Paul also happened to know Annie Chapman. One of Parley Paul's best friends beat up Annie Chapman a day or two before her murder. So there's all these little connections, these these threads running through it. That that I wish I had more answers than I did. That I in my book, I construct various scenarios, all of them. There's a lot of speculation in there, but it's all based on contemporary documentation, based

on facts. It's based on the really the press reports and the police reports. I use a lot of both of those to build from, as well as just some kind of logical speculation where it's needed, but I hope that I got. I try to make an effort so that the reader knows when I'm giving them the facts as we know them and when I'm giving them speculations, so they can dispose of that if they choose to.

thirty nine stabs and all of this. Well, in my research, I you know, I looked a little closer at all this the same material, and I came away with a different idea of her murder. Surprisingly, she was almost nude when she was found. Her legs were thrust up in the same way Polly Nichols, where her skirts were thrown up, same as Polly Nichols. Her cloak was torn open, and apparently Taburam did not have a shirt on underneath. In her breasts were exposed. So she must have looked like

a rape victim when she was found. Like the later victim, she had not been raped in the classical since. But there was a great deal of blood between her legs, and I thought, well, that's interesting, considering all the stab wounds are really on the upper part of her body,

why was there so much blood between her legs? And so I studied everything a little closer and came away with the conclusion conclusion that like Emma Smith, she had been raped within and ad of an object, this time a sharp object, probably the same long bladed weapon that was that inflicted the wound to her heart. And therefore in my mind it clicked, you know, a question that people really were never asking. People are always asking, was Martha Taburn a Ripper victim? In other words, was she

killed by the same person who killed Polly Nichols? A question I had was was she killed by the same person who killed Emma Smith? I wanted to go, you know, answer that backwards. And to me that pretty much proved conclusively that Emma Smith and Martha Tabram were murdered by the same people or person in very similar fashions. Although obviously Emma Smith was not stabbed or cut or anything like that that we know of, Martha Tabram most certainly was.

And the reason I believe is because Emma Smith again survived her injuries, as did Emily Horsnell before her. So this person after Themma Smith was terrified of being identified so made sure that from that point forward his victims did not survive his attack. And that's why we see those injuries Martha Tabram in such a way. And in an upcoming book, I'm going to talk about Polly Nichols from a perspective no one else has looked at her

before with some information that really hasn't been considered. But I do believe that at Tabrum and Nichols looking at the crime scene of it's the medical evidence in a new way. Their murders are actually more similarly similar than we currently believe, and they were in fact killed by the same person. But back to Tabraam and Smith, their murders occurred mere yards from one another. The locations were

only yards apart. These are two women who lived although they never met, their lodging houses were next door to each other. I say they never met because Emma Smith had died long before Martha Tabram moved into that lodging house. She'd only lived there a few weeks before her murder. But the lodging houses were next door to each other, and they were both raped with inadamant objects and died from this attack. So then we have a question to

ask ourselves. We have somebody who has killed Emily Horse Noew, Emma Smith, Martha Tabram, and then Martha Tabram's inquest is held one week the next weekend following the ending of her inquest, Polly Nichols's murder. So then the question is did the serial killer who killed these first three women just you know, disappear off the face of the earth in time for a new serial killer to emerge and start killing the same class of women in the same area,

but in a more mature, refined method. Or are all these murders related either the same person as committing them all or is two different people but operating for the same influence. Those are the questions that I'm asking myself to this day, and that I ask it pretty much anything I'm writing.

and just set the record straight. Contrary to the filmic depictions of him, he was not an alcoholic. He was not an absynthe addict, and he apparently was not a psychic, but that's how he's portrayed in film. But Inspector Aberlin, his beat for many, many many years was Whitechapel, the East End, and he was a very very capable investigator. He rose up the ranks and then Scotland Yard snagged him up and moved him into Scotland Yard. In fact, it was Inspector Reed was kind of moving up behind him,

taking his old spots. So when the Ripper case happened, in fact it was following Martha Taberman before Polly Nichols Scotland Yard and got involved and said we need our White Chapel man Aberlen to go back there and help out on this. And so he was one of many inspectors and investigators involved in these, But I don't think of him as being the man in charge as he's betrayed in Hollywood. Certainly he was one of the men in charge, but his conclusions that came to him long

after his retirement. He believed a fellow by the name of Severn Klozowski aka George Chapman was Jack the Ripper, and this man was a barber, he was a wife murderer. He would this man would POI would marry women, poison him, take their money. Okay, that's what this guy did. And he wasn't He wasn't Jack the ripper. So I Aberlen

was mistaken on that point. Chapman's not that great of a suspect other than you know, I have to say this man was a murderer, so he possessed the instincts to kill, and he did live in the East End at the time, very close to these murderers, these murders. But there's nothing to suggest that he went out with a knife and killed me when he would poison women, a totally different method of dispatch. So but that's that was Aberlen's thoughts after retirement, was that he was the murderer.

But it's more interesting is Aberlen's comments on other suspects and why he did, you know, like Aaron Kosminsky, he's been in the news the last year because of the Shawl and all that. He didn't think Aaron Kosminsky was the ripper. He didn't think the drowned aka doctor or you know, quote unquote doctor Montague John Drew it was

the Ripper. He didn't obviously believe in any of those theories for one reason or another, but he did believe that George Chapman was the most likely person to have been the Ripper, and I would disagree with that, but I respect his thoughts.

about in a letter written to a news agency. The press needed something to call this guy who was running around killing women, and the name leather Apron took hold because some of the women in the neighborhood, particularly the women who lived at eighteenth Thrall Street, which was Polly Nichols's final address, told of a strange cobbler, you know, a shoemaker who would wander around being me or he's just kind of crazy, and they'd make fun of him

and calling him leather Apron because he wore a leather apron. And they told the police about this, and they told the press about this. Well, then the press took that and kind of exaggerated a bit and created this character with these menacing eyes and these crazy whiskers and and all of this, and and and and sold a lot of copy with that character. And so the police were like, Okay, well, who is this leather Apron? We clearly need to talk

to him. And uh, you know, I think a lot of leather Apron was probably more than one person was it was. None of them were the killer. But this fellow by the name of John Piser was pointed out on the street as being leather Apron, and the cops just talked to him for a minute and let him go, and no one thought anything of it until Sergeant William Thick decided, oh, yeah, yeah, I've known Pieser for eighteen years and whenever anyone speaks of leather Apron, they're talking

about him. We got to hunt him down. And that became a big thing, and he was eventually arrested at his home and taken into police custody. And the police or the press, the press were always in the footsteps of the police. I mean they would literally follow the police, and if the police knocked on a door and spoke to someone as soon as the cop left, the pressman would be there knocking on the door saying, what did

you just talk about? And so and it was, you know, there were a hundred times more newspapers and then like today London might have what two or three major newspapers, in eighteen eighty eight it had over one hundred and twenty and that we're talking one city. So in American newspapers had London correspondents. So anyways, Piser was arrested as leather Apron, and the press tried to find evidence that

this guy leather Apron. What they found was that no one in the neighborhood, no one who knew him ever knew him by that name, and he steadfastly denied being leather Apron. But this, you know, with his reputation, he was ran through the mud in the press as being leather Apron, and Sergeant Thick was making all these statements about him being leather Apron, and what I talk about in my book, it appears in my opinion Thick lied. You know, it's pretty clear he lied. Piser was not

known as leather Apron. Those two did know each other personally for eighteen years. They lived in roughly the same area and knew each other. There was an identity parade where a man stepped forward and picked Piser out of a group of men and said, yeah, I saw him attacking Annie Chapman. Well, it turned out this man was lying, and in my opinion, Thick put him up to it. He said, go pick out Piser and accuse him of

basically murdering Annie Chapman, and it backfired. It didn't work, so eventually a deal was struck where Peyser would appear at the inquest into Andy Chapman's murder and be allowed to clear publicly clear him of any wrongdoing in the murder, but in return, he had to admit to being leather Apron because he was already talking about suing everybody, and they couldn't, you know, they couldn't let the police. The police couldn't let that get out. So they struck a deal.

If you just say you're known as leather Apron and mean, and by doing that he lets the police off the hook, then you'll be allowed to clear your name. There'll be no more suspicion against you. Because mobs were forming outside his door trying to kill her. That's unpopular he was, so that's the story. But I thought, well, why would this sar police sergeant with otherwise pretty good reputation, why

would he do this? It doesn't make any sense. And then I started researching him and I'm like, oh, well, look at that six years before there he is giving good character references for John Satchel Purley, Paul's landlord, and John McCarthy, Mary Kelly's landlord and the lord's Hospittlefields. And I did more research and he had a reputation of fitting people up, and I'm not making this stuff up.

I've gotten a lot of heat from some reprologists because they all love their They just think the police can do no wrong. And then on the other hand you have people who say, oh, the police were all idiots, and I don't believe in any of those. The police

overall the back then were very good. But there's going to be bad apples in every bunch, and then there's going to be cops who's usually are good, but then you know they also step out and do crazy things for extra money, and it appears that's what Sergeant WILLIAMS Thick was. So then the question is was he framing Piser? Why was he framing Pyser? Who was he trying to protect? With someone paying him to do this? What was the motivation.

I do not believe that Sergeant William Thick was a murder or anything, although he does hold the dubious distinction of being the only member of the the police force at the time to be accused by a member of the public of being Jack the Ripper. A lawyer was writing letters saying, I think Serge Wally picked to Jack

the Ripper, but there's nothing. I don't believe that for a second, but I did think maybe have an idea of who the ripper was and decided it was in his best interest to keep that information to himself and possibly frame an innocent person. That's possible. That's possible, but you know there's other possibilities as well.

to mean an upright citizen, you know, upstanding citizen, high morals. Well, in slag, you took a word and then whatever its opposite was is what its actual meaning was. So the criminals called him Johnny Upright because he was a crooked cop. In other words. Now the flip side of that, of course, the police spent on it was, oh, he was Johnny Upright because he was such an upstanding cop. But that

doesn't appear to be the case. He was given the name by a criminal who was getting convicted on his evidence. So clearly that person gave him that name because he was accusing Thick of fitting him up on fake evidence to get him convicted. If there was no truth to that, I don't think the name would have stuck. But it did, and that became his street nickname as Johnny Upright.

between Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Edos, Purley, Paul Mary Kelly. Tell us this describe this vicinity of how short a distance it is between all of these and the commonality between these addresses.

serial killers out there. You couldn't do a Ted Bundy walking tour, you know what I mean, because he's over numerous states. But you can with the Ripper, and I find that very curious in itself. Flower and Dean Street, Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddoes or two of the Ripper victims killed on the same night what's known as the Double Event September thirtieth of eighteen eighty eight. They were

killed in different areas. Catherine Ettos was killed in Miterer Square area in the city of London, and Elizabeth Stride was killed on Berner Street. They were killed to ten minutes. Their murder sites were ten minutes walk apart, and they were murdered forty five minutes one from the other. What's interesting is these two women, aside from being approximately the same age, also happened to have lived on the same street,

Flower and Dean Street for six or seven years. I don't know that they knew each other, that they were friends. There's no question they had to have known each other by sight at least, and were probably acquainted just by virtue of the fact. Again, if we can't judge anything by how it is today, we all think, well, gosh, Tom, I've lived in my house for five years and I couldn't tell you the names of the people two doors

down from me. But I can guarantee you if you saw them at the store, you'd probably recognize them, weren't you. But this is a different time. These people didn't set in their cozy air condition homes watching TV all day. They were when they weren't sleeping or cooking, they were out in front of their lodging houses. They were in the streets. They were in the pub on that street. They were in the little corner grocery stores, eating and setting outside and talking with one another. That being the

bath houses, go into the bathhouses. Catherinetto's and Elizabeth Wride had to have known each other. They probably worked again. They would make both supposedly make extra money by cleaning. I would have been cleaning in the same buildings. So it's just another interesting connection because these days one of the popular things is to go ooh, was Elizabeth Stride

a ripper victim or was she not? People think their hip if they can take a ripper victim and argue that she wasn't a ripper victim, even though they have to use a lot of false information to do that, and some very reputable authors do that. Donald rumblow And in the most recent edition of his book, gets all the facts wrong in his attempt to try and argue that Elizabeth Stride was not a ripper victim, and numerous authors before him have done that. And it's again self perpetuating.

One author makes a mistake and it gets repeated. You know, that's why each author has to kind of do their own research. I've made mistakes. I'm sure in my book that I'll have to correct in a future edition if someone else doesn't correct at first. But you know, you've got to at least make the effort to not make those kind of mistakes. But yes, Elizabeth Stride most probably was killed by the same person who killed Catherine Etto's and that person was probably the same person who killed

Polly Nichols, Andy Chapman and Mary Kelly. But of course nobody can say that for one hundred percent certainty. But we're dealing with probabilities. And when you're looking at one hundred and twenty six year old cold case, you know that's all you have are possibilities and probabilities. You know what I'm saying.

or contacted the lodging house owner. Yes, so you do talk about that in terms of these other murders. That again, the protocol must have been for these people to go to the lodging house owner first. You talk about that with Emma Smith. The other thing I wanted to ask was this, with these tenuous connections between all of these victims, what do you say about the Again, the idea that he made one killer may have escalated his crimes, changed

his signature. Is there any kind of good possibility that one killer, or the one killer with an accomplice did all of these murders.

followed Mary Kelly were into more of a gray area. Uh, you know, although one of them that mayor one of Rose Milett who is It's interesting because she also lived at nineteen George Street and her boyfriend was a boxer who John Satchel trained and paid a lot of money to train. And I've often wondered, you know, and others have wondered too, if Jack Roper himself wasn't a boxer because the reason the way these women I believe were

rendered unconscious because they weren't. Most of them were not strangled per se, but they were all somehow rendered unconscious

in a way the doctors could not detect. And I've in my book I present the most probable to my mind way of doing this was called garretting, but not with a string or a chord, but using your own arm to suffolk to render a person unconscious, which was crucial for the ripper because he can't have this woman screaming out, you know, and running and getting help and then capturing him, right, so he had to quickly render her unconscious, which meant he had to be tall and strong.

That's who we're looking for. And the people who would know these techniques would be boxers and criminals. So that's another clue that wasn't in the books before mine, but that's something to strongly consider, and it explains away the mystery of how some of these women were rendered unconscious but yet left no fingerprints on the next you know, or the telltale signs of strangulation that you usually see.

You know, they so are sure it's a possibility. It's a possible, But I have no proof or straightforward evidence to to to say that that's the case. It's just that's just another speculation, you know what I'm saying. That's that's what I was to find. I was hoping to find that enough avenue has led to a certain individual where we could point to him and go, ah, he's

extremely suspicious. But that's not the case. Instead, there's a number of individuals who are suspicious, and it could be any one of them or none of them.

of the year, which is really saying. So I'm considering he had his own book coming out the next month, but you know, that set everything off to a good pace. And then if anyone who wants to go to Amazon or Goodreads and read what people say, I've just been overwhelmed with the positive response. Of course, I've had a handful of critics, you know, who just immediately if it's in that book and it's under my name, it's just crap.

You know, you're always going to have ripperology. Like any field where there's debate is content you know, everything is contentious. But those people, you know, I'm they keep you on your toes too. It's good to have someone with a on their shoulders picking your work. Apart and saying, Okay, here's this here. It makes you look and think about things. And it also it led to people going out. Sometimes people go out to try and prove you wrong and

find new evidence. Sometimes it actually proves you right, and sometimes it does prove you wrong. The truth is what matters. Though I couldn't care less whether I'm right or wrong about anything. What I want to see happen is new stuff gets discovered and brought to light. You know what I'm saying. That has happened. That that right there, that

answers your question. The best thing that's happened since this book came out, as I've seen a lot of new information come out, discussions happen, research has taken place that wouldn't have happened had I not come out with that book. And some of that's come from my biggest critics and some from my biggest fans, and then some from the people who are extremely objective and just stay right down the middle. But that's my favorite thing about it. That

and I also like the money. The money's been fun. You know, I have got I haven't got rich from it, but considering I thought I was writing that I wrote this book and I thought, I hope I just kind of break even or something. But it's, like I said, it's it's done well, and people like Dance the Panski are saying, get on my show, and I'm like, well, so I didn't expect. I swear to god, I had no idea anyone would want to talk to me just because of this little book. But it has. It's won

three awards, you know too. It's won some Best History Book Award, a Best Try Prime Book Award, so very please.

that because I stopped. I stopped when I got to Polly Nichols because I had to write the Bank Holiday murders. So starting with Nicholson moving forward, I want to keep that going on. I've already written most of a pretty large section on Polly Nichols, which I think a lot, which again is going to cause a lot of debate and a lot of people will love it and some will hate it. It's going to have new stuff and

then just keep going on. It's time consuming though, it's tough work, and so anyways, I want to do that book, and then I want to do Charles Lagrant. I want to do a book on him, which you could call it a suspect book. But again, my approach is going to be to respect the reader in this way that I want to be respected when I read a book. I don't want someone telling me what the truth is and shoving it down my throat and saying, oh, here's

Jack the Ripper. I'm gonna say, here's a guy who people back then some of them thought, was Jack the Ripper. Let's take a closer look at him and and see what you know, and then you decide what you think. Because I'm not convinced he's Jack. I'm not convinced anybody's Jack Ripper. You know what I'm saying. It would take an awful lot to convince. Some people are extremely easily convinced, and then and then others, like myself, I can't. I

can't imagine. I can't imagine myself being convinced beyond doubt of someone's guilt. It would take some It could happen, but it would have to be There have to be evidence that I don't currently know about come forth to convince.

one hundred and twenty five years. And a lot of the records were destroyed, a lot of stuff was Pilford, like you mentioned in the book, things were stole as souvenir, so there isn't a complete story, and a lot, like you say, lives were built upon other lives or perpetrated

or repeated. So you've did an incredible job digging through all of that stuff and then coming to some at least juncture where we can at least decide, Okay, this is what are you saying about this particular victim and the connection between these murders based on the flower and Dean address and some of the other things. So just

a fascinating read. You bring the reader right into London in eighteen eighty eight, and I applaud you on a great book and very fascinating, very fascinating take on another aspect of the Jack the Ripper saga in this the Bank Holiday Murder. So I want to thank you very much Tom. For those that might want to contact you or learn more about this tell us how they might contact you or learn more about this book and more about what you do regarding Jack the Ripper.

get the paperback through Amazon relatively inexpensively. If you want to contact me, my website is ripperbook dot com. You can go on Facebook and find me at Facebook dot comback slash Ripperbooks with an spy n and then I don't really tweet much. I don't fully understand what that is, but I have you can find me at Ripperbook and then I also moderate the busiest Jack the Ripper page

on Facebook. If you just type in Jack the Ripper, you'll find the Jack the Ripper community on there with like fifteen hundred members, and just sign up and you'll catch me on there, along with a number of other names you'll recognize from the books on your shelf.