S03 Episode 12: The Square (Pt.1 of 2)

that were falling, but drops of blood. As the merciless downpour continued, mixed with flashes of lightning and eruptions of thunder, it was as if everything had been turned on its head, the heavens above replaced by the bowels of hell. But where heaven had gone to exactly none could say. For surely, wherever it was, it certainly wasn't down here. The East end of London, eighteen eighty eight. The fires had begun sometime in the evening, the first having broken out at

the South Key warehouses. A scent of charcoal had blown softly through the streets before the fire announced itself with an immense explosion from out of the dockyard. Before long, two hundred yards of warehouse stuffed with the dubious spoils of colonial practices were ablaze under that reddening August sky, flashing with electricity, each jagged discharge appearing like rips in the air, cracks that might at any point be opened

up for something abominable to come through. Three hours later, with the help of twelve steam pumper fire engines and almost a hundred firefighters, the flames were subdued and the men able to return to their beds. But chaos will not be stilled at Shortly before one o'clock, another call came in. A second fire had broken out at Ratcliff dry Dock, even more devastating than the first. A large

two story warehouse was soon consumed. The flames then danced on the wind across the yard and set light to a sailing ship fresh in for repairs, before making their way to the mother load, a one hundred and twenty foot long warehouse stuffed with eight hundred tons of coal. Hundreds of nearby residents crammed into the surrounding tenements, now threatened by the flames, poured into the street fearing for

their lives. Others drawn in by the strange confluence of chaos, beauty and destruction, came simply to watch the ominous spectacle. One face among them was fifty year old Emily Holland, a long time resident of the East End's Whitechapel district, a woman for whom the spectacle was a welcome respite from the hellish existence of a life spent on the margins of society, doing anything to stay afloat in the gutter, where any distraction from the sheer truth of it all

was about as much as you could hope for. You're listening to Unexplained and I'm Richard mc lane Smith. Having seen enough of the fire, Emily set off back towards Wilmot's, a roughly twenty minute walk away, where she shared one room with five other women. Framed by the deep red sky above, she made her way west along the main thoroughfare of Commercial Road, careful to stay away from the many narrow roads and unlit alleyways, but branched off it, for she was only too aware of what horrors might

await women who walk through such places alone. No doubt each of them had a story. Five months previously, forty five year old local resident Emma Smith was brutally raped and beaten on an unlit corner of near by Brick Lane by four young men who finished their assault by jabbing a blunt object into her vagina, ripping through the internal wall. After the assault, Smith had stood up and

walked alone back to her lodgings against her will. The lodgings manager helped her to a nearby hospital, where she later succumbed to her injuries. Only three weeks ago, the body of thirty nine year old Martha Tabrim was found in the stairwell of a building on George Yard, which ran parallel to Brick Lane. Tabrim, who occasionally carried out sex work, had been last seen heading off with a client before her body was discovered in a pool of blood, left displayed in such a way by her killer in

an effort to inflict maximum shame on the woman. She had been stabbed twenty one times across the body, predominantly in the breasts and around the groin. Only minutes away from Wilmot's, Emily turns into Osborne Street at the bottom of Brick Lane, where she spots her friend and fellow lodger, Polly Nicholls, stumbling down the road. She didn't recognize her at first, owing to the new black straw bonnet she

was wearing. It was good to see her, since although she had lodged at Wilmot's for the last six weeks, she had recently been staying somewhere else. As it happened, Polly had just been back to Wilmot's to ask for a bed for that night, but had been told to come back when she had the money for it. Clearly a little drunk, she joked about how she had made three times the amount for a bed already that night,

only to drink it all away. The type of service that Polly was supplying that evening could be had for as little as threepence, the price of a large glass of chin. Worried for her friend, Emily tries to convince her to come back to Wilmot's. Perhaps they can make a bargain with the deputy, she says, but Polly refuses, deciding instead to try the White House, a lodging only a few minutes away on Flower and Dean Street that

permitted sex workers to use their beds. The pair say there goodbyes as a nearby church bell makes the chime two thirty am Emily watches her friend stumbled down Whitechapel Road as the rains continue to fall. She hated to leave her on her own, especially in such a state, but reassures herself that at forty four years old and no stranger to this world, Polly was more than able

to look after herself. An hour later, thirty nine year old cart driver Charles cross steps into the cool early morning air and sets off on his way to work. Turning into the darkness of Buck's Row, he made his way hurriedly towards the sanctuary of the soft light of a gas lamp. At the far end, he notices what looks like a tarpaulin lying on the pavement just ahead of him, but as he draws closer, he realizes it is in fact the body of a woman lying unconscious

in the street. Spotting his friend Robert Paul at the other end, he calls him over. I think she's dead, he says, as Paul bends down to examine her, checking her wrist for a pulse. She's breathing, but it's little if she is, he says, looking furtively about the street. However, not wanting to be late for work, the two men decide to leave her, agreeing only to alert the first policeman they see. Minutes later, P. C. John Neil, walking

his usual beat turned into Buck's row. Angling his light into the dimness, he spots the body and hurries over to it. He calls out to the woman but gets no response. Bending down, he holds the light to her face and recoils in horror at the sight of blood leaking out of a deep wound around the neck. Her eyes still open wide frozen in shock, he placed the lamp on the pavement, illuminating a black straw bonnet left upturned next to the body. Seeing two colleagues enter the street,

he calls for them to fetch a doctor immediately. By the time doctor Llewelyn arrives minutes later, the woman is dead. Inspecting the body at the scene, it was clear that she had bled to death due to the severity of two brutal cuts to her neck, each reaching from one ear to the middle of the throat, cutting all the way back to the vertebrae. Since there are no signs of blood on the woman's clothing, the doctor assumes there

are no other injuries. Noticing a large crowd gathering, Llewellyn is keen to preserve what he can of the woman's dignity and have the body removed to a moutree before continuing his assessment. The crowd stare aghast as the body is lifted from the pavement and placed in the back of a police wagon as all about the surrounding streets workers from the nearby slaughterhouses in blood spattered overalls lend

a further macabre edge to the proceedings. With the body having finally been taken away, local resident James Green steps forward into the space and throws a bucket full of water onto the ground, before sweeping the resultant bloody wash into the gutter. An hour later, Llewellyn, who is now back at home, receives a call from the police inspector with a hint of grave concern in his voice. They

had discovered something else. Soon after, Llewellyn is led into the morgue and toward the body, now lying prostrate on an autopsy table. He gasps at the sight of it. It was like nothing he had ever seen before. Three inches from the left side, at the lower part of the abdomen ran a very deep, jagged wound. It was only one of four similar cuts that ran downward on the right hand side, as if centered on the woman's womb.

All the cuts appeared to have been made with the same long bladed knife and inflicted with a very deliberate brutality. At the Wilmot lodging House, Emily Holland wakes to the devastating news that yet another woman had been murdered. For a moment, she sees Polly's face as it disappears into the sheds of Whitechapel Road. A short time later, she learns the news from Mary Anne Monk, another friend of Polly's whom she had met at Lambeth Workhouse, that the

dead woman was indeed Polly. A devastated Emily will later travel to the mark herself that day to identify her friend at the inquest to Polly's death. On being asked if he knew anyone who might have done this to his daughter, her father will reply, I don't think she had any enemies. She was too good for that. Are you always taking care of your family? Do you often take care of others and not yourself? Now it's time to take care of yourself. To make time for you

you deserve it. Tell a doc gives you access to a licensed therapist to help you get back to feeling your best, to feeling like yourself again. With teledoc, you can speak to a licensed therapist by phone or video. Therapy appointments are available seven days a week from seven a m. To nine p m. Local time. If you feel overwhelmed sometimes maybe you feel stressed or anxious, depressed or lonely, or you might be struggling with a personal

or family issue, teledoc can help. Teledoc is committed to facilitating great therapeutic matches, so they make it easy to change counselors if needed. For free. Teledoc therapy is available through most insurance or employers. Download the app or visit teledoc dot com Forward Slash Unexplained podcast to Day to Get Started. That's t e l a d oc dot com slash Unexplained podcast. Annie Smith was twenty eight when she met and married John Chapman in eighteen sixty nine.

The following year, the couple celebrated the arrival of their first child, Emily, and three years later a second daughter, Annie was born. They were joined in eighteen eighty by a brother, John, but the family would soon be torn apart owing to some form of disability, Annie and John were forced to send their son to a home. Their misery was compounded when two years later the couple's first daughter, Emily,

died at the age of twelve from meningitis. John worked as a coachman, and though they didn't have a great deal of money coming in, it was at least stable. However, both he and Annie struggled with alcoholism that served only to intensify an increasingly fractious relationship, and by eighteen eighty

five the pair agreed to go their separate ways. Though many women worked in those days, sometimes taking on entire businesses when their partners died prematurely, the majority of work available was strictly manual and low paid if you could get it. The situation owed much to a sexist education system, and though some significant changes were around the corner as the nineteenth century drew to a close, for those like

Annie Chapman, options were few and far between. Girls from low income households, yet they were lucky enough to get an education at all, were schooled only in domestic skills. Even for those from more fortunate backgrounds who might have been given an academic education comparable to boys, it was widely deemed unnecessary, since the only role they were considered destined for was that of a wife and mother whose only other occupation would be to supervise domestic staff. For Annie,

there would be no such luxuries. A semi regular payment from her husband helped her to just about stay afloat and out of the workhouses, and loneliness was kept at bay in the form of a new boyfriend, John, who made sieves for a living and with whom she shared a room at a lodging house in Spittlefields, just to the west of Whitechapel. On Christmas Day eighteen eighty six, Annie is devastated to hear that her ex husband John

has died. She breaks up with her boyfriend soon after, the summer of eighteen eighty eight sees Annie, now forty seven, bouncing about from one lodging house to another, before managing a period of stability settling at Crossingham's lodging house on Dorset Street in Spittle Fields, home to three hundred or so residents of varying itinerancy. In recent months, she had come into an arrangement with bricklayer Edward Stanley, which covered

the cost of her bed most weekends. However, The arrangement also complicated matters since Stanley had ordered the lodging house Deputy Timothy Donovan not to let her stay if she ever brought another man back with her, a situation rendered all the more fraught. With rumors flying about in the wake of Polly's murder that some of the recent murders

in the area could be linked. London's Metropolitan Police had been homing in on a suspect over the last few days, and by September fifth, the press had a name leather Apron. Annie knew of him well. The women all talked about him, warning each other to stay out of his way. Real name John Pyser, around five and a half foot, tour with dark hair and a mustache, He was said to stalk the streets silently, wearing a deer stalker hat and

leather apron, looking for sex workers to extort. He was said also to carry a sharp leather knife at all times. On Friday the seventh, Annie is struggling to get the money together for a bed. If a roof over your head was your only concern, there was always the option of a workhouse, whereby lodging could be sought in return

for a sustained commitment of work. However, it was and is often still the case that the ruling establishment viewed low income earners as feckless and lazy, that their predicament was down to their own ineptitude, and as such were to be discouraged at all times from leaning on the state. As a result, workhouses were designed to offer such unfavorable

conditions that people would be discouraged from using them. A midway option could be found in the casual ward, a small section of the workhouse offering little more than a floor, a shared bucket, and some bread to those in need. Occupants of the casual ward were entitled to spend one night, after which they were barred from coming back within thirty days, in return for a day's work breaking rocks or unpicking rope.

Having spent the last few days in a casual ward, Annie, who struggled with a serious ailment of the lungs, was determined not to make it three nights in a row. That afternoon, she made a three mile trek to Vauxhall, just south of the Thames, where she successfully convinces her mother to give her fivepence for a bed at Crossingham's.

By midnight, however, she had spent it all Regardless, Annie makes her way to the lodging house and shares a drink with a friend in the communal kitchen before heading out again, hoping to sneak back in. Later. At just past one thirty a m. Lodging house deputy Timothy Donovan is informed that Annie has just been spotted again in

the kitchen. Moments later, she is at the door of Donovan's office, pleading to be allowed to stay the night, but Donovan refuses, reprimanding her that if she can find money for her beer, then she can find money for a bed. Defeated, Annie asks that Donovan at least save her usual bed and that she'll be back soon to sleep in it. Four hours later, local resident Elizabeth Long is making her way toward nearby Spittlefield's Market when she

turns into Hanbury Street. It was here only the day before, under a bright sun, that a hearse carrying the mutilated body of Polly Nichols, followed somberly by her father, ex husband and son, had begun its four mile journey toward Manor Park Cemetery in forest Gate at five thirty am. However, the windows of the undertakers are blacked out, and only silence and darkness is to be found as Elizabeth hurries

along the deserted road, passing number twenty nine. However, it appears the street is not as deserted as she had thought when she spots a man with his back to her ending in the shadows. He is roughly five and a half feet tall, late thirtieth wearing a dark coat and a low crowned felt hat. A moment later, she realizes he is talking to a woman. As she passes, Elizabeth catches the end of their conversation. Will you, asks

the man, to which the woman replies yes. Trying to mind her own business, Elizabeth hurries on and out of the street, just as Albert Kadosh, who lives at number twenty seven, is preparing himself for the working day. Having put on some clothes, he makes his way towards the outhouse at the back of the property. Stepping into the yard, he hears a voice cry out from behind the dividing

fence to number twenty nine on his right. Moments later, he hears something clattering aginst the fence from the other side, assuming it to be someone stacking crates for the business next door. He heads back inside. Minutes later, John Davis, a resident of number twenty nine, steps out the front door into a dividing passage between the yard and the street. Surprised to find the gate has been left open, He watches a few people pass by before turning to open

the back gate and stepping into the yard. It took a moment for Davis to process exactly what it was He was looking at the body of a woman left lying on her back, her clothes hoisted up to her waist and her feet planted on the ground with the knees up. The wet lump of material draped over her shoulder was comprised of intestines that had been completely severed from and lifted out of her stomach, and at the neck two jagged wounds where she had been savagely sliced

from one side to the other. What Davis didn't see, however, before he ran screaming from the scene, was how the uterus, the upper part of the vagina, and two thirds of the bladder had also been entirely removed. An hour and a half later, in the Prince Albert Pub, only four hundred yards from Hanbury Street, a sandy haired man with a large mustache curled at each end, wearing a dark jacket and soft felt hat, nervously approaches the bar, ordering a half pint of veil, making sure to keep his

face hidden. Landlady missus Fiddimont, suspicious of his general demeanor, pulls his drink while trying to catch the reflection of his face in a mirror on the back wall. As he takes his glass, she notices blood spatters on the back of his hand. Realizing he is being watched, the man swiftly finishes his drink and leaps. Later that day, the woman found in the yard of twenty nine Hanbury Street will be formally identified as Annie Chapman. She is the fourth of what the press have taken to calling

the White Chapel Murders. Chief Suspect Leather Apron John Pyser. Pyser makes a perfect suspect for the press, not least of all because he is believed to be Jewish, a cast iron boger man, if ever one was needed. Fears and frustrations mount throughout the East End when news of Annie's murder sweeps through the streets, and with the fixation on Leather apron being a Jew. It isn't long before some residents are turning their anger toward the Jewish members

of their community. But finally, after days spent scouring the neighborhood for John Peyser, on September tenth, he is apprehended. Sadly, for the police and the women of Whitechapel, he has a solid alibi for the night of Annie and Polly's murders. On the Friday, four days later, a handful of friends and family watch as Annie Chapman's body is buried not

far from Polly Nichols in Manor Park Cemetery. By the time Nichols's inquest has drawn to a close on the twenty third, it is clear to the police that although the choice of victim is not by any means out of the ordinary, the manner in which Nichols and Chapman were murdered suggests they are dealing with something that not many had seen before. As the coroner noted in his summing up, the audacity and daring is equal to its

maniacal fanaticism and abhorrent wickedness. The suggested motive may be wrong, but one thing is very clear that murders of a most atrocious character have been committed. Three days later, a letter arrives at the front desk of the Central News Agency, a news distribution service based in the city of London that borders the borough of Whitechapel to the west. On the envelope written in red ink, it is addressed only

to the boss. Inside there is a letter, also written in red ink and dated twenty fifth September eighteen eighty eight. It reads, Dear Boss, I keep on hearing the police have court me, but they won't fix me just yet. I have laughed when they look so clever and talk about being on the right track. That joke about leather apron gave me real fit. I am down on horse and I shan't quit ripping them till I do get buckled. Grand work. The last job was, I gave the lady

no time to squeal? How can they catch me? Now? I love my work and want to start again. You will soon hear of me with my funny little games. I saved some of the proper red stuff in a ginger beer bottle over the last job to write with, but it went thick like glue and I can't use it. Red Ink is fit enough. I hope the next job I do, I shall clip the lady's ears off and send to the police officers just for jolly. Keep this letter back, then give it out straight. My knife's so

nice and sharp. I want to get to work right away if I get a chance. Good luck, yours truly, Jack the Ripper. Part two of the Square will be out Tuesday, October two. If you enjoy listening to Unexplained and would like to help supporters, you can now go to Unexplained podcast dot com forward slash support. All donations, no matter how large or small, are massively appreciated. All elements of Unexplained are produced by me, Richard McClain smith.

Please subscribe and rate the show on night tunes. Feel free to get in touch with any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've heard on the show. Perhaps you have an explanation of your own you'd like to share. You can reach us online at Unexplained podcast dot com or on Twitter at Unexplained Pod. Now it's time to take care of yourself. To make time for you, teledoc gives you access to a licensed therapist to help you

get back to feeling your best. Speak to a licensed therapist by phone or video anytime between seven am to nine pm local time, seven days a week. Teledoc Therapy is available through most insurance or employers, Download the app, or visit teledoc dot com Forward Slash Unexplained podcast Today to get started. That's t e la DC dot com Slash Unexplained Podcast