S3 – INTERVIEW 4: Paul Begg

the attention of interested readers and professional historians alike. Paul has worked solo as well as with other writers to publish books like Jack the Ripper, The Definitive History, The Complete Jack the Ripper A to Z and recently Jack the Ripper The Forgotten Victims, and along the way, Paul's books have demonstrated to interested readers like Adam would, for instance, what had been missing from the discussion without his comprehensive

and rigorous devotion to historical detail. His collaborative spirits and his dedication to primary sources have made at him a universally respected authority on the history and the facts of the case. Researcher Karl Nellis asked Paul to take us back to how it all began for him, and so that's how it will all begin for us. This is the Unobscured Interview series for season three. I'm Aaron Minky.

I started off investigating historical mysteries of one sort or another, and it was coming to the centenary of the Jack the Ripper murders, and I had always been interested in Jack the Ripper, and I bought every book that I could find at that time, and nobody had really done a history of who saw what, where and when, which I suppose is part of my journalistic background, and so I decided to write a book that didn't have anything to do with suspects, but just looked at the crimes.

And that book led to another book and an other one after that, and so before I knew it, I was spending probably the best part of my life research in Jack the Ripple, which in a way I regret because I would like to have researched something infinitely more important. But at the same time, uh, Jack the Ripper is is becomes acutely interesting subject too to research and write about.

Mm hmm, well, I can say, for my own part, I'm really grateful for the historical approach that you've taken, uh and the way that you have researched and written about in Whitechapel, and you know so for for this program, we've been consulting your definitive history the facts, and I've especially appreciated the perspective that you take in the Forgotten Victims. And we hope that listeners interested in thoughtful, detailed work we'll seek out your books and maybe as a as

a way into that. As a historian, how would you describe your historical approach. You mentioned a history of the crimes rather than focusing on the suspect, But if you would put yourself in the context of other history writing, what kind of is your approach as a writer of

these histories. Well, I think it's important to just establish those basic facts as I as I mentioned earlier, the very basic stuff of who saw, what, where, when and why that every good story should have, and very often, particularly in the history of something like crime, that's one thing that people don't do. They are they will describe the crime, but they're real interest is in the suspect.

And I think in historical crime, the great thing about it is that it it it enables you to see people doing normal things at the time a murderer is committed. So it's one of the few ways that you actually have a chance to see historically people doing ordinary things, which historians don't normally bother to look at, and consequently

we don't find out of that. So in kind of general terms, how would you describe that ordinary life for most people in the East End of London that we get a glimpse of when we look at and almost through this series of horrific crimes and then see the ordinary life that was happening around it. What do we see? What do we see there? Well, then we see, we see we see an awful lot actually, uh, but it's a very hard life that the people were living at that time, particularly in the East End, and so it

was uh, it was, it was tough. But but an event like a murder captures the witnesses and the investigators in that moment of time going about their day to day lives, and there things mains. As I said, mainstream histories don't often tell you, and that many people probably probably wouldn't choose to read even if historians did. For example, there were lots of horses, lots of them. So what did you do if your horse was injured in an

accident or if it dropped dead in the street? And how dirty were those streets are washed with horse urine and worse? And what was it really like to travel in a handsome cab, rocking along like a ship tossed in a storm called in winter, hot in summer? And then of course if you opened the window in the handsome cab because it was getting very hot, the horses hooves flicked the mess from the straight back into the cab,

which brings us back two horses. And so we you know, all of that is sort of stuff that you don't normally find out about. Even the Sherlock Holmes story you have. You have homes bowling along in a handsome cab, but we don't actually get told what it was really like. And we don't have doss houses anymore. People don't go into work into the workhouse. We buy our milk from a supermarket, not from a dedicated milk shop. We carry a torch to see in the dark, not an oil lamp.

And we don't have music calls, and we don't have clubs. Every few yards. Um, So a murderer is a a terrible thing, but it tells us about ordinary people going to the who have to go into the workhouse and who have to go into a doss house. And we can find out a little bit of what it was like from people who we're writing at the time, and

we we can we can collect that information together. But it there aren't that many books that go out and tell you these things, and when they do, it can be it does can sometimes not have that level of interest that the murder story has. It doesn't have that frision of drama attached to it. So when when you're discovering how people lived and how their world fund should that can be really interesting when when it's attached to a murder, because very often in some small way those things. Uh,

knowing about those things could be relevant. Two understanding the murder itself and perhaps knowing who the murderer was. M hm, m hm. For a little more context, Um, the Ripper murders weren't the only kinds of violent crime in London's East End. They weren't the only killings in that year, and there was enough violent crime on record in the neighborhood throughout the eighties that we can get a more

textured picture. How violent was Whitechapel and what was the general understanding of that violence among contemporary observers, writer is, and what do we know about how the people in the neighborhood of Whitechapel, or Whopping or around bethnal green Um, what did they think of the violence in their neighborhoods Well, I think it's again it's one of those things that is somewhat difficult to to pinpoint what the people themselves actually thought. What we get a lot of is what

people coming from outside the area thought of it. So you have lots of reasonably well off middle class people commenting on the horrors that they saw and witnessed in the East End, but not a great deal of what people who lived there actually experienced. The facts and figures suggest that there weren't very many murders, surprisingly in the East End of London, and in fact, I think, off the top of my head, I mean, for for the period, most of the murders that were committed there with the

were the jack the Ripper murders. There weren't very many other than those. As for the violence of the area, well, that's a different thing altogether, and it does that there does seem to have been a considerable amount of violence, and very nasty violence of the sort that would make the top of the news today if it happened. Um and and things were happening there. I was just reading

recently about an altercation that took place. Uh. And the man through an oil lamp at at somebody, and although he wasn't intending to that person, he missed h and he hit the wall behind him, and the and the oil lamp shattered and it burst into flame, and the person was caught splattered with the oil from the lamp and and was burned quite badly. And of course there was an awful lot of of domestic violence going on.

So one another story told by a policeman called Benjamin Lease, and he was walking down Dorset Street, uh and suddenly a knife was thrown from one of the houses and stuck into some boarding close to him. So, I mean it possible that you could be walking down the street and have a knife thrown at you for no reason whatsoever. M So it was quite it was quite a dangerous place, and it was known even the police. When you read the newspapers and the police reports it was it was violent.

But one of the problems is that you get stories about um sailors coming into Whitechapel from the docks, and one such man, Thomas Sadler, for example, was walking down a street and he was attacked and robbed UM. And yet other times people are walking around the streets and they don't see a soul. It would appear that one of Jack the Ripper's victims, the first one Mary and Nichols, walked about half a mile without being seen by anybody

as she walked down the main street. M So some of the information that you get can be quite conflicting, but hopefully you will be able over the next years to be able to learn a lot more MHM. And and from what I've read, there are some places where it was especially dangerous to be if you were a policeman. Well, again, it is a common story that policemen wouldn't venture down

Dorset Street unless they were in pairs. And UM, I think that I can't find I'm not saying it's not true, it's just that I can't find any evidence of that being the case. And I can read of other areas outside of the east end, which were known to be particularly dangerous, and the same thing is said of those streets,

so it it's it really does dependent. Rsett Street may have been a dangerous street, but other streets on Flower and Dean Street and Thrall Street, they were both they were all just as dangerous to walk down, just as rough. And it's not said that policemen walked down those streets in pairs. So I think you have to take certain later statements with a pinch of salt. Mhm. Would you would you describe Dorset Street for us? Yes, Dorset Street was.

It was a fairly narrow street. It had a pub one end and a bigger pub the other end, and a small pub in the middle, and it was otherwise pretty much line with with what we're called common lodging houses or doss houses. There was a little shop there run by a man called John McCarthy, which was basically and all grocer's shop, uh, and really nothing about it to be to be alarmed about. It had started out

its life being known as Datchett Street. That became Dorset Street, and the locals used to call it Dosset Street because of the number of doss houses that it contained. And it was the doss houses which had a really bad reputation for being places of immorality because not too many questions were asked if a man and a woman turned up wanting a bed together. Uh. And they were thought to be hotbeds of crime and and thievery, and so they weren't really looked upon very kindly. But in fact

they were fairly horrible places. But it's specially by today's standards, but they really were the poor man's hotel. They were where you went you could buy a bed for the night. Uh. And it's popularly argued that sometimes some just strung a rope from one side of the room to the other and for a penny you could lean on the rope and go to sleep there. There are photographs of of this sort of thing happening, but I think that was

a fairly uncommon practice. So that, Yeah, the doss houses were thought to be fairly dangerous, and to some extent they were, and the that gave Dorset Street a really bad name, which grew worse over the whereas more murders were committed there. MHM. When it comes to policing the East End um and especially heading toward the events of eighteen eighty eight and the personalities and the people. Um, let's go to Charles Warren. Can you briefly describe Charles

warren'ts uh? Maybe his personality and his career leading up to Who was Charles Warren? Yes, Sir, Charles Warren basically was a soldier, a scholar, engineer and administrator. He had basically been undertaking or overseeing engineering work done in various places abroad. He was also an archaeologist of some distinction and eventually was a senior Freemason, and he undertook excavation work in in Egypt and elsewhere in Palestine. Um, and

he was. But it's also been claimed that whilst he was doing this work he was acting as a spy and mapping out land for for the government. But he was quite distinguished in that respect, wrote a couple of books about it, and he also played a part in investigating the death of a professor who had gone out out there and had gone missing and had actually been murdered by the natives. And Warren trapped down the natives and found out who they were, which really was It

was no mean feat. So he came back to the uk as uh, you know, quite quite a bit of a national hero actually, the way the newspapers had portrayed his actions abroad. So he came back. He he was chosen to be commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. He that was probably a very good decision because certainly the press welcomed it because the police needed to be we're in

desperate need really of organization. Later he was accused of organizing the police too much along military lines, paying too much attention to minor things such as boots and shoes and things. But he did have a very keen concern

about the welfare of the ordinary policeman. So yeah, um, what is interesting is that what happened at the time of Jack the Ripper uh caused a change in the police which has carried on through to today and probably, I mean, I think it might be fair to say it's affected things on really on both sides of the Atlantic and elsewhere. When the police were formed, it was formed as an organization to protect the public from crime and protect and prevent crime. And that was the reason

why they started. Why why you had policemen patrolling the streets on their beat. Detective work was really perceived as a sign of failure to have the detective meant that a crime had been committed and that needed it needed to be detected, whereas the whole object of the police was was the crimes were not going to be committed. So there was this difference. Now a man called James Munroe,

his background being very much detecting crime. He had been done a fair amount of workouts as running a clandestine side of things, and so he was aware of of all of that, especially when he was ahead of the police in India, and he was appointed head of the c I D which is the detective branch of Scotland Yard. And so you had these two men who were really either end of things. And when Warren resigned as he

did later in he was replaced by James Munroe. And so whereas Warren in his annual report had not even bothered to mention anything about the detectives, Munroe was very probe his department MHM. And that's carried through right down to today where more interest is being given is given to detectives and many detectives almost became superstars in the past. But the ordinary copper on a beat, the copper and uniform UH is almost seen as a less so being,

which wasn't the case under Warren's regime. Warren, unfortunately, ah after he resigned, he was sent out to to fight abroad and he made are there's some slight evidence to the effect that he was a man and a general appointing him was suffering from senility and thought he was somebody else. I thought Warren was somebody else and appointed him to a job that he was a seriously deficient

inexperience to undertake. And there was a battle at a place called spied On cop and it was an absolute disaster. And that's basically stuck with Warren uh and has damaged his reputation for the rest of his life and right down to today. M hm. Now, his time as Commissioner only lasted about two years, is that right? That's right? Yeah. And as well as having a difference of approach to Monroe, he also had frequent conflicts with Matthews, the Home Secretary. Um,

can you describe what the conflicts were in their relationship? Well, basically, when Sir Charles Warren accepted the commissionership of the Metropolitan Police, he believed that he had full authority over the police and he wasn't aware so well led to believe that he was answerable to the own secretary and two various of the Home Office mandarins, and so he wanted to

have full control over what was going on. That first of all, brought him into conflict with James Munroe, who also believed that he had almost complete authority over the c i D, and he resented Warren's involvement with the c i D, and he resented Warren almost ignoring the c i D. Matthews was also a fairly difficult man, as was the sort of liaison between the two, which was a man called Godfrey Lushington, and eventually got to a point where Munroe sorry where Warren wrote an article

that but he had received permission to write that article, and he felt that all he could do at that time was offered his resignation, which he did, and that's why he went. But it typifies the sort of relationship that he had with Henry Matthews is that the Metropolitan Police was being criticized and he thought the criticism was unjustified, and so he defended his department, only to discover that he could only defend his department providing he had the

permission of Henry Matthews to do so. And if therefore, if Henry Matthews said no, he had no alternative but to sit back and and sort of bite his tongue and seethe. And those are the sort of conflicts that

they had. And in the previous prior to the murders, there had been what turned out to be a riot in Trafalgar Square as a consequence of the unemployed wanting to hold meetings, and there was this march was planned to take place on Trafalgar Square and Warren uh they they they, Matthews couldn't make up his mind what the legal situation was with regard to trying to stop these marches,

so he vacillated from one thing to another. Warren was putting out instructions that the march couldn't go ahead, and then it was all right to go ahead. Everybody was getting frustrated. The whole thing blew up into a riot that was quite nasty, and Warren got blamed for the whole thing. So he was now he was he Matthews was a bit of a waste of time. Really. He probably had his own troubles, which, unfortunately we don't know

a huge amount of that. Um. But he doesn't. He seems to have fallen out with most people in one way or another. UM. And the even the government wanted him, really found him unsuitable as Home Secretary, but for various political reasons, they were not able to get rid of him, so he had to stay in office, even though he was causing quite a bit of difficulty. Mm hm hm.

Let's talk a couple of other people who ended up being pivotal figures um, either in the investigation of the White Chapel murders or in the reporting on the White Chapel murders. Uh. Let's talk Dr Winn Baxter. Um. Who was he? Why is he such a significant figure in the investigation and in the press reporting about the Whitechapel Well. Win Baxter was actually a lawyer, not a not a doctor,

but which was possibly one of the problems. He was the coroner for the area where at least three of the murders were committed, and so it was his job to basically inquire into the crime and to establish cause

of death, time of death and details like that. There's also the fact that he felt a little bit that part of things were with an unsolved crime, that there was a responsibility there to interview and gave the gain sorry interview and gain the evidence of people so that in the event their testimony would be that were given under oath, would be available to be brought to court if at some point in the future somebody was put on trial for the crime, because they couldn't always guarantee

that some that a witness would could be found or would even be alive. Baxter is distinguished for perhaps being a little pedantic. He questioned in depth the his inquests covered several weeks. There there were adjournments, and the press would speculate whilst that the adjournment was taking place, and there would be lots of press reporting around around the the the inquiry themselves, the days the inquests were held. So he was thought in some instances to be a bit of a bit of a pain, a bit of

a nuisance. Uh So that that, But thank goodness he was, because it's only as a consequence of his inquests that we have as much information about the crimes as we do hm. Hm. The eighties offered the London Police little by way of the forensic techniques that detectives used today. Um. But over the course of investigating the White Chappel murders.

There are a few interesting ideas that were suggested suggested uh in one setting or another, either at the I D or in an inquest um that might even seem a little strange today. What were some of the the cutting edge methods that were considered for collecting and analyzing

evidence in the course of investigating the murders. Well, the the it's it's it's a difficult thing because the police hadn't actually encountered something of this kind before, So for a lot of them this was a new and difficult experience, and the police had over the years they had worked out how things were to be done. So the police basically they were required to protect the crime scene pretty much as we do today, although to compare how we protect a crime scene today from how they protected a

crime scene in you would see very considerable differences. But ideally the body should be dis scribed and looked at before the doctor and other policemen came up and trampled all over the area. The police were supposed to uh look at the clothing and and look at other aspects

of the the physical side of the crime. The a doctor would look for would would be there to ensure that death had happened, but would also be providing a time of death, would be trying to determine what the weapon used was uh, and where it was used from and so on and so forth, which is all pretty much the same sort of thing that that that is done today. They didn't have any really techniques of anything. They couldn't They couldn't identify human blood, couldn't distinguish that

too well. They obviously they didn't have anything like DNA photography. They did use for crime scenes. They did that in the case of Mary Kelly, but it was a fairly rudimentary process and bad lighting could affect that. So they were they were really down in detecting crime. Was was down to hard nose detective work, lacking the science that were used to today. M Hm m hm. So let's

start stepping toward that investigation of the murders themselves. Um. One of the interesting facts that complicated the investigation was that Robert Anderson was absent from office on the day that Mary and Nichols is killed, and he continues a month long sick leave the day after any Chapman is killed. M Can you describe the apartment that he left behind

when he was on this sick leave. Well, what happened with with Sir Robert Anderson was that he was appointed head of the c I D. And he had he or he says that he his doctor had at that point prescribed him with a necessary holiday because he was suffering from exhaustion. So when he was appointed to the job, he made this point known, and the date when and for how long he should take leave was given to him by Sir Charles Warren. So it wasn't at Anderson's

choice to go at that time. That was the time that Warren wanted him to leave, because Warren was actually expecting there to be an up search later on in when there would be when he thought there would be further demonstrations by the unemployed as had happened to him in the previous year. So he wanted Anderson back and fully ensconced in the Assistant Commissioner's chair for later in the year, so he told him to go at that time.

So Anderson went on holiday. He couldn't have known that there was going to be a murder on the day he left, nor could he have known or would he have expected, that there would be another week murder straight afterwards. Um, and so he was he when when he was alerted to to come back, he he did so. So Anderson was away. But I don't think any any blame can be assigned to Anderson for that fact. Uh. What he left behind, of course was it was a department that

didn't have him at the top. But it seems to have functioned reasonably well. The investigation seems to have gone ahead. And it was towards the end of Anderson's absence abroad that the police um decided to do a house to house search for investigating men who were living on their own. So all the all the all the usual things seemed to have done in the case being done with the murders of of Annie Chapman and Mary Nichols. M Um, who was Mary Anne or or Polly Nichols? What do

we know about her life? Well? Um, Mary Anne Nichols was was born in eighteen forty five near Fleet Street, which is where lots of newspapers were located until relatively recently. Um. She was the middle of three children. The others were brothers, one older and the other younger, and she married a

man called William Nichols in eighteen sixty four um. He was a printer, and they would have five children, and they lived quite comfortably in a block of flats or apartments as you might call them, known as peabody buildings, which this was a somewhat upmarket place. You had to be you had to pass certain qualities, have certain qualifications to to be allowed to live there. And they had shared toilet facilities, they were cooking facilities, there was a

close washing area. You could even book and have a hot bath every day if you liked so. There were facilities for for personal hygiene, and most of those things were things that people in the surrounding houses didn't necessarily enjoy. So you can see that this was quite a They were a little bit upmarket and paying a modest rent for for this kind of establishment. But about eight the

couple separated. The precise circumstances aren't probably understood, but William Calls said that Mary Ann began drinking heavily and had left him on several occasions. Then she left him for good and he provided some financial support, but in two he discovered that she was living by prostitution and ceased

making the payments. He was summoned for maintenance, but proved his case, and that is what is said in the police One of the police reports that have survived Mary's life thereafter is a series of stays in workhouses until August, when she was staying in a common lodging house in Thrall Streets, Spittlefields, paying fortunes a night for a bed.

She then moved to another workhouse, sorry, and the lodging house and it was search that's where she was living when on the thirty one of August she was found

dead in a street called Buck's Road. Mhm mhm. Um. So one of the people who is responsible for determining what happened, Uh, it's a detective named Frederick Aberlein who is attached to H division, the White Chapel Division, I believe, Um, can you describe what approach he would have taken, uh to beginning a murder investigation before there's a kind of expectation that it's a serial killing. There's no idea about there being some figure named Jack the Ripper. It's just

Frederick Aberlein and c I D investigating a murder. What would would Airline's approach have been? Well, first of all, there there were there had been two murders in Whitechapel prior to the murder of Mary Ann Nichols. The first had been earlier in the year when a woman named emeral Elizabeth Smith was attacked by apparently by by a group of three men u and one of them had round some sort of object into her, causing paraitonitis to

set in, from which she had died. And then about a week before Mary Ann Nichols was murdered, another woman called Martha Tabrum had been murdered on the landings of a block of flats, and she had been stabbed nearly thirty times, m in a friend that fairly frenzied attack, a lot of the stabs being to the area of

the genitals and upper thighs and so forth. So then the murder of mary Ann Nichols came along, So that was the third murder in Whitechapel, remembering that there weren't any other murders taking place, those were the only three murders that had taken place in Whitechapel at that time. So by the time he got to Nichols, it was beginning to be recognized that there was something odd going on.

The original idea was that that the murders had perhaps been committed by a gang who had been extorting money from the local prostituere u. And so basically these two attacks, first of all, a very violent attack that wasn't necessarily intended to kill, and then a frenzied attack on which obviously was intended to kill, but were were these were lessons to show what other women could expect if they didn't pay up to the gang. So that was the

had been a prevailing theory. Inspector Abilene had been assigned to the White Chapel area in March eighteen seventy three and had been been there until February seven, at which point he was transferred to the METS headquarters Scotland Yard.

So when Nichols was murdered, he was sent back to investigate the murder us because he knew the area really well and was very well respected there, and I knew a lot of people, so you he would have had quite a lot of eyes on the ground as it were, uh, And so his investigation was really came to the conclusion that it was He then sort of abandoned the idea that this was a gang, and he came to the conclusion that they'd probably all been committed by the same person,

and that the murder of Mary Anne Nichols had it was by one person and not a gang, and that that person was a man. Mhm. So why um, why would the the earlier killings of Ma Smith and Martha Tabrum later be omitted from considerations of the case as a whole by someone like Dr Thomas Bond on November Well, To be honest, I don't think we really know why it.

Bond didn't include those crimes. He he was, he wasn't asked two h take any part in in the examination of those crimes, and it was with Nichols that we start to get detailed descriptions of what were happening. So it may well be that his he was only provided with information from Nichols to Mary Kelly, which was a crime that he was responsible for actually was there, and he only worked from the reports that he had been

provided up to ah the murder of Mary Kelly. M hmm. Now, just before any Chapman's murder um the radical newspaper The Star, which had been publishing for less than a year UM they began to trump at the story that Polly Nichols killer was a Jew named leather Apron. Can you describe when these reports start hitting the public, what kinds of stereotypes about Jewish life in the East End would these

reports have conjured up for the Stars readership. Well, the the East End Jewish community was as largely consisted of

recent immigrants fleeing persecution in Eastern Europe. Ah they formed tight knit communities, often often built around people who had come across from there from the same village, So whold streets could be taken over by uh people who have fled from the same village abroaden and in Eastern Europe, and they had they'd have their own little places of worship, and of course, because they were looking for kosher food, they would only be eating the food provided in the

main by their own community. So that alienated a lot of the the native people, especially when accommodation that had formerly been made available to one family, the immigrants coming from Eastern Europe were content to take a room with the whole family living in a room, and so these properties, many of these properties could be let to lots of people instead of one person, and so the single tenants were finding it very hard to find somewhere to live,

and so there's a lot of ill feeling about these people, um which basically boils down to the difficulty that we have in being able to distinguish between hostility towards people because they were Jewish or just because they were that they were there were foreigners, and not using not not

sort of relating well to the native population. So that was the first thing that it's a bit uncertain about and the but what's interesting I think about the leather Apron story is uh he was portrayed in the Star as a Jewish criminal, almost sort of in the in the tradition of Dickens Fagin. The Star reported that he moved through the streets at night. He was strangely silent, very menacing and threatening the prostitutes with a sharp leather knife as a knife to cut leather, not a knife

made out of leather. As the Star reported his uh It said, his expression is sinister and seems to be full of terror for the women who describe aimed it. His eyes are small and glittering. His lips are usually parted in a grin, which is not only not reassuring but excessively repellent. I mean, so that they're really going overboard in their description of this sort of nightmare creation. And they also described features which are sterop stereotypically Jewish,

so it was quite obvious what they were aiming at. Uh. The interesting thing is that is that leather Apron probably didn't have never existed. There were undoubtedly men who stole from the women, and it may well be that it was some of these men who women thought was the leather Apron being described. But as far as we can tell, the original story seems to have been credited to a man called Harry Damn, and he was an American journalist

who has looking briefly for the start in London. He was young, and it seems likely that some of the women he spoke to when he was sent to the East then to gain information, fed him the basics of the leather Apron story. Uh. And then he exaggerated that and worked that up in a way that American journalists were a bit more used to doing than the British

journalists were. And unfortunately for him, it turned out that there was a man in the East Den with the nickname of leather Apron, and so the star story really didn't do that man much many favors m And that man's name was was John Piser. That's right. Um, So when this story comes to attach to John Piser, what are the consequences for him? Well, John Pies was the was the son of a Polish immigrant, and he was

a slipper maker by trade. He and he wore a leather apron, which was the usual attire for someone in his life line of business, and for some reason it had also won him the nickname leather Apron, probably because he walked to work and came home and everything we're

wearing the apron. We don't really know an awful lot about it for certain, except that his health was poor and that a police sergeant for some reason thought it likely that he was the man allegedly spoken about by the local prostitutes to the start, and so he was

arrested and hauled in. And of course the result of that was that first of all, he found himself with with the fear of being jack the rippa being held over his head uh and and sort of fighting not two pcent to the gallows uh And And secondly, it awakened even more animosity towards the Jews, because suddenly this to a lot of people, it looked like this murderer was a Jew, was one of the recent immigrants from

Eastern Europe. Is there a way to kind of generally describe the relationship between the police and the press and the East End Jewish community in mid September. Is there something that characterizes the relationship between those three kind of parties to what's happening here at the beginning of the of the murder investigation, Well, I think the police. The police seemed to have been fairly mixed, as as I

suppose you would expect there. They were fairly mixed in their opinions about the the the immigrant Jewish population, but then the native Jewish population was was unhappy about them as well, So they were not really winning on on any account, so the police. But at the time of the crimes, the police were very happy with the way

that that the Jews had accommodated there their inquiries. And yet on the other hand, we have policemen reporting that they were keeping watch on some Jewish property and they had to pretend to be not to be policemen, because if it had been known that they were policemen, their lives would have been at risk, so it it's very difficult.

One suspects that the Jewish immigrants kept very much to themselves as far as the police were concerned, because the police had been the agents of their persecutors in Eastern Europe, so they are not likely to have been particularly anxious to to get involved with them. The press was again at times openly hostile. They there was a lot of anti Semitic views were being expressed, but again there's still this uncertainty about whether it was anti Semitic or whether

it was anti immigrant. Uh. And so the press and the local population again they were they were fairly hostile towards the immigrant population, and in a sense understandably so. These people had were coming in large numbers fleeing abroad. They were coming with lots of beliefs of their own. They were coming from small villages into into a big city. They didn't speak the language, they didn't understand the customs, and for the most part they kept themselves to themselves.

So by not integrating with the with the population, UH, they weren't at that stage doing themselves any any favors either. So it was it was really a very difficult situation, it could flare up at any moment. M hm. So let's turn to Dr George Baxter Phillips, who was the police surgeon who responds to the scene of any chapman's murder. Can you describe a police surgeon's role and the work that someone like doctor Dr Baxter Phillips was doing at

the time. Well, a police surgeon was a surgeon, obviously often a local doctor who was called upon to visit a murder scene to confirmed death, determine whether it was from natural causes or not, and in the case of it not being from natural causes, then the surgeon was supposed to estimate time of death, estimate things such as the instrument used, how it was used, and so on.

So the police surgeon very often performed the autopsy as well and when necessary, and he gave would give evidence at the inquest and the trial if there was one, And he could also be called upon to give advice to the police as and when they needed it. So the police surgeon was was a fairly central figure and usually well almost always lived in the area where the where the policeman were. So h division had its own police surgeons. M hm. Can you describe the influence of

Dr Baxter phillips judgment of any Chapman's murder. How did what he concluded affect the investigation as a whole. Well, yes, in in his case, Dr Baxter Phillips did influence the direction of the investigation. Um. In the case of any Chapman, the most important thing that the police surgeon did was the estimate of time of death. Now, he estimated that

she had died around about four twenty in the morning. However, he was not certain because the effect conditions such as loss of blood and the coldness of the of the day of that morning could have had on the body. So he wasn't certain about time of death, but he said around about four twenty. It could have been earlier, it could have been later. The police gave weight to the police surgeon's conclusion m hm, whereas when Baxter he

gave weight to witness testimony. And those witnesses were a woman who may have passed Annie Chapman with a murderer not long before the murder itself, and there was a neighbor who may have heard overheard the murder to making place. So the police tended to virtually ignore both of those witnesses because what they claimed to have seen and heard

took place after the estimated time of death. But of course if Dr Phillips was wrong, and it would have been fairly significantly wrong in the time of death, then those witnesses should have been accorded greater seriousness than they were. So in that instance we have a case of the doctor's evidence then and the theorists still now being a matter of considerable argument today at least. M hm. You've

mentioned the length of the inquests that win Extra held. Um, the inquest for for Nichols and for Chapman conclude, uh, just four days apart from each other. At that point, after both of those inquests have closed, Um, what were the results? Was there kind of a prevailing opinion, especially among the detectives and those who are running the investigation,

about what was happening. Yes, By the time Abilene was transferred to Whitechapel to take charge of the investigation, Uh, the he concluded that at least Nichols had been killed by one person, and there are press reports that suggest that he was also of the opinion at that stage that possibly Smith and Taburn were also killed by the same person. So there was a movement now towards thinking that uh, the that they were dealing with with what

today we would call a serial killer. Now it has to be realized that whilst the police, uh we're certainly senior policeman, members of the medical profession, and the judiciary were aware of a thing of what we call serial killers, they didn't The average man in the street didn't understand it at all. It was a completely new and frightening phenomenon as far as they were concerned. The senior police and the doctors and so forth didn't have a shared

language with which to describe these people. So whereas we quite happily talk about serial killer and you know what I'm talking about, back then they didn't. And also, the prevailing medical opinion was basically one that these people were a moral defectives in a way that insane people were insane um and so they had a brain issue. And others thought that the serial killer was and a moral deficiency, which obviously we now know well, obviously they do have

a moral deficiency, but it's not an illness. Um. So there was a considerable amount of uncertainty about what serial killers were, but it was and for the average man in the street. This was a completely new experience. And that is where what I suppose you might call the beginnings of ripparology lie, because people then the man in the street and in the newspapers, uh, trying to speculate about the kind of person they thought the murderer was.

So they weren't coming up with names, but they were thinking of things like a deranged doctor, or a mad midwife, uh, a religious fanatic. So they were they were trying to work out who the murderer was by that kind of method.

And so that's what and so the and they the Nichols and Chapman inquests partly running side by side, meant that the press had a lot of time, a lot of days in which to speculate about who the murderer was and what sort of personally was and what the police were doing, and what the police should be doing, and what the police weren't doing mhm. And so it was all really quite a new form phenomenon really for

for everybody to be dealing with mm hmm. And then we have the dear Boss letter arriving at the press office. Can you describe that letter and what effect it had on the investigation. Well, there was a news agency called Central News and they claimed to have received this letter on the seven September and treated it first as a joke, but on the twenty nine September they passed it across to the to the police and the letter started dear Boss, and the text purported to be from the murderer, who

signed himself Jack the Ripper. And whether or not the police actually believed that this letter came from the murderer, they gave publicity to the letter, probably just in the hope that someone might recognize the handwriting and they could investigate from that. The letter did two things. First of all, it was the first time the name Jack the Ripper was used, and whoever dreamt that up, well they it was a work of genius. Really had caught the public's imagination,

and it continues to do so. Whether or not the murders would have been so widely known without it isn't known, but it certainly did no harm to the longevity of the story. And it also briefly passed into the language because people started to threaten to Jack the Ripper somebody, and almost any murder bearing the least similarity and to be honest sometimes no similarity, were called Jack the Ripper murders. The newspapers reported Jack the Ripper murders from all around

the world. The second thing it did was to spark a letter writing bug in thousands of people. So the police were deluged with advice from the public and from the murderer, or at least so the letters alleged Um the Dear Boss was just one of a number of letters that made it into print, But not all of them were were printed, made their way into the newspapers, and in fact it would seem that there were thousands of letters were received. In many the writers suggested that

the murderer was somebody they knew. Others suggested the type of person a ripple was a policeman or a doctor, as I said, and how aware how and a where he might be caught in. In others, people suggested how the police should do their job. Others were supposed to be from the murderer, and they were jeering or gloating about the stupidity of the police, or giving the location of where he intended to strike next. And other letters were sent to newspapers, and a few were sent to

private individuals in the latter case. Indeed, a few people were even arrested for writing these letters, meant most of them thinking that they were being funny when they did so. Mhm mhm uh. Would you describe the Saucy Jackie postcard? Yeah? The Saucy Jackie postcard was posted to the Central News

on the first of October. It also addressed the recipient as Boss, and other contents suggested that it was written by the same person as the Dear Boss letter, and the postcard appeared to give details of the murders of Elizabeth Stride and Katherine Eddoes that only the killer at

that time could have could have known. It's now thought possible that it could have been posted after the details of the murder were published, and neither Dear Boss nor Saucy Jackie areb are really now believed to have been written by the murderer at all, but they certainly contributed considerably to the notoriety of this series of murders. M hm hm uh. No, Liz Stride was Swedish. Can you

describe what what brought her to London? What was her life in England like in the years before she ended up alone in Whitechapel well, this Stride was registered as a prostitute in Sweden, but how and why it isn't certainly known. She managed to gain some decent employment in Sweden, and um she was she was taken off the prostitute's register, and then a small inheritance enabled her to emigrate to London.

She worked here and then married, and even ran a small coffee shop with her husband, but the marriage eventually collapsed. Elizabeth had apparently started drinking heavily and this was the cause of the breakup. We're told she took to pleading, apparently meaning mainly for the Jews, and it was said that she could speak Yiddish, but her life spiral downward. Her drinking landed her in court on charges of being drunken,

disorderly and using obscene language on several occasions. There's no known record of her being arrested for prostitution, but um there's no reason to doubt that, as with many women at that time, she could have resorted on them, and did resort to prostitution whenever she had when there was no other alternative. Somebody said to me many years ago that you'd be horrified if you knew what great Granny had done in her life to make ends meet, so this was not an uncommon thing in the East End.

But a fellow, a fellow lodger where she stayed from time to time told a journalist. He said, when she should, when she could get no work, she had to do the best she could for a living and so and that was in relation to being a a prostitute. But he was He was defending and said that she was a nicer, cleaner woman you couldn't wish to meet. So, yes, she was. This ride was had a tragic life, I think, hm, hm, can you describe what Israel Schwartz saw on the night

of Liz Strides's murder. Israel Schwartz told the police that he had been walking home at night. A short distance ahead of him was was a man, and that man turned into Burner Street, which was also the direction in Schwartz was going, so he followed him in a little up the way. Up the road, there was a lone woman. The man ahead of Schwartz stopped. There may have been a brief exchange of words, we we don't know, and then the man pulled a woman into the street and

threw her to the ground. She gave a low scream, and a Schwartz, thinking it was a domestic and not wanting to get involved, across the street and hurried away. As he did so, the man shouted out what sounded like Lipski, and Schwartz ran off, just seeing another and holding what he seriously described as a knife or a pipe. The attack had taken place very close to the spot where Elizabeth Stride was found dead, and had taken place

about fifteen minutes before her body had been discovered. It was therefore possible that Schwartz had seen the run up to the murder and the murderer mhm mhm. So in terms of the case as a whole, and in terms of trying to identify a suspect on the part of the police prevent further killings, how important was Israel Schwartz as a witness for having seen these events. It's very

difficult to say how important Israel Schwartz was. He wasn't called to the inquest, which perhaps suggests that what Schwartz witnessed had nothing to do with the murder, or that it was this decided he was lying and the assault never took place. Whether or not he witnessed an assault on Elizabeth Stride. He was nevertheless a witness if he was telling the truth to what was going on in the streets shortly before Stride's body was found, So in theory,

he should have been called to give evidence. But of course, if the police thought that he wasn't telling the truth, then he had nothing relevant to say if he wasn't in burning streets at the time. But however, we know that another street witness in the street who had also seen nothing, but whose testimony was relevant to what was happening or rather not happening in Burna Street at the

time of the murders. She wasn't called either. So it's possible that the police were keeping Schwartz under wraps, which they shouldn't really have done and assuming they were doing it, or or rather they shouldn't have done it, assuming that they did it at all, or it's possible that Schwartz gave his testimony and camera or off the public record, or finally that he had gone to ground and the police couldn't find him. So basically, if Schwartz was telling

the truth, then his testimony would be important. Obviously, if he wasn't telling the truth, his testimony was unimportant if he had been in the street at the time he said he was, but hadn't seen the assault on stride, his testimony was still relevant because he was there shortly

before the murders were committed. However, Sir Robert Anderson, who was the head of the c i D at the time, said in his memoirs written in that Jack the Ripper had been positively identified by an eye witness, the only person who ever had a good view of the murderer. This person had refused to give evidence because the murderer was a Jew like himself. So we are being told by Sir Robert Anderson that the witness was a Jew and that he had a good view of the murderer.

We know of only two men who saw a man with a woman identified as a victim, a man called Novender, who was one of the three men who passed a woman they identified as Catherine Eddoes, and Israel Schwartz. By no stretch of the imagination could Levender genuinely be described aimed as having had a good view of the murderer. So that means that the only Jewish eye witness to

anything that we know about was Israel Schwartz. So either Anderson's story confirms what Schwartz said and also means that Schwartz was Anderson's eyewitness, or the whole thing is open to serious doubt. Mhm mhm. Now, in that in that story that that Schwartz tells, there's that shout of of Lipsky. Can you describe the Lipsky case that he is probably referring to? There? Yes, very briefly, Israel Lipsky lived in Batty Street, which was a street adjacent to Burner Street,

which is where Stride was murdered. A fellow lodger in the house was a young woman named Miriam Angel, and in June of she was poisoned with nitric acid. On nitric acid, it also appears that Lipsky had tried to commit suicide by drinking the acid too, but he didn't die, and when he had recovered, he was charged and tried and convicted of murdering Miriam Angel. He denied having done so, and a lot of people believed him, but the jury

wasn't amongst them, and he was sentenced to hang. There was a great deal of effort to try and persuade the Home Secretary to commute the sentence. But Henry Matthews refused to do so, and Lipsky then wrote a confession shortly before he went to the gallows. Many people still entertained doubt about his guilt. However, the name we're told that the main Dame Lipsky, was briefly used as a term of insult. So uh it is to be assumed that the man who Schwartz are attacking a woman was

making a remark about Schwartz's appearance. M hm hm um. From that same night when with Dry was killed, can you describe Leon Goldstein and what he contributed to what came to be the public image of Jack the Ripper. Around the time Elizabeth Stride was murdered, a man was seen in the street. He carried a black bag, and fortunately a man named Leon Goldstein recognized the description of himself in the newspaper and went along to the police.

The contents of his black bag were utterly harmless, and Mr Goldstein went on his way, But his black bag stayed in the public's mind and added to the image of the top the the upper class gent with a top hat, wearing a cape, and always carrying a black bag. The bag is iconic in the story of Jack the Ripper as much as the deer Stalker hat is icon

nick in the image of Sherlock Holmes. So Leon Goldstein inadvertently gave rise to this, this myth of the black Bag, and the police didn't help because they never released the story of Mr Goldstein too the press, so it was never significantly reported. M Hm. When was it that that the story that the police knew from their conversation with Goldstein finally did become public so that you and I

could know about it today. Well, that's that's known as a consequence of the since the release of the police files, because they were they were kept private until the nineteen seventies, so that's part of the information that's coming to light in these recent years. It's worthwhile remembering that up until really the year two thousand, research into Jack the Ripper and his crimes was severely curtailed by the fact that

police files were closed. The newspaper library was in effect was in London, which effectively meant that anybody not living in or near London had to make a major sacrifice to get there to to look through the newspaper files.

So researching Jack the Ripper was with which you know, has been done by private individuals, not people with with tons of money and lots of spare time, and done when they are also trying to Very often they have a job, full employment, and there maybe a family and family demands, so they weren't able to go off and

do all these things. But from two thousand, UH, we've benefited greatly from the vast you know, the genealogical records that have been made available on sites like Ancestry, and the massive digitalization of newspapers which is going on in America and here and elsewhere in the world, which has opened up, uh, a huge range of information that prior

to two thousand people didn't have access to. And the search facilities available on the computers have made looking for information so much easier, and with a click of a button, I can now find records that it would maybe have taken me a week to find twenty years ago that one twenty years ago, thirty or forty years ago, So

there's a big difference there. And also in two thousand m. Stewart Evans and Keith skin Are published a book which contained all the police files which hitherto had again only been available to people living in or near London who who could see them at the Public Record Office. There are a few people, myself being one of them, who was lucky enough to be able to buy a photocopy of the entire files, but that cost about a thousand over a thousand pounds, and that was back in when

a thousand pounds was worth. However, a lot more have had a bigger buying power than it does today. So when people say, oh, you know that reparologists aren't doing, haven't haven't really paid an awful lot of attention to the people involved in the victims and everything. That's because we haven't really had access to the source materials until relatively recently. M hm m hm um. And I really commend your your book Forgotten Victims to anyone who does

want to undertake thinking along those lines. And I think you've done such a good job with with that book in talking about a number of murders that happened over a span of time, including the Jackie Ripper murders, and discussing with some sensitivity, um, how stories about especially you know, favored suspects and the identity of possible murders uh includes or excludes consideration of the lives of women and who

lived and died in the East End in the eighties. Um. I thought, you know, in some ways it is a hard subject, but in some ways I found in a beautiful book and I'm really grateful for that one, thank you. Um. There's a there's a footnote in that book, uh, about the life of Katherine Eddos that she had attended her cousin's public hanging in eighteen sixties six. Um. Can you describe that event and the resulting Gallows ballad chat book about Christopher Robinson that was a part of who Katherine

Eddos was in the years before her murder. Well, um, uh, not not a great deal really about that. It was passing passing statement that was made about Katherine Eddos that she had gone to witness the execution of her relative. The story basically is that Eddoes and the man that she was living with at the time, he was, as far as we can tell, the one who apparently wrote these little books and they were cheap almost sort of pamphlets really that that described events that had happened in

very often in rhyme of some sort. Uh, and the as you said, Gallows ballads, and they had gone to witness this execution, and they had produced one of the ballads. Whether this story is absolutely true or not, and whether they were produced in these books again, um, we really we really don't know. I don't know. The trouble is that very few of these things have survived. They were almost throw away things when they were created, So it's

very difficult to to know. And I haven't actually seen, uh seen any ballad relating to and as relative mhm, mhm. Would you describe for us the events that occurred in Minor Square right? Um? Well, and about one five in the morning, uh PC. Edward Watkins was on his eat, which took him into Mica Square, which was a small square with with three entrances. In the shadows of the

southwest corner, he saw the body of Katherine Edo's. It emerged that about ten minutes earlier, three men had passed one of the entrances to Mica Square and had there seen a woman talking to a man. Two of the men walking past would later identify the woman by her clothing as Katherine Eddo's, and one of those men was

the man that I mentioned earlier, Joseph Lavender. Um, Now, it's very likely that they did see Katherine Eddos with a murderer, but it is equally likely that the woman was not Katherine Eddo's, or even if it was Eddos, that the man had just been accosted by her when the three men walked by, and had disengaged himself and walked on, leaving heads to meet Jack the Ripple. So again, as with all of these cases, there are lots of

variable So they did see a woman. She they did recognize her and identify her by a fairly distinctive clothing as being Edos. So they probably did see Eddoes with somebody. But there was a small margin of time during which the man that they saw could have left her, And if she had wandered into the shadows of Might Square, then she might well have encounter Jack the Ripper looking there, listening to everything that had gone on, and maybe proposition to her there and then so we can't say that

the man that she was with was the murderer. M hm hm. Can you describe the way that the location of Miter Square complicated the investigation? I assume you mean that the murderer of Mita Square in Mighty Square was committed in the jurisdiction of the City of London Police. Many people don't realize that London actually has two police forces.

The central part of London, the business district known as the Square Mile, is the jurisdiction of the City of London Police and the Metropolitan Police Orange, whose headquarters are at Scotland Yard, have charge of the rest. So the murderer murder of Catharine Eddos introduced two forces, two sets of inquiries. Um, they liaised with one another, but we don't know for certain how well. There were some complaints to the effect that the City Police weren't passing across

all the information. Um. There may well have been complaints by the City Police and that the network passing over all the information. But unfortunately all the City Police files on this case were destroyed in the bombing of World War two, so we don't have any of the police, the City Police documentation telling us anything, any snippets of inside information. Mhm hm, yeah, that's all us. Um. Can you describe describe that the Gholston Street graffido and Charles

Warren's reaction to it. Yeah, A piece of apron seems to have been torn from the apron that Katharine Edos was was wearing uh and that that piece of apron was was later found in a sort of covered entrance to some stairs leading to the landings of several flats or apartments. The eight piece of apron was smeared with blood and it appears to have been taken by the

murderer to wipe his hands or knife. Above it on the wall, there's some writing in short which said something along the lines of the Jews are not the men to be blamed for nothing. The odd thing was that Jews were spelt j u w e s. We don't know whether that meant something or it was us playing

and ordinary misspelling. Anyway, ever since the leather apron business, there was growing animosity towards the Jews and in this area, and the head of the head of h Division while Superintendent Thomas Arnold, and he concluded that the writing had nothing to do with the murderer, but he was concerned that the message might incite further anti Jewish unrest. It was a genuine concern because we know that fifty extra policemen were drafted into the area the next day to

deal with any trouble. MHM Arnold wanted to have the writing erased he had already got a man with a wet sponge ready to wipe the wall clean. And Sir Charles Warren, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, recognizing the seriousness of erasing what could have been the murderer's handwriting, carefully listened to Arnold's concerns and took the responsibility of giving the order to wipe off the joke writing. He took that responsibility upon himself, so that basically he'd get

the blame and not Ah, not Thomas Arnold. So I think that gives an insight, a little insight into Charles Warren's character there anyway. Uh. Later commentators, including policemen such as Sir Robert Anderson, decided that Warren's actions were wrong and described them as cross dupidity um. And we're of the opinion that war and had destroyed the only clue

ever to be left by the murderer. Their fairness to Warren, Superintendent Arnold had recommended the range, and as I said, had been a waiting about to give the order himself. His concerns about the message perhaps barking anti Jewish unrest were genuine, So Warren really had very little option but to accept that that the anxieties of the man in charge of that part of London. Arnold knew it far better than Warren did, and Arnold also didn't believe that

the writing had any connection with the crimes. So Ever since then people have argued about whether the apron and the writing were connected or not, what did the writing mean, and if they were connected, what did the writing mean and so on, So it's all a bit in the conundrum. So would you describe for us the speculation of Dr

Frederick Gordon Brown when he examined Katherine Eddo's body. Dr Frederick Gordon Brown was the police surgeon who conducted the autopsy on Katherine Eddo's A kidney had been removed from Katherine Eddos and apparently taken away by the murderer. Dr Brown concluded that the removal of the kidneys suggested that the murderer possessed anatomical knowledge, and to have successfully removed it, he thought that he must have had a degree of

surgical skill. Other doctors who had examined the other victims did not necessarily agree, and some said that the ripper didn't even possess us the skill of the butcher. However, Dr Brown's opinion fired what's perhaps the most popular theory about Jack the Rippon, namely that he was a deranged doctor. Mhm h M. Can you describe the White Chapel Vigilance Committee, um, and what led the committee to dissolve towards the end

of October. On October, a lot of the residents in the East End were dissatisfied with the police investigation and they that this and those especially those with businesses, formed together to offer a reward and to assist the policeman on their beat by patrolling the streets, keeping an eye out for suspicious men and reporting any they observed. They were called the White Chapel Vigilance Committee. Uh. They were

not as they are sometimes described vigilantes. Uh. Maybe the same roots of the word, but they weren't taking the law into their own hands. They were merely keeping an eye open. They were being vigilant m hm hm um. And despite the dissatisfaction with the police at the time that the Vigilance Committee was formed, um, And you mentioned earlier there is a major mobilization of the police in Whitechapel in October. Um, how would you describe that operation?

That's undertaken well. Basically, the the the police had very little option but to catch the catch Jack the ripper in in the act. Uh. And so therefore they drafted police into the area in large numbers from other arts of London. As ever, of course there were issues with regarding the um the cost of this exercise, so they were they they came in and then as things quiet and they were moved out, and then they will move

back in again m hm um. At the end of the month, Robert Anderson asks Dr Thomas Bond, who we mentioned earlier, to examine all of the medical evidence of the murders. To that point, Um, why was Dr Bond a trusted observer, trusted by Robert Anderson? And uh, you know what in his life had led him to be in Robert Anderson's trust. And then when he did have the amassed evidence together, what did he conclude and did

the police find it helpful? Um? Dr Thomas Bond was really the doctor that Robert Anderson favored and was was one of the senior, most senior of the of the police surgeons. And on the twenty October Robert Anna Star's Bond to assist in the Ripper investigation. He hadn't done much on the earlier victims, but he was able to study their inquest testimony. Uh, and he had seen Mary Kelly's body, and he submitted a report on the ten oh, sorry tenth of November. So he uh he was the

senior as I said, was the senior surgeon. He was the surgeon to a division of the Metropolitan Police, the division basically Scotland Yards. And he reviewed the notes as m as we know, and had been involved in the inquest in sorry, the autopsy on Mary Kelly. He was basically the first, if not the first, one of the earliest ah psychological or creat creators of a psychological profile.

He his report to Anderson basically profiled the murderer and said things like he he he concluded that the murderer would not necessarily be splashed or deluged with blood. His hands and arms must have been covered in parts of his clothing must certainly have been smeared with blood. But he could have rolled down his sleeves and put on gloves and things, so he could have made his escape

without blood necessarily being all over him. Um. He concluded things like he he thought the mutilations in all the cases except Bernard Street, were all of the same character, he said, and so we that's one of the reasons why the murderer of the murder of Elizabeth Stride sometimes isn't thought to be one of the Ripper victims. But then at the same having said that, the circumstances of that murder we're different. She Stride wasn't mutilated. It appears

that the murderer had made an escape. Um. So, really, all I have to say on Bond, that's great, That's that's good, and I'll have h Adam. Adam Wood has has written a lot about about Bond's career in his Swanson books, so when I talk with him, we'll get to go into Bond's history a little more. So that's great,

that's great. Um. After after Mary Kelly's killing, can you describe the way that the police worked to make sure that that her murder, despite it's horrific nature, did not incite the same kind of of press coverage of the previous killings. Uh. The the issue I think with after Mary Kelly was really that, um, it was it was the murder of Kelly was committed within the jurisdiction of

the from coroner. Again, coroner's had had different areas that they were responsible for, and the previous murders, with the exception of Katherine Eddoes in the City of London, had fallen within the jurisdiction of Wind Baxter, and he was a man who took care to question almost everyone with something relevant to say, and to probe what they said

as best best he could. Mary Kelly fell within the jurisdiction of Dr Roderick McDonald, and he decided to take only that information necessary to establish the cause and time of death, so the inquest was over within a day. The effect of this was that it curtailed a sort of press speculation that had been indulged in when reporting

the quests day after day in between adjournments. Whether this was done in accordance with Dr McDonald's personal beliefs about how in quest should be conducted, or was done at the request of the police or even the Home Office, the result was that it it switched off press interest, almost like he was switching off an electric light. Reports continued to be made of other murders in the area, and there were flurries of Jack the Ripper excitement, but for many it put a full stop to the murders.

Kelly was indeed remind regarded by many as as the last Jack the Ripper murder m hm hm um. And there there are some writers who have written that Charles Warren resigns because of the failure of the police to solve the case, to catch the killer. You mentioned earlier, his his conflicts with with Matthews leading up to the

Murray's Magazine article. UM, So, in your mind, what were the reasons that Warren did resign, Maybe just the article um and his and his conflict with Matthews, and then what was the process for selecting as a new Commissioner Monroe, as you mentioned, once Charles Warren had left his post. Um. I think it's fairly well established that the reason why Warren resigned was because he'd he was basically fed up with the restrictions that were being placed upon him by

the Home Office. He was somebody who ran his own businesses, it were, and resented the fact that he had to sometimes go cap in hand to somebody else for permission to do what he believed was the right thing to do. And the writing of the Murray's Magazine article, which didn't contain anything really that anybody could object to. But Matthews did object to it because simply because Warren hadn't asked

his permission to write it and have it published. Warren, I think also had probably been quite keen to leave

the job, and prior to this blowing up in his face. UH, Monroe was a had been a senior policeman in India UH and on his return to England need have been appointed Assistant Commissioner c I D. He also ran into trouble with with Warren, mainly because Monroe, like Warren, wanted to run his own department his way, and he didn't like Warren interfering any more than Warren, like Matthews interfering.

It's just odd perhaps that Monroe, who must have understood Warren's problems, had no sympathy for Warren, who was suffering the same as Monroe was suffering only with Warren. But so he resigned, and the Home Office then appointed him to a special permission to run a clandestine secret department reporting on subversive groups other than the Fenians. So he was still there, if you like, running this separate section UH.

And he was consulted about the White Chapel murders throughout and was perhaps therefore, for very many reasons, best equipped ahead the met at the time. And I don't think that there was much of a process of of selection process going on. I think mon Row was basically chosen for the job and put into it. M hmmmmm. You mentioned that there are further murders that happened in the

East End. Uh. Some of them do generate more speculation, more press coverage, more interest in whether or not Jack the Ripper, They say, you know that, whether or not the same hand was involved. Um. So I'd like to talk a little bit about Alice mackenzie and Francis calls. Um. How was the murder of Alice mackenzie investigated relative to the killings that we've talked about so far, Nicholson, Chapman,

ETOs Stride Kelly. Initially, in the case of Alice McKenzie, M James Monroe personally took charge of that murder investigation. And he initially because Sir Robert Anderson was on holiday again. Uh, And he initially believed that she was murdered by the same person who had committed the earlier murders, but he later changed his mind, and so the the murder of Alice Mackenzie was just followed as if it were an

ordinary murder investigation. What's interesting, I suppose for today for people who are interested in who the ripper was, is that, although Monroe later changed his mind, his initial conclusion means that the ripper had not been identified at the time of Mackenzie's murder in July, so various suspects who were dead by that time or had either not become suspects

at that point or they weren't the ripper. The murder of Francis Coles again is doesn't appear really to have any connection with the Jack the Ripper murders um, but it is significant for being the last murder included in the White Chuckle murders file held by the police. Francis Coles also, to some ex then comes across as possibly one of the nicest of the victims from what little we know about mm hmm, yeah. What gives us that

impression about about her? About her life? I think it was the fact that she was She had tried various jobs, and one of which appears to have damaged her hands. She was not able to do jobs. She tried very hard to retain some degree in respectability, and particularly not to let her father know what she was doing or what she had become h and always trying to keep

her clothes look or keep looking decent. She also when she met up with Thomas Sadler that that last night of her life, she had tried to basically take care of him and look after him. And she obviously taken drinks and done what she was supposed to do. But she just comes across as being hard done by somebody she she she wouldn't probably have been doing what she was doing in at a different time, in a different place.

I'm not sure that she comes across as having other failings such as being a desperate alcoholic or or anything like that, or not failings particularly, but but illness issue of that kind. She was just somebody who seems to have found herself in her having hard times almost through

note falls of our own. Yeah, um, when we're thinking about yeah, stepping further and further away from the time of the murders and and starting to look back on them, um, and almost to shape our understanding of them from a historical perspective. Who was Melville McNaughton and what role did he have in enjoining the investigation. Melville mc norton had been a was was a and from a wealthy family that had tea plantations in India, and he had gone to run the tea plantations. They were it was a

tough time for him. They were fairly remote from the rest of civilization. He'd get to see an awful lot of people. But he appears to have stuck it out and being quite good at what he did. But at one point he ran into trouble with some of the natives and basically they beat him up and left him for dead in the plane. Fortunately he recovered and he

returned eventually returned to England. But as a consequence of that event, he actually met James Monroe, who was the senior policeman out there at the time, and so the two of them became quite good friends. So when mc norton came back to Britain, Munroe wanted him to join the met and become I think it was Assistant Chief Constable.

Uh All appeared to be going swimmingly until Warren found out about this incident of him being beaten up in India, and he really then said no. And so that was another interference with with with Munroe's department that put him at odds with Warren. So it was the following year that that Norton was when, after Warren had gone, that McNaughton managed to all the Monroe managed to get McNaughton into into place, and he joined the met in the middle of and so he was there for all the

the later to investigate the later murders. But he had a tremendous interest in the case and apparently kept pictures of the victims and other informa in his desk draw so he would have been able to make it acquaint himself with with all the the basic facts of the investigation. And then of course he was active in the subsequent investigation, so he became quite a knowledgeable person. And he wrote a report called the which we refer to as the

mc norton Memorandum. And he wrote this probably in anticipation of questions being asked of the police about a man called Thomas Cutbush, who a newspaper at the time was identifying but not naming him as Jack the Ripper. In this report, he briefly summarizes the Jack the Ripper murders and refers to three suspects. They were Montague, John Druette, somebody called Kasminski, and a man called Ostrog. We don't

know very much about any of them. Drew it appears to have been come to the attention of the police some years after when Norton joined the met. A lot of has been done on Kasminsky. We don't know for sure who Cosminski was, but the we do know that he went into an asylum and the only k anything Ski that's been found in asylum records as a chap called Aaron Kasminski, and a lot of theorizing has been

done about him and Michael Ostrog. Turns out that he was actually in a prison in France at the time the murders were committed, and so he couldn't have been Jack the Ripper, But obviously mc norton didn't know that when he wrote the memorandum, so he's become quite an important figure in the case. Do we know how the memorandum was received on its first being written, Well, as far as we can tell it, it was never received

by anybody we we suppose. We we assume that it was written for his senior officer, which at that time would have been Robert Anderson. Um or it was prepared at Anderson's request forman Rose request, possibly for the attention of the Home Office, But we really don't know, and there's nothing. There are no none of the usual stamps to suggest this was received by somebody or read by somebody, as as are appended to most documents, so it may not ever have been needed and Munroe sorry, not just

stuck it into the files. We do know. What's interesting is that there was a copy that he kept a copy of that report, which differs slightly from the one in the police files, which some people have argued, ah was something that mc norton wrote later. I think it was. It's more likely to be a rough draft of the

one that's in the police files. They basically say that the same thing m but there are important details that are different, so it probably wasn't We can't you know, it wasn't received by anybody, so there was no reaction

to it. Um Stepping now more towards those kinds of retrospective questions and considerations, you've written that that Wind Baxter, the coroner for everyone except Atos and Kelly um that he gained undeserved notoriety for advancing the theory that the murders were committed in order to obtain the victims internal organs. Would you say more about that theory, why drew the

attention it did to Baxter, and why it was undeserved? Well, when Baxter had heard that an American doctor was trying to buy you y ah and the explanation given for this, unprobable as it sounds, was to accompany a book he was writing. Now, when Baxter heard this story and at the inquest, suggested that ah that they said possibly may have been heard or something like it may have been heard by the murderer and given the murderer the idea of killing women in order to obtain organs that he

could then sell. In honesty, it was an insane idea, but when Baxter suggested that it was, the murderer was insane. So in fairness to Baxter, all he suggested was that a madman might have been inspired by a story that was in circulation at the time. And I think that's quite quite reasonable. I'm in a madman, to be honest, could have been inspired by anything, and we know that the most obscure things seem to have inspired people to

kill um. It's just a pity that because win Baxter put forward this idea, it's been assumed that the idea was his. It wasn't really his. There was a doctor who was trying to buy you try. We don't know who he was, unfortunately, but there was one am and it's perfectly reasonable to think that somebody who was insane would have might have been inspired by that. So I think it's really unfair to take win Baxter there and give him give him trouble for for something that wasn't his.

Mm hmm um. In and You've Forgotten Victims book, you talk a bit about the random, the White Hart, the Pension and other Torso or or Thames murders, and you noted that at the time of writing um, they had drawn little attention relative to what we consider the Ripper killings. Could you say a few more words on on that. Uh? Yeah, as a very good question. Unfortunately, it's one to which

there's no definitive answer. I guess it's part because they were overshadowed by the Whitechapel murders, and therefore they just didn't get the publicity that they One imagine that they might have done had they had the Whitechappel murders not being committed at the same time equally, of course, it depends on what really grabs the attention of the press. And these were bodied parts in effect that we're being

found at different times in fairly separated places. And unlike the Ripper killings, which were suggested one person operating in a very small area, it may well be that the

to Also killings just didn't grab public attention. And we have known about these murders for quite a long time, and it's only in the last few years that people have been writing books about them and ah really bringing them into the sphere of of anybody interested in the Ripper murders as well, because they show what was going on at the time. Mhm Um. In that same book, all right, and you offered a few comments on this on this earlier Um, but just stepping towards wrapping up

our conversation for today. UM. In that book, you've written that often the stories of women killed in Whitechapel are omitted from the studies of the murder and that their status um, whether they're in or out of being included in in the victims of a you know, Jack the Ripper, kind of depends on in your term that the whim of the theorist about the identity of the killer. Um, with that in mind, would you be going to offer how you have gone about thinking about the identity of suspects,

potential um possibilities for who the murderer was. Well, right from the I've never been terribly interested in the identity of Jack the Ripper. Oddly enough, it was always for me was compiling the data, the about all the crimes and what led to various conclusions and so forth. So it's really I think that the chances of us ever knowing who Jack the Ripple was largely depends on who the police at the time thought Jack the Ripple was.

And the only clues to that that we have are the are the names provided in the Norton memoranda, and to a slightly lesser extent, to Francis Tumbletye, who was a definite suspect at a time at some point, UM, and maybe one or two others. But there's That's basically it. And of those really, really I suppose it all boils down to Drewid and kause Minsky and the research that

has been done on them. UM. And I wouldn't like to I know, to be honest, I really don't feel capable of, uh, sort of nailing my colors to to the master of either one. At the moment. I think there subjects that really do demand a lot more in

a lot more investigation and research. And I suppose that really is we're trying to understand what was going on at the time, and understanding the history of the case becomes so important because, for example, it was h h In the case of Kazminski, we believe that he is also a suspect named by Anderson as being the witness, sorry that the person who was seen by a witness, the only person who have had a good view of

the murderer. And so what Anderson wrote and how seriously he can be taken depends to a very great extent on what we know about Sir Robert Anderson and what kind of man he was, and how things that we know about him may have influenced the way he believed

and the things that he said. Is for example, some people have said that he and it, strangely enough, has almost become an accepted fact that he was anti Semitic, and that was something that was leveled an accusation that was leveled at him at the time, and he vehemently denied it, and the evidence such as we have it would support that denial. So there's no real evidence that I am aware of that Anderson was anti science semitic.

But this is a neat theory provided by people who want to undermine what he said, and it doesn't have any support. So we really need to study people like Anderson and mc norton and Swanson in great depth. The trouble is there's not an awful lot of information out there that enables us to do the If they have been politicians or something, they've probably been fifteen biographies of them, like there are with people like Gladstone. That's where we are,

and nobody has done that in depth research. Really. Um Adam Wood has done a tremendous book about Swanson and probably has packed into that book everything that anybody will ever know about Swanson and um and it does really help to get some sort of insight into into Swanson because he was the man who wrote the the notes in a copy of Anderson's book that tends to confirm the things that Anderson said about his suspect that we believe to be McNaught Skazminski, So, Um, you know that

it really is important. History now is is becoming really important. We can't just theorize willy nilly, we we really do have to get down to the serious level of history. And maybe as a as a final thought to conclude our conversation, UM, could you offer what, in your opinion, studying the White Chapel murders gives to us in the present. What's the value of this ongoing study which has been has been undertaken ever since the murders, and you know,

doesn't look like it will stop anytime soon. Um, But having dedicated, as you said, so much of your own writing life to this case, what have you discovered maybe as you've done this work well, as I said, I think the I think the main thing is that uh probably said it a thousand times, is that Jack the Ripper, that the mystery if it attracts, if the if the mystery itself is something that somebody enjoys, if they're curious about trying to resolve who Jack the Ripple was, just

in the same way as they might be if they're interested in who King Arthur was, or who Robin Hood was, or any any of those sort of mysteries of identity. The great thing about it is that it gets you to read books. People who are interested and want to know, they read the books, and they very often they collect the books. More important than that is that they actually think about what they're reading. And that's no bad thing either. So you those are two basic things that you get

out of it, that you learn. And of course it's I I have found from right from when I got interested in this myself, that people would be interested in the mystery of identity. They would perhaps retain that mystery, but they would get interested into some other aspect of the case. So I always had one person in mind who I know was drawn to the ripper by the mystery of identity and then found out that one of the suspects came from Chiswick, where he lived, and then

he started to investigate the connection with Chiswick. And then he started took that even further and ended up being quite a uh well a highly knowledgeable local historian. Uh And so it it took him off in all sorts of different directions. I mentioned earlier the issue of horses dropping dead in the street. When you think about it, horses then were like cars are today, and if your car breaks down now you call somebody like one of the motoring organizations here, it would be the A A

or something like that. Uh. There was a similar operation which were the horse slaughterers in Victorian London, and they had a branch all over different places and they would come out and they would get the horse and take

it back to their to their yards. So there's all this business going on um and about the way that people lived, and so there are people who have actually specialized in learning about the horse slaughtering business that was huge in Victorian London and really one company basically had the monopoly on it. And so there's all kinds of things that people lead off to discover and as I say, the murder aspect of it adds a frision of of excitement.

But of course it's not just that. I mean, Jack the Ripper now is part of our popular culture known

around the world. You still can, I believe, go to a burger bar Singapore where they're selling you can have an anti burger, which is somewhat the thought of that is rather repellent, but nevertheless it's it just goes to show how how deep Jack the Ripper has penetrated into the national psyche in in some cases you can see how the name has been used in everything from advertising, which virtually began as the murders were being committed, right

through is everything. There was a worldwide World War Two bomber called Jack the Ripper. There's everything from a toilet spray to a computer game being mat to a novel or a movie or even an opera all about Jack the Ripper. So that's an area that is a very

valid area for study. And I'm sure that just as there have been books written just about the TV and movies about Jack the Ripper, I'm sure that somebody at some point is going to write a popular culture book, probably quite an academic one which I wouldn't understand, about about the way that Jack the Ripper is part of of everything that's going on today. And and then of course, right at the end is the is Jack the Ripper is a mystery and understanding perhaps even solving it, you

have to study the evidence. You have to know how people lived and so on, because all of how they lived could have a bearing on what they did and therefore ultimately lead to perhaps a discovery of who the murderer was or getting close to that now means you've got to, as I said, you have to read books, which is no bad thing. You've got to learn about sources, which ones are and which ones aren't reliable, all sorts of things that that historians do. That's part of their job.

And many of those things have applications in in our world, ah such as now there is an increasing need to distinguish between trustworthy and untrustworthy news stories and blogs and

web pages goodness knows what else. And looking at the Ripper mystery is a good way of learning how um, how to do these things and how to be uh so analytical and and how to understand sources and in many respects in schools where Jack Ripper is taught, because it adds that frision of of excitement too otherwise tedious life in Victorian Britain, but it teaches people how to about things like very simple historians one of one stuff like what is the primary source, what's the secondary source?

What's a tertiary source? Are news for make newspapers one of those? Which so which one? And how do you distinguish between the editorial in a newspaper and a news story all of that kind of stuff. So Jack the Ripper really does have an area where it teaches. It can teach people things on so many different levels, and

that for me, I think is the thing. And I suppose as a writer, if you want to understand Jack the Ripper, you're gonna read books, which is great because then you can go out in my mind and help to brilliant Billiam Paul. That's it for this week's episode of Unobscured. Unobscured was created by me Aaron Manky and produced by Matt Frederick, Alex Williams, and Josh Thane in

partnership with I Heart Radio. Research and writing for this season is all the work of my right hand man Carl Nellis and the brilliant Chad Lawson composed the brand new soundtrack. Learn more about our contributing historians, source material and links to our other shows over at History unobscured dot com. M HM, and until next time, thanks for listening. Unobscured is a production of I Heart Radio and Aaron Menkey.

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