Hi everyone, this is Deb from Dying to be Found.
Before we get started, I just wanted to say that episodes contain disturbing discussions on harmful acts and crimes against animals and or humankind.
Recordings are not intended for young or sensitive audiences due to the content nature of this podcast.
Listener discretion is strongly advised.
Hi everyone, I'm Deb.
And I'm Beth.
And we want to thank you for choosing our podcast Dying to be Found.
My sister Beth is here to join me today.
And that can only mean one thing.
We're going to talk to you about the Victorian era.
Yay!
Beth, I know that's your favorite.
So that's what I always tend to go with.
But unfortunately, the thing is, I don't find anything coming from the Victorian era except for over in England.
So that's where we're headed today.
Okay.
If any of our listeners have a storyline from the Victorian era and it's not located over in England, please DM us.
Today, I'd like to give out a shout out to one of our listeners that listens to every single podcast.
Oh my gosh.
I love that.
Tell me.
Al.
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.
Al, thank you so much for listening.
I need some feedback here.
What does he say?
I hop into the car and we're going somewhere and our podcast is on.
Serious?
Yes.
For our new listeners, Al would be Beth's hubby.
Yes.
Oh, he's dedicated in so many ways, isn't he?
Yes.
Hi, darling.
Oh, hi, Al.
Thank you for listening.
It's always good to see you whenever we're podcasting too, because he'll pop in from time to time just to say hi.
Yes.
Oh, that's lovely.
All right, Beth, anything going on that you want to talk about?
Oh, not really.
Just slowing down a little bit because it's summer and do a lot of camping.
But other than that, that's it.
Good.
So what I'm hearing is you're relaxing.
Yes, I am.
I love that.
I'm relaxing on the back porch.
I put a single air mattress out on the back porch and I sunbathe.
Because I don't have a pool, but my next host, maybe, maybe not, will have a pool.
So nice.
It would.
I say that I don't get in any water that doesn't have chlorine in it.
And I live by the lake.
You're funny.
All right, Beth, we're going to talk about one of the most famous serial killers known to man.
And we're going to go all the way back to 1888.
So again, England, my apologies, but you guys had a lot going on back then.
And Beth, I have talked about a couple other cases with you from that area.
And I'm going to say they're pretty brutal.
Yes, most definitely.
Today, we're going to talk about Jack the Ripper.
Wonderful topic.
I was waiting to get to this one.
I am very surprised.
There was a lot less information on Jack the Ripper than I imagined.
I thought at this point in time, there would be a ton of information on him.
Yes.
I wanted to give you a little bit of terminology because I've heard the word Ripper a time or two.
It means that Jack the Ripper is not the only Ripper out there.
There's a ton of Rippers.
And one of them we have talked about, that would be H.H. Holmes.
Exactly.
Collins Dictionary defines a Ripper as a murderer who dissects or mutilates their victims' bodies.
Basically, Beth, every Ripper out there is associated with the most infamous Ripper of all.
And for simplicity, during our episode here, I'm going to refer to him or her as Jack
because there is speculation out there that Jack is a Jill.
Okay, that's a new one.
Did you know that?
No.
I know, right?
During the summer of 1888, five, possibly six sex workers were all murdered within one mile of each other
in the Whitechapel District that's located in East London, England.
And there's a little bit of confusion on how many victims there are associated with Jack the Ripper,
but there were five definitely strong links.
And I'll go into that in just a little bit, but there could possibly be six or even more.
As far as the information that we have today, there are definitely five, unfortunately.
Before I get into those victims, Beth, I want to let you know how the public perceived sex workers
back in 1888.
Good idea.
According to the History Channel, sex work at the time was not illegal.
In fact, there were plenty of brothels and I'm going to call them the projects because I can't really think of any other term,
but they actually had housing to accommodate the industry.
Did you know?
Yes, I took that in high school, English history.
Surprising to me that they talk about true crime in literature classes.
It wasn't true crime, it was all about the housing in England and how they throw housing.
Oh, okay.
And they talked about how they would have housing for the sex work industry?
Yes.
Well, they would call it something else back in my day.
I got you.
All right.
Now, sex work was illegal under certain circumstances and that's if the sex workers caused a public disturbance.
I don't know what kind of disturbance that would be.
That would really be the only time that I know of that it would become illegal.
Sex workers were given the term ladies of the night and murders were rarely reported to the police.
Murders were not common, but beatings were, which could potentially result in death from time to time.
I guess there's a fine line there.
Yeah.
But for the majority of the time, nothing was really reported.
That's pretty sad, beaten to death.
Absolutely.
I'm going to talk about the victims here, Beth, because truly, like I said, there's not a ton of information on Jack the Ripper himself.
The first victim, I'm not really sure if this is Jack's first victim or not.
Her name is Martha Tabrum.
She was found mortally wounded near Whitechapel High Street with 39 stab wounds to her throat, chest, and abdomen.
And her injuries were not as gruesome as Jack's next five victims, so kind of why authorities are not sure that she was his victim at all.
The next victim was Mary Ann Polly Nichols.
Mary was a single mother of six who had fallen on hard times after leaving her husband when he had an affair.
That's pretty sad, a poor single mother and of six children.
Mm-hmm. One of the things that I found as I talk about these victims, Beth, a lot of them fell on hard times and most of them turned to alcohol and sex work.
So in Mary's case, she had turned to alcohol.
She worked menial jobs, then eventually turned to sex work on London's East End to help make ends meet for her six kids.
Mary was homeless and drank away any money that she did earn while working the streets of London.
On August 31st, 1888, at 3.45 in the morning, two men were walking along a footpath in Buck's Row, Whitechapel, and found Mary with her throat cut.
She was also disemboweled.
Oh dear.
Yeah. I guess I was wondering why are these guys walking around at that hour, but I'm sure pubs were probably open.
One other thing I didn't mention is that I guess before they really pegged Jack the Ripper with a name, they called these the Whitechapel murders because most of them happened in that area.
And it's a real area. I actually looked that up while I was researching this. So Whitechapel, England, which is East London.
So Whitechapel is the name of a city?
I would say yes.
Okay.
City or town.
Okay.
I probably should have said that earlier, but you know what? No time like the present.
All right. The next victim is Annie Chapman, who, Beth, was connected to royalty. She wasn't a bloodline with the royals, but she hobnobbed in Windsor as a child and after she was married.
So she just went to different parties and such. She rubbed elbows with royal descents.
Very interesting.
But like Mary Nichols, Annie separated from her husband and also turned to alcohol where she liked to scrap with other women and pretty much isolated herself from society.
So she was a recluse of sorts. Annie was discovered less than a mile away where Mary Nichols had been found a week earlier.
And in this case, Beth, Jack had removed her womb.
That's very strange, isn't it?
It is. You have to be very angry with a woman for that.
And you have to know your medical background.
Yeah, because if they're very precise and they know exactly where everything is located, absolutely. Back in the day too, right?
Yes.
A leather apron had been found near Annie's body and for a hot minute, Beth, police suspected a man named John Pizer, who would walk the streets and threaten sex workers by telling them that he was going to rip them open.
Oh.
If they didn't give him any money.
So he, what do you call that?
Extortionist?
Mm-hmm.
John was able to provide a solid alibi of his whereabouts when Annie was killed. So, of course, police dropped him as a suspect pretty quickly.
Now, police speculated that Jack was a medical professional, just like you said, based on how quickly and efficiently he was able to remove Annie's womb.
While police were investigating Annie's death, the coroner on the case provided information about a person of interest who had offered him, get this, 20 pounds for every womb that he could provide to a pathological museum in one of London's medical schools.
That is strange.
That kind of reminded me when we did H.H. Holmes and we were talking about the scarcity of skeletons.
Yes.
This is the same era, because didn't H.H. Holmes happen in 1887?
He actually was one of the suspects.
What?
Yeah.
Oh, you know what? I think I remember talking to you about that and I said that we would do Jack the Ripper. That was a long time ago that we did that one.
Oh, it was. I think it was one of the first.
But H.H. Holmes was in America.
He traveled to England regularly.
Oh, and it was the same time.
Yes. The reason I know the details of H.H. Holmes so well is I actually read a whole book on him. So that sticked with you.
Okay. I haven't read that, but I'll tell you that is in our English classes in high school.
H.H. Holmes?
Yeah. What was that book you read?
Something about the devil.
The devil in the white city?
Yeah, that's it.
Yeah. I was flabbergasted when my students started talking to me about that book because I had just started our podcast and I hadn't yet told my students that I had a podcast.
Okay. Getting back to this with the 20 pounds for every wound that this person could collect, that was about $2,400 U.S. dollars or $3,171 Canadian in today's currency.
Gee, that was a lot.
Yeah.
And so I suppose with H.H. Holmes, he was a businessman. He was making good money.
Okay. On September 30th, 1888, Jack performed a double murder in less than one hour.
What?
I know. The first victim was Elizabeth Stride. She was a self-professed survivor of the Princess Alice disaster, although no records indicated that she was on board.
I didn't hear about that. Is there any more detail?
There is because, you know, rabbit hole here. I had to go look all this up because at first I want to sound like I know what I'm talking about.
But secondly, I did go look it up. The Princess Alice disaster was an incident that occurred in September 1878 when a British paddle steamboat sank in the Thames River after colliding with another passenger ship.
First of all, I didn't realize that the Thames River was big enough for passenger boats like that. Maybe a paddle boat.
I know. I'm with you on that.
Yeah. Well, the two boats collided with each other and unfortunately, Beth, 600 to 700 people died in that incident.
That's a lot.
Mm-hmm. This was declared the largest catastrophe with an inland British waterway.
Elizabeth claimed to have lost her husband and children on board Princess Alice that day, but there's no record of that and she was never clear on how many children she had lost.
So that's why they're speculating that she was not on board the ship.
Oh.
Elizabeth drifted around London. She did eventually marry or remarry in this case.
She found a job at a coffee shop, but after her husband passed away, Beth, Elizabeth found herself on London's east end, working the streets to earn money.
Elizabeth was discovered deceased off a dark Whitechapel side road around one o'clock in the morning on September 30th, 1888.
An hour later, Catherine Eddowes was another case of societal misfortune.
On September 29th, 1888, this would be the day before, she had been arrested for public drunkenness and was released in the early morning hours of September 30th after she sobered up.
Police found her on the streets, kind of propped up against the wall in a drunken slumber, I guess.
Police picked her up, sobered her up, and sent her on her way.
When Catherine left the precinct, she turned towards the Whitechapel area.
At 1.45 a.m., Catherine was discovered in Mitre Square, a small, quiet area in East London.
Her face had been mutilated and her uterus and left kidney were missing.
See, this doesn't sound like H.H. Holmes.
Well, it doesn't, but his name was just thrown out there.
He never had any charges or anything.
Yeah, so he's just a suspect.
Yes.
Police were able to recover Catherine's apron that she had or a shawl.
I saw a couple of different conflicting stories here.
So she either had an apron or a shawl on her person.
Police were able to recover that a few blocks away, which seemed to have been planted by Jack the Ripper because, Beth, this is kind of weird.
He left a cryptic message written in chalk on a wall above where the apron or shawl had been discarded.
And it read, quote, the Jews are the men that will not be blamed for nothing, unquote.
Now, let me just say the spelling of Jews is J-U-W-E-S, and it does not refer to Jewish people.
It refers to a Masonic plot, which is connected to the Freemasons.
Have you heard of them?
Oh, yes.
Do you have those in Canada?
Yes.
Okay.
Yeah.
And I watch Oak Island.
What is that?
Oh, you don't know Oak Island?
No, tell me.
Well, there's an island in Nova Scotia that had a lot of gold buried.
Oh.
So for the last 10 years, or maybe a little more, you can catch the show every week.
And we've been watching this every week for 10 years, where they're drilling down.
They even drained a swamp.
Wow.
Is this streaming or is this on regular television?
It's on regular television.
Well, I'm going to have to look it up on streaming because I don't have regular television.
So you're saying the Freemasons are digging?
It's not the Freemason.
All this is connected to the Freemason.
Okay.
All right.
I'm going to have to go look that up.
That sounds interesting.
All right.
Well, the term Jews, J-U-W-E-S, is also connected to devil worship.
But truly, Beth, I found myself going down that rabbit hole with this one.
There's so many definitions of this, so I would encourage you to go look that one up as well.
Ultimately, police did speculate that Jack the Ripper's attacks were racially motivated.
Racially motivated against who?
Exactly.
In the meantime, when this double murder occurred, the news press finally associated Mary,
Annie, Elizabeth, and Catherine's murders with Jack the Ripper based on an anonymous letter
that was sent to the London Metropolitan Police Service, also known as the Scotland Yard.
This letter was written in red ink and it taunted police with what he had done,
what he would continue to do, and the letter was signed Jack the Ripper.
I wondered how the name came about.
Oh, you'd be surprised because I have more information on that.
Cool.
Okay, Beth, interesting fact.
It seems that whoever wrote the letter, and I'm going to talk about some hoaxes in just a minute,
but it seems like the press came up with it.
Oh, so this wasn't written by the real Jack the Ripper?
Probably not, and I will get into that in just a moment, but yeah,
they think that it was somebody from the press that gave the name Jack the Ripper.
Interesting, eh?
Yeah.
Prior to these attacks, there was one victim who was mortally wounded on April 3rd, 1888.
So this is like a prequel, Beth.
What I'm about to tell you came before the five victims that I mentioned.
She survived briefly, but before she died, she was able to say that she was attacked by a local gang.
Again, there's a little bit of speculation here, and police wondered for a hot minute if it was
Jack the Ripper or if it was gang related, and that's why I'm not giving a name because
we just don't know that for sure.
One thing police did believe at the time is that four out of the five victims that I had mentioned
were working the streets when they were attacked.
Modern historians feel that three of the victims, Nichols, Chapman, and Echols,
were not actually sex workers.
They were just later victims who worked occasionally to make ends meet.
So that was not their primary source of income.
That's what the historians are saying now.
Beth, you know, I love to say the word wackadoodles.
Yes, yes.
Yep.
And so let's get to that anonymous letter that was sent.
According to the police, they do believe that it was a news journalist that wrote it,
and it was not Jack the Ripper.
But after that letter arrived, all sorts of letters began arriving at police headquarters,
Beth, because we know there are copycats out there.
Yes.
Why do they want to interfere with a investigation like that?
I just don't get it.
I don't neither.
Well, police regretted publicizing the fact that there was a letter that had been signed by
Jack the Ripper after all that occurred because they had to start investigating everything.
They just added to their work pile.
One of the letters dubbed Mr. Lusk's Letter from Hell, and this was said to authorities
that contained half a kidney that the author said that he had taken from his victim.
Can you believe that?
No, that's pretty gross.
Yeah, there we go.
That is the term of a wackadoodle to me.
Police did feel that this letter in particular came from a medical student.
Okay, well, now they're practicing and there's no telling what they did, right?
Right.
All right, the last victim was Mary Jane Kelly.
Mary was discovered on November 9th, 1888 in her rented flat.
And this is probably the worst one, Beth.
I was horrified when I learned what Jack the Ripper did to her.
I can't imagine anything being more horrifying than what was already done to the others.
Well, before I tell you what happened, I will say that around four o'clock that morning,
an upstairs neighbor heard a noise, could have been a scream, it could have been a commotion.
Regardless of the fact, the neighbor did nothing.
They didn't call the police.
I don't know, may have been a heavy sleeper.
I know what that's like, but I mean, if you're a heavy sleeper, could you imagine maybe you
were dreaming?
I can kind of imagine that.
Yes, I can imagine that too.
All right, just before 11 a.m., Mary's on-again, off-again boyfriend came around.
And this is what he found.
Mary had been skinned down to the bones, and he was only able to identify her by her eyes
and her ears.
That's really bad.
I don't even think we hear much of that in today's age.
I know.
And I mean, they had to have just taken, ugh, and I don't, okay, my imagination is going
to go wild here.
I'm just thinking about how meticulous this person was and the time that it would have
taken to do that.
Mm-hmm.
So a couple more murders occurred after Jack's five or six victims.
However, there was a cooling off period.
This could have occurred because Jack was acutely aware of the heightened police presence
after killing his victims in the Whitechapel area.
However, around eight months later on July 17th, 1889, another victim was discovered
with two stab wounds to her throat, much like the other victims suffered.
She also had a deep cut that ran down her breast all the way down to her belly button
with several slashes on her lower abdomen.
Although the victims' wounds were similar to Jack the Ripper's M.O., police do not
feel that this was his work.
I wonder why they thought that.
I don't know.
I mean, the victims weren't disemboweled or none of their organs were taken.
I don't know.
That's just my guess.
Now, two months later on September 10th, 1889, an unidentified woman was discovered under
a bridge close to where Jack's fourth victim, Elizabeth Stride, had been found.
This victim suffered mutilation of her torso, but like the victim before her that I had
just mentioned, it was quite different from Jack the Ripper's calling card.
The last murder in the Whitechapel area was discovered on February 13th, 1891.
So that's about three years after Jack the Ripper was at his height.
Although this victim's throat had been slashed, she had not sustained any bodily mutilation,
which is good.
Yes.
Police feel that this murder may have been interrupted because the victim was found
alive and unfortunately, Beth, she did expire shortly thereafter.
Oh, that's a shame.
I know.
Any murders that had occurred after 1888 were not considered to be the hands of Jack the
Ripper.
Detectives had multiple theories as to why the Whitechapel murders stopped and rather
abruptly.
Number one, Jack the Ripper got locked up for unrelated crimes, whether he was put in
prison or an asylum, because, you know, asylums were pretty popular back then.
Yeah.
Police thought that maybe Jack died possibly by disease or malnutrition.
I'm sorry.
I don't know about this one.
He seems rather healthy if he's going to go on that rampage, but disease and maltrition
were also very prevalent during that era.
Their last reason that they thought the attacks stopped was that the pressure of high police
presence scared Jack off and he may have come too close for comfort and almost gotten caught,
which would have kept him under the radar.
So those are just some reasons why they feel Jack was just a short-lived situation.
Now, let me talk about the suspect list here.
There's just a couple suspects.
I had already mentioned one, that person who was out in the streets threatening sex workers.
The suspect list for Jack the Ripper was very small at the time.
From the get-go, police had a hard time identifying anyone due to the lack of witnesses and Jack's
ability to go unnoticed.
I mean, he was doing it in the middle of the night when everybody's sleeping, right?
Uh-huh.
Police did, however, feel that Jack was in the medical field or could have been a butcher
due to lack of better words, Beth, very technical and very precise in these attemps.
One suspect was a lawyer and a teacher who was interested in surgery.
He was a little bit wacky, but was later found dead after disappearing in 1889.
A second suspect was a Russian physician who had homicidal tendencies and was later sent
to an asylum.
Another suspect was a local resident who held a lot of animosity against sex workers.
He was also sent to an asylum shortly after the last murder.
One or two other suspects were on police radar, but not enough to continue following leads.
I'm going to suppose one of them was H.H. Holmes.
Uh-huh.
So I mentioned that in 1888, the suspect list was small, but Beth, the cool thing about
this is, you know, I love to talk about older cases because DNA always makes an appearance.
What?
Back then?
Oh, no, no.
No, this is like modern times.
Oh, yes.
Yeah.
So guess what?
What?
The suspect list is now over 100.
That's a lot.
Can you imagine?
No.
Another theory, oddly enough, I watched a TV show back in the early 80s.
The whole show centered around royalty, not the lady, but they are saying that there was
a prince who committed this crime.
Wow.
Wait, are you talking about somebody from England?
Yes.
Really?
Yes.
They may have mentioned who the prince they thought was, but I can't recall from that
many years ago, but I do picture the stagecoach coming up and yeah.
Interesting though, besides what I'm talking about right now, this is all I found on Jack
the Ripper.
I didn't see anything like that, like what you just mentioned.
Uh-huh.
I didn't see anything on H.H. Holmes.
So let's talk about DNA.
In 2019, Forensic Science did their job.
According to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, also known as
AAAS, scientists believe that they have an identity on Jack the Ripper.
Get out.
Uh-huh.
He happened to be one of the police's prime suspects back in 1888.
Jack the Ripper could very well be 23-year-old Aaron Kosminski, a Polish barber living in
the area at the time that Jack was active.
And Beth, this would be the local resident that I had mentioned to you that had animosity
against the sex workers and ended up in the asylum.
Well, I do have a question.
Yeah.
Just wondering, how would a barber know how to disembowel and to get the womb of one of
the ladies?
That's a very good question.
Maybe he had a hobby and was interested in science and just went to the library and picked
up some anatomy books.
Maybe his intelligence was extremely high because you know a lot of serial killers have
a very high IQ.
Yes.
So he could have been that.
But that's a great question.
If our listeners have an answer to that, please let us know.
Even though the DNA was linked directly to Kosminski, experts cannot say that he is 100%
Jack the Ripper.
So as far as cases go, Beth, this one still remains unsolved.
And I think that's most likely because this case, honestly, it happened 135 years ago.
There's no one around, no more witnesses.
The investigators aren't here anymore to support modern evidence.
And I will mention though, in 2011, the Scotland Yard refused to release information on this
case for one reason or another.
I think that they had mentioned it would interfere with investigators' efforts to solve the case.
But that was how long ago now?
12 years?
Yes.
Over the years, DNA samples were taken from a letter that Jack had sent to the police
back in 1888 and the results pointed to another suspect by the name of Walter Sickert.
However, some experts feel that letter was fake because, Beth, I mentioned a ton of wackadoodles
came out of the woodwork there looking for a copycat.
Mm-hmm.
Whether or not this letter came from the press or from Sickert, we will never know.
If I had also mentioned too that Jack the Ripper could actually be Jill, is it possible?
We don't know for sure.
There's not a lot of evidence pointing towards that.
Regardless of all of these theories, DNA analysis suggests that whoever Jack the Ripper was
likely had brown hair and brown eyes, which according to the AAAS, aligned with eyewitness
accounts and Aaron Kosminski's description.
Let me be clear though, although Kosminski is linked to the case by DNA, again, we don't
know if he's really Jack or not.
It looks like Jack the Ripper will always remain a mystery at this point unless something
wild happens and detectives give an official name.
Otherwise, Beth, that's about all I've got.
I really thought there'd be more information, like I said, but yeah, I'm so glad DNA came
into play because we can at least say that we're a little bit closer to knowing.
For sure.
But that's all I've got today on Jack the Ripper.
Well, that was a lot.
But on the other hand, I thought there was going to be a lot more information.
Exactly.
I thought so too.
I could only find more information on the victims.
Very little about Jack.
That was surprising to me.
So, Deb, do you have a teachable moment for us today?
Why, yes, I do.
No, if I can directly relate this to our storyline today, but I'm going to talk a little bit
about how sex work has changed very little over the past century.
There are various forms now and unfortunately, sex trafficking has become an epidemic across
the globe.
Some countries still don't recognize or respect women as part of a productive society.
Hollywood has gone crazy with all these cases you hear in the news.
And although there are tons of agencies fighting against sex trafficking, just when they close
one ring down, Beth, another one pops up.
So, my teachable moment here is that we need to do more to educate people on the real issues
surrounding sex trafficking.
Social media is shaping young minds to flaunt their sexuality and that gives off mixed messages.
Alternative options should be made available mainly to women who find themselves on the
streets, set up with a John.
I think that's what they still call them today.
We have banks, Beth, we have rehab centers, government programs, and the likes for so
many high-risk lifestyles.
Why can't we have more for people who are trying to get themselves off the streets?
Absolutely.
Yeah, so there's no wrong or right answer here and we just need to take sex trafficking
seriously.
And I don't know if this teachable moment really links anything that we did talk about,
but I just thought that this was a good time to talk about that.
So, that's my teachable moment.
Another great one, Deb.
I think the public should look to all those agencies that are out there.
Absolutely.
Well, we would love to receive some feedback from our listeners on today's storyline or
any of our other episodes.
Be sure to DM us on Instagram if you have more to add to this episode.
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