Episode 346: Jack the Ripper Part 3 | Morbid

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Hey, weirdos. I'm Elena. I'm Ash. And this is Morbid.

Morbid. Yeah, we are on part three of the Jack the Ripper series, and I'm questioning your psyche at this point.

Yeah, this has been the longest research I've done.

Really? Because I started much earlier than I normally do with research because I knew it was going to be a very daunting very intricate kind of thing.

But I feel like I have been in Whitechapel in the 1800s for literally like months at this point.

Essentially have. Elena has a whole casual 40 pages between parts one and three.

Yeah. And I'm nowhere near done. And she's, yeah, like, yeah.

I'm only on the double event here. I'm not even through all of the cases here.

You get like more like Drew is a Capricorn, but I'm like, no, you're not.

It's like you are just. No, you're not.

You are just like the epitome of a Cap, like every part of Capricorn energy, like you have all of it.

Yeah, I really, like, I lean into my sign really hard.

I don't even mean to. I mean, I do too. It really is who I am.

It's that fucking... That solar system that was happening, whatever configuration it was in when I was born, it was real powerful in that moment because I got every ounce of it.

It was intense. Well, you also have Virgo in your chart, which I think only makes you a more intense person when it comes to work.

Listen to me. Look at you. I know a couple signs.

You're like, I know some stuff about Australia. i drink things and i know things there you go oh i miss game of thrones speaking of i miss game of thrones so much imagine if they redid the last season imagine imagine if they just like said, oops, we were kidding.

Imagine if they made it good at the end.

That'd be fun. That'd be awesome. Speaking of good shows, though, like actually good shows, I just started and I realize I'm very behind the curve because what I didn't realize was... was that this show that I'm about to talk about, Peaky Blinders, in case you were wondering, it came out in like 2013.

Yeah, I was still in high school. And it's still happening.

Yeah, they just like really draw out those seasons.

I didn't realize that until recently either.

That's funny that you brought that up. that up?

I had no idea. And I know I've been wanting to watch it since 2013, but it's been one of those that I'm like, yeah, I'll watch that.

And then I just haven't. But last night we were like, oh, all of our shows are kind of like.

Floating. Just floating or like they're week to week.

And we've already like, you know, because we only have precious few moments to watch shows. at night when the kids are asleep.

So we're like, what do we do? Let's make a choice.

And last night, John was like, should we start another one?

And I was like, Peaky Blinders, let's do it.

And we did it. And I realized that not only is this show fucking awesome, and I'm so excited to be completely entrenched in it, But two, it takes place around the same time period of this in the same place.

Yeah, like only like. 30 or 40 years after yeah it's not that far off and it's like definitely got the vibe and i was watching it last night being like i cannot escape this I am just not helping myself at all.

Like no escapism for me. Oh, I am. like, an escape artist when it comes to, like, walking away from... I have to.

Like, in order to sleep and, like, function, I have to.

It wasn't great on my... My dreams last night wasn't great because it was very like intertwined with like the Catherine Eddowes one that I'm going to talk about today.

And it was a lot. I can't research at night anymore.

Yeah, it's hard. Like for that reason. And I, you know me, I'm like a very like spiritual like. spiritual lady so if i get weird dreams that throws me off for like my whole day that's true you know i'll just like start crying in the middle of the day for no reason I will say that if you have no other reason to watch it, watch it for Cillian Murphy.

Okay. Uh, that's what I was in it for. There you go.

The time period, of course, and Killian Murphy were like big selling points to me.

Of course. And they, they gave. They gave me everything I needed.

I've been like a Killian Murphy head since like 28 days later, which I realized came out when Ash was like five and that took. me for a ride.

Which means that you... I think I was like six, so you were 16.

So 16-year-old Elena was standing... Killian Murphy.

Because now, obviously, we're 10 years apart always.

That's how time works. That is how time works. funny because I don't feel that far away from you in age anymore.

So hearing that you were 16 when I was six, I'm like, that doesn't line up.

No. And when you get older, the time difference doesn't It's not that big of a deal anymore.

Yeah, it's like how older dudes and older ladies can date younger dudes and ladies later on in life. it's not so weird but yeah it just like the time difference just doesn't make as much of a difference because you're not as like in such a different form of your life anymore exactly we're both in like I mean, even still we're in very different, but like very similar faces.

Exactly. And that's our life. And that is our life, everyone.

So go watch Peaky Blinders if you haven't.

And if you have, which I know a lot of you have, because I tweeted about it when I was watching it and everybody was like, oh my God, I love that show.

People are obsessed. I'm here. I'm ready to talk to you about it.

And I'm excited to be here. I just started Desperate Housewives, so we're in different places, me and Drew.

We are. Anybody else out there? I mean, I don't even I think I think Desperate Housewives came out when I was probably like five.

Probably. So it's funny to watch now. It's also like sometimes you're like, oh, you could save. that back then.

Yeah, there's always that. But that show is good.

I never watched that. I don't think you would like it.

Yeah, never really was something I wanted to watch, but I'm glad you are.

Thanks. I'm glad you're watching Peaky Blinders.

Thank you. That's something I do want to eventually watch.

I'm just not there yet. There you go. Yeah, that's our TV schedule for you.

That's our TV schedule, guys. So I'm excited to watch Peaky Blinders.

Hopefully somebody else. I think a couple of people were like, I'm going to start it too now.

And I was like, hell yeah, let's all start it together.

Let's be in this together. Let's go for it.

And it's basically just going to get me until Stranger Things 2.

Like, it's one of those, like, I needed a good show that was going to get me back to the next Stranger Things.

Because that is going to take like years to come out, right?

I don't know. I don't know. Is that how it usually works, though?

That is. But we'll see. It's like euphoria.

I need it now. I'm in a place of freaking...

I just feel alone in the world without. And I feel like you're not alone with you for euphoria.

I know that because a lot of people watch that.

Oh, no. I mean, I feel alone in the world that it's not here.

We're all alone in this together. I was going to say you're suffering together.

We are immensely. So there you go. All right.

This is... We're gonna... We're going to get into it today.

She says apprehensively. I did. Yeah. I. Yep.

I do, because this is going to get rougher and rougher.

From here on out, it's going to get like so bad.

So bad. It's been really bad. It has. It's getting so bad.

I mean, one of these is one of the most horrific scenes I've ever read about.

I'm glad that I'm not going into this blindly.

I can't imagine going into a case like this having no idea.

Even so, I think when you hear details, you're going to be like, oh.

Oh, that's already happened for sure. And I can see that coming up next.

This is a rough one. And the next one we'll talk about in part four is, of course, the very infamous.

Mary Jane Kelly scene, which I think a lot of people have seen that photograph.

I forgot that that photograph existed until all of a sudden I was like, oh, that is a real thing.

And that's a real person. And that's a real thing that happened.

Tucked into like the back of your head and then you remember.

Yeah. So we'll be talking about... Mary Jane Kelly in part four, but today we're going to be talking about the double event, which is when he killed twice in one night very close to each other.

We're going to talk about it. I have a lot of theories.

I have a lot of questions. I have a lot of like, hmm.

So let's get into it. Let's do it. Shall we?

We shall. Okay. So we just the last time we when we left you, we were talking about how John or Jack Pizer leather apron.

He had been brought in, but he had been cleared.

Had like multiple alibis. And he said, I didn't come forward when my name was first brought up.

I went on the run because I thought people were going to hang me without even... wondering whether i actually did it or not because the media had like put it out way too soon which fair Because it probably would have happened because there were several times when people thought that police were bringing in a suspect, which at this point, he's just called the Whitechapel murderer.

Or the Mutilation series, they were calling it.

He isn't even Jack yet. He hasn't even named himself yet.

We haven't even got there. Oh, I know. We haven't even gotten to the letters because they haven't come yet.

This part or next part? It's going to be next part.

Okay. But that's when we're going to talk about the letters, him naming himself, like the whether we think it's a hoax or not, those letters, the different suspects, the different theories, the different ins and outs and stuff.

And also Mary Jane Kelly. But for this one, Leather Apron's been cleared completely.

The last victim was Annie Chapman, and Whitechapel has lost their collective shit.

I mean, it was Annie Chapman's murder was horrifying.

There are still some discrepancies as to her time of death, though, that were kind of complicating the investigation.

Because at this point, they're just trying to get anything they can because they know that these are connected.

They don't know when the next one's going to hit.

They're trying to stop it before it hits. and they don't have a lot to work with so dr phillips dr bagstrip phillips our guy love our guy He had stated that when he saw Annie Chapman at 630 a.m., he believed that she had been dead for about two hours.

Okay. But if we put that next to the witness accounts that morning, it doesn't really make sense.

So someone must have been off. So there was a man named John Richardson who lived at 29 Hanbury Street where the murder occurred.

And the body was discovered outside in that yard.

And he said he came out into the yard at 445 a.m.

And he did not see a body. Hmm. Now, if you walked out into that yard, she was right there.

You would definitely see her. Albert Kadosh heard someone yell, no, we talked about him at 525 a.m.

And then at 528 a.m., he said he heard someone fall against the fence. between his yard at 27 Hanbury Street and 29 Hanbury.

But then... We have Mrs. Elizabeth Long's witness account.

She was the first one that I talked about in the last episode. that she saw Annie Chapman with a man who, quote, looked like a foreigner in a deerstalker hat.

We were like, what does that mean? And I'm like, what exactly does that mean, Elizabeth?

But that was at 530 a.m. Huh. So remember, Albert Kodosh said at 525, he heard no.

Right. He heard someone fall at 528. And now Elizabeth Long saying at 530, two minutes later. she sees Annie Chapman just talking to this guy before even going into the yard.

That is the problem with eyewitness accounts.

Exactly. So Dr. Phillips' estimate of death is... is already shot to shit.

He came at 6.30 and said she was already dead two hours ago, but an hour ago she was talking to someone.

Or was she? So that doesn't make any sense.

And also, now we have to question how Mrs. Long... could have seen her at all.

Like, have she really seen her? Because who's off here?

Is it Albert Kadosh? Which I... I'm thinking Albert might be the one that's off.

I think Elizabeth Long did see her. Oh, you think so?

I think she saw her at that time because she did mention something about hearing the clock chime.

Okay. Again, she could be off. Was the clock off?

Because Albert may have just been off by 15 minutes or so.

Because that's not that crazy to think about that.

Like he was like, oh, it was five, you know, 20, whatever, when I heard it.

Maybe he heard the clock chime too and he got the wrong amount of chimes.

Maybe he looked at something and thought it was this time.

I feel like he's a little more off then.

Elizabeth the Long. I could see that. Because Elizabeth the Long was like very adamant.

Right. The clock changed. 530. I heard it.

I looked at her. I know that's her. She was talking to this guy.

And it's a little different too, because she's probably like out and about going somewhere and we can assume maybe she had to be there at a certain time.

Exactly. Whereas he's coming home and just kind of like is at home.

Yeah, he doesn't have I don't think he had anything that he was like really thinking about doing.

So she was on her way to the markets. I think the Spitalfield Market.

So she actually had somewhere that she had to be.

So I think time was more of like the essence to her.

Now, of course, nailing time of death is hard even today.

So there are a lot of factors. And back then it was just like way jankier.

They just like threw a dart at a dartboard of times.

They were like, sure, this works. But Dr. Phillips did acknowledge that the massive blood loss paired with the cold air that morning she was killed definitely could have fucked up his estimate too.

So he wasn't sitting there saying like two hours for sure.

He was just saying, I think. He was like within two hours. hours, I think.

And he was saying all of those elements could have fucked up my estimate.

I am not holding myself to it. So not even he was holding himself to it.

But still, it didn't really help with the investigation that much.

And besides all this, there was this weird obsession for a bit where police were assuming this killer was an escaped inmate from an asylum.

I could see why they would think that because of the brutality.

But why else? See, and that's the thing.

So it's weird to me. It's wild to me. actually, that they assumed that at any point that this person was insane.

Because the care and the meticulousness with which these murders were carried out does not ring as someone in the throes of insanity or someone who is not a sane clinically person could do.

It rings to me very evil and very focused. like knows what they're doing, like calculated.

Yeah, it doesn't feel like somebody escaped from an asylum.

This had the Metropolitan Police Force concentrating for a long period of time on escaped or recently released asylum patients.

And to me, it feels like a massive waste of time. time.

I think that was like real dumb. Also just really using people like that as scapegoats.

Oh, yeah. It was a very low hanging fruit.

Yeah. And they went like really hard at it for a while.

And I was like, guys, you got to stop. Yeah.

It's not there. Right. It's not. This is like a way, this is not a careless person.

So then this crazy theory popped up and I just had to talk about it because I was like, what?

This is called the American doctor theory.

Now, this theory came about when the coroner, which This coroner in particular that I'm going to talk about, Winn Baxter, was not a medical doctor.

So he was not Dr. Winn Baxter. He was a voted-in coroner.

He mentioned during Annie Chapman's inquest on September 26, 1888, that he believed...

And I quote, it was someone who had considerable anatomical knowledge and skill.

There were no meaningless cuts. The organ has been taken away by one who knew where to find it, what difficulties he would have to contend against, and how he should use his knife so as to abstract the organ without injury to No unskilled person could know where to find it or have recognized it when it was found, which I agree.

But he then followed this up by saying he knew and believed that there was a market for these types of organs.

The black market. And he relayed a story that recently the sub-curator, recently at that point, The sub curator of the pathological museum told him that a few months earlier, an American had called him up on the phone and asked him if he could buy some specimens. because he said he was writing a paper that was about to be published and he was going to be sending, he wanted to like send specimens to some of these places.

The curator was like, No, we can't do that.

We're not in that business. And this American who's like they're claiming was a doctor, medical student said he would pay a ton of money for them.

And he had already made this request to another institution, apparently, he said.

Now, Winn-Baxter then suggested on the record... that maybe someone had heard about this random American who was allegedly requesting to buy specimens from the pathological museum. for a pretty penny at that, in that this person who heard this took it upon themselves to procure some of those specimens to sell to him, because heard you can make a lot of money I'm gonna get some of these.

Okay. I'm sorry. No, my good sir. That does not.

No, no, no, no, no. I was like, okay. Nope.

And he said this on the record, which of course is going to get everybody like going crazy.

This doesn't make any sense. No, no. So no, no, no, no.

In response to this, the Lancet which was a weekly medical journal published.

They like published details of the cases, but they were the only ones who had published details because they were a medical journal. they published a warning and they were very dissatisfied with Baxter's theory.

They said, quote, in our opinion, a grave error in judgment was made by the coroner's informant in this respect.

The public mind, which Also, can I just say this is so relevant to now?

Like when you read this, you're like, wow, we haven't changed.

Yeah. The public mind ever too ready to cast much excuse me, ever too ready to cast mud at legitimate research.

Hmm, will hardly fail to be excited to a pitch of animosity against anatomists and curators, which may take a long while to subside.

Yeah, we're still working on it. Still doing that.

And what is equally deplorable, the revelation thus made by the coroner, which so dramatically startled the public last Wednesday evening. may probably lead to a diversion from the real track of the murderer and thus defeat rather than serve the ends of justice.

We believe the story to be highly improbable, although it may have a small basis of fact, which will require the exercise of much common sense to separate from the sensational fiction that surrounds it.

So essentially, it was a bullshit theory.

He repeated this story. He had no proof of this.

There was no, like, it was ridiculous. He just wanted to say something.

It just didn't make sense to me. Nothing about these.

We talk about how these things were taken out meticulously and very carefully, sure.

But that's a lot of fucking work to go through to get when you could technically, if you're really just looking for organs to harvest, it's like find somebody who's like.

At that point, people were dying on the streets.

It's like, guys, that doesn't make sense.

He's doing it too quickly and in too... obvious places and leaving them in the mid, like in the middle of the street?

Why would he be doing that? Wouldn't he take them back somewhere?

Move them out of the way to not get caught so he could keep doing this?

If he wanted to make more money, would he not just take all of the organs or like as many as he can?

That's the thing. It's like, I don't know.

I don't know about this. It makes no sense to me.

He didn't take an organ from everybody at this point.

Not from everybody. Still, that also doesn't make sense.

As soon as they heard that a uterus was taken, it was like, this must be for the black market.

And it's like, no, I don't think so. Yeah.

Also, I don't know how... So he takes this uterus.

What's he doing with it? Right. You can't just throw it on ice and be like...

Well, maybe someone will buy this like they can't use that.

What do you think they're using that for?

Like, it doesn't make any sense. Do you think that the real murderer took the uterus and like kept?

That's what nobody understands. Do you think it could have been a trophy for him?

I think it seems like a lot of these are trophies.

And do you think, like, you know how, like, people will buy oddities?

Do you think he kept it in, like, an oddity jar?

Like a jar of formalin or something? Right.

Yeah. I mean, it's a very high possibility.

Hmm. Or that he just tossed it somewhere and it was never found.

Just took it to take it to fuck with people.

Who really knows? That's the worst part of this.

Now, after Annie Chapman, there was a three-week lull So people started to get lulled into a sense of false security.

That was until September 29th, 1888. At 1 a.m., Louis Dimschultz, I believe it's Dimschultz, I think actually, Louis Dimschultz was coming back from work and he was taking a horse and carriage.

He was the steward of the International Workingmen's Educational Club.

I think I mentioned it in part one at some point.

On the other side of the Dutfield's Yard Court, around 40 Berner Street.

So the Dutfield's yard was like this big courtyard that there was all kinds of things around it.

And one of these was that club. He was cutting through Dutfield's yard and his horse wouldn't walk anymore and appeared scared.

It was like pulling to one side, clearly trying to avoid something.

And it was pitch black. There wasn't one light in this courtyard.

So it is literally the blackest black. His horse isn't walking anymore. and he's like, what the fuck is this?

Animals know. So he lights a match and he sees a bundle in front of him on the ground.

He thought it was just like a tarp was rolled up so i think what it said was he took like um the whip that he had was for the horse because the worst and he just like poked it but was like uh i don't really know what this is yeah But he jumps down, he sees a woman lying on the ground next to the wall of the club, but he can barely see.

So he went into the club to grab a candle and two other men came out with him to go look back at who was on the ground.

When they all lit matches to see, they lifted her shoulders and head and she was completely limp.

When they held the lights to her, they found that this woman had her throat violently slashed.

There was blood all over the ground and pavement beneath her.

They estimated about two quarts of Wow.

Had flowed towards the door of the club beneath her.

Her hair was completely matted with blood and mud.

She was holding a packet of breath fresheners in one hand. and I guess her hand was like still a little clenched around it.

There was actually a myth that she was holding grapes in her right hand, but that's not true.

No grapes were found on her hand. Oh, I remember that.

For some reason, I remember that piece. Yeah, and there's a reason for that because I think people... there's a sighting where she was eating grapes.

So I think that became something, but that is in no report.

It's in no coroner's report. I remember when I wrote my silly paper for high school, like saying something about, or like reading something about the grapes.

Yeah. And you probably would have written it because it's stated in a lot of sources as like, this is in the report.

It's not. Oh, man. It is not in the report.

I know it's really frustrating when that happens because you're like, what the fuck?

Yeah. And actually, before I even go any further, let me tell you, because I found a couple of other books for you guys to read.

How many books do you have at this point?

I am on seven. So the newest one I found was Jack the Ripper, Scotland Yard Investigates. by Stuart P. Evans and Donald Rumbleau.

Donald Rumbleau also did the complete Jack the Ripper, which is another book that I recommend.

The other one that I found was Jack the Ripper, the Definitive Casebook by Richard Whittington Egan.

That one's really good because it kind of... doesn't give you a blow by blow of the case.

It goes into the different theories and the different, like, myths and the different things, it kind of gives you a more like abstract look at the case, which is really interesting and fun.

So I definitely recommend those. And I've been linking the other ones like The Hidden Lives of Jack the Ripper's Victims by Robert Hume, The Ripper Code by Thomas Tuffill.

Jack the Ripper and the Case for Scotland Yard Suspect by Robert House and The Five by Hallie Rubenhold.

They're all really good. They're all great.

They all have different pieces of the puzzle, so I highly recommend you go read all of them.

Because they're amazing. And again, I will link all of these.

Summer reading brought to you by Leia. Summer reading.

So no grapes. Triggered. no grapes. She was wearing a long black coat with red and white flowers pinned to it.

Trimmed, the whole thing was trimmed with fur and And she was wearing a black skirt, a black bonnet and a like checkered neck scarf that was pulled very tightly around her neck.

But they said that they thought she pulled it very tightly.

And then maybe it got slightly tightened when, you know, she was attacked, but they didn't think it was like he tied something around her neck.

Like he didn't choke her or anything. Yeah.

Now, they got a police officer immediately, of course, and soon there was a crowd gathering around her.

Our boy, Dr. Bagster Phillips, was at it again.

He declared that she was still warm and had likely just been killed.

Now, everyone in the club and everyone who was outside from the club got searched.

They got interviewed. Their homes were searched.

They were probably not psyched about that, but like, you're in the wrong place at the wrong time, my dudes.

I don't know what to tell you. No one was found to have blood on their hands or their clothing.

And nothing was found out of the ordinary.

Which is like great, but also just a fucking bummer because you're like, I know you're like, he wasn't just someone running back into the club.

Can you imagine if it was just one of them?

He just walked back into the club. Now, on October 1st, 1888, she was identified as Elizabeth Stride.

Who sometimes went by Annie Fitzgerald. I know that is a totally different name.

That is just another one that she went by.

An alias is an alias, baby. Exactly. She was known around the area to be constantly arrested for being drunk and disorderly as of late.

She was climbing. Yeah. You know, Elizabeth had many nicknames aside from Annie Fitzgerald.

She was known as Long Liz. Yeah. Long Liz.

Likely. Now, this is interesting because I didn't realize that this was a thing, but I guess like people with the last name Stride, that was like a running joke at the time. that they would call them like long whatever, because stride, which I'm like, wow, guys.

Hilarious. But other people, because it was like a whole thing where people were like, is it that or is it because she had like a long face?

And she wasn't that tall, so it doesn't make sense.

Maybe that was why. though yeah it could have been like a funny like long lives over here right uh but she was also known as mother gum Because she always had breath mints?

No. Oh. Because when she laughed, which was often because she was known to be very jovial and very sweet.

Oh. She showcased kind of a gummy mouth because she was missing several teeth.

Wow, people are such dicks. I know, people were real dicks.

She was missing her two front teeth. So...

You know, people are dicks. People have always been dicks.

Yeah. Trolls be trolling. But it seems to me like...

A lot of these women, even when people were like dicks, they just kind of like took it in stride and were just like, ah, fuck off. would just like go about their business the uk yeah like they they water off a duck's back yeah like they just they know how to joke yeah and they know how to let jokes roll because they're cheeky They are.

They're cheeky and we fucking love them.

And they're not so sensitive. We love them.

Some people can be over here. They know how to do it.

Yeah. They really do. We love you guys.

My stepmom is like British and her mom was like actually like lived in Britain.

Yeah. Her name was Cleo and she was the coolest fucking lady.

And she would just like read you. but like in the funniest way yeah like and you know that it's like it was silly yeah you can you can take it because it's funny all in good fun And it's all in good fun.

Everybody just roasts each other. It's wonderful.

So, like, we see you. We love you. So who was Elizabeth?

Who was Mother Gum? Who is Long Liz? Who is Annie Fitzgerald?

Who were they? Tell me. So we're talking about Elizabeth Stride here.

She was originally named Elizabeth Gustav's daughter.

She was born November 27th, 1843 in Stora.

I might say lots of these things wrong because it is in Sweden.

Stora Tumlahead in Sweden. I think that she might be a Capricorn.

Get it, girl. Let me double check. She was one of four kids with an older sister, Anna Christina, and two brothers, Carl Bernhard and Svant.

Her father was Gustav Erikson, which is why her last name was Gustav Daughter.

Makes sense. She's Sagittarius. There you go.

You were close. Yeah. Her mother was Vita Carl's daughter, and they lived on a farm.

Everyone was expected to work on this farm, kids included from a very early age.

They grew potatoes, other vegetables. You know, it was a pretty it was like a nice little farm.

But yeah. Not very lucrative, not very easy work.

So it was tough growing up. They literally kept the kids home from school to work on the farm like they were expected to just work on the farm.

Oh, man. And in that time, it just that was the way.

It was just that important to make sure that they were making money from the farm because that was all they had.

Yeah. So especially the girls. They were definitely not considered at that time worth going to school if they could work at home.

It was just the way it was. Now, when she was 17, she took off to start her own life in the city of Gothenburg.

She was known as a very kind and very respectable girl who didn't get into any trouble.

She was also known to always have her Bible with her because that is one thing growing up.

They went to church. They could, I think the, what I read in the hidden lives of Jack the Ripper's victims was that like. the only thing she really did know how to read was her bible like that was it now um People really liked her and they really got along with her.

She settled in pretty well. And by February of that year, she had gotten work as a domestic servant for Lars Fredrik Olofsson and his wife.

It was a super nice environment. She took care of their kids.

She did work around the house. She worked for them for three years.

Everything was great. No complaints at all.

Then out of nowhere, with no notice and no hint of displeasure, she just walked out.

Something had to have happened. And that's why I'm like, what happened there?

Yeah, what's the tea? Something happened there.

Of course, now she had to go find somewhere to stay because she no longer had a nice roof over her head.

And she walked out of a nice home. So it's like, what happened there?

We're missing a piece of that puzzle. And I don't know if we'll ever get it.

And it's interesting, too, because it's like, you know, your mind goes to certain places.

But she had been there for three years, and then all of a sudden something happened?

Like, did something come to a head, or what happened here?

Right. I would like to know, but I don't know if we'll ever find out.

Now, she ended up getting a room on a street that was in not a great area.

Because that's really all she could afford at the time.

That's where they were, yeah. Yeah. August 1864, her mother, at only 54 years old, died of a respiratory illness.

Oh. Could have been TB, could have been anything, we don't know.

But she was young. And she, so she's devastated.

Of course. She took to the area she was finding herself living in and she took to the streets as a sex worker.

Because she had no other options. And often that is what we find in these situations.

They had no other options. And I wonder if she like had lost some faith.

Oh, for sure. A lot of them were hopeless at the time that they were killed and I had been hopeless for a long time.

Right. Unfortunately, this was like a really sad time.

There was not a lot of hope and there was not a lot of like positive stuff to look at.

Now, this is interesting. Again, from the hidden lives of Jack the Ripper's victims, I found out that she was registered in the Gothenburg police files as a, quote, prostitute.

Interestingly, in Sweden, this registration wasn't like they registered her to, like, arrest her.

She registered as one. That meant she was legally allowed to be a sex worker and would not be arrested for it in the 1800s.

In Sweden, yeah. The Swedish government figured it was better to just control and regulate what was going on.

Imagine that. Now, it wasn't all, it wasn't great.

I will say that. It sounds great. Like, it sounds like, oh, wow, progressive, but like it wasn't.

I don't know. Basically, they were just trying to stop because at the time, the spread of disease was very rampant.

And especially like, and the spread of illnesses, like sexually transmitted illnesses.

So they figured instead of criminalize it, they were just going to try to keep it under control.

So they registered sex workers and allowed them to work, but just wanted to be made aware of any health concerns.

Which sounds fine. Each worker was described in the register and other information was put in their file aside from like diseases or illnesses, other health information.

Elizabeth was 21 at the time. She was labeled as female prostitute number 97, which like, wow.

And described as being slight build, blue eyes, brown hair, a straight nose and other random information.

Okay. This sounds, again, like I said, very progressive way to look at sex work, but it wasn't, especially for like 18, whatever, 1860s.

60-something. But it wasn't just as simple as that.

She was also not allowed to be outside in public until after 11 p.m.

Oh. So... Okie doke. With that little dollop of progressiveness, you're like, wait, what?

What was that? What? Like... Yeah. Like at all?

Yeah. Like she couldn't be like, she could not work out in public.

Okay. Until after 11 p.m. All right. Now, she had to also go twice a week to the doctor to be examined and had to like make sure that nothing was happening.

Which like that's the good part of it. Yeah, exactly.

Keeping her and others safe. There's beneficial things here, but it's like a little too controlling.

Now, at one point when she was young, she gave birth to a stillborn child from an unknown father.

This was devastating for her obviously, and she had just lost her mother.

I mean, I think she was only 21 years old at the time when that happened.

But she went back to the street life and was in and out of the hospital with sexually transmitted illnesses several times over the next few months and maybe a couple of years.

Now, in November 1865, she ended up being taken off the register by the police.

And this would really only happen if they like moved, died.

Something big happened. Now, this one was for a positive thing.

It was she got another job as a domestic servant for Carl Wenzel Wisner and his young wife.

So she only stayed there for a few months, though.

She ended up leaving when Maria informed her that she was pregnant.

I don't know if it was because she didn't want to take care of a baby, She just wanted to be a domestic servant.

Just lost a baby. She had just lost a baby.

Maybe she just wasn't ready. But at this point, she did find out that she got a little money from her dead mother's estate.

Okay. So this was her chance. She was like, I'm going to get far away from this shittiness in Sweden and I'm going to London.

Oh, no. Because the grass is always greener.

Oh, yeah. Now, she worked briefly in the West End in London, which we discussed at one point was like kind of the upper class elite. she liked it like she was finding work as a domestic servant she liked it but I think I don't know if I mentioned it in the Mary the Polly Nichols one but Polly Nichols was struggling with the fact that when she was a domestic servant, they paid you three months out.

So for the first three months, you didn't get paid.

And then you got paid the back three months.

So if you could stick it out for those three months, cool, you're getting a big check.

But most of these people are taking this job with no money to their name.

They can't afford that. Right. So it's like kind of this terrible cycle of like people can't deal with the three months of no pay.

Right. Like what are you supposed to do?

And that was just how it was. there like that's just that was like standard that like you didn't get paid for the first i don't know if it was like your probationary period, maybe.

Oh, probably. And like a 90-day probationary period.

Actually, that makes perfect sense. I think that's kind of how it went, but like you don't get paid and that's tougher back then, especially when like nothing, like these people are coming in there with not anything to rub together.

But they could live in the house and... They could live in the house.

And I think they could eat, but it was like...

And a lot of them were very reliant on alcohol at the time because they're struggling.

Yeah. I think that has a lot to do with it.

Yeah. Now, and I think a lot of them just want to be able to like have. you know, people want their own money, you know, like you don't want to have to rely on someone for three months and, So a lot of people dealt with it, but some people couldn't.

And she was struggling with this, like this three month period. because that's not how it was done in Sweden, and she didn't know that this is how it was going to be.

Elizabeth Split from this like domestic servants job in the West End found her way to a known Swedish parish in the area because she figured I can meet some people that I can go to their church. yeah it'll feel like home but without all the stresses right right so it worked for her for a while and she was staying in lodging houses and trying to make her way She had gotten herself a small job making and cleaning bed linens for the lodging house, which a lot of these women did as well.

They would sometimes be able to like clean the floors, clean the kitchen, cook at the lodging houses, change the beds, you know, do the laundry.

And them doing that was like, okay, you get your free night stay.

Like you worked. It was like a workhouse without being a workhouse.

So she got herself that small job. It seemed to be working out a little bit.

This is when she became known as Long Liz.

Right. That's when people started calling her that.

Again, I guess it was a common nickname for people with that surname, but like...

What? It's so weird. Like, all right. Now, around this time is when she like it was right before she was being called Long Liz that she met John Thomas Stride.

He was a carpenter from the Isle of Sheppey Kent.

He was said to be a short, unattractive man who was abrasive and loud.

So it's like, Okay. Short, abrasive, and loud.

All right. I guess so, Elizabeth. I love the word abrasive.

Abrasive is a great word to describe a lot of people.

Because you feel it. Yeah. Abrasive is like a feeling.

You know what I mean? It really is. It's abrasive.

Yeah. I feel like I know who he is. I know exactly who this short, unattractive, abrasive man is.

Yeah. But, you know, Liz was taken. I suppose she was taken with this short, unattractive man who was abrasive and loud.

Okay. Now, they married March 7th, 1869.

Hot. They moved into the East End, into a lodging house, and together... Oh, it's so hot.

Not so hot, but you know, and they opened up a coffee shop together because he was our Yeah, right.

See, we're getting there. And he was already kind of like in that business.

He wanted to open up his own coffee place.

And this was in East India Dock Road. I would love to open up a coffee place.

Yeah, this sounds like it would be awesome.

It wasn't. Oh. It wasn't working out. And they actually moved a couple of times the coffee shop location because like one would fail and they just moved to another one.

They just weren't getting enough Yeah, it just wasn't happening.

And I don't think they were like super on it when it came to the business stuff.

But the third one that they opened was at 178 Poplar High Street next to the docks.

They were scraping by at this point. John was a carpenter, so during the day he was working, and Elizabeth was managing the shop.

But she was taking more time at pubs and just drinking than managing the shop because she was like, I don't feel like sitting here.

Again, vibing. She's got places to go. She's on the move.

A lot of these women. By the way, guys, she's a Sag.

So Sagittarius, you know, we like to be all around Sagittarius. all over the place.

There you go. You said we. Because I'm a sad rising.

Oh, I was like, you're a Gemini. I am. I am, but they say that the older you get, the more you start to align with your rising.

Oh, look at that. And I do feel that way, actually.

Well, there you go. A lot of these women... that became victims of Jack the Ripper, it seemed like they were just not...

They could have gone a lot of places if life had given them any card to work with.

I think that's a perfect way of putting it.

Because I feel like they all were not content to sit and just rot.

They wanted more and they wanted to go, go, go, but they just...

Life was just kicking them, kicking them, kicking them every single time.

They didn't have a way to get there. Yeah, it just kind of was like banging their heads against a brick wall.

And I feel the more you read about them, the more you're like, damn.

I'm sorry. Yeah. Like shit. Like it's just like a shit was not great.

But again, she was... This is... Alcohol tends to play a very heavy role in all these people's lives, I think, just because escapism and just to get away from the terribleness that was surrounding them.

But again, she didn't really want to sit and manage the shop.

She was known around all the pubs and around the locals to be fun, sweet.

She was really funny. Just like she was known back in Sweden, she was the same girl.

People at the Blackanese pub, Blackanese head pub, excuse me, were the ones to name her Mother Gum.

And that was because she... laughed a lot yeah and when she would laugh they were like mother gum like man but i think they again i think it was just like she probably thought it was like whatever like good fuck In 1874, the coffee shop was actually almost just closed down, but instead it changed hands so they were able to give it over to someone else.

They were kind of running it into the ground, so another businessman just took over.

I know, because that actually, when you said it was near the docks, I was like, oh, great location.

You would think, yeah. But I think they were just kind of running it into the ground.

Needed somebody there to be a good location.

They just like wash their hands of it. Yeah.

Now, March 21st, 1877, there was a police report where she was seen in the Thames Magistrates Court in Stepney. and then ordered to enter Poplar Workhouse.

That usually means you got in trouble and that was your punishment.

Often to avoid jail, people would take on hard labor at workhouses to pay their debts to society.

So jail. But we don't... I was going to say, so jail without going to jail.

Yeah. But we don't know what she did. Yeah, we don't know exactly what she did there, but...

I'm assuming as most of the time there was probably some kind of like disorderly intoxication and that kind of thing because they were always getting in trouble for that because like people just like need to chill out.

Yeah, just like calm down. Whatever, just let her live.

Again, she's vibing. She's just vibing. Let her vibe.

So it was September 3rd, 1878 that she got herself into a scam.

That was like kind of reprehensible, to be quite honest.

For her? Not a great look for her. Not a great moment in her life that kind of carries out.

Now, a steamer ship by the name of Princess Alice on this day collided with another ship, a ship named Bywell Castle on the Thames River, and it sank.

Oh. Somewhere between 600 and 700 people died in this tragedy.

It was a huge tragedy. There was a collection put together. where people could donate to the families who had lost loved ones in the ship. she pretended to be a survivor of the accident and that her husband and two of her, what she said were nine children were, were killed in the accident and she claimed she had seven other kids to take care of now she even claimed that those two front teeth that she didn't have were kicked out by another passenger who was desperately trying to save themselves in the accident.

Okay. And she said she managed to survive by climbing the ship's mast to safety.

What about the seven kids, though? How'd they get out?

That's the thing. You never see those seven kids.

She did not have seven kids. I feel like, where are your kids at?

It didn't work, because people were like, where are those seven kids?

And she was like, about that. And they were like, yeah, you don't have that.

And they were like, you are not listed on the manifest anywhere.

Neither is anyone with that many kids. And no one lost a husband and two children, or people did, but like no one by the name of you.

Right, right, right. So it didn't make sense.

Okie dokie. She did unfortunately use this story over and over and over, and she...

You know, she's desperate. I was going to say, it's reprehensible.

But it's also completely born out of desperation.

And, you know, like if we were in that position, we don't know what we would do to eat.

To live, to survive. It's bad to play off a tragedy like that.

Absolutely. It's bad. And I'm not going to sit here and give her any credit on that.

No. At all. It's like, and again, nobody's perfect.

No victim is perfect. They don't have to be perfect.

No matter what, they didn't deserve what they got.

It doesn't... Just because you're not perfect and you did some shit in your life doesn't mean in any way you deserve to end where you ended.

Nobody's perfect. You live and you learn it.

Nobody's nerfect. yep you know we're in different places entirely there you go i love you so much But it's true, though.

It's true. I will say at least she wasn't like. working like as a domestic servant and like making that money and then being like, Hey, by the way, like I died in a ship crash and I didn't die, but everybody else did.

Like she didn't have any. thing no and it's again it's a shitty thing it was a bad use of her time it was a bad right decision she made a lot of these women made some bad decisions.

Because when the system is working against you, that's when you make bad decisions.

Exactly. And you don't even need to justify all of them.

Everyone makes bad decisions and sometimes they're unjustified.

Oh girl, we could do a whole ass podcast about the bad decisions in my life that I've made.

Like we've all been there. Everybody's been there.

So it's like, we don't need to sit here and be like, but, you know, it's like, no, she made a shitty choice and she had to live with it.

But again... By no means does it give anybody any justification to harm her.

It's not like a, you know, so it's like, we don't have to pretend they were perfect people that just like didn't do anything bad in their lives.

Everybody's shitty in some way. It's like, yeah, like people will come like right into us and they're like, listen, when you cover me on the podcast, like if you ever do someday, don't say that I lit up a room.

I didn't. I'll still say it. You probably did.

But you know what? They did a lot of great things.

They had a lot of people who loved them.

They wanted to do better and they just couldn't.

They were in bad circumstances. But this is a bad, this is a bad decision that she made.

And she did use this over and over again.

And she used it sometimes. She'd say – she'd just tell people if they asked, like, where's your husband?

Oh, he died in the – In that accident. And, you know, like she'd say like, oh, I lost these teeth like in that accident or, you know, my kids died in that accident.

Like just it was usually to try to like get ahead a little bit.

Yeah. But it never really worked. She just really clung to that story.

Okay. But she had learned earlier. early in life, how to sew and tailor.

And she would sometimes use those skills during money too, but it was just never consistent.

That's the problem back then. It just was never consistent money.

Now, she was always known by friends to carry sewing equipment.

And this was just in case the opportunity arose that she could use her skills.

Okay. She always had buttons, thimbles, a needle, and some thread on her.

That's really cute. She was just ready to jump into action.

A seamstress. So you can see that Elizabeth was ready to make... legitimate money.

She just needed the opportunity to do it.

By 1881, she and John Stride had moved into a lodging home at 69 Usher Road in Bow.

This was very cramped. They didn't have it to themselves.

They had to share with several of the other families.

She began drinking very heavily around this time.

John, on the other hand, was very religious and the idea of drinking horrified him.

She left around Christmas, leaving their house and John because they just couldn't.

It wasn't working. He was like getting angry that she was drinking.

It became a constant source of fighting.

Well, he's abrasive too, so. Yeah. And she's probably getting abrasive as well.

Exactly. It's not good. You're in a cramped place.

Now, she became sick around this time and was admitted to Whitechapel Workhouse Infirmary on Baker's Row for bronchitis and exhaustion.

Now, after a week, she was made to go to Whitechapel Workhouse.

She struggled. I love that they were like...

Hey, recover from your bronchitis and your exhaustion for one week and then get to work.

Yeah. Like not even just like start sewing again, like go like. tie the fucking ship things together and have your hands bleed all over the place.

They're like, you feeling good? Okay, get in there.

Go crush some bones for a marrow. Woo! No, she was so she went to Whitechapel Workhouse.

She struggled in and out of these kind of situations, not really finding work to rely on.

So like the other victims, she was in these workhouses and lodging homes and casual wards constantly, just over and over again.

And John would give her money every now and then.

But then they were still estranged and he was in bad health too.

So now everything's starting to kind of crash.

She's not even getting that because... He ends up dying, like, very shortly after this.

And meanwhile, while they're not together, like a strange, she's still claiming that he died in that ship sinking.

So she moved into a lodging house at 32 Flower and Dean Street, which we mentioned in part one is one of the worst areas.

Flower and Dean Street is that one of those like infamous like islets.

I love that flower. Flower in Dean Street.

Yeah. Can you name it something that will keep me away from it?

Exactly. In 1884, John did end up dying of heart disease.

So. By this time, she had turned back to the streets and back to sex work to make money, finding herself absolutely desperate and without options.

She got herself caught a few times. then she would have to work off the demerits in workhouses.

Now, this is when I came across... In one of the sources, and I cannot remember which one it was, they mentioned something about like, you know, had to walk hours a day on a giant treadmill.

And I was like, I'm sorry, what? I looked it up.

That was like a thing they did back then to prisoners.

They would have them work like a treadmill. was the name for this big fucking contraption that worked on like a mill wheel.

And it was literally a treadmill that are like almost like a step treadmill. like almost like a master.

Yeah, that you just they would make prisoners walk for hours. to make this mill run so that they could, like, make flour and shit for just to, like, be, like, useful.

The stairmaster will get you snatched real quick.

And it was literally, like, eight hours a day though no yeah no isn't that wild i do the stairmaster for like 15 minutes and i'm like i literally will never be the same again I look at a Stairmaster and I heave.

I bet. I can't imagine. Yeah. I can't imagine.

That's horrific. It just blew it. When I saw that, I was like, whoa.

You know what? I'll even put a thing in the show note, don't blame me. to it because you guys just need to do your research.

It's a wild rabbit hole to go down. I was like, what is the world?

You would be like skin and bones. Yeah. I mean, you have a dump truck.

Like, damn, at what cost? Exactly. Now, around this time, again, people really like Elizabeth.

I like Elizabeth. Regardless of some bad choices, Elizabeth was a very likable person.

I mean, the likable people like that I know sometimes do make bad choices.

Yeah, everybody does. We're humans. And you know what?

She was someone who would try to help you if she could.

And she was very jovial, very like happy.

She was very goofy. She was always laughing.

Even when she was sad, she just was always someone that like people were like, you know what?

She was just fun to be around. when she was bummed out, you just didn't feel it.

So it's like, damn, Elizabeth. This is when she started seeing a dock worker by the name of Michael Kidney.

They stayed at lodging houses together on Dorset Street, another really bad street.

I remember that. It was along what was called the Wicked Quarter Mile.

Oh. And not wicked like, that's wicked cool kid.

Yeah, we're not in Boston. It was wicked.

Like something wicked this way comes. Now at the lodging house, they made friends and had a kind of community there.

So like... you know, now it's becoming like a thing.

We're like, we stay at the same lodging houses and like me and Michael, we're doing this thing, you know?

That's really sweet. She worked in the kitchen sometimes.

She was a good cook. Okay. So people liked her cooking.

She was like... Just getting her feel here.

And at this point, I'm like, come on. Become a chef.

That's the thing. You can do it, Elizabeth.

It's so frustrating. But she just didn't.

I didn't get the chance. You might not know this off the top of your head, but could a woman work in a restaurant at that point in time as a chef?

I think it was basically like barmaid. It was like, I don't think you were going to be hired as a chef, but I don't know that for sure.

You wish that she could get hired to cook for a family.

Yeah, that's the thing. Like, she was decent at it.

So it's like, with more practice and more just doing it, I think she could have, like, really found her way.

But they were eventually able to get some money together to move into a room together on Devonshire Street.

But they weren't really happy together. They were not.

Yeah, Michael Kidney is a shithead. Fuck him.

She was drinking heavily again and started taking to the street again to get some extra money, kind of just falling back into that life because it was the life she had known.

She felt comfortable with it. And it's a guaranteed way to make money.

It's a guarantee. They all said it at one point that it was just quick.

They would disassociate and they got their money and they would go, which is horrifying to think about for real.

Now, he assaulted her one night because he found out that she had gone back to sex work and he was pissed. pissed.

So one night when she got home, he physically assaulted her.

And he was pissed that she was drinking, pissed that she was on the streets.

And meanwhile... he was an abusive drunk.

Like he himself was an abusive drunk. So he's mad that she's drinking.

And he's like, you're a piece of shit drunk.

And it's like, yeah, you're a piece of shit drunk.

Right. And then he's pissed. And I'm like, well, she doesn't have any opportunities, motherfucker.

Like, what do you want from her? Because you're sitting around drinking the money away.

You're a shitty asshole too. Come on. So she had enough after she like assaulted her and she left.

So on March 21st, 1886, she went to live at Poplar Union Workhouse and was sent to the infirmary because she was in extremely bad condition.

She was not doing well. It was probably like all the drinking, like affecting her body.

And it was just like the life she was having to lead.

I was going to say, yeah. Now, she did go back to kidney several times.

It was one of those very toxic moments. Each time it got worse and worse.

He was more and more abusive, but she needed a roof over her head a lot.

So she was willing to put up with it. That's so sad.

Which is really sad. She was brought before the Thames Magistrates Court eight times between 87 and 88 one year.

It was all for drunken disorderly stuff.

So she was really going through it. The year before she was killed, she was going crazy. through it.

And like we said, that seems to be the case.

It's like they get, and it's just so sad because every single one so far has had this little piece of hope where like, ooh, you could turn it around, but life just doesn't let them.

No, exactly. And it's, like, right here is where, like, she was at her worst.

She was... back to sex work, which she was not happy doing.

She wasn't cooking. Michael Kidney and her were back and forth, but every time it was abuse, abuse, abuse.

She's just in a terrible place. September 20th of 1988, she was walking in Whitechapel.

And she met a woman named Catherine Lane and her friend Elizabeth Tanner.

When she started talking to Catherine, she was like, oh, this is Elizabeth.

And Elizabeth Tanner was like, oh, I'm the manager of the lodging house on Flower and Dean Street.

And she was like, if you want to stay there, like, I'll help you out because she heard her story and she was like wow like you have a terribly abusive partner like i'm gonna try to help you out okay so she told her you can stay there She was like, you need to do some laundry.

You need to clean. I'll pay you a small amount and you can stay for a roof over your head, which was huge.

And she was like, I can also help out in the kitchen.

And she was like, cool, perfect. This is great.

So they got along really well. Things were going well.

She's a few days into this new job, this new lodging situation.

Elizabeth Tanner was really liking Stride.

She said she got along with her. She would have been happy to have her there for longer.

And on September 29th, 1888, they went drinking together at the Queen's Head Pub around 6.30 p.m., which is like...

They must have really liked each other. She's the deputy of this lodging house.

Usually they're like manager of the lodging house.

She's not like going drinking with the tenants.

Exactly. A lot of times they were dicks.

And it's like, sometimes they were cool.

And it seems like if the two of them are getting along so well, like must've been a nice relationship.

When it's like at that point, too, it's like maybe she could have found herself like co-managing this place.

Exactly. Now, people from the lodging house remember her coming back around 7 p.m., so after having that drink with Elizabeth Tanner, and then getting ready to leave again.

And by 7.30, a few of them witnessed her in the kitchen.

They said she appeared to be in good spirits, was happy.

She was openly readying herself to walk the streets that evening.

So she was saying, I'm going to make a few, I'm going to make some money.

Yeah. Now, witnesses saw her with several different men slash possibly clients throughout the evening before 11 p.m., A couple of men saw her speaking to a man they described as wearing a jacket that had white flowers pinned to it.

They both called him Clark Lee. Looking like he looked like a clerk.

I think it's like you look like a clerk, I guess.

He had a dark mustache. I don't know if it's just like...

Because I saw this and I was like, that's a strange description, but somebody else describes a man that way too.

Yeah. The two men saw this man and her leaving the bricklayer's arms, which is a pub. the bricklayer's arms in Settle Street together and they were like kissing each other and hugging.

Okay. So like seemed very close. More witnesses saw Elizabeth with this man, and they were both going towards Commercial Street. or Commercial Road, excuse me.

At 1145 p.m., William Marshall, a witness, reported he saw Elizabeth quote, kissing and carrying on with a man he described as a clerk-looking man.

This man was described as having a sailor's hat on, and they were walking towards Dutfield's Court near the International Workmen's Educational Club.

Already. Don't know if you remember that.

I do. He heard this man saying to her, you would say anything but your prayers.

Oh. And she left. So I think he was being like cheeky, like you would say anything about your prayers.

And she was like, ha ha, cheeky. But Dutfield's yard, like we said, is next to that club, which was hopping late at night, but the yard itself was gated off in pitch black.

It was described as a place you would have to grope your way through to get to the other side of where the gate was.

That's the thing. Like, I don't even think we can actually grasp how fucking dark it was.

I cannot, so. I cannot grasp the concept of how dark this is because I'm like picturing it.

And every now and again, I'm like a streetlight and I'm like, none.

No. And I panic when like the lights go off and there's no source of light and you have to like find a light switch.

That is a real panic moment for me. I don't like like... like heavy, heavy darkness.

I don't like the sound of darkness. Yeah, it's... So thinking of that outside...

When it's dangerous and you know there's like tons of people who are just going to stab you around and like rob you.

Yeah. And like possibly rape you. Like they're just everywhere.

Mm-hmm. What? Like, I don't want that. Dude, I used to have to walk through the common like from the salon that I used to work at to where I would park and I would be so fucking terrified.

And that place is lit. Exactly. Like fully lit.

Fully lit, but like still scary at night.

Exactly. Now, so they were walking towards there.

Um, a few minutes later they were seen. They believe that this is the same guy seen at a green grocer shop who the grocer was Matthew Packer.

It was on Burner Street. I guess what happened in there was the guy walked up to the grocer, Matthew Packer, and was like, Like, get her whatever she wants.

And so she was like, and she was like, I want some grapes.

And he was like, what kind of grapes would you like?

We have this grape or this grape. She asked for a certain kind of grape.

She said, I want cotton candy grapes. He bought it.

There you go. And he bought her the grapes.

Packer said he believed this man was about 35 years old.

Everything seemed fine, according to him.

Now, Police Constable William Smith saw Elizabeth around 12.30 a.m. near Duffield's yard. with a man he said was about 28 years old, which is like a very specific number, wearing a dark coat and a deerstalkers cap.

So a different man. Different man, but if you remember that Deerstalkers hat.

I do. Annie Chapman was talking to a man with a Deerstalkers cap.

You might be like, whoa, but deerstalkers hats were very common then.

So it's not still weird. But we know that she switched. who she's with because the previous man had a sailor's cap.

Exactly. I'm paying attention. There you go.

See, you're on it. I'm on it. Now, he was also carrying a package that was wrapped in newspaper, apparently.

That other man was carrying a package. There was a few, like, there's different sources that say, because I think also witnesses confuse themselves in these situations.

But there is... There is a package in newspaper that comes up every now and then in these.

Which makes you wonder. is that where he's keeping his tools exactly a la Albert Fish exactly like does he does he walk around with them And that's how he walks around with them because no one would question somebody with a package wrapped in newspaper, especially back then.

Right. Why would anyone care? I had never picked up... I've listened to so much coverage about this case, but I'd never come up with that before.

Yeah. You don't know. We don't know, but it would make...

It's not. Yeah, it's not a weird thing to think.

Is he walking around with like a six to eight inch knife in his pocket?

Yeah, it's like either it's in his pocket in a sheath of some sort, but like. it would make more sense if he was just walking around with it in a newspaper package.

Right. Because no one's going to blink at that.

And he can walk away still holding the package and no one's going to question it.

And if anything, it looks less... suspicious because you're just everybody's walking around holding shit right now a few minutes later she was spotted on faircloth street with a man who people said was about five foot seven and was wearing a long black coat that went to his ankles.

This witness heard her say, no, not tonight, some other night.

Okay. That particular one, it is reported in everything, but some people, some ripperologists out there, they believe that that was not her.

And it's just because when you put it together with everything, it seems like that may have been somebody who they thought was her, but not sure.

Worth noting. Exactly. Then that brings us to 1245 a.m. when Israel Schwartz was on his way home.

He saw a man about five foot five. He said he looked to be about 30 years old.

He looked to be a little drunk. A little tipsy.

Entering, and he was in the entrance of Dutfield's yard.

He had kind of like a round face. He said he had brown hair, a small brown mustache.

He was wearing all dark clothing, like black shirt, black pants, black hat, black everything he was a goth he was uh in the police report from october 19th 1888 it states this And I quote, so Israel Schwartz stated at this hour on turning onto into burner street from commercial road and having got as far as the gateway where the murder was committed. he saw a man stop to speak to a woman who was standing in the gateway.

The man tried to pull the woman into the street, but he turned her round and threw her down on the footway, and the woman screamed three times, but not very loudly.

On crossing to the opposite side of the street, he saw a second man standing lighting his pipe.

The man who threw the woman down called out apparently to the man on the opposite side of the road, Lipsky.

That's what he yelled. And then Schwartz walked away. but finding that he was followed by the second man, the one with the pipe he was lighting, he ran so far as the railway arch, but the man did not follow so far.

Schwartz cannot say whether the two men were together or known to each other.

Upon being taken to the mortuary, Schwartz identified the body as that of the woman he had seen.

And he thus describes the first man who threw the woman down, aged about 30, height five foot five, complexion fair hair dark small brown mustache full face broad shouldered dressed in a dark jacket and trousers black cap with a peak and he had nothing in his hands All right.

Now, this was interesting to me because Lipski, what does that mean?

You asked me that. The reason I looked away from you is because I was Googling it.

Well, don't worry, because I'm going to tell you about it.

Oh, good. So now, according to casebook.org, which I linked in part one, I believe in the show notes, but I'll do it again here.

There was an article posted in Ripperologist magazine, which I did not know was a thing, but apparently it's like a very big periodical in the Ripperology.

We love to hear it. This article was written by Robert McLaughlin, and in it he talks about what this Lipski could mean.

I was curious myself, and this article really, it made me think.

So I recommend reading this entire article.

And again, I'm going to post the link to it in the show notes.

But basically, it's a discussion about what exactly Lipsky means and if that is even what Israel Schwartz said.

Like maybe he was mistaken. Maybe he heard it wrong.

Excuse me, not what he said, but what he heard.

So the year prior in 1887, this is very interesting.

On Berner Street, which was very close to the scene, a man named Israel Lipski Oh, bitch.

Murdered a woman who was in the same lodging house as he was staying.

Her name was Miriam Angel, and he murdered her by pouring nitric acid down her throat.

Shh. Jesus. It's a wild story. And I went into it for like an hour.

I'm going to cover that story in more detail by itself because it deserves an entire episode.

But he confessed to it and was hanged on August 22nd, 1887.

Damn. This was only a year earlier. So did Lipsky start to mean murder?

Well, so his real surname was actually Lebelsk, But he changed it when he arrived in London.

A lot of people did that. No one really knows why.

He was Jewish. And since anti-Semitism was rampant around this time.

Yeah, you had mentioned that. People think like maybe he thought it sounded less Jewish, Lipski, but it was a massive case that was everywhere in all the papers and people had it on their minds for sure.

Now, one possibility for this was that this man shouted Lipski at his friend across the street and meant it as like a verb.

Almost. According to the complete Jack the Ripper by Donald Rumbelow, which again, I really love.

Men would often say these things during arguments with their wives, like domestic disputes.

They'd say things like, I'll white chapel you after these murders.

Yeah. my god it was very common thing in london i guess at the time people would take events and use them as like verbs kind of thing I guess we kind of still do that to this day.

Yeah. And I guess then it was just like a little more like prominent gratuitousness.

I suppose. But so maybe this man was trying to harm Elizabeth and yelled Lipski like I'm going to Lipski you. or possibly he was hurling an insult to Israel Schwartz.

Again, anti-Semitism was rampant, and maybe he saw Israel looking their way and not minding his own business, and he yelled, the name of a really infamous Jewish murderer at Schwartz as an insult.

Because that, I mean, like, especially at this time during the Jack the Ripper murders, Jewish people were being, they were in danger. at this point like people so him yelling that would have been like a threat and it could have definitely been an insult and israel schwartz himself was like he could have looked at me and been like I think you're Jewish, and I'm just going to yell this nasty insult at you to get him to go away.

Right. So that could be something that in which all of these are horrifying so far to use Lipski as a verb, first of all, and then to just like. hurl an anti-Semitic basic insult at somebody.

Right. Or... This was something I had wondered, this next one.

And I was glad to see it questioned in that article as well, because my initial thought was that maybe he wasn't saying Lipski at all.

Maybe he was saying Lizzie or something like that.

Her name is Elizabeth. She was called Liz sometimes.

It seems to me... When I read this incident and I read the report, it felt personal to me.

This man was dragging her out on the street.

And And that doesn't feel Jack to me. It feels very domestic violence to me.

Michael Kidney. Perhaps the guy that she was with that was abusive?

Was he trying to get her to go back home with him somewhere and she was refusing?

Because again, he's dragging her into the middle of the street.

He's not dragging her into an alley. Yeah.

And because when she was refusing, this man pushed her to the ground.

And I don't know, it just feels weirdly personal.

That feels domestic violence-y. I absolutely.

Yeah, she also didn't call out for help.

Like, I feel like she would have had a stranger been assaulting her.

She screamed, but it even says not very loudly.

And no specific, like, help me screams. Right.

And that scream that she did let out could have just been like.

In pain. Yeah, it could have just been like a completely involuntary yell that she just fell down to the ground, like you said, in pain.

And maybe he yelled Lizzie or something like that.

Yeah. Or even yelled Lipski at her. Like, who knows?

But Lizzie to me seems like it's like an interesting thought at the very least.

I agree. And Robert McLaughlin in that article also said that.

So I was glad to see somebody else thought that.

But all to say, the Lipski incident happened at 12.45 a.m., and by 1 a.m., she was dead.

Okay. So this was 15 minutes later. Right.

She was dead. Now, the Matthew Packer statement, which was the one that he was the grocer at the Green Grocer.

They came in. He was like, but... Give her all the grapes she would like.

That statement fell apart as well. Oh. He had originally said he saw nothing.

And no one's strange. But now he was claiming the grape story now that a reward was being offered.

And the police were not offering a reward.

They were refusing to, which I understand they were like... hesitant to do that because they were worried people would do these things, but private citizens were offering rewards and like media was.

Also, her postmortem showed that she did not have any grape in her system.

Oh. And his statement is like, buy her any grapes she wants.

And she was like, I want those grapes and was like all excited.

When you were explaining that, I was like, I've never really met anybody that was like that stoked about grapes.

Yeah, I mean, it was London in 1888. So I think grapes were like... that would have been a great thing to get for her.

I mean, I don't think she's eating that great.

So I think grapes would have been like, holy shit, I can have some fresh grapes.

Like, sure. Because she probably didn't have the money to buy them herself.

That's true. You know? So that wasn't too crazy for me.

It was just more like... That grape story along with the myth of her holding on to, like, a bunch of grapes in her hands.

Yeah, it's just a little... It's such a...

Over the years, the weirdest things get added to things like this.

Exactly. It's weird by itself. You don't have to...

The whole thing is weird without the grapes, I promise you.

Now, Dr. George Phillips and Dr. Blackwell were tasked with her postmortem examination.

The cause of death was listed as violent hemorrhage from severance of blood vessels in the neck by a sharp instrument.

She was not mutilated any further. And they believed that this was because Jack the Ripper was interrupted.

Yeah. It says, and this is a quote from the autopsy.

It says, The left hand was lying on the ground and was partially closed, and it contained a small packet of Cassius wrapped in tissue paper.

Those are breath mints. Now there were no rings or marks of rings on her fingers.

The appearance of the face was, quote, placid and the mouth was slightly open.

There was a checkered silk scarf around her neck and the bow of which was turned to the left side and pulled tightly.

There was a long incision in the neck which exactly corresponded with the lower border of the scarf.

The lower edge of the scarf was slightly frayed as if by a sharp knife.

The incision on the neck commenced on the left side, 2.5 inches below the angle of the jaw and almost in a direct line with it.

It nearly severed the vessels on that side.

Also, what's interesting is there's a lot of times in the Jack the Ripper cases where his knife must be extraordinarily sharp Because it frays fabric that it's next to.

Oh, wow. That happens in a lot of these.

So that to me says it's like a very sharp knife, which...

A medical examiner might use. Which I'm just saying.

Now the next day, the Star newspaper reported, quote, A man, when passing through Church Lane at about half past one, saw a man sitting on a doorstep and wiping his hands.

As everyone is on the lookout for the murderer, the man looked at the stranger with a certain amount of suspicion, whereupon he tried to conceal his face.

He's described as a man who wore a short jacket and a sailor's hat.

If you remember, William Marshall, the random witness, saw Elizabeth Stride with a man wearing a sailor hat as well.

Oh, honey, I remember. Oh, you remember. that's just a little interesting thing didn't really get followed up on all right now next day Michael Kidney appeared at the police station himself drunk as hell and told them,

If he was the policeman on beat when Elizabeth's body was found, he would kill himself.

What? Okay, Michael. Like, wow. You didn't have to come here to say that.

Yeah, they were just like, thank you. Okay, have a good day, I suppose.

Cool of you to profess. Yeah, he was having a real moment.

Now... I don't know if I buy Elizabeth Stride as a Ripper victim.

Oh, is my ending thing here. Her injuries were done, according to Dr. Phillips, in seconds.

That throat cut? he said could take in less than five seconds.

Boom, done. The throat was quick. And he said it was done with a blunter. more beveled knife so that the side of it could have been sharp, like razor sharp, but it was blunted at the top.

He believed. Oh. So not a pointed, sharp six to eight inch knife that was very clear in the other killings.

Uh-huh. So... This is strange to me that he would use a different knife.

Right. And It just... I don't know. Nothing... I know that, like, he could have been interrupted, and that's why I'm not saying that I... that she's definitely not a Ripper victim, because maybe he was interrupted.

Maybe somebody came. Maybe it was... The first guy, Lewis, when he was on his... With his horse and cart.

And maybe the horse coming into the yard scared him and he ran away.

Yep. And then... We have a... This is the double event.

So within... I mean, so close to this one, he goes... crazy on another victim.

And because maybe he didn't get to. That is the That's the thing that a lot of people hang on to, that that must be why Catherine Eddowes was so brutalized.

But then at the same time, we're talking about Whitechapel.

Yeah. And it's like, I don't know, Elizabeth.

To me, I'm like, I don't know. I wonder if she was killed by Elizabeth Stride was killed by someone she knew.

You think that's possible? I don't know.

I'm not saying it's definitely it, but to me it feels a little more like it.

I don't know if she, I would definitively place her in the canonical five.

I don't know if I would keep her. I know she's in there, but I don't know about that one.

I'll have to get back to you after I read the 602 books that you recommended.

Yeah, there you go. Get all your reading in and then you let me know.

Okay, sounds good. Talk to you in a few years.

I'm not super alone in this feeling. There are people who don't believe that Elizabeth Stride is one of them.

But I, you know, I'm just saying, I think it's a little strange.

I guess here are Catherine Eddowes and then you can tell me.

So 1.30 a.m. after the Elizabeth Stride has been found, the scene has been discovered.

At 1.30 a.m., police constable for the city police, Edward Watkins, was walking his beat and he walked directly through Mitre Square and Aldgate.

Nothing was out of the ordinary. This is his regular beat that he would just, you know, because they would that beat they would take is like the same path, you know.

Things were, you know, as chaotic as they normally would be at this time.

Couldn't see and all that kind of. Yeah, all that fun stuff.

But 14 minutes later. Fourteen minutes later, he loops back around to walk that same beat again.

This time when he passed through, he immediately saw a woman lying on her back on the ground.

He had just walked through this. Right. He used his lantern for light.

And when he shone it over her, it was clear that she had been. brutally murdered her clothing was intentionally and aggressively cut open to expose her entire body like cut open She was soaked from head to toe in blood.

Her torso had been eviscerated, cut open from rectum to sternum—

Yes, I said rectum to sternum and not groin to sternum.

Her intestines were slashed and cut. a two-foot piece of intestines were laid on the ground, cut out of her body, and laid on the ground next to her between her body and her arm.

Another larger piece of the intestines was draped over her right shoulder.

And if you remember, Annie Chapman draped over the shoulder.

A clear connection there. Now, she had a deep laceration across her throat and her face was slashed several times.

The killer had also cut through part of her right ear, like cut it off.

He had just walked like this guy had just walked through here and now he loops around not 15 minutes later and this kind of damage was already done.

That is insane. Like, that's the thing.

It's not like he walked through and he found Elizabeth Stride with her throat cut, something that could have happened within seconds.

Right. This is like... Major surgery, but like not for surgery.

When you find out what he did, like this alone is... outrageous when you find out the details here i have no idea how he did all this in that time it's in truly wild like is jack the ripper a person i know he seems like a phantom in I can't imagine what this guy must have felt like the patrolman.

It must have been like an alternate reality.

You loop back around and you're like, what?

Like, how did this happen? Like, how did I miss this the first time around?

Yeah. So she was killed in a corner by an alley.

And looking at a surveyor map of the murder site, I saw that there was literally like two lamps in the entire square.

Just two lamps. One was across the street, but far away.

And one was around the corner and probably would have been like no help for lighting purposes where she was.

And next to her were three empty homes. And across the way, like literally across the street, was the home of police constable Richard Pierce, who was asleep in his home at the time of the murder and could have seen it from his bedroom window.

Stop. If you looked out his bedroom, and if you look at the surveyor's map, I'll see if we can post it.

You can see it was right there. Which, again, makes you wonder, like, did somebody know that?

That's the thing. I wonder if they knew that he lived there and they did that to be like, wake up, right out your door.

Yeah, like look out your window. I just did it right under your bedroom window.

Exactly. I think that was part of it. Now, nearby was a warehouse, Kearley and Tongs, where a night watchman and former Metropolitan Police Force officer named George James Morris was sweeping.

Watkins ran in there and told him there was another woman in the square.

He said she was cut to pieces and that her intestines were tossed, quote, in a heap over her shoulder.

And that he was like, I need help. Yeah.

I think like the direct quote is he ran in there and was like, for God's sake, man, help me.

And he was like, what? I don't know what you need going on.

Now Morris followed him out. And upon seeing the body, he whistled for help himself.

He told Watkins he had not seen or heard anything and that his warehouse door had been open while he swept for the last few minutes.

That's crazy. And two police officers showed up after their call for assistance.

One of them was PC James Harvey. Harvey showed up and he was shocked, not only just at the scene in front of him, but because he had actually walked to Mitre Square at 1.40. and had seen nothing.

What? He had seen nothing at all. She was found at 1.45.

Right. He had walked there at 1.40, seen nothing at all.

Harvey was there, like literally there five minutes before and saw nothing.

And he was adamant. I saw nothing here. What the fuck, dude?

Now, according to Jack the Ripper, Scotland Yard Investigates, this would mean Harvey was literally within yards while Jack was murdering this woman.

And heard nothing and saw nothing. You would think, too, that he would have heard even like a...

Like a scuffle? Like a sling? Yeah. When he took the knife out?

Yeah. Or like... I think he just... He severs that windpipe so quick that it's just he can...

But for him to do it in the dark, he does this shit in the dark.

And he's meticulous. that's the other thing the fact that he's doing this in the dark and this is a kind of a crude question to ask but do organs make a lot of noise when they're being taken out of the body like i would think that like when you take somebody's intestines out and slump them over their shoulder, that that would make some kind of noise.

It would. That's the thing. Because also like the mesentery was cut oftentimes off of these intestines.

The mesentery is what attaches it to the abdomen.

It's like... thick rough piece of skin almost like um that it's you have to when we would do an autopsy part of it is you remove the bowels And you would start at the bottom of the intestines and you would basically flay away that mesentery so you could pull the intestines out.

Otherwise, you're tearing and ripping them away. away from that misantery.

So for him to be able to plop some next to her and also fling some above her shoulder, he had to take that sharp blade and he had to know to cut that mesentery away.

He had to know it was there. And if you do it, find it.

And this is very, this is going to sound crude, but it's just reality.

You know how when you are like, when you're cutting wrapping paper. and your scissors, you get that nice like whoop, and it just glides.

The way we would do it is once you get that one cut, On the mesentery, you can pull the intestines and glide that blade across it and pull them all out until you get to the end.

Okay. And... Yeah. So it's for him to know to do that because otherwise it would take him a lot longer because he'd be ripping and pulling.

You'd hear that. And it's hard. It's not easy to do.

Like a lot of times when we would do an autopsy, if you were going to not use a blade, because there were some autopsy technicians that just preferred to use their hands for a lot of things.

That's a red flag. Just as the way it is.

A red flag. There's some things that are easier to use your hands because you don't want to get a blade lost somewhere and cut yourself.

Because sometimes you're just blindly having to cut.

You don't have to go super in detail anymore.

I'm an empath and I can feel all of this.

But sometimes They would use their hands to rip something away from something else, and it makes a very clear sound, a squish sound at the very least.

I said number two. And two, it takes, I mean, I worked with like big guys.

It takes them muscle to get that out. Right.

And that's them in a well-lit area with a very easy leverage of leaning over a table while we have like, you know.

Yeah. This guy's doing it on the ground.

Could you do this? Have you done this? What the?

Can you do this? Like rip things away with your hands?

Can you do the, like take it from the mezzanine?

The mezzanine. Not the balcony, the mezzanine.

Let's go see a movie. Yeah, cutting the mezzanine away from the... the intestines and removing the bowels is one of the things they do when you first start working there.

At least where I work, that's your like, hey, You're new.

You get to do the bowels. And it's like, oh, thank you.

Because it's like, once you learn how to do it, it becomes very second nature.

But they make you do it at first. Because it's, I mean, it's like, one of the more foul jobs of all the evisceration jobs.

That's kind of like when I worked at a pizza place and they made us eat an anchovy for It's the exact same thing.

It's exactly like that. It's because you like... Same deal.

Yeah. It's the... I know in all these...

This is going to be really gross, but hi, we're in Jack the Ripper and I'm an autopsy technician, so it's going to get weird.

In a lot of reports, they- Oh, keep it that weird.

I'll keep it that weird. Yeah. They mentioned the intestines, obviously.

That's a very important thing that it was ripped out, that it was over her shoulder.

In a lot of them, they mention like... And there was like fecal matter, like, you know, on the intestine.

Like, they do it like it's like... this is a strange thing.

And I'm like, well, that's where it is. Like, I'm like, if you pull someone's intestines out, that's going to be there.

Like, this isn't a weird thing. Yeah, we all poop.

That's really not something to note. It's just like that's where the poop goes.

Yeah. So I just think it's so weird. I'm like, you don't have to do that.

No, you don't have to write that. That's rude.

We know what intestines have inside of them.

Yeah, it's like he didn't do that on purpose.

That was just part of the test. He probably wouldn't have wanted to do that on purpose.

Don't they tell you, like, don't cut the poop pipe?

Don't cut the poop pipe, kid. But that is just...

That part, the ripping out the intestines so fucking quickly and doing it with such, like, ease and with no...

And not even just doing that. If he just did that, I'd be impressed.

But he does a shit ton of other stuff in this small period of time with no light either.

Right. And it's really wild. But to my point then, there would have been a noise.

There would have been a noise. Exactly. So I think there would have been noises. of some kind even just like you know it's like it's gooey in there it's like things make sloshing noises that's what i was picturing to be on ripping noises there's ripping noises in In fact, one of the... Oh, no.

Just one more thing. Keep it to yourself, honey.

When you remove the pelvic block or the thoracic block, whatever you're removing...

The abdominal block, I should say. When you are able to get it away from the sides of the body, it makes a suction noise.

Oh. And that... was always called like the noise of victory because it means that you are able to actually lift the block out because it's hard work.

It's like hard to get that. That noise I just made was actually involuntary.

I'm not kidding. It just came out. That was the noise of victory for me because I terrified you.

I don't even want an autopsy anymore. I'm gonna put in my will to not autopsy me.

It's a good thing. I'm going to write, it was probably my fault.

Don't autopsy me. It was probably my fault.

I like that. So yeah, wild. Now, Dr. Frederick Gordon Brown, the city surgeon, was called to the scene at 2.18 a.m.

He noted that she appeared to have not been raped and she was still very warm.

Can I ask, how would they even know if she had been raped?

Because he slashed her from groin. Yeah, I think... rectum to everywhere yeah to sternum and yeah I don't know I'm going to be honest with that one I don't know what they were using as a uh a yardstick there but but I'll hey Dr. Brown said no they all said none of them appeared to have been sexually assaulted Okay, but yeah, but they were sexually mutilated.

But they were sexually, that's the thing.

And they all obviously are like, they were very much sexually mutilated.

They just weren't like raped in the... like you know uh i don't even know how you would say that like in the actual sense of the word rape i suppose sure Well, and realistically, he wouldn't have had time with everything else that he did.

That's the thing. He definitely wouldn't have.

Now, a few police constables looked around the scene and around the body and right next to the body, some buttons from boots a metal button, a thimble, and a mustard tin with two pawn tickets were found.

One of the tickets was signed with the surname Kelly. and at this point they were like we don't know who this person is so this is the only clue we have Now she was brought to Golden Lane Mortuary and she was stripped and washed.

Now obviously she was not identified right away because she had no identification on her.

So the press published the details of what they found in her pockets.

Okay. Because they were thinking, you know, hopefully somebody will be like, oh, I know that...

Yeah. Who carried that stuff around all the time.

Or like the pawn shop would be like sheep volunteer.

Oh, that's what this is. In the paper, so they all included all of this, which along with wearing...

They said she was wearing basically everything that she owned on her body at the time.

Oh, she probably had to. And she was also carrying pretty much everything she owned at the time.

So they wrote this, that this was in her pockets and on her person.

A piece of string, a common white handkerchief with a red border, a matchbox with cotton on it. a white linen pocket containing a white bone-handled table knife, very blunt with no blood on it, two short clay pipes, a red cigarette case with red metal fittings, a check pocket containing five pieces of soap, a small tin box containing tea and sugar, a portion of a pair of spectacles, a three-cornered Czech handkerchief, and a large white linen pocket containing a small comb, a red mitten, and a ball of worsted.

Don't know what that is. She was also wearing, like I said, a ton of clothing, many, many layers.

She was wearing a black fur trimmed jacket with an apron tied over the whole thing, a chintz skirt with three flounces. a brown linseed dress bodice with a black velvet collar, a gray petticoat, a green alpaca skirt, an old blue skirt with a red flounce, a white calico chemise, a men's white vest with buttons down the front, men's lace-up boots, a neck handkerchief and a black straw bonnet that was lined and trimmed with green and black velvet.

Most of it had been cut right through and was bloody on all the edges.

Which then again tells you how sharp that knife was to cut through.

And not with a blunt top because you would need a sharp knife to get that cut.

Right. So then again, that kind of helps your point.

Yeah, because why is he switching knives?

Right. Like he wouldn't kill one person with a beveled edge knife, like a blunt knife, and then just switch knives.

For somebody else? Yeah, I don't think so either.

That doesn't make sense. By the way, worsted is a high quality type of wool yarn.

Oh, that's good to know. Thank you. No problem.

Now, with these details that were published, a man named John Kelly came forward saying he believed it may have been the woman that he had been living with for seven years.

And he said her name is Catherine Eddowes.

She also went by Kate. Since we have been together for this long, sometimes people call her Miss Kelly.

So Catherine was born April 14, 1842, in Graysley Green in the West Midlands.

She was one of 11 children. Her parents were Catherine and George Eddowes.

Her mother was a cook at the Peacock Inn, and her father was a tin plate varnisher at the Old Hall Works.

I looked this up because I was like, what's a tin plate varnisher?

My God. I just went down like a rabbit hole.

Oh, is this what you were talking about this morning?

I was like... So last night I looked this thing up and then I thought, and I was like, we haven't had coffee yet, girl.

Can't stop, won't stop. I cannot. So eventually, because I was looking this up and he eventually moved the family to London because they were bringing in stamping machines to take over the human tin jobs at the old hall. like some of the jobs.

So I was like, what? So tin plate workers made beautiful tin products. actually, like when you see those beautiful trays or plates with intricate designs all over them from the Victorian era. oh pretty like painted designs that she does and like painted designs and like gold leaf and such like that that's what it was So George was described as a varnisher, and I found that this meant he worked in the area where the beautiful product would come to him,

He would apply several coats of varnish to it, stove dry after each coat for varying periods of time until it was all set.

Then it would move to painters and all that good stuff to do like the gold leaf and all that.

Very cool. Interesting jobs they were. Yeah.

I was just very interested. That is cool.

The stamping portion was like dangerous as fuck, too.

Like doing the stamp outs because it was like they were doing these tiny cutouts.

And if your finger was in there, you can rip your finger off.

Yeah. Thank you. So that was interesting.

So in 1848, the family had moved to London where he could get a new job in the same kind of industry.

They actually moved to Bermondsey, which is funny considering I just covered the Bermondsey Horror recently.

Four more children were born to George and Catherine, but only two survived.

Catherine attended a school called Downgate Charity School, specifically created to train poor children to just be able to get by and stay off the streets.

It wasn't a school where she would learn to be something great or get out of her situation.

It was teaching her to have the skills she could use to just keep her head above water.

Because she was a girl, she wasn't taught math or anything that was actually going to aid her in any kind of business venture.

She was just taught sewing and the Bible, essentially.

Like, at this point, it's like, don't you want to create more jobs?

Yeah, it's like, girls can do it. I promise you.

Like, look around. You'll have a lot less deaths to investigate.

Now she was, Catherine was tiny, adorable with curly auburn hair and apparently a sweet and lovely human.

Everyone called her chick because she was so tiny and she loved to sing.

This singing voice was something she carried into adulthood and people commented on her beautiful voice her entire life.

Wow. When Catherine was 13, her mother died of tuberculosis at 13 years old.

And her father died two years later. Oh, man.

Yeah, unfortunately, this meant the younger siblings were all split up and put into workhouses and schools like the ones Catherine was attending.

The older siblings were trying to make sure their siblings were safe. could basically just get good work, stay out of trouble, like they were trying to become the parents.

They were, her older siblings were able to get her, Catherine, in with her aunt Elizabeth and uncle William, who was her father's brother.

Oh, good. They were happy to take her in.

They were like, we're going to get her work as like a domestic servant or something in Wolverhampton.

She was kind. She was sweet. She acted as a surrogate.

And this is Aunt Elizabeth acting like a surrogate mother for Catherine.

Like, it was all great. And she was in a nice, clean living space, living in a nice home.

There were opportunities. The home was on Bilston Street, and everyone around the community came to know and really love Catherine.

She was restless, though. She wasn't the kind of gal to just settle into a boring job and be content.

She was definitely destined to do something more, but was obviously just not given every opportunity to do it.

And it feels like that is really the thing with a lot of these women.

I've said it before. It's the theme throughout.

They're restless. They're not content to just sit.

Nope. Now, around this time when she was 16, she met a man named Thomas Conway.

He was from Kilgiver, Lewisburg, County Mayo in Ireland. and he was older than her and a soldier in the Royal Irish Regiment.

They took a liking to each other, but nothing blossomed until later.

She got a job at her father's old place of work at Old Hall.

She was a scourer, which meant she was there just to sweep and mop up after the workers.

She was fired very quickly for allegedly stealing allegedly allegedly this was all it took her aunt and uncle kicked her out of the house Oh, man.

Yeah. So I don't know how much how allegedly it was.

It feels like there might have been some might have known that that happened.

But, you know. She moved in with another uncle, Thomas Eddowes, in Birmingham, and she lasted even less time there and ended up moving back to Wolverhampton with her grandfather, who got her a job as a tin stamper.

So really staying in that Tim business. They love Tim.

They love Tim and Tim and that family. So basically she was the only, she was only going to be using, um, She was there to use the machine to emboss the design on stuff like I talked about earlier.

It's a kind of dangerous job. Yeah. Literally only a couple of weeks later, she quit.

And went back to Birmingham. Well, it was probably a lot.

Yeah. This is where she moved in with none other than her old crush, Thomas Conway.

Oh, my goodness. The flame flickered off.

At this time, he had been pensioned from the military because he had gotten sick, but he was healthier now.

So now the two of them got together and they started traveling all over together.

He made and sold chapbooks, which were tiny little versions of literature and poetry books.

Cool. They were usually hand bound and comprised of many different sources from the inside.

Other than this, they started making money creating gallows ballads.

What is that? They wrote and printed songs and poems about murderers who are about to be hanged Oh, shit.

That's so very ironic. So they traveled to different jails and literally sold these to people watching a public execution.

And apparently they made some good money at it.

Wow. And there were a lot of hangings at this time.

So it was like the couple were not officially married, but Catherine went by Catherine Conway and would describe Thomas as her husband.

Okay. She seemed very in love. Aw. The couple was very intense, and Catherine got TC tattooed on her forearm in blue ink.

Are you shitting me? I love it. She was a rebel.

They had two children, two daughters named Annie and Catherine Ann.

I didn't even realize, sorry, that tattoos could happen.

Yeah, it was like a thing. Yeah. Back then.

Now, in 1866, they actually did a gallows ballad for her cousin, Christopher Charles Robinson, who was hanged for murdering his fiancée in cold blood.

Oh. In 1868 they had a son named Thomas.

In this same year they outlawed public executions.

Which completely took away the need for gallows, ballads, and boom.

Source of income, done. Depleted. Gone. They moved to Surrey around this time and she took up work as a laundress. this is when things got bad.

The family was in and out of workhouses now around these times, and money was not coming in at all.

August 1873, while living in St. George's workhouse, Catherine had another baby boy named Alfred George.

Things went from bad to worse. Things were bleak now and both Thomas and Catherine were drinking heavily.

Wow. Wow. Wow. Oh, no. Yeah. They broke up.

And he kept Thomas and Alfred George, and she took Annie and Catherine.

So they split the kids. Okay. She asked if she could live with her aunt Elizabeth and uncle William again for the time being, but they said absolutely not because you fucked up hard when you were living with us and you're not coming back.

Okay, allegedly. Very tough love. She was on the streets now in London, and I think the kids were kind of like staying with friends a lot of the time.

Yeah. Her kids had like very, you know, they had very conflicting things to say.

One of them felt one way about her and the other one felt the other way.

Okay. And these were her two daughters that she got to keep.

Yeah. But they were with friends a lot. I don't think they were with Catherine all that much.

Now she was on the streets of London. Now she was drinking even more heavily.

And this was really the beginning of the end.

So she began getting arrested for drunken disorderly behavior, a lot, and started sex work as a means of getting even just enough money to put a roof over her head.

It's kind of unfortunately a similar tale to a lot of the victims.

It was during this time that she found herself chatting with a man at Spitalfields Market.

His name was John Kelly. Yeah. And he had recently become a widow.

He had lost his wife. He was kind, he was sweet, and he just wanted to make her happy.

Okay. He was also sober. Great. And the reason he was sober was he just didn't think it was worth spending money on alcohol.

Because he was like, I don't have a lot, so I'm not going to spend it on alcohol.

Well, that's the thing, right? He was like, and he said, I'm working my ass off for Precious Little.

I'm not going to waste it on drinks. That was his whole thing.

Mom. Sadly, she was still kind of telling people her name was Kate Conway, even when people started seeing her and John Kelly together and people would be like, oh, Mrs. Kelly.

And she was like, it's Conway. And it was like, eek.

But I think she was really in love with Thomas Conway.

I was going to say. It was a very toxic situation.

Well, and they had spent years together.

They had four children. You can't help who you love.

And I think she was just not willing to give up that relationship, like the idea of it again.

Yeah. Well, and I mean, she was newly with this ex. man so she's probably like i'm not like no yeah like she she basically she would answer to Kelly sometimes, but she would kind of flip back and forth.

Like she would answer, which again, a lot of these women too, and a lot of people back then had a lot of aliases they were going by.

So I think that was just another way to have different names too.

Right. So she was also suffering from Bright's disease.

What is that? Now we would call it nephritis, and it's an inflammation of the nephrons in the glomeruli, which help the kidneys produce urine.

They're part of the kidneys. So she would have probably been suffering from a lot of symptoms associated with it, including shortness of breath, back and flank pain, fluid retention in her hands and her face.

It would have been like kind of tough. Like exhaustion.

Yeah. So I had no idea that one of them was suffering from that.

So she was sick. Wow. Now, that's just interesting.

Hold on to that for me until later. You mean put it in my back pocket?

Put it in your back pocket. So they moved in together at 55 Flower and Dean Street at Cooney's Lodging House, I was going to say.

It was rough. She wore everything she owned because things were always being stolen.

And she was worried that something would get stolen.

I hope she wasn't too hot. I think it was pretty, well, this was kind of the beginning of fall at this point, I suppose.

I hope she was warm and not too hot. Yeah.

Now that's, again, that's why she was found with so many layers.

Yes. Because she was wearing them all. Deputy of the 55 Flower and Dean Street Place, Frederick William Wilkinson, said that Catherine was, quote, a very jolly woman.

She was described as a very jolly woman by a lot of people.

Very jovial. and he confirmed that she and John Kelly lived like they were married.

Later, he would be the one to give John Kelly an airtight alibi for being at the lodging home at night the evening that Catherine was murdered.

He was like, no, he was here all night. And I don't think he would have done anything.

They drifted together. They drifted like together and solo in and out of workhouses and lodging houses.

Sometimes they would be staying together.

Sometimes they wouldn't. They would spend a lot of time apart, but just drift back together again.

Or as John described it later, quote, be throwed together a lot.

She would often beg and borrow money from her daughters who were now grown.

They resented it having been part of the downward spiral that she had taken when they were young.

So that was a difficult relationship that she was navigating.

In the summer of 1888, they were common law married at this point.

Yeah. It only takes like 10 years, right?

I think it's less. Isn't it like seven? Oh, I think you might be right, actually.

Yeah, it's seven. because they were together seven years.

Oh, that makes sense. It was this summer in 1888 that they walked 40 miles together with tons of other workers from London to Kent to do hop picking. which would be used to make beer.

This was like a huge job. A lot of people from London and Whitechapel did this.

They would go do the hop picking and they would make some extra money.

This was a nice reprieve from the horrific air and conditions that they were living in in the city.

That 40-mile walk was a nice reprieve. Yeah, exactly.

I told you everything you need to know. It's true.

But this was the first time that they were apparently together, like together, together all the time and could not escape each other.

And they were not getting along that great.

Well, I was going to say, maybe that's why they weren't together together so much.

Exactly. So they ended up, they did it. They, they made a little money, not a lot.

Ended up coming back. They left September 27th without a lot to show for it, but you know.

They split up the night they arrived back at London.

Didn't split up like break up. They just kind of like went their separate ways.

Whoa. Exactly. John Kelly went to stay at the lodging house on Flower and Dean Street, and Catherine ended up having to go to a couple of workhouses and do manual labor for her stays.

Apparently, September 28th, she told the manager of Mile End Workhouse, quote, I have come back to earn the reward offered for the apprehension of the Whitechapel murderer.

I think I know him. Oh. And they were just like, okay.

They were like, who is he? And she's like, I don't know.

And then they were like, be careful not to become a victim of him out there.

And she said, oh, no fear of that. And this was on September 28th.

That's wild. And I'm sorry, what day was she killed?

And this was basically, this was the day before.

And she was like, oh, no fear of that. How strange is that?

And there's a couple other things that like weird lineups like that.

Yeah, because I think I want to say it was Annie Chapman that was talking in the kitchen of a lodging house about how scary it was.

Yeah, it was. Yeah. Now, September 29th, John Kelly and Catherine met for breakfast.

They had breakfast together, kind of went their own separate ways, but they planned to meet back up later that day.

When they did see each other again, it was around 2 p.m., Catherine said she was going to try to go to Bermondsey to see her daughter Annie and ask for money.

And she told John that she would be back in Whitechapel around 4 p.m. and we could meet up then.

I don't know how that went, but she certainly wasn't rolling back into Whitechapel at 4pm in good condition.

She was seen on something that they called Prostitutes Island.

Oh, man. where a lot of women would stand on to try to solicit clients, I suppose.

She was very drunk at this time. And according to the hidden lives of Jack the Ripper victims, she was...

Many sources say and reports say she was pretending to do an imitation of a fire engine.

Okay. Interesting tidbit I found. There was this blog, and I will link to this blog because it was really good.

It was called the History Girls Blogspot.

This is at least an interesting explanation for what Catherine was actually going through when they said she was doing a drunken impersonation of a fire engine.

This is just like a take on it because i was like what is that yeah what is a drunken imitation of a fire engine even like do you want me to do one like what would it be But would it sound like that back then?

Well, I don't know what a fire engine sounds like back then.

That's what I mean. I don't know what fire engines sounded like back then.

I don't know. So I don't know if that would be even... Because that's what I thought of.

Like, was she making siren noises? Yeah.

But I'm like... Is that what they sounded like back then?

I don't even know. I assume they would have some kind of... Well, I don't know what they say.

But I just don't know if it would sound like they did now.

Now... This is interesting. According to the writer of this blog, who I believe is named Lori, but I'm not positive, she posited that maybe due to her kidney issues... which would have left her short of breath.

Maybe she was huffing and puffing like a steam engine.

Fire trucks were run that way back then, by the way.

And she either ended up going with it because she was getting a laugh from people... who thought she was doing some kind of impersonation.

And she actually didn't mean to be causing a scene.

Or maybe she was just drunk and completely out of control and just making a lot of noise.

But... There is a possibility that she was sick and suffering, which makes the story a little different.

Instead of just being like, what? She was doing an impersonation of a fire engine?

It's like maybe she was just like not able to breathe.

Yeah. And people took that as like, that's funny.

What are you doing? And she's like, oh, I'm being a fire engine.

Like maybe it had to do with her being sick.

It could have. This just was like, it was basically like a very empathetic possible point of view to share.

And I just thought it was like a very interesting one.

And it was one that was looking at her. as less of just a drunk, you know... Person.

Person of the night. Yeah. And instead making her a human who was suffering and maybe was just going with it.

Or maybe she was just fucking hilarious.

Exactly. It's just like, basically, I kept seen the fire engine imitation thing.

And I was like, Well, I don't know what that looks like one.

And then two, I was like, I just I think that's like a different point of view and it's just interesting because we won't know but it's just something to think about right and it again reminds you to look at her as somebody who was suffering So I'll link that blog because I think it's an interesting blog and I wanted to get hit.

Well, and it's nice that somebody took the time to like consider it that way.

Right. Yeah. And she didn't say like, I know this.

She was like, yeah, you just don't know.

You know, we got to look at the fact that she did have this kidney disease.

So she was arrested that night at 830 p.m. when a police constable named George Simmons and another one named Lewis Robinson found her on the ground. on aldgate high street and she was out cold okay uh they tried to pick her up and she just like slumped back over Which also could have been hand-in-hand again with her illness.

Yeah, she was very drunk. She was shit-faced.

Yeah, I was going to say she was shit-faced here.

This was definitely not the illness, but you know...

Not good. Yeah. So she was taken to the Bishopsgate police station, very intoxicated at this time.

They asked her her name and she replied, nothing.

Okay. Which, okay. She was put in a cell to sober up because they would just put you in a cell to wait for a while and be like, you good?

And then just let you out. Girl, they still do.

It's the drunk tank. But everyone who interacted with her at the station that night said she smelled very strongly of drink. and could not stand up on her own at all.

So she was in a bad way that night. I love that they just say, Of drink.

Of drink. At 12.15 a.m. she woke up and they heard her singing softly to herself.

Aww. She was probably a little scared. And that's just what she would do.

She would sing softly to herself. Around 1230 a.m., she said, hey.

When are you going to let me out of here?

Oh, I wish they hadn't. They said, when you're able to take care of yourself, we'll let you out of here.

So around 1 a.m., they let her out. She told them before she left, they were like, we need to know your name, address.

She said her name was Marianne Kelly. Okay.

And that she lived at 6 Fashion Street in Spitalfields.

Okay. So PC George Hutt let her leave. And when she did, she turned and said, good night, old cock.

That's iconic. There are reports that she was still drunk at this time, but they just figured she couldn't go anywhere at all to get more drinks.

So they were like, she'll just go home. Oh, she had like just, like if they had just kept her a little longer.

She would have been probably around. It's really sad.

But this is interesting. She did say, and this is in the official reports everywhere you read this, she did say, I shall get a damned fine hiding when I get home.

And George Hutt replied, which I was like, okay, George.

He wrote, and serve you right. You have no right to get drunk. fuck off which that's that wasn't even like the but that's like fuck you george but also i'm like so was john kelly abusing her Maybe.

Like, was that, I'm like, who are you talking about?

Or was she just drunk and she was thinking she was going home to Thomas Conway?

Oh, yeah. Maybe she was like, oh, like, because they did say.

She was very drunk when she was leaving, or they believe she was still.

So maybe she was still drunk and thinking like back to when she lived with Thomas Conway and like, I'm going to get home and he's going to hurt me.

Or was it possible that she was thinking about going back to the workhouse and maybe somebody there?

Yeah, I don't know. upset that she was like that and you've heard her just a very strange comment I thought considering John Kelly by all accounts was not said to be an abuser hmm I mean, there are a lot of accounts though.

I guess everybody who knew him was like, I didn't know them to get into those kinds of fights.

And usually you didn't have a lot of privacy.

If you were going to get into an abusive fight, it was going to be around like eight other families in a room.

Yeah, because you're in a workhouse. So I don't know for sure, none of us do, but it's a very strange comment.

I just thought it was weird. I mean, a lot of people were hitting their wives back then.

That's the thing. And I'm like, was this just like a normal comment to make?

Probably, but like horrible. And then also he didn't like that she drank because he didn't drink.

Exactly. So maybe that was it. I don't know.

Now, it was just interesting. So at 1.35. she was spotted by witnesses Joseph Levy and Harry Harris at the corner of Duke Street and Church Passage, which was an avenue that led into Mitre Square.

That's where she would later be found. She was talking to a man, according to them, very closely.

She had her hand on his chest. He was said to be medium build, about five foot seven and somewhere in the area of 30 years old.

He was fair complected with a mustache. We heard this in a lot of the other ones.

He was wearing a grayish jacket with a red scarf or neck handkerchief and a gray cloth hat with a peak.

Heard that before too. This is a hat that's almost like a scally cap, like almost like a Peaky Blinder hat.

But it's got like a little more height to it.

Okay. Like almost like a newsboy cap, I guess you would say.

Like one of those. Yeah, yeah. You know?

Yep. um i'm trying like is that what that yeah you're right now levy said that he when he they passed by them Levy had said he said to Harris, look there, I don't like going home by myself when I see those characters about.

He later said he was like, I wasn't nervous or like thinking they were going to hurt me.

He just figured seeing a man and a woman seemingly chatting closely in a dark alley at almost 2 a.m. probably meant they were not up to anything wholesome.

So he was like, that's all I was saying.

I didn't think they were threatening in any way, either one of them.

1.45 a.m., only about 10 minutes later. She was discovered ravaged and disemboweled on the street in the dark.

Now, while removing her clothing, doctors found a piece of her ear when it dropped out of the fabric of her clothing.

Just dropped on the ground. Oh. Yeah. Dr. Brown performed the autopsy, but present to observe the whole thing was Dr. George William Sequeira, Dr. Phillips. and Dr. William Sanders.

Now, when he began the examination, he noticed that both eyelids had been sliced open, like vertically.

The left one had a quarter inch slice through the lower lid and the right was sliced all the way through.

There was also a very deep laceration that began at the bridge of her nose and extended across her right cheek to her jaw.

It had cut down to the bone in her face.

Wow. The tip of her nose was sliced off, and her upper lip was also cut in half down to the gum, which was sliced underneath it.

Her mouth was sliced at the right side of it up into her cheek and both of her cheeks underneath her eyes. had little triangular cuts that the skin flapped over.

Okay. Like very deliberate cuts, triangles. under her eyes, which was not seen in any other ones.

No. Now, the cut to the abdomen that completely eviscerated her... was jagged and described as zigzagged.

But from a sketch I saw in Scotland Yard Investigates, it looks to me like more of an attempt to avoid slicing the belly button in half.

And why would you not want to do that? So this is what, so here's the thing.

The cut extends from the breastbone down to the groin pelvic bone, and it takes a quick detour from its straight path when it hits that navel.

And I'm just speaking from my experience with eviscerating, but when we would start the eviscerations, and begin with the Y-shaped incision, we would intentionally divert the cut around the belly button before bringing it back down to the pelvic area.

It was just a thing we did to not split the navel in half.

Okay. That's all. To me, this indicates that it could possibly be someone who has performed an autopsy before.

And their muscle memory causes them to eviscerate like that because they've been doing it like that.

I know this is murder and not a clinical evisceration, but if they are used to doing that, it may just be habit.

If I'm going to cut a body open, this is how I do it.

Just doesn't even think about it. Just whoop, takes that detour.

I would never just I would never my I don't think my brain would let me after hundreds of autopsies. cut straight down through that navel.

It would be an automatic detour around that navel.

Yeah. that was interesting to me seeing that.

Cause I was like, wait a second, that's how I cut.

And I, that's, and that's just how I've been taught to cut.

And was he taught to cut like that? Yeah.

Possibly. As you're saying this, I'm just trying to figure out who this guy is.

Now the reporter... The report even says that the cut was straight down to within a quarter of an inch from the navel and then went horizontal. and around the left side of the navel before coming back around and going straight back down again, leaving that navel untouched.

Yeah. I think they said in one of the books I saw, it was like on a tongue of skin, they called it.

Sure. To make me even more suspicious that this was someone with at least a medical background, they had removed her left kidney.

Cleanly. Like, that's also weird because she had kidney problems.

Exactly. They had sliced through the renal capsule and removed it.

The renal capsule is like this thin layer that is like encapsulating the kidney. okay dr brown said he believed this was definitely someone with knowledge of anatomy and dissection because they had to know where the kidney was located first of all which i don't know where the fuck my kidneys.

It's not easy to find when you open from the front.

Because their kidneys are closer to the back, right?

Yeah. And so when you open from the front, you got to look for them.

They're not just right there for you to see.

Like they're not just like hanging above something.

Are they like in the middle or are they toward your lower back?

They're towards the lower. Right. And they're not easy to find.

Part of her uterus was also removed against, another uterus removed, and the killer took these two things with him.

And part of the uterus. Yeah, like I guess he took most of the uterus, but it wasn't as clean as the other one was.

But the kidney was clean. They had cut it at the right vessel.

They had removed it in a way that wasn't just torn out of the body.

She had kidney disease. Was this someone who knew who she was, knew she had a kidney disease, and did that to kind of... Which would be a doctor.

Yeah. Also, her liver had been stabbed.

Her vagina and rectum had been lacerated and stabbed.

The killer had sliced the right thigh up to the labia and separated that as well to create one big flap of skin.

The pancreas and spleen were also lacerated and stabbed.

And like the others, she had died from the hemorrhage of the severed carotid artery and everything else was done post-mortem.

And so... So you said the pancreas, the spleen, and the liver were stabbed.

Because you first said the liver, so I thought, oh, is this somebody that knows her, knows she's a heavy drinker? and stabbing the liver to put that out there.

But the pancreas and spleen, I mean, it all works together.

It's all kind of. Yeah. One big happy family in there.

So it's like you're going to... But it's just... And I don't know if those were like frenzied stabs, but... Yeah.

Yeah. No matter what, he took the kidney, he took the uterus, he sliced off her ear.

Only part of her ear came out of her clothing.

Would her kidneys have looked different because they... They would have had like a shriveled kind of appearance and pale.

So again, you wonder if it's like this guy has some kind of like... anatomy knowledge definitely has some kind of anatomy knowledge but then also like some kind of interest too yeah and like he would want that kidney for some reason exactly because that's Because I'm like, okay, so did he know that she had a kidney problem or when he opened her up because he has this medical knowledge, then he realized she did and he just wanted that kidney?

And it's like... Where is the light coming from?

How are you seeing this shit? How are you finding that fucking kidney in her body in a matter of under 15 minutes?

And the only thing that you can think of is a lantern, but nobody saw anybody with a lantern.

Is he holding a lantern in one hand while also using, or is he placing it somewhere?

Like, this is done on the ground, obviously.

So is that why he... Well, he does the windpipe thing to silence them, but also to kill them quickly, maybe to put his lantern on them?

Maybe. I don't know. Possibly. That's a little far-fetched, but...

It's just like, what the fuck is this guy?

He has to have some light. There's no way that he's doing this without light.

Oh. Hell no. So what would be a light source back then other than a lantern?

Just a lantern. Right. That's all you would have.

Or like a match, which like that doesn't make... That makes even less sense.

Yeah. So it's like... What the fuck? Like, was he, he must have just placed it down on her or on next to her.

Right. But that's not even a lot of light.

Like, that's a lot of work to do in very dim light.

Very quickly. Well, in this, I was just going to say the speed at which he did it would make you think that he's somebody who's done this for a while.

And that he... The thing is, it's like he went in there with a plan.

He went in there looking for a kidney, it seems to me, because it's like...

I don't think he's just opening up and being like, doop-a-doo, because the kidney isn't going to be the first thing that jumps out at you.

Because again, we said they're closer to your back.

Exactly. He's opening through the front.

He's going to have to like... Sorry, but dig.

Well, no, he is. And it's also in a capsule of its own.

It's not out there. Which he knew. And like sliced it open without, you know, and I just don't think he would have just randomly dug in there.

And somehow found the renal capsule and then decided to open it up and take a kidney?

No, it doesn't make a lot of sense. You don't have a lot of time.

He had to have been going in there with a plan.

I'm getting the kidney out. So then we're back to, because I had said maybe he just saw that her kidneys were fucked up.

So no, that wasn't the case. He had a plan that he was going in there for a kidney.

I don't know why, but he went in there for a reason.

I just don't feel like the kidney would be the thing you'd rip out first.

It just doesn't feel right to me. Yeah. Like, I want to think that he must have known her medical history.

Yeah. But then... Like, how did he know that she was going to be there when she was?

You know what I mean? Well, that's the other thing.

Was he following her? It's like... But then you would think... if he was following her that night and she did end up in jail, he probably would have given up and started walking home.

Well, and then there's also the fact that there were a few witnesses who said that John Kelly... told them that he heard that she was in jail, that she had been arrested that night.

And he was like, oh, she'll be out by the morning.

Right. Mm hmm. So he word around town was that she had gotten arrested.

So maybe someone waited outside that jail for.

Yeah. Because I'm sorry, was this close by the jail?

This was close, yeah. So she hadn't walked like crazy far because I think it was only like a few minute walk.

This is a fucking stump I kid. It's... It's a fascinating case.

Because her in particular, I do feel like he knew her or knew of her medical history.

But then it's also the case of like... Because the kidney thing is just weird, dude.

He also escalates each time. That's the other reason I don't believe Elizabeth Stride is part of this series.

And if she was, then that was not his intention was just to do that.

Right. Because if you look at it. It goes from, you know, Polly Marion Nichols was the first one.

She was ravaged for sure. But then Annie Chapman had the intestines.

The intestines. Then we get to Catherine Eddowes, who is ravaged.

And then the last one we're going to get to is the crescendo.

Mm-hmm. So to me, it felt like it was like he was ratcheting it up a notch each time intentionally.

Yeah. And this was, I don't know, but it's just really wild to me.

And like I said, in all of these cases, the mutilation is done post-mortem.

He kills them right away with that severed windpipe.

How quickly would they die from a severed windpipe?

Very quickly. Very quickly. Yeah, like, because you would just not be able to breathe.

Okay. So that would... And then, like, bleeding out, because he would sever those carotid arteries, and boom.

So you'd bleed out very quickly. At least...

At least they were not alive for any of the mutilation.

But during the examination, they also found the apron that she was wearing on top of everything, that like one layer.

It had been cut through with a knife and part of it was missing.

Like part of it, like there was a piece of fabric that wasn't there.

So soon after this, Constable Alfred Long found the missing sliced apron piece on Goulston Street, which was only about a 10 minute walk from the murder scene.

The piece of apron also appeared to have blood on it, but not just on it.

It appeared that someone had wiped blood onto it, possibly from a bloody knife.

Oh, like he had maybe taken it and smeared, like taken it to use to clean the knife.

Upon further inspection, this is interesting, and this points back to the anti-Semitism kind of thing that was going on. he found writing in chalk right next to where they found this apron, like down a passageway.

And it looked like it had been just written in chalk, like very recently.

And it said, and I quote, the Jews are not the men that will be blamed for nothing.

The Jews are not the men that will be blamed for nothing.

Which to me is someone trying to make it seem like to blame it on Jewish people.

Like this is somebody who's trying to make it look like a Jewish person wrote that.

Like we're not going to believe you're lame for anything.

And why I point this out is, one, to point out the anti-Semitism that was going on here and how they were really trying to pin this on a Jewish person.

It just for being Jewish, like no other reason.

And regardless of who did this or what it meant, it was evidence because it was found right next to the apron and it seemed to be very recently put there.

Right. Now, a city detective, Daniel Halsey, stayed with the writing and stated to the other officers on scene that he would remain there, and he was like, until it gets lighter outside.

Then we'll try to take a photograph of it.

It rained, didn't it? No. It rained stupidity is what it rained.

Oh, okay. Sir Charles Warren. Okay. showed up a little before 5 a.m. and told them it had to be erased from the wall immediately because people would see it and it would be dangerous for people.

And he was not willing to wait. even less than an hour for light to come.

He was like, erase it. Why can't you just keep people away from the area, dude?

Halsey begged him to wait until light so they could photograph it before destroying it.

And he was like, I'll stay here with it.

We can even cover it, like, if you want.

Like, just, we have to keep it here so we can get it in evidence.

Yeah. You can't just write it down. We need photograph of it.

Yeah. Well, and then like, I mean, handwriting analysis back then, like, I don't know, but at least you could like have.

Have him write something and look at it.

Because as we'll see, some letters come in later.

I know. And so Sir Charles Warren was like, no, they're going to wreck this house.

They're going to riot. No, we're not. Now this was not a house.

It was a like huge apartment building. And this was in like a stairway leading to the apartment building.

They wouldn't have torn this place down.

And even in complete Jack the Ripper, the Rumbolo one, he says the same thing.

He's like, that was bullshit. That was a bullshit excuse for him to use.

And... So Halsey was like, come on, man.

And then Halsey and the other officers suggested, why don't we just rub out the word Jews on here so that it's not...

You know, it's not immediately igniting anything.

Like, why don't we rub that out or cover it?

Everything else stays. We take a picture of that.

Please, dude. And he said, absolutely not.

And in fact, according to the acting commissioner of the city police, Major Smith, He said that Sir Charles Warren erased the entire piece of writing himself before they were able to get any picture of it.

Don't know what that was about. Do you only learn about him in criminal justice school because of this case or other cases as well? many other cases, like you learn about like Bloody Sunday and you learn about like, he was head of the, you know, the Metropolitan Police Force.

He kind of turned it very militarized, which was like a whole So he was not the best.

So it's like, eek. But by this time, acting head of the CID, Robert Anderson, our little Switzerland buddy who's on holiday.

Does he come back? He does. Okay. He was forced to return back to London from Paris where he had traveled to be closer during his doctor mandated holiday.

And he literally landed in Paris the night of the double event oh shit so they were like you need to come home and he was like oh fuck So the home secretary told him, I hold you solely responsible for solving these murders.

And he was like, hey, I just got back from my mental health break.

Hey, guys. He said, and I quote, I hold myself responsible to take all legitimate means to find him.

So he was like, I will do my best. But I will do my best.

And in response to this... Because now he's feeling a lot of pressure and he's feeling a lot of like, oh shit.

Anderson suggested that any sex worker found outside after midnight should be arrested.

Or they should be told that they will not be protected by police if they remain outside.

Okay. Which I was like, uh, no. Luckily everyone was like, dude.

Yeah. Chill. I said, just to be clear, I was like, okay.

Okay. I wasn't like, okay. Yeah, great. Good idea.

No, everybody was like, I think you need to go back on vacation.

Like, calm down. You're like, Why are we punishing the sex workers for getting murdered?

For getting murdered. Are you joking right now?

But just to eat and get a roof over there.

Maybe we could create some jobs for them.

But that didn't happen. They were like, no, let's not do that.

No, never. So this is what brings us to, and this is where we'll end up kind of ending it on this episode.

I don't think it's long enough. I know. I think you should just keep going.

Oh, I could go farther. The letters. I'm going to briefly touch upon them in this part, and then we will talk about them more in the next one.

For some reason, ever since I've known about Jack the Ripper, which obviously you like introduced me to this case, I have always found the letters to be one of the most fascinating parts.

They are. They're fascinating. I mean, like, from hell, that's... Come on.

Like, okay, Axeman. Yeah, exactly. You tried, but...

Now, even back in the 1800s, people were writing hoax letters and being dicks in the middle of a murder investigation.

People are always going to people. The trolls are always going to troll.

The trolls of back then. But there are some letters, very few, that seemed like they could be real.

So one that I think might be the real deal is the Dear Boss letter.

Yes. Now, this was sent right before the double event, right?

Right before it was sent. And it was postmarked before it.

It was sent to the Central News Agency in London on September 28th, 1888.

So this was two days before. Two days before.

Two days. Or one day. Excuse me. One day before.

One day. Two days. One day before. This is like drunk history.

It was. dated on the letter, September 25th, like he had written it on September 25th.

And the details make me think it could be real.

It was given to police by a reporter, Thomas John Bulling.

So this is what it says. Dear boss, I keep on hearing the police have caught me, but they won't fix me just yet.

I have laughed when they look so clever and talk about being on the right track.

That joke about leather apron gave me real fits.

I'm down on whores and I shan't quit ripping them till I do get buckled.

Grand work the last job was. I gave the lady no time to squeal.

How can they catch me now? I love my work and want to start again.

You will soon hear of me with the funny little games.

I saved some of the proper red stuff in a ginger beer bottle over the last job to write with, but it went thick like glue and I can't use it.

Red ink is fit enough, I hope. Ha ha. The next job, and this is where I was like, whoa, the next job I do, I shall clip the lady's ears off and send them to police officers just for jolly, wouldn't you?

Keep this letter till I do a bit more work, then give it out straight.

My knife is nice and sharp. I want to get to work right away, if I get a chance.

Good luck. Yours truly, Jack the Ripper.

Don't mind me giving the trade name. Wasn't good enough to post this before I got all the red ink off my hands.

Curse it. No luck yet. They say I am a doctor now.

Ha ha. He said, I shall clip the lady's ears off.

And he did. He clipped a lady's ear off.

He didn't he didn't send them. But I don't know if it's because he maybe couldn't find them.

They were stuck in. And here's another thing.

They were stuck in her clothing. They didn't find them. until they it fell out of her clothes maybe he was searching for them and couldn't find him and had to hurt people and had to get out of there before he could grab it But it's weird to me that he cut her ear off.

Yeah. And this was written before that happened.

I think this one is definitely real. Very weird.

And this letter was posted in the media because the police were desperate at the time.

I think it would have been a lot better to hold this one close to the chest and see if another communication came in. without the press involved, but hey, I'm not part of the Metropolitan Police Force in 1888.

Proudly spoken. Sir Charles Warren was. He thought that this should be put in the press.

I just don't agree. Now, another communication was sent posted October 1st, 1888.

So it was meant to seem like it was written right after the double event, like literally within 12 hours.

It was a postcard that looked like the original letter, but had what appeared to be blood smeared all over it.

This one said, I was not codding, dear boss, when I gave you the tip.

You'll hear about saucy Jack's work tomorrow.

Double event this time. Number one squealed a bit, couldn't finish straight off.

Had not time to get ears for police. Thanks for keeping last letter back till I got to work again.

Jack the Ripper. What do you think about this one?

That one... If it is truly sent the day after the event, then I don't really know because it was posted in the media, like some of the details.

Right. So they could have. I think this one's like me.

Saucy Jack. I don't know about that one.

He's like a silly guy when it comes to his writing, I mean.

Yeah, he's saucy. But like, I don't know if he would refer to himself as saucy, Jack.

He's not well, bitch. That one I don't feel interesting, but I don't feel completely attached to it.

And it's the kind of thing where it's like, I don't know, because the event, it was already put out there.

It was already there, so it's hard to say.

It's really hard to say that one. I could see it being... him and i could also see why it wouldn't be him exactly that one i feel like i'm like very in the middle i'm on the fence with that one the dear boss one i feel pretty it's pretty compelling The Dear Boss one, I have always been like the best jock.

I'm a Dear Boss truther, I think. I feel pretty right on that one.

Dear Boss truther. And the letter that still captivates those who read this case is definitely the From Hell letter.

Yep. It was a letter not received by the central news agency.

Instead, this one was sent to the head of the Whitechapel vigilance committee, George Lusk.

The letter was sent from hell and it contained part of a kidney.

I think that one was real. That one I'm going to go with was real, and we are going to talk about it in part three.

Part four. Part four. Part 65. Whichever one we are on.

We hope you keep listening. Yeah, we're going to cover it on the next one.

And I think we'll be done after the next part.

I'm pretty sure. I am not so sure. Get me out of Whitechapel.

Get me out of here. All right. Folks, we hope that you keep listening.

And we hope you keep it weird. Weird. But also whether you do an episode of Jack the Ripper that lasts 218 things.

Two hours and 18 minutes. Sorry. I said 218 things.

You sure did. You sure did. Thank you. If you like Morbid, you can listen early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.

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[The Morbid Jack the Ripper Series: Analyzing the Double Event and Its Victims]-[Episode 346: Jack the Ripper Part 3]

📋 Summary

The Morbid Jack the Ripper Series: Part 3 – The Double Event

The Discrepancies in the Annie Chapman Investigation

The Life and Death of Elizabeth Stride

The Double Event: Stride and Eddowes

The "Lipski" Mystery and Police Incompetence

Conclusion: The Shadow of the Letters

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript