Don: 0:27

And and. That's why you can't trust clowns with homemade salsa.

Ron: 0:32

No, I knew that that's old news. Well, way to be an expert. Ron's a know-it-all I grew up in a Mexican household, I know everything about salsa.

Doug: 0:44

It's a qualification. That's cool.

Don: 0:47

Welcome back to the Uncannery everybody. My name is Don, I'm Ron Doug here, and we're back again to chat with you all. Hey, how was your Thanksgiving?

Doug: 0:56

It was well. It's too stereotypical to say how thankful I am.

Ron: 1:02

Oh, man Boy, do you want to tell us how much you?

Doug: 1:08

respect us again.

Don: 1:10

It's uh thankful day, not respect day absolutely where the pilgrim had and, uh, go out and shoot a turkey with a blunderbuss can.

Doug: 1:21

Can I just drop the controversial opinion immediately that turkey's not that great.

Ron: 1:26

No, I'm 100% with you. I've been saying this for years. Thank you, I'm glad I finally found someone. Don, where do you stay on turkey?

Don: 1:33

I'm a pro-turkey, but only on Thanksgiving.

Doug: 1:35

Because you want the dry bird once a year.

Don: 1:38

No, if you know how to cook it it's not dry, you should come to.

Ron: 1:46

Thanksgiving at my house. It's good. I have had good turkeys before 100%, but my wife's family does the best thing with the turkey, which is like the better meal is the day after Thanksgiving Sandwiches.

Don: 1:53

Yep.

Ron: 1:53

And they get together and they make those club sandwiches, and that's really what the turkey's for, I find.

Don: 1:58

Give me the ham on.

Ron: 1:59

Thanksgiving, and let me have the old turkey, between sourdough bread and with a piece of bacon.

Doug: 2:05

Full Thanksgiving spread. You guys sleep through the entire day just to get to the next one.

Ron: 2:10

Parle on the sandwiches I remember being a kid and like hating Thanksgiving and being like boy there's no toys and I just got to go to my grandpa's house and he sucks and he's going to ruin the turkey we all know this is pre-Christmas. Okay, we had to dress up and it was very like you know, children should be seen, not heard, kind of you know family.

Don: 2:28

At the time, you had to dress up like in costume.

Ron: 2:30

Well, we had to dress like fancy, you know like Sunday best type stuff, and we never had to do that for Christmas or literally any other holiday. So it was just sort of stuffy. I suppose were my earliest memories of Thanksgiving. But I'm happy to report I've come 180 on my views of Thanksgiving. I love it very much. I'm very glad to have this opportunity. I'm very respectful of this opportunity to be with people I love.

Don: 2:53

You know we're not having Thanksgiving now we don't have to hold hands or anything. I hate to tell you guys, but I did try to make a turkey.

Doug: 3:00

It's coming out in the next five minutes. I hope that you're ready.

Don: 3:12

I thought I a turkey. It's coming out in the next five minutes, so I hope that you're ready. I thought I heard something. It's gonna be dry, let's get a pizza. Oh, speaking of killing things like birds, um, I was, uh, I've been scrolling through my uh, my podcast app, trying to find new things listen to on the way to work and, uh, and you know, what you can't escape is, you cannot escape a podcast about true crime like try which like they, you.

Don: 3:29

They just pop up, they're like a, they're like a plague yeah, yeah, the, the.

Ron: 3:35

That's like a inherent human interest, right? You can always rely on it. Right, it must be like before there were podcasts. Was there a radio station that just talked?

Don: 3:43

about murders it was called the news. Yeah, yeah, I guess, yeah, yeah absolutely or unsolved mysteries.

Doug: 3:50

Right, unsolved mysteries was awesome. Yeah, everybody's gonna get into that.

Ron: 3:54

That guy was so smoky right yeah, cops was fun, but cops was a different thing. The cops is never like truly horrifying, like intellectually it is, but not but not like viscerally or it makes me sad for humanity yeah, yeah, absolutely yeah.

Doug: 4:14

It was truly filled with crime, though I can at least tell you that I remember like being a kid and being like dad.

Ron: 4:20

Why are they outside another motel in gainesville? That's the only place that has crime.

Doug: 4:26

Ron, don't go there. We just lost all of our Gainesville listeners.

Ron: 4:32

I want to apologize on behalf of the uncannery. No, no, they're back. They just want to be on the map we got you. Sorry, don you were saying well, no, cause.

Don: 4:39

It's interesting point that you bring out, because there is like a moment in history where where crime becomes narrative and I don't think like if you go back a few hundred years, like I don't think you have crime as the narrative, the, the things you talk about at parties, like there's gossip about crime and it's a little bit scurrilous, but it's not, uh, uh, it's not the, the entertainment that people are looking for. That it does. It has become today, I think that, right. So you listen to a podcast to pass the time, but to be entertained by the story of these horrible things that happen to other people or that other people have committed um.

Don: 5:13

So I think that's an interesting moment and actually we're going to talk about that very moment where that that shift happens, where crime becomes story. But before we get there, um talk about why people like true crime. So you bring up a lot of good points, ron. I also think there's a little bit of psychological distance that it allows you to experiment with. We just talked about terror a little while ago right. And hearing like these are real horror stories.

Ron: 5:43

They're not fictional horror stories but you're still experiencing it vicariously from a safe distance and yeah, I always wondered if it was considered instructive in some way right Like don't do this and crime won't happen.

Don: 5:55

Sort of right.

Ron: 5:57

Like a lot of the people I know who are very interested in true crime media are women, and then, and then it's like, I think, partly a release of anxiety for them, um, uh, like, uh, I don't know, like I I used to listen I'm not trying to like this like, say, I'm too cool for true crime, like some of the first podcasts I listened to were also true crime podcasts, but at some point I started kind of getting just sort of like feeling kind of gross about how, yeah, that that entertainment aspect that you mentioned, don, that we were like taking like the victims are frequently the people who get sort of forgotten paradoxically in the true crime stories. Right, they are merely, you know, agents who have things done unto them. And then we are interested in the actor who is the criminal.

Doug: 6:48

You're not wrong because the victim. I think that there's a certain now it's interesting that you said a release of that anxiety. Listening to that, my poor wife that I'm going to cite now, obsessed, just absolutely loves it, and I think that so many of the lock the doors even when I'll be back in five minutes, like just go into the car. I think a lot of that comes from that to a certain degree, and I I think that there is this unbelievable, could this happen to me too? I think it's interesting. I agree with you that how could somebody ever do this, like in the killer, and then we kind of I don't know if fetish size is exactly the right word, but maybe to a certain degree, fetish size like the idea. But also I think that there's a certain amount of projection of what if this was me, cause this seems like the idyllic it. They were living in completely normal life and then they met Ed Gein, you know, like or whoever.

Doug: 7:44

Whoever decides to show up, it becomes very disturbing, and so I don't know if that's I.

Ron: 7:50

I don't have anything to back that up but it kind of reminds me of the what was it this summer, or maybe further back that, the, the kind of a Tik TOK conversation. Every now and then it seems like there's this sort of uh, gender studies question that grabs the popular discourse. You know the would you choose a bear or a man question from a while ago.

Doug: 8:11

And then I didn't hear that. You didn't hear this one Really excited.

Ron: 8:13

The idea was like hey, if you're, if you're a woman and you're hiking in nature I don't remember the setting exactly who would you rather have to? Who would you rather encounter alone in the woods, a man or a bear? And the sensational kind of the.

Ron: 8:28

the revelation was that most women were like I would much rather encounter a bear the idea being that, like, yes, it's a dangerous animal, but in some ways it is more predictable than than a man, uh, or, or at least um, their past experience had taught them to be more fearful of the power that men hold over them than a wild animal does. And lots of people blew up at this, agreeing, disagreeing, being angry, blah, blah, blah. But the one I was thinking of was there was also the thing about like, how often do men think about ancient Rome?

Doug: 9:01

Oh, yeah, yeah, that one I knew about and I remember having that conversation.

Ron: 9:05

I was like I think about Rome a lot. I mean, I feel like Rome has popped up on every single one of these podcasts and I think the point of that one was like men are are afforded more frivolous thoughts than women, and I think true crime is part of that. Right Like there is like, and I think true crime is part of that. Right Like there is, like I can I feel safe walking at night in my neighborhood, right?

Ron: 9:29

And my wife does not, and many women do not, and so I think the preoccupation with true crime is does just speak to the differences in our thoughts and concerns and priorities, sometimes right when we have this time to imagine something. I like to think about the emperors of ancient Rome and the mistakes they made that led to the downfall of their civilization. And other people are like I just want to get home safely tonight, you know, mm-hmm.

Don: 10:01

Mm-hmm. So what do you think was the first big crime? That was like the, the true crime story, that that everyone was following worldwide, like it was. It was big news and it was finally the moment where journalism was making crime into entertainment sinking of the lusitania, but earlier than that.

Doug: 10:27

I'm earlier than. We need a global new.

Ron: 10:29

When does global news happen?

Doug: 10:30

yeah, because I'm thinking the king was poisoned, but that's probably only regional yeah, yeah, yeah, you're talking about the 1930s.

Don: 10:38

No, because that wasn't news until just like a couple weeks ago no, no, no, no.

Doug: 10:43

I would imagine imagine like something medieval in a sense. But again, I don't think news is traveling that fast.

Don: 10:49

No, I don't think so either. I think it's gotta be much later than that, because news wasn't news back then right. News was just a story you happened to hear after a huge train of people told it to each other.

Ron: 11:02

And it probably changed five times so that now there's a monster in it which makes it much more interesting.

Doug: 11:08

Yeah, was not poisoned the dragon, took him, absolutely, absolutely yeah, um first big it's a it's a murder.

Don: 11:16

I'll tell you it's.

Ron: 11:17

It's a murder.

Don: 11:17

It's a murder spree. What's the first big murder that the news would have been interested in as an institution?

Ron: 11:26

Jackie Boy, which one Jackie Boy, saucy Jack, jackie Robinson, yeah, murdered those Dodgers.

Doug: 11:35

Definitely murdered a baseball or two. I'll tell you that.

Ron: 11:40

No, Jack the Ripper right, Is he the first one? He is.

Doug: 11:44

Ah yeah, I know about him too. Good job, Good pull, got him.

Don: 11:47

So yeah, because Jack the Ripper murders occur in 1888. We've got telegraphs now that are spread across the Atlantic, so news can get to the United States from England as well as elsewhere across Europe. So it's actually a series of murder that that people are following in real time.

Doug: 12:06

Okay.

Don: 12:07

Uh, as as real as real time could be back in 1888. Um, so I've done a little bit of reading about Jack the Ripper and I don't I don't know what your levels of expertise are about Jack the Ripper what do you guys know about? Uh, about Jack, or about the? Uh, the murders that are attributed to him?

Doug: 12:23

I've got. Uh, the film was from hell, correct was?

Ron: 12:28

that the uh don's. This is the most disappointed.

Doug: 12:33

He's been in you yet, you peasant uh well, no, I was gonna list everything, so is it from hell?

Ron: 12:42

from hell is from hell, but I know it as the it's a. It's a graphic novel, right.

Don: 12:46

Alan it is more than the film.

Ron: 12:49

I've been told to read from hell. I never have Okay.

Don: 12:53

Well, it's a graphic novel, Don't you just look at the pictures? Yes, it's still a reading experience. Now I'm disappointed in what a surprise.

Ron: 13:00

We were raised on graphic novels Don yeah, yeah.

Doug: 13:06

Heard about it from. I think I was exposed to it a bit in, yeah, talking about media in history classes and then taking a trip to London in which I think we weren't doing a guided tour. But I think we were told by the people that we were at the hotel with, if you're interested in going through the alleyways, that uh, jack the ripper made many famous killings. They're these ones. And I instantly looked at nikki and she said, yeah, we got to check it out, which is shocking to me because, yeah, normally she'd be too freaked out to see those.

Ron: 13:45

That's what I got. I know probably less. I've definitely like heard this podcast a couple of times, like I feel like it's a podcast right of passage and I'm glad we finally are making ours.

Don: 13:55

Um, uh crossing the Rubicon. Yeah, to bring up Rome.

Doug: 14:00

Hey, check the box. Good to be here.

Ron: 14:05

I know the famous thing about it is that he was never caught right, and so there's still many sort of extant theories he's out there.

Don: 14:14

Lock your doors, hide your wife.

Ron: 14:18

There's still many extant theories about who he was right, and I've actually never really understood why Jack the Ripper is such an important crime story. Is it because this is he's kind of the first? Is he sort of? Is he a template for other crime stories to come? Or was he? Were the crimes actually so horrific and have not yet been matched?

Don: 14:34

and blah, blah, blah they've been matched, but, um, but I think the the part you're saying about being the first real story about it, that's. That's really the key, because the newspapers really are making a story out of the, this series of murders and uh, and popularizing it and bringing it to the public's attention in a way that, like, like, murder has been a thing for thousands of years, Right and, and nobody has really cared about them. But these, this particular set of five, somehow captured the imagination of literally the world and continues to today. We need to take a little tangent for a second before we get any further into the details that we're going to talk about. Sure, Because I want to credit Hallie Rubenhold, who is an author of a book called the Five the Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper so it's a 2019 book the untold lives of the women killed by Jack the Ripper Uh, so it's 2019 book.

Don: 15:28

She is a, an American, British historian, so a an American who is a historian of British history, Um and uh, and she wrote this book specifically to to try to change the conversation about Jack Um, because for for a long, long time, the focus has been on solving the very question that you brought up Like he's never been. We don't know who he is, Um, he's never been uh been caught. Uh. There's been over a hundred suspects, um that were um suggested over time. Uh, when they were initially doing the investigation, they interviewed over 2000, um people to get information from them, and so that idea of who is he has been like this, the unattainable quest, for a long time.

Ron: 16:11

There's people who call themselves ripperologists who that used to be a surfer, I think. How hard does he rip?

Don: 16:19

he's a ripperologist who study the crimes and continue to look for clues and put forward possible suspects and possible explanations. And what Hallie Rubenhold is proposing in her book is that for two things. One is that it's futile to do that because it's been so long since the crimes occurred that there's no chance that we would ever be able to find anything conclusive occurred that there's no chance that we would ever be able to find anything conclusive.

Don: 16:50

But I think, more importantly, what what her project is is elevating the lives of the victims rather than glamorizing the life of the murderer, yeah and, uh, and, and, rather than just sort of dehumanizing them and dismissing them as the you know, the, the chattel, the, the of the of the real event, making sure that their stories are the ones that are actually what people focus on. It's definitely cool.

Ron: 17:09

Yeah, yeah, and that's like what we said about right, like that's. And I'm sure there probably are true crime. I don't want to like lump all true crime media outlets and podcasts and shows together. Maybe there is a change in in that kind of genre to to do that, to to center the victims and sort of memorialize them better.

Doug: 17:28

And.

Ron: 17:28

I'm glad that this book seems to be on that on that cusp All right.

Don: 17:35

So that aside and and full respect to to Ruben holds project, and I think she's doing a good thing, but for our story today we do need to talk a little bit about about the crimes, and do you guys know how many murders are included in the Jack the Ripper canon?

Ron: 17:52

I don't know no.

Don: 17:54

So there's, there's five for sure. Um, so they're. They're referred to as the canonical five, and their names are Marianne Nichols, annie Chapman, elizabeth Stride, catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly, one of the. Well, do you know what their professions were? They were prostitutes right or at least some of them are.

Don: 18:12

That was what I remember and that's what everybody says about them. And again go back to Ms Rubenhold. One of the more controversial claims that she makes is that there's actually only evidence of one of them, mary Jane Kelly, actually working as a sex worker. Okay, um, and that what her claim is, and, uh, and, and I don't have any information one way or another to support her or refute her, so I will take her at her. Um, at her word, is that the reason that all of the others are referred to as prostitutes is because that's how they're recorded in police records. Um, uh, so they were all arrested at some point and when you are an indigent woman alone on the streets, probably inebriated, that's how you were referred to in police records, whether or not you were actually engaged in sex work at the time.

Ron: 19:03

So wow, was this a so that they were they charging them with prostitution, or was it just a plain old?

Don: 19:13

like misogyny, like were they using this as?

Ron: 19:15

a further means to criminalize these people, or was this just how they were? I?

Don: 19:20

think primarily the second, but yes to both okay okay so yeah, it was part of the the charges that against them, but it was mostly just a description of who they were so that if they were arrested again it was on their record and now we can do whatever we want.

Ron: 19:33

Okay, um, they all happen between august and november of 1888.

Don: 19:35

All five of there. There are a. It was on their record and now we can do whatever we want. Okay, all right. Um, they all happen between August and November of 1888. All five of them. There are a couple outlier murders a little bit earlier and a couple later that are less, uh, sure about. Uh, whether or not they are are are part of his handiwork. Um, but uh, what about the name Jack the Ripper? Do you do you imagine that that was something that was added on later? Was that something that he came up with before?

Ron: 20:01

he started You've got to brand everything first. No, I'm a Ripperologist. He said um, uh, I thought that it was uh the. The crimes are very violent, right Like uh, I don are very violent, right like I don't. Do they actually involve?

Doug: 20:14

I'm assuming they're knives as opposed to uh firearm yeah it was a sharp instrument for sure yeah, I would think that that would be tabloid.

Don: 20:23

Uh, you know addition so, uh, first murder is august 31st of 1888 and uh, the second murder is september 8th 1888. And then there's a little pause and there's a letter that's now called the dear boss letter that was sent to the central news agency in in London on September 27th and and in that letter a person claims to be the murderer and and signs the letter, jack the Ripper.

Ron: 20:54

So it actually is uh coming from?

Don: 20:57

now there's a possibility that that letter was a hoax. The, the, the police and news agencies were getting quite a few letters that have been shown to be hoaxes or shown to be forgeries. Um, even the ones that, uh, I have seen that, that are claimed to be from the, you know, claimed to be um, authentic the handwriting is completely different between them.

Don: 21:18

So, um, so it's. It's hard to tell where it came from, but that's where the name came from and I think that's an important date. So it's just, it's received again on September 27th 1888, but we uh we need to talk for a second about um September 30th 1888. Actually, we'll start with September 29th 1888. Okay, all right. So so far, um, we have had um uh two murders. So we've had Mary uh Marianne Nichols on August 31st and Annie Chapman on September 8th. On the night of September 30th uh, a woman named Catherine Eddowes is arrested for public integration at 8 30 PM. Um, just outside uh the Bishop's gate um uh police station. That location is actually important because where she's arrested, she's arrested by the? Um the city police, the city of London police, and their procedures are different than the metropolitan police. If she had been arrested about a hundred feet away from where she was, she would have been arrested by a different police department and she might have lived so okay, so they would have presumably taken her back to the department with.

Ron: 22:32

The idea was like take him to station and then process them.

Don: 22:35

So that's the. So they did. They brought her back to the station and uh and booked her for public inebriation and she fell asleep in the cell for four and a half hours, first off pause real quick.

Ron: 22:44

Yes, um, how the hell are you booking everyone for public inebriation in 1888? Does that sound like an impossible task? It?

Don: 22:53

is is, and it's certainly not something that they were very successful at. No, but the reason that she was arrested? She had called attention to herself. There was a circle of people around her laughing at her. She was apparently imitating a fire truck is what I understand.

Ron: 23:09

That's just.

Don: 23:11

she's just having fun, Then laid down to take a nap and a little night-night and the police officer arrested her Anyway. So because of the city police, they take her back to city police station and she's in what today would be called a drunk tank for four and a half hours. The reason that it matters is the city police procedure was to hold somebody until they sobered up enough that they could manage themselves and then release them. So she was released from jail at 1am on September 30th 1888. Her last words recorded to the uh the jailer was uh, good night, old cock.

Don: 23:49

She did ask him before that what time it was, and he, his answer was sort of condescending, like something like uh, it's too late for you to get something else to drink, or something like that. So she, uh wandered off into the the darkness, away from the police station. Um, she was next seen at uh one, somewhere between 135 and 140 in the morning by three gentlemen who were leaving a club, one of whom was able to see that she was with another person. She was with a man and he was able to give a description of her, of, sorry, of the man as being about five, seven, um, slight build, had a medical bag, an oversized jacket, and within 10 minutes later, catherine Eddow's body was found in Mitre Square. Wait, how many minutes? Within 10. 10? Yeah, okay, she'd been disemboweled and the killer had had time to do some facial mutilation and remove some organs, and I think it was a pretty comprehensive event for only taking about 10 minutes.

Ron: 25:00

So the belief is, the last man she was seen with was the her killer.

Don: 25:03

Right, and the fact that so much mutilation, especially of the internal organs, happening right after that indicates there was some medical knowledge or some anatomical knowledge. Yeah, so, so that's the. That's the only time that the police thought they maybe had a witness who had seen Jack the Ripper. Okay, okay, so who might have that kind of anatomical knowledge? Doctors Doctors would be a good guess.

Ron: 25:37

Surgeons Surgeons Soldiers. Do soldiers field dress each other?

Don: 25:44

So there would be doctors and more likely, surgeons who would have that knowledge from military training Soldiers themselves. Maybe not Fishermen yeah, butchers too have a pretty good sense of knowledge and so those were kind of the uh, um, the, the, the main suspects that police were on the lookout for, and since two murders had taken place before September 30th, they were already on sort of high alert on looking for, you know, strange men wandering alone at the night, and especially if they were carrying knives around, I guess I don't know. Um but uh, but what kind of people in Victorian England would hold those, those, those professions?

Ron: 26:29

Um well, you still need an education to cut someone open. I want to hope.

Don: 26:35

Absolutely.

Ron: 26:35

Educated men.

Don: 26:37

All right, what were you saying? Why would you think it would be men?

Doug: 26:40

I think it's a fair guess. Oh, the era, yeah.

Ron: 26:44

You're pulling a trick on me that my mother pulled on me when I was a teenager.

Don: 26:47

I was like what was that she?

Ron: 26:50

heard this story on Oprah or something and really wanted to make the eyes pop out of my head and it was like I can't remember. There's a car crash. Right, you know what I'm talking about, don yeah, can you say it's a joke.

Don: 27:03

So yeah, yeah, it's a car crash. And the doctor gets taken to the doctor and the doctor says I can't operate, oh, because the kids with a father. So the father and the son are in the car crash right taking the hospital and the doctor takes one look at the patient and says I can't operate on this patient.

Ron: 27:18

It's my son and you're supposed to be like how could that be? And I remember being like 10 or 11, being like, yeah, I really don't want he's got two dads. My mom was like she's a woman, You're so progressive.

Don: 27:43

You. My mom was like she's a woman, you're so progressive idiot. So but actually that's a good point because, yeah, we're looking for for butcher who's a man, right? Because yeah, yeah, you know you need this certain amount of strength to to butcher animals or you've got to have the ability to go to medical school, which means that you are a man with some means and ability to provide for an education. Can we put a pin in Catherine Eddowes for a second?

Don: 27:59

And we'll circle back to the rest of her story. I want to jump ahead about two years, to 1890. In 1890.

Ron: 28:08

Is this the trial of Jack the Ripper? This?

Don: 28:11

is not.

Ron: 28:12

Turned out well. No Justice is served thing.

Don: 28:19

Um turned out well. No justice is served. Um want to jump ahead to uh to another, october 24th 1890. Um, we're in a place just north of london called hampton hamstead and uh, a woman named um mary percy lives out there. Uh, very respectable, has a house, has like afternoon tea, invites people over. One day she invites over a woman named Phoebe Hogg who has an 18 month old daughter named Tiggy.

Ron: 28:45

These are fun Hogg and Tiggy coming over for tea in my sick English household Right.

Don: 28:54

Anyway. So Mary Percy kills Phoebe. Oh okay, why do you do this sick english household right? Um, anyway, so mary percy kills phoebe why do you do this public inebriation?

Don: 29:01

man it'll do it, um, uh, actually pretty brutally, um, crushes her head in with some blunt instruments, uh, cuts her nearly, beheads her, okay, and then smothers Tiggy, come on, yeah, but she's not done, because you can't just have dead bodies in your house. So she actually uses the pram or the baby carriage to move the body of Phoebe Hogg out of her house and out into the woods a little ways. And she's actually caught moving the woods a little ways and, uh, and she's actually, um, uh, caught moving the, the, the baby's body, out. Um, the police arrest her. They go inside the house. There's blood spatter everywhere. She's covered with blood. She denies anything happened. She actually says, uh, she's questioned about why she's covered with blood and there's blood all over her house. She was, uh, killing mice, um, yep, and uh with a jackhammer.

Doug: 29:58

Yeah, it's me trying to kill mosquitoes late at night.

Don: 30:02

So, uh, october 24th 1890, she winds up, uh, on trial, uh, the beginning of december, uh, 1890, just a month later, and is executed, december 23rd 1890, for the murders of Phoebe Hogg and her daughter. Prior to her execution, she says the following she says the sentence is just, but the evidence is false. So, yeah, so it's. So she's kind of admitting to the murders, but she's saying there's something, there's something not I really was killing mice well, it's people started talking about.

Don: 30:42

Why would she say something like that? Why like? Why would the evidence be false? She was literally covered with blood right and the the their. Their house was covered with blood and and she had a dead baby with her and right.

Ron: 30:54

So did they try to conceive of some motivation?

Don: 30:57

like, why did this? Yeah, phoebe was her lover's wife oh, okay but nonetheless that cryptic gallows statement sort of like stuck in the public imagination as it was reported in the newspapers again, the newspapers are making the stories out of these uh, these, these, these true crime, right? So it's the analog version of the true crime podcast um arthur conan doyle. You know who that is yeah, he's.

Ron: 31:30

Uh, I know his famous one, he's the fairies guy. I think last time I need to do some quick correction I think I said hd well was into fairies. Yeah, and I think it's conan doyle.

Don: 31:39

Conan doyle was I don't want to know about hd wells, but hd wells was an intellectual.

Doug: 31:44

That's not usually the first thing, that people think of when they say I'm gonna give that one to me, right, it's gonna be sherlock.

Don: 31:51

It's gonna be sherlock holmes yeah, well, uh, conan doyle, uh, hears about mary percy's case, hears about her cryptic gallows statement and then says hey, I wonder if I can make a story out of those murders that happened two years ago. Might not have been committed by a man.

Ron: 32:13

Oh.

Don: 32:13

Clever, clever Arthur, and actually postulates for a minute that maybe Mary Percy had been Jill the Ripper. Yeah, Interesting.

Don: 32:24

So a couple of things that he brings up about it is how much easier it would be for a woman to be invisible One because nobody's looking for a woman. No, there would be be justifiable reasons why a woman might have blood on her and still be able to navigate the streets without being questioned or seen. Or, um, like a midwife. He says, yeah, midwife would definitely have a reason to be floating around like that. Um, so that raised that whole question of, like we're looking for a man, the police are looking for a man. They increase their police patrol.

Don: 32:58

Miter square, where Catherine Eddowes was found, literally had a policeman walk through it every 15 minutes, and yet the Ripper somehow found time to commit this horrible murder. As a matter of fact, he actually committed two murders that night, and Catherine Eddowes was his second event. That's the famous night of to commit this horrible murder. As a matter of fact, he actually committed two murders that night. Catherine Eddowes was his second event. That's the famous night of what's called the double event. Literally, 45 minutes before Catherine Eddowes' murder, elizabeth Stride had been murdered about a half mile away. So somehow the Ripper was able to murder Elizabeth Stride, walk a half mile through the streets of London, probably covered with blood, like you wouldn't have time to change your clothes Right and then meet Catherine Eddowes and then convince her to stay with you and then kill and mutilate her body and still escape from the police. How could you do that? Unless you had some like special invisibility spell Right?

Ron: 33:50

Right.

Don: 33:51

And what better invisibility spell than to be a middle-aged woman wandering the streets?

Doug: 33:57

what do you think? Well, and even back to the original physical description of um the first murder, right giant trench, coat, doctor's bag, you know the whole deal. You're very covered up, so that detail we might instantly make very masculine and it could very much be feminine.

Don: 34:20

So yeah, I see it I could see that because of the oversized coat and the the.

Don: 34:25

There's three gentlemen leaving the imperial club that night that see katherine edo's and and the the person that they're with, the first to describe them as a couple. Um, it's only the last one, linda, that says that it was a man, and the fair mustache is the thing that kind of throws me off, like it. I wonder if you know it's not well lit, it's 1am in the morning. We're in london street or he actually sees her in a in a very narrow passageway called James Passageway, which is one of the entrances to Miner Square. I wonder if it like you don't walk around saying yeah, like a shadow or something.

Don: 35:00

You don't walk around memorizing faces, but then in hindsight when you think oh my gosh, that was a murderer, I walked by. Like you can create a lot of details. Like eyewitness statements are very unreliable.

Ron: 35:11

Right, yeah. So, arthur Conan Doyle, a lot of details, like eyewitness statements are, are very unreliable, right, yeah so, uh, so arthur conan dole is the first one to kind of postulate this idea does, does, does this have any legs? Do people at the time kind of latch on to this in any way, or is he kind of like laughed out of the smoking parlors?

Don: 35:25

so the primary investigator for the police department uh says that the that all all options are on the table. So, uh, as far as I know, they interviewed 2,000 people. Not all of those were suspects. They had about 100 suspects. I don't know of any that were actually female suspects that were considered during the spree of murders. But then Mary Percy does get added to that list after the fact, after she's arrested and tried for the other murder. I don't think it's got huge legs to it, but I do think it's a super interesting like. It complicates the issue quite a bit. Right, because we always assume that Jack the Ripper is a man, that he's punishing prostitutes for some reason. Right, the the crimes are super violent. They are based on um knowledge of anatomy because of the, the brutality and the speed and swiftness and the precision of some of the cuts. But that, like again, that's all based on assumption that women wouldn't have access to that knowledge and that's not necessarily the case, correct.

Doug: 36:29

And the fact like would they yeah, okay, all into the stereotypes? Would they yeah, okay, all into the stereotypes? Right, would they engage in such brutal behavior? Why would they hate prostitutes in the same way? And absolutely I could see the motivation for any of those things you know. Um, yeah, that's a lot to think about.

Ron: 36:47

Are these uh motivations still kind of the like I'm wondering about, like recent or or the contemporary scholasticism on this case? Right, that was always kind of what I'd heard. Also, was that Jack the Ripper? He's an upset angry man who's using righteous anger against women right In a very like sort of nakedly patriarchal way, right Like hey look, patriarchy exists, but we don't do patriarchy that blatantly.

Ron: 37:13

Right, like you know it's enough for these women to just sort of toil and abject misery and poverty. We don't need to literally go in and start cutting them open. Um, so then I suppose, like what then becomes the motivation if we change the, uh, the gender of of the ripper, right, does that story have to change also, um, and, and how does that? How does that change our perception of the women at the time? Right, right?

Don: 37:41

And that's a and I think that's a really interesting thing to to ponder, because the like one of the things that that Hallie Rubenhold does well and and if you haven't read her book, she does have a really good podcast. That is like opinion to the book called bad women, which I would readily recommend. The women who history has labeled prostitute and history has has dehumanized and history has said are, are lesser beings that are just sort of the waste. The real story is, you know, the, the murderer, um, showing how they actually were powerful actors in their own lives and how they tried to provide for themselves, tried to provide for their families and and were successful to a certain extent until, of course, they, they were cut short.

Don: 38:34

So that idea of, you know, operating within a patriarchy that is not giving you any of the advantages and then elevating the women's lives, but then what if the murderer is part of that? You know the one uh, subjugated by the patriarchy. What does that do to the motivations? Like, why would you do that right? So there's possibilities that I can think of, right, like, uh, uh, competition, yeah yeah, yeah right, yeah, replacement, yeah, yep, um, uh, any others you can think of?

Ron: 39:11

um even even the same sort of righteous anger right.

Doug: 39:14

Yes.

Ron: 39:14

Like there is, hey, there is a acceptable social hierarchy, and even though I I am also a member of the class that is not favored by that hierarchy, but there is that sort of um, uh, I will, I will gain that favorship by enacting it's uh, it's order right we see this often, right?

Ron: 39:35

Um, that's what I was thinking people who want to cozy up to the powers that be, even though they are, uh, dejected by those powers, thinking there'll be some sort of reward, or or they just buy into the that's narrative, right, they yep, keeping people in the right place, kind of thing and I think it's it's common to, and it was certainly common in the victorian mind to consider everything in like these huge dichotomies.

Don: 39:58

Um, and in modern gender studies, looking back at the victorian period, we have these, the theories of, like the the angel in the home, right, versus the the mad woman in the attic or right.

Ron: 40:10

They were trying to split those two, um.

Don: 40:12

But? But more recent gender studies is looking at how the different types of oppression that that marginalized groups experience all intersect. And it's not really that black and white Right, um. And so this woman, if she, if, if Jack the Ripper were a woman or any other murder who is a woman is like it is an expression of power. It's taking power away from I can take a life Right, but it's not a helpful exercise of power. I would argue that even the small exercise of power the victims were taking in their own lives is a powerful exercise of power. They are showing that they can be successful even though the system is completely against them.

Ron: 41:01

Yeah, a hundred percent Right Like, like. That is cool to see. We we often talk about and elevate uh people who come from the lowest ranks of society and are able to uh eke out an existence or even become more successful than that Right Like, and we say that builds character, that builds strength, that builds, uh you know, lots of positive kinds of things. Um that, uh, I've always kind of viewed murderers or violent criminals as people searching for power, right For for and this speaks to to male murderers as well right, a lot of the times men act more violently because they are raised in patriarchal societies that tell them that, uh, they, they have access to power, um, inherently right and then they find out that's usually not true right, like the

Ron: 41:51

the real power is kind of held by an even more specialized class than just all men, and then the realization that they don't have that power causes them to lash out and seek it in ways where they can. And yes, it's often not constructive, because it's actually hard to achieve constructive power. But it is very easy to use deconstructive power, right, harmful power, especially as a man frequently, and I think that would describe male Jack the Ripper and potentially female Jack the Ripper as well.

Doug: 42:24

Jill the Ripper. I'm very curious about, culturally, what's going on in London at the time too, because obviously I could make some assumptions about where we're at close to turn of the century, um in London. But I'm wondering too like I'm putting myself in the hypothetical that I am Jill the Ripper and I'm going out uh again, public intoxication, sometimes prostitution, maybe it wasn't always right why I'm doing this. And I think, going back to what we originally talked about, this is another thing that I think is inherent in the ideas of true crime is you're asking the question what would drive somebody to do this? This one is interesting, I think, especially interesting to me, because I'm not looking at something that's uh. Would you guys agree that most true crime like uh podcasts, these types of things like they're almost always american-centric, like uh 1950s on, like I?

Ron: 43:30

I'm trying to think you mean like the cases they cover yeah, usually yeah, it seemed like there was that. You know, quote unquote golden age of serial killers, right or like and I don't know what the um, why that was. I don't know if it was just like the media in this case also was like really, uh, glomming onto those stories and publishing them and publicizing them. But it did seem like, yeah, there's, there is a archetypal post-50s stereo serial killer story that we could all probably rattle off yeah, without even naming correct versus.

Doug: 44:07

I'm thinking about this era and I'm like, well, I haven't lived through anything like this, uh, this turn of the century england, um, and so I'm wondering, like, what sets up these conditions that something like this occurs?

Don: 44:20

well, there's a lot of things happening right. So, um, we're well into the industrial revolution. We are, uh, we're living in an age now where trains are a thing. So in victoria's reign we go from no trains to trains. So it, um, people are more mobile, um, society is more mechanized and industrial and, you know, rely it upon industrial.

Ron: 44:41

Um, uh, mechanism, uh, so we had telegraphs right, so we've got telegraphs, communication is happening um, newspapers right are, are telling these stories, including images of, of the, the victims.

Don: 44:54

There's actually um, uh, we've got some of the first, like crime scene photos, uh, from Jack the Ripper, um and uh, and post-mortem photos of the, of the, the ways to commodify, and and uh, also, um, you sell that story are available. But culturally, our queen is aging, um, our empire is is getting smaller, Um, uh, there's, I think there's like an anticipation of the end of Victoria's reign coming and she's seen less and less.

Don: 45:34

She doesn't pass away until 1901. So there's still, you know, 12, 13 years, but like, obviously you don't know that at the time. So there's a sense I think of like a waning of culture in the lead Victorian period where the earlier Victorian period was more about the robustness and the the spread of the empire and the spread of, or the expansion of, technological power.

Doug: 46:01

So if we're looking at the end of an era and there's a question about where are we going, yeah, like you start to forgive, I'm really projecting a lot onto this so like, anyway, we can take this any way we want. But then I'm like, yeah, I'm wondering if, if, if I am a woman that is seeing this at the time and I'm seeing like some of the in quotes, like would this be the type of person that looks at this as like this is decay, you know, like this is decay for me. I could see them easily jumping on this bandwagon of like I will assault and harm and kill these women, because this is part of my statement towards what I'm making, but it's it's hard because, guys, I don't kill people regularly so this is not uh and let me take another step you heard it here first breaking news.

Doug: 46:51

Absolutely, I've never killed anyone, uh that's why we invited you on. We thought you were the lived experience expert absolutely apologies to let you down today. But I'm just thinking yeah, I, I could see it.

Don: 47:05

I could see it can I throw one other story at you?

Doug: 47:09

yes, please so this.

Don: 47:10

There's one other uh case that it's brought up in this context of of the female possibility of a of a jack, a female jack um, and that's the, the murder of uh committed by a woman named kate webster, who was an irish woman. Uh was living as a maid in england um and uh in in 1879, march 2nd 1879. She murders her um her mistress, so the, the woman of the house um brutally uh and inside the house and then realizes she has to get rid of the evidence um.

Don: 47:48

so she, uh, she dismembers the body inside the house and tries to get rid of the pieces by boiling some of them in the laundry tub, throwing pieces into the river, and so this case gets brought up. So she's tried in 1879 and executed in 1879, 10 years before, nine years before Jack the Ripper. Um is a thing, so she's not a suspect per se. But when we're talking about, like, what are women capable of?

Don: 48:22

And you know why are we only looking at male suspects? And because you know, women don't have the strength and women don't have the, the, the fortitude, or the, the, the stomach for the, the brutality and the gruesomeness. What, uh, what uh, kate Webster's case does is show exactly the opposite. Like her case, her murder is so brutal. She actually um, uh, puts on, puts on her um mistress's clothes and uh, pretends that it's that she's her for two weeks in the house and pretends that she's her for two weeks in the house. She sells the furniture, acting as Mrs Thomas, her victim and the neighbors get suspicious after about two weeks Wait.

Ron: 49:04

That adds such a cool element to this right. If you wanted more of a like. What anxiety is she acting out of? It's so clearly this sort of class anxiety.

Don: 49:16

Right, it's like well, I may as well just literally become this person, right and she flees to ireland, is caught and brought back and again tried executed within three weeks. But the other thing I think is interesting is that that idea of disguise, yeah, yes right. So she commits a murder and then disguises herself to cover it up. Which jack has to be doing that too, whether it's a man or a woman, like it has to be an effort to disguise who you are.

Don: 49:43

Yeah, because you can't walk around you know portraying yourself as the serial killer very norman.

Ron: 49:48

It kind of reminds me if you let me be a little bit of a of an english teacher oh my gosh. Um, uh, it reminds me this is, this is let me be a little bit of a of an English teacher oh my gosh, it reminds me. This is this is Macbeth, right? This is Lady Macbeth and her unsex me speech, right? The idea that, like for a woman to to to become powerful, has to in some way become a man right, I have to my sex is holding me back.

Ron: 50:10

I have to. My sex is holding me back. Therefore, I must adopt the faculties of a man in order to actually get what I want to be a powerful agent in this world, right.

Don: 50:20

Yeah, the same thing. Beatrice says the same thing in Much Ado.

Ron: 50:25

It's a theme that Shakespeare circles back to that.

Don: 50:29

Oh, that I were a man, I would eat his heart in the marketplace.

Ron: 50:32

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Don: 50:33

So yeah, yeah that same idea that you have to be the right gender to to exercise that type of power, um, but also the always the association with violence is men right that, uh, that um, men have the ability to be violent for good and for ill, right, frequently for ill, yeah indeed I.

Don: 50:55

So I want to be clear, as we, as we wrap up, that I don't think that there's enough evidence to say that Jack the Ripper was a female. I don't think there's enough evidence to say that Jack the Ripper was anybody. There's there's been a lot of like, even recently proof you know proof, quote unquote of who Jack the Ripper was.

Don: 51:12

There's been DNA studies on on a shawl I think it was Catherine Ito shawl actually um, that, uh, they use mitochondrial DNA to trace it back to a Polish immigrant. But the, the um, the counterpoint to that is DNA experts say, well, it's mitochondrial DNA, like about one out of a hundred people would have that, that strain. So, um, it doesn't really show much of anything. There's been another study and this one kind of plays in what we're talking about. They, they look at there's some DNA on the postage stamp that was on the uh, one of the letters that was sent to the police office and, uh, the police station and uh, and it has uh markers. Uh, that the DNA, the person who licked the stamp was female, Um, but again, the likelihood that that letter was a forgery or came from somebody who wasn't the murderer, like we don't really know.

Don: 52:03

So, um, so it's interesting that there's these, um, there's these threads and these traces, but but, like Howley Rubinhold saidinal said, I think the, the, what makes this story interesting isn't really who that murderer was, because it's that's definitely something lost to time yeah, yeah but it's the exploration of, of the dynamics of like, like you point out, doug, like this murderer and these women who were victims, and the society that they lived in was the product of women who were victims, and the society that they lived in was the product of a bunch of uh of, of intersecting tensions and and uh and climates, and that set them all up to be at the places that they were at the times that they were um, and exploring that, I think, is what really is interesting yeah, yeah, maybe that is part of the the fascination with serial killers in general.

Ron: 52:53

Right, they all, all the ones I think of all, are sort of inseparable from their time and place. Right, the American killers are telling, I think we explore through the lens of American culture and American mid-century and the change in America through the civil rights movement et cetera. Right, and so I guess, yeah, jack is just another Jack or Jill is just another example of this. Different time, different place, right.

Don: 53:21

Which kind of relates to the topic that you had a few episodes ago. You know that there's this cultural morphing of you know the way that in that, in that episode about how people experience you know phenomena they can't explain. But the same thing is true, like there are. There have been motivations for people to commit murder for thousands of years, but the way that that power is interpreted depends upon the culture of the moment. That's right, yeah.

Ron: 53:47

And it's hard not to examine this one through the the lens of gender, because of how, uh how, the victims are all female, right, and now we have this uh interesting quirky, like you said, probably not true, but interesting in relief uh idea that maybe the killer was also a woman, right. And so how does that then inform our interpretation of those gender dynamics? Absolutely.

Don: 54:13

Well, thank you guys. I appreciate the uh, the conversation and and uh exploration. A little bit about uh, about Jack the Ripper. You know, I you both told me how you introduced, you were introduced to the murders. I didn't tell you my story, um, I was. I lived it no no, hey, it was me spoiler. Um, I was 10 years old and I was visiting my aunt, um who, uh uh, took us to a, a store, for some reason, and ripperology.

Don: 54:43

Well, there was a book, I remember it was called open, open files and it was a whole book of unsolved crimes and there was a. There was like a six page excerpt or section on Jack the Ripper and uh, and I, and she told me I could have a book to read and that was one of the things. So and that's the book I picked. I think it mortified her that I was choosing that as a 10 year old Um.

Ron: 55:04

Oh no, he's just like every other boy.

Don: 55:06

I'm pretty sure that a phone call was made to my parents. But, uh, but I, I I read that book cover to cover but uh, jack the Ripper was in it and that definitely was sort of a sparking of that interest.

Ron: 55:18

So, um, but there's another element here that I think we haven't explored and maybe say obviously say this for another show, but the, the uh, the fact that there is no resolution, right, that is also perpetually fascinating, right?

Don: 55:30

We, we are drawn to stories that we cannot put the fancy bow tie on and you know, when I first learned about it as a 10 year old, like that's definitely what my project was, like I was going to, I was going to solve it by reading this six page excerpt out of this book Right, but that was definitely the project and the and the attempt and and and becoming more comfortable with that. Irresolution is a lifelong skill.

Ron: 55:55

Absolutely 100%. Thank you so much, don. This is not where I thought our Jack the Ripper conversation would go, but I am a wiser and more informed man now than I was at the beginning of the show, and I can't always say that.

Doug: 56:07

It's good to be a Ripperologist.

Don: 56:09

You can always say that, Ron.

Doug: 56:11

Bye virologist. You can always say that, Ron. Thank you.