625. Jack The Ripper: Horror in Whitechapel (Part 2)
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Who was Jack the Ripper's second victim and why is it significant?
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London lies today under the spell of a great terror. A nameless reprobate, half beast, half man is at large. who is daily gratifying his murderous instincts on the most miserable and defenceless classes of the community. There can be no shadow of a doubt now that our original theory was correct, and that the Whitechapel murderer who has now four, if not five, victims to his knife is one man, and that man a murderous maniac. Hideous malice, deadly cunning, insatiable thirst for blood. All these are the marks of the mad homicide. The ghoul-like creature who stalks through the streets of London, stalking down his victim like a porny Indian, is simply drunk with blood, and he will have more. The question is, what are the people of London to do?
The police have not even a clue. They are in despair at their utter failure to get so much as a cent of the criminal. London must rouse itself. No woman is safe while this ghoul is abroad. Up, citizens, then, and do your own police work. So that was the evening star on Saturday, the 8th of September, 1888, after the discovery of yet another victim of the Whitechapel murderer. And I use the phrase Whitechapel murderer advisedly because he is not yet known as Jack the Ripper. Although, Dominic, today we will be exploring how the Whitechapel murderer comes to get that appellation.
We will indeed. Yes. So let's remind people where and when we are. We are in the late summer of 1888. We are in the East End of London, which we described last time as this kind of labyrinth, this warren of crowded, narrow streets and sort of reeking tenement slums. And it's a national byword, the East End, for poverty, for homelessness, for prostitution and for crime. And one other thing that's going to become very important in the next couple of episodes, it's an area that is being transformed by immigration, specifically Jewish refugees from the pogroms in Russia and in Poland. So to recap the story of the last episode, Tom, you described how on the 7th of August, a woman called Martha Tabram was found murdered in a tenement building off Whitechapel High Street.
And her body had been stabbed almost 40 times, to quote the accounts at the time, butchered with virulent savagery. And then in the second half of the last episode, we talked about a second body, which was found in a narrow lane called Buck's Row, just before four o'clock in the morning on the 31st of August. And this is another woman who was lying on her back. And the details, as they will be throughout this series, even more horrific. Her throat slashed from ear to ear, her body ripped open to reveal her intestines. And this was Marianne or Polly Nichols, very poor, alcoholic, homeless, possibly an occasional prostitute. And she's the first of the canonical five Ripper victims because really she
Although it's quite possible that Martha Tabram was also killed by the same man, it's with Polly Nichols that the press furore begins and the Jack the Ripper phenomenon begins, I suppose, doesn't it?
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
Who was Jack the Ripper's second victim and why is it significant?
0:00–17:07
2
How did the police investigation unfold after the first murder?
17:07–30:20
3
What factors contributed to the public's panic during the murders?
30:20–45:32
4
How did the press influence the perception of Jack the Ripper?
45:32–1:00:08
5
What were the details surrounding the discovery of Annie Chapman's body?
1:00:08–1:04:43
Speakers
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