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0:00
This classic episode of History
0:02
Daily originally aired on November ninth
0:04
two thousand twenty one.
0:12
It's early November eighteen eighty
0:15
eight in Spitalfields, a slum
0:17
district in the east end of London. down
0:19
a dark alleyway, along one of the most
0:21
crime infested streets in London, sits
0:24
Miller's Court. It's a squalid
0:26
place, but to its thirty residents, It's
0:28
better than living in the streets. Midnight
0:31
approaches as a widow woman named missus
0:33
Cox lives in room number five.
0:35
returns from the privy, one of only
0:37
three outside toilets when she
0:40
sees a drunken couple approaching from the
0:42
street. Missus Cox recognizes
0:44
the woman, Mary Jane Kelly, who lives
0:46
at number thirteen. Cox likes
0:48
Mary Jane, a cheerful woman who
0:50
wears beautiful gowns even if they
0:52
are a bit worn with him and dotted
0:54
with gin stains. But missus Cox
0:57
doesn't recognize her companion, a
0:59
strange man and a bowler hat. the
1:01
blotchy face, and a black mustache. Missus
1:04
Cox calls over to Mary Jane, and as
1:06
the two women exchange pleasantries, a
1:08
man silently drinks a beer. Mary
1:11
Jane warns missus Cox that she's going
1:13
to have a song. Missus Cox doesn't
1:15
mind, she loves Mary Jane Singh. And
1:18
indeed once missus Cox is inside, she
1:20
can hear Mary Jane's voice through the walls
1:23
singing a violet plucked from my mother's
1:25
grave. missus Cox falls
1:27
asleep listening to the pretty but mournful
1:29
ballot. This is the last time
1:31
though that anyone will hear Mary Jane,
1:33
Kelly sing ever again. In
1:35
the morning, her mutilated body
1:37
will be discovered, and all of London
1:40
will be informed that another him has
1:42
fallen to jack the river.
1:52
From noisier in airship, I'm
1:54
Lindsey Graham, and this is History
1:56
Daily.
2:12
History is made every day. On
2:14
this podcast every day, we
2:16
tell the true stories of the people and events
2:18
that shaped our world. Today
2:20
is November ninth eighteen eighty eight.
2:22
Mary Jane Kelly, Jack the Ripper's
2:25
last victim.
2:29
It's November ninth eighteen eighty
2:31
eight in Miller's Court. Thomas
2:33
Bauyer, who worked for Mary James landlord,
2:36
has been sent to collect the rent. It's
2:38
Bauyer's job to get aggressive if someone
2:40
doesn't pay which in this instance is
2:42
likely. Mary Jane has a bit
2:44
of a drinking problem and she's six
2:46
weeks behind on rent. Now
2:49
your bangs on the door of number thirteen
2:51
but there's no answer. He knocks
2:53
again and shouts through the keyhole.
2:56
Then he notices a crack in the window
2:58
pane that has been stuffed with rags.
3:00
Balyer pulls his out and peers inside.
3:03
That's
3:03
when he sees the mutilated body
3:05
of Mary Jane Kelly. He
3:07
staggers backwards and wretches. he
3:09
then runs to fetch his boss. John
3:12
McCarthy is not just a slumboard.
3:14
He's a pimp, a fence, and a fixer
3:16
of boxing matches. He's no
3:18
stranger to crime. But when
3:20
he's shown what's happened inside number
3:23
thirteen, he collapses in horror.
3:25
McCarthy quickly composes himself
3:27
and orders failure to fetch the police.
3:30
It's obvious to both of them who committed this
3:32
crime, the same man responsible for
3:34
a string of murders in East London over the
3:36
past few months. When Balyer
3:38
bursts through the doors of the nearest police station,
3:40
he cries out that Jack the Ripper has struck
3:43
again. The police immediately telegraphed
3:45
Scotland Yard and sooned the full
3:47
force of Whitechapel's h division
3:49
to send upon Miller's court. The
3:52
police talked to the neighbors including missus
3:54
Cox. Apparently, at three
3:56
thirty AM, many people heard a
3:58
cry of murder, but nobody
3:59
invests gated. Such
4:01
cries are unfortunately commonplace
4:04
in the area the police are told. The
4:06
police ask if the victim was close with
4:08
anyone,
4:09
not many, but there was one Joseph
4:11
Barnett, the man with whom Mary Jane
4:13
had been living until very recently. The
4:15
authorities take Barnett to shortage
4:18
mortuary, where he's shown Mary
4:20
Jane's corpse. But her body
4:22
has been so badly mutilated that he
4:24
can only recognize her eyes and
4:26
ears. Despite having an
4:28
alibi, Barnett is interviewed by the
4:30
police for over three hours. He
4:32
seems devastated by Mary Jane's death
4:34
and claims that he was still in love with her
4:37
despite their recent estrangement. But
4:39
when the police asked Barnett where the
4:41
victim was born, he can't say for
4:43
certain. It may have been Ireland,
4:45
he says, or possibly Wales. Mary
4:48
Jane played loose with details he claims.
4:50
Barnett wasn't even sure if Kelly was her
4:52
real surname. She'd
4:53
once told Barnett that her father had
4:56
been a foreman in an iron works factory
4:58
that she'd been married at sixteen to
5:00
a man named Davies who died young.
5:02
And at some point, she said she'd
5:04
lost a child but didn't elaborate
5:06
as to how. She'd also confided
5:08
to Joe that early in her life, she'd been sent
5:10
to an infirmary. This may
5:12
have meant a refuge for fallen women,
5:15
somewhere a teenage girl might be taken
5:17
if she felt pregnant to have wedlock.
5:19
At this infirmary, she met a relative
5:21
who worked as a prostitute and who
5:23
encouraged Mary Jane to travel to London,
5:25
make her living there. Mary
5:28
Jane was a beautiful young woman, and
5:30
she soon found herself in the upper echelon
5:32
of London's sex trade. She
5:34
secured lodgings in the center of town
5:36
adopted the false name Mary Jeanette
5:38
and began working in what she called a
5:40
gay house, a high class brothel.
5:43
Gentlemen were met by appointment and
5:45
would take her to dinner or the theater
5:48
before returning to her luxury rooms for
5:50
sex. She would
5:51
accept gifts from them and soon
5:53
accumulated a large wardrobe of
5:55
costly dresses. But
5:57
during this time, Mary Jane became the
5:59
victim of a
5:59
sex trafficking ring. She
6:01
was introduced to a well spoken gentleman
6:04
who offered to take her to Paris, delighted
6:06
by the opportunity she packed her bags
6:08
full of expensive dresses and set off.
6:10
But
6:10
once there, she was trapped,
6:13
held captive inside a low end
6:15
brothel treated like a prisoner and
6:17
a sex slave.
6:18
Somehow Mary Jane was able to slip
6:20
free and return to London, but
6:22
she couldn't go back to her upmarket brothel.
6:25
She was a potential witness against
6:27
sex traffickers. And if anyone were to
6:29
recognize her, she'd be in danger. So
6:32
she changed her name to Mary Jane
6:34
Kelly moved into a lower part
6:36
of town. After
6:37
that, Mary Jane was always looking over
6:39
her shoulder, fearful that someone
6:41
might come and take her life. And
6:44
tragically, on November ninth
6:46
eighteen eighty eight, someone did.
6:52
There's
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nothing I like more than a podcast
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7:38
It's
7:40
August thirty first eighteen eighty eight
7:42
in the London District of Whitechapel, a
7:44
few months before Mary James murder.
7:47
At three forty AM, a car driver
7:49
travels along quiet thoroughfare named
7:51
Box Row. He sees a dark
7:53
shape lying in front of a stable entrance, and
7:56
as he draws closer, realizes
7:58
it's a body. He immediately
7:59
fetches a police constable who
8:02
flashes his lantern and reveals the
8:04
throat slashed corpse of missus
8:06
Nichols or Polly as her
8:08
friends called her. On the night
8:10
of her death, Polly, a forty three
8:12
year old homeless woman, tried to secure
8:14
lodgings at a nearby boarding house, but
8:16
couldn't afford it. Before leaving,
8:18
she implied that she was about to earn her money
8:20
for the night stay through sex work.
8:22
Hours later, she was dead. When
8:25
Mary Jane learned to Polly's murder,
8:27
she is drinking in the ten bell's pub
8:29
around the corner from Bucks Row. As
8:31
she scans the local newspaper reading the
8:33
details of the horrific murder,
8:35
terror grips her. Mary
8:37
Jane didn't know Polly personally. The
8:39
reading of her fate makes her cry.
8:41
and reach for another glass of gin.
8:43
Mary Jane wonders if Polly met
8:45
her death at the hands of the nickels mom,
8:48
a vicious gang who storting
8:50
money from local prostitutes. Two
8:52
other women have been killed in whitechapel
8:54
recently, their names Emma Smith and
8:56
Martha Tabbard. A among her friends
8:58
in the sex trade, it's widely
9:00
believed that the nickels are responsible
9:02
for those deaths. So
9:03
perhaps they did this one too.
9:05
Then Mary
9:05
Jane remembers a chilling incident from
9:08
some months earlier. She'd been
9:10
told that a fearsome looking man had been
9:12
asking for her in one of the rougher pubs she
9:14
used to frequent. he'd
9:16
introduced himself as her father and called
9:18
her Mary Jeanette. That
9:20
was the name Mary Jane had used when working in
9:22
the upmarket brothel. The
9:24
only reason someone from those days would
9:26
be pursuing her now would be to do her
9:28
harm. Though she'd escaped that
9:30
life, she still knew too much
9:32
about some very dangerous people.
9:34
She ponders this as she lifts
9:36
her chin glass to her lips, imagining
9:38
that whoever is perpetrating these recent
9:41
killings is perhaps searching for
9:43
her. The idea is so terrifying.
9:45
She spills some liquor on her dress.
9:50
Mary Jane hasn't worked as a prostitute
9:52
in over a year, not since
9:54
taking up with a man named Joseph Barnett,
9:56
the handsome market porter she met on
9:58
Commercial Street. Joe told
10:00
her he was immediately in love.
10:02
On just their second meeting, he
10:04
proposed that they should live together. and he'd
10:06
provide her everything. He promised
10:08
that she would never need to sell her body
10:10
again. But in the year
10:12
that followed, Joe and Mary Jane
10:14
were evicted from three separate
10:16
addresses. They were both heavy
10:18
drinkers and would frequently fall
10:20
behind on the rent. Finally,
10:22
they moved to thirteen Millers Court in
10:24
Spitalfields around the same
10:26
time that Jack the Ripper began to wreak
10:28
havoc on East London. One
10:31
month after Polly's death, Mary Jane
10:33
learned of the death of yet another woman.
10:35
Annie Chapman, a mother of
10:37
three in her late forty When
10:39
her slotted body is discovered in the
10:41
backyard of a nearby house in spittle
10:43
fields, it causes public hysteria.
10:46
Chackman's wounds are even more vicious
10:48
than those sustained by Poly Nichols.
10:51
Mary Jane and Joe read about
10:53
Annie's murder in their small and sparse
10:55
furnished room. The horror of her
10:57
fate is worsened by the realization that
10:59
Mary Jane must soon return to sex
11:02
work. Joe's just been fired
11:04
from his job, and they can no longer
11:06
afford to pay the rent. The
11:08
tension between them eventually boils over
11:10
into an argument. Mary Jane
11:12
throws a company, I'm furious, that
11:14
he's broken his promise to always support
11:16
her, especially during such a
11:18
perilous time. But the cop flies
11:20
right past Joe's head and smashes
11:22
the window pane. They
11:23
stuffed the hole with rags to keep out
11:25
of draft. On
11:27
September thirtieth, two more bodies
11:29
are discovered in East London, Elizabeth
11:32
Stride and Katherine Meadows are killed on
11:34
the same night, sending shock waves
11:36
through the community. Fearing for the
11:38
lives of her friends, Mary Jane
11:40
invites two prostitutes to live with her until
11:42
the perpetrators caught. Unhappy
11:44
with the arrangement, Joe Barnett leaves
11:46
Mill court and Mary
11:48
Jane for good. Despite the
11:50
terrible danger, Mary Jane is
11:52
drastically short of money, so
11:54
she puts on one of her gear
11:56
dresses and ventures out into the
11:58
night. In doing so, she will
12:00
seal her fate and become the last
12:02
known victim of
12:04
Jack Theurer.
12:14
It's November ninth eighteen
12:16
eighty eight, the day Mary Jane's
12:18
body is discovered at the shortage mortuary.
12:21
It takes two and a half hours for the
12:23
doctors to complete their autopsy on
12:25
Mary Jane's money. The mutilation
12:27
she sustained or nightmarish, even
12:29
more severe than those of the previous ripper
12:31
victims. Because she claimed to
12:33
be Irish, Mary Jane is laid
12:35
to rest in a Roman Catholic cemetery,
12:38
Saint Patrick's in Laytonstone. On
12:40
the day of her funeral, Mary Jane's
12:42
body is placed inside a polished oak
12:44
coffin and led through the streets of White
12:46
Chapel in an open hearse, decorated
12:48
with floral wreath. As
12:50
the procession travels, crowds
12:52
trail the morning carriage. Men
12:55
remove their hats. Women and
12:57
children watch from doorsteps and windows.
12:59
Hub patrons stand outside and raise
13:01
their glasses. Well represented
13:03
among this gathering are the local
13:05
sex workers They followed the
13:07
procession all the way to the cemetery, paying
13:09
their respects to a woman who suffered
13:11
a death that could easily have been
13:14
their own. Mary Jane's
13:16
killer, most likely the man they called
13:18
Jack the Ripper, was never brought to
13:20
justice, and his identity was
13:22
never known. But his
13:24
name is not nearly as important as the
13:26
names of the innocent women. Though the
13:28
exact number of victims is disputed,
13:30
the canonical five as these women
13:32
are sometimes called are poly nickels,
13:35
Annie Chapman, Elizabeth
13:37
Stride, Catherine Meadows,
13:39
and on this anniversary of her death, Mary
13:41
Jane Kelly.
13:47
Next, on History Daily,
13:49
November tenth eighteen seventy one.
13:51
After going missing, Scottish
13:53
physician doctor David Livingston,
13:55
found in the jungles of Tanzania. From
13:59
noiser and airship, this
13:59
is History Daily, hosted,
14:02
edited, and executive produced by me,
14:04
Lindsey Graham. audio editing by
14:06
Molly Bond,
14:07
sound design by Derek
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