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Call on the experts that know how to beat the heat. Oh, yes! Conditions apply suicide for details. This episode contains discussions of sex work alcoholism, physical and sexual violence against women, murder and detailed descriptions of violent mutilation.
If these aren't topics you want to hear about, this may be a good episode to skip. Humans are fascinated by gore and violence, but even more so than mysterious and unsolved. Interest in these disturbing and unpleasant subjects is called morbid curiosity, and it has gripped millions of people throughout the ages. I'm one of those people.
My name is Halley, and this is the morbid curiosity podcast. For the 100 episode of the morbid curiosity podcast, we present a three-part episode on Jack the Reaper and the White Chuckle murders. Part one will be all about the murders. Part two will be about attempts to solve the case, and part three will be about the women that were killed and the possible connections between them that could answer why they were targeted.
Part two will be for patrons only, so if you want all three parts, you can become a patron at the lowest tier, $2 a month, which grants you double the content per month plus ad-free episodes and other rewards at higher tiers. You can become a patron at Bitly slash morbid patron, that's the it.ly slash morbid patron. I don't proclaim to be an expert in this case that title belongs to the researchers known as the barologist, whose work I read for this episode. As much as the actual evidence for the White Chuckle murders has been lost over the years, controversies exist surrounding the details.
I'll do my best to summarize the case, sticking to the version of events that's most supported by the evidence and its historical context. Also, please keep in mind while listening to this episode that the women killed by Jack the Reaper weren't just victims. They were people with families, feelings, and histories of their own. We'll dive deeper into those histories in part three of this episode.
In order to understand the murders in context, it's important to know a little bit about the area where the murders occurred, who lived there, and what daily life was like for them. In the years leading up to the murders, political upheaval and unusually cold weather had made things difficult for Londoners. In both 1886 and 1887, riots had broken out between the police and the unemployed. Resurrections were stealing human corpses from fresh graves to sell to medical schools and teaching hospitals for anatomical study.
No corpse was safe from being stolen or sold off. You can hear more about this in our corpse episode. In 1888, London was one of the largest and richest cities on earth, but the East End where the River Murders took place was one of the most poverty-stricken areas. The East End has no official boundaries, but most documents stayed until the East End lies East of the River Lee, and is mainly contained by the modern borough of Tower Hamlets.
This includes the neighborhoods of White Chapel, Spillfields, Bethanyal Green, Poplar, Lighthouse, Shadwell, Wapping, Myland, Oh, All Gate, Parts of Shortage, and Boundaries of the Sea of London. While the East End has been the cradle of so many struggles for justice and better working conditions for all, such as the match women, the Daughters, the East London Suffragettes, and the anti-fascist Martyrs of Kato Street at this time in 1888, it was suffering. The East End was overcrowded in the extreme, especially in White Chapel and Spillfields. Before the expansion of London in the 18th century, the East End was where all the unpleasant industrial works were located.
Things like tanneries, slaughterhouses, and warehouses. As the population grew, more and more residential buildings and businesses were squeezed into the existing infrastructure, creating a very cramped narrow and dark space. Whole families lived in rented single rooms, sharing a single kitchen with several other families living in the home, and perhaps a similarly packed home next door. Laging houses, also known as Doss Houses, were common.
These were large homes packed with dozens of beds that were available to rent for the night. Beds cost four pennies, around $2.50 USD a night. Then there were four penny coffins. Rose of thin beds or mattresses on the floor in tight lines.
Two penny ropes, rough hammocks that spanned a whole room that multiple people crammed into, and one penny sit-ups where people paid to sleep sitting up on a bench. Doss Houses held over 50 people per night. People also slept rough in parks or churchyards. Due to the overcrowding, up to 100 people, might share a single public toilet.
The sewers were overrun, and sewage spilled into the streets, the rivers and water supply. Slaughterhouses added to the stench, as did pollutants from tanneries, disease was rampant. Because of its proximity to the docks, many small communities of immigrants existed within the East End. An influx of Jewish immigrants into the East End in the 1870s and 80s caused further crowding, resulting in rampant anti-Jewish sentiment.
A large transient community also existed with sailors moving in and out of accommodations between contracts. Earning a living in the East End in 1888 usually came through casual labor, such as packing cargo at the docks, or hawking fruit and vegetables. These professions came with little job security, and the work environment was often cramped, dusty, and dark. Workhouses were an alternative for the desperate in exchange for food and shelter, one could do hard grueling labor in worse conditions.
Prostitution, now referred to as sex work due to criminal connotations embedded in the work prostitute, was offered the only means by which a woman on her own was able to earn a bed for the night or feed her family. While sex work was not illegal at the time, having sex in a public place known as indecency by the law was. The disheartened fellows of all financial levels existed to provide illegal venue for sex work. Mixed sex lodging houses were also sometimes used by sex workers who rented beds to work from.
These horrible working and living conditions resulted in large portions of the population turning to drink or drugs to cope with everyday life. Pubs proliferated in the East End, offering cheap alcohol as a viable means of escapism for many. The plethora of sex workers in the area offered other means. Sex workers, referred to at the time by the upper echelons as unfortunate, were often targets for assault, rape, and even murder in the East End.
Heddy crime, like Street Theft, was commonplace alongside alcohol-related violence, gang crime, and protection brackets. White chapel and spilt fields were most of the river murders to place, where some of the worst neighborhoods in the East End. There were mains of dingy alleyways and dark courtyards, each with multiple entrances and exit points, which made the district very difficult to police. White chapel spanned the jurisdictions of both the city of London police and the Metropolitan Police, with its criminal investigation branch, the CID, and its headquarters in Scotland Yard.
Each division of the Met Police was responsible for White Chapel. With its headquarters on Lehman Street, each division had 30 inspectors, 44 sergeants, and 473 constables, a total of 548 policemen, to police all of White Chapel, which was packed with 76,000 residents. On top of this lack of constables, East Enders were suspicious of the police, and avoided getting involved with them, including hiding crimes and protecting criminals. Thanks to corruption issues in the previous years, and wrongful accusations of prostitution during a contagious disease act, which were only repealed for years before the murders.
The police weren't looked non-fondly by any level of society. You can hear more about this in our contagious disease act episode. Despite mistrust, the police had some regular informants in East End, such as pub owners, pond brokers, and lodging housekeepers, who were paid in cash for useful information surrounding crimes. Many constables and detectives worked in COD-MUE in White Chapel to avoid confrontation with residents.
However, beat constables, or policemen who continuously controlled a specified area, were uniform and as visible as they could be. Uniform police constables walked beats both day and night in East End. The troops were walked repeatedly, and each cycle took about 30 minutes during the day. Night beats were around 15 minutes, with two thirds of the force out at night, as that was the time most crimes were committed.
Drunk and disorderly was the most common crime, especially between midnight and 1am, as that was the time when the clubs closed. Police and night watchmen, guards privately hired to patrol warehouses and businesses, generally they used to keep each other informed of anything going on in the area. As for the forensic techniques of the day, there were procedures for when bodies were found, such as keeping the crimes seen isolated, but this was often thwarted by public interest in the situation. Photography was relatively new, so crime scene photos were rare, but they were used in some investigations, including the river murders.
As known specific forensic unit, police used private photographers, a divisional surgeon, or local doctors, to do post-mortem examinations, and detectives analyzed the crime scene. Divisional surgeons were usually able to determine the type of weapon and the direction the attack came from, finger printing was in its infancy, and there was no standardized evidence collection procedure either. Modern chemical analysis methods, such as DNA analysis, were nonexistent. This was a state of the East End, where the murders, which were brutal even for white chapel, began to occur.
There were several killings leading up to the five that were eventually attributed to a single killer, nicknamed Jack the River. In fact, between 1888 and 1891, there were 11 brutal murders of women in East End. Collectively, these are known as the white chapel murders. I'll be discussing these in detail for the rest of the episode, so I want to warn you again that there will be graphic descriptions of violence against women, including sexual violence.
On the 25th of February 1888, a woman named Annie Milwood was admitted to white chapel workouts in Fermi with multiple stab wounds to her legs and abdomen done by an unknown assailant using a class knife. She died on March 31st. On the 4th of April, Emma Elizabeth Smith was robbed and sexually assaulted with pipe by what she described as a group of three men. She died of the ensuing infection from a ruptured pair to kneel on the 6th.
On the 7th of August, a woman's body was found on the landing of a lodging house in George's yard by one of the lodgers on his way to work. The woman was later identified as Martha Tabram, and she had been stabbed 39 times all over her body, including her vagina with a small blade. As you can imagine, the residents of white chapel were shaken by the string of violence. Unfortunately, it would only get worse.
The first of the five victims commonly attributed to Jack the River, known as the canonical five by thearyprologist, was Mary Ann, also called Polly Nichols. Around 340 in the morning on Friday, August 31st, a woman's body was discovered lying in the gutter on Box Row. She was found by police constable or PC, John Neil, while smoking his feet. Not long after the discovery, another constable PC Jonas Misen arrived at the scene alerted by two men who had seen the woman on their way to work.
Her dress had been around her waist, but they had moved back down over her feet at a decency. As more and more people stopped to look, the crime scene became contaminated with footprints. The body was soon moved to a nearby mortuary for a post-mortem examination. There was a deep cut to her throat.
Her lower abdomen had been cut open, and her genitals stabbed. The throat wound was inflicted first, and all other injuries occurred after death. The woman was later identified as Polly Nichols thanks to a post-mortem photograph circulated by the police. She was last seen by a friend with whom she shared lodging about an hour before her body was found.
No one in the area where she was found had heard a thing. Frightened rumors were now flying around White Chapel. There had been four brutal murders, and a police hadn't caught anyone. Not only that, but the Metropolitan Police were having internal struggles with the head of CID, James Monroe, resigning to Dainical's body was found due to power struggles with the commissioner, such Charles Warren.
In addition, the new assistant commissioner, Dr. Robert Anderson, was on sick leave in Europe. Tensions were on the rise, both on the streets and in the police stations. Chacwell Public Fear and Assisted in the case, renowned detective Inspector Frederick Adeline was brought in from Scotland Yard as he knew the White Chapel area well, having worked in age division for years.
Despite Adeline's help, no arrests were made. Around 5.45 am on the 8th of September, another woman's body was found in the backyard of 29 Handbrae Street, right at the bottom of the steps down from the house. The woman had a deep double slash to her throat. Her abdomen was cut open, and sections of her organs had been pulled out and left around her shoulders.
Parts of her uterus and sections of her bladder and vagina had been moved. By the time police arrived on the scene, a crowd had formed outside the front door of the house, but the crime scene in the back was mostly intact. Only one person had heard a quiet shuffle, the sound of something hitting a fence, around 5.15 am. Each division's surgeon at Dr.
George Baxter Phillips did the post-mortem examination, and felt that there was some evidence that the killer had a rudimentary knowledge of anatomy based on the locations of the cuts and the removal of the organs. However, the removal was done in haste, so the wounds were messy. The body was later identified by a large housemate as that of Annie Sifie, also known as Annie Chapman. She was last seen alive about 5.38 am with a man in a brown deer soccer hat and dark overcoat.
Suspects were now rolling in with people reporting every suspicious male they encountered. The nickname leather apron also began to circulate in reference to the killer. We'll discuss the suspects and the evidence against them in detail in part two of this episode. The newspapers were escalating fear in the area, with grim and sensational reports with less than factual recountings of the killings, so-called evidence and witness testimony that had not been given to the police, and was possibly entirely fabricated to sell papers, was circulated, and had to be followed up by the police.
Residents formed the White Chapel Vigilance Committee, where private citizens began patrolling the streets and pears. While they liaise with the police, they did not attempt to do their job for them. Still, not all constables got along with vigilance patrols. Reserve constables were sent to each division to assist in patrolling the area, and Scotland Yard's chief inspector Donald S.
Swanson joined the case as the lead investigator. With both Abiline and Swanson, the Metropolitan Police were doing their best to capture the killer. The City of London Police also stepped up their patrols on the border of City and Met Police jurisdiction, which ran right through White Chapel. Even with the addition of both police and vigilance patrols, another murder occurred on September 30th.
Around 1am, two men approached PC Henry Lam and PC William Eichliff on South Commercial Road. They informed him of a body found in abandoned workshop yard known as Dutfield Yard, just off-burner street, which is now called Henry K Street. When the police arrived, several people were already crowding the crime scene. A woman like Justin Seidigate to the Yard on her right side, her head inches from the wall of the neighboring working men's education club.
Her skirts were around her waist, and her legs were drawn up with her feet on the ground. She had one very deep slash to her throat, and her face was still warm. Louis Dincchitz, steward of the club and a jewelry seller, had found the woman as he parked his horse in cart in the yard at the end of his work. Blood was still flowing from the wounds at that point.
No one in the club or in the residences around the yard had heard a thing. The body was removed to a morgue, and the blood was washed away around 5.30am. When her post-mortem photograph was circulated, PC Walter Stryde of the Met Police recognized the woman as his aunt, Elizabeth Stryde. A woman believed to be Stryde was last seen by several witnesses outside Dutfield's yard in the early hours of the 30th.
Around 45 minutes after Stryde's body was found, PC Edward Watkins of the city police was walking his feet when he discovered the body of another woman in near square. The woman was in the darkest corner of the square lying on her back with her shirts around her waist. Her throat was caught deeply. Her abdomen had been mutilated, and her organs pulled out.
Watkins alerted the night watchman of a warehouse at border near square, who blew his whistle. City PC James Harvey arrived at the scene and stated that he had walked his feet right past a meter square just minutes before a hadn't seen or heard anything. The yard was very dark, so it's possible he had walked right past the killer at work. City Police divisional surgeon Dr.
Frederick Gordon Brown was called to the scene, and the Metropolitan Police were alerted by a Scotland yard. Around 2.20 in the morning, the body was moved to a morgue for post-mortem examination, attended by Dr. Brown, Dr. Baxter Phillips, and two other doctors.
The medical men were astonished at the extensive mutilation the woman had been subjected to. Her face was covered in lacerations. Both eyelids, her nose, cheeks, and her lips had been cut. Two triangular flaps had been cut into her cheekbones.
Her throat had been cut to the bone. Her abdomen had been opened with a single slice from Q-Bist sternum. Her liver had been stabbed, and her navel carefully cut away so that it remained whole on a flap of skin. The left labia and the paretonium had been stabbed.
The undersides of both thighs were cut from behind the knee to the labia, making a flap of skin. The intestines had been detached from connected tissues and thrown up over her right shoulder. The pancreas and one kidney were both stabbed, while the other kidney was missing. The uterus had been sliced through horizontally, leaving a stomp above the cervix, which was uninjured.
The upper portion of the uterus was missing. While doing an inventory of the women's clothing, it was noted that a piece of her apron had been torn away, and was also missing. The woman was later identified as Captain Conway, also known as Catherine Eddows, by her boyfriend John Kelly, with whom she lived at a large house on Flower Endine Street. He had last seen her at 2 p.m.
on September 29, sober and on her way to get money from her daughter. However, Eddows was picked up around 8.3 p.m. by police for being drunk and lying on the pavement on all gate high street. She had slept off the alcohol and became a police station and was released at about 1 a.m.
She was last seen alive at about 1.35 a.m. standing near the entrance to Mere Square with a man just nine minutes before PC Watkins found her body. About 15 minutes walk from Dufil's yard at 2.50 a.m. PC Alfred Long of Metropolitan Police found a scrap of cloth with blood on it in an open doorway of Kenment on Houston Street.
An inscription had been scrawled on the wall above it in chalk. It read, quote, the Jews are the men that will not be blamed for nothing. End quote, neither the cloth nor the writing had been there when he had passed on his beat half an hour before. It was later determined that the piece of cloth was the missing piece of Eddows apron.
It was unknown if the graffiti was related to the killing, or if the apron piece had been thrown there coincidentally, or with the idea of confusing the police. Chalk graffiti was not uncommon in the area, and unfortunately neither was antisemitism. Controversially, the graffiti was raised by police before the sun came up in order to prevent riots and lynch mobs from attacking Jewish residents. The scene had not been photographed.
Crowds formed around both crime scenes and the wards. The double event, as it became known, sparked intense public opinion and more stress for white chapel. The killings had now made international news, and the dire state of the East End was under a microscope. The police were criticized for not offering rewards, or using bloodhounds, and for assisted commissioner Anderson being away yet again in Europe.
The police were inferencing as they undertook a colossal manhunt, trying to follow every solid lead they had. Around 300 people were detained during the search. 76 butchers and slaughterhouse workers were questioned. Sailors were tracked down.
2,000 blodgers were interviewed, and 80,000 homes received leaflets asking for any information on the killings. Hundreds of hoax letters were sent to the police, making it more difficult to determine if any real communications for the killer had received. One letter called the Dear Boss Letter, as that is who it was addressed to, arrived in late September, and was suspected to be from the actual killer. It was signed to Jack the River.
Another suspicious letter was sent to George Lusk, the head of the Mile and Vigilance Committee. The letter included a portion of what was claimed to be Catherine Eddows' kidney. It stated that the sender had eaten the other part of it. This letter is known as the from Hell Letter due to those words being written as the center's location.
The kidney was examined and proved to be human, but there was no certainty it came from Catherine Eddows. The search for the killer continued throughout October, and in the first week of November, Commissioner Warren resigned due to power struggles with the home secretary over publishing pieces of evidence in the press. Days after his resignation, the most brutal of all the white chamel murders occurred. On the 9th of November, at 10.45 AM, a man knocked on the door of 13 Miller's Court just off-doorsed street in White Chapel.
He was attempting to collect rent from the tenant Mary Jane Kelly, also called Marie Jeanette Kelly. When no one answered, he peered through the window, was shocked by what he saw and ran for the police. When the police arrived, they closed off Miller's Court and sent for Dr. Phillips.
Inspector Abnerline arrived around 1145, with word that they were to wait for bloodhounds. When the dogs didn't arrive by 1.30 PM, the police went in without them. What was left of a woman lay across the bed. Her face was unrecognizable through the lacerations inflicted by it.
Her throat was cut and her body was me related. Her abdomen was empty of organs. Her uterus, kidneys, and one breast lay beneath her head. Other viscera were located on the bed around her.
Her thighs had been stripped of flesh, which was left on the bedside table, along with more of her abdominal viscera. Her heart was missing. Many officers attended the crime scene, including a systems commissioner Robert Anderson, who had finally returned from Europe. The first ever in situ crime scene photograph was taken before anything in the room was moved.
At 350 PM, the body of Mary Kelly covered in a tarpaland was taken by Carter to the Lord. Crowds surrounded the card, crying, dawking their hats, and trying to break the police court in. 13 Miller's Court was boarded up, and the door padlocked. The post-mortem examination was carried out by Dr.
Phillips, with the assistance of Dr. Brown and Dr. Thomas Bond. Afterwards, Dr.
Bond produced an overview of the sort of person he thought might commit such a crime, a very first offender profile ever written. He believed the killer was a middle-aged male, strong but defensive, and able to blend into the crowd. The killer was also probably solitary and likely eccentric. He probably had a small regular income, like a pension.
Or live with someone who did. People close to him might have suspicions that he was involved, but were keeping quiet. Dr. Bond also felt that Nichols, Chapman, Stry, Edoes, and Kelly were all killed by the same man.
Dr. Phillips and Dr. Brown disagreed with him on this, suggesting Stry had been killed by someone else, as she hadn't suffered any relations. Tensions were now sky high in the East End.
Many women reported seeing suspicious men, and some claims they were attacked by the river. However, the police never found enough evidence to convict anyone of the terrible murders. Several other murders of women took place in white chapel during the following years, but none were thought to be connected to the river. Catherine Rose, my lead, was found strangled in popular on December 20, 1888.
Allison Kenzie was stabbed twice in the neck and her abdomen cut on 17th July 1889 in white chapel. An unidentified dismembered and mutilated torso of women was found decomposing under a railway bridge on September 10, 1889. Francis Cole was found alive under a white chapel railway bridge on February 13, 1891, with a deep cut to her throat. She bled out while waiting for help.
Despite the popular assumption that all these women were sex workers, this isn't true. Who were these women? Why were they killed? Where they connected somehow?
We'll explore these questions in part three of this episode. In the years after the murders, several things changed to the East End. Street lighting was improved. Streets were widened to ease of the crowding.
Most significantly, large portions of white chapel were cleared of lodging houses and rebuilt with better dwellings within a mere six years of murders. However, the notorious Dorset Street became the scene of several other murders following that of Mary Kelly and was soon dubbed the worst street in London by the National Press. It would take complete demolition years later to rid the East End of his influence. Despite the crimes being committed in 1888, most of us have grown up knowing the name Jack the River.
He's the prototype for many villains in literature, film and video games. He also still contributes to many women's feelings of vulnerability and sea environments thanks to the constant retelling of his deeds. He has become a legend, stealthy, quick and without mercy. Sometimes representing the mad scientist, sometimes the establishment and sometimes the worst of humanity.
The identity of Jack the River was never found by the London police. The murders sparked a publishing sensation that eventually grew into a global industry of true crime. A specific area of true crime, ripperology, formed with numerous armchair historians and detectives circulating about the river's identity. One of these researchers, Paul Begg, whose book was one of many I read for this podcast, but he best, quote, The identity of Jack the River isn't really very important.
It's the story of those crimes and the women who died, and of the society and times in which they lived that matters and upholds the enduring fascination. We'll discuss this next at the time and later theories about suspects in part two. For now, keep tending to that spark of curiosity. Emila P, Lauren F, doing W, Erica T, Elizabeth, Yodira G, Talisha C, Olivia P, Amanda G, Ellen B, Jess N, Ashley S, and Joanna S, all have my eternal gratitude for becoming patrons or for switching into the new tears.
Thank you so much. Because of you, the listeners, our creepy community is growing strong. The MCP has joined the straight up strange podcast network, which hosts true crime, paranormal, history, science, folklore and other enigmatic podcasts. Nothing is off limits when you enter the world of straight up strange.
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Any purchases for this list are greatly appreciated. We are eternally grateful for your support. My name is Halley, and until next time, thanks for listening. I'll see you next time.