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Lucy Worsley Victorian Murder Club Season 1 Episode 1
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00:00I
00:30The London Thames, winding silently through the capital.
00:47Though calm today, in Victorian times, it was buzzing with trade, building and activity.
00:55But it also had a sinister side.
01:00Built in the 1880s, as part of Tower Bridge, this is known as Dead Man's Hole.
01:16Traditionally, this is where dead bodies would be fished out of the river, brought up these
01:24steps, and then taken through to the mortuary over there for identification.
01:30Sometimes they were accidental drownings, sometimes suicides, but just occasionally, there were
01:40also victims of murder.
01:43And there's one story about bodies in the Thames that, ever since I first heard it, has
01:50always haunted me.
01:54And captured my imagination.
01:56This is the extraordinary forgotten story of a Victorian serial killer.
02:08He may have killed as many as five women in 19th century London, cold and calculating.
02:18He taunted the police and shocked the newspapers.
02:21But he wasn't Jack the Ripper.
02:22This is a murderer you've probably never heard of.
02:28The killer's hallmark was to dismember the bodies of his victims and to scatter the body
02:35paths up and down the river.
02:37Given the name, the Thames Torso murderer, he was never caught.
02:44But ever since I heard about this case, I just can't shake these questions.
02:50Who were the women and who killed them?
02:53The body has been found in the streets of White Hill.
02:56Now I'm hunting that murderer down and I'm not doing it alone.
03:03I'm consulting professionals from the fields of pathology and psychology.
03:08And independent researchers who've their own theories on the case.
03:14And I've handpicked a team of writers and historians to help me navigate Victorian London.
03:21They've scoured the surviving police case files and original records about the victims
03:28and their deaths.
03:30We're checking leads that were followed and discovering ones that were missed.
03:37Together, we'll build a picture of the women who were killed.
03:41And we'll finally unmask one of the 19th century's most brutal serial killers.
04:001887, London, the most populated city in the world and growing fast.
04:13People are flocking here in the hope of well-paid work in new urban industries.
04:19But as the city swells, living standards fall.
04:24Homelessness rises, poverty grows and crime is rife.
04:30For many, it's a risky place to be.
04:34And for some, truly dangerous.
04:37Whereabouts are we heading?
04:40Well, this is a Victorian map, but I think that you'll know Raynham Ferry.
04:45Yes, absolutely.
04:46And I want to go to Hempelman's Fish Manure Works.
04:51OK, about 40 minutes from here.
04:53But for the first case, I need to leave the city and head east.
04:59I've come 15 miles out of central London downriver to what in 1887 would have been the peaceful
05:15farming village of Raynham.
05:18Just here on the bank was Hempelman's Bloodfish Manure Plant, producing fertilizer for the market
05:25gardens around here.
05:27And this is where the case really begins.
05:32Here's a newspaper account of the horrible discovery at Raynham.
05:37A lighterman called Edward Hughes was at work.
05:41And it says here that at 11.30 in the morning, Edward was by the jetty.
05:46The tide was flowing out to sea.
05:50And he saw what appeared to be a bag, which the tide was carrying along.
05:59It was about 33 feet from his barge.
06:02Now, Edward goes to retrieve this parcel and he manages to fish it out and get it onto the land.
06:15He discovers that it contains the lower torso of a woman's body.
06:23Here's a reconstruction of the scene in a newspaper.
06:26Because this is the illustrated police news, which is a really trashy paper, they've sensationalized the image.
06:33But just think, for poor Edward Hughes, what a distressing thing to find.
06:39But the gruesome discoveries at Raynham were only just the start.
06:47On the 5th of June, here at Temple Pier, right in the heart of the city, 16 miles upstream from Raynham,
07:01a woman's thigh, wrapped in fabric, is found floating in the water.
07:10A few days later, up here at Battersea Park, on the foreshore, was found another parcel,
07:16wrapped up in canvas this time and tied with string.
07:19And inside it was the upper part of a woman's torso.
07:23Three weeks later, in the north of the city, some boys are fishing in Regent's Canal,
07:32right here by St. Pancras Lock.
07:35They notice something unusual.
07:37It's a right arm.
07:41Later the same day, further up the canal, by Regent's Park, someone finds two severed legs.
07:47The police begin to drag the canal, and the next day, a left arm is pulled out of the water.
07:57Finally, on the 16th of July, so that's more than two months after the torso is found at Raynham,
08:04a labourer spots a left thigh floating in the water between two barges here at Camden Lock.
08:12A total of eight body parts have now been found all over London, in the Thames, in the canal.
08:23And when they're pieced together, they make the almost complete corpse of a young woman.
08:32The only parts missing are the shoulders and the head.
08:36As public horror mounts, the police begin to investigate.
08:44But with no head to identify her, no obvious cause of death, and not even a crime scene to go on,
08:52they quickly draw a blank.
08:55Now, can I do any better?
09:06In the early 1900s, Sherlock Holmes creator Arthur Conan Doyle met up with other amateur sleuths to
09:14investigate infamous and unsolved cases, especially murders. They called themselves The Crimes Club.
09:22So, to help me uncover the Thames Torso murderer, I've brought together my own crack team.
09:29Rose Wallace, a social historian with an expertise in 19th century crime and criminal justice.
09:37Nadifa Mohammed, a novelist with a passion for history and bringing the past to life.
09:43And Kate Lister, a historian of sexual behaviour and women's rights.
09:48They've been combing through original documents to see if immersing ourselves in the fabric of 19th
09:56century London can help us find out more about the victims and ultimately solve this crime.
10:06I want to know who did this and how they did it. We don't know the cause of death. And why they did it.
10:16That intrigues me. Reading the details of how the body parts were found across London and into Essex
10:23is incredibly disturbing. I mean, it's extraordinary how kind of disparate, how spread apart everything
10:33is that there are these pieces of a person. Even a hundred years later, it's still, it's really shocking.
10:40Turning their body into a jigsaw puzzle.
10:43Our first question is, who was she? Are there any leads in the papers?
10:49There was one promising lead, a Miss Cross. She is about 28 years old and she has gone missing
10:58in January. Nobody has seen her. She is described in the reports as being of weak intellect,
11:05having a speech impediment. She is described as being very trusting that she did have a habit of going
11:12missing from time to time. Do you think she's what we might describe as somebody with learning difficulties?
11:18That probably is how we would describe her today. We certainly wouldn't say of weak intellect.
11:24So, we've got a woman, late 20s, who's been missing for several months.
11:27Yep. Do we know anything more about this woman? We do. We can track her through the family
11:36address that's reported in the newspapers. Yeah. So, that means we can go into the wonderful
11:41census records and we can find them. In 1871, the Cross family are living in Guildford in Surrey.
11:50Big family, big family, one of which is Emily. Oh, so the missing woman is called Emily. Yeah. Wow.
11:59Which also helps us because we can work out that this family originally from Norfolk. Oh.
12:06The experience of the Cross family is, I think, quite representative of a lot of people
12:10moving from agricultural areas that were hit by what we call the Great Agricultural Depression in the 1870s,
12:18is having to then move elsewhere to urban areas, particularly from Norfolk to the southeast,
12:25to try and find new opportunities in this kind of 10-year period. So, we've got a woman in her late 20s
12:31who's gone missing. Her family are concerned for her. She's somebody who perhaps is a bit at risk
12:37in an urban environment, somebody who grew up in the country, is very trusting. This is promising.
12:42While the club pursues this lead on a possible victim, I'm on the trail of the murderer.
12:55The one thing that seems a clue to me is the fact that all the body parts were placed
13:00into London's waterways. So, I want to talk to someone with first-hand experience of the river as a crime
13:09scene, a former member of the Metropolitan Police Marine Unit. So, Rob, I want to show you my map
13:18with all of the locations marked of where the body parts were found. Despite where they ended up,
13:27do you think they could have been placed at the same time in central London and then flowed west downstream?
13:32Normally, in my experience, any object in the river will normally turn up downriver from where it went in.
13:40But, for me, what stretches the imagination is to drop three body parts into the water in central London
13:48and then for one to turn up in Raynham, which is a long way away.
13:54Much more likely that we've got an individual putting the parts in separate spots along the bank of the river.
14:01You think? That would be my thoughts.
14:03What about these ones up here that are in the canal? Because I think that does connect to the river,
14:08doesn't it, the Regent's Canal? It does.
14:11Could they have been sort of washed up somehow?
14:14Well, no. The canal system is completely separate. To get onto the canal system,
14:18you have to go through a river lock and then you've got to navigate several locks on the inside.
14:24There's very little current on the canals. There's nothing to move.
14:28Definitely put in at that spot. That would be my guess.
14:31Oh, interesting. There's clearly a sort of release strategy here.
14:36And if I've understood you correctly, Rob, if the murderer has an HQ then,
14:42it's likely to be upstream from Raynham because stuff generally goes down.
14:47Really, the heart of London is our hotspot.
14:49Yeah, I think so. I think so.
14:51That would fit with just about everything we have. And it fits quite nicely.
15:00We've now got a theory that the killer's working out of central London.
15:05But shockingly, by the following year, he's not the only murderer in the capital on the loose.
15:11The body has been found in the streets of...
15:14These are asking for any witnesses to...
15:16In August 1888, Jack the Ripper kills for the first time,
15:21cutting the throat of Mary Ann Nichols in the city's East End,
15:25followed days later by Annie Chapman.
15:30But as terror spreads through the streets of London,
15:34the Torso Killer makes his next move.
15:37That's right, Jack the Ripper does not call everything.
15:38But …
15:47This has been a very disappointing point of view.
15:50Which is nothing else after the first time,
15:51and is still the only reason.
15:56But the man who's behind the scenes is in the situation.
16:00oh yes these steps going down to the water are I'm pretty sure the steps just here on my map
16:21on the 11th of September 1888 a porter called Frederick Moore spots something in the mud of
16:30the foreshore he goes to get it it's a woman's arm it's been tied around the upper part with a piece
16:40of string for almost a month the origin of the severed arm remains a mystery but then the police
16:50get word that a woman's torso has been found with the arms missing there's a crucial difference
16:57though the torso isn't in the river but it is very close on the embankment but it's found wrapped up
17:07in a black skirt and placed in the vaults of this building which in 1888 is still under construction
17:14it's a building site but there's something else this isn't just going to be any old office block
17:20it's the brand new headquarters of the Metropolitan Police
17:25we have another body and this time part of it's been found in the river but part of it on land
17:40and in the basement of the new police headquarters the plot is thickening things are developing
17:47I think the killer is coming out of the shadows a little bit gaining in confidence
17:51this is really really weird terrifying as well this is a second body before we get into that
17:59did you make any headway with the first victim from Rainham could she be the missing Miss Cross
18:05well obviously DNA is of no use to us here and it's very difficult to make an identification of her
18:13but her family said she had two distinctive birthmarks she had one on her breast which wasn't found
18:19and she had one on her wrist the wrist was found the wrist was found yes no birthmark it's not her
18:26her frustrating I'm glad she's not in eight pieces though as far as we know
18:33what about this latest body the Whitehall torso I know you've been looking into who the victim
18:39might have been have you found any leads on her yes I have a family in Chelsea who were missing
18:47their 17 year old daughter Lily Vass Lily Vass she was a servant working in Wandsworth Common
18:55a sensible girl apparently who'd been in service most of her teenage years and the only associate that
19:02her mother is aware of is this girl in Notting Hill who is a pen pal of Lily's she reports her
19:09missing after this body is found in Whitehall and the parents are invited to come and look at the body
19:16parts and poor Mrs Vass can't bring herself to go into the room where the body parts are so all she can
19:23do is look at the skirt that some of the remains were found in it's a black sateen skirt that she
19:31doesn't have any memory of Lily having and so that reassures her that this isn't Lily but she doesn't
19:39return home either so what happened to Lily then thankfully two years later there is a sign of her in
19:46the records there is yeah so Lily is alive married to a man called Joseph Hale and he's a wheelwright
19:55from Notting Hill and I don't know if you remember but in Notting Hill was Lily's pen pal the servant
20:01girl and I'm now wondering if it wasn't a servant girl but it was Joseph yes who she would end up
20:07married to and maybe this is another kind of conjecture maybe that was the reason she went
20:13missing because her mother didn't approve of this relationship possibly that would make sense well
20:18good for Lily good for Lily but we still don't know who this body belongs to and it belongs to
20:24somebody it's someone exactly exactly it's just so easy to disappear in London at this point and not
20:31to leave very much of a trail at all that blows my mind that they couldn't identify that nobody came
20:37forward to it it could be this person it's really frustrating isn't it the killer is in charge
20:42the murderer may have obscured his victims identities but I'm hoping there were clues to their lives he
20:57couldn't erase so I've asked a modern forensic pathologist to review the post-mortem reports from
21:05the coroner's inquests for the Raynham and Whitehall victims and see what she can add
21:10say Mary what did the Victorian doctors who looked at these bodies in the first instance work out they
21:21made a thorough examination and they found no evidence of any significant trauma no evidence of
21:27stab wounds no breaks so we can't account for the death from the parts that we have but the commonality
21:34is that the heads are missing and that would suggest to me that that's where the cause of
21:39death lies this killer has not made things easy what did the doctors work out about the identity of the
21:46victims with the Raynham body we had the pelvis with the pelvic organs the uterus was still present so we
21:52were dealing with a female they then tried to age the person now they could look at the bones themselves and
21:59look where bones fuse and from that then they could infer how old somebody is all the bones were fused which
22:07meant they thought that the person was over 25 what was the profile they came up with for the body in
22:13Whitehall they thought it was probably somebody between about 25 to 30 and they described her as being
22:19well nourished hmm somebody with a good diet so somebody who's not living on the streets living in the workhouse
22:26something like that that's the assumption you could make so in the case of the Raynham body parts did they tell you
22:34anything about her social class they did notice indentations on the lower legs yes which they said were garter marks
22:42mm-hmm and that appears to be how the lower classes wore their stockings with the garters low in the legs
22:48higher class they wore their garters higher up the legs that seems to be their assessment so we're
22:52dealing with somebody of a lower class were they male these doctors of course they were male do you
22:58think they really knew about women's underwear well that's a completely different story but I think they
23:06did a fantastic job really oh definitely they got all of the information they possibly could out of
23:12what they had yes yeah and there is nothing else that I could tell them that they didn't find marvelous
23:19we've talked about what we can learn about the victims what can we learn about the killer from
23:24this information there are some similarity and how the bodies have been dismembered now dismemberment just
23:31means taking the body apart dividing into pieces but it's been very cleverly done if we look at the
23:38Raynham body the arms have been removed and they've been removed through the joint so it wasn't anybody
23:45taking tentative cuts or trying to work out and jag it you know sort of working their way through it was
23:50somebody with some confidence somebody who knew what they were doing somebody who knew the way around a
23:56body who could remove a limb and do it quite efficiently it comes into the realms then of who
24:02would have that kind of knowledge somebody with medical knowledge would a surgeon would butchers
24:08from cutting up animals this isn't just somebody randomly doing this they've got some key bits of
24:17knowledge mmm more devilry I've learned that the police surgeons really combed the bodies of the
24:41victims for clues that might be written there to tell us who they were it's interesting that that
24:46they are interested in at least yeah and they are pulling every detail they possibly can so at
24:52Raynham they look at the sacking they look at the twine the knots exactly the knots what can be
24:59deduced from the knots well I think the thing with the knots is there are different types of knots and
25:04that if it's and again by the water is it not that indicates a sailor a sailor's not was it a kind of
25:10a slip knot unfortunately it's just a kind of fairly ordinary knot it does lead me to think are there
25:16other physical clues that we should look into there was this skirt that was wrapped around the torso
25:23what do you think absolutely that's brought up at the inquest they've traced it back to a Bradford
25:29manufacturer really yeah this is probably it really is and it was acknowledged that was made of common
25:35material that there was one flounce the decorative frill around the bottom six inches wide and that
25:41the material could probably be bought at six and a half pence per yard what kind of level of fashion is
25:48that do we think expensive cheap this is where it gets I think a bit ambiguous because it's black fabric
25:55but then it is patterned as well so it's a bit fancier satin is perhaps a higher-end fabric most poor
26:02people were wearing second-hand clothes third-hand clothes yeah yeah it's hard to pin down but they
26:09are paying attention to it oh quite impressed by the levels of investigation the police are doing
26:14hmm it's a really interesting period that we're looking at in terms of policing particularly perhaps
26:19in London in London's always been the kind of focus of concerns about crime a disorder that's why we see
26:25the foundation of the Metropolitan Police our first professional police force in the city in 1829 but
26:31they were very much a kind of preventative force but in 1842 they set up the first detective branch and
26:39this was plain clothes police officers they go undercover they can investigate clues they talk to
26:46witnesses but then in 1878 they established the criminal investigation department CID as we know
26:54it this is a great image of H division which is the White Chapel CID that's an amazing moustache in that photo yeah
27:04part of the job description to have a moustache by the time we get to 1883 there's like 800 CID offices
27:11and these have local divisions like the White Chapel one spread out all over the place what
27:17does it show a rising crime and rising concerns about crime or both I think probably both the 1880s are
27:24really tense and fraught time particularly in London and there are those concerns about increasing crime
27:30about public disorder so there's a much kind of bigger presence of the detective branch these local
27:38detective offices were run from a Riverside command center just next to Big Ben in the very heart of
27:46London which brings me back to our second torso there's something about the Whitehall murder there's still
27:53really bothering me it's the fact that the body was left in the headquarters of the police and it was
28:02extremely hard to access as an article in the Times made clear you go down some underground steps and
28:16then a ramp down to the lower level which is a vast place of arches which is very dark and then you can
28:25take a dangerous way to another recess that's totally dark and then there's a piece of board and it was
28:32under the board within this space that the parcel containing the body was found and it goes on here the
28:40devious ways which have to be taken to reach this secret spot and the fact that this is the most secret spot on
28:48the site have led people to think that it must have been a workman who puts the body there because
28:56nobody else would have known the way the police investigated but they couldn't link any of the
29:02workmen to the crime the newspapers speculated that maybe entrance was obtained from the Thames embankment
29:11because there was this side entrance there where the supplies came in by boat now that is a connection
29:20to the other body parts which were all found in the Thames this is leading me to wonder why on earth
29:27would you put the body in a place where only a closed circle of suspects had access the people who knew
29:36this very complicated labyrinth of a building site and that's even before we get on to the connection
29:42with the police why on earth would you take that risk to try and understand the killer's thinking I'm
29:55meeting someone who regularly works with the police to help them understand criminal behavior investigative
30:02psychologist Professor Sam Lundrigan
30:05Sam so this torso has been discovered in the basement at the new police headquarters
30:13why would a killer put a body in such a risky weird place it's really striking isn't it immediately
30:20stands out and I think for this offender the locations where he is disposing of his victims
30:26bodies or body parts is integral to understanding why he's offending and what he's trying to achieve
30:34what about the disposal of the body parts along the river and the canal then in the earlier case do you
30:41think that that had any meaning beyond just getting rid of the body what we know from my research is that
30:49where offenders decide to dispose of bodies will have meaning to them in terms of the world they operate in
30:54he has some connection I would imagine with the regents canal area from that initial and obviously
31:00the Thames he's got a familiarity with those areas of London and the waterways in particular I think it's
31:05one of the most important stages in this offenders murderous activity is that final resting place
31:11because he knows they will be eventually found and so I think for him it's really important that the
31:17placement and the posing of the body parts is bringing some sort of reward the posing
31:24of the body parts do you mean like kind of almost displaying them I do with the gaze of the finder
31:30in mind absolutely I think he's thinking about that ultimate public display and discovery it is I think
31:38we're dealing with a very very dark individual can you read into the Whitehall case something about the
31:44killer's thoughts towards the police possibly taunting them by putting the body parts in the police
31:50basement it absolutely could be of course we don't know but psychologically it makes sense to me you're
31:57making me think about this picture in the illustrated police news depicting the finding of the body in a new
32:05way then do you think that the person who did the crime would want to know that this picture existed I
32:10do I know many examples where serial killers have followed the media coverage like this because
32:17that brings a reward they're looking for some validation or notoriety if you like through their
32:22acts that is so creepy do you see there's a kind of development from the first killing to the second
32:29the first the body parts all over the place yeah the second the body part is placed in the police
32:34headquarters while he's remaining actually quite remarkably consistent because the core behaviors
32:40that make up his signature the dismemberment the lack of frenzy the lack of mutilation that stays the
32:46same but what he's starting to do is branch out and use different environments so you've gone so far as
32:54to say this person likes to be in control is probably familiar with the waterways of London yeah what do you
33:01take away from these two cases I think that we're dealing with an incredibly dangerous individual he's
33:08becoming more audacious he's almost saying yeah game on catch me if you can given the pathology shown
33:19here the calculation the experience how methodically is I would already be calling this individual serial
33:26killer this person will kill again I think we are at the early stages of an unfolding criminal career
33:35we've got a killer who's taunting the police it seems playing a game of cat and mouse on the one hand
33:46he's ever so cautious and methodical but on the other hand he's taking these crazy risks
33:53it seems that the more I learn about this killer the more complicated he becomes
34:01what I've learned from Sam is just so dark you won't believe it she thinks that the placing of the
34:12torso in the vaults was something that the killer did very deliberately and that he maybe imagined the
34:18feelings of the people who came across it that feels like a sort of step up in levels of darkness
34:24and weirdness doesn't it it really does if he was to some extent taunting or teasing the police then how
34:32did they respond so we've got to remember when this is happening it's October 1888 four women have
34:41already been brutally murdered in Whitechapel and that's been attributed to Jack the Ripper and now
34:48another Thames Torso mystery and the body you know right under their noses and they're I mean they're
34:55being taunted in in the press because the character they're laughing yeah it gets worse for the police
35:01because they found the torso in this vault under what will be Scotland Yard but they think there's
35:08nothing else down there until a journalist Mr Waring comes with his little dog Smoker and they find
35:16more body parts under the nose of the police they missed it they missed it a journalist Smoker the dog
35:24yes what is he a kind of canine detective apparently yes that's exactly what the press call him
35:29Smoker the dog detective there we are in a bowler hat oh look at him in his actual outfit
35:35is this real then what does he do so I don't know why Mr Waring thought it was acceptable to bring
35:42his dog to the place where the body had been found but he does and he gives him a scent and sets him
35:47loose in the vault and they find a leg a woman's leg the police had missed it they actually trialed
35:55sniffer dogs potentially with the idea of using them in Whitechapel but there's a sort of moral
36:01outrage of how could you possibly set bloodhounds on Englishmen you know it's a breach of our civil
36:09liberty when they had been used quite freely in the Caribbean to to hunt people who escaped from
36:14plantations yeah it's that distinction between you know these things may be considered appropriate
36:21in colonial context but but not in England yeah in London not in London the home of Liberty even
36:28when the police are being ridiculed and criticized very heavily for not catching Jack the Ripper or
36:35indeed attempts also know they aren't trying every method at their disposal because of these really
36:44entrenched ideas the Victorian police are making no progress
36:53so far not a single arrest has been made for either the Raynham or the Whitehall killings
37:04with no clue about where the murders had taken place who the victims had been with no known cause
37:12of death and possibly with the killer taunting them as well the police are stuck they just need more
37:19information and seven and a half months later they get it
37:23on the 4th of June between 8 and 9 in the morning some boys are bathing here at Albert Bridge it's not
37:45something that's allowed today and they spots a parcel being nudged along the foreshore by the tide a
37:5215 year old called Isaac Brett goes to get this parcel out of the water and he takes it up the
38:00steps to the road where it's unwrapped to reveal a woman's leg it's been cut off between the hip and
38:08the knee later that day four miles down river a workman called John Reagan is hanging around just here
38:17at St George's steps Hallsley down tower bridge is under construction and he's hoping to pick up a day's work as a
38:25laborer he sees something floating in the water when he gets it out he realizes it's the lower half of a woman's body
38:35soon more remains of the victim are found in the river and on land to here in Battersea Park and even across the water in Chelsea
38:51a total of ten body parts are discovered some of them are wrapped in pieces of a woman's
39:04black and grey checked coat it's an ulster coat one of those ones with a little cape attached and just
39:12like in the Raynham and Whitehall cases no head is ever recovered and there's something even more horrifying
39:21it turns out that the victim had been around seven months pregnant
39:27looking at the map of all the murders especially this latest one you can see that many of the body
39:36parts were found in West London in Battersea Chelsea and Pimlico and often around the river
39:44this stretch of the river had recently undergone enormous change in the preceding decades ambitious
39:56Victorian engineers had reclaimed the marshy land along the riverbanks creating new embankments with
40:03public gardens and fancy promenades but by the 1880s these new public spaces also attracted London Institute and
40:13vulnerable
40:15I'm increasingly convinced these locations hold a clue about these crimes
40:20and I'm meeting murder club member Kate Lister to test out a theory on her
40:27here's our torso Kate on the land yeah and then the thing that's nagging at me is
40:33this other body part over here the part of the leg that was also
40:36on the land on the other side of the river that's different to all the other body parts
40:41which are in the water on the foreshore so here's my theory Kate which is that the killer
40:48had a boat they could have come up the river to around this part and parked up at the the battersea
40:56park pier that's marked on the map come ashore dumps the torso zips across the water
41:04perhaps to that little staircase over there yep and drops the the five that was over on that side
41:12that makes much more sense than attempting to carry up with body parts all around London
41:20although the body parts were found on the land yeah it could be that the important thing here is the
41:26river and do you know what Kate there's something else about this house here where that body part
41:32was found that's really weird okay I think we should go and take a look
41:36now this is where I wanted to bring you things have changed quite a lot but in 1889 that was a house
41:55that was its garden and it was in that garden that the leg was found why come to the other side of the
42:02river scramble up the embankment and throw a leg over there why here's my theory Kate okay it's a
42:09bit far-fetched but bear with me it's because of whose garden it was this house was built for a man
42:16called Percy Shelley who was the son of Mary Shelley okay he was the author of Frankenstein Frankenstein
42:27in which a monster is made out of body parts what do you think about that do you think he knew that
42:36do you think he knew that this was their house it was called Shelley house so the connection was
42:41quite obvious it would be the only reason wouldn't it would be to come up here and throw a leg is
42:47for the shock factor there's no other reason for doing it at all we do suspect that the killer puts
42:53body parts in places of significance yeah like in the police building that was under construction
42:59exactly so and do you know what standing here as well looking at the other side
43:03see how easy it would be to get across by boat
43:10but just when everything is starting to point towards the river
43:14in 1889 the Victorian police make a major breakthrough and it's linked to the clothing
43:22the victims body parts were wrapped in
43:27several local women come forward to say they think that they've recognized the checked coat
43:34they think it belongs to a friend of theirs 24 year old Elizabeth Jackson
43:40Elizabeth Jackson's sister Mary also comes to the police to tell them that her sister has a little
43:48scar just here on the wrist it was an accident with a vase when she'd been 12. The body is re-examined
43:56and the scar is found confirming that this must be Elizabeth Jackson or as her friends call her Lizzie
44:06it's easy to think of her as just a crime victim but these little details kind of bring her alive
44:16and just think about her sister and her friends wanting to know what's happened to her
44:23Elizabeth's remains were taken 30 miles southwest of London to Brookwood Cemetery then the largest
44:42graveyard in the world it was built in the 1850s because the swelling capital had run out of space to
44:49bury its dead I've come today to see for myself where Elizabeth was finally laid to rest so here we
44:58have Elizabeth Jackson 2nd of July burial 1889 age 24 yes it is a pauper burial indicated by third class but
45:13you had no memorial or marker but she does have her own individual grave and do we know where that is
45:21not exactly but we do know areas in the cemetery where pauper burials were
45:31so we found Elizabeth but there's also something else we think we found the Whitehall murder victim
45:40no really yes yes ah here we are 108 525 there was another murder in Whitehall that says so the remains
45:52from Whitehall the Whitehall murder the Whitehall mystery yeah and it does fit in with the dates of death
46:02and the time of investigation that's amazing it's lovely to know that somebody's still thinking about
46:09these women after all these years yes I agree yes they shouldn't be forgotten
46:20poor Elizabeth had a pauper's burial it's possible that her family weren't even there
46:26I hope that she'd be glad that somebody's come looking for her now someone who's on her side as well
46:39she deserves to have her story told I'm very curious to know more about who she might have been
46:44so Elizabeth Jackson the only identified known victim of this killer Rose and I have been doing some
47:02digging and because we have a name we can start to put a life back together born in Chelsea 1865 she is
47:11the daughter of Roman Catholic Irish immigrants her mum Catherine and her dad John who is a stonemason
47:20if we jump forward to the 1871 census we get a little bit more background on who this family
47:28was there on oakham street right yeah okay so love this map this is part of Charles Booth's
47:37map of poverty in London he mapped all the different areas to understand the nature of the communities
47:44their affluence or lack thereof at this point and we can find oakham street just here and the blue
47:51indicates sort of the poorer parts of society whereas then the red appears kind of the greater affluence
47:58it looks like they're in this little island of poverty in this sea of wealth which for a girl
48:04of her background I guess would give the the pick of domestic service jobs it's like you're reading
48:09my mind indeed so we find Lizzie Jackson age 16 so it's 10 years after 1871 and she is indeed in domestic
48:18service so Lizzie Jackson is is the general servant so how does she end up as a body in the river well we
48:28think that she continues to work in domestic service and then something happens that sees her whole life
48:36circumstances really shift and we find her in 1888 in the local workhouse oh yeah so work has it's the
48:49first of three records scarily the last record we have of her at the workhouse is on the 12th of may
48:561889 so this is just weeks before she's yeah before she's murdered there's something really wrong here
49:04people didn't go to the workhouse unless it was an absolute desperate state not only was it a horrible
49:12experience but there was so much shame and stigma attached to it yeah and she's not going home why
49:19not what would cause a roman catholic girl from an irish family to go to the workhouse instead of not
49:25she's pregnant house of wedlock isn't she yes oh this seemed to be what's happened here and thanks to
49:32her um the fact that we know who she is we do have a reasonably comprehensive account of her last
49:38few weeks from her friends mrs margaret minter who was the wife of a laborer and working in the laundry
49:45she knew uh lizzie and she talks about how shabbily dressed she was and how disheveled she looks and
49:53her mum describes how she tried to avoid her in the street she avoids her mother yeah the mother describes
49:58her as trying to run away to to hide um her state it's really sad isn't it how do we think lizzie might
50:04have been supporting herself in the inquest it comes out people talk about her in terms of that she was
50:10leading a loose life that she was well known to the police that she was well known to the lodging houses
50:15there's some suggestion that she was selling sex but this is a such a dangerous position for her and
50:21we even know that she was sleeping rough at this point as well where she was slink sleeping in on
50:26the chelsea embankment at night which does place her right in in our murderers line across the river
50:32from battersea mrs minter says that jackson slept outside you could see how vulnerable that would make
50:39her she's 24 she's pregnant possibly with an alcohol problem sleeping rough she really didn't want
50:46her parents to know that she was pregnant did she and it does keep getting worse it keeps
50:51deteriorating one of the last people to see elizabeth alive was the rather fabulously named woman
50:58ginger nell who is identified in the press as an unfortunate that's what significance because that's
51:05the victorian euphemism for a woman who sells sex and apparently ginger nell was trying to look after
51:11elizabeth and she warned her specifically about a dangerous class of boatsmen who infest the locality
51:20who took advantage of unfortunates oh that's very chilling it is and we know that elizabeth was
51:28sleeping rough on the banks of the river yes we do it's the river again it's the river again
51:33um but in 1889 the investigation takes a dramatic turn when new information comes to light giving
51:43the victorian detectives their first prime suspect and he's no stranger prowling the riverbank but
51:51someone much closer to home police discover that before her death elizabeth had been living with a man
51:58jack fairclough believed to be the father of her unborn child
52:07a troubling picture of this jack fairclough starts to emerge according to this report their life was a
52:15most unhappy one their quarreling was incessant at times she was unnaturally used that means violence
52:25and on one occasion was badly wounded in the arm by a knife thrust from him
52:33and really worryingly since elizabeth's body was found no one has seen him he's disappeared
52:40finding jack fairclough becomes the police's top priority they circulate this sketch of him all over
52:47the country he's a wanted man the hunt is on for fairclough the murder club have done a deep dive
52:59into his background and i've shared their findings with our investigative psychologist i want to see
53:06if sam thinks he could really be our man we know now and it was the same then that most female victims
53:15of homicide are killed by somebody that they know and that will typically be some sort of romantic
53:21partner so on that basis alone it would be worth looking at jack but then if we delve a little bit
53:27more into actually who he was as an individual we can see some indications that actually this may be a
53:34man who is capable of murder we know that age 18 he was arrested for a crime against a person that was
53:44robbery of a watch but he was never convicted for that offense but it starts to give us a little bit of
53:52an indication of the individual we're dealing with and the type of lifestyle he led and perhaps the way he
54:00dealt with people in his life how he got what he wanted and if you add to that that he was also
54:08led a very transient lifestyle he was actually quite mobile and we know already we've established that
54:14the person responsible for these crimes is quite mobile in that he's using multiple disposal locations
54:21he led a rather chaotic lifestyle and that is evidenced in his military records where we know not
54:28once but twice he deserted from the military he ran away from the army ran away there's a number of
54:35references in statements from individuals who knew them both as a couple that suggests that they had
54:43quite a dysfunctional relationship and that it was not unusual for him to use violence so again it's sort of
54:50starting to starting to build up this picture not necessarily that um points directly that he killed
54:57elizabeth but that he is potentially a man who is comfortable using violence to get what he wants
55:06he sounds like a badden what do you think do you think he could have been the killer
55:11put it this way if i was advising the police i would want them to find this man as quickly as possible
55:21shortly after fairclough's image is released an eagle-eyed policeman spots a man matching his
55:27description fairclough's in a lodging house in the devon village of ossory saint mary
55:33the local constabulary wires scotland yard using a private telegraph system connecting police stations
55:42across the country the inspector in charge speeds down to devon and the next morning
55:49he brings fairclough back to london for interrogation
55:56when fairclough is questioned he tells the police that at the time elizabeth jackson was killed
56:02he was outside london traveling around the country looking for work he says that he's been up to
56:10huntingdon and down as far as to near exmouth right down here and that is where the police caught up
56:18with him two police officers are sent to follow his route to check out his alibi and here is their report
56:27the police have traveled through many counties making inquiries and have spent a great amount of
56:34time upon the case but goodness it was shown beyond all doubt that he was miles away from london both for
56:4510 days before and 10 days after the first remains were discovered in the thames
56:50i can hardly believe it but that seems pretty conclusive
57:00unless the police have made some gigantic mistake fairclough was nowhere near london when the killing
57:07happens which means that fairclough cannot be the killer
57:12with no arrest made the thames torso murderer remains at large then on the 10th of september 1889
57:25three months after elizabeth jackson's body was found yet another dismembered corpse is discovered
57:33but this time the victim's headless torso isn't found in the thames or even on the banks of the river
57:41it's found here in east london in whitechapel the very heart of the territory of jack the ripper
57:52found less than two months after the rippers most recent suspected murder the discovery sends shockwaves
57:59through the terrified streets of london and it begs a horrifying question could it be that the thames torso
58:08murders had been the work of jack the ripper all along
58:22that smacks of there being a sexual connotation to this there's such moral panic and such fear
58:29his crime scream power and control i am the man who committed all these murders my name is
58:59so
59:05so
59:06so
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