Bad Women: The Ripper Retold Trailer

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Speaker 1: It's a bad habit we have we tell the tale of the murderer and not the murdered. The clock on White Chapel Church was striking half past two when Ellen Holland watched her friend Polly Nicholls sway off into the darkness. Polly was drunk, penniless, and broken. She was inconsequential in the minds of most people she met, But she was about to cross paths was some one who would give her a grisly, unenviable place in history. In the autumn of eighteen eighty eight, Polly and four other women were brutally killed in a slum neighborhood of London. Their unsolved murders were so violent, so cruel, that their killer earned a nickname that is still known the world over. I'm down on halls and are sha'n't quick ripping them? Jack the Ripper? But in the greatest cold case in history, few of us have stopped to question the basic facts. One fact that you know about chr. Ripper that he never got caught and who did he kill? Prostitutes? I'm Hallie rubbin Hold as a historian interested in the stories of women, I'd assume the lives of the five victims had been thoroughly researched long ago. I was wrong when I dug into the records. I began to reveal rich and interesting lives. Most of the time women leave if they're being beaten to a pulp or he put out an eye, lives blighted by problems and prejudices. Most women today would recognize. There wasn't a great deal of sympathy for alcoholics, so one had to sign a temperance pledge saying I will not drink. If only it were so simple. I identified with the women, sympathized with the tough life choices they made, and admired their determination. She gets on the boat and comes to England. She seeks why the horizons. I came to know them and like them. She wants more than she's been born into. But I also discovered something else, something new, something troubling. It was just so obvious to me the very first time I looked at this file. How could we have gotten this this wrong for this many years? And something that chips away at the foundations of the ripper myth nam shure, all of you here today, do you know that Jack's victims were ladies? Of the night, weren't they They were forced to choose the myth still served up by tour guides to visitors who flocked the murder scenes each evening. And now, ladies, you might be thinking, well, I'd never think that work ever, but didn't Okay, Well, certainly the answer is yes, Polly, Annie, Elizabeth, Catherine, and Mary Jane were not killed while selling sex. It was other, no less troubling factors that put them in the path of their murderer. In this podcast, I'll tell you how I know that and why it still matters very much even today. Kelly has upset the world of rippology by her general attitude towards ripparologists. I'll also explain why my research has enraged so many people who claimed to be experts in the Ripper case. The attacks have just been relentless and malicious, But actually I think they just don't really want other people talking about the murdered women and challenging their views in any way. If you want to know how we got the Ripper story so wrong, what those mistakes tell us about ourselves, and why putting the record straight makes some people so very me angry, join me. Hallie rubin Hold for bad women. The Ripper Retold starting October five, wherever you get your podcasts,