Bad Women: The Blackout Ripper
Pushkin Industries
The streets of wartime London are pitch black and the darkness offers cover to a murderer every bit as terrible as Jack the Ripper. During one awful week in February 1942 he viciously attacks women night after night. But the victims of the so-called Blackout Ripper are now all but forgotten.
In this season of Bad Women, historian Hallie Rubenhold and criminologist Alice Fiennes share new details from the archives to tell the extraordinary and moving stories of the women who died and why their deaths were swept from view.
And don't miss season one of Bad Women about a cold case like no other. In the fall of 1888, five women were brutally murdered in the slums of London. But everything you think you know about Jack the Ripper and those murdered women is wrong. Hallie reconstructs the lives of the five victims - revealing the appalling treatment they faced as women in the 1880s, and completely overturning the accepted Ripper story.
21 Listeners
2 Comments
All episodes
Best episodes
Seasons
Top 10 Bad Women: The Blackout Ripper Episodes
Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best Bad Women: The Blackout Ripper episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to Bad Women: The Blackout Ripper for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite Bad Women: The Blackout Ripper episode by adding your comments to the episode page.
S1 E1: The Ripper Myth
Bad Women: The Blackout Ripper
10/05/21 • 30 min
Jack the Ripper's victims were prostitutes murdered while selling sex on the streets of Whitechapel - that's what historian Hallie Rubenhold thought when she started researching the crimes. She was wrong.
As she looked into the case, she discovered much of the familiar Ripper story is totally false. But by challenging that myth and trying to tell the true stories of the murdered women, Hallie attracted a storm of criticism.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
9 Listeners
1 Comment
1
S1 E3: Polly Walks Out
Bad Women: The Blackout Ripper
10/08/21 • 35 min
Polly Nichols had a husband, a young family and lived in a brand new home built by a philanthropic millionaire. Then she walked out on it all. Why?
Surviving without a husband was almost impossible for a lone women, so Polly began a slow spiral into desperate poverty that would eventually put her in the path of her killer, Jack the Ripper.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
6 Listeners
S1 E2: Welcome to Whitechapel
Bad Women: The Blackout Ripper
10/05/21 • 32 min
London on August 6th, 1888 is one of the greatest cities on Earth, but the Whitechapel neighborhood is a byword for poverty, violence, and vice. Jack the Ripper will slaughter his victims here.
Join Hallie Rubenhold on a tour of this slum - with its busy markets, rowdy pubs, filthy lodging houses, and crowded police cells - and meet the real women who will soon cross paths with the Ripper.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
6 Listeners
1 Comment
1
S2 E1: Murders in a City Without Light
Bad Women: The Blackout Ripper
10/11/22 • 41 min
London's West End - once a glittering Mecca of nightlife - is pitch black. The lights are off to hide the city from waves of Nazi bombers - but in the darkness a merciless killer is hunting down the women of this district.
Join hosts Hallie Rubenhold and Alice Fiennes as they walk those bomb-damaged streets to tell the stories of the women targeted by this "Blackout Ripper" over the course of just one week in 1942.
You'll glimpse inside the theaters, jazz joints and dive bars of Piccadilly and Soho; witness deadly air raids; and criss cross the blacked out streets where a serial killer lurks. You'll learn too of the hardships that blighted the lives of many women in wartime, and the extent of the violence they faced at the hands of men from their own side in the conflict.
Sources:
Bone, James. London Echoing (London: Jonathan Cape, 1948)
Caddick-Adams, Peter. Sand and Steel: A New History of D-Day (London: Penguin Random House, 2019).
Cederwell, William. Reading London in Wartime: Blitz, the People and Propaganda in 1940s Literature (New York: Routledge, 2018).
Farson, N. Bomber’s Moon (London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1941).
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
5 Listeners
S1 E4: Polly the "Prostitute"
Bad Women: The Blackout Ripper
10/12/21 • 37 min
Standing over the corpse of Polly Nichols, police officers decided that in life she had been a prostitute. There's no evidence Polly ever sold sex, so why did the authorities reach this conclusion? And do the prejudices that warped the police hunt for the Ripper survive to this day?
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
4 Listeners
S1 E5: Dark Annie and the Demon Drink
Bad Women: The Blackout Ripper
10/19/21 • 37 min
Annie Chapman and her husband were making good on their ambitions to live a comfortable, respectable life. Only... Annie drank. Under pressure from her husband’s employer, Annie was sent away - and she fell deeper and deeper into the bottle. This addiction - and society's disgust with women who drank - also pushed Annie closer and closer to her killer.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
4 Listeners
S1 E8: The Face of The Ripper
Bad Women: The Blackout Ripper
11/09/21 • 29 min
Elizabeth Stride was supposedly seen by several eyewitnesses in her final hours. They also saw a man with her. At last, Jack the Ripper had a face. These descriptions are the bedrock of many well known theories about the killer’s true identity. But can they be believed? And was the Ripper even responsible for Elizabeth’s murder?
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
3 Listeners
S1 E6: The Gentlemen of the Press
Bad Women: The Blackout Ripper
10/26/21 • 31 min
Annie Chapman’s murder sparked fears that a crazed killer was on the loose in London, prompting the burgeoning newspaper industry to flood Whitechapel with reporters. Those journalists wrote the first draft of Jack the Ripper’s history, and much of it survives in the story we tell today. But can we really believe those newspaper reports?
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
3 Listeners
Bad Women: The Ripper Retold coming October 5
Bad Women: The Blackout Ripper
09/21/21 • 4 min
In late 1888, five women were brutally murdered in a slum neighbourhood of London. The violent killer earned himself a nickname - Jack the Ripper. But everything you think you know about the murders and those murdered women is wrong.
In a new 15-part series, historian Hallie Rubenhold tells you the real story of those victims and how they came to be in the path of a serial killer - completely overturning the Ripper story we've been told up until now.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
3 Listeners
S1 E7: Public Woman 97
Bad Women: The Blackout Ripper
11/02/21 • 38 min
Swedish farmer’s daughter Elizabeth fell pregnant out of wedlock. The authorities considered her no better than a prostitute and subjected her to myriad physical and emotional humiliations. After she lost the baby, Elizabeth fled Sweden - embarking on a life of deceit that would end in her vicious murder on the streets of Whitechapel.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
3 Listeners
Show more best episodes
Show more best episodes
FAQ
How many episodes does Bad Women: The Blackout Ripper have?
Bad Women: The Blackout Ripper currently has 50 episodes available.
What topics does Bad Women: The Blackout Ripper cover?
The podcast is about True Crime, History and Podcasts.
What is the most popular episode on Bad Women: The Blackout Ripper?
The episode title 'S1 E1: The Ripper Myth' is the most popular.
What is the average episode length on Bad Women: The Blackout Ripper?
The average episode length on Bad Women: The Blackout Ripper is 33 minutes.
How often are episodes of Bad Women: The Blackout Ripper released?
Episodes of Bad Women: The Blackout Ripper are typically released every 7 days.
When was the first episode of Bad Women: The Blackout Ripper?
The first episode of Bad Women: The Blackout Ripper was released on Sep 21, 2021.
Show more FAQ
Show more FAQ
Comments
@philmwrites
Oct 30
A long overdue perspective. Excellent production, immersive podcast.
1 Like
Reply
@norisnor
Dec 7
Like
Reply