Only Murders in my Mind
Episode 32: History's Most Notorious Murderers Revealed
[Music] Welcome to Only Murders in My Mind, a random thought production. Hi, I'm Carol Bissett, a crime writer, and I invite you with my co-presenters, Liz Hedgecock and Mike Jackson, each week to our conversations on all things murderous. Hello, everybody, and welcome to this episode of Only Murders in My Mind. And as usual, I've got Liz Hedgecock with me. - Hello. - And Mike Jackson. - Hello, both of you. - Good afternoon, sir. And all the thousands of people out there. Can I just put a warning on this programme, because we're going to be talking about murders from the Victorian - actual murders from the Victorian spirit. So I think it's only fair to warn people there's going to be graphic descriptions. So if it's not your cup of tea, you know, we've warned you. We thought about this. I think, Mike, did you come up with this idea? I mean, I'm absolutely fascinated when I've done the research. It was my idea if it works, it wasn't my idea if it worked. So you can all vote on whether it was Mike's idea or not at the end of the episode. Please, in the comments, say, "What a wonderful idea for Mike here." So we've all picked one or two murders from the Victorian times to talk about, and they are quite messy, glory. There's a reason why they're famous. Yeah, exactly. But I'm just going to tell you, I think it was an era that's almost not famed, but people often think about Victorian England as a somewhat bloody time in many ways. I don't know why. It's a funny one, isn't it? On one hand, you have the whole, "Oh, you know, the covered-up table legs and..." Yes. You know, all of that stuff, and they're all very prim and proper, and then you have that kind of all that was a dark underbelly. So, I mean, if you look at Dickens, for example, you know, all the stories about, you know, starving. And Nicholas Nickelby, the awful schools. And they were there, weren't they? They were, yeah, it was based on real life. Yeah, that's the sort of thing. They wouldn't have talked about it at the time, so... I think there was a real... The class system was very prevalent then, wasn't it? There was a real contrast between the real working class, poor living in hobbles and so on. And then the rich, with all the money and the fine energy. I think it was one of those areas when there wasn't much in between. No. You were out of the rich or poor. Yeah. And if you did try to move, then, you know, everyone would let you know all about it because, you know, Dickens, for example, lots of people despised him, and so he's a cockney writer because of him being, you know, maybe less rich, well-educated and all that stuff. So, would you say... His stories were a reflection, like a journal of the time. They were telling stories of how it really was. I think so. I think very much so. I think all of his stories about workhouse and about... One of his hats was social reformers, wasn't it? So, yeah. Because it was, you know, when you think of all of the twists and things like that. Not that he was perfect, far from it, but... No, no, but yeah, it's just... I'd like to think we've come a long way since then. Yes, but yeah, if you think of a Christmas carol and a screw, saying, "Oh, they're no prisons. Oh, they're no workhouses." Yes, yeah. Take your part, too. Yeah. So, shall I go first with one of the most notorious killers who are that era as... How long would it happen, Lisa, if we were to... No. It'd be a very short episode. You can't go first. John, come and cut them off. Oh, the shepherd's crooks coming through. Only joking. No, Jack the Ripper. I don't think... You're setting the bar high. I am. I don't... There's anybody on the planet that's not heard of Jack the Ripper. And it was 10 weeks during the autumn of 1888 in the East End. That's when these murders occurred. Apparently, the East End had about half a million people living there, and 22% of these people lived in poverty. It was one square mile, our white chapel, where there were five notorious murders that were attributed to Jack the Ripper. Now, there were murders just before the Ripper things started, and there were murders after they think it stopped. And the experts at the time said, "No, that wasn't a Ripper case." So, what were the hallmarks of a Ripper case? If the cops could say it, that wasn't... Exactly. That wasn't. What were the peculiarities? Well, the first murder that they said could be Jack the Ripper was Emma Smith on 3 April in Brick Lane. Now, she was badly stabbed, mutilated, etc. But she actually died the next day from peritonitis. And... Was that as a result of the... I've been a tabbing. Yeah. Can I select it? Yes, yes. The thing is very common for people that had knife wounds, or anything like that, to get peritonitis. Because we didn't have the antibiotics and things there. But the first one that was attributed to Jack the Ripper was Martha Tabarem on 7 August 1888. Actually, no, I'm talking wrong there. That was another one that they thought might be Jack the Ripper. But later people said it wasn't. And again, it was by the mode, the modus operandi. Ah, so there was a particular... Yeah, so... Modus operandi, as you just said. Yeah, so... Merri Nicholas was the first, and she was the 31st of August of that year. Now, what would the Jack the Ripper case is? They would be badly mutilated. They very often had their throat split. So much that the heads were just hanging on. And then they'd be carved right down the middle with a knife. And for some reason, he'd put all the organs from the inside up on the left shoulder. Which was really peculiar. If I had to leave the room suddenly to say... So Annie Chapman, on 7 September, as I say, strangled partial decapitation, cut open from the neck down. And they said it was such a neat job. And this is where... Cut this person be a surgeon came in. This person was very, very fast. And they know that they were fast, because sometimes the bodies were still warm when they were found. Yeah, really. You know, so he probably only just gone. There was Elizabeth Stride that was on around the 29th of September. Now, she wasn't mutilated, and they think that was because he was disturbed. Well, again, maybe it wasn't, because the copycat learned just going off at the same time. Catherine and Eddows, excuse me if I'm not saying these right, 29th of September, she was savagely mutilated. And Mary Kelly, November the 9th, and she was the worst one of all. When they pleased saw her, she'd had part of her face cut off. And those had been sliced off, breasts had been sliced off. You know, yeah. I mean, they really were awful. Well, did all this news get into the news frame? Yeah. Oh, yes. Would have done. And that's what would have made it sensationalised it. Yes. And of course, the country was up in arms about it, saying that, you know, the police weren't doing their job. Really difficult. All these little back alleys in sort of in that person, he's standing like chapel. People, nice people didn't go to this path. You know, it was notorious for prostitutes. And this person was picking on prostitutes that they were the people he was killing. It's scary, as human beings, we have a almost ghoulish fascination with something horrific. You know, that it makes the newspapers. It must have sold thousands of newspapers at the time, because of the fascinating people. And it almost feels as if Jack the Ripper was, you know, wanting these crimes to be, you know, famous. Yeah. If one didn't know to arrive. Yeah. Having that kind of calling card and that specific way of doing things. I mean, you know, there was no need to do a lot of that other stuff, but they did it because, you know, presumably they wanted to be absolutely distinct. You know, these are mine. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we still sort of, we still build on that fascination, don't we? Because if you think of some sort of, I'm just thinking back to Scandinavia that we've talked about before. Yes. Some of the series that we've talked about in the past there, they're very gruesome. And you see it on the television, you know, before now, we've talked about killing Eve. You know, there's really gruesome scenes that get depicted. And these films, these plays, these television series, all become very, very popular. Yeah. Tarantino's got a habit of doing very violent scenes in his films. Now, the killings seem to stop. You know, as quickly as they started, they seemed to stop. But there was all sorts of rooms flying around, and some were to do with nobility. And we know that from, you know, if you've read anything about Jack the Ripper. So a chief constable magnum was given the task of trying to narrow the suspects down without upsetting any of the nobility. And his first subject was John Durritte. But he committed, because he committed suicide, he had tendencies, homicidal tendencies. And he committed suicide not long after the last murder. A Russian doctor, Aaron Kuzminski. But he was in and out of a lunatic silence. He was actually, actually, was on sort of, you know, we've got to report into the police station every day. Yeah. And you're on license. Yeah. And he disappeared during these murders. But they found out later that he was actually detained in a lunatic asylum in France. And then there was, I'm just trying to think of the other person, was Michael Ozilonk. Oh, he was the Russian doctor, sorry. Yeah. So these, they were pointing the finger at these people. But when they actually investigated them in depth, they couldn't have done the murders. And this is the biggest mystery, isn't it, with, um, John Durritte. Now, yeah, I'm just looking at it, says they were over a hundred suspects. Yes. So there was a lot. That's why that's why he was asked to whittle them down. But one of them was the author, George Gissing. No, I didn't know that. I'm not done with my research. If it's probably in this food book. I'm assuming they're never, sorry for my ignorance, but they never found. No, they never found yet. But what you've got to realize is when you get, um, crime suspects in this country, where there's been maybe a road murders, all the same, all the same Emma, and then it stops. And then maybe 10 years later, it starts again. It's usually because they've been in prison or in a mental institution. It's not usually because they decided it wasn't a nice thing to do. They're usually a reason for it. And it is. It's one of those things that will fascinate people. Yeah. One of the things I know, actually, about the suspects that they've pulled out in what I'm reading here is so many of them are, you know, foreign-born. Yeah. So that, as I say, yeah, it's got here, there were many, many other suspects, which is what you've just said in this book. I mean, you could devote a whole program to this. Oh, absolutely. I just came here to think, yeah. So why do you think Jack the Ripper has such a hold on the imagination? Because there's been all sorts of, you know, spin-off derivative sort of ideas. I mean, Ripper Street, for example. Yeah. That was good. I enjoyed that. It may very well be because he was never caught. Mm. So is that, that mystery surrounding who was it? Yes. Yes. Yes. And as I say, there was the theory that he was on. That's a member of the royal family. Yeah. You know, I think that's what fascinated him. And did they know that they were protecting him? You know all this conspiracy theories aren't? Oh. Oh, yeah. You know, they're there. But I find the whole thing fascinating. And I watched a documentary on the, you know, when they were got new evidence-type documentary. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Not that long ago. That found it absolutely compelling the information that they were. It didn't give me any more clues to what I've got in this book. But it was interesting to... Yeah. I mean, do you think it's someone who had some problem with prostitutes? Yes. Yeah. I mean, one of the suspects that this, McNaughton mentioned hated women. Absolutely hated women. And I mean, it could also have been, you know. You know, a case of, well, you know, someone like that is going to go with you. Yeah. You know, they'd be easy to take off somewhere. Oh, yes. Yeah. And that could have been circumstantial. And when we go to modern times and we go to the Yorkshire Ripper, same thing, prostitutes. I mean, not all of them were. And I was horrified at the time and still am that they were sort of, you know, they were a lesser member of the public because of what they did. And it was when somebody that wasn't a prostitute was killed, that it was like, oh, what a sinus man. What a sinus man, you know. So that's my little, as an aside, if you're interested in what Whitechapel was like back in the day, friend of the show, Paula Harmon, in her Margaret Demorey books. Margaret goes to the East End and into Whitechapel. Quite a lot because she's, you know, trying to look after the poor people who live there. And quite often, you know, bodies that she's dealing with in her day job have come from that area. So she's got the history. Yes. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. So they're a really interesting reader. The Margaret books are happening later because it's 1910 or there about. But you still get a real flavour of, yeah. Yeah. I thought the conditions have improved that much in that time, aren't they? So fascinating though, isn't it? Because my son, my youngest, he lives in Berlin now, but he used to live in the East End. Yeah. He nearly hacked me. I've gone back 10 years now. But even then, even more so now, Whitechapel hacked me really up and coming areas. Yeah. You know, you pay a lot of money to live there. Brick Lane, if you want a good curry, Brick Lane is the place to go. Oh, yeah. I've been. You know, it's some of my favourite shops in Brick Lane. You know, these places and re-invent themselves. Mm, it's a good job he did really. Yes. What is your case? Well, I was going to talk, the two I was going to talk about, but after just having my stomach turned with carols, goriness, I thought I'd go for something a little, still a murder, but a little less horrific. But this lady was called, I don't know if it was Kristina or Kristiana. I'm going to call her Kristiana. Kristiana Edmond. I mean, she was known as the chocolate cream killer. Oh, yes. Born in 1822 in Margate, then he can't. Lovely part of the country, I might say. She came from a privileged upbringing, but in her early 20s, she was diagnosed with hysteria, which is a common term then for various mental health issues. But at some time in her 20s, early 20s, she became infatuated with a local doctor, Dr Charles Beard. And in September 1870, she poisoned Dr Beard's wife by giving her a poisoned chocolate cream. Now, fortunately, Mrs Beard recovered from this resulting violent illness. And Dr Beard apparently later on said that he suspected Kristiana, but he didn't have any proof, and he didn't want any scandal, which is quite often the case. Oh, yes. I was having a read of this as well, and there's the possibility that they may have had a liaison. Yes. So avoiding publicity could have been a bit prudent on his part. But it seems that Kristiana then went on to start, and I find this bit fascinating. She began obtaining chocolate creams from the local confectioner, John Maynard. She took them home, laced them with strict need, and then took them back. And he would sell them onto the public, not knowing that she'd pointed out. Yeah, that's the randomness, isn't it? You know, you cut this vision. You're going to find these chocolate creams, you know, pretty strictening it all of them, and taking them back to the show, and saying, "Can you sell these?" Yeah. Which apparently he did. And surely you would think, like, they're perfectly good. You saw them when you bought them. What's the problem with them? And she did this quite a lot, so she must have been doing it more than one. Yeah. Because apparently the strict name. And this is the fascination then, isn't it, with the poisons? Poisons were probably much easier to get. Yeah, it was perfectly legal to buy a strict name. And she used to get a strict name from the local chemist, because she needed it, so she said, to poison stray cats. Oh. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, she's clearly a Robin. Yeah. I mean, yeah. Yeah. And one of the things she did, she tried to cover a track, because it's that she used to pay young boys to go and buy the strict name for her. So, obviously, children could go in and buy a strict name as well. Oh, I thought that the kids were exchanging the chocolates. No, no, oh my gosh. And then, by this time-- It does make you think, like, did nobody cotton on to this, say, any point? No, right. Because they were living in Brighton. And by this time, several people in Brighton have become ill after eating the chocolates. I feel quite sorry for the confectionate. But no one connected the illness. Definitely one star, wouldn't it? If he'd trade in Stanford's case, yeah. Yeah, I don't think that that's enough. One of the things they didn't have to worry about was trading the chocolates. No, true, true. But no one made the connection. Nobody made the connection between the illness and the chocolates. Yeah. And then what knobbled her? Well, it was in 1871, a four-year-old lad called Sidney, Sidney Barker, who was unholy with his family, died as a result of eating chocolates from a maynard shop from the conventional shop. So no one had died up to that point, just been ill? No, they didn't. Just didn't be ill. Oh, gosh. In fact, the boy was the only one who did die. Not for one's and trying. I was going to say, thank Christina's part. Goodness for small mercies? Yeah. But I think what did it was, she also sent some parcels out. Yeah. She started sending parcels out to prominent people. Yeah. And she had to go at the doctor's wife again. Did shake, she did. Which was probably a mistake. Oh, I think it's where she had to go at him. I had to go at her a second time. Yeah. That's when he got the police informed. I got the place involved, rather. Yeah. And she was arrested and charged with the attempted murder of Mrs Beard and the murder of Sidney. Did she hang? Well, the trial began in January 1872, and actually moved it. It was originally going to be in the Brighton area, but they moved it to the Old Bailey. And again, I should imagine-- Why was that, do you think? I actually imagine it was a bit like-- It was a big trial, yeah. It was a bit high. Yeah. It was the high. And because there's that sort of-- what's there something happening with this doctor-- Yeah. Scandal. Yeah. All these problem-- Who are the prominent people that have been sent to? Yeah. You don't know. But anyway, she was a bit turned out that her mother testified against her. Oh, oh, dear. Saying that both sides of the family had a history of mental illness. So she was obviously trying to say that the daughter was other mental illness. And she was sentenced to death. But it was commuted to life imprisonment due to her mental state. And she spent the rest of her life in Broadmoor criminal lunatic asylum. Yes. She died there in 1907. Well, I think also-- She hardly quickly ignored it. Oh, wow. Also, I think she claimed to be pregnant, to try and escape. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'll just get away with it. I know some of the ones that I researched for this episode by claiming they were mentally unstable. They did get away with an awful lot. Yeah. You know, it was-- Oh, gosh. It's-- But it's unbelievable. Yeah. Apparently when she claimed that she was pregnant, I forgot what I meant to write down. I forgot. But they got a jury of 12 women to come and examine her. Yes. I hadn't realized this. It was a special thing. A special thing. Like a matron's jury. Oh, right. They-- They-- They-- Specialized. Oh. I don't think it involved any sort of internals. I think these women just came along. And-- Talked to her. Talked to her. Talked to her. Prodded her about maybe. I-- I don't know. Mm. And determined that she was not with child. Oh. And that's when she was-- And it was after that that she was sentenced. And apparently, there have been some-- Some retellings of this as a-- In 1939, a chap called John Diggison Carr-- Oh, yes. Wrote a fictional reselling. A retelling of that called The Black Spectacles. And apparently, there was a drama broadcast on the BBC in 2006 by John Fletcher called The Great Chocolate Murders, which traumatized the whole thing. I can see why that whole kind of tension has to-- is nobody going to realize what's going on here? Yeah. I mean, she could have been killing the general public. Yeah. In a-- in a-- on a big scale, couldn't she? Part of the reason why she got away with it, as well, was from the sound of it. You know, she'd say, oh, yeah, I've been ill too. I've been poisoned. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. True. And I think the fact that more through luck than anything else, she only killed one person, even though she tried to kill so many more. Yes. It was one of the reasons why she got away with it, from as long as you did. And as I was telling this, before it's quite easy to poison somebody without realizing it, isn't it, nice? I wouldn't know personally, Carol. You're on your own with that one. I haven't nearly poisoned me in my husband the other night. But that's-- that's-- I keep that for another episode. Yes. Another fascinating thing. There's something called Daisy Jordan had a puppet show called The Sorrowful Tale of Sleeping Sydney, which revisits the tragic story of this, her poisoning, this Christiana's poisoning, as well. It's a great grief. It's free. Like a punch and duty. True. I'm assuming it must-- It must have been the same. I couldn't find a date for this. Maybe it must have been the way it was done, but you could imagine it being a sort of punch and duty to all of that. Yeah. People are blobby. Good grief. Go on, Liz. OK. Well, my one is one that you all have heard of, and it's actually a bit earlier than Victoria Macburk and hair. Oh, yes. Yes, which I didn't know that much about, but quite stunning. 16 murders in 10 months. Wow. That's going. It ain't going some, yeah. And it's an interesting one, because it kind of feels like it was a crime of circumstance. It all took place up in Edinburgh. Centre of anatomical study. So if you're going to be cutting up corpses, you need corpses, and they were in very short supply, because at the time Scottish law said that corpses for research could only come from suicides, foundlings, orphans, or people who died in prison. Yeah. Very, very specific. So therefore, you'd have body snatching. And families would try all sorts of ways to get around this by having, you know, I think things would more shapes where you'd put like a sort of an iron cage around the coffin so that people couldn't get in and nab the body. So it all came about by chance, really, because when hair's lodged, they should die to catch a lodging house. They were trying to work out what to do with him, because I think they were concerned that, you know, anyway, they sold the body to an anatomist, and they got seven quid for it, which back then was a good sum of money. This was all in 1828. And I think they realized that this was actually, you know, quite, yeah, good money, yeah. Two months later, another lodger had a fever. They were concerned that the fever would stop others staying in the lodging house, so they killed her. You can kind of, you know, see where this is going, can't you? So they kept doing this. And eventually, other lodgers discovered their last victim, and it's quite understandably called the police, but they couldn't prove the murder. And there was no evidence of the other murders. So what the police did was basically offered her immunity for turning King's evidence. So he fessed up to a lot, all 16, but they couldn't touch him, they charged Burke, and they charged his wife. And they found a guilty of one murder. That's all it takes. Yeah. And the judge basically said, you know, your sense of death and your corpse is going to be dissected as a warning. So where-- Which one was hung? Burke, because herhood-- Yeah, herhood snitched. So he got away completely. Well, wow. But yes, apparently, if you want, I don't know if it's still there, I mean, according to research, it is. You can go and see Burke's skeleton, the anatomical museum of Edinburgh Medical School, is still there. So there you go. And the way they did it was, they suffocated their victims with a pillow. So one of them would have the pillow, or just cover them out, and the other one would lie on top of the chest, so they couldn't get a breath. It was very efficient. But yes, sometimes they just lured people into the lodging house for a drink, and then, you know, made away with the grief. And presumably, one of the reasons for killing that way was not to damage the body that they were going to sell. Yeah, you wanted it in your condition, I assume. Because I know the prisoners that were-- I'm going back probably even further now, when they were being hung, they could pay to not go to the medical schools to be done if they had the money. But they still get buried in the grounds of the prison. So whether that actually worked, I don't know. But the trial was on Christmas Eve, and it was continuous. There were no breaks. I think they were worried about stuff happening. But yeah, it went on until Christmas morning. And then the jury took 50 minutes to find her guilty. Hair, meanwhile, was kept in custody for his own safety until February. And then he was assisted to leave Edinburgh in disguise. Yeah. But he was recognized at a coach stop on the way and the news spread. And when the coach got to Dunfreece, there was a crowd waiting. So what the police did was they arranged a decoy coach. Hair nipped out through the back window and went to another carriage and got put in the town prison. So he didn't escape exactly. And then in the middle of the night, he was taken out of town and he was told to make his way to the English border. And that was it. No sign of him ever again. So was that the first witness protection? I shouldn't say it sounded like witness protection. Yeah. And it brought about partly the Anatomy Act in 1832. So and that authorized a section of a wider range of bodies. So there you go. Actually helped to change the law. But yeah, the whole idea that you can just fess up that you killed 16 people and get away with it. But apparently it was quite a common thing then. So persuade one of the party to, you know, you get immunity and then to dub in you. You're a complex. In King's evidence. Yes. I like the fact that he because the Scottish took him to the. English border. Yeah, off you go. And the thing is you might say, well, what's this got to do with the crime fiction? We get a lot of our ideas from things that are. Truth is stranger than fiction. It definitely is. It definitely is. So yeah, but we just thought we delve into that murky past. So thank you for listening. And I hope nobody's listening at night. Yeah, let us know whether you enjoyed the episode and whether you would like more of these or whether, you know, you're happy with one off, but that's quite enough. I think we would move away from doing recent crime, but we're quite a stoic crime, aren't we? And lock it into it in real depth. And maybe take one case and analyze it between three of us if you'd like us to do that. And don't remember the, don't forget, that if you really didn't like this program, it was this is I to go. It is so was. I really did like it. It was my idea. Thanks, mate. So until next week, that's all from us now. Bye. Bye. 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