Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hello, revisionous history fans. Malcolm Glaubell here, I want
Speaker 1: to tell you about a new podcast from Pushkin Industries
Speaker 1: called Bad Women Ripper retold you know the story. In
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty eight, five female prostitutes were brutally murdered in
Speaker 1: a London slum, attacks so violent the killer earned a
Speaker 1: nickname Jack the Ripper. For centuries, we've assumed these women
Speaker 1: were indeed bad women. But what if everything we know
Speaker 1: about them is wrong. Historian Hallie Rubinholt has uncovered the
Speaker 1: true stories of the Rippers. Victims Polly, Annie, Elizabeth, Katherine,
Speaker 1: and Mary Jane all struggled against the misogyny that thrived
Speaker 1: in Victorian England until they found themselves in the path
Speaker 1: of one of the most visio killers in history. Listeners
Speaker 1: are loving the show. I've called it brilliant, a badly
Speaker 1: missing lair to the story, addicting, fascinating, informative and entertaining,
Speaker 1: and a historical treat and Bad Women is critically acclaimed.
Speaker 1: It's been deemed one of the best true crime podcasts
Speaker 1: by the Guardian, Vulture and Esquire. Vulture said Hallie takes
Speaker 1: aim at her critics in her first episode and continues
Speaker 1: throughout too satisfyingly skewer ripparologists, especially one former officer, who
Speaker 1: seems to think the murder victims at the heart of
Speaker 1: the case must have done something to warrant their gutting
Speaker 1: one way or another. If you haven't listened to Bad
Speaker 1: Women yet, I don't know what you're waiting for. I'm
Speaker 1: going to share a preview now that will get you
Speaker 1: totally hooked. You can binge the entire season on all
Speaker 1: your holiday travels and staycations. Just search for Bad Women
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts. It's a warm September evening.
Speaker 1: The sky has darkened and a moon has risen over
Speaker 1: the flat, oily river. Hundreds of day trippers and pleasure
Speaker 1: seekers are aboard the Princess Alice as she steams through London. Music, singing,
Speaker 1: and the excited shouts of children give the so called
Speaker 1: Moonlight Cruise a holiday few. No one notices that the
Speaker 1: craft is moving directly into the course of a great
Speaker 1: iron hulled freighter. The Princess Alice plows on her paddle wheels,
Speaker 1: biting into the rank sewage pood waters of the Thames.
Speaker 1: What unfolds over the next few terrible minutes will be
Speaker 1: a tragedy for the city, but an opportunity for Elizabeth's stride.
Speaker 1: It may be the first time she has benefited from
Speaker 1: the misfortune of others, but it will not be the last,
Speaker 1: before she meets her murderer on the streets of Whitechapel.
Speaker 1: I'm Hallie, rubin Holt. You're listening to Bad Women. The
Speaker 1: Ripper retold, a series about the real lives of the
Speaker 1: women killed by Jack the Ripper and how we got
Speaker 1: their stories so wrong. One side, money plenty, and friends
Speaker 1: too by the score. Then fortune smilder upon me. Now
Speaker 1: one pass my dome, alny and not well. Harf seems
Speaker 1: to larn me. I'm complete. Elizabeth, Gustav's daughter, was borne
Speaker 1: by candlelight in the darkness of a Swedish November. Her
Speaker 1: father tended the land and rural towards lander, cultivating fields
Speaker 1: of grain, flax and potatoes. He also owned a barn,
Speaker 1: several cows, pigs, chickens, and a horse. The family was
Speaker 1: more prosperous than many in the area, and Elizabeth grew
Speaker 1: up in a sturdy, clapboored farmhouse as a farmer's daughter.
Speaker 1: In the eighteen forties. She would have been initiated into
Speaker 1: the routine of agricultural life as soon as she was
Speaker 1: steady enough on her feet to carry pails and gather eggs.
Speaker 1: When she grew older, she would have assisted with milking,
Speaker 1: tending the chickens and pigs, making butter, and even distilling aquavit,
Speaker 1: the alcoholic liquor traditionally offered at meal times and Swedish households.
Speaker 1: Elizabeth's local community was small, all and conservative. She was
Speaker 1: raised a Lutheran, and prayer would have punctuated her days
Speaker 1: upon waking, before meals and before bed, asking the Lord
Speaker 1: to shepherd his flock safely through the long night. As
Speaker 1: a girl, little was expected of her beyond mastery of housekeeping, childcare,
Speaker 1: and basic animal husbandry, all of which she could learn
Speaker 1: from assisting her mother. She therefore received little schooling. Elizabeth
Speaker 1: probably grew accustomed to the constant rhythm of farm life,
Speaker 1: the turning of the seasons, the cutting of the fields,
Speaker 1: the freezing of the earth before the sowing of seeds.
Speaker 1: But just before her seventeenth birthday, everything changed. Elizabeth set
Speaker 1: out for the city of Gothenburg to seek employment as
Speaker 1: a servant in Sweden. As in other European countries, it
Speaker 1: was traditional for young women to gain experience of domestic
Speaker 1: life beyond the confines of their homes and communities. This
Speaker 1: was seen as a kind of apprenticeship before they eventually
Speaker 1: assumed command of their own households. Elizabeth went to work
Speaker 1: as a maid for a lower middle class family. Domestic
Speaker 1: labor at this time was cheap and in plentiful supply,
Speaker 1: so even families of meager means could afford to hire help.
Speaker 1: Employers were obliged to house, feed, cloth, and tend to
Speaker 1: their servants when they were ill. In return, servants offered
Speaker 1: their complete obedience. Yet choosing and hiring a servant could
Speaker 1: also be risky. Bringing unknown young women into the home
Speaker 1: could have unpredictable consequences. There was a preference for the
Speaker 1: ruddy cheeked daughters of yeomen, who smelled like grass and goats.
Speaker 1: It was believed that these girls had not yet learned
Speaker 1: how to deceive or steal. They were innocent and honest.
Speaker 1: By contrast, urban girls had been exposed to avarice and licentiousness.
Speaker 1: Although it was a master or mistress's responsibility to keep
Speaker 1: them safe, peril nonetheless lurked at every turn for maid Sir,
Speaker 1: whether or not she encouraged the advances of the master
Speaker 1: or his son, his brother, cousin, friend, or father, there
Speaker 1: were plenty of opportunities for a young servant woman to
Speaker 1: find herself alone with men, to be coerced, overpowered, or
Speaker 1: to give in to mutual desire. And so while service
Speaker 1: was believed to be the making of a young working
Speaker 1: class woman, becoming entangled with a man could be her undoing.
Speaker 1: Some women's lovers would promise to look after them, and
Speaker 1: many made good on these pledges, establishing their mistresses and lodgings.
Speaker 1: Some men lived alongside their paramours, and they posed as
Speaker 1: married couples. Others visited only on occasion. Some relationships continued
Speaker 1: for many years, if not a lifetime, but many more
Speaker 1: fell apart within weeks. The nineteenth century double standard enabled
Speaker 1: men to walk away from such attachments. By contrast, it
Speaker 1: often devastated the lives of the women who were left
Speaker 1: to bear the crying and gurgling consequences of these unions.
Speaker 1: Elizabeth has taken to the grave the name of the
Speaker 1: man who altered her life with his lust. It will
Speaker 1: never be known whether her first encounter with him was
Speaker 1: consensual or forced, where it occurred or under what circumstances.
Speaker 1: But by March eighteen sixty five she was six months pregnant,
Speaker 1: and whoever had got her into that position was no
Speaker 1: longer present to shield her from the consequences. Until the
Speaker 1: eighteen sixties, in Sweden, extramarital sex and illegitimate pregnancy were illegal,
Speaker 1: punishable offenses. In fact, across all Europe and its colonies,
Speaker 1: sexual immorality was a source of anxiety, verging on para noia.
Speaker 1: In Gothenburg, the prostitution police were charged placing women on
Speaker 1: the sex Trade Register, colloquially referred to as the Register
Speaker 1: of Shame. There were two lists, one containing the names
Speaker 1: of the knowledge prostitutes and the other of suspected women, pregnant,
Speaker 1: single women, women frequently seen alone with men or out
Speaker 1: at night, and mistresses. The chief concern was the spread
Speaker 1: of venereal disease, specifically syphilis, and bad women were seen
Speaker 1: as responsible for its spread. This belief was then used
Speaker 1: to justify the harsh treatment of women in legislation designed
Speaker 1: to prevent infection. When her pregnancy began to show, it
Speaker 1: was surmised that twenty one year old Elizabeth was guilty
Speaker 1: of lecherous living. She was ordered to appear at the
Speaker 1: Police Inspection House. On her first visit, she was entered
Speaker 1: into the official register as public woman number ninety seven.
Speaker 1: She was then further questioned and her answers included in
Speaker 1: the ledger age twenty one years, appearance, blue eyes, brown hair,
Speaker 1: straight nose, oval face, five foot two inches, slender build.
Speaker 1: I surmise that this woman has not been living a
Speaker 1: life of gluttony. The rules that were to govern Elizabeth's
Speaker 1: daily life would then have been explained to her a
Speaker 1: lecture intended to humiliate her. You will attend the inspection
Speaker 1: house twice a week on Tuesdays and Fridays, or face
Speaker 1: a rest and a fine, or three nights in prison
Speaker 1: on rations of bread and water. You will not be
Speaker 1: permitted outdoors after eleven at night. You must conduct a
Speaker 1: quiet and a silent life. You must not loiter in
Speaker 1: the windows or doorway of your home. You must dress
Speaker 1: in a decent way when appearing in public, and not
Speaker 1: call attention to yourself. At the Police Inspection House, Elizabeth
Speaker 1: would have been subjected to regular examinations of her genitalia.
Speaker 1: This routine was designed as much to Chasen the city's
Speaker 1: public women as to screen them against the dreaded syphilis.
Speaker 1: Syphilis is transmitted primarily through sexual intercourse, and it has
Speaker 1: three key stages in its acquired form, primary, secondary, tertiary.
Speaker 1: And Hanley is a lecturer in the History of Science
Speaker 1: and Medicine at Birkbeck University of London. The primary stage
Speaker 1: is characterized by the presence of a soft saw or
Speaker 1: canker at the side of infection. So in most cases
Speaker 1: this would have been on a person's genitals and you know,
Speaker 1: this saw could appear a couple of weeks to several
Speaker 1: months after infection and it would last for a short
Speaker 1: period of time and then disappear, And when it disappeared,
Speaker 1: the patient moved into a period of disease latency. The
Speaker 1: secondary stage could occur anywhere from several months to several years. Later,
Speaker 1: patients would experience flu like symptoms, a fever, swollen glands,
Speaker 1: a sore throat, and then the eruption of a rash,
Speaker 1: as well as wart like growths and lesions on their genitals. Eventually,
Speaker 1: it would attack the person's central nervous system. Sufferers might
Speaker 1: experience behavioral changes, including paranoia and mood swings, deterioration of
Speaker 1: the spinal cord, and seizures. There were other visible symptoms
Speaker 1: as well. The soft tissue in a person's face begins
Speaker 1: to break down this type of necrotic deterioration where a
Speaker 1: person's nose disintegrates essentially, as does their soft palate and
Speaker 1: parts of their frontal Though, syphilis affected fertility too, and
Speaker 1: could be passed on to a fetus before birth, so
Speaker 1: called congenital syphilis. In the days before antibiotics, this was
Speaker 1: a terrible disease. So as to avoid giving offense to
Speaker 1: Gothenburg's respectable citizens, all suspected and known public women were
Speaker 1: required to enter the police inspection house through a concealed
Speaker 1: rear passage jetty line. Once inside, they had to strip
Speaker 1: naked and form a line. Sometimes, if the weight was
Speaker 1: a long one, they were ordered to stand in the
Speaker 1: outdoor courtyard, shivering in the cold as the uniformed officers
Speaker 1: stood over them. For a young woman who had been
Speaker 1: raised in a religious community, the indignity of the experience
Speaker 1: would have been shocking. However, as Elizabeth was pregnant with
Speaker 1: an illegitimate child, she may well, like so many women
Speaker 1: of her era, have internalized her punishment as a justifiable one.
Speaker 1: Elizabeth can only have been subjected to this routine a
Speaker 1: handful of times before it was discovered that she was
Speaker 1: presenting the symptoms of syphilis. She was immediately admitted to
Speaker 1: the cohousit or cure house, the local venereal disease hospital.
Speaker 1: These treatment centers, also known as lack hospitals, were designed
Speaker 1: for poor people. A stay here carried profound stigma, and
Speaker 1: this was in part a deterrent as well, like the
Speaker 1: shaman stigma that accompanied entry into a workhouse. A similar
Speaker 1: stigma existed for the law hospitals, and these were institutions
Speaker 1: that were often seriously underfunded, understaffed, and lacked the facilities
Speaker 1: needed to be able to provid eyed people with effective care.
Speaker 1: Even by Victorian standards. Patients at these institutions were effectively imprisoned,
Speaker 1: hence the name lock hospital. Some women entered voluntarily, but
Speaker 1: many were incarcerated against their will. At Gothenburg's cure house,
Speaker 1: attendance and nurses used force to subdue patients. It was
Speaker 1: also overcrowded, and when the number of patients exceeded capacity,
Speaker 1: inmates were made to sleep on the floor Mercury was
Speaker 1: the go to treatment for syphilis at this time. The
Speaker 1: standard forms were an ointment, pill, or tonic, but doctors
Speaker 1: also experimented with other modes of administration fumigation, I think
Speaker 1: it's the best way to describe it. So you'd sitting
Speaker 1: essentially something that looked a bit like a steam room,
Speaker 1: and mercury infused vapors would be pumped in and you
Speaker 1: sit there and just sort of absorb it through your skin.
Speaker 1: There was no standardized dosage for mercury, doctors saw its
Speaker 1: administration as an art rather than a science. It was
Speaker 1: also highly toxic and potentially deadly Severe Mercury poisoning could
Speaker 1: result in everything from loosened to lost teeth and bettered
Speaker 1: breath all the way through to hair loss and changed
Speaker 1: mental state, very similar symptoms to what you might expect
Speaker 1: in the later stages of syphilis itself. Pregnant Elizabeth was
Speaker 1: spared mercury but treated internally with acid while her genital
Speaker 1: wartz would have been dehydrated or cut off. After receiving
Speaker 1: this cure for seventeen days, she went into premature labor.
Speaker 1: Elizabeth gave birth to a stillborn girl at seven months
Speaker 1: while under lock and key. At the cure house, a
Speaker 1: birth certificate was still required. The space for the father's
Speaker 1: name was left blank. Methods of treating syphilis varied between countries,
Speaker 1: but they shared an underlying concept women should shoulder the
Speaker 1: blame for its transmission. If the state could control the
Speaker 1: morally corrupt woman the disease is spreaders, then the problem
Speaker 1: would be isolated. Sexually transmitted disease involves two parties, of course,
Speaker 1: but male carriers were exempt from regulation. Unfortunately, the idea
Speaker 1: that women, specifically female sex workers are solely responsible for
Speaker 1: the spread of disease and should be punished for it
Speaker 1: is one that we haven't left behind. There's been a
Speaker 1: long history of sex workers being imprisoned under public health justifications.
Speaker 1: Grace is a sex worker from the UK who contacted
Speaker 1: me after reading my work on Elizabeth's life. People fear
Speaker 1: that we will be seen as vector as a disease.
Speaker 1: So unfortunately, these actually do still persist and clients let
Speaker 1: you know about it, leave me. They will say things
Speaker 1: and you feel do you know what I mean? In
Speaker 1: Elizabeth's time, as for Grace, today, attitudes and fears around
Speaker 1: the spread of disease caused women real physical harm too.
Speaker 1: Syphilis inspections were brutally rapid. Fifty women might be examined
Speaker 1: using the same medical instrument in less than two hours,
Speaker 1: says Anne Hanley, and that speculum was then passed to
Speaker 1: the attending nurse, who sort of cursorily disinfected it the
Speaker 1: use of the next patient. There's no way that these
Speaker 1: diagnostic examinations were thorough, and there's no way that they
Speaker 1: were hygienic. In many cases, women who may not have
Speaker 1: had a anereal disease were being infected by the very
Speaker 1: process of examination to determine whether or not they were infected.
Speaker 1: Even if women seemed to respond to the rudimentary cures
Speaker 1: on offer and were released from the hospital, their slate
Speaker 1: wasn't white clean. Criminal convictions followed those who had been
Speaker 1: inmates at lock hospitals, and once a woman appeared on
Speaker 1: a police register, she would not be able to secure
Speaker 1: respectable work. One of the only ways that she could
Speaker 1: actually sustain herself would be to resort to the profession
Speaker 1: she had been accused of practicing. Institution Inside, Elizabeth joined
Speaker 1: the ranks of women who sold themselves on a notorious
Speaker 1: Gothenburg thoroughfare known mockingly as the street of many nymphs.
Speaker 1: As open solicitation on the street was forbidden, she would
Speaker 1: have traded discreetly indoors at a brothel, perhaps, or in
Speaker 1: a coffee house. Elizabeth had been publicly denounced as a whore,
Speaker 1: had suffered the indignity of police examination, had discovered she
Speaker 1: carried a potentially deadly and disfiguring disease, and had been
Speaker 1: incarcerated and subjected to excruciating medical procedures. Estranged from her
Speaker 1: family and from respectable life. She had then been released
Speaker 1: onto the street, with no friend to whom she could
Speaker 1: turn in the city. It was now that the symptoms
Speaker 1: of syphilis returned and medical incarceration was ordered once more.
Speaker 1: But just when things looked to be at their bleakest,
Speaker 1: an opportunity appeared, one that would change Elizabeth's life forever.
Speaker 1: That was a preview of Bad Women. You can binge
Speaker 1: the entire season right now wherever you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 1: It's a powerful show, and I'm very proud that Pushkin
Speaker 1: is able to bring it to you. One last thing
Speaker 1: before you go, a little extra gift for the holidays,
Speaker 1: I just have to share a preview of this month's
Speaker 1: bonus episode of Revisionist History, exclusively for Pushkin Plus subscribers.
Speaker 1: Pushkin Plus has everything you love about pushkin Shows, plus
Speaker 1: so much more, add free listening, behind the scenes moments,
Speaker 1: bonus material, crazy asides. And the excerpt you're about to
Speaker 1: hear is from one of the last and arguably one
Speaker 1: of our best offerings on pushkin Plus this year. It's
Speaker 1: a follow up to one of my favorite episodes of
Speaker 1: Revisionist History, The Dog Will See You Now. You know,
Speaker 1: the one about the COVID sniffing dogs. Well, we've gone
Speaker 1: back for more. Take a listen. A lot has happened
Speaker 1: in Biodetection Canine since we went to visit them. For one,
Speaker 1: the company was recently acquired by another company called Protection
Speaker 1: One Canine. That company specializes insecurity dogs. Now they're all
Speaker 1: part of the same doggy industrial complex. But something else happened.
Speaker 1: Some of the dogs became roadies. Have you heard of
Speaker 1: Eric Church, the country music star who has lyrics like
Speaker 1: we recently were part of a Wall Street Journal article
Speaker 1: and if you read the article, Eric Church says that
Speaker 1: having the COVID dogs probably saved the tour. But that
Speaker 1: all came about because you know someone within Eric Church's
Speaker 1: camp was a Revisionist History fan and heard the podcast
Speaker 1: that's Bio Detection. Canine president Jerry Johnson, you heard him,
Speaker 1: Revisionist History. This very podcast is the connector between country
Speaker 1: music and canines. The Dogs are now backstage COVID sniffers,
Speaker 1: and not just for Eric Church. They're touring with bands
Speaker 1: including The Black Keys and Metallica heavy metal Canines. To
Speaker 1: work with these bands, the Lucky Dogs and their handlers
Speaker 1: travel on the road with the crew. How's everybody doing today?
Speaker 1: I just today by your mind, if I run the
Speaker 1: COGD dog part, it's gonna get and you just stand
Speaker 1: in a single ball line and just go ahead and
Speaker 1: relax your arms on your side and the doggle target
Speaker 1: the left hand. Certain on the day of the show,
Speaker 1: Indian Lord too Adorable, German che for Belgian Melonois begin
Speaker 1: work long before the music starts, so typically the dogs
Speaker 1: will show up depending on the first call, anywhere from
Speaker 1: five thirty to six thirty in the morning, and the
Speaker 1: first people on scene are usually the recording artist people,
Speaker 1: so they'll come in in different shifts depending on what
Speaker 1: their jobs are, so they'll come in groups of anywhere
Speaker 1: from three to ten. The dogs are prepositioned at the
Speaker 1: entrance and everybody comes in. They stand in a single
Speaker 1: file line facing the dog, teams about six feet apart.
Speaker 1: Everybody's kind of socially distanced. And then what we have
Speaker 1: them do is they stand facing the dog, nothing in
Speaker 1: their left hand, and the dog comes down and sniffs
Speaker 1: their left hand. Takes about a second per person, and
Speaker 1: then you know, when they're done. Then they go about
Speaker 1: and do their work. The dogs, I think are probably
Speaker 1: the most popular. I almost call the people the most
Speaker 1: popular individuals on the show. For people are riding, they
Speaker 1: can't wait too you know, they automatically go to where
Speaker 1: they need to stand so they can get sniffed. So
Speaker 1: you are such a sweet girl, Oh my goodness, I
Speaker 1: love you. What smart baby, so smart. It's a great environment.
Speaker 1: If you like what you heard, you can hear the
Speaker 1: rest by subscribing to Pushkin Plus on the Revisionist History
Speaker 1: Show page in Apple Podcasts or at pushkin dot fm
Speaker 1: slash plus. It's only four ninety nine a month. It's
Speaker 1: a cup of coffee. And if you're already a subscriber,
Speaker 1: thank you. We hope you've enjoyed the uninterrupted listening and
Speaker 1: bonus content from other pushkin shows. Thanks for listening, and
Speaker 1: stay tuned for more bonus episodes coming soon.