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Hello and welcome back to Cult Leader. I'm your Cult Leader, Spencer Henry. I always forget to do this, you guys. So please, if you can, take a second to subscribe, rate, review, and you can also follow along online at Cult Leader Podcast. You can follow me at Spencer Henry and what else? What else? Oh, what else? Oh, what else?

Oh, we have the Facebook group. If you want to join the Facebook group, there's people talking about things that you probably like to learn about on there. I think you just search Cult Leader Podcast on Facebook groups. I don't know how that works. And that's it. I want to get right into today's episode because it is going to be long-winded. Here's the thing you guys. I love resolution. I'm the type of person who needs all loose ends tied up. When I hear a story, I want the beginning, the middle, the end. But what's funny is that I've come to

realize a lot of my most favorite crimes to learn about are actually unsolved. The axiom of New Orleans, who I covered in an early episode, unsolved. So, I don't know why I always avoid covering them because the truth is, it's almost more suspenseful when you don't know what happened. This episode has been requested a lot. And I was always like, yeah, maybe. But as I began to look more into the details surrounding what I thought was kind of like a low key boring case. I was like, hey, wait a second. Yeah, let's talk about this. So without further ado,

I present the infamous Jack the Ripper. And it's in London. What up, London Colt Babes. And we're in 1888. I don't have an accent for 1888, like I do with my 1920s. And I will spare you my British accent. You don't want to hear it. But the story starts in the east of London. White chapel to be specific. White chapel is a very different district today than it was back then. According to BBC America, during the time of Jack the Ripper's reign of terror, the area was just like unimaginable.

From malnutrition to disease, the area was super overcrowded. It was an area where a lot of immigrants were living at the time and the conditions were rough. Over 78,000 residents lived in abject poverty. It was an area of docile houses, sweatshops, abattoirs, which we know what those are for the last week's episode. Overcrowded slums, pubs, a few shops here and there in warehouses. Leavened with a row or two of respectively kept cottages.

Now residents at the time had a 50-50 chance of surviving beyond the age of five years old due to the harsh conditions. If that gives you any further insight to how actually shitty this area was at the time.

Now it was super common for women in the area to resort to sex work as a means to survive. And you know I'm not judgey sex work is work, they deserve rights. But you know I know you know. But here it was like fucking gnarly, very unsanitary.

In 1888 it is estimated there was around 62 brothels and over 1200 women working in the streets. The violence wasn't an uncommon occurrence in the area. The brutal slangs were going to be talking about today sent shockwaves through the community.

There's a few murders that have been historically linked to Jack the Ripper, but I want to talk about the ones that we know for sure were connected and then we can kind of go from there.

So there's actually a name you guys might have heard it before if you've looked into this case at all and it's the canonical five which describes the five main connected victims to the killing spree will start there.

It's the wee hours of the morning on Friday, August 31st 1888 on what is now called Derbord Street but at the time it was known as Bucks Row.

At 3.40am the body of Mary Ann Nichols was discovered by a woman named Emily Holland who was a prior roommate of Mary's.

Mary was 43 which she was found, but let's get to know her a little bit. I like a backstory. So Mary Ann Nichols, she was born on August 26th 1845 to her parents Caroline and Edward Walker.

Her dad was a locksmith and her mom stayed at home. When she was just 19 she married a man named William Nichols who was a printer's machinist also from London.

And they got to work out starting a family months after getting married they welcomed their first child Edward John and over the next 12 years had four additional children Percy Alice Eliza and Henry.

Their marriage came to an abrupt end after the birth of their youngest Henry. Mary's father accused her husband William of having an affair with the couple's nurse though William denied it saying that he stayed married to Mary for some time after the birth of their son.

Regardless they ended up calling it quits in 1880 due to disputed causes and he paid her a measly allowance of five shillings a week which like, sorry, what is this the pirates of the Caribbean what the fuck is a shilling.

In 1882 he finds out she's doing sex work and stops paying her because he's no longer legally obligated to support her even though she's getting her money technically illegally at the time.

She ends up working a few odd jobs at different boarding houses and continuing her sex work living back and forth between her father's house who was not keen of her lifestyle once he found out how she was making money and then random beds at these places that I mentioned before so basically these are kind of like a hotel's I mean they're lodging houses.

So Whitechapel had a lot of these lodging houses at the time and pretty much every victim that we're going to be talking about in today's story lived at a lodging house at some point or another so she shared a room with Emily who I mentioned was the one who discovered her body and let's just talk about that.

So Mary was last seen around 2 a.m. on the morning of the 31st. She'd left a bit earlier that evening and tried to stay at a lodging house but they turned her away.

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