All language subtitles for A Very British Murder with Lucy Worsley - S01E02 - Detection Most Ingenious_track3_eng

Murder is the darkest
and most despicable of crimes,

and yet we are drawn to it
in real life and in fiction,

and that is because a murder
is always a good story.

In the Victorian age, people started
to relish a new type of murder.

They were attracted to hypocrisy
in a respectable home...

..to dark secrets, to mysterious
compulsions and unhinged minds.

And the Victorians
were also fascinated

by two new developments
in the fight against crime.

There was forensic science...

and the coming of a new kind
of hero, the detective.

In his essay called
the Decline of the English Murder,

George Orwell lays out
the characteristics

of an absolutely enjoyable crime.

First of all, he sets the scene -

the perfect situation
for relishing the details.

"It is a Sunday afternoon,
preferably before the war.

"You put your feet up on the sofa,
settle your spectacles on your nose,

"and open the News of the World.

"The sofa cushions
are soft underneath you,

"the fire is well alight,
the air is warm and stagnant.

"In these blissful circumstances,

"what is it
that you want to read about?"

"Naturally," Orwell says,
"We want to read about a murder."

But for him,
the most elegant crimes -

the ones that defined the genre -
didn't take place in the 1930s.

They were Victorian.

At the top of the list of Orwell's
perfect crimes

were those committed in the 1850s
by Dr William Palmer.

"For a really entertaining murder,"
said Orwell,

"The murderer should be a little man
of the professional class

"living an intensely respectable
life somewhere in the suburbs."

Well, it's not quite the suburbs,

but this humdrum street
in Rugeley, Staffordshire,

is the rather unlikely setting
for a despicable crime.

On the 20th of November 1855,

a man called John Parsons Cook died
in the upstairs room of that pub.

It was then called the Talbot Arms.

He'd experienced vomiting
and horrific convulsions.

At first it seemed Cook might have
died of natural causes,

but William Palmer - the doctor
who'd been treating him -

seemed to be in quite a hurry
to get him buried.

And over the previous days, there'd
been a suspicious run of events.

Picture the scene,
the week before Cook's death.

It all starts with a big day out
at the races.

John Cook has gone to enjoy himself
with his friend William Palmer,

and Cook wins a lot of money
on the horses.

He and Palmer toast each other
with brandy,

but unfortunately the brandy doesn't
do Cook any good - he falls ill.

He comes to stay here
at the Talbot Arms

and luckily his friend William
Palmer is on hand to look after him.

Palmer gives Cook a cup of coffee -
he gets ill again.

Do you see a pattern?

If I were you, I wouldn't accept
a drink from William Palmer.

Palmer next gives Cook
a bowl of soup,

and within just a few days,
Cook is dead.

The chambermaid described the
violent arching of Cook's back,

and the frightening grimaces
of his face as he died -

symptoms of tetanus,
but also of poison.

The fascinating thing about
William Palmer as a murderer

is that he was an upstanding member
of the middle classes.

He didn't look like
a villain at all.

These are the tools of his trade -
he was a respectable family doctor.

Someone you hoped that you could
trust with your life.

But as Sherlock Holmes
would later say,

"When a doctor does go wrong,
he's the first of criminals.

"He has the nerve
and he has knowledge."

Dr Palmer became known
as the Rugeley poisoner.

And his weapon of choice

would have been kept in this little
powder drawer at the bottom -

it was Strychnine.

Or was it? It was extremely hard to
detect this state-of-the-art poison.

Certainly, it looked like
Palmer had a motive - money!

The dead man's betting book,

which allowed him to claim
his big win on the horses,

had mysteriously disappeared.

Palmer was found to have huge debts.

His wife had died the year before,

just after he'd insured her life
for �13,000.

And his brother Walter
had died not long after,

yielding another big cash windfall.

All this juicy detail was lapped up
by Victorian newspaper readers.

William Palmer's
was the first big crime

to take place after the lifting of
the newspaper tax in 1855.

This meant that newspapers suddenly
got a whole lot cheaper.

Some that had cost four pence
were now just a penny.

Combined with a brilliant murder
story, circulation exploded.

What the newspapers particularly
liked in the Palmer case

was the detail
of the scientific investigation.

In Palmer's case it was compromised
right from the start, actually.

Palmer himself was allowed
to be present at the autopsy,

and during it he managed to jostle
the person handling the stomach

so that its contents spilled out.

Later Palmer tried to bribe the
courier taking the victim's stomach
down to London to make itdisappear.

The Illustrated Times

has got pictures here
of the stars of trial -

the analytical chemists explaining
exactly how poisoning worked -

and the Staffordshire Advertiser
have included

a word-by-word transcript
of all of their testimony.

The readers of all these newspapers

were getting a very detailed lesson
in the science of chemistry

and in the absolute latest
techniques of poisoning.

Palmer's trial featured 60 witnesses
and lasted a record 12 days.

But eventually,
he was sentenced to death.

The case gave the public a potent
mix of science and murder.

And at St Bartholomew's hospital,

where William Palmer
trained to be a doctor,

the Victorian pathology museum
contains the fascinating gory stuff

the bottled stomachs
and contaminated organs

around which the best
murder trials now revolved.

Palmer's crime represented

a new kind of more
sophisticated poisoning.

Collections like this one helped
these magicians of the modern age -

the toxicologists
and the forensic scientists -

to understand the human body.

They needed to see
lots of different organs

so they could tell what was normal
and what was abnormal.

This is somebody's stomach,

but it's been corroded away because
they've swallowed a strong acid.

And as the scientists were
becoming more rigorous

in their examination
of the murder victim,

the police were also
transforming themselves.

It all began in 1842,

with the establishment
of the Metropolitan Police
Detective Force at Scotland Yard,

formed from a handful
of the cleverest police officers.

They aimed to make policing
a science,

through observation of crime,

and intimate knowledge
of the criminal world.

This new detective squad,
which was very small at first,

would become the elite
of the police force.

It wasn't their job to go
out on the beat, preventing crime.

Their role was much
more active than that.

They had to gather intelligence,
look for patterns,

find the evidence,
and go after the killers.

In other words,
it was much more exciting!

These detectives often came from
same streets

as the criminals they investigated,

so they understood the Victorian
underworld.

Charles Dickens was very taken
with the new detectives.

He loved following them around
and spending time with them.

This is his magazine,
Household Words,

and from 1850 he published
a whole series of articles
about the detectives.

He was doing something
quite important.

He was making them look like they
were respectable,

and even glamorous characters,
to his middle-class readers.

Dickens loved the idea of these
working-class heroes -

cerebral and brave at the same time,
sweeping up crime all over the city.

This essay is called
The Modern Science of Thief-Taking

and Dickens here is really
bigging-up the detectives.

He says that, "These 42 individuals
don't wear a uniform,

"but they perform the most difficult
operations of their craft."

They're "connoisseurs of crime".

They can walk into a crime scene

and they can spot the hallmarks
of a particular gang of criminals.

They can read tracks
which are invisible to other eyes.

A few months later,
Dickens invites the whole of
the detective squad

into the offices of Household Words
for a party -

the detective police party.

Over brandy-and-water and cigars,
they chat together about crime.

The most impressive detective
present is called Inspector Wield,

who's, "A middle aged man
with a portly presence

"with a large,
moist and knowing eye,

"a husky voice and a habit of
emphasising his conversation

"with the aid
of a corpulent forefinger."

Now, these very distinctive tics

belong to a real detective
called Inspector Field.

And Dickens uses his right name
when he follows Inspector Field

on his rounds of the slums
of St Giles by night.

This essay, called On Duty With
Inspector Field, begins like this.

"How goes the night? St Giles's
Clock is striking nine."

It's almost as if Dickens
is stalking Inspector Field.

And his description is full of
admiration.

"Inspector Field is, tonight,
the guardian genius
of the British Museum.

"He is bringing
his shrewd eye to bear

"on every corner
of its solitary galleries."

Soon Field emerges, and leads
Dickens on a journey of discovery

into London's criminal underbelly.

What I love about this essay
is the window it opens up

into the squalid, grimy, horrible
world of the slums of Saint Giles,

where Inspector Field is completely
at home and completely in charge.

He isn't different from these
people, he's one of them.

He's risen up through his own
abilities,

and this gives him the power
to pass between worlds -

from the slums to the middle-class
newspaper offices.

Just like Charles Dickens
did himself.

Given Dickens's empathy
for the police detectives,

it's no surprise
that the real Inspector Field

soon got a fictional counterpart.

Inspector Bucket in Bleak House

bears a striking resemblance
to Inspector Field,

right down to the plump,
pointing forefinger.

He's one of our very first
fictional police detectives.

But Dickens wasn't just taken
with detection.

He also had a keen interest in crime
and brutality more generally.

I've come to Dickens's own house to
hear about the great writer from his
biographer, Simon Callow.

He moved in parts of society that
were unknown to most of his readers.

He specialised in the underbelly.

And it's very notable that whenever
he went to any new town,

pretty well the first visit he made
every time was to the police station.

When he went to America,
he went to the New York precinct,

and they took him round
the underworld, basically.

They took him to the brothels,
to the gambling dens,

to the places where
the criminals hung out.

He seemed to need to know
about all of that.

Dickens's interest in the
unvarnished detail of murder

was evident in his famous public
readings from Oliver Twist.

Especially the killing by Bill Sikes
of his girlfriend Nancy.

Dickens appeared in tails with
a white starched shirt and bow tie.

He stood at a lectern,
which he'd designed himself,

which had a metal rectangle over it,

through which gas flowed,

and which lit up,
so he was gas lit within this frame.

And then he'd give himself, just
like a musician,

he wrote a score for himself.

And, it's fascinating that you see
he rewrote some of the scenes
to make them tighter and more vivid.

And he gives himself notes
all the way through.

So, for example in letters so marked,
so heavily,

his pen almost breaking on the page
is the word "TERROR" - underlined
twice - "TO THE END."

And he maintained that atmosphere of
extreme dread all the way through.

But the moment that people remembered
most of all,

"It was a ghastly figure to look
upon.

"The murderer, staggering backward to
the wall,

"and shutting out the sight
with his hand,

"seized a heavy club,
and struck her down!"

And then Dickens
just repeated this...

He did this. Sometimes he didn't
seem to stop at all.

This was the thing that frightened
his audiences so much.

He hammered her
till they actually began to see her
face disintegrating under his fist.

I mean, it was a sort of
psychotic performance, really.
Absolutely extraordinary.

Dickens brought these
terrifying accounts of murder

and the criminal underworld
to a new novel-reading audience,

who found they could now enjoy
stories of violence
with a clear conscience.

In 1868, Wilkie Collins published
a book called The Moonstone.

TS Eliot described it as,

"The first, the longest, and the
best of English detective novels."

Whether it's a true detective novel
or not is a bit of a moot question,

but it'll definitely keep you
turning the pages.

Basically, it's about a stolen
diamond,

but I've come to a tobacconist,
because Collins expert Matthew Sweet

promises me cigars hold the secret
to the novel's plot.

Right then,
shall we go for these ones?

Will you please show us what to do
now that we've picked these two?

What you need to do is to cut...
cut the little end off here.

Cut that, and now I'm just
going to char the end for you.

Turning it around slowly. Turning
it, so you get it nice and evenly...

I think that's nearly there. Right.

Thank you very much.
Now draw, and then blow it out.

That's really nasty!
Yeah? I'm sorry!

You are going to explain in a minute
why we're smoking cigars?

I will, I will.
It's all going to be revealed?

If you'd like to take that and draw.
Matthew's first puff. Yes.

Draw in, you're away!

Good smoking! Terrific.
Excellent. Like a pro.

So, what role do cigars play
in the story of the Moonstone?

Well, the cigar, strangely, is the
engine of the plot in the Moonstone.

Without the cigar, the moonstone
diamond would never have been stolen.

Because the hero, Franklin Blake,
is a cigar smoker who stops smoking.

And then, because he's sleepless,
and because he's ratty

and because he gets
into an argument with a doctor,

he finds that his drink has been
spiked with opium,

so this puts him into a very strange
psychological state,

during which he commits the robbery
that he himself wants to see solved.

You make that sound really neat
and orderly and sensible,

but it takes place over 800 pages

and there's so many twists
and turns along the way.

Twists and turns and all with this
strange kind of narcotic fug waiting
for us at the end of the story.

Another thing in the Moonstone

that really looks forwards
to detective stories

is the planting of the clue,
isn't it?

The way that if you're paying
attention,

you know that this normal detail
of daily life, the cigar,

is going to hold the secret
of the whole plot.

Well, yes, I mean it's the classic
clue, isn't it?

You can imagine something like this
reproduced in a Cluedo set

along with the length of rope
and the revolver.

And the classic idea is that this
is an object that can be read.

It looks ordinary,
the world is full of them,

and yet if you know how to look at
this,

if you see how long it's been
burning, where it comes from,

where it was bought, who
might use a cigar like this,

then it becomes legible.

And it might perform
some very important role
in a story or a puzzle.

Well, in this particular story,

it's the explanation for the whole
of everything. Absolutely, yes!

The Moonstone was part of a new wave
of writing in the 1860s

known at the time
as "sensation fiction".

Novels designed to quicken the pulse
of middle-class readers.

What could be more sensational than
murder and detection?

The Queen of sensation fiction was
Mary Elizabeth Braddon.

She really was one of the 19th
century's most prolific and
successful novelists.

Her first smash hit novel,
Lady Audley's Secret, was set here.

Ingatestone Hall
became Audley Court -

a place of full of secrets,
glamour and crime.

The book's plot revolves around
bigamy and murder.

George Tallboys comes back from
Australia after years away
seeking his fortune.

He expects to find his wife at home
waiting for him,

but instead hears that she's died.

He goes with a friend, Robert
Audley, to visit Audley Court,

where he hears about
the new, young Lady Audley.

It's George's supposedly
dead wife, remarried.

With her shameful secret
about to be exposed,

she arranges to meet George here.

This is the famous Lime Tree Walk
from Lady Audley's Secret.

In the story, it leads to a well,

down which Lady Audley
pushes her husband.

Mary Elizabeth Braddon said
that the whole story was inspired
by a walk that she took here.

She said this secluded spot,
"Suggested something uncanny."

In the book,
the mystery is investigated

by Robert Audley himself,
who has turned amateur detective.

I'm really fascinated by Braddon,

whose own life seems to reflect
her taste for sensation.

I've come to meet her
biographer Jennifer Carnell.

So, this is a photograph
of Mary Elizabeth Braddon,
and is that her hair?

That's her hair,
probably from when she was a toddler.

She's not exactly the sort of
glamorous, Lady Audley
type character I was expecting!

No, she's much more of a slightly
matronly look to her.

She was incredibly prolific.

It was nearly 80 different novels
that she wrote and the early ones
were published

with the support of...

I don't know how to
describe him - John Maxwell -
he was her sort of partner in life.

He was. He was a very pushy
publisher, good at publicity -
very different to her.

So she had the skill at writing
and he had the salesmanship.

But there was a problem with
Maxwell.

There was a slight problem - because
he did already have a wife!

And children, even.
Wife and children.

His wife had become insane after the
birth of her last child and had gone
back to her family in Ireland.

For many years she's been living
with John Maxwell,

they have children together,
but then it all goes wrong.

Yes, his first wife died and Maxwell
sent a telegram to Ireland

saying he wasn't going to go
to the funeral, he didn't feel well.

The Irish family were so incensed
that they put a notice -

a death notice -
in the London newspapers,

saying that Mrs John Maxwell
had sadly died.

And unfortunately, many people
thought that this meant
that Braddon had died,

and the letters and telegrams of
condolence arrived at the house -

and then obviously,
as she was very much alive,
the cat was out of the bag!

You couldn't make it up. It's like
her own stories. It is.

Can you tell me how she targeted her
work at different audiences?

She was quite clever in that
and unusual, too.

She was writing
for the middle classes.

And that's the big
three-volume novel?

Yes, and she also wrote for
poorer people - the working class.

This is a "penny dreadful",
which is clearly aimed at people
who are servants.

We've got an article here addressed
to female servants.

What would the other readers
have been like?

Shop girls, young clerks, and
teenagers, as well, also read these
kind of magazines.

This is clearly quite
a cheap publication -

it's called
the Halfpenny Journal -

and each weekly number starts
with a story called the Black Band.

It's not signed, but this
is by Braddon, isn't it?

It is. It ran for almost a year -

it was her longest book
she ever wrote -

and it's got extraordinary number of
murders, plots, poisonings, duels...

This is another female murderess,
fainting away.

That's another one.
She's been discovered.

So this is even less plausible
than Lady Audley. Sort of trash?

It is, it is - it's campy fun!

But at the same time, people who
haven't got much money are enjoying
this? They're lapping itup, yes!

Tell me about the different types
of detective we get

in the two types of writing?

You get a great difference
in the detectives.

For example in The Black Band,

Braddon praises them
as the friends of the people.

They're here to uphold justice.

They're magicians of modern life

with their incredible
detective skills

and up-to-date ways
of solving crimes,

but in the middle-class
sensation novel

they're an intruder and they're not
allowed to solve crimes.

And the amateur detective will always
prevail over the professional.

Now everybody,
at all levels in society,

wanted to read
about murder and detection.

The middle classes had their
expensive novels,

there were cheap magazine stories
for the workers -

and authors rushed to meet this new
demand,

producing a whole array
of different types of story

and different types of detective
to suit every taste.

And they included novelties such as
boy detectives, and even...

SHE GASPS IRONICALLY
..the female detective.

"My friends suppose
I am a dressmaker.

"I am aware that the female
detective

"may be regarded
with even more aversion

"than her brother in the profession.

"But criminals are both masculine
and feminine.

"Indeed, my experience tells me
that when a woman becomes a criminal

"she is far worse than the average
of her male companions,

"and therefore it follows that
the necessary detectives
should be of both sexes."

All of a sudden, we get
not one, but two, female detectives
appearing in fiction.

Each of them is the heroine of her
own book.

One book's called
The Female Detective.

The other one's a bit more racy.

It's called
the Revelations of a Lady Detective.

Each heroine -
Miss Gladden and Mrs Paschal -

is a female first
because she's a professional.

She makes her living
through sleuthing.

It's pretty incredible

that the first girl detectives
appeared in the 1860s.

This was a time when ladies'
movements were restricted by the
decade's impractical fashions.

Particularly the crinoline,

which ladies actually referred to
as "the cage".

But in the book called
The Revelations of a Lady Detective,

Mrs Paschal isn't going to let
a giant skirt get in her way.

The heroine of the story is chasing
a criminal.

He goes down a hole into a cellar.

She can't follow him because
of her crinoline,

so - her words - she takes off
the "obnoxious garment".

It's a brilliant little moment
of female emancipation.

These two ground-breaking books were
published within months of each
other in 1864,

and since they're rather rare,
I have come to see them

with curator Kathryn Johnson
at the British Library.

Are these filling the gap between
cheap and disposable magazines and
the more expensive hardback novels?

Probably nearer
to the cheap magazine.

At the time the original edition of
this book came out,

a three-volume novel would have cost
something in the region

of 10 and sixpence -
per volume -

which was round about
an average working man's wage -

so it was way out of his pocket.

This is priced at sixpence,
as you can see at the top.

Looking at the cover of the
Revelations of the Lady Detective,

what would a reader have seen
looking at that image?

They might have been shocked.
As you can see at the top, she's
quite clearly smoking.

You can see
the puff of smoke although
she has correctly got gloves on.

She's lifting up a padded coat,
a duster coat,

and at the bottom you can see
she has a crinoline,

but it is rather daringly
showing not only her ankles,

but a considerable amount of leg.

That cover image is not
of a respectable woman.

In 18th century prints, if you hold
up your dress and show your ankle,
you are a prostitute.Indeed!

What other unladylike things does
the lady detective do?

She tells us that she has one
of Mr Colt's revolvers,

although perhaps disappointingly,
we never see her use it.

But perhaps she found
a great comfort with the enormous
weight of it in her pocket!

I like this about the female
detectives - they're bursting
through the boundaries.

They're out and about.

Yes, it's something different,
though it's interesting
at the beginning of this.

It's almost as if she has an excuse.
She says that she had to undergo
this career as a detective

because her husband died
and left her very poorly off -

and so the implication is that she
wouldn't undertake something so
daring and unusual

if she hadn't been bereft
of the support of a husband.

She justifies herself quite hard,
doesn't she? Yes.

I like the bit where she actually
lists her qualities.

She says, "My brain is vigorous
and subtle, I concentrate all my
energies upon my duties,

"I have nerve and strength, cunning
and confidence, resources unlimited"

Good on her!

Sadly, these two books
were a bit or a false start,

because there wouldn't be any more
fictional lady detectives
for over 20 years.

But the British appetite for murder
could not be satiated.

One brutal real-life crime even gave
us an interesting addition
to the English language.

The victim was an eight-year-old
girl called Fanny Adams.

She was attacked and cut into little
pieces by a solicitor's clerk who
lured her away from her friends.

And although the crime was a fairly
open-and-shut case,

little Fanny Adams lingered on.

In 1869, the sailors in the British
Navy were issued with a new type of
rations - tinned mutton.

They weren't very keen on
this stuff - it was a bit disgusting

and they weren't sure
what animal it came from.

They started calling it Fanny Adams

because it could have been the
cut-up dead body of a murder victim.

This expression "Sweet Fanny Adams"
passed into language more generally,

and you might still use
the expression today

to describe something that was tiny,
or negligible or worthless -

you could say it was "sweet FA".

Now FA doesn't stand for what you
might immediately think it does -

it's actually a reference
to Fanny Adams -

this poor little murdered girl.

Beyond a little dark humour,

the murders that really intrigued
late 19th-century Britain

tended to be more complex than mere
butchery.

In 1886, Robert Louis Stevenson
wrote a book

called The Strange Case
of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde,

and introduced us
to a new type of murderer.

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde broke new
ground because the violence in it
was motiveless, it was animalistic.

It turned out that the killer,
Mr Hyde,

was the alter ego
of the virtuous Dr Jekyll.

The book was a huge success,

and it quickly became a stage play
with an actor called Richard
Mansfield in the lead.

It opened in 1888, here in London
at the Lyceum theatre.

For the first time, Victorian
audiences encountered the idea
of the split personality.

The transformation scene was said to
be so alarming

that women fainted and had to be
carried from the theatre.

These days we're so familiar
with the image of Jekyll drinking
the potion and turning into Hyde

that it's hard to imagine the shock
of seeing it for the first time.

But how did Richard Mansfield do it?

The Actor Michael Kirk

helped me to recreate
the melodrama of his performance.

Michael, what actually happened
in the transformation scene,
the famous scene?

Well, he actually transformed
himself in front
of about 2,000 people

from a very hideous little man
to a very upright doctor -

he transformed himself
from Hyde to Jekyll.

So it's not the nice man
turning into the monster
that we know from the films. No.

On the stage and in the book,
it's the monster into the nice man.

Into the nice man, yes.

Now it couldn't have
just been the acting.

Surely, there must have been
more to it than that?

He actually said, "All I do is
change physically."

That's all he did, and the lighting,
the orchestra, the sound effects,

and everything that went with it
did the rest.

There's a brilliant contemporary
description of how he appears,
isn't there?

Yes, there is.
"With the howl of a wolf,

"the leap of a panther
and the leer of a fiend!"

So there's just one actor,
a massive theatre -

a bit of light,
a bit of music -

but he's going to completely
transform himself

from bad guy to good guy.

How does he do it?
Will you show me?

Right, first of all physicality.

So we're going to go on our toes,
put your weight on your toes
and lean forward.

This is Mr Hyde the murderer, walks
on his toes. Walks on his toes.

So, got that.
Now bend your body right over...

..and straighten your fingers.
And go...

Feel the energy right
to the end of those fingers.

And a slightly deformed shoulder.
Put the shoulder up.

Shoulder up. One shoulder up. OK?

So that's it. Leer!

Leer - the leer of a fiend!

The leer of a fiend!
The howl of a wolf - woo!

SHE LAUGHS

Serious, serious. Now, over there
is Dr Lanyon. Is Dr... who? Lanyon.

Dr Lanyon, he's my friend?

He was your friend,
he isn't your friend any more.
He's my enemy! He's your enemy.

THEY SNARL

Down there is the potion

and you're going to prove
to Dr Lanyon how you do it!

And you say to him,
"Behold, man of disbelief."

Behold, man of disbelief! Behold!
Behold!

Take the glass.
Take the glass!

No! Don't take the glass.

Don't say that you're taking
the glass, just take it.

With a sweep.
2,000 people are watching you!

Yes, I'll drink this down. Oh!

Place it on the table.

Oh, the pain! The pain!

Turn away the agony
into the stomach.

GROANING

And suddenly, amazing relief
and totally strengthen, you'll feel
your whole body going upright

and it all relaxes

and there is your friend

and you turn to him
and you say, "Lanyon." Dr Lanyon.

Lanyon. Lanyon!

The play Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde

opened in what would turn out to be
a particularly fearful summer.

In 1888, there was a series of
brutal murders in Whitechapel.

These unsolved crimes
would grip the nation,

and even a century later,
we're still addicted.

The uncaptured killer
would become the 19th century's
most notorious murderer.

The image of this killer

is strangely intertwined
with that of Mr Hyde.

The murder of the prostitute,
Martha Tabram, in the East End,

which some considered to be
the first of this group of crimes,

took place just two days
after Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
began its West End run.

Over the next two months,

five more women were killed
in truly horrifying ways.

As the victims were discovered,
a pattern began to emerge.

They'd had various internal organs
removed, rather skilfully.

This gave rise to the speculation
that the killer

could have been a trained doctor.

People now began to confuse the real
murderous doctor with the fictional
one in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

One newspaper said that, "Mr Hyde
is at large in Whitechapel."

Some people were even more confused
than that.

They began to suggest
that Richard Mansfield,

the actor who played Mr Hyde
could be the killer himself.

After all, every night,
he proved he could transform himself

from a respectable looking doctor
to a murderous monster.

Behold, man of disbelief, behold!

HE GASPS FOR BREATH

And if even an honourable doctor
could harbour the brutal instincts
of the psychopath,

anybody walking the streets
was in danger.

The serial killer could be anywhere.

The fear and excitement escalated
when a letter arrived at the offices
of the Central News Agency.

It began, "Dear Boss,"

and it went on to mock the police,
who couldn't catch the murderer.

It was signed Jack the Ripper,

introducing, for the first time,
an irresistibly catchy name.

In fact, the whole thing became
something of a theatrical event
for Victorian Londoners,

and an interactive one, too.

Once again, ordinary people started
writing in to newspapers
and the police.

But this time, they didn't
just suggest solutions.

They sent letters purporting
to be from the Ripper himself.

Now, why would you pretend
to be Jack the Ripper?

Perhaps people wanted to just see
their letter in the paper.

Perhaps they wanted
to mock the police

for having failed
to solve the crime.

Or perhaps they just did it for fun.

One of the people prosecuted

for sending hoax Jack the Ripper
letters was Maria Coroner,

21 years old,
worked for a mantle-maker.

When she appeared in court,

she was described as,
"A pleasant-looking young woman,

"of greater intelligence than is
common for one of her class."

When she was asked about
her motive,

she said she,
"Done it in a joke."

So, for some people,

Jack the Ripper seems
to have been light entertainment
right from the start,

even at the same time as the killer
spread fear and panic in London.

Today, on a rainy Friday night,

the East End is seething
with Ripper tours,

crisscrossing each other's paths.

I'm going to warn you now,
this is the real story.

The Ripper's story is a massive
subject, for all different types of
reasons.

Therefore there's lots of questions,
and the big question is,
"Who done it?"

Before the murders took place,
the impoverished East End

was already a tourist attraction -

where posh people might
go "slumming",

to see how the poor lived.

So perhaps it's not surprising

that the Ripper's crimes
were soon drawing in the crowds.

These tours have quite a history.

They've been going on for at least
100 years, possibly longer.

The first formal recorded tour
took place in 1905

and it was led
by Dr Frederick Brown,

the police surgeon who'd
carried out the postmortem

on one of the original victims.

His tour group consisted
of members of an exclusive club,

a literary club called
the Crimes Club.

One of the them was
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle -

the inventor of Sherlock Holmes.

The legendary amateur detective

first appeared
the year before Jack the Ripper.

But he wasn't an immediate hit.

Sherlock Holmes took off
in an age scarred by the Ripper.

Perhaps the dismal failure
of the police to find a culprit

created a desire for a fictional
sleuth who was never wrong.

Sherlock Holmes was the perfect
detective to comfort
the nervous middle classes.

He was up against killers
who were psychotic and ruthless,

but there was something of the
machine about Sherlock himself.

He used his flawless logic

to solve crimes that had defeated
the plodding members of the police.

He elevated detection
into an elegant crossword puzzle.

The very first time we see Sherlock
at work at a crime scene

was in an empty house
on the Brixton Road.

In A Study in Scarlet,
Holmes's distinctive

and rather novel
approach is immediately seen.

"He whipped a tape measure
and a large round magnifying glass
from his pocket.

"With these two implements, he
trotted noiselessly about the room.

"Sometimes stopping,
occasionally kneeling...

"and once lying flat upon his face.

"In one place he gathered up very
carefully a little pile of grey
dust from the floor,

"and packed it away in an envelope.

"Finally, he examined, with his
glass, the word upon the wall,

"going over every letter of it
with the most minute exactness."

Holmes uses the bloody finger-marks,
which spell out the German word for
"revenge",

to draw some clever conclusions

about the appearance
of the murderer.

His scientific approach
to the crime scene -

the idea of reading
minute forensic clues -

was genuinely pioneering and would
actually inspire real-life policing.

The next step towards more
scientific police detection took
place in 1901,

with the creation by the Met of the
world's first fingerprint bureau.

Now, your job has been to teach
police officers

how to do this, hasn't it?

Well, one of my jobs. We would take
classes of police officers

and show them
how to take fingerprints.

So, this is quite important that you
do this properly

because people could go to prison
on the basis of this. That's right.

The ink is the same as they use
for printing newspapers?

It is a printer's ink.
You have to smear this now.

Spread this over...

This system isn't done nowadays,
it's all done electronically.

I'm going to do the thumb first,

then the forefinger, mid-finger,
ring and in that order.

Ah! Right thumb first.
Can you bend down a bit?

Ooh, ooh, why do we roll it
like that?

We're trying to get
all the information

from one side of the finger to the
other because of the pattern area.

Some patterns are wider than others,

so you want to get as much
information as possible.

You are, um, you're quite strict.

Ken's definitely in charge here.

What happens if people don't want
their fingerprints taken?

Well, I think they can be persuaded
to have their fingerprints taken.

Police do have the authority,
I understand,

to take fingerprints
by force if necessary,

but I don't think that often
happens.

And how long have we been
doing this in Britain, then?

We've been taking fingerprints
since about...

1894.

Ooh! But not initially
by the police, is that right?

No, it was done in prison.

When the fingerprint bureau is set
up in 1901 they already have access,
don't they, to this large data bank?

They had about 18,000 - 20,000
sets of fingerprints on record

by the time they started
to classify fingerprints.

They were able to build
up a collection, then.

Of people who were already
criminals - they'd been in prison?

That's right, so there's a mass
reclassification of all these
fingerprints

that they'd actually built up

from all the prints
they'd received in prison.

So 1901 is the key date -

this is when the science
of classifying people

by their fingerprints and uniquely
identifying suspects begins?

Correct.

The idea that every criminal action
leaves a print, or a trace -

a hair, a speck of dust -

gave a sense of discovery and
excitement to the solving of crimes,

and the process of detection
became ever more fascinating
to the British people.

As Sherlock Holmes put it,

"There's the scarlet thread of
murder running through the
colourless skein of life,

"and our duty is to unravel it,
and isolate it,
and expose every inch of it."

By the end of the Victorian age,

the pieces were nearly all in place

for a new age of detection
to begin -

in real life and in fiction too.

Crimes would be solved
scientifically, methodically,

neatly, and to the complete
satisfaction of the reader.

So, next on A Very British Murder,
I meet a mild-mannered
Edwardian killer,

investigate why the "whodunnit"
entered a golden age,

and how the best of these murder
mysteries came to be written
by new "queens of crime".