Though married to chicken farmer Harold, Evelyn Oatley has given up on rural life and returned to live in seedy Soho under her showgirl alias "Lita Ward". The coming of war has meant a boom time for those selling entertainment, liquor and sex to the servicemen flooding the area. It is in this world of dancing and drinking that Evelyn lives. 

But beneath a fun-loving facade, Evelyn is lonely. Her male callers help stave off this sense of isolation, but only temporarily. And it’s while working that she’ll meet a cruel and sadistic killer and take him back to her apartment. 

Sources: 

Iglikowski-Broad, Vicky. ‘The Shim Sham Club: “London’s Miniature Harlem”’, The National Archives, 5 February 2020.

National Fairground and Circus Archive, ‘The Second World War’, The University of Sheffield, July 2015.

Sladen, Chris. ‘Holidays at Home in the Second World War’, Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 37, No. 1, 2002.

Walkowitz, Judith R. Nights Out: Life in Cosmopolitan London (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012).

Though married to chicken farmer Harold, Evelyn Oatley has given up on rural life and returned to live in seedy Soho under her showgirl alias "Lita Ward". The coming of war has meant a boom time for those selling entertainment, liquor and sex to the servicemen flooding the area. It is in this world of dancing and drinking that Evelyn lives. 
But beneath a fun-loving facade, Evelyn is lonely. Her male callers help stave off this sense of isolation, but only temporarily. And it’s while working that she’ll meet a cruel and sadistic killer and take him back to her apartment. 
Sources: 
Iglikowski-Broad, Vicky. ‘The Shim Sham Club: “London’s Miniature Harlem”’, The National Archives, 5 February 2020.
National Fairground and Circus Archive, ‘The Second World War’, The University of Sheffield, July 2015.
Sladen, Chris. ‘Holidays at Home in the Second World War’, Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 37, No. 1, 2002.
Walkowitz, Judith R. Nights Out: Life in Cosmopolitan London (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012).

The streets of wartime London are pitch black and the darkness offers cover to a murderer every bit as terrible as Jack the Ripper. During one awful week in February 1942 he viciously attacks women night after night. But the victims of the so-called Blackout Ripper are now all but forgotten.  

In this season of Bad Women, historian Hallie Rubenhold and criminologist Alice Fiennes share new details from the archives to tell the extraordinary and moving stories of the women who died and why their deaths were swept from view.    

And don't miss season one of Bad Women about a cold case like no other. In the fall of 1888, five women were brutally murdered in the slums of London. But everything you think you know about Jack the Ripper and those murdered women is wrong. Hallie reconstructs the lives of the five victims - revealing the appalling treatment they faced as women in the 1880s, and completely overturning the accepted Ripper story.

The streets of wartime London are pitch black and the darkness offers cover to a murderer every bit as terrible as Jack the Ripper. During one awful week in February 1942 he viciously attacks women night after night. But the victims of the so-called Blackout Ripper are now all but forgotten.  
In this season of Bad Women, historian Hallie Rubenhold and criminologist Alice Fiennes share new details from the archives to tell the extraordinary and moving stories of the women who died and why their deaths were swept from view.    
And don't miss season one of Bad Women about a cold case like no other. In the fall of 1888, five women were brutally murdered in the slums of London. But everything you think you know about Jack the Ripper and those murdered women is wrong. Hallie reconstructs the lives of the five victims - revealing the appalling treatment they faced as women in the 1880s, and completely overturning the accepted Ripper story.

Bad Women: The Blackout Ripper

S2 E4: "Lita Ward" the Soho Girl

https://api.omny.fm/orgs/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/clips/10a6bdab-4182-4402-a1d3-af28011d91df/transcript

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