Rachel Dobkin has come to see her psychic advisor, Madam Nerva. After years of bitter disagreements and financial wranglings with her estranged and violent husband, Rachel wants to know what the spirits think she should do next. Through Madam Nerva the spirts tell Rachel not to go near her husband again... but will she heed their warnings? 

The case of Rachel Dobkin is another face of wartime crime and not the work of the Blackout Ripper - but it reveals a common thread. It shows how some men thought the disruption and chaos of war would help them get away with murder. 

Further reading:

Carroll, Niamh. ‘The History of the Boundary Estate’, Bethnal Green London, 14 May 2021,

Cole, Mike. ‘The Battle of Cable Street’, Historic UK.

Cowan, Colin. ‘Mental observation wards: an alternative provision for emergency psychiatric care in England in the first half of the twentieth century’, History of Psychiatry, 

Eilers, Nicole Kvale. ‘Emigrant Trains: Jewish Migration through Prussia and American Remote Control, 1880 - 1914’, in Brinkmann, T. (ed), Points of Passage: Jewish Migrants from Eastern Europe in Scandinavia, Germany, and Britain 1880 - 1914 (New York: Berghahn Books, 2013).

Lefebure, Molly. Murder on the Home Front (London: Sphere, 2013).

Marks, Lara V, Model Mothers: Jewish Mothers and Maternity Provision in East London 1870 - 1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994)..

Odell, Robin. Medical Detectives: The Lives and Cases of Britain’s Forensic Five (Cheltenham: The History Press, 2013).

Roberts, Elizabeth. A Woman’s Place: An Oral History of Working Class Women 1890 - 1940 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995).

Summerscale, Kate. The Haunting of Alma Fielding: A True Ghost Story (London: Bloomsbury, 2020).

Rachel Dobkin has come to see her psychic advisor, Madam Nerva. After years of bitter disagreements and financial wranglings with her estranged and violent husband, Rachel wants to know what the spirits think she should do next. Through Madam Nerva the spirts tell Rachel not to go near her husband again... but will she heed their warnings? 
The case of Rachel Dobkin is another face of wartime crime and not the work of the Blackout Ripper - but it reveals a common thread. It shows how some men thought the disruption and chaos of war would help them get away with murder. 
Further reading:
Carroll, Niamh. ‘The History of the Boundary Estate’, Bethnal Green London, 14 May 2021,
Cole, Mike. ‘The Battle of Cable Street’, Historic UK.
Cowan, Colin. ‘Mental observation wards: an alternative provision for emergency psychiatric care in England in the first half of the twentieth century’, History of Psychiatry, 
Eilers, Nicole Kvale. ‘Emigrant Trains: Jewish Migration through Prussia and American Remote Control, 1880 - 1914’, in Brinkmann, T. (ed), Points of Passage: Jewish Migrants from Eastern Europe in Scandinavia, Germany, and Britain 1880 - 1914 (New York: Berghahn Books, 2013).
Lefebure, Molly. Murder on the Home Front (London: Sphere, 2013).
Marks, Lara V, Model Mothers: Jewish Mothers and Maternity Provision in East London 1870 - 1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994)..
Odell, Robin. Medical Detectives: The Lives and Cases of Britain’s Forensic Five (Cheltenham: The History Press, 2013).
Roberts, Elizabeth. A Woman’s Place: An Oral History of Working Class Women 1890 - 1940 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995).
Summerscale, Kate. The Haunting of Alma Fielding: A True Ghost Story (London: Bloomsbury, 2020).

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 E8: Madam Nerva Sees Death

https://api.omny.fm/orgs/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/clips/bc213119-0d7d-4032-af16-af58009712d4/transcript

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