November 29, 2022 • 50 mins
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).
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. Benjamin Marshall is working alone in the wreckage of
Vauxhall Baptist Chapel. This area of South London was badly
bombed earlier in the Blitz, and the church is now unusable.
(00:36):
A strange fire had then caused further damage, and now
Marshall is part of the demolition squad tasked with clearing
the charred debris. The July heat is already building, but
the fifty year old continues shoveling dirt and rubble in
this airless basement. Spotting a stone slab leaning up against
(00:59):
a wall, Marshall decides to move it. I was mesmerized.
Beneath the slab is the body of a naked dismembered incomplete.
Marshall carefully lifts these pitiful human remains with his shovel
(01:19):
and calls out to his former. It's been decades since
the last burial here, and this corpse doesn't appear to
have come from a disturbed grave. Could it then be
the body of a victim of the blitz, killed in
the air aid that blasted the chapel and lain undiscovered
(01:39):
ever since. That's the conclusion. The woman's killer seems to
have hoped people would draw. In the chaos and carnage
of war. Some men assume their crimes will go undetected
and unpunished. But looking at the mutilated form of this woman,
it's clear that this is not the work of a bomb.
(02:02):
The efforts made to disfigure her and disguise her identity
tell police immediately. But this was murder. This is the
(02:23):
seldom told story of women in World War Two who
were killed not by the enemy, but my husbands, lovers,
and strangers, wearing the uniform of their own side. It's
also the tale of a particular string of murder victims
that history has swept from view. I'm Hallie Rubinhold, and
(02:44):
I'm Alice Fines, and you're listening to bad Women the
Blackout River. Polly Dubinski is not the first to come
(03:24):
to this little brick house in London's gritty East End
in search of answers. Madame Nerva is expecting her. Did
you bring what I need? Polly holds out a scarf
and sweater they belonged to her sister, Rachel Dobkin, who's
been missing for three days. The clairvoyant usher's Polly inside
and then takes hold of these items of clothing. They
(03:46):
will be key to her work, for she practices psychometry.
She claims that she can read these objects and thereby
untangle the mystery of Rachel's disappearance. Polly had come to
seventeen Underwood Road the day before frantically seeking help, but
Hilda Nerva had been too busy cooking Sunday dinner to
go into a psychic trance. Today, however, she is ready.
(04:10):
Perhaps her breathing now grows deep and labored, for she
is communing with another world. I see her fairly in
the countryside. I see missus Dobkin, and she looks said.
Then Madame Nerva feels a blow to her head and
(04:32):
a choking sensation, as though something is tightening about her throat, squeezing, crushing. Oh,
she gasps for air. Oh yeah. The vision is clearly
not a hopeful one. But Madame Nerva isn't working totally blind.
She knows the missing woman well. Rachel Dobkin is convinced
(04:54):
of the psychic's powers, and she calls her home regularly.
In fact, Rachel came here just days ago, asking Madame
Nerva to read a piece of her jewelry. She was
meeting the man who gave it to her, and she
wanted advice. Sensing great sorrow in the gold band, the
clairvoyant warned Rachel of grave danger. Will you promise me
(05:19):
you won't go. Rachel pledged that she would not see
the man. This isn't a story about the black Out Ripper,
to which we'll return next episode. Rachel Dobkin wasn't in
the habit of frequenting West End nightclubs, but she faced
a danger no less. Chilling in Madame Nerva's hand was
(05:39):
her wedding ring, and the man she'd promised to avoid
was her own husband. In the spring of eighteen eighty one,
Russia's Czar Alexander the Second was returning from a military
parade to the Winter Palace, taking his customary route, when
(06:01):
revolutionaries at the roadside threw a bomb under his carriage.
The Russian monarchs down, seeming unhurt, only for a second
explosion to tear through the Royal Party and its bodyguards.
The assassinations sparked a series of vicious anti Jewish riots.
(06:23):
Pilgrims the Christians attacked the houses and shops of the
Jews indiscriminately by smashing doors and breaking windows. Only one
of the ten convicted plotters was actually Jewish, but the
Jewish people as a whole were blamed. They were made
to pay with their businesses and homes and in blood.
(06:44):
One hundred houses were pinaged, a quantity of furniture being
thrown out into the street. Two hundred people were injured
during the riots. Rachel Dobkins' parents, Barnet and Sarah Dubinsky,
were in the eye of the storm. Their province in
what is now Ukraine, saw brutal violence, and in the
(07:07):
decade that followed, the only grew worse. Imperial Russia imposed
both petty restrictions and at serious hardships on the Jewish population.
For example, businesses could refuse to employ Jews, so many
eked out a poultry living in the poorest paying trades.
Given the violence and economic hardships, it's little wonder that
(07:31):
by eighteen ninety two, Barnett and Sarah had joined the
millions of Jews seeking a new life abroad. The refugees
traveled overland, at first, mostly boarding and disembarking steam locomotives
that puffed and shrieked their way west. At the German frontier,
(07:54):
some travelers were packed onto special sealed trains. Fearing the
polluting influence of the migrant Jewish durch Underer, the Prussian
authorities sought to limit their contact with the German population
and dissuade them from settled. Conditions on the journey could
be abominable. Travelers were treated like prisoners and deprived of
(08:15):
access to adequate food and water. It was very hot
and close and altogether uncomfortable, said one voyager. I cannot
see even now how the officers could allow such a thing.
It was really dangerous. But eventually the travelers would have
reached Germany's coast, where the train doors would have opened.
Sarah and Barnett would then have bordered a steamship to
(08:37):
cross the North Sea to Britain. When Barnett and Sarah
arrived in London, they settled in the already bustling Jewish
community of Whitechapel. According to social researcher Charles Booth, some
ninety percent of London's Jewish population resided in the city's
(08:59):
grim East End, and Yiddish was spoken on the streets.
The quarter was also a reputed sink of misery and degeneracy.
Saw you filthy? Overcrowded and stinking of rot and refuse.
Whitechapel was also notorious for the recent string of savage
(09:19):
murders that had been perpetrated on its dingy narrow streets.
In the time since Polly Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride,
Kate Edos and Mary jen Kelly had been killed here,
some of the most depressing slums had been cleared and
change was under way, but the East End remained of
(09:41):
grave concern to politicians and reformers. Studying the Jewish community
in particular, Charles Booth noted that these immigrants formed a
permanent layer of poverty, verging on destitution. East End Jews
worked in trades such as tailoring and boot making, but
regular employment was hard to come by, and many of
(10:03):
those who labored in the garment industry, like catmaker Barnet,
carried out work at home, were toiled and cramped workshops
under terrible conditions and for little pay. The medical journal
The Lancet investigated the condition of Jewish tailors in the
East End of London. Its findings carried antisemitic overtones, attitudes
(10:29):
not uncommon at the time. Our commissioners found them working
in unwholesome overcrowded houses. Such people were wanting in even
the more elementary habits of cleanliness, which are possessed by
the poorest of English people. The Dubinskis themselves lived in
a house where home life and work life melded. The
(10:52):
building was divided into tailoring workshops. It was here, in
August eighteen ninety two, amid rolls of cloth and spindles
of thread, that Sarah gave birth to a baby girl.
For Jewish women newly arrived in a foreign land and
separated from the support of their families, childbirth could be
(11:13):
a lonely and frightening experience. Sarah might have been attended
by a bobber or a handywoman, a local not formally
trained in midwiffery, but who would have been trusted by
the community. Nonetheless, the couple named their new arrival Rachel.
More Dabinski children followed, and by the time she was nine,
(11:36):
Rachel had four younger siblings. Although some decried the standards
of sanitation and in in Jewish homes, others remarked that the
children of Jewish immigrants were generally in better health than
their gentile counterparts. One schoolboard president thought that the improved
morality of Jewish parents and the care which their religion
(11:59):
demanded as to food was largely the cause of their
superiority over English children. The disease Ricketts, which left many
working class children with weak and deformed bones, was less
common in Jewish homes. Medical experts suggested that this was
because of diet. Jewish women often banded together to bulk
(12:21):
by fish at the local market, herring in particular, a
source of protein and bone strengthening vitamin D. Other observers
noted the self sacrificing care and devotion that Jewish parents
showed to their children, but illness could still devastate family life.
(12:42):
In April nineteen oh one, baby Hannah Dubinski contracted whooping cough.
The sound of her gasping breath would have rung through
their cramped dwelling. Starved of oxygen, her tiny body would
have at first convulsed and then fallen still as her
rattling breaths ceased. All together, Immigrant fortunes could rise and fall.
(13:20):
A worker might switch back and forth between the roles
of employee and employer over a lifetime. Flush one year,
bankrupt the next, but despite the hardships and tragedies they suffered.
The Dubinski family moved on the whole upwards. They were
among the deserving pool granted a home in the Leyland Buildings,
(13:42):
a new housing development that had risen on the ruins
of an infamous slum. The red brick tenement complex radiated
out from a central park and was intended to accommodate policemen, nurses, teachers,
and other workers of good moral character. They were even shot,
schools and laundries on site. The Dubinskys and their lodger,
(14:02):
Abram Vogel, took up residence in three rooms. Their quarters
would have been compact for seven people, to say the least,
but they would all the same have felt pleased with
their new home. Rachel grew into a petite young woman
with dark hair and a thoughtful, arresting gaze. She was
(14:23):
quiet and anxious on occasion. By eighteen, she was working
in the cat making trade, most likely alongside her father. Then,
when she was twenty eight years old, she was introduced
to Harry Dobkin. This match was arranged through a Jewish
marriage broker. As summer turned to autumn in nineteen twenty,
Rachel and Harry wedd at bethnal Green Great Synagogue. The
(14:47):
place is perfectly good. I don't see what's wrong with it.
I can't do anything more. Their union, however, was not
a happy one. According to Harry, the couple argued bitterly
from the start. I quarreled with my wife over the
inconvenience of the lodgings we were in and told her
(15:08):
I had rooms were week ago. She refused to go
there on our left. The marriage has been a failure
from the outset. This separation came just three days after
their nuptials. Historian doctor Ginger Frost doubts that disagreements about
accommodation alone would have caused such a split. That's really fast.
(15:29):
There's something they're not saying about what happened there is
what I thought. I don't know what it was, but
something that bad within a few days could have been
sexual incompatibility. Maybe there was just instant dislike that's possible.
Perhaps Harry Dobkin was violent in those first few days.
Perhaps two sex was an unpleasant, even traumatic experience for
(15:50):
rachel Girls and young women generally received little by way
of sex education, to the point that a pregnant woman
might have no idea how the baby growing inside her
would actually leave her body. Harry was gone, but the
couple had been together long enough for Rachel to conceive
(16:12):
a child nine months after they wed and then separated.
Baby Stanley was born at the City of London Maternity
Hospital under the eye of medical professionals. Such care was
a luxury beyond the means of many women, so when
Rachel was admitted, it was probably through a charitable scheme.
(16:32):
Single women who are sufficiently recommended, said the hospital rules,
and are found to be deserving of the benefits of
the hospital's charity, will be eligible for admission for their
first confinement. On Stanley's birth certificate, Rachel wrote that both
she and Harry were residing at the same address, but
her husband who knows where, for he'd gone to sea
(16:56):
as a third class steward on an ocean liner. The
couple may have separated, but their lives remain knotted together.
Their meetings would become ever more acrimonious, and in the
coming years, Harry Dobkin would wage an awful campaign of
threats and violence against his ever more fragile wife. Bad Women,
(17:22):
the Blackout Ripper will be back. After this short break
stage your full name for the record. Harry Dobkin had
clearly not been providing for his family and was summons
to the imposing Old Street Police Court, where he was
(17:44):
ordered to pay the sum of one pound per week
to his wife and child, a considerable portion of his earnings.
Divorce was expensive, difficult to obtain, and carried a stigma,
so the pair chose to remain married. According to Ginger Frost,
such messy separations often crippled both parties. Usually separations come,
(18:09):
it's usually years of marriage. The woman would do a
lot to avoid it because the separation payments you get
are not the same as having a breadwinner. They're not
enough really to keep you in any children, So she
has to work. That means somebody has to take care
of the kids. It just doesn't work. Harry paid the
sum for a few weeks perhaps, but then fell into arrears.
He was again holed up at court and sentenced to
(18:32):
six weeks in prison. This measure was ultimately intended to
discourage non payment, but of course while Harry was in prison,
his income was halted him going to job. That happens
all the time. Men can never make these payments because
you can't keep two households on that. She can't keep
her house on that, and he can't keep his on that.
You got to live with somebody else. He didn't appear
(18:54):
to want another relationship, but if he ever wanted to
have another one, he couldn't afford it because he was
paying so much of his pay to her. So conflict
on that really common. When Harry left prison, he took
a job aboard the s S. Pittsburgh of the White
Star Line, sailed away and did not return for ten years.
(19:21):
How Rachel made ends meet in Harry's absence is unclear.
It's doubtful he sent money back. When Harry Dobkin finally
returned from c he says relatives tried to engineer a
rapprochement to bring the husband and wife back together again.
He even claimed he was offered money to reunite with
(19:41):
Rachel eight pounds. So the unhappy pair lived together briefly
for According to Harry, the arguments erupted again. Then discovered
that almost seemings discharge papers will missing, and accused my
wife of taking them. She accused me of taking a
(20:02):
brooch belonging to her. Where is it? Come? Tell me?
I was arrested and charged of stealing. The following day,
I appeared at Old Street police call, but a case
was dismissed. The apartment was rented in Harry's name, but
he said that he left and moved back in with
his parents. He bemoaned that thereafter Rachel continually reported him
(20:25):
for non payment of their maintenance agreement, and he spent
several short spells behind bars. By Harry's account, Rachel was
an exasperating nuisance. His sister Annie described how she would
turn up at her home causing trouble. She called at
all hours and kicked up a row. There is, however,
another side to this story. In January nineteen thirty five,
(20:50):
someone tried to set a fire on Rachel's doorstep at
five am. An employee of the housing block was sent
to survey the considerable damage from the lockdownwards. The door
had been burned almost through. It looked as though someone
had put some oily rag and paper against the door
and had set light to him. Terrified, Rachel was convinced
(21:11):
that Harry was behind the arsen attack. Perhaps it was
an attempt to merely intimidate her, or perhaps it was
a bid to end the union. Permanently. Rachel didn't pursue
her husband through the courts, and no charges were laid
against him. The residence of Whitechapel erected barricades and readied
(21:34):
themselves to repel the invaders. In almost medieval scenes, cobbles
and paving stones were lifted in preparation to pelt the
approaching enemy, and those in upstairs windows boiled water to
rain down on their foes. Mounted police charged the locals
of this Jewish neighborhood, hoping the blows from their truncheons
(21:58):
would clear a path through. The thousands assembled a path
that would allow Sir Oswald Moseley and his black shirted
British fascists to stage a provocative march. The police could
make a little headway, the barriers were too numerous, the
crowds too enraged, the hail of stones too thick. The
(22:20):
fascist procession would have to take another route. We were
through free, complained the black Shirts when they were denied
the chance to struck past synagogues, Jewish homes, and Jewish businesses,
raising their stiff armed Nazi salutes. The black Shirt leader
talked openly of expelling Jews from the country and Amongst
(22:42):
his rabble rousing accusations, he blamed the Jewish garment workshops
of Whitechapel for the woes of an industry hit by
the Great Depression. Bloodied and bested, the black Shirts at
last retreated and marched away from the East End. Moseley
(23:05):
had humiliatingly lost the Battle of Cable Street and went
to Berlin to lick his wounds, where he also found
time to marry his fiancee. Under the gaze of Hitler himself,
the doctor examined the bruising on Rachel Dobkin's arms and face.
(23:29):
What caused this, he asked his patient, my husband, she replied,
When Rachel returned with a black eye, Doctor Murphy made
a record of the assault. My sister's husband has been
very cruel to her. Polly Dubinsky was eleven years younger
than Rachel, but she kept a protective eye on her
older sister. She has received severe blows from him at
(23:51):
different times. Friend Sadie Zimbler also saw Rachel's black eyes
and purple bruises. She told me that he was a
violent man, and I advised her to keep away from him.
Although they lived apart. Rachel's meetings with Harry could still
flare into disagreement, and Harry would try to win these
(24:12):
disputes with his fists. The abuse inflicted such trauma that
Rachel became unable to work. It seems that Harry's attempts
to silence his wife only made her even more reliant
on his maintenance payments Supper Harry. In nineteen thirty seven,
Harry beat Rachel in the street so hard that she
(24:35):
suffered a so called mental lapse. Unbeknownst to her family,
she was sent to an observation board in nearby Saint
Clement's Hospital. The treatment of mental illness was changing. Lunatics
were now patients and no longer insane, but of unsound mind.
(24:56):
Mental ill health was an ailment, and hopefully a temporary one,
rather than an identity. Previously, doctors waited until people were
so ill that they could be certified insane and sent
to an asylum. But now observation woods welcomed patients like
Rachel and then decided whether they needed more intensive treatment,
a period of convalescence, or had recovered sufficiently to be discharged.
(25:22):
When Rachel's siblings, Polly, Mary and Nathan marched through the doors,
of the hospital two days later to retrieve her. They
were adamant that their sister was quite well enough to leave.
Rachel was said to be frightened. I'm not sure I'm
quite well, and she described fiery feelings on the crown
of her head and giddiness. Though her time in hospital
(25:45):
was short, the suggestion that Rachel was of unsound mind
would haunt her in the coming years, prompting some to
discount her growing concerns about her abusive husband. That's one
Russian tea. Maud Air didn't know the agitated man. Ordering
(26:07):
food at her son's cafe on an August day in
nineteen thirty nine, the customer, Harry Dobkin, topped to waiting staff,
then approached Maude. My wife is pregnant. She's threatened to
have an illegal operation. Will you come and ever talk
with her and persuade her not to do it. Maude
(26:27):
followed Harry Dobkin back to his nearby rented room. He
was earning a living making and selling aprons, and the
space was both home and workshop. Inside she found Rachel.
She then said, I'm pregnant. I have a boy of
eighteen and I don't want to go through with another one.
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I've paid the money and I'm going to have an
illegal operation tomorrow. Maude explained to the englishwoman that the
procedure would be dangerous. I told her not to be
silly and go through and have the child. Rachel, who
admitted that she had already tried to end the pregnancy
by swallowing an anti malarial drug, seemed to listen to
(27:12):
this advice. I will not have it done. Will you
speak to my husband. Rachel's husband, however, had already left.
He'd gone to report her to the police. Interviewed by officers,
Rachel described how Harry's abuse had escalated during one of
her visits to seek her overdue alimony about a fortnight ago.
(27:35):
My husband forced himself for me and had intercourse, although
I did not wish it. This accusation of rape, denied
by Harry, seems not to have interested the police. A
wife couldn't deny her husband's sex, said the law, but
seeking an abortion was an offense. They'd happily investigate. Husband
(27:59):
and wife disagreed about who'd insisted on the termination, but
Rachel was not in fact pregnant. A doctor who examined
her at the behest of The police concluded that she
was going through the menopause and suffering from menopausal neurosis
that made her a borderline mental case. In their final report,
(28:22):
police noted that Rachel was unreliable, rambling and suffering from
bad nerves. Despite Rachel's accusations of violence, the police decided
that Harry and Rachel were essentially as bad as one another.
Both mister and Missus Dobkins are very vindictive towards each other.
(28:42):
There is no doubt Harry Dobkins tries to avoid payment
of the maintenance order. She in turn, molests him whenever possible.
Homicide expert Professor Jane Monkton Smith is familiar with such
explanations of domestic violence. The six of one half a
dozen of the other narrative I think is incredibly damaging
(29:03):
to victims, especially of control and abuse. We sent Jane
the files on Rachel Sobkin, and she felt that the
police were wrongly dismissive of Rachel's plight. He wasn't living
with her, so he's coming in from outside and forcing
himself on her, and this woman is left to deal
with the consequences of his violence time and time and
(29:25):
time again. And you do not see that being spoken
about in any of the records. The violence is almost
spoken about as if, well, they had that kind of relationship,
So that's what was going on, and she was a
bit crazy anyway. So poor guy. She was on the
road to losing her life, absolutely definitely, and not a
(29:45):
single person was on her side. It wasn't long after
this incident that Rachel started to visit the medium Madame Nerva.
Spiritualism was immensely popular. Practitioners believe that the dead survived
in another realm and could commune with the living. Sherlock
Holmes creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had even been among
(30:07):
spiritualisms celebrity proponents. For historian Ginger Frost, its popularity is
linked to the upheaval and tragedy that unfolded in the
first part of the twentieth century. So many people died
in World War One, and the flu epidemic took out
even more, and those two whammy's within a couple of
(30:28):
three years of each other. It was just disaster, and
most people had lost multiple people in their lives. They
wanted to be able to connect to them again. They
wanted some hope that they were still somewhere and I
can understand that, and so saund circles and mediums proliferated.
Most of them have like a spirit guide who would
show up and they'd speak in that guide's voice, and
(30:48):
the guide would answer questions. Some of them transported things,
of course, most of them had just concealed them on
their bodies. But they would just suddenly spout flowers, or
they would have a relic from another time that would
be in their hand, or they were seeing things from
other times, they were going other places without actually leaving
the room. There were all of these kinds of psychic
(31:10):
Hilda Nerva, a Polish emigre, told the Psychic News that
since childhood she'd possessed a strange power that enabled her
to help other girls with their problems. Rachel certainly came
burdened with problems, and her relationship with Madame Nerva seems
to have had a therapeutic quality. This wasn't uncommon to
(31:30):
talk out things with their their comforting. It's just if
you think of it that ways, it's kind of therapy.
It seems like a very healthy to have someone to
go to and talk to about the stuff and feel
better when you leave. Rachel went to the Little Brick
House every other Sunday, but April eighth, nineteen forty one,
was a Tuesday. Rachel Dobkin, now forty eight years old,
had a pressing question for Madame Nerva. Can you tell
(31:53):
me something? Give me an article and I'll try and
get through for you. Rachel handed over the wedding ring
and Madame Nerva entered a semitrance. You are worried and
full of trouble. You are planning to go in a
few days on a journey to meet someone. Don't go.
(32:18):
Leave it to the spirit friends, and stay where you are.
The psychic described a vision of Rachel entering a large
building where she knew there was money for her. I
see sadness for you. Will you promise not to go?
Rachel made the promise, but Madame Nerva's words seemed to
(32:39):
have weighed on her heavily. Bad women the blackout Ripper
will be back after this short break. Two days after
her meeting with Madame Nerva, Rachel called at the home
of a friend who said she was depressed, anxious, and
(33:01):
afraid of Harry. She told me that her husband would
get her sooner or later. We'll finish her. Yet the
following Rachel appears to have had a change of heart.
On Friday morning, she met with her beloved son Stanley,
and they arranged to go to the cinema later that afternoon.
At lunchtime, she crossed paths with Polly and told her
(33:23):
that her husband had offered her a pound of onions
as a present, food being scarce at this stage of
the war, and she was going to meet him. Harry
Dobkins said he encountered his wife on the street near
his house. He was on his way out to sell
some aprons. It was obvious she had been my infamy.
(33:45):
Rachel was always trying to lure him back to live
with her, he said, casting himself in the role of
the beleiagued victim. I said, please don't hang around here
and calls trouble. My mother is very ill. They agreed
to meet later at a local cafe. The proprietors remembered
them coming in. She'd seen them together before. They sat
(34:06):
at a corner table. The woman was very tall. The
couple appeared quite friendly, and they were not quarreling or arguing.
But Harry told a different story. She said, if you
don't make peace with me. I'll might trouble for you.
She was talking in low tones, but was a bit hysterical.
After this threat, I said, I'll consider peace if you
(34:28):
will calm yourself and go home. She drank a cup
of tea, and as we left a tea shop, she
said she didn't feel well and she was going to
her mother's to hear the wireless. Harry said. She boarded
the number twenty two bus and he watched as it
merched away towards Shoreditch. That evening, Polly finished work and
(34:50):
went home early. The baby of the family, she hadn't
followed her siblings into the garment trade, and had instead
learnt shorthand typing and become a bookkeeper and clerk at
a city office. Rachel never appeared at the flat to
rest and listened to the wireless, nor did she make
it to the cinema with Ordinarily she would call round
(35:11):
in the evenings and eat dinner with her family, but
that night her place at the table sat empty. The
following morning, there was still no sign of her, and
Polly felt uneasy enough to let herself into Rachel's flat
with the spare key. When she saw her sister's undisturbed
bedsheets and realized that she hadn't slept there. Polly felt
(35:31):
sure that something terrible had happened. At first, the flames
licked at the old church ruins, dancing across its floorboards
and wood paneling. Then they curled around what remained of
the timber rafters, and soon the orange blaze lit up
(35:53):
the night sky. Harry Dodkin supplemented his income as a
part time firewatcher at the warehouse next door. Apron Sales
had been poor, so he spent his nights protecting these
premises from the incendary bombs dropped by the Germans. He
greeted the police and firefighters when they finally arrived, showing
(36:14):
them the best route to reach the fire that gripped
the bombed out ruins of Vauxhall Baptist Chapel. The stout
little man in his suit and trilby hat seemed excited
and claimed to have tried to extinguish the flames, though
he hadn't raised the alarm his very role as a firewatcher.
One witness recalled a strange remark he made, I didn't
(36:37):
do it. Across town. The Dubinskis were worried sick about Rachel.
They hadn't seen her for over three days, and they
alerted the police. The only clue was Rachel's handbag that
had been found thirty miles from the city, and which
(36:59):
contained vital documents such as her ration book. Officers searched
for the missing woman had trained stations and in local hospitals,
and they wrote extensive reports, but they did not take
polly suspicions or the prophecies of Madame Nerva particularly seriously. Instead,
(37:19):
they pointed to Rachel's mental health history. The woman was
clearly troubled, and she'd probably gone and drowned herself, they thought.
But over the next year, Polly returned time and again
to the police, imploring them to act now. In the
character of her husband, I'm reporting this because I feel
(37:39):
he has had some hand in her disappearance. Polly's unrelenting
campaign for justice seems to have annoyed the detectives. One
police file cast doubt on her mental health, saying she
buckled under the sorrow of Rachel's disappearance and was experiencing
her llucinations. Officers did search the chapel, but hampered by
(38:03):
bomb and fire damage, found nothing and Ultimately, it was
thought inconceivable that Harry Dobkin would have waited over twenty
years to kill Rachel. There is not the slightest indication
that Harry Dobkin has murdered his wife, as suggested by
the missing woman's relations, but Jane Mountin Smith says that
(38:26):
to arrive at such a conclusion is to totally misunderstand
intimate partner violence. One thing that we do know about
this type of homicide is that there's a level of
planning in most of them, and in some cases they
will try and make it look like there's been a
car accident or a strange fall, or even illness. Sometimes
(38:47):
that goes on a lot, So sometimes these things are
never found out, and sometimes, yeah, it can take a
long time before they're uncovered. The police also tied themselves
in knots to discredit accounts of Harry's violence. For instance,
Polly may have noticed Rachel's bruises and been told how
they've been caused, but officers noted that Polly had never
(39:11):
actually seen Harry strike her sister or threatened her life.
In their questions to witnesses. The police also seem to
have been particularly interested and how often Rachel contacted Harry
as though this meant she could not have seriously feared
he would do her harm. When I was reading the
case notes for this, I actually got quite angry because
(39:35):
she suffered a significant injury, which caused people to then
be able to accuse her of having mental health problems.
This poor woman probably couldn't open her mouth without somebody
interpreting what she was saying or doing as crazy, which
then tends to protect him. But he inflicted that injury,
(39:58):
and then she's accused of chasing him for money and
him having to spend time in prison because he hadn't
paid the money. This is a violent, nasty man. He
was the architect of all of the problems that she had,
and they're speaking about him as if she's the problem.
(40:19):
What did they think she was going to do for money?
She had no means of supporting herself. She was of
a status of a single mother back then. Oh my goodness,
that would have been so hard. As the months went by,
there was still no sign of Rachel. Twice Polly was
(40:39):
called into identified bodies, neither of which turned out to
be her sister. These experiences proved so traumatic that Polly
refused any further invitations to the morgue. Harry Dobkin probably
thought that he had got away with Rachel's murder, but
Harry Dobkin was wrong. The forensic pathologists set to work
(41:07):
examining the torso that Benja men Marshall had discovered in
the basement at the chapel. It was so small and
slight that at first he thought it might have belonged
to a young girl. The hair and other parts of
the body were missing, and what remained had been mutilated
and partially burned. The perpetrator clearly thought his grizzly handiwork
(41:29):
would frustrate attempts to identify the dead woman, but the
murderer hadn't reckoned on the persistence and skill of the
pathology team. They raked and sibbed through tons of rubble
from the chapel looking for more clues, and the X
rayed and photographed the remains in a lab at one
of London's top hospitals, determined to find out who the
(41:50):
dead woman was. Finally, Abraham Kopkin was summoned. He tended
to teeth across the East End fillings extractions dnches, a
surviving section of jaw was set before the dentist. That's
my patient, that's missus dobb In August nineteen forty two,
(42:13):
the police went to question Harry Dobkin. He was living
with his aged parents in the front room of their house.
The space was furnished simply, and there were boxes of
leather and fabric straps everywhere. There's been a development in
respect to your wife. I want you to accompany us
to the police station for further inquiries. Harry protested that
(42:33):
he knew nothing of any cellar at the chapel, had
never once been down there. He grew agitated, and then
he took a bill from a leather merchant's firm out
of his pocket, sprawled a note on the back, and
handed it to a police officer. He was said to
be in the habit of writing down his thoughts on
scraps of paper, Divisional Inspector, Dear sir, It read, in
(42:57):
respect to what you say that my wife has been
found dead or murdered, and that you say I know
something that I am holding back from the police. I
am sorry to say that I cannot say anything different
to my previous statements. But the police had said nothing
about murder, nor had they suggested he was holding information
(43:18):
back from them. They charged him, implying that Rachel had
driven her husband to murder. We suggest that Dobkin had
reason to be rid of his wife, as she had
been a financial incumbrance to him for many years. The
maintenance order was a constant drain on him. He'd been
committed to prison several times for its non payment. He
(43:38):
has also said that she pestered his parents, which did
not improve matters. Jane Monkton Smith thinks that such a
reading of Harry Dobkins's motive, one that paints Rachel as
a shrew and to blame for her own death, badly
misses the mark. That's the society we created for men,
created for women, a society where they would be reliant
(44:00):
on them, and they get annoyed about that when they
don't want that woman anymore. And he wanted rid of her.
I really believe that he wanted rid of her because
he could see himself going back into prison again for
not giving her money. How dare she? How dare she
wreck his life by trying to get money off him
when he's got other things to do and a life
(44:21):
to lead with no thought for how he has wrecked
her life and just expected that she would take it.
The jury deliberated for only twenty minutes, and they were
unanimous on their verdict. Harry Dobkin had strangled his wife
to death with his bare hands and then concealed her
(44:43):
remains in the church cellar. He was hanged on a cold,
foggy morning at once Worth Prison in South London. After
the trial, a journalist visited the Dubinski family home. They
kept a photo of Rachel atop the piano, she noted,
(45:04):
and another over on the wall, and very beautiful she looked.
The reporter was intrigued by the role Madame Nerva and
spiritualism had played in the case. Then Rachel's mother, Sarah
and her sister Mary confided that all the time that
her body had lain concealed in the church ruins, they'd
heard strange knocks at the door, only to find no
(45:27):
one waiting on the step, And then in the dead
of night, Sarah had repeatedly been woken by a voice
from the playground outside, the voice of her missing daughter. Rachel,
so tormented and ill served in life, now at least
(45:47):
rested in a proper grave. On the headstone the Dubinskis
chose to end the heartfelt inscription with a wish peace
to her dear soul bad women. The Blackout Ripper is
(46:27):
hosted by me Hallie rubin Hold and me Alice Fines.
It was written and produced by Alice Fines and Ryan Dilley,
with additional support from Courtney Guerino and Arthur Gomperts. Kate
Healy of Oakwood Family Trees aided us with genealogical research.
Pascal Wise Sound designed and mixed the show and composed
all the original music. The show was recorded at Wardoor
(46:48):
Studios by David Smith and Tom Berry. You also heard
the voice talents of Ben Crow, David Glover, Melanie Gutridge,
Stella Harford, Gemma Saunders, and Rufus Wright. Much of the
music you heard was performed by Edgarchan, Ross Hughes, Christian
Miller and Marcus Penrose. They were recorded by Nick Taylor
at Portupine Studios. Pushkin's Bend Holiday mixed the tracks and
(47:12):
you heard additional piano playing by the great Berry Wise
Hi Berry. The show also wouldn't have been possible without
the work of Jacob Weisberg, Heather Faine, Carlie Migliori, Maggie Taylor,
Nicole Morano, Eric Sandler, and Daniella Lukhan. We'd also like
to thank Michael Buchanan Dunne of the Murder Mile podcast,
(47:33):
Lizzie McCarroll, Catherine Walker at the Royal Pharmaceutical Society and
the Earbe Historical Society. Bad Women is a production of
Pushkin Industries. Please rate and review the show and spread
the word about what we do, and thanks for listening
(48:23):
and he and people in the
Pushkin. Benjamin Marshall is working alone in the wreckage of
Vauxhall Baptist Chapel. This area of South London was badly
bombed earlier in the Blitz, and the church is now unusable.
(00:36):
A strange fire had then caused further damage, and now
Marshall is part of the demolition squad tasked with clearing
the charred debris. The July heat is already building, but
the fifty year old continues shoveling dirt and rubble in
this airless basement. Spotting a stone slab leaning up against
(00:59):
a wall, Marshall decides to move it. I was mesmerized.
Beneath the slab is the body of a naked dismembered incomplete.
Marshall carefully lifts these pitiful human remains with his shovel
(01:19):
and calls out to his former. It's been decades since
the last burial here, and this corpse doesn't appear to
have come from a disturbed grave. Could it then be
the body of a victim of the blitz, killed in
the air aid that blasted the chapel and lain undiscovered
(01:39):
ever since. That's the conclusion. The woman's killer seems to
have hoped people would draw. In the chaos and carnage
of war. Some men assume their crimes will go undetected
and unpunished. But looking at the mutilated form of this woman,
it's clear that this is not the work of a bomb.
(02:02):
The efforts made to disfigure her and disguise her identity
tell police immediately. But this was murder. This is the
(02:23):
seldom told story of women in World War Two who
were killed not by the enemy, but my husbands, lovers,
and strangers, wearing the uniform of their own side. It's
also the tale of a particular string of murder victims
that history has swept from view. I'm Hallie Rubinhold, and
(02:44):
I'm Alice Fines, and you're listening to bad Women the
Blackout River. Polly Dubinski is not the first to come
(03:24):
to this little brick house in London's gritty East End
in search of answers. Madame Nerva is expecting her. Did
you bring what I need? Polly holds out a scarf
and sweater they belonged to her sister, Rachel Dobkin, who's
been missing for three days. The clairvoyant usher's Polly inside
and then takes hold of these items of clothing. They
(03:46):
will be key to her work, for she practices psychometry.
She claims that she can read these objects and thereby
untangle the mystery of Rachel's disappearance. Polly had come to
seventeen Underwood Road the day before frantically seeking help, but
Hilda Nerva had been too busy cooking Sunday dinner to
go into a psychic trance. Today, however, she is ready.
(04:10):
Perhaps her breathing now grows deep and labored, for she
is communing with another world. I see her fairly in
the countryside. I see missus Dobkin, and she looks said.
Then Madame Nerva feels a blow to her head and
(04:32):
a choking sensation, as though something is tightening about her throat, squeezing, crushing. Oh,
she gasps for air. Oh yeah. The vision is clearly
not a hopeful one. But Madame Nerva isn't working totally blind.
She knows the missing woman well. Rachel Dobkin is convinced
(04:54):
of the psychic's powers, and she calls her home regularly.
In fact, Rachel came here just days ago, asking Madame
Nerva to read a piece of her jewelry. She was
meeting the man who gave it to her, and she
wanted advice. Sensing great sorrow in the gold band, the
clairvoyant warned Rachel of grave danger. Will you promise me
(05:19):
you won't go. Rachel pledged that she would not see
the man. This isn't a story about the black Out Ripper,
to which we'll return next episode. Rachel Dobkin wasn't in
the habit of frequenting West End nightclubs, but she faced
a danger no less. Chilling in Madame Nerva's hand was
(05:39):
her wedding ring, and the man she'd promised to avoid
was her own husband. In the spring of eighteen eighty one,
Russia's Czar Alexander the Second was returning from a military
parade to the Winter Palace, taking his customary route, when
(06:01):
revolutionaries at the roadside threw a bomb under his carriage.
The Russian monarchs down, seeming unhurt, only for a second
explosion to tear through the Royal Party and its bodyguards.
The assassinations sparked a series of vicious anti Jewish riots.
(06:23):
Pilgrims the Christians attacked the houses and shops of the
Jews indiscriminately by smashing doors and breaking windows. Only one
of the ten convicted plotters was actually Jewish, but the
Jewish people as a whole were blamed. They were made
to pay with their businesses and homes and in blood.
(06:44):
One hundred houses were pinaged, a quantity of furniture being
thrown out into the street. Two hundred people were injured
during the riots. Rachel Dobkins' parents, Barnet and Sarah Dubinsky,
were in the eye of the storm. Their province in
what is now Ukraine, saw brutal violence, and in the
(07:07):
decade that followed, the only grew worse. Imperial Russia imposed
both petty restrictions and at serious hardships on the Jewish population.
For example, businesses could refuse to employ Jews, so many
eked out a poultry living in the poorest paying trades.
Given the violence and economic hardships, it's little wonder that
(07:31):
by eighteen ninety two, Barnett and Sarah had joined the
millions of Jews seeking a new life abroad. The refugees
traveled overland, at first, mostly boarding and disembarking steam locomotives
that puffed and shrieked their way west. At the German frontier,
(07:54):
some travelers were packed onto special sealed trains. Fearing the
polluting influence of the migrant Jewish durch Underer, the Prussian
authorities sought to limit their contact with the German population
and dissuade them from settled. Conditions on the journey could
be abominable. Travelers were treated like prisoners and deprived of
(08:15):
access to adequate food and water. It was very hot
and close and altogether uncomfortable, said one voyager. I cannot
see even now how the officers could allow such a thing.
It was really dangerous. But eventually the travelers would have
reached Germany's coast, where the train doors would have opened.
Sarah and Barnett would then have bordered a steamship to
(08:37):
cross the North Sea to Britain. When Barnett and Sarah
arrived in London, they settled in the already bustling Jewish
community of Whitechapel. According to social researcher Charles Booth, some
ninety percent of London's Jewish population resided in the city's
(08:59):
grim East End, and Yiddish was spoken on the streets.
The quarter was also a reputed sink of misery and degeneracy.
Saw you filthy? Overcrowded and stinking of rot and refuse.
Whitechapel was also notorious for the recent string of savage
(09:19):
murders that had been perpetrated on its dingy narrow streets.
In the time since Polly Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride,
Kate Edos and Mary jen Kelly had been killed here,
some of the most depressing slums had been cleared and
change was under way, but the East End remained of
(09:41):
grave concern to politicians and reformers. Studying the Jewish community
in particular, Charles Booth noted that these immigrants formed a
permanent layer of poverty, verging on destitution. East End Jews
worked in trades such as tailoring and boot making, but
regular employment was hard to come by, and many of
(10:03):
those who labored in the garment industry, like catmaker Barnet,
carried out work at home, were toiled and cramped workshops
under terrible conditions and for little pay. The medical journal
The Lancet investigated the condition of Jewish tailors in the
East End of London. Its findings carried antisemitic overtones, attitudes
(10:29):
not uncommon at the time. Our commissioners found them working
in unwholesome overcrowded houses. Such people were wanting in even
the more elementary habits of cleanliness, which are possessed by
the poorest of English people. The Dubinskis themselves lived in
a house where home life and work life melded. The
(10:52):
building was divided into tailoring workshops. It was here, in
August eighteen ninety two, amid rolls of cloth and spindles
of thread, that Sarah gave birth to a baby girl.
For Jewish women newly arrived in a foreign land and
separated from the support of their families, childbirth could be
(11:13):
a lonely and frightening experience. Sarah might have been attended
by a bobber or a handywoman, a local not formally
trained in midwiffery, but who would have been trusted by
the community. Nonetheless, the couple named their new arrival Rachel.
More Dabinski children followed, and by the time she was nine,
(11:36):
Rachel had four younger siblings. Although some decried the standards
of sanitation and in in Jewish homes, others remarked that the
children of Jewish immigrants were generally in better health than
their gentile counterparts. One schoolboard president thought that the improved
morality of Jewish parents and the care which their religion
(11:59):
demanded as to food was largely the cause of their
superiority over English children. The disease Ricketts, which left many
working class children with weak and deformed bones, was less
common in Jewish homes. Medical experts suggested that this was
because of diet. Jewish women often banded together to bulk
(12:21):
by fish at the local market, herring in particular, a
source of protein and bone strengthening vitamin D. Other observers
noted the self sacrificing care and devotion that Jewish parents
showed to their children, but illness could still devastate family life.
(12:42):
In April nineteen oh one, baby Hannah Dubinski contracted whooping cough.
The sound of her gasping breath would have rung through
their cramped dwelling. Starved of oxygen, her tiny body would
have at first convulsed and then fallen still as her
rattling breaths ceased. All together, Immigrant fortunes could rise and fall.
(13:20):
A worker might switch back and forth between the roles
of employee and employer over a lifetime. Flush one year,
bankrupt the next, but despite the hardships and tragedies they suffered.
The Dubinski family moved on the whole upwards. They were
among the deserving pool granted a home in the Leyland Buildings,
(13:42):
a new housing development that had risen on the ruins
of an infamous slum. The red brick tenement complex radiated
out from a central park and was intended to accommodate policemen, nurses, teachers,
and other workers of good moral character. They were even shot,
schools and laundries on site. The Dubinskys and their lodger,
(14:02):
Abram Vogel, took up residence in three rooms. Their quarters
would have been compact for seven people, to say the least,
but they would all the same have felt pleased with
their new home. Rachel grew into a petite young woman
with dark hair and a thoughtful, arresting gaze. She was
(14:23):
quiet and anxious on occasion. By eighteen, she was working
in the cat making trade, most likely alongside her father. Then,
when she was twenty eight years old, she was introduced
to Harry Dobkin. This match was arranged through a Jewish
marriage broker. As summer turned to autumn in nineteen twenty,
Rachel and Harry wedd at bethnal Green Great Synagogue. The
(14:47):
place is perfectly good. I don't see what's wrong with it.
I can't do anything more. Their union, however, was not
a happy one. According to Harry, the couple argued bitterly
from the start. I quarreled with my wife over the
inconvenience of the lodgings we were in and told her
(15:08):
I had rooms were week ago. She refused to go
there on our left. The marriage has been a failure
from the outset. This separation came just three days after
their nuptials. Historian doctor Ginger Frost doubts that disagreements about
accommodation alone would have caused such a split. That's really fast.
(15:29):
There's something they're not saying about what happened there is
what I thought. I don't know what it was, but
something that bad within a few days could have been
sexual incompatibility. Maybe there was just instant dislike that's possible.
Perhaps Harry Dobkin was violent in those first few days.
Perhaps two sex was an unpleasant, even traumatic experience for
(15:50):
rachel Girls and young women generally received little by way
of sex education, to the point that a pregnant woman
might have no idea how the baby growing inside her
would actually leave her body. Harry was gone, but the
couple had been together long enough for Rachel to conceive
(16:12):
a child nine months after they wed and then separated.
Baby Stanley was born at the City of London Maternity
Hospital under the eye of medical professionals. Such care was
a luxury beyond the means of many women, so when
Rachel was admitted, it was probably through a charitable scheme.
(16:32):
Single women who are sufficiently recommended, said the hospital rules,
and are found to be deserving of the benefits of
the hospital's charity, will be eligible for admission for their
first confinement. On Stanley's birth certificate, Rachel wrote that both
she and Harry were residing at the same address, but
her husband who knows where, for he'd gone to sea
(16:56):
as a third class steward on an ocean liner. The
couple may have separated, but their lives remain knotted together.
Their meetings would become ever more acrimonious, and in the
coming years, Harry Dobkin would wage an awful campaign of
threats and violence against his ever more fragile wife. Bad Women,
(17:22):
the Blackout Ripper will be back. After this short break
stage your full name for the record. Harry Dobkin had
clearly not been providing for his family and was summons
to the imposing Old Street Police Court, where he was
(17:44):
ordered to pay the sum of one pound per week
to his wife and child, a considerable portion of his earnings.
Divorce was expensive, difficult to obtain, and carried a stigma,
so the pair chose to remain married. According to Ginger Frost,
such messy separations often crippled both parties. Usually separations come,
(18:09):
it's usually years of marriage. The woman would do a
lot to avoid it because the separation payments you get
are not the same as having a breadwinner. They're not
enough really to keep you in any children, So she
has to work. That means somebody has to take care
of the kids. It just doesn't work. Harry paid the
sum for a few weeks perhaps, but then fell into arrears.
He was again holed up at court and sentenced to
(18:32):
six weeks in prison. This measure was ultimately intended to
discourage non payment, but of course while Harry was in prison,
his income was halted him going to job. That happens
all the time. Men can never make these payments because
you can't keep two households on that. She can't keep
her house on that, and he can't keep his on that.
You got to live with somebody else. He didn't appear
(18:54):
to want another relationship, but if he ever wanted to
have another one, he couldn't afford it because he was
paying so much of his pay to her. So conflict
on that really common. When Harry left prison, he took
a job aboard the s S. Pittsburgh of the White
Star Line, sailed away and did not return for ten years.
(19:21):
How Rachel made ends meet in Harry's absence is unclear.
It's doubtful he sent money back. When Harry Dobkin finally
returned from c he says relatives tried to engineer a
rapprochement to bring the husband and wife back together again.
He even claimed he was offered money to reunite with
(19:41):
Rachel eight pounds. So the unhappy pair lived together briefly
for According to Harry, the arguments erupted again. Then discovered
that almost seemings discharge papers will missing, and accused my
wife of taking them. She accused me of taking a
(20:02):
brooch belonging to her. Where is it? Come? Tell me?
I was arrested and charged of stealing. The following day,
I appeared at Old Street police call, but a case
was dismissed. The apartment was rented in Harry's name, but
he said that he left and moved back in with
his parents. He bemoaned that thereafter Rachel continually reported him
(20:25):
for non payment of their maintenance agreement, and he spent
several short spells behind bars. By Harry's account, Rachel was
an exasperating nuisance. His sister Annie described how she would
turn up at her home causing trouble. She called at
all hours and kicked up a row. There is, however,
another side to this story. In January nineteen thirty five,
(20:50):
someone tried to set a fire on Rachel's doorstep at
five am. An employee of the housing block was sent
to survey the considerable damage from the lockdownwards. The door
had been burned almost through. It looked as though someone
had put some oily rag and paper against the door
and had set light to him. Terrified, Rachel was convinced
(21:11):
that Harry was behind the arsen attack. Perhaps it was
an attempt to merely intimidate her, or perhaps it was
a bid to end the union. Permanently. Rachel didn't pursue
her husband through the courts, and no charges were laid
against him. The residence of Whitechapel erected barricades and readied
(21:34):
themselves to repel the invaders. In almost medieval scenes, cobbles
and paving stones were lifted in preparation to pelt the
approaching enemy, and those in upstairs windows boiled water to
rain down on their foes. Mounted police charged the locals
of this Jewish neighborhood, hoping the blows from their truncheons
(21:58):
would clear a path through. The thousands assembled a path
that would allow Sir Oswald Moseley and his black shirted
British fascists to stage a provocative march. The police could
make a little headway, the barriers were too numerous, the
crowds too enraged, the hail of stones too thick. The
(22:20):
fascist procession would have to take another route. We were
through free, complained the black Shirts when they were denied
the chance to struck past synagogues, Jewish homes, and Jewish businesses,
raising their stiff armed Nazi salutes. The black Shirt leader
talked openly of expelling Jews from the country and Amongst
(22:42):
his rabble rousing accusations, he blamed the Jewish garment workshops
of Whitechapel for the woes of an industry hit by
the Great Depression. Bloodied and bested, the black Shirts at
last retreated and marched away from the East End. Moseley
(23:05):
had humiliatingly lost the Battle of Cable Street and went
to Berlin to lick his wounds, where he also found
time to marry his fiancee. Under the gaze of Hitler himself,
the doctor examined the bruising on Rachel Dobkin's arms and face.
(23:29):
What caused this, he asked his patient, my husband, she replied,
When Rachel returned with a black eye, Doctor Murphy made
a record of the assault. My sister's husband has been
very cruel to her. Polly Dubinsky was eleven years younger
than Rachel, but she kept a protective eye on her
older sister. She has received severe blows from him at
(23:51):
different times. Friend Sadie Zimbler also saw Rachel's black eyes
and purple bruises. She told me that he was a
violent man, and I advised her to keep away from him.
Although they lived apart. Rachel's meetings with Harry could still
flare into disagreement, and Harry would try to win these
(24:12):
disputes with his fists. The abuse inflicted such trauma that
Rachel became unable to work. It seems that Harry's attempts
to silence his wife only made her even more reliant
on his maintenance payments Supper Harry. In nineteen thirty seven,
Harry beat Rachel in the street so hard that she
(24:35):
suffered a so called mental lapse. Unbeknownst to her family,
she was sent to an observation board in nearby Saint
Clement's Hospital. The treatment of mental illness was changing. Lunatics
were now patients and no longer insane, but of unsound mind.
(24:56):
Mental ill health was an ailment, and hopefully a temporary one,
rather than an identity. Previously, doctors waited until people were
so ill that they could be certified insane and sent
to an asylum. But now observation woods welcomed patients like
Rachel and then decided whether they needed more intensive treatment,
a period of convalescence, or had recovered sufficiently to be discharged.
(25:22):
When Rachel's siblings, Polly, Mary and Nathan marched through the doors,
of the hospital two days later to retrieve her. They
were adamant that their sister was quite well enough to leave.
Rachel was said to be frightened. I'm not sure I'm
quite well, and she described fiery feelings on the crown
of her head and giddiness. Though her time in hospital
(25:45):
was short, the suggestion that Rachel was of unsound mind
would haunt her in the coming years, prompting some to
discount her growing concerns about her abusive husband. That's one
Russian tea. Maud Air didn't know the agitated man. Ordering
(26:07):
food at her son's cafe on an August day in
nineteen thirty nine, the customer, Harry Dobkin, topped to waiting staff,
then approached Maude. My wife is pregnant. She's threatened to
have an illegal operation. Will you come and ever talk
with her and persuade her not to do it. Maude
(26:27):
followed Harry Dobkin back to his nearby rented room. He
was earning a living making and selling aprons, and the
space was both home and workshop. Inside she found Rachel.
She then said, I'm pregnant. I have a boy of
eighteen and I don't want to go through with another one.
(26:49):
I've paid the money and I'm going to have an
illegal operation tomorrow. Maude explained to the englishwoman that the
procedure would be dangerous. I told her not to be
silly and go through and have the child. Rachel, who
admitted that she had already tried to end the pregnancy
by swallowing an anti malarial drug, seemed to listen to
(27:12):
this advice. I will not have it done. Will you
speak to my husband. Rachel's husband, however, had already left.
He'd gone to report her to the police. Interviewed by officers,
Rachel described how Harry's abuse had escalated during one of
her visits to seek her overdue alimony about a fortnight ago.
(27:35):
My husband forced himself for me and had intercourse, although
I did not wish it. This accusation of rape, denied
by Harry, seems not to have interested the police. A
wife couldn't deny her husband's sex, said the law, but
seeking an abortion was an offense. They'd happily investigate. Husband
(27:59):
and wife disagreed about who'd insisted on the termination, but
Rachel was not in fact pregnant. A doctor who examined
her at the behest of The police concluded that she
was going through the menopause and suffering from menopausal neurosis
that made her a borderline mental case. In their final report,
(28:22):
police noted that Rachel was unreliable, rambling and suffering from
bad nerves. Despite Rachel's accusations of violence, the police decided
that Harry and Rachel were essentially as bad as one another.
Both mister and Missus Dobkins are very vindictive towards each other.
(28:42):
There is no doubt Harry Dobkins tries to avoid payment
of the maintenance order. She in turn, molests him whenever possible.
Homicide expert Professor Jane Monkton Smith is familiar with such
explanations of domestic violence. The six of one half a
dozen of the other narrative I think is incredibly damaging
(29:03):
to victims, especially of control and abuse. We sent Jane
the files on Rachel Sobkin, and she felt that the
police were wrongly dismissive of Rachel's plight. He wasn't living
with her, so he's coming in from outside and forcing
himself on her, and this woman is left to deal
with the consequences of his violence time and time and
(29:25):
time again. And you do not see that being spoken
about in any of the records. The violence is almost
spoken about as if, well, they had that kind of relationship,
So that's what was going on, and she was a
bit crazy anyway. So poor guy. She was on the
road to losing her life, absolutely definitely, and not a
(29:45):
single person was on her side. It wasn't long after
this incident that Rachel started to visit the medium Madame Nerva.
Spiritualism was immensely popular. Practitioners believe that the dead survived
in another realm and could commune with the living. Sherlock
Holmes creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had even been among
(30:07):
spiritualisms celebrity proponents. For historian Ginger Frost, its popularity is
linked to the upheaval and tragedy that unfolded in the
first part of the twentieth century. So many people died
in World War One, and the flu epidemic took out
even more, and those two whammy's within a couple of
(30:28):
three years of each other. It was just disaster, and
most people had lost multiple people in their lives. They
wanted to be able to connect to them again. They
wanted some hope that they were still somewhere and I
can understand that, and so saund circles and mediums proliferated.
Most of them have like a spirit guide who would
show up and they'd speak in that guide's voice, and
(30:48):
the guide would answer questions. Some of them transported things,
of course, most of them had just concealed them on
their bodies. But they would just suddenly spout flowers, or
they would have a relic from another time that would
be in their hand, or they were seeing things from
other times, they were going other places without actually leaving
the room. There were all of these kinds of psychic
(31:10):
Hilda Nerva, a Polish emigre, told the Psychic News that
since childhood she'd possessed a strange power that enabled her
to help other girls with their problems. Rachel certainly came
burdened with problems, and her relationship with Madame Nerva seems
to have had a therapeutic quality. This wasn't uncommon to
(31:30):
talk out things with their their comforting. It's just if
you think of it that ways, it's kind of therapy.
It seems like a very healthy to have someone to
go to and talk to about the stuff and feel
better when you leave. Rachel went to the Little Brick
House every other Sunday, but April eighth, nineteen forty one,
was a Tuesday. Rachel Dobkin, now forty eight years old,
had a pressing question for Madame Nerva. Can you tell
(31:53):
me something? Give me an article and I'll try and
get through for you. Rachel handed over the wedding ring
and Madame Nerva entered a semitrance. You are worried and
full of trouble. You are planning to go in a
few days on a journey to meet someone. Don't go.
(32:18):
Leave it to the spirit friends, and stay where you are.
The psychic described a vision of Rachel entering a large
building where she knew there was money for her. I
see sadness for you. Will you promise not to go?
Rachel made the promise, but Madame Nerva's words seemed to
(32:39):
have weighed on her heavily. Bad women the blackout Ripper
will be back after this short break. Two days after
her meeting with Madame Nerva, Rachel called at the home
of a friend who said she was depressed, anxious, and
(33:01):
afraid of Harry. She told me that her husband would
get her sooner or later. We'll finish her. Yet the
following Rachel appears to have had a change of heart.
On Friday morning, she met with her beloved son Stanley,
and they arranged to go to the cinema later that afternoon.
At lunchtime, she crossed paths with Polly and told her
(33:23):
that her husband had offered her a pound of onions
as a present, food being scarce at this stage of
the war, and she was going to meet him. Harry
Dobkins said he encountered his wife on the street near
his house. He was on his way out to sell
some aprons. It was obvious she had been my infamy.
(33:45):
Rachel was always trying to lure him back to live
with her, he said, casting himself in the role of
the beleiagued victim. I said, please don't hang around here
and calls trouble. My mother is very ill. They agreed
to meet later at a local cafe. The proprietors remembered
them coming in. She'd seen them together before. They sat
(34:06):
at a corner table. The woman was very tall. The
couple appeared quite friendly, and they were not quarreling or arguing.
But Harry told a different story. She said, if you
don't make peace with me. I'll might trouble for you.
She was talking in low tones, but was a bit hysterical.
After this threat, I said, I'll consider peace if you
(34:28):
will calm yourself and go home. She drank a cup
of tea, and as we left a tea shop, she
said she didn't feel well and she was going to
her mother's to hear the wireless. Harry said. She boarded
the number twenty two bus and he watched as it
merched away towards Shoreditch. That evening, Polly finished work and
(34:50):
went home early. The baby of the family, she hadn't
followed her siblings into the garment trade, and had instead
learnt shorthand typing and become a bookkeeper and clerk at
a city office. Rachel never appeared at the flat to
rest and listened to the wireless, nor did she make
it to the cinema with Ordinarily she would call round
(35:11):
in the evenings and eat dinner with her family, but
that night her place at the table sat empty. The
following morning, there was still no sign of her, and
Polly felt uneasy enough to let herself into Rachel's flat
with the spare key. When she saw her sister's undisturbed
bedsheets and realized that she hadn't slept there. Polly felt
(35:31):
sure that something terrible had happened. At first, the flames
licked at the old church ruins, dancing across its floorboards
and wood paneling. Then they curled around what remained of
the timber rafters, and soon the orange blaze lit up
(35:53):
the night sky. Harry Dodkin supplemented his income as a
part time firewatcher at the warehouse next door. Apron Sales
had been poor, so he spent his nights protecting these
premises from the incendary bombs dropped by the Germans. He
greeted the police and firefighters when they finally arrived, showing
(36:14):
them the best route to reach the fire that gripped
the bombed out ruins of Vauxhall Baptist Chapel. The stout
little man in his suit and trilby hat seemed excited
and claimed to have tried to extinguish the flames, though
he hadn't raised the alarm his very role as a firewatcher.
One witness recalled a strange remark he made, I didn't
(36:37):
do it. Across town. The Dubinskis were worried sick about Rachel.
They hadn't seen her for over three days, and they
alerted the police. The only clue was Rachel's handbag that
had been found thirty miles from the city, and which
(36:59):
contained vital documents such as her ration book. Officers searched
for the missing woman had trained stations and in local hospitals,
and they wrote extensive reports, but they did not take
polly suspicions or the prophecies of Madame Nerva particularly seriously. Instead,
(37:19):
they pointed to Rachel's mental health history. The woman was
clearly troubled, and she'd probably gone and drowned herself, they thought.
But over the next year, Polly returned time and again
to the police, imploring them to act now. In the
character of her husband, I'm reporting this because I feel
(37:39):
he has had some hand in her disappearance. Polly's unrelenting
campaign for justice seems to have annoyed the detectives. One
police file cast doubt on her mental health, saying she
buckled under the sorrow of Rachel's disappearance and was experiencing
her llucinations. Officers did search the chapel, but hampered by
(38:03):
bomb and fire damage, found nothing and Ultimately, it was
thought inconceivable that Harry Dobkin would have waited over twenty
years to kill Rachel. There is not the slightest indication
that Harry Dobkin has murdered his wife, as suggested by
the missing woman's relations, but Jane Mountin Smith says that
(38:26):
to arrive at such a conclusion is to totally misunderstand
intimate partner violence. One thing that we do know about
this type of homicide is that there's a level of
planning in most of them, and in some cases they
will try and make it look like there's been a
car accident or a strange fall, or even illness. Sometimes
(38:47):
that goes on a lot, So sometimes these things are
never found out, and sometimes, yeah, it can take a
long time before they're uncovered. The police also tied themselves
in knots to discredit accounts of Harry's violence. For instance,
Polly may have noticed Rachel's bruises and been told how
they've been caused, but officers noted that Polly had never
(39:11):
actually seen Harry strike her sister or threatened her life.
In their questions to witnesses. The police also seem to
have been particularly interested and how often Rachel contacted Harry
as though this meant she could not have seriously feared
he would do her harm. When I was reading the
case notes for this, I actually got quite angry because
(39:35):
she suffered a significant injury, which caused people to then
be able to accuse her of having mental health problems.
This poor woman probably couldn't open her mouth without somebody
interpreting what she was saying or doing as crazy, which
then tends to protect him. But he inflicted that injury,
(39:58):
and then she's accused of chasing him for money and
him having to spend time in prison because he hadn't
paid the money. This is a violent, nasty man. He
was the architect of all of the problems that she had,
and they're speaking about him as if she's the problem.
(40:19):
What did they think she was going to do for money?
She had no means of supporting herself. She was of
a status of a single mother back then. Oh my goodness,
that would have been so hard. As the months went by,
there was still no sign of Rachel. Twice Polly was
(40:39):
called into identified bodies, neither of which turned out to
be her sister. These experiences proved so traumatic that Polly
refused any further invitations to the morgue. Harry Dobkin probably
thought that he had got away with Rachel's murder, but
Harry Dobkin was wrong. The forensic pathologists set to work
(41:07):
examining the torso that Benja men Marshall had discovered in
the basement at the chapel. It was so small and
slight that at first he thought it might have belonged
to a young girl. The hair and other parts of
the body were missing, and what remained had been mutilated
and partially burned. The perpetrator clearly thought his grizzly handiwork
(41:29):
would frustrate attempts to identify the dead woman, but the
murderer hadn't reckoned on the persistence and skill of the
pathology team. They raked and sibbed through tons of rubble
from the chapel looking for more clues, and the X
rayed and photographed the remains in a lab at one
of London's top hospitals, determined to find out who the
(41:50):
dead woman was. Finally, Abraham Kopkin was summoned. He tended
to teeth across the East End fillings extractions dnches, a
surviving section of jaw was set before the dentist. That's
my patient, that's missus dobb In August nineteen forty two,
(42:13):
the police went to question Harry Dobkin. He was living
with his aged parents in the front room of their house.
The space was furnished simply, and there were boxes of
leather and fabric straps everywhere. There's been a development in
respect to your wife. I want you to accompany us
to the police station for further inquiries. Harry protested that
(42:33):
he knew nothing of any cellar at the chapel, had
never once been down there. He grew agitated, and then
he took a bill from a leather merchant's firm out
of his pocket, sprawled a note on the back, and
handed it to a police officer. He was said to
be in the habit of writing down his thoughts on
scraps of paper, Divisional Inspector, Dear sir, It read, in
(42:57):
respect to what you say that my wife has been
found dead or murdered, and that you say I know
something that I am holding back from the police. I
am sorry to say that I cannot say anything different
to my previous statements. But the police had said nothing
about murder, nor had they suggested he was holding information
(43:18):
back from them. They charged him, implying that Rachel had
driven her husband to murder. We suggest that Dobkin had
reason to be rid of his wife, as she had
been a financial incumbrance to him for many years. The
maintenance order was a constant drain on him. He'd been
committed to prison several times for its non payment. He
(43:38):
has also said that she pestered his parents, which did
not improve matters. Jane Monkton Smith thinks that such a
reading of Harry Dobkins's motive, one that paints Rachel as
a shrew and to blame for her own death, badly
misses the mark. That's the society we created for men,
created for women, a society where they would be reliant
(44:00):
on them, and they get annoyed about that when they
don't want that woman anymore. And he wanted rid of her.
I really believe that he wanted rid of her because
he could see himself going back into prison again for
not giving her money. How dare she? How dare she
wreck his life by trying to get money off him
when he's got other things to do and a life
(44:21):
to lead with no thought for how he has wrecked
her life and just expected that she would take it.
The jury deliberated for only twenty minutes, and they were
unanimous on their verdict. Harry Dobkin had strangled his wife
to death with his bare hands and then concealed her
(44:43):
remains in the church cellar. He was hanged on a cold,
foggy morning at once Worth Prison in South London. After
the trial, a journalist visited the Dubinski family home. They
kept a photo of Rachel atop the piano, she noted,
(45:04):
and another over on the wall, and very beautiful she looked.
The reporter was intrigued by the role Madame Nerva and
spiritualism had played in the case. Then Rachel's mother, Sarah
and her sister Mary confided that all the time that
her body had lain concealed in the church ruins, they'd
heard strange knocks at the door, only to find no
(45:27):
one waiting on the step, And then in the dead
of night, Sarah had repeatedly been woken by a voice
from the playground outside, the voice of her missing daughter. Rachel,
so tormented and ill served in life, now at least
(45:47):
rested in a proper grave. On the headstone the Dubinskis
chose to end the heartfelt inscription with a wish peace
to her dear soul bad women. The Blackout Ripper is
(46:27):
hosted by me Hallie rubin Hold and me Alice Fines.
It was written and produced by Alice Fines and Ryan Dilley,
with additional support from Courtney Guerino and Arthur Gomperts. Kate
Healy of Oakwood Family Trees aided us with genealogical research.
Pascal Wise Sound designed and mixed the show and composed
all the original music. The show was recorded at Wardoor
(46:48):
Studios by David Smith and Tom Berry. You also heard
the voice talents of Ben Crow, David Glover, Melanie Gutridge,
Stella Harford, Gemma Saunders, and Rufus Wright. Much of the
music you heard was performed by Edgarchan, Ross Hughes, Christian
Miller and Marcus Penrose. They were recorded by Nick Taylor
at Portupine Studios. Pushkin's Bend Holiday mixed the tracks and
(47:12):
you heard additional piano playing by the great Berry Wise
Hi Berry. The show also wouldn't have been possible without
the work of Jacob Weisberg, Heather Faine, Carlie Migliori, Maggie Taylor,
Nicole Morano, Eric Sandler, and Daniella Lukhan. We'd also like
to thank Michael Buchanan Dunne of the Murder Mile podcast,
(47:33):
Lizzie McCarroll, Catherine Walker at the Royal Pharmaceutical Society and
the Earbe Historical Society. Bad Women is a production of
Pushkin Industries. Please rate and review the show and spread
the word about what we do, and thanks for listening
(48:23):
and he and people in the
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