December 20, 2022 • 55 mins
Season Finale: Marjorie Cummins is certain that her husband is innocent - he's not the violent Blackout Ripper and he shouldn't hang for murder. She loyally supports him in court - refusing to believe the compelling evidence against him. Will the jury agree with her?
In wartime London, it seems, men could murder some women and still escape the hangman. Some juries defied the directions of judges to reach 'not guilty' verdicts if the female murder victims were painted as being promiscuous, immoral or unfaithful.
One heavily-pregnant mother - Kathleen Patmore - was fatally stabbed by her soldier husband. Seemingly an open-and-shut case of murder, many instead felt that Kathleen deserved her fate and that her husband was the innocent party.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. The jury have taken a certain view of your case.
The judge, mister Justice Charles, is astounded by the verdict
just delivered in his court, and I want to make
it perfectly clear that it is the view of the
(00:36):
jury and not mine, he tells the defendant, a serviceman
standing in the dock before him, Mister Justice Charles has
sent many a killer to the gallows, and he seems
utterly incensed that today he won't be pronouncing the death
sentence for this man. The jury has stunned the venerable
(00:58):
judge by finding the serviceman not guilty of murder. Mister
Justice Charles doesn't seem to delight in sending criminals for execution. Indeed,
it's been noted a previous sentencings that he's visibly affected
when telling convicts that the law offers him no other
choice than to send them to be hanged by the
(01:19):
neck until dead. But today the judge is wrathful, and
his angry indignation is aimed at the jury. The murder
case against the defendant is watertight. The serviceman was caught
red handed. He was drenched in the blood of his
female victim. He told witnesses what he'd just done to
(01:42):
Kathleen Patmore. And he didn't deny carrying a knife with
the express purpose of using it to hack and mutilate
the woman. And yet, and yet the jury had found
him not guilty. The judge is livid. This was not
the sort of justice he is used to presiding over
(02:04):
at London's Central Criminal Court. The famed Old Bailey wasn't
the law of the land as he knew it. It was, instead,
mister Justice Charles Bellowed, the law of the jungle. In
wartime London, it seems there were some women you could
murder and no jury would willingly convict you. This is
(02:39):
the 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
(02:59):
and I'm Alice Fines, and you're listening to bad women.
The blackout River flat it out times against As a
(03:34):
letter had arrived for Prisoner one six four four at
his Majesty's prison, Onsworth, bloggings A proper nerd a dun
colored brick and stone Victorian Jale in Southwest London. Gordon,
my dearest love, it began. I want you to know
that nothing can alter my feelings for you. Marjorie Cummins
(03:57):
had heard the prosecution case against her husband when he
was tried for the murder of Evelyn Oatley in her
Soho flat. She'd heard that a cigarette case, the one
inscribed with the initials of Evelyn's showbiz alter ego Leta Ward,
was found at cummins raf accommodation. Furthermore, she'd heard how
her husband's fingerprints were left on a kitchen implement that
(04:20):
had been used in a depraved and sickening attack on Evelyn.
As her life ebbed away. It was, the judge said,
a sadistic sexual murder of the ghoulish type. The police
had amassed other equally damning evidence linking Gordon Cummins to
the grisly murders of Evelyn Hamilton, Margaret Lowe and Doris Joanne,
(04:45):
and the airman had all but admitted to police that
he'd strangled Greta Heyward in a Piccadilly doorway. I am
the man he told his arresting officers, though he added
that he'd been too drunk to fully recall the incident.
No detail in this catalog of revolting violence could turn
Marjorie Cummins against her husband, nor shake her deep affection
(05:09):
for him. Marjorie, you see, still didn't believe he was
the blackout ripper. I shall always believe you innocent. I
love you so much it breaks my heart to see
you suffer. So why you've got you Amy. As Cummins
sat in his narrow prison cell, with its whitewashed brick walls,
(05:33):
its bucket for a toilet, it's small barred window too
high up to afford him a view, awaiting his date
with the hangman, Marjorie continued to think of her husband
as a hero. I'm sure men have been awarded the
Victoria Cross for going through less than you have endured.
The Victoria Cross is Britain's very highest award for bravery,
(05:55):
and even in the vast conflict then underway, it was
given out only rarely to men whose single handedly stormed
Nazi bunkers or piloted burning aircraft through a hail of
enemy fire, all who paid no heed to their own
mortality to save the lives of wounded comrades. Marjorie felt
(06:17):
that her husband's resolved that he would clear his name
was an act of bravery to equal all of these.
You have been wonderful all through the difficult time, and
you have our admiration as well as our love. This
letter was signed off every scrap of my love and
a million kisses from your adoring wife. It was delivered
(06:40):
to the prison just before Comin's final roll of the dice,
an appeal to have his murder conviction quashed and his
death sentence lifted. The following Tuesday morning, Marjorie would sit
in court as the airman's lawyers argued that the pioneering
fingerprint evidence was flawed, that Evelyn Oatley's possessions had been
(07:01):
planted in the raf billet by the police or by
the real killer who was trying to cover his tracks,
and that have Cummins were really the perpetrator of such
frenzied crimes, how come no traitors of blood were found
on his clothing. If Cummins could unpick the case against
him and introduce sufficient doubt, might the man Marjorie loved
(07:24):
so very much yet brought free The morning's persistent rain
had grounded the attack aircraft, but eventually it lifted. Bad
luck for the men on the ground. As their column
of trucks trumbled forward, two bombers dived down on them,
(07:47):
releasing canisters a deadly poisoned gas. Men could be seen
falling on all sides, reported one newspaper, noting that the
ambulance drivers coming along to ten the survivors of the
now burning convoy had to work glass masks to enter
the lethal FuG and fumes. The delighted crowd, no doubt
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cheered their arrival and applaud in my whole chet point definitely.
This reenactment wasn't the only attraction that Saturday afternoon at
r F Henlo's Empire Air Day celebration. Like air bases
(08:36):
up and down the country, and Henlo had been thrown
open to the general public, partly to benefit charity, partly
as a pr exercise for the Royal Air Force. The
thousands of civilian visitors on May twenty third, nineteen thirty
six were treated to aerobatic displays and demonstrations of daring
parachute jumps. They were so free to roam the base,
(08:58):
allowed to peer into the hangars, barracks and dining halls incredible.
Twenty one year old Marjorie Stevens was among the throng,
and it was on this day that she first met
Airman Gordon Cummons. Cummins was on the very lowest rung
(09:18):
of the RAF and his duties involved the maintenance and
upkeep of the aircraft. He was quite literally no high flyer,
but Marjorie seems to have been smitten with him all
the same. He's very cultured and well spoken. Within months
of their first meeting, the couple had wed. Other women
might not have seen lowly aircraftman Cummins as much of
(09:41):
a catch. A life with such a man would mean
either long separations or trailing round after him from air
base to airbase, but Marjorie was a tune to the
life of a surfaceman's wife. Marjorie's father, Ernest Stevens, had
been a career soldier serving with the kilt wearing Seaforth Highlanders,
(10:02):
stationed in India to defend Britain's occupation of the colony.
Ernest had risen up the ranks till he finally attained
officer status. His elevation came as the Highlanders swapped the
balmy cricket matches, swimming gallers and regimental concerts, at which
Ernest excelled for the mud and blood of the trenches.
(10:25):
At the start of the First World War, the British
Army had little choice but to push its most experienced
soldiers into frontline duties to hold back the Germans until
sufficient civilian volunteers could be trained up to join them.
Ernest unit was thus plucked from India and sent to
the front. On February first, nineteen fifteen, just weeks after
(10:50):
becoming a second lieutenant, Ernest was out at night supervising
a party of soldiers digging trenches. Tried to keep the
noise down boys when he was struck by a German
bullet a head wound. He lingered for a day before dying.
His wife, Ethel, was pregnant with Marjorie. Ethel had followed
(11:17):
her husband to Europe, but her roots were firmly in
Britain's imperial possession in South Asia, so as soon as
the war was over, she boarded the SS city of
Karachi to take her three young daughters home to India.
The liner was packed with the colonial ruling elite Christian missionaries, engineers, bankers,
(11:40):
but there were also army officers sailing east. They would
perhaps have been a stinging reminder that she was returning
to India as a war widow. Despite their strong ties
to India, all three Stephens girls drifted back to Britain,
(12:01):
and when Marjorie wed Cummins in London just after Christmas
nineteen thirty six, she said she opted to rent apartment
with her eldest sister, Frieda in order that my husband
would have a flat to come to for spending his leave.
The Air Force sent Cummins to bases right across the
British isles north, southeast and west in Scotland for one posting,
(12:25):
then distant Cornwall for another. It's not clear if Marjorie
closely shadowed these moves or exactly when she moved in
with Freda. At the outbreak of war, Marjorie was living
slap bang in the middle of England, perhaps the best
compromise given her husband's geographically erratic postings. She lodged for
(12:46):
the middle aged couple the Hipwards, and was listed as
being incapacitated, though her normal occupation was as a theatrical secretary.
The limitations of her long distance marriage seem not to
have saddened or worried Marjorie. We have been very, very happy,
and he has never been anything but kind and tolerant
in every respect. It was not his habit to consort
(13:09):
other women. Cummins, however, seems to have made the very
most of the separation. Cummins gave me and everyone else
the idea that he'd more or less cut away from
his wife. Flight Lieutenant William Pete, an officer at one
of cummins postings, thought the airman behaved far more like
(13:29):
a bachelor than a married man. Cummins used to boast
of his conquests of women, and when he had a
few days leave, he'd boast of his being with his
West End friends and used to say he didn't go
home to his wife. Beyond this, he never made any
reference to his wife in my presence. It also seems
Cummins wasn't sending much money home either. According to Pete,
(13:53):
the airman was the very image of profligacy. Every so
often he would be flush with cash and appear in
the local pub, and there he would treat all, what
are you having, bill? Very kind of you Gordon just
a kind of sludge. I'll take my usual Canadian rye
a double. Naturally, I have simple tastes, not your yearning
(14:16):
for the finer things. Such ostentatious displays of generosity would
cost come Ins the equivalent of several hundred dollars, and
usually within a couple of nights he'd be broke and
would not be seen again at the bar until he
was once again flashing of bulging Billfolt. Was he carefully
(14:38):
husbanding his military salary so that he could indulge in
such grandstanding, or tapping up Marjorie for cash? Look here,
I'm on the rocks. Perhaps he was getting money from
the women he boasted of conquering flight. Lieutenant Pete claimed
to have seen him in the company of wealthy women
(14:58):
at fine hotels in the nearby city of Bath, with
these women giving the air and money. Or was he
simply stealing it from them? If he did, he was
never caught. There was not a single black mark in
his RAF records. Cummins's own explanation of the source of
his wealth was more fantastic. In reality, he was the
(15:21):
son of the principle of a school for delinquents, but
he would tell anyone who would listen that he was
the scion of an aristocratic family, complete with a title.
When Cummings told me he was the Honorable Gordon Cummins,
I and others accepted that he was owing to his
manner and speech, he tried to create the impression that
(15:44):
he was the black sheep of a good family. Cummins
probably bridle that his humble status in the air was hierarchy.
He was said not to associate with his fellow rank
and file airmen, and he instead tried to cultivate relationships
with officers such as Flight Lieutenant Pete. His attempts to
(16:05):
impress his commanding officer, a revered aviation pioneer called George Stainforth,
seemed to have paid particular dividends. Just as in Marjorie's
father's day. The coming of conflict enabled ordinary servicemen to advance.
Wing Commander Stainforth now pushed for Cummins, who had spent
(16:25):
so long on the lowest rung of the Air Force,
to be allowed to join the RAF's officer cadet program
and train for duties in the air. That training would
see Cummins transferred to lodgings in London, not too far
from where Marjorie had now set up home with her
sister Frieda. But if Marjorie was hoping to see more
(16:48):
of her husband in his free time, she was to
be sorely disappointed. She believed that he chose to stay
at his barracks during the week and not at home
because he was conscientious about rising through the ranks of
the Air Force. Of course, far closer to cummins billet
(17:08):
than Marjorie, his home and fireside were the brasseries, bars
and women of Piccadilly. Cummins entered the dock at the
Criminal Court of Appeal and scan the public gallery. Newspaper
(17:33):
reporters saw him lock eyes with a woman. He smiled.
Marjorie deserved this tiny show of appreciation. From the moment
of his arrest and through his initial conviction, she tirelessly
agitated for her husband's release. She felt their original lawyer
had made a hash at the defense. Surely, in a
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land where the law is supposed to be so just,
an innocent man cannot be hanged because his counsel didn't
know his case properly. The prosecution held that the small
fingerprints on a mirror in Evelyn Oakley's room and on
the cutting blade of a can opener conclusively linked Cummings
to the crime scene and the murder. Cummings original lawyer
(18:19):
had failed to shake the jury's faith in that argument.
The twelve men had put great stock in the evidence
of the nation's top fingerprint expert, Cheryl of the Yard.
According to Superintendent Cheryl, only five or six points of
agreement were needed to match a fingerprint to the digit
(18:40):
that had left it, and in the case of Cummings
and the prints left at Evelyn Oatley's home, there had
been at least twenty five such points of agreement. Surely
the judges would be independent minded and skeptical of such
cockshure testimony the incriminating fingerprint with tiny and incomplete ventured
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Cumming's new defense lawyer. He fingerprint evidence is vital, Judge,
Mister Justice Humphrey, retorted, end of deadly significance. The guilty
verdict stood and Cummins would be returned to Wandsworth Prison
to await execution. Marjorie burst into tears as her husband
(19:26):
left the dock. He stopped to wave at her. Are
you missus Cummings Final chance? The senior detective asked Marjorie
as she stood alone in a corridor. Why, yes, yes,
I am. I'd like to offer you my congratulations. Whatever
do you mean? I'd like to offer you my congratulations
(19:46):
on your lucky escape. The detective's words infuriated Marjorie, and
she complained bitterly about the officer's conduct to the very
highest authorities. But to his seasoned i perhaps the thought
that violent men invariably turn their attention to their wives
did not seem far fetched. Such cases were, unfortunately legion,
(20:10):
especially as those violent men returned home from war. The
blackout Ripper will return in a moment. The men of
(20:37):
the first Battalion of the Royal Scots Fusiliers were feeling
hard done by fighting the merciless Japanese and the merciless
heat in the fetid jungles of Burma. They suspected that
their sacrifices were of little interest to those back home.
They grumbled that they had no British cigarettes to smoke,
(20:58):
and pointedly called themselves the forgotten Army. The message that
arrived the Fusiliers, Cyril Patmore, compounded their misery. Such correspondents
could bring military units to their knees, spreading disquiet from
man to man like a raging infection, until their commanders
(21:18):
reckon morrale was so low that the men couldn't be
sent back into battle. Kathleen Patmore was expecting a baby,
and of course Cyril wasn't the father. This thunderbolt was
delivered as an air graph, a short message shrunk down
on microfilm so as to save vital space in aircraft
(21:39):
heading to the war zone. It wasn't a particularly private
way of imparting sensitive news, nor did it allow the
writer to go into great detail. Heavily pregnant, Kathleen, cath
later wrote more fulsome letters. These were pages of sorrow
and remorse, My darling. I am wondering if you're caring
(22:03):
to get letters from me any more, but I feel
I must keep writing until I see you again, or
you tell me not to. Kathleen explained that in Cyril's absence,
she'd been out celebrating their wedding anniversary and his birthday,
which fell a week apart in November. The evening out
had meant a long walk home. Evidently I didn't make it.
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I didn't go into it cold sober, Otherwise it would
never have happened. It had taken a full seven months
for that airgraph and this news to come. Shame, remorse, frightened,
call it what you like, but each time I attempted
to write to you, I just had the nerve. I
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didn't mean to do it, sweetheart, Please believe me and
don't start a divorce. I just couldn't stand that fusilia.
Pat Moore showed these letters to the welfare officer of
his unit. In cases of marital infidelity, it was common
for soldiers to ask for the allowance paid to their
spouse to be immediately halted and for the process of
(23:11):
drawing up divorce papers to begin. War had brought upheaval,
tearing the fabric of society into pieces, and with so
many partners separated from each other, adultery on both sides
wasn't uncommon. Some tens of thousands of British servicemen had
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initiated divorce proceedings, with one estimate suggesting it would take
something like fifteen years to clear the backlock. But Cyril
pat Moore didn't ask to join the tail end of
that melancholy queue. He just wanted to be allowed to
go home. I feel ashamed for you to see me
in this condition. Yet, how I wish I could see you,
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to talk to you. It wouldn't matter what you did
to me. Afterwards. The clock was ticking down to the
berth and after three years away, Private pat Moore was
finally granted passage a ship heading home. That voyage, it seems,
was broken in the Mediterranean, and Patmore went supernir shopping
(24:16):
at an Italian market, where he purchased a six inch knife.
Behind looked, if anything, more like an aristocrat's stately home
than a hotel. The ironstone building, topped with a golden
(24:37):
statue of a deer, dated back hundreds of years, but
the hind was moving with the times. Parking for motor
cars had been added to compliment the ample stabling for guests.
Horses Behind had other attractions too. In nineteen thirty four,
its restaurant employed a dapper little waiter, Cyril pat Moore,
(24:59):
was no more than five feet tall, but he made
a big impression on missus. Kathleen Shore, the married mother
of one, entered into an association with Patmore and promptly
left mister Shaw, a shoemaker, and her home in the Shires.
Sixty miles north of London. This act of desertion was
(25:21):
sighted in Alfred Shaw's petition for divorce, and Cyril Patmore
was named in Kathleen's adultery. A daughter, Chrissie, was born
before the divorce. The record of this birth is missing
from the archives, but Patmore certainly thought of the child
as his and was there at the birth. I remember
when I was in your arms. After Chrissy was born,
(25:44):
wrote Kathleen, I was the happiest woman in the world.
The pain and suffering was soon forgotten. As early as
nineteen thirty five, Kathleen had assumed her lover's surname and
official documents, even though the pair didn't actually wed until
late nineteen thirty seven. They lived together at the very
(26:05):
heart of London. Patmore no longer waiting tables for the
horse riding set, but instead working at the Embassy Club.
This was a legendary private member's establishment, and it was
so exclusive that, according to one regular, even a duke
with an income of a quarter million, a great townhouse,
a yacht, a lovely wife, and one or two pensioned
(26:27):
off ones might have to wait at the door for
a table to become available. Despite the eyewatering membership fees
he'd already stumped up, but the merrymaking was coming to
an end. Kathleen gave birth to a boy just as
war was declared, and Pat Moore took a government post
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as an air aid warden, perhaps out of civic duty,
or perhaps simply to supplement his income and provide for
his growing family. The couple also admitted a lodger into
their home, Frank Tobin, aged thirty two, and apparently following
a quarrel with Kathleen Patmore, volunteered to join the army.
(27:12):
When he went off to fight, first in Africa and
then the Far East, his wife stayed on in the
house with Tobin. The lodger was said to write to
his friend Pat and keep him abreast of events at home.
He also regularly gave Kathleen large sums of money. Two
more Patmore children were born. Some observed that the new
(27:35):
arrivals resembled Tobin, who was described as being too friendly
for a mere lodger. For many who had endured the Blitz,
with wave after wave of bomber aircraft coming to London
night after night, the new onslaught of pilotless rocket bombs,
(27:56):
brought a new kind of terror. The v Ones, the
so called doodle bugs or buzz bombs, were jet propelled
craft packed with explosives launched from far away Nazi based
They would burble their way towards their targets. When their
fuel ran dry, the engine would cut out, and those
(28:19):
on the ground would have just seconds to find cover
before the eerie silence was violently rent apart. At once
malevolent and inhuman, these new weapons unnerved many Londoners who'd
assumed that by nineteen forty four the worst of the
war was over. They proved too much for Kathleen Patmore.
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She left London and her lodger to return to her
roots in rural Oxfordshire. Kathleen was descended from a line
of agricultural laborers, and she moved into a rented cottage
with her sister May. Her other siblings and relatives were
dotted around the farms nearby, and some of them were
already housing Kathleen's older children, As is sometimes the word
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with families, Kathleen seems to have set up home amongst
her very fiercest critics her behavior in this idyllic corner
of England, safely away from the deadly buzz bombs would
prompt their ire, and that disapproval and their willingness to
gossip would have appalling consequences for Kathleen. In the summer
(29:36):
and autumn of nineteen forty four, the harvest in this
quaint part of England was reached by the Sons of Napoli,
Palermo and Brindisi. As many as one hundred thousand Italian
prisoners of war had been shipped to Britain following their
defeat and surrender in earlier campaigns. When Italy switched sides
and joined the Allies, all except the most fervent fascists
(30:00):
in their ranks were designated as cooperators. They weren't really
the enemy any longer. Those some Britons remained uncon vince
that they were reliable Allies. In any case, Italian men
performed a valuable service. Was so many farm hands away
at war and women increasingly taking up jobs in the factories,
(30:22):
who else was there to gather in the crops and
tender livestock. Italian cooperators could visit cinemas, but not pubs
or dance halls. They could only use trains or buses
as part of their work duties, and they had to
observe a curfew, though some communities grumbled that the Italians
(30:44):
were still allowed out too late. Raio its Ice fraternization
with locals was another saw point. You ain't insanni itarly
now mates. The cooperators could enter private homes if invited,
but women seen entertaining Italian men were treated with the
utmost suspicion. Kathleen's older brother, Horace, kept a beady eye
(31:09):
on her and on her sister May. I've seen both
of them going out at night with Italian prisoners of
war in the woods and returning to the house separately
as late as seven am. A laborer on the farm
where the sisters leased their cottage corroborated similar accusations. Their landlord, meanwhile,
was so scandalized that he reported two of his Italian
(31:32):
workers to the authorities and stopped taking any rent money,
hoping that the women would pack up and leave. Curiously,
May joined this chorus of disapproving voices, recounting stories of
Kathleen sleeping with other men. She even went as far
as to write anonymous letters to those in charge of
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Italian cooperators, informing them that Kathleen had close ties to
one man in particular, I was afraid she was getting
too friendly with one named Fronzo Antonio. That though I
don't know if anything was happening between them, I made
this Italian understand that missus Patmore was a married woman
with children and a husband in Burma. In the spring
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of nineteen forty five, Kathleen's pregnancy began to show, and
she was, perhaps unsurprisingly reluctant to take May into her confidence.
I thought she was pregnant, and she admitted she was,
but declined to discuss the matter with me. She was
very secretive in nature and told me very little about
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her men friends. The bombs were no longer falling on London,
and soon the blackout would end, so Kathleen returned to
the capital. She left behind her children and a country
community roiling with rumor and gossip about the identity of
her next baby's father. Was it a yank or a
(32:59):
truck driver called Bill? The prime suspect was forty year
old Soldato Friendzo Antonio. Kathleen's new lodgings in London were
close to where the Italian had been sent following the
scandal at the farm. Sailing back from the war. It's
unclear if Cyril Patmore knew any of these salacious tales.
(33:22):
His letters to his calf seemed to have been optimistic.
Roll on the day when I can straighten things out
and settle down to the second chapter of married life.
That's going to be hard at first, However, we should
be able to get a little home together and live happily.
Ever after, Patmore's confidence seems to have evaporated on arriving
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home from the Far East. A visit to see his
children in the Oxfordshire countryside opened up the floodgates to
the vicious and score settling gossip about his wife. With
her husband now in their midst, Kathleen's family spared not
a moment in apprising him of their views of her
total moral lag. May even produced a written list of
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men she said her sister had slept with, and twelve
year old Chrissie was called as a witness to her
mother's infidelities, recounting how she'd walked in on Kathleen in
bed with the truck driver Bill. Patmore even began to
suspect that Frank Tobin had indeed been overly friendly for
a lodger and to doubt the parentage of his youngest children.
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They're just like the bastard. The final straw was the
naming of Soldato Antonio as the likely father of the
child growing in his wife's belly, if it had been
anyone else but not our enemies. Kathleen's brother, Horace, witnessed
Patmore's growing confusion and anger and fueled it with his
(34:56):
own tittle tattle. But with Patmore planning to return to
London to confront his wife, Horace makes no mention of
trying to warn Kathleen of the soldier's grim mood, nor
Patmore's chilling and vengeful parting words. I will do her
in and I will hang for it, fusela Patmore was.
(35:19):
It turns out half right. The blackout ripper will return
in a moment. The soldier who approached Frederick Keeling's car
was covered in blood and holding a six inch knife.
(35:43):
The chauffeur was waiting for a fair just a few
doors down from Kathleen Patmore's new digs. Call the police.
I've done my missus. When officers arrived, Cyril Patmore directed
them towards the body of his wife and held out
the knife slick with her blood. I did it with this.
(36:04):
The kitchen of number twelve Green Hill Road was also
a wash with Athleene's blood. Her lifeless body lay face
down in it. She could not have survived such an attack.
But then a police detective saw a movement rolling the
heavily pregnant corpse over. He witnessed the final kicks of
(36:27):
her unborn child. The officers arrested pat Moore and drove
him to the police station, noting that he was keen
to tell them of his troubles. He repeated one lament
over and over to think it was an Italian she's
been going with. If this was the second chapter in
(36:49):
Patmore's marriage, it was a bloody Shakespearean tragedy. The soldier
had kept his word and done Kathleen in, But would
he hang the law of the jungle Cyril. Patmore wasn't
going to the gallows after all. The jury didn't think
(37:10):
he deserved it, and mister Justice Charles, the Old Bailey
judge presiding, was incensed with the twelve I am bound
to tell you. The liver man comes back, finds his
wife unfaithful, stabs her and she dies. He is guilty
of stark murder. The jury had heard witness after witness
(37:33):
outline Kathleen's supposed marital wrongdoings. In the witness box, her
sister May was asked if Kathleen had been consistently and
persistently immoral. Yes, she practically lived with the Italian prisoners
billeted in our area. Pat Moore had gone to Kathleen's
London home armed with the list of men's names May
(37:56):
had happily supplied, and with this Italian knife. I only
meant to scar her so nobody else could have her
but me. Kathleen's face did indeed bear the mark of
one disfiguring slashing cut, but she struggled, and I stabbed
her in the wrong place. He plunged that souvenir knife
(38:18):
deep into her neck, going as far as the lung,
a wound which would have proved rapidly fatal. He viewed
this woman as a possession and would not accept the
humiliation of its loss. For years, I've been waiting for
this moment to return and have you for my own again,
(38:40):
he told her, and I'm robbed of everything. Though peeved
that the jury had returned the wrong verdict, mister Justice,
Charles wasn't going to take his frustrations out on Patmore.
If the jury decided he was guilty of manslaughter instead
of murder, then the judge could show the soldier leniency,
(39:00):
after all, his unfaithful wife had behaved abuminably. As your
counsel has said, you were a solid tried, he told
the prisoner. If you had not been so solid tried,
I would have been bound to give you a very
very heavy sentence. Private Patmore, who the judge described as
(39:21):
a good man and a good husband, only got five years.
The murder of Kathleen Patmore in the final months of
World War Two was not, of course, an isolated case.
Doctor Mark Roothouse from the University of York is an
(39:42):
expert in wartime crime. Although the increase in domestic violence
is not reflected in the crime figures, there is plenty
of anecdotal evidence, particularly in oral testimonies, in memoirs and autobiographies,
that there was an increase in these things as individuals
who were processing very traumatic experiences turned in on themselves
(40:06):
but also outwards on others. Men who'd been exhorted to
sacrifice themselves and fight for home and family were being
demobilized from the armed forces, and many had the feeling,
like Cyril Patmore, that they'd be robbed of the homecoming
that they'd imagined that they felt they deserved. The very
(40:29):
same week as the Patmore verdict, another soldier stood in
the dock at the Old Bailey. Frederick and Lillian Hooker
had had eleven children together when Frederick joined the Pioneer
Corps and had been sent away. Missus Hooker was said
to have struck up a friendship with an Irish soldier,
(40:49):
something to which their fourteen year old son, Thomas, attested
in court. On leaving the army, Frederick Hooker said he
found his wife to be culled towards him, but despite
this difficult homecoming, he still worshiped her. That is until
he stabbed her. She drove me to it. She was
(41:14):
carrying on with other men, and I asked her not
to for the children's sake. I su I've done it again.
The jury rejected the judge's guidance that the offense was
murder and found Hooker guilty of the lesser crime of manslaughter.
Summing up mister Justice Tucker chided the twelve that their
verdict was sending a dangerous message. That is murder and
(41:38):
nothing else. If Parliament thinks fit to pars an act
that soldiers returning and finding their wives unfaithful may kill
them and that is manslaughter, it will be the law
of the land. Until that is done, it is not
the law of the land. These twin verdicts showing sympathy
(41:59):
for wife killers in England's most famous court, prompted much
comment in the newspapers, with one legal expert of pining
it is inevitable will be more such cases of killing.
One hears of so many wives who have misconducted themselves.
The refusal of these juries to send such defendants to
the hangman had deep roots in the prevailing culture. One
(42:23):
of the important things to note about the nineteen forties
is that physical violence is part of everyday life. Here's
Mark again. He says that from the beatings handed out
by school teachers to husbands clouting their wives, recourse to
brutality wasn't frowned upon, even by the police. The police
did not want to get involved because it got them
(42:43):
into difficult negotiations about what was acceptable what was not acceptable.
If the violence took place in a public space, then
the police would take an interest if it was causing
some kind of disturbance and complaints from neighbors. They would
also take an interest if the violence within the household
overstepped the mark and someone ended up being seriously injured
(43:05):
or worse than the police would take an interest. But
run of the male physical chastisement would be the kind
of thing the police would be very cautious about getting
involved with. In such a society where violence was a permissible,
even expected part of family life, Inflicting physical harm on
women was only wrong if the severity of the injury
(43:28):
outweighed the provocation. Kathleen Patmore had sorely tried her husband,
and Lilian Hooker drove hers to take her life. They
weren't bad men, thought the jurors. They'd just been pushed
to breaking point. They'd snapped. The crime of passion has
been around for millennia. Professor Jane Monkton Smith is an
(43:51):
expert on homicide and particularly on domestic violence. She rejects
the crime of passion defense, the idea that lover may,
in a fit of jealousy or after an appalling betrayal,
lose control of themselves and kill Jane's research has shown
that the crime of passion, though an established feature of
our cultural script, is nothing more than myth. It kind
(44:18):
of acts to defend, especially men who kill their partners
allegedly spontaneously. So there's some kind of dreadful provocation. They
in the moment react to that and things go a
bit far. Nobody could really have predicted it, and it's
(44:38):
a terrible situation. But of course that's not the way
these things play out at all. There is nothing, no
fact anywhere to suggest that the crime of passion narrative
has anything to support it, because all the research that
has been done in this area shows that there are
levels of planning. These homicides, despite what everybody really wants
to believe, are not spontaneous. Indeed, Cyril Patmore had time
(45:04):
enough between Oxfordshire and London to think about his marriage
several days. In fact, even if we believe his story
that he took a six inch knife to threaten and
to scar Kathleen, Cyril Patmore did not simply snap. He
thought about the grievous harm he wanted to inflict on
(45:24):
his wife, and then he settled on a determined course
of action to echo those judges that is murder and
nothing else. Had say the cuckolded poultry farmer Harold Oatley
finally run out of patience with Evelyn and her soho
lifestyle and taken his razor to her, or indeed, had
(45:48):
on rue Jouanne bickered with his wife Doris about her
return to the sex trade and choked her to death.
Would they have been sentenced to hang or just given
a light sentence. Would a jury have perhaps looked sympathetically
on leading aircraftman Cummings if he'd offered his wife Marjorie
(46:09):
then spun a defense in court detailing her immoral, unreasonable,
or nagging ways. As it was on June twenty fifth,
nineteen forty two, with all legal avenues exhausted, all appeals
from reprieved denied, Cummings was taken from the condemned cell
(46:32):
where he played distracted games of chest with his warders,
to the nearby gallows and the drop. The man dubbed
the most notorious killer since Jack the Ripper was no
more and his swordid crimes, far from growing in notoriety,
quickly slipped into obscurity. And this suited the families of
(46:56):
the dead and the survivors too, when the murders of
February nineteen forty two occasionally resurfaced in the newspapers, often
when one of the investigating detectives had a memoir. Note,
the victims were invariably referred to as prostitutes. When we
approached the relatives of the dead women for this series,
(47:18):
they politely decline to be interviewed. The shame associated with
the crimes has even suppressed conversations within families. Cummings not
only rob these women of their lives, his depravity has
also meant that their very memories have been erased. We
don't have any information about any of this, wrote one
(47:40):
relative in reply to us, as I'm sure you can understand.
It's not something we discussed. I was fascinated to learn
about this case that almost doesn't exist. It's not in
the press, you don't see it on tally. Michael Buchanan
Done is a London to a guide, an host of
Murder Mile UK podcast. He's done much to uncover the
(48:02):
truth about the valuable lives Cummings snuffed out. Hlne fits
should be that one shouldn't always exactly criss crossings, soho
Piccadilly and Paddington. Michael shows visitors the streets the women walked,
the bars where they drank and met friends, the places
(48:25):
they called home, and in so doing, Michael hopes his
tool groups will come to know the women as he does,
as real, rounded people and not simply as victims of
a killer. Evelyn Hamilton left in a freezing, dank air
aid Shelter was no mere corpse. She was someone who'd
(48:47):
known poverty and then dedicated herself to improving both a
lot of other working people and her own mind. Through determination,
she became a pharmacist. I mean, that's amazing for today,
but we're talking a hundred years ago. She's clearly smart,
she's clearly educated. She's quiet. But I think that's the
(49:07):
problem is that people of think about her shyness and
they equate that to loneliness, and I think that's a
big mistake when you look at her life. She liked herself,
she liked her world, she liked what she did. The
Soho home of Evelyn Oatley, who was so cruelly dismissed
as a mere good time girl, was demolished long ago.
(49:31):
But Michael's tour groups can still get a flavor if
the edgy, creative and bohemian neighborhood that drew Evelyn from
the gritty industrial north to the place where she became
hopeful starlet Lta Ward. Where she grew up, there was nothing.
She's got dreams of going to London to become an
actress and a dancer, and you want her so much
(49:52):
to succeed. She's not a good time girl. I think
there's an inherent loneliness there, and she's trying to find
out who she is and what she wants. Michael has
retraced the route widowed and bankrupt Margaret Lowe would have
taken selling sex in the area. She walks the perimeter,
the filthy square mile, as they call it around Soho.
But the secretive aloof woman that others dubbed the Lady
(50:17):
seemed an especially reluctant participant in the trade. Weighed down
with grief for her former married life and always afraid
of losing her daughter. And it's almost as if she
doesn't want to be there, but she knows that she
has to be. I find it tragic, but also I
understand her. I understand why she's holding onto those few
(50:39):
moments of her past, especially her daughter. Who she loves,
and she wants her past to return, the good past.
North of Hyde Park, Michael takes his tour groups into
the world of Doris Joanne, the provincial girl without a
father who counted societal prejudice against so called bastards by
(50:59):
never backing down, never taking orders, and always cutting a
striking figure. She's stylish. Everyone always looked at her and
you could see her coming. She always looked immaculate. Michael,
pounding the pavements amid the traffic and bustle of modern
(51:19):
London does in real life what we've tried to do
in audio over the series, give those long dead women
a chance to reach across the decades and be heard.
Michael's guiding ethos also sums up what we've tried to
do in Bad Women, and we think his words are
a fitting way to draw this season to a close.
(51:42):
Sodd Gordon Frederick Cummings. He's an asshole. I hate him.
He's arrogant. He does not deserve to live, and I
hate to say that about anyone. Whereas the women, I
fell in love with them, every single one of them.
I sympathized with them, what they were about, what their
struggle was, the amount of times have done a live
presentation then burst into tears because I think when you
(52:04):
see the victims not just as name age collection of injuries,
but you learn about all the quirks in their life,
You learn about the sadness, you learn about the joy.
It makes them real and whole, and you kind of
want to meet them and hope, hope that they survive,
but you know that they won't. Bad women. The Blackout
(52:36):
Ripper is 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 Guarino 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
(52:57):
recorded at Wardoor Studios by David Smith and Tom Berry.
You also heard the voice talents of Ben Crow, David Glover,
Melanie Gutridge, Stella Halford, Gemma Saunders and Rufus Wright. Much
of the music You Had was performed by Edgarchan, Ross Hughes,
Christian Miller and Marcus Penrose. They were recorded by Nick
Taylor at Porcupine Studios. Pushkin's Ben Holiday mixed the tracks
(53:21):
and 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 Fane, Carlie Migliori,
Maggie Taylor, Nicole Morano, Eric Sandler, and Daniella Lukhan. We'd
also like to thank Michael Buchanan Dunn of the Murder
(53:41):
Mile podcast, Lizzie McCarroll, Katherine Walker at the Royal Pharmaceutical
Society and the Earb 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.
Pushkin. The jury have taken a certain view of your case.
The judge, mister Justice Charles, is astounded by the verdict
just delivered in his court, and I want to make
it perfectly clear that it is the view of the
(00:36):
jury and not mine, he tells the defendant, a serviceman
standing in the dock before him, Mister Justice Charles has
sent many a killer to the gallows, and he seems
utterly incensed that today he won't be pronouncing the death
sentence for this man. The jury has stunned the venerable
(00:58):
judge by finding the serviceman not guilty of murder. Mister
Justice Charles doesn't seem to delight in sending criminals for execution. Indeed,
it's been noted a previous sentencings that he's visibly affected
when telling convicts that the law offers him no other
choice than to send them to be hanged by the
(01:19):
neck until dead. But today the judge is wrathful, and
his angry indignation is aimed at the jury. The murder
case against the defendant is watertight. The serviceman was caught
red handed. He was drenched in the blood of his
female victim. He told witnesses what he'd just done to
(01:42):
Kathleen Patmore. And he didn't deny carrying a knife with
the express purpose of using it to hack and mutilate
the woman. And yet, and yet the jury had found
him not guilty. The judge is livid. This was not
the sort of justice he is used to presiding over
(02:04):
at London's Central Criminal Court. The famed Old Bailey wasn't
the law of the land as he knew it. It was, instead,
mister Justice Charles Bellowed, the law of the jungle. In
wartime London, it seems there were some women you could
murder and no jury would willingly convict you. This is
(02:39):
the 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
(02:59):
and I'm Alice Fines, and you're listening to bad women.
The blackout River flat it out times against As a
(03:34):
letter had arrived for Prisoner one six four four at
his Majesty's prison, Onsworth, bloggings A proper nerd a dun
colored brick and stone Victorian Jale in Southwest London. Gordon,
my dearest love, it began. I want you to know
that nothing can alter my feelings for you. Marjorie Cummins
(03:57):
had heard the prosecution case against her husband when he
was tried for the murder of Evelyn Oatley in her
Soho flat. She'd heard that a cigarette case, the one
inscribed with the initials of Evelyn's showbiz alter ego Leta Ward,
was found at cummins raf accommodation. Furthermore, she'd heard how
her husband's fingerprints were left on a kitchen implement that
(04:20):
had been used in a depraved and sickening attack on Evelyn.
As her life ebbed away. It was, the judge said,
a sadistic sexual murder of the ghoulish type. The police
had amassed other equally damning evidence linking Gordon Cummins to
the grisly murders of Evelyn Hamilton, Margaret Lowe and Doris Joanne,
(04:45):
and the airman had all but admitted to police that
he'd strangled Greta Heyward in a Piccadilly doorway. I am
the man he told his arresting officers, though he added
that he'd been too drunk to fully recall the incident.
No detail in this catalog of revolting violence could turn
Marjorie Cummins against her husband, nor shake her deep affection
(05:09):
for him. Marjorie, you see, still didn't believe he was
the blackout ripper. I shall always believe you innocent. I
love you so much it breaks my heart to see
you suffer. So why you've got you Amy. As Cummins
sat in his narrow prison cell, with its whitewashed brick walls,
(05:33):
its bucket for a toilet, it's small barred window too
high up to afford him a view, awaiting his date
with the hangman, Marjorie continued to think of her husband
as a hero. I'm sure men have been awarded the
Victoria Cross for going through less than you have endured.
The Victoria Cross is Britain's very highest award for bravery,
(05:55):
and even in the vast conflict then underway, it was
given out only rarely to men whose single handedly stormed
Nazi bunkers or piloted burning aircraft through a hail of
enemy fire, all who paid no heed to their own
mortality to save the lives of wounded comrades. Marjorie felt
(06:17):
that her husband's resolved that he would clear his name
was an act of bravery to equal all of these.
You have been wonderful all through the difficult time, and
you have our admiration as well as our love. This
letter was signed off every scrap of my love and
a million kisses from your adoring wife. It was delivered
(06:40):
to the prison just before Comin's final roll of the dice,
an appeal to have his murder conviction quashed and his
death sentence lifted. The following Tuesday morning, Marjorie would sit
in court as the airman's lawyers argued that the pioneering
fingerprint evidence was flawed, that Evelyn Oatley's possessions had been
(07:01):
planted in the raf billet by the police or by
the real killer who was trying to cover his tracks,
and that have Cummins were really the perpetrator of such
frenzied crimes, how come no traitors of blood were found
on his clothing. If Cummins could unpick the case against
him and introduce sufficient doubt, might the man Marjorie loved
(07:24):
so very much yet brought free The morning's persistent rain
had grounded the attack aircraft, but eventually it lifted. Bad
luck for the men on the ground. As their column
of trucks trumbled forward, two bombers dived down on them,
(07:47):
releasing canisters a deadly poisoned gas. Men could be seen
falling on all sides, reported one newspaper, noting that the
ambulance drivers coming along to ten the survivors of the
now burning convoy had to work glass masks to enter
the lethal FuG and fumes. The delighted crowd, no doubt
(08:14):
cheered their arrival and applaud in my whole chet point definitely.
This reenactment wasn't the only attraction that Saturday afternoon at
r F Henlo's Empire Air Day celebration. Like air bases
(08:36):
up and down the country, and Henlo had been thrown
open to the general public, partly to benefit charity, partly
as a pr exercise for the Royal Air Force. The
thousands of civilian visitors on May twenty third, nineteen thirty
six were treated to aerobatic displays and demonstrations of daring
parachute jumps. They were so free to roam the base,
(08:58):
allowed to peer into the hangars, barracks and dining halls incredible.
Twenty one year old Marjorie Stevens was among the throng,
and it was on this day that she first met
Airman Gordon Cummons. Cummins was on the very lowest rung
(09:18):
of the RAF and his duties involved the maintenance and
upkeep of the aircraft. He was quite literally no high flyer,
but Marjorie seems to have been smitten with him all
the same. He's very cultured and well spoken. Within months
of their first meeting, the couple had wed. Other women
might not have seen lowly aircraftman Cummins as much of
(09:41):
a catch. A life with such a man would mean
either long separations or trailing round after him from air
base to airbase, but Marjorie was a tune to the
life of a surfaceman's wife. Marjorie's father, Ernest Stevens, had
been a career soldier serving with the kilt wearing Seaforth Highlanders,
(10:02):
stationed in India to defend Britain's occupation of the colony.
Ernest had risen up the ranks till he finally attained
officer status. His elevation came as the Highlanders swapped the
balmy cricket matches, swimming gallers and regimental concerts, at which
Ernest excelled for the mud and blood of the trenches.
(10:25):
At the start of the First World War, the British
Army had little choice but to push its most experienced
soldiers into frontline duties to hold back the Germans until
sufficient civilian volunteers could be trained up to join them.
Ernest unit was thus plucked from India and sent to
the front. On February first, nineteen fifteen, just weeks after
(10:50):
becoming a second lieutenant, Ernest was out at night supervising
a party of soldiers digging trenches. Tried to keep the
noise down boys when he was struck by a German
bullet a head wound. He lingered for a day before dying.
His wife, Ethel, was pregnant with Marjorie. Ethel had followed
(11:17):
her husband to Europe, but her roots were firmly in
Britain's imperial possession in South Asia, so as soon as
the war was over, she boarded the SS city of
Karachi to take her three young daughters home to India.
The liner was packed with the colonial ruling elite Christian missionaries, engineers, bankers,
(11:40):
but there were also army officers sailing east. They would
perhaps have been a stinging reminder that she was returning
to India as a war widow. Despite their strong ties
to India, all three Stephens girls drifted back to Britain,
(12:01):
and when Marjorie wed Cummins in London just after Christmas
nineteen thirty six, she said she opted to rent apartment
with her eldest sister, Frieda in order that my husband
would have a flat to come to for spending his leave.
The Air Force sent Cummins to bases right across the
British isles north, southeast and west in Scotland for one posting,
(12:25):
then distant Cornwall for another. It's not clear if Marjorie
closely shadowed these moves or exactly when she moved in
with Freda. At the outbreak of war, Marjorie was living
slap bang in the middle of England, perhaps the best
compromise given her husband's geographically erratic postings. She lodged for
(12:46):
the middle aged couple the Hipwards, and was listed as
being incapacitated, though her normal occupation was as a theatrical secretary.
The limitations of her long distance marriage seem not to
have saddened or worried Marjorie. We have been very, very happy,
and he has never been anything but kind and tolerant
in every respect. It was not his habit to consort
(13:09):
other women. Cummins, however, seems to have made the very
most of the separation. Cummins gave me and everyone else
the idea that he'd more or less cut away from
his wife. Flight Lieutenant William Pete, an officer at one
of cummins postings, thought the airman behaved far more like
(13:29):
a bachelor than a married man. Cummins used to boast
of his conquests of women, and when he had a
few days leave, he'd boast of his being with his
West End friends and used to say he didn't go
home to his wife. Beyond this, he never made any
reference to his wife in my presence. It also seems
Cummins wasn't sending much money home either. According to Pete,
(13:53):
the airman was the very image of profligacy. Every so
often he would be flush with cash and appear in
the local pub, and there he would treat all, what
are you having, bill? Very kind of you Gordon just
a kind of sludge. I'll take my usual Canadian rye
a double. Naturally, I have simple tastes, not your yearning
(14:16):
for the finer things. Such ostentatious displays of generosity would
cost come Ins the equivalent of several hundred dollars, and
usually within a couple of nights he'd be broke and
would not be seen again at the bar until he
was once again flashing of bulging Billfolt. Was he carefully
(14:38):
husbanding his military salary so that he could indulge in
such grandstanding, or tapping up Marjorie for cash? Look here,
I'm on the rocks. Perhaps he was getting money from
the women he boasted of conquering flight. Lieutenant Pete claimed
to have seen him in the company of wealthy women
(14:58):
at fine hotels in the nearby city of Bath, with
these women giving the air and money. Or was he
simply stealing it from them? If he did, he was
never caught. There was not a single black mark in
his RAF records. Cummins's own explanation of the source of
his wealth was more fantastic. In reality, he was the
(15:21):
son of the principle of a school for delinquents, but
he would tell anyone who would listen that he was
the scion of an aristocratic family, complete with a title.
When Cummings told me he was the Honorable Gordon Cummins,
I and others accepted that he was owing to his
manner and speech, he tried to create the impression that
(15:44):
he was the black sheep of a good family. Cummins
probably bridle that his humble status in the air was hierarchy.
He was said not to associate with his fellow rank
and file airmen, and he instead tried to cultivate relationships
with officers such as Flight Lieutenant Pete. His attempts to
(16:05):
impress his commanding officer, a revered aviation pioneer called George Stainforth,
seemed to have paid particular dividends. Just as in Marjorie's
father's day. The coming of conflict enabled ordinary servicemen to advance.
Wing Commander Stainforth now pushed for Cummins, who had spent
(16:25):
so long on the lowest rung of the Air Force,
to be allowed to join the RAF's officer cadet program
and train for duties in the air. That training would
see Cummins transferred to lodgings in London, not too far
from where Marjorie had now set up home with her
sister Frieda. But if Marjorie was hoping to see more
(16:48):
of her husband in his free time, she was to
be sorely disappointed. She believed that he chose to stay
at his barracks during the week and not at home
because he was conscientious about rising through the ranks of
the Air Force. Of course, far closer to cummins billet
(17:08):
than Marjorie, his home and fireside were the brasseries, bars
and women of Piccadilly. Cummins entered the dock at the
Criminal Court of Appeal and scan the public gallery. Newspaper
(17:33):
reporters saw him lock eyes with a woman. He smiled.
Marjorie deserved this tiny show of appreciation. From the moment
of his arrest and through his initial conviction, she tirelessly
agitated for her husband's release. She felt their original lawyer
had made a hash at the defense. Surely, in a
(17:56):
land where the law is supposed to be so just,
an innocent man cannot be hanged because his counsel didn't
know his case properly. The prosecution held that the small
fingerprints on a mirror in Evelyn Oakley's room and on
the cutting blade of a can opener conclusively linked Cummings
to the crime scene and the murder. Cummings original lawyer
(18:19):
had failed to shake the jury's faith in that argument.
The twelve men had put great stock in the evidence
of the nation's top fingerprint expert, Cheryl of the Yard.
According to Superintendent Cheryl, only five or six points of
agreement were needed to match a fingerprint to the digit
(18:40):
that had left it, and in the case of Cummings
and the prints left at Evelyn Oatley's home, there had
been at least twenty five such points of agreement. Surely
the judges would be independent minded and skeptical of such
cockshure testimony the incriminating fingerprint with tiny and incomplete ventured
(19:00):
Cumming's new defense lawyer. He fingerprint evidence is vital, Judge,
Mister Justice Humphrey, retorted, end of deadly significance. The guilty
verdict stood and Cummins would be returned to Wandsworth Prison
to await execution. Marjorie burst into tears as her husband
(19:26):
left the dock. He stopped to wave at her. Are
you missus Cummings Final chance? The senior detective asked Marjorie
as she stood alone in a corridor. Why, yes, yes,
I am. I'd like to offer you my congratulations. Whatever
do you mean? I'd like to offer you my congratulations
(19:46):
on your lucky escape. The detective's words infuriated Marjorie, and
she complained bitterly about the officer's conduct to the very
highest authorities. But to his seasoned i perhaps the thought
that violent men invariably turn their attention to their wives
did not seem far fetched. Such cases were, unfortunately legion,
(20:10):
especially as those violent men returned home from war. The
blackout Ripper will return in a moment. The men of
(20:37):
the first Battalion of the Royal Scots Fusiliers were feeling
hard done by fighting the merciless Japanese and the merciless
heat in the fetid jungles of Burma. They suspected that
their sacrifices were of little interest to those back home.
They grumbled that they had no British cigarettes to smoke,
(20:58):
and pointedly called themselves the forgotten Army. The message that
arrived the Fusiliers, Cyril Patmore, compounded their misery. Such correspondents
could bring military units to their knees, spreading disquiet from
man to man like a raging infection, until their commanders
(21:18):
reckon morrale was so low that the men couldn't be
sent back into battle. Kathleen Patmore was expecting a baby,
and of course Cyril wasn't the father. This thunderbolt was
delivered as an air graph, a short message shrunk down
on microfilm so as to save vital space in aircraft
(21:39):
heading to the war zone. It wasn't a particularly private
way of imparting sensitive news, nor did it allow the
writer to go into great detail. Heavily pregnant, Kathleen, cath
later wrote more fulsome letters. These were pages of sorrow
and remorse, My darling. I am wondering if you're caring
(22:03):
to get letters from me any more, but I feel
I must keep writing until I see you again, or
you tell me not to. Kathleen explained that in Cyril's absence,
she'd been out celebrating their wedding anniversary and his birthday,
which fell a week apart in November. The evening out
had meant a long walk home. Evidently I didn't make it.
(22:26):
I didn't go into it cold sober, Otherwise it would
never have happened. It had taken a full seven months
for that airgraph and this news to come. Shame, remorse, frightened,
call it what you like, but each time I attempted
to write to you, I just had the nerve. I
(22:48):
didn't mean to do it, sweetheart, Please believe me and
don't start a divorce. I just couldn't stand that fusilia.
Pat Moore showed these letters to the welfare officer of
his unit. In cases of marital infidelity, it was common
for soldiers to ask for the allowance paid to their
spouse to be immediately halted and for the process of
(23:11):
drawing up divorce papers to begin. War had brought upheaval,
tearing the fabric of society into pieces, and with so
many partners separated from each other, adultery on both sides
wasn't uncommon. Some tens of thousands of British servicemen had
(23:31):
initiated divorce proceedings, with one estimate suggesting it would take
something like fifteen years to clear the backlock. But Cyril
pat Moore didn't ask to join the tail end of
that melancholy queue. He just wanted to be allowed to
go home. I feel ashamed for you to see me
in this condition. Yet, how I wish I could see you,
(23:55):
to talk to you. It wouldn't matter what you did
to me. Afterwards. The clock was ticking down to the
berth and after three years away, Private pat Moore was
finally granted passage a ship heading home. That voyage, it seems,
was broken in the Mediterranean, and Patmore went supernir shopping
(24:16):
at an Italian market, where he purchased a six inch knife.
Behind looked, if anything, more like an aristocrat's stately home
than a hotel. The ironstone building, topped with a golden
(24:37):
statue of a deer, dated back hundreds of years, but
the hind was moving with the times. Parking for motor
cars had been added to compliment the ample stabling for guests.
Horses Behind had other attractions too. In nineteen thirty four,
its restaurant employed a dapper little waiter, Cyril pat Moore,
(24:59):
was no more than five feet tall, but he made
a big impression on missus. Kathleen Shore, the married mother
of one, entered into an association with Patmore and promptly
left mister Shaw, a shoemaker, and her home in the Shires.
Sixty miles north of London. This act of desertion was
(25:21):
sighted in Alfred Shaw's petition for divorce, and Cyril Patmore
was named in Kathleen's adultery. A daughter, Chrissie, was born
before the divorce. The record of this birth is missing
from the archives, but Patmore certainly thought of the child
as his and was there at the birth. I remember
when I was in your arms. After Chrissy was born,
(25:44):
wrote Kathleen, I was the happiest woman in the world.
The pain and suffering was soon forgotten. As early as
nineteen thirty five, Kathleen had assumed her lover's surname and
official documents, even though the pair didn't actually wed until
late nineteen thirty seven. They lived together at the very
(26:05):
heart of London. Patmore no longer waiting tables for the
horse riding set, but instead working at the Embassy Club.
This was a legendary private member's establishment, and it was
so exclusive that, according to one regular, even a duke
with an income of a quarter million, a great townhouse,
a yacht, a lovely wife, and one or two pensioned
(26:27):
off ones might have to wait at the door for
a table to become available. Despite the eyewatering membership fees
he'd already stumped up, but the merrymaking was coming to
an end. Kathleen gave birth to a boy just as
war was declared, and Pat Moore took a government post
(26:49):
as an air aid warden, perhaps out of civic duty,
or perhaps simply to supplement his income and provide for
his growing family. The couple also admitted a lodger into
their home, Frank Tobin, aged thirty two, and apparently following
a quarrel with Kathleen Patmore, volunteered to join the army.
(27:12):
When he went off to fight, first in Africa and
then the Far East, his wife stayed on in the
house with Tobin. The lodger was said to write to
his friend Pat and keep him abreast of events at home.
He also regularly gave Kathleen large sums of money. Two
more Patmore children were born. Some observed that the new
(27:35):
arrivals resembled Tobin, who was described as being too friendly
for a mere lodger. For many who had endured the Blitz,
with wave after wave of bomber aircraft coming to London
night after night, the new onslaught of pilotless rocket bombs,
(27:56):
brought a new kind of terror. The v Ones, the
so called doodle bugs or buzz bombs, were jet propelled
craft packed with explosives launched from far away Nazi based
They would burble their way towards their targets. When their
fuel ran dry, the engine would cut out, and those
(28:19):
on the ground would have just seconds to find cover
before the eerie silence was violently rent apart. At once
malevolent and inhuman, these new weapons unnerved many Londoners who'd
assumed that by nineteen forty four the worst of the
war was over. They proved too much for Kathleen Patmore.
(28:44):
She left London and her lodger to return to her
roots in rural Oxfordshire. Kathleen was descended from a line
of agricultural laborers, and she moved into a rented cottage
with her sister May. Her other siblings and relatives were
dotted around the farms nearby, and some of them were
already housing Kathleen's older children, As is sometimes the word
(29:09):
with families, Kathleen seems to have set up home amongst
her very fiercest critics her behavior in this idyllic corner
of England, safely away from the deadly buzz bombs would
prompt their ire, and that disapproval and their willingness to
gossip would have appalling consequences for Kathleen. In the summer
(29:36):
and autumn of nineteen forty four, the harvest in this
quaint part of England was reached by the Sons of Napoli,
Palermo and Brindisi. As many as one hundred thousand Italian
prisoners of war had been shipped to Britain following their
defeat and surrender in earlier campaigns. When Italy switched sides
and joined the Allies, all except the most fervent fascists
(30:00):
in their ranks were designated as cooperators. They weren't really
the enemy any longer. Those some Britons remained uncon vince
that they were reliable Allies. In any case, Italian men
performed a valuable service. Was so many farm hands away
at war and women increasingly taking up jobs in the factories,
(30:22):
who else was there to gather in the crops and
tender livestock. Italian cooperators could visit cinemas, but not pubs
or dance halls. They could only use trains or buses
as part of their work duties, and they had to
observe a curfew, though some communities grumbled that the Italians
(30:44):
were still allowed out too late. Raio its Ice fraternization
with locals was another saw point. You ain't insanni itarly
now mates. The cooperators could enter private homes if invited,
but women seen entertaining Italian men were treated with the
utmost suspicion. Kathleen's older brother, Horace, kept a beady eye
(31:09):
on her and on her sister May. I've seen both
of them going out at night with Italian prisoners of
war in the woods and returning to the house separately
as late as seven am. A laborer on the farm
where the sisters leased their cottage corroborated similar accusations. Their landlord, meanwhile,
was so scandalized that he reported two of his Italian
(31:32):
workers to the authorities and stopped taking any rent money,
hoping that the women would pack up and leave. Curiously,
May joined this chorus of disapproving voices, recounting stories of
Kathleen sleeping with other men. She even went as far
as to write anonymous letters to those in charge of
(31:53):
Italian cooperators, informing them that Kathleen had close ties to
one man in particular, I was afraid she was getting
too friendly with one named Fronzo Antonio. That though I
don't know if anything was happening between them, I made
this Italian understand that missus Patmore was a married woman
with children and a husband in Burma. In the spring
(32:15):
of nineteen forty five, Kathleen's pregnancy began to show, and
she was, perhaps unsurprisingly reluctant to take May into her confidence.
I thought she was pregnant, and she admitted she was,
but declined to discuss the matter with me. She was
very secretive in nature and told me very little about
(32:36):
her men friends. The bombs were no longer falling on London,
and soon the blackout would end, so Kathleen returned to
the capital. She left behind her children and a country
community roiling with rumor and gossip about the identity of
her next baby's father. Was it a yank or a
(32:59):
truck driver called Bill? The prime suspect was forty year
old Soldato Friendzo Antonio. Kathleen's new lodgings in London were
close to where the Italian had been sent following the
scandal at the farm. Sailing back from the war. It's
unclear if Cyril Patmore knew any of these salacious tales.
(33:22):
His letters to his calf seemed to have been optimistic.
Roll on the day when I can straighten things out
and settle down to the second chapter of married life.
That's going to be hard at first, However, we should
be able to get a little home together and live happily.
Ever after, Patmore's confidence seems to have evaporated on arriving
(33:45):
home from the Far East. A visit to see his
children in the Oxfordshire countryside opened up the floodgates to
the vicious and score settling gossip about his wife. With
her husband now in their midst, Kathleen's family spared not
a moment in apprising him of their views of her
total moral lag. May even produced a written list of
(34:09):
men she said her sister had slept with, and twelve
year old Chrissie was called as a witness to her
mother's infidelities, recounting how she'd walked in on Kathleen in
bed with the truck driver Bill. Patmore even began to
suspect that Frank Tobin had indeed been overly friendly for
a lodger and to doubt the parentage of his youngest children.
(34:33):
They're just like the bastard. The final straw was the
naming of Soldato Antonio as the likely father of the
child growing in his wife's belly, if it had been
anyone else but not our enemies. Kathleen's brother, Horace, witnessed
Patmore's growing confusion and anger and fueled it with his
(34:56):
own tittle tattle. But with Patmore planning to return to
London to confront his wife, Horace makes no mention of
trying to warn Kathleen of the soldier's grim mood, nor
Patmore's chilling and vengeful parting words. I will do her
in and I will hang for it, fusela Patmore was.
(35:19):
It turns out half right. The blackout ripper will return
in a moment. The soldier who approached Frederick Keeling's car
was covered in blood and holding a six inch knife.
(35:43):
The chauffeur was waiting for a fair just a few
doors down from Kathleen Patmore's new digs. Call the police.
I've done my missus. When officers arrived, Cyril Patmore directed
them towards the body of his wife and held out
the knife slick with her blood. I did it with this.
(36:04):
The kitchen of number twelve Green Hill Road was also
a wash with Athleene's blood. Her lifeless body lay face
down in it. She could not have survived such an attack.
But then a police detective saw a movement rolling the
heavily pregnant corpse over. He witnessed the final kicks of
(36:27):
her unborn child. The officers arrested pat Moore and drove
him to the police station, noting that he was keen
to tell them of his troubles. He repeated one lament
over and over to think it was an Italian she's
been going with. If this was the second chapter in
(36:49):
Patmore's marriage, it was a bloody Shakespearean tragedy. The soldier
had kept his word and done Kathleen in, But would
he hang the law of the jungle Cyril. Patmore wasn't
going to the gallows after all. The jury didn't think
(37:10):
he deserved it, and mister Justice Charles, the Old Bailey
judge presiding, was incensed with the twelve I am bound
to tell you. The liver man comes back, finds his
wife unfaithful, stabs her and she dies. He is guilty
of stark murder. The jury had heard witness after witness
(37:33):
outline Kathleen's supposed marital wrongdoings. In the witness box, her
sister May was asked if Kathleen had been consistently and
persistently immoral. Yes, she practically lived with the Italian prisoners
billeted in our area. Pat Moore had gone to Kathleen's
London home armed with the list of men's names May
(37:56):
had happily supplied, and with this Italian knife. I only
meant to scar her so nobody else could have her
but me. Kathleen's face did indeed bear the mark of
one disfiguring slashing cut, but she struggled, and I stabbed
her in the wrong place. He plunged that souvenir knife
(38:18):
deep into her neck, going as far as the lung,
a wound which would have proved rapidly fatal. He viewed
this woman as a possession and would not accept the
humiliation of its loss. For years, I've been waiting for
this moment to return and have you for my own again,
(38:40):
he told her, and I'm robbed of everything. Though peeved
that the jury had returned the wrong verdict, mister Justice,
Charles wasn't going to take his frustrations out on Patmore.
If the jury decided he was guilty of manslaughter instead
of murder, then the judge could show the soldier leniency,
(39:00):
after all, his unfaithful wife had behaved abuminably. As your
counsel has said, you were a solid tried, he told
the prisoner. If you had not been so solid tried,
I would have been bound to give you a very
very heavy sentence. Private Patmore, who the judge described as
(39:21):
a good man and a good husband, only got five years.
The murder of Kathleen Patmore in the final months of
World War Two was not, of course, an isolated case.
Doctor Mark Roothouse from the University of York is an
(39:42):
expert in wartime crime. Although the increase in domestic violence
is not reflected in the crime figures, there is plenty
of anecdotal evidence, particularly in oral testimonies, in memoirs and autobiographies,
that there was an increase in these things as individuals
who were processing very traumatic experiences turned in on themselves
(40:06):
but also outwards on others. Men who'd been exhorted to
sacrifice themselves and fight for home and family were being
demobilized from the armed forces, and many had the feeling,
like Cyril Patmore, that they'd be robbed of the homecoming
that they'd imagined that they felt they deserved. The very
(40:29):
same week as the Patmore verdict, another soldier stood in
the dock at the Old Bailey. Frederick and Lillian Hooker
had had eleven children together when Frederick joined the Pioneer
Corps and had been sent away. Missus Hooker was said
to have struck up a friendship with an Irish soldier,
(40:49):
something to which their fourteen year old son, Thomas, attested
in court. On leaving the army, Frederick Hooker said he
found his wife to be culled towards him, but despite
this difficult homecoming, he still worshiped her. That is until
he stabbed her. She drove me to it. She was
(41:14):
carrying on with other men, and I asked her not
to for the children's sake. I su I've done it again.
The jury rejected the judge's guidance that the offense was
murder and found Hooker guilty of the lesser crime of manslaughter.
Summing up mister Justice Tucker chided the twelve that their
verdict was sending a dangerous message. That is murder and
(41:38):
nothing else. If Parliament thinks fit to pars an act
that soldiers returning and finding their wives unfaithful may kill
them and that is manslaughter, it will be the law
of the land. Until that is done, it is not
the law of the land. These twin verdicts showing sympathy
(41:59):
for wife killers in England's most famous court, prompted much
comment in the newspapers, with one legal expert of pining
it is inevitable will be more such cases of killing.
One hears of so many wives who have misconducted themselves.
The refusal of these juries to send such defendants to
the hangman had deep roots in the prevailing culture. One
(42:23):
of the important things to note about the nineteen forties
is that physical violence is part of everyday life. Here's
Mark again. He says that from the beatings handed out
by school teachers to husbands clouting their wives, recourse to
brutality wasn't frowned upon, even by the police. The police
did not want to get involved because it got them
(42:43):
into difficult negotiations about what was acceptable what was not acceptable.
If the violence took place in a public space, then
the police would take an interest if it was causing
some kind of disturbance and complaints from neighbors. They would
also take an interest if the violence within the household
overstepped the mark and someone ended up being seriously injured
(43:05):
or worse than the police would take an interest. But
run of the male physical chastisement would be the kind
of thing the police would be very cautious about getting
involved with. In such a society where violence was a permissible,
even expected part of family life, Inflicting physical harm on
women was only wrong if the severity of the injury
(43:28):
outweighed the provocation. Kathleen Patmore had sorely tried her husband,
and Lilian Hooker drove hers to take her life. They
weren't bad men, thought the jurors. They'd just been pushed
to breaking point. They'd snapped. The crime of passion has
been around for millennia. Professor Jane Monkton Smith is an
(43:51):
expert on homicide and particularly on domestic violence. She rejects
the crime of passion defense, the idea that lover may,
in a fit of jealousy or after an appalling betrayal,
lose control of themselves and kill Jane's research has shown
that the crime of passion, though an established feature of
our cultural script, is nothing more than myth. It kind
(44:18):
of acts to defend, especially men who kill their partners
allegedly spontaneously. So there's some kind of dreadful provocation. They
in the moment react to that and things go a
bit far. Nobody could really have predicted it, and it's
(44:38):
a terrible situation. But of course that's not the way
these things play out at all. There is nothing, no
fact anywhere to suggest that the crime of passion narrative
has anything to support it, because all the research that
has been done in this area shows that there are
levels of planning. These homicides, despite what everybody really wants
to believe, are not spontaneous. Indeed, Cyril Patmore had time
(45:04):
enough between Oxfordshire and London to think about his marriage
several days. In fact, even if we believe his story
that he took a six inch knife to threaten and
to scar Kathleen, Cyril Patmore did not simply snap. He
thought about the grievous harm he wanted to inflict on
(45:24):
his wife, and then he settled on a determined course
of action to echo those judges that is murder and
nothing else. Had say the cuckolded poultry farmer Harold Oatley
finally run out of patience with Evelyn and her soho
lifestyle and taken his razor to her, or indeed, had
(45:48):
on rue Jouanne bickered with his wife Doris about her
return to the sex trade and choked her to death.
Would they have been sentenced to hang or just given
a light sentence. Would a jury have perhaps looked sympathetically
on leading aircraftman Cummings if he'd offered his wife Marjorie
(46:09):
then spun a defense in court detailing her immoral, unreasonable,
or nagging ways. As it was on June twenty fifth,
nineteen forty two, with all legal avenues exhausted, all appeals
from reprieved denied, Cummings was taken from the condemned cell
(46:32):
where he played distracted games of chest with his warders,
to the nearby gallows and the drop. The man dubbed
the most notorious killer since Jack the Ripper was no
more and his swordid crimes, far from growing in notoriety,
quickly slipped into obscurity. And this suited the families of
(46:56):
the dead and the survivors too, when the murders of
February nineteen forty two occasionally resurfaced in the newspapers, often
when one of the investigating detectives had a memoir. Note,
the victims were invariably referred to as prostitutes. When we
approached the relatives of the dead women for this series,
(47:18):
they politely decline to be interviewed. The shame associated with
the crimes has even suppressed conversations within families. Cummings not
only rob these women of their lives, his depravity has
also meant that their very memories have been erased. We
don't have any information about any of this, wrote one
(47:40):
relative in reply to us, as I'm sure you can understand.
It's not something we discussed. I was fascinated to learn
about this case that almost doesn't exist. It's not in
the press, you don't see it on tally. Michael Buchanan
Done is a London to a guide, an host of
Murder Mile UK podcast. He's done much to uncover the
(48:02):
truth about the valuable lives Cummings snuffed out. Hlne fits
should be that one shouldn't always exactly criss crossings, soho
Piccadilly and Paddington. Michael shows visitors the streets the women walked,
the bars where they drank and met friends, the places
(48:25):
they called home, and in so doing, Michael hopes his
tool groups will come to know the women as he does,
as real, rounded people and not simply as victims of
a killer. Evelyn Hamilton left in a freezing, dank air
aid Shelter was no mere corpse. She was someone who'd
(48:47):
known poverty and then dedicated herself to improving both a
lot of other working people and her own mind. Through determination,
she became a pharmacist. I mean, that's amazing for today,
but we're talking a hundred years ago. She's clearly smart,
she's clearly educated. She's quiet. But I think that's the
(49:07):
problem is that people of think about her shyness and
they equate that to loneliness, and I think that's a
big mistake when you look at her life. She liked herself,
she liked her world, she liked what she did. The
Soho home of Evelyn Oatley, who was so cruelly dismissed
as a mere good time girl, was demolished long ago.
(49:31):
But Michael's tour groups can still get a flavor if
the edgy, creative and bohemian neighborhood that drew Evelyn from
the gritty industrial north to the place where she became
hopeful starlet Lta Ward. Where she grew up, there was nothing.
She's got dreams of going to London to become an
actress and a dancer, and you want her so much
(49:52):
to succeed. She's not a good time girl. I think
there's an inherent loneliness there, and she's trying to find
out who she is and what she wants. Michael has
retraced the route widowed and bankrupt Margaret Lowe would have
taken selling sex in the area. She walks the perimeter,
the filthy square mile, as they call it around Soho.
But the secretive aloof woman that others dubbed the Lady
(50:17):
seemed an especially reluctant participant in the trade. Weighed down
with grief for her former married life and always afraid
of losing her daughter. And it's almost as if she
doesn't want to be there, but she knows that she
has to be. I find it tragic, but also I
understand her. I understand why she's holding onto those few
(50:39):
moments of her past, especially her daughter. Who she loves,
and she wants her past to return, the good past.
North of Hyde Park, Michael takes his tour groups into
the world of Doris Joanne, the provincial girl without a
father who counted societal prejudice against so called bastards by
(50:59):
never backing down, never taking orders, and always cutting a
striking figure. She's stylish. Everyone always looked at her and
you could see her coming. She always looked immaculate. Michael,
pounding the pavements amid the traffic and bustle of modern
(51:19):
London does in real life what we've tried to do
in audio over the series, give those long dead women
a chance to reach across the decades and be heard.
Michael's guiding ethos also sums up what we've tried to
do in Bad Women, and we think his words are
a fitting way to draw this season to a close.
(51:42):
Sodd Gordon Frederick Cummings. He's an asshole. I hate him.
He's arrogant. He does not deserve to live, and I
hate to say that about anyone. Whereas the women, I
fell in love with them, every single one of them.
I sympathized with them, what they were about, what their
struggle was, the amount of times have done a live
presentation then burst into tears because I think when you
(52:04):
see the victims not just as name age collection of injuries,
but you learn about all the quirks in their life,
You learn about the sadness, you learn about the joy.
It makes them real and whole, and you kind of
want to meet them and hope, hope that they survive,
but you know that they won't. Bad women. The Blackout
(52:36):
Ripper is 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 Guarino 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
(52:57):
recorded at Wardoor Studios by David Smith and Tom Berry.
You also heard the voice talents of Ben Crow, David Glover,
Melanie Gutridge, Stella Halford, Gemma Saunders and Rufus Wright. Much
of the music You Had was performed by Edgarchan, Ross Hughes,
Christian Miller and Marcus Penrose. They were recorded by Nick
Taylor at Porcupine Studios. Pushkin's Ben Holiday mixed the tracks
(53:21):
and 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 Fane, Carlie Migliori,
Maggie Taylor, Nicole Morano, Eric Sandler, and Daniella Lukhan. We'd
also like to thank Michael Buchanan Dunn of the Murder
(53:41):
Mile podcast, Lizzie McCarroll, Katherine Walker at the Royal Pharmaceutical
Society and the Earb 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.
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