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Bad Women: The Blackout Ripper

S2 E2: The Death of a Quiet Druggist

Bad Women: The Blackout Ripper

Pushkin Industries

History, True Crime

4.61.7K Ratings

🗓️ 11 October 2022

⏱️ 42 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Evelyn Hamilton has annoyed her bosses in the male-dominated world of pharmacy - they find her quiet and independent nature mystifying and odd. After an unhappy stint at a druggist shop outside London, she's landed a new job and a fresh start in a faraway town.

In February 1942, Evelyn sets out on her long journey – just as the Blackout Ripper is hunting for his first victim…

Join hosts Hallie Rubenhold and Alice Fiennes as they traces Evelyn's life and struggles; and with the help of Lauren Ober (host of The Loudest Girl in the World podcast) examine why the quiet pharmacist's demeanour provoked such hostility.

Sources:

Andrews, Maggie and Lomas, Janis. The Home Front in Britain: Images, Myths and Forgotten Experiences since 1914 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).

Diniejko, Dr. Andrzej. ‘A Chronology of Social Change and Social Reform in Great Britain in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries’, The Victorian Web, 2014

Neale, Alexa. ‘Case Files For Murder Trials: The Case of Cyril Johnson’, “Domestic Murder” She Wrote, September 2016

Webb, Laura and Webb, Kevin. ‘Selina Cooper: The Story of a Working Class Suffragist’, March 2019, UK Vote 100

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

A 34-year-old man was found bleeding to death on the street.

0:03.6

This man was Anthony Virgilio, Tony, to his friends.

0:07.3

Calvin Jones would spend 30 years in prison for Tony's murder.

0:11.0

And for 30 years, Calvin Jones would call my house and speak to my father.

0:15.7

What did my dad have to say to a convicted murderer?

0:19.2

When my dad died, he left behind a question.

0:22.2

Was he responsible for killing Tony Virgilio from Sonoro and Tenorfoot TV, the estate?

0:28.0

Listen to the estate wherever you get your podcasts.

0:36.8

Pushkin.

0:46.0

Evelyn Hamilton is dining at Maison Lyons.

0:50.0

Electric lights bathe the vast modern restaurant in a gentle glow.

0:55.6

She is on a company, and it's late.

0:59.3

Reserved and introverted, Evelyn spends most of her nights alone.

1:04.6

She prefers it this way, for others can interpret her quiet nature as

1:09.5

surly and rude. This has caused her no end of problems,

1:15.4

particularly when her male employers have taken against her manner.

1:20.7

After a busy evening, which included a touchy exchange with a hotel worker over a room,

1:27.1

Evelyn is perhaps just now especially appreciative of this window of solitude.

1:33.3

Her gold wristwatch shows that it's almost midnight, so she ready herself to leave.

1:39.1

She has a train to catch first thing in the morning to start a new job in the

1:43.7

distance city of Grimsby. But she will never make that train.

1:49.5

For dawning her coat and setting out into the black February night,

...

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