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S2 E4: "Lita Ward" the Soho Girl

S2 E4: "Lita Ward" the Soho Girl

FromBad Women: The Blackout Ripper


S2 E4: "Lita Ward" the Soho Girl

FromBad Women: The Blackout Ripper

ratings:
Length:
39 minutes
Released:
Oct 25, 2022
Format:
Podcast episode

Description

Though married to chicken farmer Harold, Evelyn Oatley has given up on rural life and returned to live in seedy Soho under her showgirl alias "Lita Ward". The coming of war has meant a boom time for those selling entertainment, liquor and sex to the servicemen flooding the area. It is in this world of dancing and drinking that Evelyn lives. 
But beneath a fun-loving facade, Evelyn is lonely. Her male callers help stave off this sense of isolation, but only temporarily. And it’s while working that she’ll meet a cruel and sadistic killer and take him back to her apartment. 
Sources: 
Iglikowski-Broad, Vicky. ‘The Shim Sham Club: “London’s Miniature Harlem”’, The National Archives, 5 February 2020.
National Fairground and Circus Archive, ‘The Second World War’, The University of Sheffield, July 2015.
Sladen, Chris. ‘Holidays at Home in the Second World War’, Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 37, No. 1, 2002.
Walkowitz, Judith R. Nights Out: Life in Cosmopolitan London (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012).See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Released:
Oct 25, 2022
Format:
Podcast episode

Titles in the series (18)

It’s a cold case like no other. In the fall of 1888, five women were brutally murdered in the slums of London. The attacks were so violent that the killer earned a nickname - Jack the Ripper. But everything you think you know about Jack and those murdered women is wrong. Historian Hallie Rubenhold uncovers new facts about the five victims - revealing the appalling treatment they faced as women in the 1880s, and completely overturning the accepted Ripper story.