Jack the Ripper as we think of him, is an invention of the Victorian media. They took the complete absence of hard facts about the killer, and populated it with the period's anxieties, fantasies and fears.

We're joined again by Dr Bob Nicholson, presenter of ‘Killing Victoria’ podcast on BBC Sounds.

Edited by Tim Arstall. Produced by Freddy Chick. Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.

Please vote for us for Listeners' Choice at the British Podcast Awards! Follow this link, and don’t forget to confirm the email. Thank you!

You can now watch After Dark on Youtube! www.youtube.com/@afterdarkhistoryhit

Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  

You can take part in our listener survey here.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode contains descriptions of execution and torture.

To be Hanged, Drawn & Quartered. Put on the Rack. Impaled on a spike. This list paints a very dark picture. What was the reality of execution and torture in the Medieval world? Was it as bad as we think? Worse?

Guiding us through this very grim history is Matt Lewis host of the History Hit podcast 'Gone Medieval'.

Produced by Annie Coloe. Edited by Freddy Chick. Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.

Please vote for us for Listeners' Choice at the British Podcast Awards! Follow this link, and don’t forget to confirm the email. Thank you!

You can now watch After Dark on Youtube! www.youtube.com/@afterdarkhistoryhit

Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  

You can take part in our listener survey here.

All music from Epidemic Sounds.

After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal is a History Hit podcast.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today we step into the shadowy world of W.T. Stead—a Victorian journalist whose life was as controversial as it was groundbreaking. 

Hear how he uncovered a sex scandal which shocked the nation, dabbled in the supernatural, and also… predicted the Titanic disaster (and ultimately, his own death).

Please vote for us for Listeners' Choice at the British Podcast Awards! Follow this link, and don’t forget to confirm the email. Thank you!

You can now watch After Dark on Youtube! www.youtube.com/@afterdarkhistoryhit

Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  

You can take part in our listener survey here.

All music from Epidemic Sounds.

After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal is a History Hit podcast.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This 1897 New York murder case that has it all - a villain, an incredibly useless police force, and a duck who saves the day. The incredible Dr Cat Byers (@heymorguegirl) joins Maddy and Anthony to tell this story.

Edited by Tomos Delargy. Produced by Freddy Chick. Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.

Please vote for us for Listeners' Choice at the British Podcast Awards! Follow this link, and don’t forget to confirm the email. Thank you!

You can now watch After Dark on Youtube! www.youtube.com/@afterdarkhistoryhit

Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  

You can take part in our listener survey here.

All music from Epidemic Sounds.

After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal is a History Hit podcast.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Through the industrial fog of Victorian London, in one of the city's most notorious slums, a murder took place that shocked a nation.

The Bermondsey Horror, as it was called at the time, centred around a young woman and her older partner, and a wealthy man who was lured to their home one night.

How did the gruesome events unfold? What did Charles Dickens have to say about the public execution? And what was the social impact of this story?

Edited by Tom Delargy. Research by Phoebe Joyce. Produced by Stuart Beckwith. Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.

Please vote for us for Listeners' Choice at the British Podcast Awards! Follow this link, and don’t forget to confirm the email. Thank you!

You can now watch After Dark on Youtube! www.youtube.com/@afterdarkhistoryhit

Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  

You can take part in our listener survey here.

All music from Epidemic Sounds.

After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal is a History Hit podcast.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It was a murder mystery that gripped 19th century France and changed crime investigation forever.

Who was the body in the trunk? What were the groundbreaking techniques used in the forensics investigation? And how did the murder case unfold from there?

Taking Anthony and Maddy back to France in 1889 and through this story is historian and author Dr. Cat Byers.

This episode was edited by Tom Delargy and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long.

Please vote for us for Listeners' Choice at the British Podcast Awards! Follow this link, and don’t forget to confirm the email. Thank you!

You can now watch After Dark on Youtube! www.youtube.com/@afterdarkhistoryhit

Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  

You can take part in our listener survey here.

All music from Epidemic Sounds.

After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal is a History Hit podcast.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What happens when you're left on a desert island with a psychopath? This is a story so horrendous it would be hard to believe were it not for the skeletons left behind. Maddy Pelling takes Anthony Delaney through the shipwreck of the Batavia.

Edited by Tim Arstall. Research by Phoebe Joyce. Produced by Freddy Chick. Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.

Please vote for us for Listeners' Choice at the British Podcast Awards! Follow this link, and don’t forget to confirm the email. Thank you!

You can now watch After Dark on Youtube! www.youtube.com/@afterdarkhistoryhit

Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  

You can take part in our listener survey here.

All music from Epidemic Sounds.

After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal is a History Hit podcast.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For Albert Pierrepoint, execution was a family affair. His father and uncle were hangmen and from the 1940s until the late 1950s Albert was Britain's "Number One" executioner. Which meant he was the one sent to hang the Nazis who ran the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp at the end of the war.

Who was Albert Pierrepoint? What does it take to be able to execute hundreds of people? And what is 'The Drop'?

Edited and produced by Freddy Chick, Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.

Please vote for us for Listeners' Choice at the British Podcast Awards! Follow this link, and don’t forget to confirm the email. Thank you!

You can now watch After Dark on Youtube! www.youtube.com/@afterdarkhistoryhit

Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  

You can take part in our listener survey here.

All music from Epidemic Sounds.

After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal is a History Hit podcast.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today we’re going behind the foreboding doors of the Victorian workhouse to ask - ‘Could we survive it?’. From Oliver Twist's gruel to songs about flogging, from lice-ridden clothing to soul destroying isolation. Our guest is Oskar Jensen, author of "Vagabonds: Life on the Streets of Nineteenth Century London".

Edited by Tim Arstall. Produced by Freddy Chick, Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.

Please vote for us for Listeners' Choice at the British Podcast Awards! Follow this link, and don’t forget to confirm the email. Thank you!

You can now watch After Dark on Youtube! www.youtube.com/@afterdarkhistoryhit

Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  

You can take part in our listener survey here.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If you think your job is bad, have you tried being a plague doctor in 17th century Venice?

Join Anthony and Maddy as they wake up on a quarantine island and take you through a day in the life of a plague doctor, including the sights, smells and horrors of what you would have seen as you explored plague-riddled Venice in 1631.

Find out what they would have worn, what they did on their lunch break, and what the perks of the job were!

This podcast was edited by Tom Delargy and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long.

Please vote for us for Listeners' Choice at the British Podcast Awards! Follow this link, and don’t forget to confirm the email. Thank you!

You can now watch After Dark on Youtube! www.youtube.com/@afterdarkhistoryhit

Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  

You can take part in our listener survey here.

All music from Epidemic Sounds.

After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal is a History Hit podcast.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.