Nicholas Day
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How does a community form? How does it survive and adapt to change? This episode details the role myths and legends have played in establishing the rules of society and the punishments for those who break them.
The Pied Piper of Hamelin is an old tale of social norms ignored – and punished. The deal agreed with the mysterious Piper is not fulfilled and the town's children pay the price. But what are the origins of the legend? This episode will...
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We all think we know the story of Jack the Ripper. The most famous serial killer in history, the man who murdered five women on the streets of Whitechapel – and got away with it.
In this two-part Murder Maps special, we re-examine those notorious crimes. We reveal how the story we know today was shaped by the sensationalist press of 1888. And we strip back decades of rumour and misinformation to reveal the true lives of the five women slain. ...
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Death is a frightening, unsettling prospect for us all. Myths and legends help express and explore those anxieties. But they tell us about more than mortal fear alone, for in a culture's tales of death, we can see what it is they value in life.
In this final episode, we tell the ancient Greek myth of Antigone, who defied the laws of her land to bury her dead brother. We meet the most beloved and perfect of the Norse gods, Baldr, whose fate it was...
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Dr. Ruxton was an Indian born physician. He lived a quiet, respectable life in Lancaster but had a violent jealous streak. He had accused his wife of infidelity for years but in September 1935 Ruxton's jealousy got the better of him. He beat, strangled and stabbed her to death then did the same to the housemaid who witnessed the killing. Ruxton dismembered the bodies to remove identification marks and dumped them across the border in Scotland. Local...
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The First World War took the lives of countless soldiers on the front line. But one man in Paris too old for combat saw this as an opportunity. Henri Landru targeted the lonely and vulnerable women left behind by the war. He seduced them with promises of marriage and lured them to houses outside Paris where the women vanished. With the police uninterested in investigating the disappearances, two women took it upon themselves to pursue Landru.
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It is one of London's great unsolved mysteries. Late one evening in May 1957, an elderly Polish Countess was travelling home from a party when she was attacked at Gloucester Road Tube station. Stabbed repeatedly on the platform, she died in hospital later that night. Her killer was never identified and, to this day, there are only theories about why Countess Teresa Łubieńska was targeted. But could there be a clue in her past? The Countess had a...
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Three police officers were murdered in Shepherds Bush on Friday 12th August 1966 by Harry Roberts and two others. After the killing they went on the run and a huge manhunt ensued. One assailant was captured within hours, the second was found 4 days later in Glasgow but Roberts hid in Thorley Wood near Bishop Stortford and used his army training to survive for three months until he was finally arrested. The notion that someone had killed several policemen...
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In 1864, the body of a wealthy banker was discovered on the tracks between Bow and Hackney Wick stations in London. But the death of Thomas Briggs was no accident - it was the first murder on a British railway. The pressure was on for police to solve the crime, but nobody could have predicted the drama that was to come - the desperate flight of the killer and the cross-Atlantic race to bring him to justice.
Author
Language
English
Description
We all think we know the story of Jack the Ripper. The most famous serial killer in history, the man who murdered five women on the streets of Whitechapel – and got away with it.
In this two-part Murder Maps special, we re-examine those notorious crimes. We reveal how the story we know today was shaped by the sensationalist press of 1888. And we strip back decades of rumour and misinformation to reveal the true lives of the five women slain. ...
Author
Language
English
Description
It was a crime which shocked Britain. In 1878, a widow was killed in her own home - and the killer was her own servant. This was a murder which struck at the heart of Victorian society, at the sanctity of the home and the rigid divides between the classes. For the young Kate Webster did not only kill and dismember her employer – she stole her clothes, her property and her identity. And to the Victorians that was almost more monstrous than the murder...
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Forest and mountain, sea and ice – the wilds of this world are a rich setting for myths and legends. As this episode shows, the stories told about the wilderness – and the monsters feared lurking within it – can tell us a lot about a people.
The city-loving Ancient Greeks saw it as a realm of the divine – and a dangerous place for mortals. The Norse were master sailors, yet imagined the seas filled with terrifying monsters. The Celts of...