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Jack the Ripper wasn't biggest fear of 1880s Londoners [30min]

Former British Conservative politician Michael Portillo presents a series revisiting the great moments of history to discover that they often conceal other events of equal but forgotten importance. In the late 1880s, Londoners were certainly afraid, but not, as we might expect, of a top-hat wearing, knife-wielding psychopath. Michael travels from London's East End to its West End to reveal that the fear that stalked those streets was not down to one man, but to the catastrophic collapse of a whole way of life.
Read entire article at BBC Radio 4 "The Things We Forgot to Remember"