[suspenseful music] DON WILDMAN (VOICEOVER):
The ancient city of London is haunted by 2,000 years
of bloodshed and horror. For centuries, this
metropolis was so violent, not even the dead were safe. ROBERT STEPHENSON: People were
actually worried about having their bodies snatched. DON WILDMAN: This is like
a 10 on the creep-o-meter. Unbelievable. DON WILDMAN (VOICEOVER): From
the subterranean layers where Jack the Ripper
stalked his prey-- I'm picturing this man
carrying innards, organs of these women,
down into the sewer. DON WILDMAN (VOICEOVER): --to
ancient quarries that hid dark occult rituals-- This is a witchcraft mark. It's warning you,
down here is hell. DON WILDMAN (VOICEOVER): --we're
peeling back the layers of time on "Cities of the Underworld-- London, City of Blood." [theme music] [classical music] I'm Don Wildman. I'm in London,
capital of England, one of the great and
powerful cities of the world. But hidden in the shadows
of the magnificent buildings and monuments, there's another
much grimmer world at work here. The dirty, bloody
business of this city has always happened under cover
of darkness, concealed in dank sewers, grimy alleys,
abandoned buildings, murder and depravity lurking
everywhere, just out of sight. This great metropolis is also a
city of vice, a city of misery, a city of blood. And you can see
it all if you dare to venture to its underground. DON WILDMAN (VOICEOVER):
Located in Southeast England, the big, bad city of
London has always had a reputation for wickedness. In the 17th century, when 80% of
London burned in a great fire, some believed it was
a judgment by God. They pointed to the
date 1666 as proof that the Antichrist was
let loose in the world. But while the poor braced
for the apocalypse, secret societies run
by the ruling classes indulged like there
was no tomorrow. Some suspected that their
decadent fun included drunken orgies that were
celebrations of Satan. [dramatic music] Walking in these
streets today, it's hard to imagine that London
in the 18th century could be a brutally chaotic
place to live, but vice and depravity weren't
exclusive to the inner-city slums. In fact, some of
London's fancier noblemen were members of secret
societies, groups of jaded aristocrats looking for
thrills, throwing wild parties. But when they grew bored
with drunken orgies, a few turned to darker pursuits. And the only way to avoid the
prying eyes of a crowded city was to get out of town
and go underground. DON WILDMAN (VOICEOVER):
36 miles from London, in the town of West Wycombe, was
the subterranean headquarters of the Hellfire Club, a band
of aristocrats who indulged in sacrilegious orgies and
perhaps black magic rituals. So this is a couple of
hours outside of London. I'm in a meadow
here, climbing up to see that structure on top. Can you see it on the ridge? There's a church. It's actually a church built
by Sir Francis Dashwood, who was the guy who dug
the Hellfire Caves. The caves are 300
feet below the church. The church is named for
St. Lawrence, Patron Saint of Prostitutes. DON WILDMAN (VOICEOVER): I
met my guide Andrew Smith-- - Andrew.
- How are you? DON WILDMAN
(VOICEOVER): --in front of the church, which is
topped not by a cross, but by a large golden ball. DON WILDMAN: What
is that doing there? Well, that is where
members of the Hellfire Club would have stayed
and played cards. DON WILDMAN: Inside the ball? ANDREW SMITH: Inside the ball. DON WILDMAN: And this church
sits on top of the caves, right? ANDREW SMITH: 300 foot below
us are the very Hellfire Caves. DON WILDMAN (VOICEOVER):
Beneath this church is a warren of
tunnels and chambers, where the Hellfire Club met. But exactly what they did in
the dark is still a mystery. ANDREW SMITH: So Francis
Dashwood and everybody else in the Hellfire Club would
have come down this very slope to enter in and take part in
the ceremonies and the rituals. This is an entirely
man-made space? Yes, absolutely. Everything dug by hand,
bare hands, picks, shovels. DON WILDMAN (VOICEOVER):
These tunnels started out as a chalk mine in 1749,
commissioned by Dashwood to provide work for local
farmers who had suffered a bad harvest. But within a few
years, Dashwood had begun to transform the
mines into something else, a secret lair eerily designed
to resemble a cave leading down to hell. Wow. It's like a labyrinth down here. Yes. And it's quite easy
to get lost, as well. Some of the rooms are circular. Some are in a maze formation. DON WILDMAN (VOICEOVER): The
main passageway stretches for over a half-mile, opening
up into larger chambers, notably the 1,256-square-foot
banquet hall, before dead-ending
in a pool of water. In the 1700s, a boatman would
secretly ferry club members across this so-called
River Styx to the entrance of the top-secret inner temple. The confusing layout
was intentional. Sir Francis and his club
members had serious reputations to protect. Sir Francis Dashwood,
a member of parliament-- Yes. --aristocrat. Yeah, absolutely. He went on to become
chancellor of the exchequer, a great friend of the American
Benjamin Franklin, of course. DON WILDMAN: Benjamin
Franklin walked these halls? ANDREW SMITH: Yes. Dashwood's friends were all
the noblemen and nobility at the time. Other members of parliament,
judges, and aristocrats of the day, they were all
friends of the Dashwood and would all come out
over to here or where other meetings of the
Hellfire Club took place. DON WILDMAN (VOICEOVER):
Although the Hellfire records were all burned after
the last meeting in 1774, numerous second-hand accounts
claim that Dashwood appointed himself the first
abbot of the club. And the 12 founding
members were the apostles. They drank, gambled,
and routinely brought in prostitutes
they called the nuns. It was even alleged that
masked noble women voluntarily served as living altars
during black masses, a perverse satanic version
of Christian ceremonies. But was the club mocking
religion or seriously trying to summon Satan? It's kind of weird. I mean, these are the most
powerful men in Britain at the time coming down into
these tunnels, basically, to party in a ritualistic way. Why would they do this? It could be purely a rich
man's escape club, some sort of fantasy club. DON WILDMAN (VOICEOVER):
Whether they were actually hoping to raise
the devil or not, if Dashwood and his cronies
had been caught conducting a black mass, they would
have been disgraced or worse. The crime of sacrilege
was a serious one. In 1766, in France, a man
was tortured and executed after wearing his hat as a
religious procession passed by. Dashwood was tempting fate when
he built a clubhouse designed to mimic the mouth of hell. This isn't natural, what
I'm looking at here, right? No, this is all artificial. DON WILDMAN: I mean,
look at the detail that he has gone to here,
and all designed basically to give you a further feeling
of dissent, going deeper and deeper into hell. You must remember where
we are physically, as well. We're now 300 feet
below that church. And how bizarre that he's
built a church to God above, but 300 feet down below he's
quite possibly worshipping Satan. DON WILDMAN (VOICEOVER):
If serious devil worship did go on, it would
have happened here in the inner temple, where
new members were initiated into the club. We're now coming in to
the inner temple, the heart of the cave complex. DON WILDMAN: Everything has
been leading down to this space. Nobody knows exactly what
was going on down here. ANDREW SMITH: Well, because
of the loss of the records, we can't be 100% certain. But what we do know from what
has been told down over time is that there was pentangles
drawn on the floor. There would have been
chanting and the summoning up of the devil. I think for the new initiatives
to the Hellfire Club-- DON WILDMAN: Can you imagine? --it must have been
terrifying for them. Yeah. So you've been brought down this
whole cave system 300 feet down below. And suddenly, you're brought
into this bizarre world and told you can't tell
anybody what happened. [inaudible]. Lit all over by
candles and oil lamps. People in face
masks and things-- - Yes.
- --like that. Insane. They might have been truly
evil, or they may have been just a good old party, but it
seems suspicious to me that men of this import
would take their reputation and they really put it at risk
by having people even speculate what's happening down here. [heavy rock music] DON WILDMAN (VOICEOVER): As
rumors spread about the club, it became too
dangerous to continue. By 1774, the Hellfire
Club was finished. And when Dashwood died of
natural causes in 1781, the club secrets
were lost forever. Think of this in
today's terms, you know? Vice President,
Secretary of Treasury, I mean, politicians down here-- black magic rituals, satanism. Can you imagine what's
going on down here? And think of what that would
do to their reputation. Maybe it's going on today. [dramatic music] DON WILDMAN (VOICEOVER): In
the 16th and 17th centuries, Londoners lived in constant
fear of war, plague, and a supernatural terror-- witches. At that time, the
authorities portrayed witches as child-devouring servants of
Satan with supernatural powers. They could fly, control
animals, and savagely attack their enemies with evil spells. The truth was the
witches of England were ordinary women and men
practicing ancient folk rituals using things like good-luck
charms and herbal medicine. And buried beneath the
English countryside, there is evidence that some were
willing to risk getting hanged to keep their forbidden
traditions alive. I'm about two hours
outside of London because somewhere in this forest
is the entrance to a quarry system that dates back to 1200. We're going inside, where
you can find evidence of the practice of witchcraft
from hundreds and hundreds of years ago. DON WILDMAN (VOICEOVER):
Bedlam's Bank is a stone quarry in the
Surrey Hills, 40 miles south of London. The stone, dragged out by oxen,
helped build Westminster Abbey and the Tower of London. But the tunnels left
behind may have been the site of occult ceremonies. The quarry has been abandoned
since the late 17th century, except for cavers like Andy
Belcher, who's is guiding me through it today. This is the entrance? ANDY BELCHER: Yep. That is wild. I can't see the bottom here. So we're standing on top
of a quarry system that goes for how long? ANDY BELCHER: About
a mile either way. 10 miles of passages
down here, open passages. It's the absolute maze
of passages in between that makes it a really
interesting place to explore. - Right.
- Both metal buckles. DON WILDMAN (VOICEOVER):
And he and his colleagues made an eerie discovery
in the quarry-- cryptic symbols
scrawled on the rock. Witchcraft expert Ralph
Keaton is coming along to help interpret them. Y'all set? Yeah. OK, here we go. Yeah, this is a dicey,
little ladder, isn't it? You holding on? All right. OK, this must be the way in. This is wild. This is the beginning, the
entrance, to Bedlam's Bank. Jeez, like, this low in there. Good luck in there. [laughs] [groans] Kind of a working set. DON WILDMAN (VOICEOVER): It
would be incredibly easy to get lost down here, so Andy
showed us the route and debriefed us on the dangers. --away from each other. And whenever you see
anything like that, be really careful
not to touch it. Obviously, this surface, it
is as unsafe as it looks. So be very careful around here. So this place is collapsing? Slowly, but surely. DON WILDMAN (VOICEOVER):
Starting in the 14th century, the quarry was laid out as a
series of parallel galleries. The walls between
them were then chipped away, except for a series
of support pillars. Over the years, cave-ins and
boulders washed in by floods have obscured the
original layout. But we do know that the farther
we get from our entrance, the newer the tunnel is. Right now, we're inching our
way into the 16th century. Look at how low
the ceiling is. We can't knock this
because it's so unstable. The only place you can get--
the only way you can get through is crawl. This is the ceiling, all right? We're squeezing
through about 2 feet underneath of about 150
feet of English countryside and in an 800-year-old
mine looking for witches. Wait. This is all breaking
off in different ways. ANDY BELCHER: Yes. DON WILDMAN: So there's all
kinds of routes down here? ANDY BELCHER: Yes. It's an absolute
labyrinth, this place. It's very, very
easy to get lost. This is a really good example
of where the stone was cut. And you can see here-- Oh, yeah. --how it was done. So this is where they
removed a giant block of stone? ANDY BELCHER: Several
blocks of stone, yeah. It was all done with
a single-headed pick. DON WILDMAN
(VOICEOVER): The miners here had to battle
cave-ins, lack of oxygen, and their own superstitions. Caves were believed
to be portals to hell. The men who came down
here needed protection, and they may have turned to
someone in their own community, someone they thought had special
powers to ward off danger. So you can see the marks. You can see the evidence of
these men who were working down here in the dark, right?
I mean, this would have been-- Pretty much, yeah. --candlelight at best. Yeah. Well, it definitely is. I mean, the darkness would
[inaudible] your mind anyway. DON WILDMAN: Yeah. RALPH KEATON: And the
closeness of everything, you get claustrophobic. So they would try and
bring things down here to keep evil spirits away. OK. And would you find marks
like that around here? Yeah. And the galleries that
we're about to go-- Really? So they actually left
physical evidence of this? Absolutely. There are marks all
over the wall in chalk. DON WILDMAN (VOICEOVER):
Chalk markings are scratched all over the walls. Some are clearly surveyors'
marks assigning numbers to the 26 galleries
in the section, but others are more mysterious. DON WILDMAN: Ralph,
what is the sign? What's appearing here looks
like an R. It actually isn't. It's a diamond shape, if
you get this, with a mark. This is kind of a mark of
either an entrance or an exit. OK.
Mother Earth? Even inside Mother Earth. And so what you're
asking Mother Earth to do is keep alive, keep
awake, protect me. DON WILDMAN (VOICEOVER): Symbols
like this have been found all over England carved into old
house timbers and stone walls. Called apotropaic
marks, they are believed to be charms against evil. Ralph believes this mark was
made not by a coven of witches in hiding, but by
someone who worked here, someone skilled in pagan occult
practice, perhaps the same man who left a surveying mark
just a few feet away. If this is the surveyor
who's doing this, he's got some knowledge, who
may have been witch-orientated. So just to be clear,
witchcraft, what we now think of as an evil witch's brew and
all that sort of "Hamlet" stuff and all--
RALPH KEATON: Yeah. --this is not what
we're talking about? This is not what
we're talking about. No, witchcraft in this
sorts of case is-- was for protection. DON WILDMAN (VOICEOVER): Whoever
made these marks was playing with fire, literally. Folk rituals possibly
dating back to the druids were seen as a challenge to
both the church and the King, so the ancient
beliefs were banned. And as fear of witches grew, a
mere accusation of witchcraft could be a death sentence. Suddenly, you can have a
village where two women fall out, and one would call
the other one a witch. Yeah. And suddenly, she's
persecuted for being a witch, even if she wasn't. DON WILDMAN (VOICEOVER):
Torture was officially banned in 17th century England,
but the methods for extracting confessions from
an accused witch were brutal, including sleep
deprivation, isolation, and starvation. One irrefutable test
was known as ducking. RALPH KEATON: They
would bind your hands, put a big stone weight around
you, and chuck you into a lake. Right. If you floated,
you were a witch. But if you didn't,
then you were innocent. You were innocent,
but too late. DON WILDMAN (VOICEOVER):
Hundreds were found guilty and either hanged or burned
before the witchcraft laws were lifted in the 18th century, but
these markings seemed to prove that someone believed
the dangers of the quarry were greater than anything the
witch-hunters could dole out. Here we got some of the-- Oh, yeah. [inaudible] marks here. This is interesting. Look. This is interesting. V is female, feminine,
Virgin Mary, OK? This is a witchcraft mark, OK? It's a warning to others coming
down, but it's a protection. It's warning. It's warning you,
down here is hell. Again, look at the strange sign. Oh, yeah. If you look at that,
what does that look like? DON WILDMAN: It looks
like an eyeball. RALPH KEATON: Absolutely,
and that's what it is. It's the evil eye. I would think somebody's been
injured here at some point. And what they're doing here is
saying, we don't want any more. - All right.
- Keep it away. DON WILDMAN: So this is
your insurance policy? RALPH KEATON: This is your
insurance policy, yeah. DON WILDMAN: [laughs] Keep it away. Here we go. DON WILDMAN (VOICEOVER):
Some passages were just too small
for our camera crew. You can barely get this camera
through these spaces down here. DON WILDMAN (VOICEOVER):
So I headed off on my own with a small
night-vision camera. There's symbols
all over this cave. You never know where
you're going to find them. Let's see what we can see. So this chamber gets really,
really tight right here. I don't see anything. I don't see any symbols
around here at all. All I see is the tightest
space I've ever been in. All right. I got out of that little tunnel. Look what I find-- evidence of men hundreds
of years before us down here in the dark,
down here scared to death. And they would have needed
protection from somewhere. If they weren't going
to get it from God, they had to get it from
somewhere else, Mother Earth, from the witches. [dramatic music] [dramatic music] Overcrowding in Victorian
London was horrific, and it didn't ease off
much after you died. Church graveyards were so packed
that some rotting corpses were buried shallow, covered
in only 6 inches of dirt. Because of these
miserable conditions, cemeteries were hotbeds
for disease and magnets for body-snatchers. These desperate criminals
did a brisk business selling stolen corpses to doctors
and medical students, only sometimes the bodies they
sold were suspiciously fresh. As the nightmare of black-market
body-snatching swept the city, some Londoners went
to extremes creating elaborate subterranean
strongholds for the dead. West Norwood Cemetery, on
the outskirts of London, was opened for business in
1837, and business was brisk. The average lifespan for a
middle-class Londoner was 34. And in an era famed
for social climbing, everyone wanted the
best for their departed. This is the West
Norwood Cemetery. This would have been a
very exclusive address to have if you were a corpse. I'm meeting a guy named
Robert Stephenson, who's going to tell me how the wealthy
made sure they stayed here for eternity. - Hello, Don.
- How are you doing? Nice to meet you. Thanks for meeting me here. So in cemeteries like this, all
throughout the 19th century, people were actually
worried about having their bodies snatched. ROBERT STEPHENSON: Yes. It's a strange quirk
in this country, the medical schools didn't have
any natural supply of bodies. DON WILDMAN (VOICEOVER):
The 21 medical schools in London needed
over 1,000 corpses a year for their students. But since many believed a body
had to be intact for the soul to enter heaven, the only
legal source of specimens were executed criminals. So a black market was born. Cemeteries built high
walls and hired guards to protect the bodies, but the
desecrations continued and were virtually ignored by lawmakers
who wanted to support advances in medical science. Operating on tips from
church wardens, many bodies were dug up the night
after they were buried. But for those willing
to pay top dollar, West Norwood provided a safer
final resting place, a catacomb safely locked
beneath the chapel. DON WILDMAN: So this is
not publicly accessed? No, not to the general public.
Come on. DON WILDMAN (VOICEOVER): The
chapel was partially destroyed in World War II, and
the catacombs sealed up, but we have special
permission to go inside. Ha, look at that. Oh, man. This is like a
horror movie here. All right. [inaudible]. Do come in--
- All right. --to the world of the dead. DON WILDMAN: Oh, I
don't believe this. This is like a 10 on
the creep-o-meter meter. Unbelievable. Oh, boy. Coffins everywhere. There's just dead
people everywhere. DON WILDMAN (VOICEOVER):
At its peak, this catacomb 15 feet beneath
the chapel held 972 bodies. DON WILDMAN: --once
you're pushing the-- ROBERT STEPHENSON:
It is, effectively. They'll slide in, go in
feet first, head ends out. DON WILDMAN
(VOICEOVER): In addition to the honeycomb storage
units called loculi, there were 14 private vaults
where the coffins were stacked on shelves. These heavy, elaborate
coffins were brought down to the catacomb using the
height of Victorian funerary technology, a
hydraulic catafalque. DON WILDMAN: So this is just
one big jack, basically, bringing down the coffin below? ROBERT STEPHENSON:
Totally noiselessly. So there's mournful
families upstairs-- Yes. DON WILDMAN: --and
their loved one has dropped mysteriously down? ROBERT STEPHENSON: Out of sight. In Victorian England, I mean,
times were very tough then. I mean, you almost think that
the dead were treated better than the living. So the coffin gets
lowered down here. Yes. What happens to it then? Then it probably gets put
onto a trolley, taken over to somewhere--
- Oh, yeah. --just like this. Look at all those
coffins in here. So these are the lucky few? These are the people that could
afford to be put behind an iron gate, secure inside their
triple-shell coffins? ROBERT STEPHENSON: Mm-hmm. DON WILDMAN: These people
aren't going to be disturbed by any body-snatchers? ROBERT STEPHENSON: No. DON WILDMAN (VOICEOVER):
It took all these defenses to protect the dead because
body-snatching paid 20 times more than the average
working man's salary. They would use wooden spades
that didn't make much noise. They'd work very fast. And it'd very soon get down
to the level of the coffin. Then usually break
open the head end. DON WILDMAN: Yeah. So they didn't need
to take all the earth. They just wanted to get
the head end, usually a loop-- noose of rope around
the head to pull the body out. DON WILDMAN: Wow. So these gangs, I mean,
they got very sophisticated with their methods? ROBERT STEPHENSON: They did. And I'm afraid at the
end, it occurred to them they could shortcut the process. Why go into cold burial grounds
at night when you could perhaps kill somebody? Kill somebody on the street? Yeah, absolutely. Smother them so they didn't
obviously look as if they'd been murdered. DON WILDMAN (VOICEOVER): One
gang in East London notorious for giving their victims a
fatal dose of the drug laudanum went too far when they tried to
pedal the body of a young boy who was well known in the area. Two of the gang members were
tried, executed, and probably ended up being
dissected themselves. Cases like this led
to public outcry, and that spelled the
beginning of the end for the body-snatching trade. ROBERT STEPHENSON:
They passed a law that allows the
medical profession to get a hold of bodies legally. They had looked into how many
people died in workhouses in London. It was something like 3,700. So, well, nobody
wants the bodies. Why don't we use it
for medical research? And so from the
Anatomy Act of 1832 on, all those people out in the
graveyard can rest in peace? That's right. [dramatic music] [dramatic music] DON WILDMAN (VOICEOVER):
Today's modern London sprawls over 600 square miles,
home to 8 million souls. But who were the
first Londoners? Simple people in touch
with the natural world or bloodthirsty savages? Vital clues lie buried beneath
the city's outer reaches. Long before the Romans began
to build the city they called Londinium, there was a much
older civilization here-- Celtic tribes ruled by a
powerful class of priests known as the druids. When the Romans invaded
Britain, the Celts put up a ferocious resistance,
but they were no match for Julius Caesar's legions. The druids and their
religion were wiped out, but they may have left some
traces behind them, evidence of dark and bloody rites
buried in ancient caverns that were once used as
underground temples. Julius Caesar claimed the Celts
and their leaders, the druids, practiced human sacrifice,
burning innocent victims alive in wicker cages
shaped like giant men. Were his accusations
truth or propaganda? Some believe the answers can be
found under the suburban town of Chislehurst in the
ancient chalk mine known as the Chislehurst Caves. How are you doing?
- Hello. I'm Don. DON WILDMAN (VOICEOVER): I met
the owner of the caves, Jim Gardner, outside the
subterranean network that he's been
exploring all his life. So these are your caves, huh? They are. Thse are. DON WILDMAN (VOICEOVER): Just
70 feet beneath a public garden, we were entering a possible
lair of the druids. We're inside of a
mine that is how big? Covering about 20 acres. The theory is that if
you took all the passages and put them end to end, they'd
stretch for 20-odd miles. It's a vast area to
have dug by hand. ANDREW SMITH: The caves were
dug into the hill in three sections. The section nearest
the face of the hill is thought to be the oldest,
perhaps excavated by Celts in the 6th century BC. The Romans definitely
removed chalk from here to help build roads and the
great city wall around London. The medieval Saxons expanded the
works deeper into the Hillside, sinking shafts from above. Modern history found
other uses for the mines. In the 19th century,
smugglers hid contraband here. During World War II,
they were converted into an air-raid shelter
for 15,000 people. But 2,000 years earlier, druid
priests in blue face paint may have walked this
very passageway. The bit that we're
going through now is called the Druids' Maze,
and you'll see why in a minute. This definitely has a
ceremonial feel down here. It does because of
the echo and because of the fact that the place
is so tidy and so well cut. This looks like an altar here. DON WILDMAN (VOICEOVER):
19th century experts thought this chamber was
carved out by the druids, who worshipped in natural spaces
like groves of trees and caves. JIM GARDNER: The druids
definitely existed. They were a religious
cult, religious order, going back into almost
prehistoric times. DON WILDMAN
(VOICEOVER): The druids are believed to have been
a highly educated class of priests who ruled here for
centuries before the Roman invasion in the
first century BC. They left no written records. Most of what we know
about them comes from the brief battlefield
reports of their enemy, Julius Caesar. So wild theories have
filled that vacuum, and many started in
the Victorian era. Victorians had this
insatiable desire to have something unusual,
something out of the ordinary, sensational. DON WILDMAN (VOICEOVER): The
repressed Victorians latched on to the most lurid aspects
of druid lore, especially human sacrifice. The romantic history is
that the druids would choose a member of the
village, usually a boy, and he would have been laid out. On here? Yes. Throat cut, blood collected. So if a human sacrifice
was done, I mean, this-- you might be draining blood
right down here into a bowl. And that God would
have been appeased? JIM GARDNER: Yes. DON WILDMAN: Therefore,
the harvest would come. JIM GARDNER: That's right, yes. DON WILDMAN: Therefore,
warm weather would come. JIM GARDNER: That's right. This is not unlike the Mayans,
not unlike other civilizations, pre-Christian civilizations,
that were doing the same sort of thing. I'm sure it was the
same all over the world. People who live
in a state of fear will do almost anything to
try and appease whatever is making them fearful. DON WILDMAN
(VOICEOVER): There is no denying that this space is
ideal for primitive ceremonies. I mean, this is almost like
a natural speaker system here. If you were a high priest
in the dark in your robes, and you make a sound--
(ECHOING) hello-- that's a lot of sound. That's a lot of power. [dramatic music] DON WILDMAN (VOICEOVER): The
North Side of London's River Thames is home to many of
London's famous landmarks, and it was also the hunting
ground for two of the most notorious serial killers in
history, Sweeney Todd and Jack the Ripper. Both were media
sensations, and both may have used London's
sprawling underground to hide their crimes. This is Fleet
Street from the 1800s. This was London's nerve center. And like celebrity
newsmongers of today, the printers here churned out
daily tabloids, cheap scandal sheets, and true-crime books
known as penny dreadfuls. One of the most
notorious was the tale of Sweeney Todd, the murderous
barber who turned his victims into meat pies. Now, were his murders
cooked-up fiction or raw fact? The clues lie hidden in
the crypt and tunnels that run right beneath
these city streets. DON WILDMAN (VOICEOVER): I met
author Lee Jackson in front of St. Dunstan's church, a
12th-century landmark that is reputedly the spot where
Sweeney Todd's barbershop became a den of carnage. If Sweeney Todd's shop was
adjacent to the church, it and other shops nearby would
have access to the large crypt below, a perfect place to
conceal his bloody work. And so he did
his business there. He did his business there. And then he used the church
in a strange and unusual way. In a very strand
and unusual way. Shall we go and have a look? Sure. And the crypt is
this way, I think. All right. LEE JACKSON: Let's have a look. Oh, wow. Here we have the steps down. I don't need to mind
my head, but you might want to watch yours. Where are we in relation
to Sweeney Todd's shop? Well, the theory would be
that we would be directly below Sweeney Todd's shop. DON WILDMAN (VOICEOVER):
The story of Sweeney Todd first appeared in
1846 in a penny dreadful-- sleazy pulp-fiction
novels inspired by true crimes. According to the story,
Sweeney killed patrons of his barbershop, then
disposed of the bodies by turning them into
meat pie filling. The story sounds
far-fetched now. But at a time when 1/5 of
the meat served to Londoners came from diseased animals,
it seemed all too plausible. LEE JACKSON: Sweeney Todd
plays into this fear of where's our food coming from? Then there are hygiene
inspectors going around. There's no one telling you
where the food comes from. It's this suburban fear
that we have even today. DON WILDMAN (VOICEOVER):
According to the story, over a hundred missing
persons in London were victims of Sweeney's
specially rigged barber chair. When Todd pulled a handle,
it opened a trap door and tilted the chair
back, dumping the victim into the crypt below. A second chair was rigged to pop
up and replace the first one, leaving no trace of the murder. LEE JACKSON: The
victim tumbles through. Their neck is broken
on the solid stone floor of the cellar.
DON WILDMAN: OK. If it's not
broken enough, Todd comes down and with his razor-- Slits his throat. He then gets the
body [inaudible].. He drags it--
- Through here? Through here. DON WILDMAN (VOICEOVER):
Sweeney is said to have dragged the corpses through the crypt
to the nearby basement of Mrs. Lovett's pie shop using an older
passage that has since been blocked off. The hard bits she
couldn't use, like skulls, were brought back to
the vault and stashed between the coffins. It's actually the
smell, the miasma, from the rotting
heads and bones-- Yes. LEE JACKSON: --that comes up
through St. Dunstan's Church that, finally,
someone has a look. DON WILDMAN (VOICEOVER):
In the book, Sweeney Todd was captured and
hanged, and justice prevailed. 40 years later,
Londoners were again riveted by the tale
of a murderous fiend, but one who was all too real. LEE JACKSON: I think
Sweeney Todd added a lot to the interpretation of
Jack the Ripper, as well. In a way, Jack the Ripped was
the first sort of superstar serial killer, you know? The times were ripe for the
press to sort of go mad about. You had, you know, this
amoral, random, callous, cunning maniac. It's exactly what you see
in the Sweeney Todd story. DON WILDMAN (VOICEOVER):
In 1888, in Whitechapel, a neighborhood about a mile
from St. Dunstan's, a manhunt was underway for the
killer of two prostitutes. Then the police received a
letter from a man stating, "I love my work, and I
want to start again." It was signed Jack the Ripper. Three days later, two
more women were dead, and London was in panic. This is the heart of
Whitechapel neighborhood. And though it's hard to
believe, in the 1880s, this was part of
London's worst slums. It is here in these streets
that Jack the Ripper committed London's most infamous
and grisly murders. Somehow the murderer found
his way through these streets, killing five women without
ever having been seen. DON WILDMAN (VOICEOVER): The
Ripper's savagery electrified the entire population. Queen Victoria herself pressured
officials to find the killer. But the Ripper snuck away
from five bloody crime scenes without ever being caught. Some theorize the
secret to his success lay beneath the streets
in the sewers that spread under the entire
city, including Whitechapel. [heavy rock music] To explore the vast network
beneath the Ripper crime scenes, I need the
help of Robert Smith from Thames Water, who knows
all about dealing with the filth and toxic fumes of the sewer. ROBERT SMITH: Yeah, all right. That's it. This is the environment that
a desperate criminal like a Jack the Ripper would have had
to have gone down to escape walking around in the streets. If he wanted to
stay out of sight, he had to go down the sewers. Right this way. So I'm trying to imagine there's
manholes right over our heads-- Yeah. --all throughout the system. I could actually plan this
according to manholes. I could get down there,
kill, come down-- back down in certain places. There's enough
openings to do that. It's a possibility. It's a possibility. DON WILDMAN
(VOICEOVER): All five of the victims were killed
within easy reach of an escape hatch to the underworld. Built in the 1850s,
the London sewers were a modern wonder, the
biggest and best in the world. An elaborate 11,000-mile network
of mostly arched brickwork tunnels channeling deadly waste
out of the city to the Thames estuary, these tunnels saved the
city from devastating cholera epidemics. But because they were all built
big enough for cleaning men to move through them, they may
have protected a killer, as well. But even if the blood-soaked
maniac made it down here, he still wasn't safe. What is this chirping thing?
What are we doing here? [beeping] It's a modern-day canary. I mean, that's what
they used in those days. If a canary died, then it was
time to get out of the sewer. If this starts
really going erratic, then it's time to
make an orderly exit. All right. So this is a dangerous
environment we're in? Very much so. DON WILDMAN (VOICEOVER):
An even greater danger down here is rain. These tunnels fill
up in foul weather, and some that the
Ripper would have used are smaller than the
ones I was exploring now. Let's say we've got, what,
18 inches of flow there-- Yeah. --maybe 2 foot. So you're looking about 4 foot. That's how high they are.
DON WILDMAN: OK. ROBERT SMITH: He'd have to
be very aware of the weather and stuff that was
going on outside. And desperate and insane
and everything else. Yes. DON WILDMAN
(VOICEOVER): Insanity was the hallmark of
the Ripper murders. Three of the women were
horribly mutilated, slashed open with internal organs missing. So I'm picturing this man
carrying innards, organs of these women, down
into this sewer, carrying them back to
his base of operations. DON WILDMAN (VOICEOVER):
The questions remain. Why did he kill these women? And what did he want
with his gory trophies? There is a theory that
the Ripper was obsessed with black magic, that he
killed the women simply to get their organs
as ingredients for a demonic summoning ritual. Whatever his exact
motive was, it was as dark and
twisted as this maze 15 feet beneath the
streets of London. So this theory holds
water, no pun intended. London's sewage system goes
everywhere, OK, pervasive throughout the entire town. So this man, Jack the
Ripper, could commit a crime, drop down into the underground. He uses these tunnels,
these undergrounds, to his best advantage to escape. Eventually, he gets
away with murder. DON WILDMAN (VOICEOVER):
The imagination can run wild in London's
bloody underworld. But if you're exploring deadly
quarries, the secret chambers of a demonic society, or
sewers and crypts used by serial killers, the ultimate
terror isn't witches or ghosts. It's the horror humans are
capable of, especially when hidden away in the
dark of the underworld. [dramatic music]
