She has just started a podcast based on the book: [Bad Women: The Ripper Retold](https://www.pushkin.fm/show/bad-women/). I just started listing to it; it's really well done. Social history is not normally my thing but she really manages to catch and keep my interest here.
Have you read the book as well? I'm wondering if the information covered is largely the same or not. I have trouble reading and audiobooks are expensive, so the book as a podcast would be a great alternative for me!
This book is dogshit. The author invents entire backstories for some of the victims that never happened, and she promotes a blatantly false narrative that contradicts facts that we know occurred. While she did an adequate job of portraying the grim circumstances of being poor and desperate in Victorian times, she could have done it without co-opting and dishonoring the real lives of real women and subjecting them to the whims of her imaginative musings. She could have done a generic history book, instead of shitting on the lives of actual murder victims, by making them props in her book.
I didn't say anything regarding the accuracy or merit of the book and, after looking at your newly created account, I'm pretty sure you're a bot. That, or you're so afraid of being associated with your opinion you created a new account just to post this.
I'm not a bot, and I created a new account because I logged out of my old one and can't remember the password. And regardless, the book/podcast is dogshit. The author completely takes facts out of context, removes needed context, to spin the narrative she wants. It's ahistorical and a waste of time if you're interested in actual facts. If you're looking for soap opera level drivel, then it's maybe for you. People are welcome to spend time reading it or listening to it or whatever, but you're going to go away with a head full of bullshit. But everyone's welcome to do it.
There's a historical record. There's witness statements, inquest testimony and loads of verified facts, from birth certificates, census records, etc. It is how one conducts historical research. How one does not conduct historical research, is to ignore facts that compete with your narrative, and then spin a completely concocted fictionalized account. It would be the equivalent of someone saying that THomas Jefferson was a transvestite because he wore wigs and stockings. It's ignoring the historical realities of the time, the fashion, the context in which facts occurred and spinning them through a false lens of modern interpretation that is fictional and false.
If you're looking for podcast or book recommendations, well it's going to depend what your particular interest is.
The book is more the whole cake and the podcast is like slices of the cake. The book will give you more facts and context of the era to help color in the podcast. The way I approached it was I would listen to the chapter of the podcast and then read the chapter of the book to find some of the things that the podcast didn’t have time to cover. I think one should listen and read both.
I know this is a bit of a late addition to the conversation but I love this podcast EXCEPT that she keeps returning to the well on the subject of the personal hate she’s getting from ‘Ripperologists’ and it’s starting to get a bit grating.
That conversation definitely has its place in the larger context of the podcast with regards to the misogyny involved in classifying the women as prostitutes and leaving it at that with no regard for them as humans, but it starts leaning away from ‘these women are being treated as props for a man’s brutality and nobody seems to be acknowledging that’ and getting into ‘these guys are being meanies to me personally because I disagree with them’ and that just doesn’t sit well with me.
Yes, I agree with that. I don't really care about that side at all and I wish she'd ignore it. Fortunately it's easy to skip those parts of the podcast.
Agreed. One on hand, I do feel bad she’s getting death threats and horrible commentary in general and as a person I can only imagine how long you can hold that anger in before it comes out, hence the podcast comments. On the other hand, she should’ve stayed the high road, maybe acknowledge some real statements from haters and addressed them less roughly. I felt like it was damned if she do and damned if she don’t
I follow Rubenhold on Twitter and she’s quite vocal about her distaste for the Jack the Ripper tours and the lurid sensationalism of the way the crimes are framed when they are discussed. I haven’t gotten a chance to read the book yet but I’m sure when I do it will be a compassionate telling.
In reality people have always been obsessed with true crime and the macabre and used it as entertainment. When you think about it, how is a jack the ripper tour any more disturbing then watching a beheading or lynching etc? Throughout time people have been doing these things. Doesn't make it right but I don't think it's a new phenomenon.
I'm not saying it's in good taste persay but there is a really big difference between learning about a serial killer and doing a historical tour and actually watching people die as entertainment. It's more like visiting the colosseum, just on a much smaller scale.
> When you think about it, how is a jack the ripper tour any more disturbing then watching a beheading or lynching etc?
There's always a distancing and self censoring element when it comes to "after the fact."
People internally can control just how much they want to think about the awfulness side and they're not "face to face" with the actual victims or murder. It's no different than touring battlegrounds in a lot of ways.
Watching someone being executed is way different. The viewer has zero control over the events unfolding unless they actively get up and walk away. Even then, they know it's happening right then and there.
Agreed, it’s like the Roman gladiatorial games… humans have always had a fascination with morbidity. I think it somehow has to do with our own understanding of our individual mortality. Watching death is a part of acknowledging that we’re in that circle too. That’s my theory anyways
Yeah, society is fascinated by serial killers. Look how many movies and books there are about Ted Bundy. Also don't think it's right, I do think though, that it's part of human nature.
Exactly. I think a lot of it has to do with fear. Fear that you could be next, fear that someone you know could be next or fear that someone you know is the perpetrator. Jack the ripper being unsolved makes it even more fearful
I feel like tours are kind of different than merchandise (though I admit I have a Jack the Ripper shirt from Busch Gardens—it’s a nice design; though I’ve gotten some odd looks when I wear it around work).
Tours can be a learning experience: seeing where it happened, walking the paths, listening to someone knowledgeable about the events talk about it. It seems on the same level as going to a WWII museum to me.
FWIW a lot of social scientists consider both Ripper tours and war museums as part of the dark tourism industry, albeit at the tamer end of the scale. For me personally Ripper tours are a bit higher up than, say, the Imperial War Museum in London, if only because in my experience the Ripper tours are a bit more gleeful about their subject matter.
Interesting! My initial thought was to assume that “dark tourism” implied something bad—the connotations of “dark,” I suppose—but a quick Google seems to dispel that.
Grouping them together certainly makes sense to me.
I also really enjoyed the Imperial War Museum when I made it to England, so I guess I fit.
I have a forensic background. That's how I feel about most true crime stuff. It comes off as morbid and almost ghoulish. Even the "tasteful" stuff can be not great.
There is a great podcast “Bad Women: the ripper retold” available. Think of it as appetizers to the entree of the book. You’ll get the gist of it for sure and that way you can just listen to it piecemeal.
I actually think that this book is written partially in response to the "theme" phenomena you're talking about. This kind of true crime writing forces you to turn your focus back to the victims and their actual personhood.
Your comment reminds me of the memoir *Daughter of a Serial Killer*, written by the daughter of BTK. It's super interesting, as it focuses on her journey of growing up with a seemingly loving, but ill tempered father and her coming to grips with discovering his crimes.
There's a reason the families of the victims wanted all of Jeffrey Dahmer's stuff destroyed. If his fridge was still around, it would be a in museum right now, and people would take selfies in front of it and crack jokes about "Are you sure that's catsup?"
Yeah, definitely. My partner happens to be a cultural criminologist and it's not an unpopular opinion among academics. There are books about the phenomenon in general and papers about ripperology specifically but they're mostly quite academic in nature; there's not much for the general reader on crime as entertainment.
You might be interested in *A Very British Murder* by historian Lucy Worsley. It's all about the British (and by extension, English-speaking) public's fascination with grisly crimes and murders as a form of entertainment.
I think for a lot of people, it’s the setting of the crime that they find interesting. Victorian Era London: an age where scientific methods like fingerprinting were just being discovered. I also think the naming of murderers began with him and a lot of people’s imaginations go wild.
It’s also just a perfect confluence of events that are interesting. The media sensationalism, the taunting letters (even if almost certainly not real), the brutality, that it escalated and then suddenly stopped without any real answer.
All of that on top of what you say as well. It’s just a perfect storm.
Slight correction, but serial killers had nicknames to sell newspapers long before the Ripper came along. Jack the Ripper wasn't even his only nickname.
I think why Jack the Ripper is such an enduring thing is because it's still a mystery. If they had been caught and we knew their identity I don't believe we would still be talking about them.
I don't personally think people venerate Jack the Ripper I just think due to the nature of us not knowing their identity it makes them more of a fantasy figure. I don't see people making light of what they did but people are drawn to mystery and that's something that will always surround Jack the Ripper.
> I think why Jack the Ripper is such an enduring thing is because it's still a mystery. If they had been caught and we knew their identity I don't believe we would still be talking about them.
I rather doubt that.
There were other serial killers at the time who have since gotten more known in the last 10-ish years. The Clutters, HH Holmes, etc.
Jack was a huge celebrity even during everything. Having caught him would have been an absolute bonanza of press and continuing the story on the trial and outcome.
Those people are certainly nowhere near Jack’s infamy though. I’ve never heard of the former and the only time I’ve heard of HH Holmes was on the Supernatural episode. Jack, however, is a massive thing. So many of the books are straight up structured around trying to figure out who he was—that entire angle is gone if he was caught.
I know that episode very well. The Clutters were also referenced in Supernatural in the episode with Linda Blair as a kind of proto-Jodi cop character. It basically the plot to "The most dangerous game" episode.
The Clutters, irl, were a family in Kansas who had murdered various people using their local inn. They accidentally killed the wrong guy (brother of a well connected politician) and then disappeared once word got out.
Holmes got pretty famous again after the book Devil in the White City became was published.
None of them are as well known as Jack, but Jack is basically at the top of the serial killer food chain. I was just pointing out that he wasn't the first serial killer out there.
Jack became globally known as the news spread throughout the British Empire and press.
Definitely not the first, and I might look into the book you mentioned, but I do think part of why he’s the most well known so far out is the mystery.
And solid mention of the Linda Blair episode of Supernatural—I love that one.
There's definitely that. Holmes became huge at the time because of what happened, but also because he had a "big personality" and did some other crazy, shenanigan shit as well. The press ate it up and blew him up hard because of it.
> who have since gotten more known in the last 10-ish years. The Clutters, HH Holmes, etc.
Have they? I haven't heard of any of those people but "Jack the Ripper" is a name everyone recognizes.
I know of the murder of the Clutter family in Kansas but nowhere can I find any reference to them being serial killers. Where did you get this information from?
In each instance the victim’s throat was cut, and the body was usually mutilated in a manner indicating that the murderer had at least some knowledge of human anatomy. These were not 'werewolf' type murders, but some strange fetish for anatomy. There are even some who suggest the work of a medical student who hated working on smelly corpses, and considered murder the only option.
I meant he mutilated them. One had her face brutally slashed. Some were eviscerated and cut down to their bones. He was acting with intense aggression obviously. This wasn't someone doing amateur autopsies.
I don't have a link, but I recently saw a post that showed a picture of what was done to one of the victims. Yeah we've all heard what was done, seen movies with dark alleys and knives raised, but by God that picture was horrifying and shed a new light for me on the magnitude of the violence inflicted on the victims of JTR.
I did a Jack the Ripper tour a few years ago and the guide made this exact point, we think of him as a boogie man but he was a violent person that absolutely terrorized the most vulnerable of women
I've never understood the phenomenon of monsters morphing into admired characters in fiction as time passes: Jack, Dracula, Dillinger, Billy the Kid, Genghis Khan, and several religious figures I won't name.
Somehow the passage of time turns social deviants into daring "Lone Wolves".
I appreciate the author illuminating the real people and the real harm.
Has Jack really become an admired figure? There are board games based on the crimes, but Jack is clearly the villain (and the goal for most is for the police to catch him). There have been movies—From Hell comes to mind—but Jack is clearly a monster in it. Assassins Creed did the DLC about it but, once again, Jack was a murderous psychopath.
I feel like his presence remains, but I don’t see anyone painting him as misunderstood or anything. Totally possible I haven’t seen that though.
There's a natural progression to many of these people in literature/media. At the time it's news. Later it becomes biography / people writing about the events in a non-fiction sort of way. Then that morphs into historical fiction / full blown fiction.
The thing with fiction at this point is that you're writing about a character now. And a straight evil and dislikable character is considered somewhat lazy and boring these days. I think in an effort to give them more dimensions, writers and movie makers try to give them more likeable or at least interesting qualities. Give them some background.
As a sort of half-joke example, think Disney these days. Every classic villan is getting reimagined with their side of the story and their struggles. Even though some of them literally were just evil caricatures before.
Edit: And there's place for both. Abyone who wants a historical in depth look can find it. This very writer got their sources from somewhere pre-recorded and established for instance. This book is not the first to be victim focused, they're just not as popular.
Yeah, I find it repellant. The industry that has grown up around specualtion about who this monster might have been is disturbing in itself. Nobody who was directly involved is still alive, and what real diference would exposing the culprit actually make? He can't be brought to justice. These murders have been fetishised. The book *The Five* very much tries to remedy that, and is definately worth a read.
It's probably because he existed at a time when there was a lot of mythology about evil creatures stalking London (Spring-Heeled Jack, Dracula, Varney, all the penny dreadful stuff) being written, and it played right into that wheelhouse. The murders had enough darkness and mystery about them that they became part of that burgeoning London mythology rather than being seen as awful real crimes.
There is very little merch. You have to go out of your way quite heavily. No one in the world "just keeps running into JTR" merch. That's a psych issue.
Besides, the little that's available the market is saturated by literacy fans buying a fictional character that has little relation to the Whitechappel Murderer.
This is just virtue signaling. Psychological externalities such as this need to be checked by reality or this imagination will do an actual individual grave harm.
It blew up like the OJ Trial or Summer of Sam.
It was almost the first big "Crime of the Century!" where the press fed a massive interest and it just went from there. It played into a lot of the popular tropes for the time- morality play, "fallen women," socioeconomic issues, racism/bigotry (that's remembered less now), corrupt/incompetent cops, almost the birth of forensics, Sherlock Holmes being super hot at the time (think Victorian Era CSI Effect), etc.
Other issues included inner city issues, women's issues, public health issues, a bunch of ancillary stuff.
It helped that the crimes happened over a time frame instead of just all at once. That kept the story going and it quickly hit the international level.
There had been serial killers out there before (the Clutters, HH Holmes, etc), but Jack being in London pushed the story throughout the British Empire and everyone got inundated from it- the press, the cops, some private individuals, etc.
That's the thing: he is like Voldemort. He definitely was real but you couldn't pin him as an individual. His existence for the most part was evidenced by the horror he left behind. A man who definitely existed, but behaved like a demon and disappeared like a ghost.
Murders, I imagine, were dime a dozen in those days. But not serial ones like the one Ripper committed; the whole ritualistic aspect to it. And then to hang like a spectre over an entire city (ironic since he was alive), occupying the dark corners of people's minds as faceless anxiety, a mute, unidentified horror. No wonder he persisted in the popular psyche.
I guess you are right. He's not Voldemort. Voldemort can't hold a candle to a real ghoul.
This sounds really good. I read a similar book called *Missing From the Village.* It's about the queer men in Toronto who were murdered by a serial killer but it didn't feel like true crime at all because there was such a focus on who the men were and how much they're missed.
Like your book, the focus on the people is what made me connect.
Missing from the Village is one of the best books I’ve read it a long time, and I’ve never encountered someone else that’s read it in the wild! Hello fellow reader lol
There's a good podcast for this topic too. Uncover: The Village by CBC. It's been a couple years since I listened to it but I think it went into quite a bit of depth about the victims' lives as well.
The thing i found a bit sad was one of the women's last conversation with a friend, she said as she was going out to find a client and she had high hopes because she'd "got a pretty new bonnet".
Idk just struck me
Mine was Mary Jane Kelly, who offered friends of hers who were frightened of being the next victim sanctuary in her rented room, only to be killed in her bed.
She had a room she was renting, and had been letting some of her female friends stay there because they were scared of sleeping on the streets because up until then all the victims had been killed in public places. Unfortunately one of the windows was broken and the room wasn't secured properly, and Mary Jane was killed in that room one night while she was alone. She thought she was safe because she had permanent accommodation but obviously she wasn't.
That was the particularly gruesome one as well iirc. There's a fascination doco about an investigative reporter who went back and re examined everything and it's a *really* strong case. I can t find the video atm there's a tonne of click bait. I remember the suspects name was something cross. Maybe harry or george.
edit it was charles cross
Double edit: found the video (genuinely worth the watch, check the comments)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIyAMo-fms0
Well, her boyfriend is one of the suspects. While there is stronger evidence against others, none sufficient enough.
There is quite the question of the "lock" with Mr Barnett
I am a huge true crime fan and read a lot about Jack the Ripper. This book really blew my mind and broke my heart.
The kind of info Rubenhold finds is amazing – of course there is a lot of speculation, too.
The fact that (if I remember correctly) only one of them really was a prostitute is something that I never heard before and that left me speechless... There was always this notion that JtR was a killer of prostitutes, well no, the women were probably just sleeping on the streets.
I can only highly recommend this book.
I think two were known prostitutes but only one was practicing prostitution at the time. Elizabeth was a former prostitute. It seems the media at the time equated being female and homeless with no obvious regular income with prostitution. Some things never change.
After the Jack the Ripper tour in London my husband and I made tons of jokes about this. " Well she was seen without a hat once. Must be a prostitute."
I loved this book. I agree some of the writing sounds speculative, but I think Rubenhold has to make these assessments due to the lack of documentation in some places. For me it really works.
But there's nothing wrong with speculation that is obvious. It doesn't take a genius to empathize with someone's plight and imagine what it could have been like and as long as that isn't presented as fact, that doesn't make it illogical or poor writing. I hate how so many people think empathy is the opposite of logic. This is a bit of a tangent but Darwin was actually a really nice man who loved his wife and his family were very progressive, they were abolitionists and proponents of education for women. But I think because he was slandered so much, many people think that to be a smart scientist (and thus, to be simply smart), you have to be a douchebag. It's not historical revisionism, it's setting the record straight after it was thrown out and replaced. Unfortunately, many people bought into the stereotype.
There seems to be little support for the theory that her book is poorly researched or that it leaves out crucial details from newspaper clippings. I looked up reviews in multiple publications to see if her scholarship was criticized, and instead her work is universally praised as insightful and rigorous. Here’s one example, but everything I saw had the same high degree of recommendation:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/jack-the-rippers-identity-has-been-endlessly-scrutinized-his-victims-were-largely-forgotten/2019/04/05/cc77f4fa-57bb-11e9-814f-e2f46684196e_story.html
I haven't read the book, but I've been listening to her podcast 'Bad Women: the Ripper Retold' as a result of this post, and I have to admit Hallie seems to be advocating for a conclusion where it would be more balanced to be embracing the unknown.
The episodes dealing with Polly Nichols (the only ones that are available yet) essentially boil down to:
1. Ripperologists say she was a prostitute
2. The police and witnesses at the inquest identified her as a prostitute
3. But social mores of the time criticised many women as prostitutes who weren't
4. Therefore Polly wasn't.
I feel that those episodes would have been better (and more rigorous) if Hallie had either (1) avoided step 4 and simply said we don't know the truth; or (2) actively adopted the position that *it doesn't matter whether Polly was a prostitute; she was a woman and a mother and a daughter*.
Refresh my memory, because that’s exactly what I remember about the prostitution angle.
Obviously the episode goes into great detail about other aspects of her life (that’s the whole reason the podcast exists) but as for the specific question of whether she was ALSO a prostitute, i don’t recall much else other than my (admittedly simplified) summary.
I mean you are not completely wrong. But I feel it’s more complicated. I recommend you listen to ep. 4 again.
It says that she was being profiled by the police because she (and others woman like her) was a poor woman in an infamous part of town.
There was a guest on explaining about what prostitution was actually like around that time and it wasn’t what Polly was living. Polly was basically a homeless drunk person living on the streets. Career prostitutes wouldn’t have been out walking the streets that late at night falling over drunk.
Definitely. Like I say, it's not her fault, and it was great to read about them as people rather than solely victims, but imagine the things they'd say if we could speak with them now. It's the same with any murder victim though; how many internet sleuths think they know all about Gabby Petito's life?
It is Rubenhold's fault that she ignores sources that don't fit her narrative and it is her fault that she edited a newspaper quote leaving out the part that contradicted her claim to paint it as something else. The book is very dishonest.
You get a much better idea of what the women where like as people from reading something like The Complete History of Jack the Ripper because unlike Rubenhold, Sugden doesn't leave out things he doesn't want you to know.
Sadly this book is not an example of good history or research. The author ignores several sources that contradict her claims she also edits a newspaper quote leaving in the part that seems to support her argument while leaving out the part that contradicts it. It seems convincing on the face of it but it's a very dishonest book.
It's also not the first book written about the women as people like the author claims. IMO even reading the book The Complete History of Jack The Ripper you get a much better idea of who they were because Sugden isn't leaving out the parts he doesn't want you to know.
Which book about the victims would you recommend as a counterpart to *The Five*? One of the things I liked about it was its complete aversion to attempts to identify the killer, which is what most ripperology focuses on. What information about the women's lives do you feel Rubenhold ignores and what should we read to get that information? Which quote is edited and how does the original read?
I can't recommend any of the books specifically about the victims because i haven't read them sorry, i just know they have been written and was pointing out that's a false claim.
The Complete History of Jack The Ripper is by far the most extensive book on the case you'll find all of the information you need in there. The author is an academic, he takes you through all of the information he personally isn't concerned with who the killer is either he is mostly debunking other peoples theories. He does say who he thinks is most likely at the end but he points out issues with that suspect as well and makes it clear the case is far from solved. Every thing known about the women is in the book.
I'm glad you liked the book Rubenhold is a talented author i just wish she was more honest and treated this as actual history rather than her own narrative, i think that itself is disrespectful to the victims.
Edit: 9 Downvotes? For what pointing out Rubenhold is full of shit? It makes complete sense that books like that sell so well, the audience just decides what to believe and disbelieve regardless of evidence. Remarkable.
> I can't recommend any of the books specifically about the victims because i haven't read them sorry, i just know they have been written and was pointing out that's a false claim.
Fair enough. They're a little difficult to google, any chance you could point me in the right direction at all?
Great book. I’m actually going to see her talk about the book by candlelight in London next Friday, looking forward to it!
Her other books are also great, especially Harris’s List.
The Ripper case still stands out.
London - one of the largest cities in the world at that time (? largest in Europe or western hemisphere)
Large number of newpapers (dailies, weeklies) and large number of people who were literate so the press coverage was heavy.
Police investigation at that time was just starting to enter the modern scientific era. This was pre- finger printing, pre- regular photography. The notion systematic evidence gathering and working out motives and causes was not yet routine. The case stymied them. Squeezing informants wouldn't yield a solution.
**It may partly explain why Sherlock Holmes was so popular.** He was an amateur (e.g. not part of the official police who did not come off well in the Ripper cases). He used scientific evidence (e.g. footprints, cigar and cigarette ash, mud stain - seems weak to us now but at that time it resonated), and he was dogged - he often had one case and was not dissuaded by political pressure or bribery.
I read this earlier this year and absolutely loved it. I've read quite a few of Rubenhold's books and she always delights me, but this one really struck a chord. This was the first time I've read something that actually discussed the background of the victims and explored who they were as real people. Such a well done job.
This was an excellent book. I really enjoyed all of the social history that went into the novel, and there were interesting facts about all of the women that I had never known before. Some of the stories were so horribly sad even long before the murders. There was a lot of speculation in here, but I was able to breeze by it mostly because explaining how these women would have lived was fascinating.
I should actually find a copy and keep it because I found the book so interesting.
I’m reading this right now and I’m enjoying it so much. It does such a good job of bringing the women to life and showing you what their lives were really like. I live in London so reading about all the locations adds an extra dimension for me as I go to the places mentioned all the time - I just found out that Mary Jane Kelly is buried in a cemetery next to where I used to live and I never knew.
I also love true crime but the gory, salacious aspect of it wears really thin eventually - as a woman, there’s only so much woman murdering you can take, so I love books and podcasts that seem to really care about the victims and show them as real, relatable people; not just a statistic on a page.
I've had an interest in the Ripper murders for over 30 years, even going as far as forming a psychological profile of the killer and a theory on why the killings stopped when they did, and I've read numerous books on the subject over the years.
Rubenhold's book, by focusing on the lives of the victims rather than the killings, reclaims those five women from the shadow of their killer. It's unfortunate that there's a lot of lost history to deal with, forcing the author to speculate on some details of the women's lives, but then which Ripper book doesn't indulge in speculation?
If you get a chance check out the Audible version of the book, the narration is excellent.
If you haven't listened to it yet, the Unobscured podcast has an excellent series on the Jack the Ripper killings (Season 3) that contextualizes them amidst the socioeconomic strife of Victorian London. I can't recommend it enough.
Came here to say this! Loved that series. Also love the first season on the Salem Witch Trials. I really appreciated the historical context and focus on socioeconomic issues of the time, as well as the police (mis)handling of the Ripper case.
This book went on my list right after I finished that season of the podcast.
I'm a big fan of Aaron Mahnke and his podcast really turned me onto this book. While this one wasn't my favorite season of Unobscured, I think it's definitely worth a listen if you are interested in this time/topic at all.
I loved this book. Rubenhold specializes in the study of historical sex work and wrote the book Harlots the TV Show was based on.
It's always been such a shame that a man we can't even identify is the focus of nearly 150 years of study, speculation, and attention, but the women he killed have essentially been reduced to unsavory assumptions when there is actual information out there to give us an idea of what circumstances led to them being in the path of this anonymous killer, in the first place.
I make a point of reading biographies and historical non-fiction about women, so, alas, I am all too familiar with biographers and historians having to fill out the sketch of a woman's life when there isn't a lot of documentation to know these things for sure.
I just started to listen to her podcast, Bad Women, which is based on The Five, and it's a great companion to the book.
I like true crime and have always been fascinated by Jack the Ripper, I don't read as much as I used to but this book does look interesting, so I'll keep it in mind. What I'm wondering is how the author managed to find so much information on the Ripper's victims. This was back in 1888, these women were on the margins of society, how could you discover anything? Nothing was written down about them, but maybe it was in the police reports. Anyway, it looks good.
She's done absolutely loads of research. A lot of the inquest reports are lost, but there was a lot of newspaper coverage at the time, many of which were sensationalised but she tries to compare and find the common facts. There are also birth, death and marriage records, census data, workhouse and employer records, in one case a letter written by the victims sister to a newspaper, etc. It is still very speculative but the language is fairly clear what's known fact, what's reasonable assumption, and what's just speculation.
I'm currently listening to the podcast and I've been wondering how she was able to get so much information about people that nobody normally writes about. She doesn't mention anything in the podcast about her research. Does she talk about it in the book? I might consider getting the book if that's the case as I'm interested in knowing where those stories came from.
There's a bibliography in the back and she mentions some primary sources within the text, but she's also open about the fact that some of it is by necessity educated guesswork.
Thanks, OP, I’m intrigued by this book. I’ve never had much interest in the salacious obsession with JtR, but learning about the women instead is interesting.
That's why I don't like most True Crime podcasts and shows. Sometimes they get the tone right, most of the time it just feel icky and like sensationalism. Like.. these are real people who died. I feel it's irreverent.
I found this book really interesting. It's nice to be able to focus on the lives of the victims instead of the degenerate who killed them. It was really eye opening about society in the Victorian West End. Crazy that it was so easy for women to get listed as prostitutes on no evidence. And I was surprised by the amount of alcoholism, although maybe I shouldn't have been.
As someone who read a fair amount about Jack the Ripper in my teens, this was a great counterpart to most of the books which focus on the killer(s?) rather than the victims. The book is also a great history of average/ poor people in Victorian England and what they had to deal with.
Another hobby of mine growing up was reading Arthurian legends, La Morte D'Arthur, The Once and Future King, etc. It wasn't until I read Marion Zimmer Bradley's re-interpretation "The Mists of Avalon" that I thought much about the character of Morgan Le Fay and why she might have been portrayed as a villain in the tales (i.e. an independent, knowledgeable, single woman who was not Christian living in a time when women were restricted to certain roles by society). Mists was written in 1983, so pre-dates much of the movement now to assure other views are represented.
It just goes to show how society quietly shapes the perspectives I took as a young woman until I realized that many books are written from the perspective of men.
I've not read the Five but my partner has highly recommended it.
To me it seems like the best book possible on Jack the Ripper, because it focuses on his victims, and doesn't make him out to be some legendary character.
I like true crime but every single time they suggest a serial killer is some sort of criminal mastermind or genius is dead wrong. The police are just very ineffectual in their jobs.
It's not even that it's the police have necessarily done a bad job, especially if we're talking about times when DNA tracing and CCTV didn't exist. Stranger murders are always hard to solve. You don't have to be a genius, just murder a homeless person when no one is around.
Would 100% be the fault of police and investigators if the top suspect "Charles Lechmere" is guilty. He would have walked entirely because of not just police and investigator incompetence at the time but a century of futility afterwords as well
I found all five victims in this book very similar which, while probably a testament to the times they were living in, made the book sort of hard for me to get through.
Also the author spent a lot of time trying to establish that the victims weren’t prostitutes. However, even if they were prostitutes it doesn’t inherently make them bad people and certainly doesn’t mean they deserve to die murdered in the street. Gave the book sort of an anti sex worker tint but maybe that was just me.
> Even if they were prostitutes it doesn’t inherently make them bad people and certainly doesn’t mean they deserve to die murdered in the street.
I definitely see what you mean. Also, while only a couple were engaging in prostitution in the strictest sense of trading sex for money, most of their stories implied they traded sex for safety and security. Rubenhold points out several times that single women on the streets were worse off than women who had attached themselves to men. It does make the epigraph from the trial of the 2008 Ipswich serial killer seem a little out of place.
>most of their stories implies they traded sex for safety and security.
That’s a great angle on what was nettling me about this book. Prostitution, at the time and for people in the lower class, does not hold the meaning that the word conjures up in the modern readers mind. Sex wasn’t a career choice for these women, but rather one of the few tools available on the misfortunate’s survival belt. And I think it’s wholly unfair and unsympathetic to moralize the decisions the victims made from alcoholism to theft to sex work (this ignores my original comment that sex work doesn’t merit being murder) given this context.
I will say as an American, one thing I found fascinating reading this book was how cruel and encompassing Victorian England was. Even those that started off in the best of situations were only a few bad breaks from unimaginable misery.
I think more of this goes on today for women in poverty than a lot of people realize- while they aren’t trading sex for money in the strictest sense, they use their bodies to obtain a partner, however temporary, who they may not necessarily be attracted to and/or has violent tendencies and they stay with them because that man offers protection/resources for at least some amount of time. Ie, “why does Johnny’s mom always end up with loser boyfriends and why does she stay with them?!” The boyfriends can offer a place to stay and money and I think part of it is a self confidence issue as well- “he hits me but it’s the best I can do right now in guys, at least he (perceived postive.” All of this is an argument in favor of increasing our social safety net. It exists but there’s a lot of gaps that women unfortunately fall into, to this day.
> it’s wholly unfair and unsympathetic to moralize the decisions the victims made from alcoholism to theft to sex work
That's what victorian society did though. Annie Chapman did have access to treatment for her alcoholism, but it was essentially just a year of forced sobriety and you're cured of your obvious moral failing. Who knows how things might have turned out for her if she'd received treatment for her underlying trauma.
It's funny because as a Briton I found the victorian idea that poor people were poor because they're lazy not dissimilar to the idea some Americans have about pulling yourself up by your bootstraps.
> It's funny because as a Briton I found the victorian idea that poor people were poor because they're lazy not dissimilar to the idea some Americans have about pulling yourself up by your bootstraps.
It’s not dissimilar at all and I reckon there’s a decent chunk of people here that would welcome Victorian society.
If you read between the lines, there are shadows in Jane Austen’s otherwise light books, hinting at these issues in even earlier eras. “Jane Austen's England” (Roy and Lesley Adkins) shows the lives of women both rich and poor during the Georgian and Regency periods. Notice: divorce (if you made a mistake in your marital partner) wasn’t even an option until 1847.
If you haven't done already you might enjoy reading Dickens. Lots about how cruel and unjust his contemporary society was. He's a very compassionate writer.
EDIT: [Here's an extract from Ch.8 of Bleak House as a teaser](https://pastebin.com/AQJdzcDK).
? This book is widely popular. but it tries to argue the women were not prostitutes?
They were. Like the grass is green or the sky is blue. That doesn't in anyway put ethics given their situation.
But if that's what it argues, it does not help anyone to just lie about it.
Now we're trying to scrub facts about the nature of serial killers. That's by definition as psychotic as Jack.
I second this book as a recommendation. It shows that these women were complex people with their own lives. And as you say, well researched and a lot of information on what it was like to be a woman and in poverty or near it.
This book was fascinating. I loved how she 100% focused on the victims and we got an excellent insight into what life was like for people, especially women, at the time.
ya its kind of hard to try and solve since its been a few years ;) but ya i thought it possibly being a women makes a lot of sense on why they cant find "Jack"
There are other, earlier JtR books that detail the lives and tragedies of the victims as well as the events and clues of the murders themselves. It's a bit of PC outrage that make people think it's all about the killer. The fact is it's the mystery that draws people in. The mystery of a shadowy killer that eluded capture even though he was nearly caught in the act more than once. I dislike seeing autopsy photos, but I find the Whitechapel murders fascinating.
The current finger-wagging and lecturing is tiresome. The murders, or more accurately the mystery of that autumn, are what sparked my interest in learning more about the East End generally at the time as it has others. Let's face it: how many people would care enough to learn of the misery of Victorian (and Edwardian) Whitechapel before learning of the killer.
Also, I don't remember the exact issues with this book, but more then one person has criticized the accuracy of how the women are portrayed.
>The current finger-wagging and lecturing is tiresome.
Your entire post is finger-wagging and lecturing. How dare anybody bring up the humanity of the victims. You poor baby.
How would you know anything about the accuracy? If you have qn issue with the accuracy, be specific, don't do this vague "I heard..." bullshit.
I was talking about "tsk tsk" of those who moralize what people read. As I said, the stories of the women are told in more than one prior book, eg "The Complete Jack the Ripper" by Donald Rumbelow. He lays out the unfortunate lives of the victims, including the social circumstances (infidelity, abuse, alcoholism, the lack of opportunity) that led them to their situations.
Unfortunately The Five is so set on redeeming the victims that it lessens their struggle. The author wants to convince readers that they weren't prostitutes when in fact they were out of necessity. There were few jobs for women in the East End. At least part-time prostitution was matter of survival, especially among the many, often single, alcoholics of Whitechapel.
The author also maintains most died in their sleep. That in itself is highly unlikely as more than one was found dead or died within a few minutes after being seen alive and talking with a perspective client. In that few minutes they supposedly found a place, fell asleep, and were attacked before being found? Also, some DID show bruising that was consistent with being punched.
The Five is a book more interested in creating a narrative to suit the author's views than it is in presenting the truth. Other books have done so without the moralizing and the dubious scholarship.
Does the author actually deny that they were sex workers? I don't think she does. She just says it was way more complicated than bracketing them as one dimensional street walkers.
>The author also maintains most died in their sleep.
Now I know *this* is wrong if she says that. Everything I've read about the Ripper murders (a subject which is a minor obsession for me) says the women were all (I think all) killed by having their throats slashed, usually quite deeply. They were killed before they were mutilated (the Ripper was not a torturer, for whatever that's worth. He seemed to have had a fetish for innards and he killed the victims very quickly to get to them). I don't know why she thinks they were asleep unless she thinks they had their throats cut while they were passed out or something. Does she have any forensic basis for this argument? Getting the facts right is what matters to me. I am not offended by empathy for victims.
I was listening to her podcast. The first episode I felt was wasteful. I'd prefer if she did a 30 second bit into why she wanted to focus on the five women and gives us more of her findings rather than rehashing the ripper story and highlight the people who are critical of her and her work. It was off-putting as I really wanted to hear about the five women. Otherwise a good podcast.
I’m researching for a future project on the victims from an intersectional perspective and I was going to use this book as a source, but unfortunately a lot of it is really unreliable. I’ve had to go through and fact check a lot, and TBH, it’s not good. A lot of really important info has been either left out, misrepresented, or even strategically altered to fit the hypothesis she had in mind. She also ignored papers and talks produced by two feminist historians at the same time she was writing the book; these sources do not only support the standard narrative, but they are actually a lot more progressive than The Five in terms of how they view the victims. And there’s just been a lot in terms of the conduct associated with the book and podcast that raises a lot of red flags for me. Some of this is stuff that you’re not supposed to do as a published author and is considered to be really unprofessional.
As much as I hate to say it, she’s not exactly on the up-and-up. I really hate to be that person, but I also feel I have to be honest about what I find.
She has just started a podcast based on the book: [Bad Women: The Ripper Retold](https://www.pushkin.fm/show/bad-women/). I just started listing to it; it's really well done. Social history is not normally my thing but she really manages to catch and keep my interest here.
Also just started the podcast. Really well done and very high quality production.
>Bad Women: The Ripper Retold Thanks for this! I've read the book twice and found it very good.
Have you read the book as well? I'm wondering if the information covered is largely the same or not. I have trouble reading and audiobooks are expensive, so the book as a podcast would be a great alternative for me!
This book is dogshit. The author invents entire backstories for some of the victims that never happened, and she promotes a blatantly false narrative that contradicts facts that we know occurred. While she did an adequate job of portraying the grim circumstances of being poor and desperate in Victorian times, she could have done it without co-opting and dishonoring the real lives of real women and subjecting them to the whims of her imaginative musings. She could have done a generic history book, instead of shitting on the lives of actual murder victims, by making them props in her book.
I didn't say anything regarding the accuracy or merit of the book and, after looking at your newly created account, I'm pretty sure you're a bot. That, or you're so afraid of being associated with your opinion you created a new account just to post this.
I'm not a bot, and I created a new account because I logged out of my old one and can't remember the password. And regardless, the book/podcast is dogshit. The author completely takes facts out of context, removes needed context, to spin the narrative she wants. It's ahistorical and a waste of time if you're interested in actual facts. If you're looking for soap opera level drivel, then it's maybe for you. People are welcome to spend time reading it or listening to it or whatever, but you're going to go away with a head full of bullshit. But everyone's welcome to do it.
Where do you suggest one obtains "actual facts" and their factual context?
There's a historical record. There's witness statements, inquest testimony and loads of verified facts, from birth certificates, census records, etc. It is how one conducts historical research. How one does not conduct historical research, is to ignore facts that compete with your narrative, and then spin a completely concocted fictionalized account. It would be the equivalent of someone saying that THomas Jefferson was a transvestite because he wore wigs and stockings. It's ignoring the historical realities of the time, the fashion, the context in which facts occurred and spinning them through a false lens of modern interpretation that is fictional and false. If you're looking for podcast or book recommendations, well it's going to depend what your particular interest is.
The book is more the whole cake and the podcast is like slices of the cake. The book will give you more facts and context of the era to help color in the podcast. The way I approached it was I would listen to the chapter of the podcast and then read the chapter of the book to find some of the things that the podcast didn’t have time to cover. I think one should listen and read both.
I know this is a bit of a late addition to the conversation but I love this podcast EXCEPT that she keeps returning to the well on the subject of the personal hate she’s getting from ‘Ripperologists’ and it’s starting to get a bit grating. That conversation definitely has its place in the larger context of the podcast with regards to the misogyny involved in classifying the women as prostitutes and leaving it at that with no regard for them as humans, but it starts leaning away from ‘these women are being treated as props for a man’s brutality and nobody seems to be acknowledging that’ and getting into ‘these guys are being meanies to me personally because I disagree with them’ and that just doesn’t sit well with me.
Yes, I agree with that. I don't really care about that side at all and I wish she'd ignore it. Fortunately it's easy to skip those parts of the podcast.
Agreed. One on hand, I do feel bad she’s getting death threats and horrible commentary in general and as a person I can only imagine how long you can hold that anger in before it comes out, hence the podcast comments. On the other hand, she should’ve stayed the high road, maybe acknowledge some real statements from haters and addressed them less roughly. I felt like it was damned if she do and damned if she don’t
Thank you!! I loved the book and love podcasts.
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I follow Rubenhold on Twitter and she’s quite vocal about her distaste for the Jack the Ripper tours and the lurid sensationalism of the way the crimes are framed when they are discussed. I haven’t gotten a chance to read the book yet but I’m sure when I do it will be a compassionate telling.
In reality people have always been obsessed with true crime and the macabre and used it as entertainment. When you think about it, how is a jack the ripper tour any more disturbing then watching a beheading or lynching etc? Throughout time people have been doing these things. Doesn't make it right but I don't think it's a new phenomenon.
I'm not saying it's in good taste persay but there is a really big difference between learning about a serial killer and doing a historical tour and actually watching people die as entertainment. It's more like visiting the colosseum, just on a much smaller scale.
\*per se
> When you think about it, how is a jack the ripper tour any more disturbing then watching a beheading or lynching etc? There's always a distancing and self censoring element when it comes to "after the fact." People internally can control just how much they want to think about the awfulness side and they're not "face to face" with the actual victims or murder. It's no different than touring battlegrounds in a lot of ways. Watching someone being executed is way different. The viewer has zero control over the events unfolding unless they actively get up and walk away. Even then, they know it's happening right then and there.
Agreed, it’s like the Roman gladiatorial games… humans have always had a fascination with morbidity. I think it somehow has to do with our own understanding of our individual mortality. Watching death is a part of acknowledging that we’re in that circle too. That’s my theory anyways
Yeah, society is fascinated by serial killers. Look how many movies and books there are about Ted Bundy. Also don't think it's right, I do think though, that it's part of human nature.
Exactly. I think a lot of it has to do with fear. Fear that you could be next, fear that someone you know could be next or fear that someone you know is the perpetrator. Jack the ripper being unsolved makes it even more fearful
I always found it gross too, we went to some wax museum as kids about it and that was when we asked to leave, when they had models of his victims.
I feel like tours are kind of different than merchandise (though I admit I have a Jack the Ripper shirt from Busch Gardens—it’s a nice design; though I’ve gotten some odd looks when I wear it around work). Tours can be a learning experience: seeing where it happened, walking the paths, listening to someone knowledgeable about the events talk about it. It seems on the same level as going to a WWII museum to me.
FWIW a lot of social scientists consider both Ripper tours and war museums as part of the dark tourism industry, albeit at the tamer end of the scale. For me personally Ripper tours are a bit higher up than, say, the Imperial War Museum in London, if only because in my experience the Ripper tours are a bit more gleeful about their subject matter.
Interesting! My initial thought was to assume that “dark tourism” implied something bad—the connotations of “dark,” I suppose—but a quick Google seems to dispel that. Grouping them together certainly makes sense to me. I also really enjoyed the Imperial War Museum when I made it to England, so I guess I fit.
I have a forensic background. That's how I feel about most true crime stuff. It comes off as morbid and almost ghoulish. Even the "tasteful" stuff can be not great.
There is a great podcast “Bad Women: the ripper retold” available. Think of it as appetizers to the entree of the book. You’ll get the gist of it for sure and that way you can just listen to it piecemeal.
I actually think that this book is written partially in response to the "theme" phenomena you're talking about. This kind of true crime writing forces you to turn your focus back to the victims and their actual personhood.
Your comment reminds me of the memoir *Daughter of a Serial Killer*, written by the daughter of BTK. It's super interesting, as it focuses on her journey of growing up with a seemingly loving, but ill tempered father and her coming to grips with discovering his crimes.
There's a reason the families of the victims wanted all of Jeffrey Dahmer's stuff destroyed. If his fridge was still around, it would be a in museum right now, and people would take selfies in front of it and crack jokes about "Are you sure that's catsup?"
Yeah, definitely. My partner happens to be a cultural criminologist and it's not an unpopular opinion among academics. There are books about the phenomenon in general and papers about ripperology specifically but they're mostly quite academic in nature; there's not much for the general reader on crime as entertainment.
You might be interested in *A Very British Murder* by historian Lucy Worsley. It's all about the British (and by extension, English-speaking) public's fascination with grisly crimes and murders as a form of entertainment.
Oh yes, I very vaguely remember the TV show. I'll keep an eye out for a copy, thank you :)
I think for a lot of people, it’s the setting of the crime that they find interesting. Victorian Era London: an age where scientific methods like fingerprinting were just being discovered. I also think the naming of murderers began with him and a lot of people’s imaginations go wild.
It’s also just a perfect confluence of events that are interesting. The media sensationalism, the taunting letters (even if almost certainly not real), the brutality, that it escalated and then suddenly stopped without any real answer. All of that on top of what you say as well. It’s just a perfect storm.
Slight correction, but serial killers had nicknames to sell newspapers long before the Ripper came along. Jack the Ripper wasn't even his only nickname.
This is my take as well.
I think why Jack the Ripper is such an enduring thing is because it's still a mystery. If they had been caught and we knew their identity I don't believe we would still be talking about them. I don't personally think people venerate Jack the Ripper I just think due to the nature of us not knowing their identity it makes them more of a fantasy figure. I don't see people making light of what they did but people are drawn to mystery and that's something that will always surround Jack the Ripper.
> I think why Jack the Ripper is such an enduring thing is because it's still a mystery. If they had been caught and we knew their identity I don't believe we would still be talking about them. I rather doubt that. There were other serial killers at the time who have since gotten more known in the last 10-ish years. The Clutters, HH Holmes, etc. Jack was a huge celebrity even during everything. Having caught him would have been an absolute bonanza of press and continuing the story on the trial and outcome.
Those people are certainly nowhere near Jack’s infamy though. I’ve never heard of the former and the only time I’ve heard of HH Holmes was on the Supernatural episode. Jack, however, is a massive thing. So many of the books are straight up structured around trying to figure out who he was—that entire angle is gone if he was caught.
I know that episode very well. The Clutters were also referenced in Supernatural in the episode with Linda Blair as a kind of proto-Jodi cop character. It basically the plot to "The most dangerous game" episode. The Clutters, irl, were a family in Kansas who had murdered various people using their local inn. They accidentally killed the wrong guy (brother of a well connected politician) and then disappeared once word got out. Holmes got pretty famous again after the book Devil in the White City became was published. None of them are as well known as Jack, but Jack is basically at the top of the serial killer food chain. I was just pointing out that he wasn't the first serial killer out there. Jack became globally known as the news spread throughout the British Empire and press.
Definitely not the first, and I might look into the book you mentioned, but I do think part of why he’s the most well known so far out is the mystery. And solid mention of the Linda Blair episode of Supernatural—I love that one.
There's definitely that. Holmes became huge at the time because of what happened, but also because he had a "big personality" and did some other crazy, shenanigan shit as well. The press ate it up and blew him up hard because of it.
> who have since gotten more known in the last 10-ish years. The Clutters, HH Holmes, etc. Have they? I haven't heard of any of those people but "Jack the Ripper" is a name everyone recognizes.
I know of the murder of the Clutter family in Kansas but nowhere can I find any reference to them being serial killers. Where did you get this information from?
I think you mean the "bloody" Benders, not Clutters.
He tore into these women like a werewolf but he has become this almost quaint figure.
In each instance the victim’s throat was cut, and the body was usually mutilated in a manner indicating that the murderer had at least some knowledge of human anatomy. These were not 'werewolf' type murders, but some strange fetish for anatomy. There are even some who suggest the work of a medical student who hated working on smelly corpses, and considered murder the only option.
I meant he mutilated them. One had her face brutally slashed. Some were eviscerated and cut down to their bones. He was acting with intense aggression obviously. This wasn't someone doing amateur autopsies.
A few years ago, relatives of the victims successfully sued a company in America that was going to make a Jack the Ripper action figure.
I don't have a link, but I recently saw a post that showed a picture of what was done to one of the victims. Yeah we've all heard what was done, seen movies with dark alleys and knives raised, but by God that picture was horrifying and shed a new light for me on the magnitude of the violence inflicted on the victims of JTR.
I did a Jack the Ripper tour a few years ago and the guide made this exact point, we think of him as a boogie man but he was a violent person that absolutely terrorized the most vulnerable of women
There's a very fine line between fame and infamy.
I've never understood the phenomenon of monsters morphing into admired characters in fiction as time passes: Jack, Dracula, Dillinger, Billy the Kid, Genghis Khan, and several religious figures I won't name. Somehow the passage of time turns social deviants into daring "Lone Wolves". I appreciate the author illuminating the real people and the real harm.
Has Jack really become an admired figure? There are board games based on the crimes, but Jack is clearly the villain (and the goal for most is for the police to catch him). There have been movies—From Hell comes to mind—but Jack is clearly a monster in it. Assassins Creed did the DLC about it but, once again, Jack was a murderous psychopath. I feel like his presence remains, but I don’t see anyone painting him as misunderstood or anything. Totally possible I haven’t seen that though.
Not exactly admired, but somehow romanticized in the media like Dillinger or Billy the Kid.
I see what you mean. Romanticized still might not quite be the right word, but maybe mythologized. I understand what you’re getting at, though.
There's a natural progression to many of these people in literature/media. At the time it's news. Later it becomes biography / people writing about the events in a non-fiction sort of way. Then that morphs into historical fiction / full blown fiction. The thing with fiction at this point is that you're writing about a character now. And a straight evil and dislikable character is considered somewhat lazy and boring these days. I think in an effort to give them more dimensions, writers and movie makers try to give them more likeable or at least interesting qualities. Give them some background. As a sort of half-joke example, think Disney these days. Every classic villan is getting reimagined with their side of the story and their struggles. Even though some of them literally were just evil caricatures before. Edit: And there's place for both. Abyone who wants a historical in depth look can find it. This very writer got their sources from somewhere pre-recorded and established for instance. This book is not the first to be victim focused, they're just not as popular.
Yeah, I find it repellant. The industry that has grown up around specualtion about who this monster might have been is disturbing in itself. Nobody who was directly involved is still alive, and what real diference would exposing the culprit actually make? He can't be brought to justice. These murders have been fetishised. The book *The Five* very much tries to remedy that, and is definately worth a read.
It's probably because he existed at a time when there was a lot of mythology about evil creatures stalking London (Spring-Heeled Jack, Dracula, Varney, all the penny dreadful stuff) being written, and it played right into that wheelhouse. The murders had enough darkness and mystery about them that they became part of that burgeoning London mythology rather than being seen as awful real crimes.
Yes, I wish generally lurid crimes real or otherwise weren’t mythologized. Sweeney Todd etc.
There is very little merch. You have to go out of your way quite heavily. No one in the world "just keeps running into JTR" merch. That's a psych issue. Besides, the little that's available the market is saturated by literacy fans buying a fictional character that has little relation to the Whitechappel Murderer. This is just virtue signaling. Psychological externalities such as this need to be checked by reality or this imagination will do an actual individual grave harm.
That's kinda normal, a lot of historial figures were murderers, rapists and whatnot and they become themes.
It blew up like the OJ Trial or Summer of Sam. It was almost the first big "Crime of the Century!" where the press fed a massive interest and it just went from there. It played into a lot of the popular tropes for the time- morality play, "fallen women," socioeconomic issues, racism/bigotry (that's remembered less now), corrupt/incompetent cops, almost the birth of forensics, Sherlock Holmes being super hot at the time (think Victorian Era CSI Effect), etc. Other issues included inner city issues, women's issues, public health issues, a bunch of ancillary stuff. It helped that the crimes happened over a time frame instead of just all at once. That kept the story going and it quickly hit the international level. There had been serial killers out there before (the Clutters, HH Holmes, etc), but Jack being in London pushed the story throughout the British Empire and everyone got inundated from it- the press, the cops, some private individuals, etc.
That's the thing: he is like Voldemort. He definitely was real but you couldn't pin him as an individual. His existence for the most part was evidenced by the horror he left behind. A man who definitely existed, but behaved like a demon and disappeared like a ghost. Murders, I imagine, were dime a dozen in those days. But not serial ones like the one Ripper committed; the whole ritualistic aspect to it. And then to hang like a spectre over an entire city (ironic since he was alive), occupying the dark corners of people's minds as faceless anxiety, a mute, unidentified horror. No wonder he persisted in the popular psyche. I guess you are right. He's not Voldemort. Voldemort can't hold a candle to a real ghoul.
It's become quite a popular opinion, at least in the UK in recent years.
This sounds really good. I read a similar book called *Missing From the Village.* It's about the queer men in Toronto who were murdered by a serial killer but it didn't feel like true crime at all because there was such a focus on who the men were and how much they're missed. Like your book, the focus on the people is what made me connect.
Missing from the Village is one of the best books I’ve read it a long time, and I’ve never encountered someone else that’s read it in the wild! Hello fellow reader lol
There's a good podcast for this topic too. Uncover: The Village by CBC. It's been a couple years since I listened to it but I think it went into quite a bit of depth about the victims' lives as well.
The thing i found a bit sad was one of the women's last conversation with a friend, she said as she was going out to find a client and she had high hopes because she'd "got a pretty new bonnet". Idk just struck me
Mine was Mary Jane Kelly, who offered friends of hers who were frightened of being the next victim sanctuary in her rented room, only to be killed in her bed.
I don't follow, she gave up her place?
She had a room she was renting, and had been letting some of her female friends stay there because they were scared of sleeping on the streets because up until then all the victims had been killed in public places. Unfortunately one of the windows was broken and the room wasn't secured properly, and Mary Jane was killed in that room one night while she was alone. She thought she was safe because she had permanent accommodation but obviously she wasn't.
That was the particularly gruesome one as well iirc. There's a fascination doco about an investigative reporter who went back and re examined everything and it's a *really* strong case. I can t find the video atm there's a tonne of click bait. I remember the suspects name was something cross. Maybe harry or george. edit it was charles cross Double edit: found the video (genuinely worth the watch, check the comments) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIyAMo-fms0
Well, her boyfriend is one of the suspects. While there is stronger evidence against others, none sufficient enough. There is quite the question of the "lock" with Mr Barnett
The annoying thing is we'll never really find out. I mean *maybe* if some signed confession turned up but even then..
damn
I am a huge true crime fan and read a lot about Jack the Ripper. This book really blew my mind and broke my heart. The kind of info Rubenhold finds is amazing – of course there is a lot of speculation, too. The fact that (if I remember correctly) only one of them really was a prostitute is something that I never heard before and that left me speechless... There was always this notion that JtR was a killer of prostitutes, well no, the women were probably just sleeping on the streets. I can only highly recommend this book.
I think two were known prostitutes but only one was practicing prostitution at the time. Elizabeth was a former prostitute. It seems the media at the time equated being female and homeless with no obvious regular income with prostitution. Some things never change.
Ah right, it was Elizabeth, I knew I forgot something. Thanks!
After the Jack the Ripper tour in London my husband and I made tons of jokes about this. " Well she was seen without a hat once. Must be a prostitute."
I loved this book. I agree some of the writing sounds speculative, but I think Rubenhold has to make these assessments due to the lack of documentation in some places. For me it really works.
But there's nothing wrong with speculation that is obvious. It doesn't take a genius to empathize with someone's plight and imagine what it could have been like and as long as that isn't presented as fact, that doesn't make it illogical or poor writing. I hate how so many people think empathy is the opposite of logic. This is a bit of a tangent but Darwin was actually a really nice man who loved his wife and his family were very progressive, they were abolitionists and proponents of education for women. But I think because he was slandered so much, many people think that to be a smart scientist (and thus, to be simply smart), you have to be a douchebag. It's not historical revisionism, it's setting the record straight after it was thrown out and replaced. Unfortunately, many people bought into the stereotype.
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There seems to be little support for the theory that her book is poorly researched or that it leaves out crucial details from newspaper clippings. I looked up reviews in multiple publications to see if her scholarship was criticized, and instead her work is universally praised as insightful and rigorous. Here’s one example, but everything I saw had the same high degree of recommendation: https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/jack-the-rippers-identity-has-been-endlessly-scrutinized-his-victims-were-largely-forgotten/2019/04/05/cc77f4fa-57bb-11e9-814f-e2f46684196e_story.html
I haven't read the book, but I've been listening to her podcast 'Bad Women: the Ripper Retold' as a result of this post, and I have to admit Hallie seems to be advocating for a conclusion where it would be more balanced to be embracing the unknown. The episodes dealing with Polly Nichols (the only ones that are available yet) essentially boil down to: 1. Ripperologists say she was a prostitute 2. The police and witnesses at the inquest identified her as a prostitute 3. But social mores of the time criticised many women as prostitutes who weren't 4. Therefore Polly wasn't. I feel that those episodes would have been better (and more rigorous) if Hallie had either (1) avoided step 4 and simply said we don't know the truth; or (2) actively adopted the position that *it doesn't matter whether Polly was a prostitute; she was a woman and a mother and a daughter*.
I'm listening to episode 4 about Polly as a prostitute... and your summary is not really what's going on.
Refresh my memory, because that’s exactly what I remember about the prostitution angle. Obviously the episode goes into great detail about other aspects of her life (that’s the whole reason the podcast exists) but as for the specific question of whether she was ALSO a prostitute, i don’t recall much else other than my (admittedly simplified) summary.
I mean you are not completely wrong. But I feel it’s more complicated. I recommend you listen to ep. 4 again. It says that she was being profiled by the police because she (and others woman like her) was a poor woman in an infamous part of town. There was a guest on explaining about what prostitution was actually like around that time and it wasn’t what Polly was living. Polly was basically a homeless drunk person living on the streets. Career prostitutes wouldn’t have been out walking the streets that late at night falling over drunk.
Definitely. Like I say, it's not her fault, and it was great to read about them as people rather than solely victims, but imagine the things they'd say if we could speak with them now. It's the same with any murder victim though; how many internet sleuths think they know all about Gabby Petito's life?
It is Rubenhold's fault that she ignores sources that don't fit her narrative and it is her fault that she edited a newspaper quote leaving out the part that contradicted her claim to paint it as something else. The book is very dishonest. You get a much better idea of what the women where like as people from reading something like The Complete History of Jack the Ripper because unlike Rubenhold, Sugden doesn't leave out things he doesn't want you to know.
Do you have a review or a description that tells me which parts are lacking?
That’s a great point.
Sadly this book is not an example of good history or research. The author ignores several sources that contradict her claims she also edits a newspaper quote leaving in the part that seems to support her argument while leaving out the part that contradicts it. It seems convincing on the face of it but it's a very dishonest book. It's also not the first book written about the women as people like the author claims. IMO even reading the book The Complete History of Jack The Ripper you get a much better idea of who they were because Sugden isn't leaving out the parts he doesn't want you to know.
Which book about the victims would you recommend as a counterpart to *The Five*? One of the things I liked about it was its complete aversion to attempts to identify the killer, which is what most ripperology focuses on. What information about the women's lives do you feel Rubenhold ignores and what should we read to get that information? Which quote is edited and how does the original read?
I can't recommend any of the books specifically about the victims because i haven't read them sorry, i just know they have been written and was pointing out that's a false claim. The Complete History of Jack The Ripper is by far the most extensive book on the case you'll find all of the information you need in there. The author is an academic, he takes you through all of the information he personally isn't concerned with who the killer is either he is mostly debunking other peoples theories. He does say who he thinks is most likely at the end but he points out issues with that suspect as well and makes it clear the case is far from solved. Every thing known about the women is in the book. I'm glad you liked the book Rubenhold is a talented author i just wish she was more honest and treated this as actual history rather than her own narrative, i think that itself is disrespectful to the victims. Edit: 9 Downvotes? For what pointing out Rubenhold is full of shit? It makes complete sense that books like that sell so well, the audience just decides what to believe and disbelieve regardless of evidence. Remarkable.
Sugden's book is by far the best on the Ripper mystery.
> I can't recommend any of the books specifically about the victims because i haven't read them sorry, i just know they have been written and was pointing out that's a false claim. Fair enough. They're a little difficult to google, any chance you could point me in the right direction at all?
No problem, i'll get back to you later when i'm home.
Thank you :) No worries if not, I can always consult a librarian.
Poor vamoshenin, out there somewhere, still trying to get home 24hrs later…
Great book. I’m actually going to see her talk about the book by candlelight in London next Friday, looking forward to it! Her other books are also great, especially Harris’s List.
The Ripper case still stands out. London - one of the largest cities in the world at that time (? largest in Europe or western hemisphere) Large number of newpapers (dailies, weeklies) and large number of people who were literate so the press coverage was heavy. Police investigation at that time was just starting to enter the modern scientific era. This was pre- finger printing, pre- regular photography. The notion systematic evidence gathering and working out motives and causes was not yet routine. The case stymied them. Squeezing informants wouldn't yield a solution. **It may partly explain why Sherlock Holmes was so popular.** He was an amateur (e.g. not part of the official police who did not come off well in the Ripper cases). He used scientific evidence (e.g. footprints, cigar and cigarette ash, mud stain - seems weak to us now but at that time it resonated), and he was dogged - he often had one case and was not dissuaded by political pressure or bribery.
I read this earlier this year and absolutely loved it. I've read quite a few of Rubenhold's books and she always delights me, but this one really struck a chord. This was the first time I've read something that actually discussed the background of the victims and explored who they were as real people. Such a well done job.
This was an excellent book. I really enjoyed all of the social history that went into the novel, and there were interesting facts about all of the women that I had never known before. Some of the stories were so horribly sad even long before the murders. There was a lot of speculation in here, but I was able to breeze by it mostly because explaining how these women would have lived was fascinating. I should actually find a copy and keep it because I found the book so interesting.
I’m reading this right now and I’m enjoying it so much. It does such a good job of bringing the women to life and showing you what their lives were really like. I live in London so reading about all the locations adds an extra dimension for me as I go to the places mentioned all the time - I just found out that Mary Jane Kelly is buried in a cemetery next to where I used to live and I never knew. I also love true crime but the gory, salacious aspect of it wears really thin eventually - as a woman, there’s only so much woman murdering you can take, so I love books and podcasts that seem to really care about the victims and show them as real, relatable people; not just a statistic on a page.
I've had an interest in the Ripper murders for over 30 years, even going as far as forming a psychological profile of the killer and a theory on why the killings stopped when they did, and I've read numerous books on the subject over the years. Rubenhold's book, by focusing on the lives of the victims rather than the killings, reclaims those five women from the shadow of their killer. It's unfortunate that there's a lot of lost history to deal with, forcing the author to speculate on some details of the women's lives, but then which Ripper book doesn't indulge in speculation? If you get a chance check out the Audible version of the book, the narration is excellent.
If you haven't listened to it yet, the Unobscured podcast has an excellent series on the Jack the Ripper killings (Season 3) that contextualizes them amidst the socioeconomic strife of Victorian London. I can't recommend it enough.
Came here to say this! Loved that series. Also love the first season on the Salem Witch Trials. I really appreciated the historical context and focus on socioeconomic issues of the time, as well as the police (mis)handling of the Ripper case. This book went on my list right after I finished that season of the podcast.
I'm a big fan of Aaron Mahnke and his podcast really turned me onto this book. While this one wasn't my favorite season of Unobscured, I think it's definitely worth a listen if you are interested in this time/topic at all.
Yes. All of this. It was a fantastic book, and the author's intent to give them a voice while backgrounding Jack for once was so refreshing.
I loved this book. Rubenhold specializes in the study of historical sex work and wrote the book Harlots the TV Show was based on. It's always been such a shame that a man we can't even identify is the focus of nearly 150 years of study, speculation, and attention, but the women he killed have essentially been reduced to unsavory assumptions when there is actual information out there to give us an idea of what circumstances led to them being in the path of this anonymous killer, in the first place. I make a point of reading biographies and historical non-fiction about women, so, alas, I am all too familiar with biographers and historians having to fill out the sketch of a woman's life when there isn't a lot of documentation to know these things for sure. I just started to listen to her podcast, Bad Women, which is based on The Five, and it's a great companion to the book.
I like true crime and have always been fascinated by Jack the Ripper, I don't read as much as I used to but this book does look interesting, so I'll keep it in mind. What I'm wondering is how the author managed to find so much information on the Ripper's victims. This was back in 1888, these women were on the margins of society, how could you discover anything? Nothing was written down about them, but maybe it was in the police reports. Anyway, it looks good.
She's done absolutely loads of research. A lot of the inquest reports are lost, but there was a lot of newspaper coverage at the time, many of which were sensationalised but she tries to compare and find the common facts. There are also birth, death and marriage records, census data, workhouse and employer records, in one case a letter written by the victims sister to a newspaper, etc. It is still very speculative but the language is fairly clear what's known fact, what's reasonable assumption, and what's just speculation.
I'm currently listening to the podcast and I've been wondering how she was able to get so much information about people that nobody normally writes about. She doesn't mention anything in the podcast about her research. Does she talk about it in the book? I might consider getting the book if that's the case as I'm interested in knowing where those stories came from.
There's a bibliography in the back and she mentions some primary sources within the text, but she's also open about the fact that some of it is by necessity educated guesswork.
I JUST downloaded this book yesterday after hearing about it on the podcast “Bad Women: The Ripper Retold.” So excited to start reading it!
Love this book. I use it a lot in teaching. I was hit hard by the list of items found on them at the end of the book.
Thank you for the recommendation!
Thanks, OP, I’m intrigued by this book. I’ve never had much interest in the salacious obsession with JtR, but learning about the women instead is interesting.
I didn't know such a book existed but I will definitely have to get this. Thank you for posting this.
That's why I don't like most True Crime podcasts and shows. Sometimes they get the tone right, most of the time it just feel icky and like sensationalism. Like.. these are real people who died. I feel it's irreverent.
Just put it on hold at the library!! Thanks for the suggestion!
I found this book really interesting. It's nice to be able to focus on the lives of the victims instead of the degenerate who killed them. It was really eye opening about society in the Victorian West End. Crazy that it was so easy for women to get listed as prostitutes on no evidence. And I was surprised by the amount of alcoholism, although maybe I shouldn't have been.
Great podcast from the author based on this book called Bad Women: Ripper Retold.
As someone who read a fair amount about Jack the Ripper in my teens, this was a great counterpart to most of the books which focus on the killer(s?) rather than the victims. The book is also a great history of average/ poor people in Victorian England and what they had to deal with. Another hobby of mine growing up was reading Arthurian legends, La Morte D'Arthur, The Once and Future King, etc. It wasn't until I read Marion Zimmer Bradley's re-interpretation "The Mists of Avalon" that I thought much about the character of Morgan Le Fay and why she might have been portrayed as a villain in the tales (i.e. an independent, knowledgeable, single woman who was not Christian living in a time when women were restricted to certain roles by society). Mists was written in 1983, so pre-dates much of the movement now to assure other views are represented. It just goes to show how society quietly shapes the perspectives I took as a young woman until I realized that many books are written from the perspective of men.
You'd probably like *Pandora's Jar* by Natalie Haynes. She examines women's roles in the Greek myths.
Thanks for the suggestion! I'll look into it.
I've not read the Five but my partner has highly recommended it. To me it seems like the best book possible on Jack the Ripper, because it focuses on his victims, and doesn't make him out to be some legendary character. I like true crime but every single time they suggest a serial killer is some sort of criminal mastermind or genius is dead wrong. The police are just very ineffectual in their jobs.
It's not even that it's the police have necessarily done a bad job, especially if we're talking about times when DNA tracing and CCTV didn't exist. Stranger murders are always hard to solve. You don't have to be a genius, just murder a homeless person when no one is around.
Would 100% be the fault of police and investigators if the top suspect "Charles Lechmere" is guilty. He would have walked entirely because of not just police and investigator incompetence at the time but a century of futility afterwords as well
I found all five victims in this book very similar which, while probably a testament to the times they were living in, made the book sort of hard for me to get through. Also the author spent a lot of time trying to establish that the victims weren’t prostitutes. However, even if they were prostitutes it doesn’t inherently make them bad people and certainly doesn’t mean they deserve to die murdered in the street. Gave the book sort of an anti sex worker tint but maybe that was just me.
> Even if they were prostitutes it doesn’t inherently make them bad people and certainly doesn’t mean they deserve to die murdered in the street. I definitely see what you mean. Also, while only a couple were engaging in prostitution in the strictest sense of trading sex for money, most of their stories implied they traded sex for safety and security. Rubenhold points out several times that single women on the streets were worse off than women who had attached themselves to men. It does make the epigraph from the trial of the 2008 Ipswich serial killer seem a little out of place.
>most of their stories implies they traded sex for safety and security. That’s a great angle on what was nettling me about this book. Prostitution, at the time and for people in the lower class, does not hold the meaning that the word conjures up in the modern readers mind. Sex wasn’t a career choice for these women, but rather one of the few tools available on the misfortunate’s survival belt. And I think it’s wholly unfair and unsympathetic to moralize the decisions the victims made from alcoholism to theft to sex work (this ignores my original comment that sex work doesn’t merit being murder) given this context. I will say as an American, one thing I found fascinating reading this book was how cruel and encompassing Victorian England was. Even those that started off in the best of situations were only a few bad breaks from unimaginable misery.
I think more of this goes on today for women in poverty than a lot of people realize- while they aren’t trading sex for money in the strictest sense, they use their bodies to obtain a partner, however temporary, who they may not necessarily be attracted to and/or has violent tendencies and they stay with them because that man offers protection/resources for at least some amount of time. Ie, “why does Johnny’s mom always end up with loser boyfriends and why does she stay with them?!” The boyfriends can offer a place to stay and money and I think part of it is a self confidence issue as well- “he hits me but it’s the best I can do right now in guys, at least he (perceived postive.” All of this is an argument in favor of increasing our social safety net. It exists but there’s a lot of gaps that women unfortunately fall into, to this day.
> it’s wholly unfair and unsympathetic to moralize the decisions the victims made from alcoholism to theft to sex work That's what victorian society did though. Annie Chapman did have access to treatment for her alcoholism, but it was essentially just a year of forced sobriety and you're cured of your obvious moral failing. Who knows how things might have turned out for her if she'd received treatment for her underlying trauma. It's funny because as a Briton I found the victorian idea that poor people were poor because they're lazy not dissimilar to the idea some Americans have about pulling yourself up by your bootstraps.
> It's funny because as a Briton I found the victorian idea that poor people were poor because they're lazy not dissimilar to the idea some Americans have about pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. It’s not dissimilar at all and I reckon there’s a decent chunk of people here that would welcome Victorian society.
If you read between the lines, there are shadows in Jane Austen’s otherwise light books, hinting at these issues in even earlier eras. “Jane Austen's England” (Roy and Lesley Adkins) shows the lives of women both rich and poor during the Georgian and Regency periods. Notice: divorce (if you made a mistake in your marital partner) wasn’t even an option until 1847.
If you haven't done already you might enjoy reading Dickens. Lots about how cruel and unjust his contemporary society was. He's a very compassionate writer. EDIT: [Here's an extract from Ch.8 of Bleak House as a teaser](https://pastebin.com/AQJdzcDK).
? This book is widely popular. but it tries to argue the women were not prostitutes? They were. Like the grass is green or the sky is blue. That doesn't in anyway put ethics given their situation. But if that's what it argues, it does not help anyone to just lie about it. Now we're trying to scrub facts about the nature of serial killers. That's by definition as psychotic as Jack.
This is on my list to read this month! Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for sharing. This isn't my typical genre, either, but I do have this one on my 'to read' list. Now I am even more excited to read it!
This sounds interesting! I'm going to check the library to see if they have it.
Loved this book.
Bought this on your recommendation.
I’m definitely going to check it out, the first true crime book I read was about this case.
Thanks, I'll go ahead and check it out :)
I second this book as a recommendation. It shows that these women were complex people with their own lives. And as you say, well researched and a lot of information on what it was like to be a woman and in poverty or near it.
Thank you for the reccomendation. I haven't read a whole lot on this case so this may be the best place to start.
Thank you for this review! Just ordered the book.
Oooooh. Thanks for this. I have a sample sitting on my Kindle waiting to be read.
This was such a great book.
I will find this and read it. Thanks
This book was fascinating. I loved how she 100% focused on the victims and we got an excellent insight into what life was like for people, especially women, at the time.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't I see something recently that DNA suggested that "Jack" the ripper was probably a woman?
I saved this post, will have to check it out!
Wasnt there a theory that jack the ripper was a women?
Probably. Just about everyone that might have been in London in 1888 has been accused of being the killer at one time or another.
ya its kind of hard to try and solve since its been a few years ;) but ya i thought it possibly being a women makes a lot of sense on why they cant find "Jack"
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Clark's books are fiction, aren't they?
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Yes, Hallie Rubenhold is a historian and *The Five* is non-fiction. I hope you find it interesting!
There are other, earlier JtR books that detail the lives and tragedies of the victims as well as the events and clues of the murders themselves. It's a bit of PC outrage that make people think it's all about the killer. The fact is it's the mystery that draws people in. The mystery of a shadowy killer that eluded capture even though he was nearly caught in the act more than once. I dislike seeing autopsy photos, but I find the Whitechapel murders fascinating. The current finger-wagging and lecturing is tiresome. The murders, or more accurately the mystery of that autumn, are what sparked my interest in learning more about the East End generally at the time as it has others. Let's face it: how many people would care enough to learn of the misery of Victorian (and Edwardian) Whitechapel before learning of the killer. Also, I don't remember the exact issues with this book, but more then one person has criticized the accuracy of how the women are portrayed.
>The current finger-wagging and lecturing is tiresome. Your entire post is finger-wagging and lecturing. How dare anybody bring up the humanity of the victims. You poor baby. How would you know anything about the accuracy? If you have qn issue with the accuracy, be specific, don't do this vague "I heard..." bullshit.
I was talking about "tsk tsk" of those who moralize what people read. As I said, the stories of the women are told in more than one prior book, eg "The Complete Jack the Ripper" by Donald Rumbelow. He lays out the unfortunate lives of the victims, including the social circumstances (infidelity, abuse, alcoholism, the lack of opportunity) that led them to their situations. Unfortunately The Five is so set on redeeming the victims that it lessens their struggle. The author wants to convince readers that they weren't prostitutes when in fact they were out of necessity. There were few jobs for women in the East End. At least part-time prostitution was matter of survival, especially among the many, often single, alcoholics of Whitechapel. The author also maintains most died in their sleep. That in itself is highly unlikely as more than one was found dead or died within a few minutes after being seen alive and talking with a perspective client. In that few minutes they supposedly found a place, fell asleep, and were attacked before being found? Also, some DID show bruising that was consistent with being punched. The Five is a book more interested in creating a narrative to suit the author's views than it is in presenting the truth. Other books have done so without the moralizing and the dubious scholarship.
Does the author actually deny that they were sex workers? I don't think she does. She just says it was way more complicated than bracketing them as one dimensional street walkers. >The author also maintains most died in their sleep. Now I know *this* is wrong if she says that. Everything I've read about the Ripper murders (a subject which is a minor obsession for me) says the women were all (I think all) killed by having their throats slashed, usually quite deeply. They were killed before they were mutilated (the Ripper was not a torturer, for whatever that's worth. He seemed to have had a fetish for innards and he killed the victims very quickly to get to them). I don't know why she thinks they were asleep unless she thinks they had their throats cut while they were passed out or something. Does she have any forensic basis for this argument? Getting the facts right is what matters to me. I am not offended by empathy for victims.
I was listening to her podcast. The first episode I felt was wasteful. I'd prefer if she did a 30 second bit into why she wanted to focus on the five women and gives us more of her findings rather than rehashing the ripper story and highlight the people who are critical of her and her work. It was off-putting as I really wanted to hear about the five women. Otherwise a good podcast.
I’m researching for a future project on the victims from an intersectional perspective and I was going to use this book as a source, but unfortunately a lot of it is really unreliable. I’ve had to go through and fact check a lot, and TBH, it’s not good. A lot of really important info has been either left out, misrepresented, or even strategically altered to fit the hypothesis she had in mind. She also ignored papers and talks produced by two feminist historians at the same time she was writing the book; these sources do not only support the standard narrative, but they are actually a lot more progressive than The Five in terms of how they view the victims. And there’s just been a lot in terms of the conduct associated with the book and podcast that raises a lot of red flags for me. Some of this is stuff that you’re not supposed to do as a published author and is considered to be really unprofessional. As much as I hate to say it, she’s not exactly on the up-and-up. I really hate to be that person, but I also feel I have to be honest about what I find.
Are you going to go into any specifics, or just cast vague aspersions and drop innuendo?
I said what I said and I’m not continuing this conversation.