A review by sadiereadsagain
The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper by Hallie Rubenhold
5.0
We all know who Jack the Ripper is, we all know what he did. Though no one knows his true identity, he is possibly the most well known figure from the Victorian era after the monarch herself. But most of us couldn't name all his victims, and likely the only thing we know about them were that they were prostitutes. I'm ashamed to say that I grew up knowing about the Ripper, was for a time quite fascinated after learning about him at the London Dungeons. But of his victims, beyond their horrible death-mask mugshots, I knew nothing. Except, obviously, that they were prostitutes.
In this book, Hallie Rubenhold does something that has been far too long in coming - she gives these women back their stories, their humanity and their voices. In the process, she also dispels the most common known "fact" banded about - very few of these women had ever sold themselves for sex, and it's likely that even the one or two who had were not soliciting when they were picked out by an absolute coward to be killed in the most horrendous ways. I am aware that whether they were selling sex or not has no bearing on how we should view their deaths, but the fact is that for many people, particularly the ones responsible with solving the Ripper case, the fact they were viewed as prostitutes shaped the effort and direction of the attempts to get justice for these women, and allowed countless people to judge and exploit these women for over one hundred years.
As Rubenhold walks us through each of these women's histories one at a time, we finally see them in full colour. We learn about the struggles they had clawed through, the heartaches that had crushed them, and the awful conditions in which they found themselves, only to be further abused and stripped of their dignity after having their lives stolen. Rubenhold does not discuss the Ripper, and she doesn't exploit the details of how these women died. This book is purely about five women who had done all they could to survive, until they couldn't.
I thought this book was incredible. Yes, it's worthy in its aim, but that isn't the only thing that makes this readable and important. A lot of assumptions and projections are made in drawing together these stories, but that is more effort than has ever been granted to these women. This book is a fascinating dive into the realities of life for working class women in Victorian England, and the ways in which even middle class lives could easily slip under the mantle of respectability to quickly tumble into the gutter. No two women had followed the same path to the dirty, dark streets of Whitechapel, but what unites them are the toxic combination of poverty, the limited scope granted to women, the poor sanitation and living conditions, and the welcoming arms of cheap alcohol. These women had such difficult lives, yet did what they could to get by. That they were killed so horrifically and then exploited for the juicy details for well over 100 years before someone thought to write their truth is incredibly sad. I'm thankful that Rubenhold decided to write this. And thankful that it was Rubenhold, with her flowing writing and sensitivity towards these women that wrote it, and not someone perpetuating their exploitation.
In this book, Hallie Rubenhold does something that has been far too long in coming - she gives these women back their stories, their humanity and their voices. In the process, she also dispels the most common known "fact" banded about - very few of these women had ever sold themselves for sex, and it's likely that even the one or two who had were not soliciting when they were picked out by an absolute coward to be killed in the most horrendous ways. I am aware that whether they were selling sex or not has no bearing on how we should view their deaths, but the fact is that for many people, particularly the ones responsible with solving the Ripper case, the fact they were viewed as prostitutes shaped the effort and direction of the attempts to get justice for these women, and allowed countless people to judge and exploit these women for over one hundred years.
As Rubenhold walks us through each of these women's histories one at a time, we finally see them in full colour. We learn about the struggles they had clawed through, the heartaches that had crushed them, and the awful conditions in which they found themselves, only to be further abused and stripped of their dignity after having their lives stolen. Rubenhold does not discuss the Ripper, and she doesn't exploit the details of how these women died. This book is purely about five women who had done all they could to survive, until they couldn't.
I thought this book was incredible. Yes, it's worthy in its aim, but that isn't the only thing that makes this readable and important. A lot of assumptions and projections are made in drawing together these stories, but that is more effort than has ever been granted to these women. This book is a fascinating dive into the realities of life for working class women in Victorian England, and the ways in which even middle class lives could easily slip under the mantle of respectability to quickly tumble into the gutter. No two women had followed the same path to the dirty, dark streets of Whitechapel, but what unites them are the toxic combination of poverty, the limited scope granted to women, the poor sanitation and living conditions, and the welcoming arms of cheap alcohol. These women had such difficult lives, yet did what they could to get by. That they were killed so horrifically and then exploited for the juicy details for well over 100 years before someone thought to write their truth is incredibly sad. I'm thankful that Rubenhold decided to write this. And thankful that it was Rubenhold, with her flowing writing and sensitivity towards these women that wrote it, and not someone perpetuating their exploitation.