True crime is not a genre I dip into very often, but today’s read was my second true crime read of April. I didn’t really know much about the Jack the Ripper case, yet even the slimmest awareness of the cultural legacy of this case, can leave you with some erroneous assumptions. For example, it is usually said that all the Ripper’s victims were prostitutes, yet this is one of the many beliefs Rubenhold challenges. I was surprised how close in age most of the victims were, in their early 40’s, and one of the biggest things this book does is show how hard their lives were before they even reached the fateful nights they were killed. They are given back their individuality, which is emphasised by only having each woman’s first name as the section title separators. Yet in doing so Rubenhold shows the wider and much more prolific economic and social problems women were facing at that time. However, I am getting ahead of myself.
Rubenhold starts a year previously to the Ripper killings, contrasting the opulence of the Golden Jubilee with the water, resource, and employment shortages, which contributed to an encampment in Trafalgar Square of the homeless and unemployed. This was a ripe ground for political agitation and social unrest, a violent protest dubbed as “Bloody Sunday” erupting after the government tried to impose restrictions on public meetings. I hadn’t expected this as the opening, but I think it was a very effective choice, as it also allows the writer to introduce the first of the Ripper victims, Mary Ann a.k.a. Polly:
‘Through these two scenes moved two women whose lives and deaths would come to define the nineteenth century; one was Victoria, who gave her name to the era: 1837-1901. The other was a homeless woman called Mary Ann or “Polly” Nichols, who was among those encamped at Trafalgar Square that year. Unlike the monarch, her identity would be largely forgotten, though the world would remember with great fascination and even relish the name of her killer: Jack the Ripper.’
The introduction then moves into a broad outline of the Ripper killings, and I was interested to learn about the sheer scale of the police investigation: ‘In all, more than two thousand people were interviewed and more than three hundred were investigated as possible suspects.’ Rubenhold also discusses the effect of newspaper reporting at the time and how those living in Whitechapel responded to this series of attacks. Nevertheless, this book is not a dry recitation of known facts and from the very beginning the author strikes a challenging note against what is supposedly already known about the case, in particular the victims:
‘Most of the information that exists about the five victims has been drawn from witness statements given during the inquests; however, these present a problematic account of events.’
Assumptions about the poor women of Whitechapel also begin to be unpicked in the introduction. For example, at the time newspapers would state that all the women in Whitechapel lodging houses were prostitutes. However, contemporary police information suggests otherwise. Sir Charles Warren, the then Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police compiled data on the issue and had to come to the conclusion that: ‘We have no means of ascertaining what women are prostitutes and who are not.’ Rubenhold goes on to comment that:
‘Warren’s figures present another intriguing prospect. If the lodging-house population was comprised of 8530 people and one third, or 2844, of those residents were female, and if it were to be accepted that 1200 of these women could be identified as prostitutes, that would still indicate that the majority of them, or 1644 were not engaged in any form of prostitution at all. Much like the inhabitants of Whitechapel’s common lodging houses, the victims of Jack the Ripper and their lives have become entangled in a web of assumptions, rumour and unfounded speculation. The spinning of these strands began over 130 years ago and, remarkably, has been left virtually undisturbed and unchallenged for all of this time.’
As her book goes on to demonstrate there is ‘no hard evidence to suggest that three of’ the Ripper’s ‘five victims were prostitutes at all.’ What is so important about Rubenhold’s book is that she is not nit-picking over semantics and details, as particularly in her conclusion she strongly argues for why the truth in this serial killing spree matters.
Moreover, the writer uses the introduction to begin establishing the social and economic realities of being poor in the 1880s: ‘If the Whitechapel murders served to expose anything, it was the unspeakably horrendous conditions in which the poor of that district lived […] By the end of the nineteenth century, 78,000 souls were packed into this quarter […]’ The social contexts in which the victims lived is of great importance and gone into with rigorous but also interesting detail throughout the book.
Polly (1845-1888)
Mary Ann who became known as Polly was born in Gunpowder Alley, Shoe Lane and Rubenhold notes that Charles Dickens came ‘to know these dingy courts and foetid alleys intimately in his youth while he worked as a shoe black, and later scribbled away in nearby rooms. Polly […] would spend her first years in the same lodgings as the fictional Fagin and his pick-pocketing boys.’
As Rubenhold covers Polly’s childhood, marriage, and the birth of her children, I was strongly impressed with the feeling that it really did matter how these women ended up on the streets and the street they died on. The Five is a book which makes you consider the present, reminding you of how precarious life is for so many. The author’s writing style makes you invest in the women as individuals. You are rooting for them all the while knowing they don’t have a happy ending. It was so sad reading how Polly’s marriage and home life fell apart.
In this section, as well as some of the later ones, the writer really paints a vivid picture of the reality of going to a workhouse for assistance. This was something working-class women struggled to avoid when they left their husbands, as Rubenhold explains:
‘However, in an era when divorce was an option only for those who could afford the exorbitant court fees, a working-class wife who wished to “officially” separate from her husband first had to demonstrate her desperation and destitution. The only means by which this could be achieved was to enter the workhouse. For many wives, this ordeal was described as “the most humiliating experience of their lives” and carried with it “a permanent stigma”.’
Whilst a husband was required to pay his wife a maintenance fee in the above situation, there was still a huge double standard at play for legally separated couples, as a husband could stop payments to his wife if she had a relationship with another man. There were no rules against the husband having other relationships.
Polly’s life depicts the inevitable downward spiral of someone in her position, falling deeper into poverty; a situation not helped by the inadequacies and downright atrocities of the poor relief system at the time. The book explores how being a homeless woman carried (and still does) the additional threat of sexual violence. At the time a female ‘vagabond’ was assumed to be sexually immoral and therefore an acceptable person to force sexual attentions onto. Rubenhold includes some interesting research material on this subject, discussing Mary Higgs’ investigative work, where she went undercover as a female ‘tramp’ to record what it was like.
As the first canonical victim of Jack the Ripper, Polly’s death was instrumental in shaping the subsequent investigation. Unfortunately, the authorities assumed that because she was outside at night then she must have been soliciting. The realities of being destitute at those times meant that such a person would have a variety of sleeping places: lodging houses, casual wards, dark corners in alleyways. Yet this was not taken into account, nor was other evidence given. Rubenhold writes:
‘These assumptions [that Polly was a prostitute] subsequently had a hand in crafting the direction of the entire investigation, the coroner’s inquest and the way that the story was reported in the newspapers, even though virtually everything stated by the three witnesses who knew Polly intimately – Ellen Holland, Edward Walker and William Nichols – appears to counter the preconception that she was engaged in prostitution. At times the coroner’s inquest becomes a moral investigation of Polly Nichols herself, as if the hearing was in part to determine whether her behaviour warranted her fate.’
Annie (1841-1888)
Annie’s father was a trooper in the second Life Guards, her mother a servant. Their marriage took place several years later, but it seems as though affairs between military men and servants were not that uncommon: ‘Hyde Park, [was] notorious as a venue for flirtation between soldiers and servants […]’ The irresistibility of military men was referred to, by journalist Henry Mayhew, as ‘Scarlet Fever’. Prior to their marriage, Annie’s mother would have been seen ‘in the eyes of society, and the army’ as ‘a “dollymop”: a soldier’s woman who, while not quite falling into the category of “professional”, was deemed a sort of “amateur” prostitute.’ Interestingly, once they got permission from the army to marry, their marriage year got backdated on Annie’s father’s paperwork, so it looked like the marriage started sooner. Living in a military barracks sounded pretty grim, as there were no designated married quarters until the 1850s. Despite the lack of privacy and poor sanitation, there were some benefits such as schooling for any children.
A stressful time in Annie’s formative years was the loss of four of her siblings over three weeks due to either scarlet fever or typhus. Like her mother Annie, when old enough, went out to work in domestic service. Rubenhold notes that ‘[…] between 1851 and 1891, nearly 43 per cent of women between the ages of fifteen and twenty went into service.’ Another traumatic event in Annie’s life was the death of her father. When he retired from the military, he went on to become a valet. He was able to spend little time with his family and he ultimately killed himself. Due to a likely donation Annie’s mother became a landlady and Annie went on to marry one of the lodgers, a coachman called John Chapman. This marriage left Annie in a comfortable standard of living, so given the theme of this book, one wonders where did it all go wrong for her?
Alcoholism is the unfortunate answer, an addiction Annie may have struggled with since a young age (a point brought out by some very diligent research on Rubenhold’s part). Her father had a similar addiction, as did one of her brothers. Interestingly her mother and remaining siblings all became teetotal due to the circumstances of their husband’s/father’s death. The author considers how drunkenness was perceived at the time and the way it was linked to class and presumed moral character. The writer also interestingly links alcohol addiction with middle class wives struggling with loneliness and boredom. Sadly, many of Annie’s children were affected by her addiction, either dying a few days or weeks after birth, or surviving but going on to develop epileptic seizures or foetal alcohol syndrome. This latter condition is evidenced in family photos. Proof that Rubenhold really makes you care about the women she is writing about, can be found in Annie’s story, as it so heartbreaking how she ends up falling off the wagon, after becoming sober at Spelthorne Sanatorium. Her return to drink resulted in her having to leave her husband (so he could keep his job). Annie’s story also highlights the reason why it is so important to uncover the events which led to Annie ending up on the street, as Rubenhold writes:
‘In previous attempts to recount the events of Annie Chapman’s life, one of the greatest oversights has always been a failure to examine how someone who lived on a country estate in Berkshire or who had resided in Knightsbridge ended up in Whitechapel. This alteration in circumstances would not have happened overnight, as both geographically as well as socially it is not a natural trajectory.’
After having to leave her husband, Annie returned to her family home (although John provided upkeep payments). Shame, guilt, and her need to drink, (which her teetotal family would not have approved of) however, meant this was a short stay and Annie choose to strike out on her own: ‘Ultimately, Annie, like so many addicts, chose a life without those she loved, rather than a life without the substance she craved.’ Later efforts by her family to encourage her to come home failed unfortunately.
The author argues that ‘perversely, it was the self-recognition of her disgrace that kept the “female inebriate” drinking “in order to drown her shame.”’ Rubenhold further adds that:
‘[…] Victorian society conflated the broken woman with the fallen woman. The woman who had lost her marriage and her home through her moral weakness was viewed with no less abhorrence than the woman who had engaged in extra-marital sex. A woman who was “drunk and disorderly”, who embarrassed herself in public, who demonstrated no regard for her appearance, who did not have a respectable home or a husband or family to regulate her conduct, was judged to be as much of a degenerate as a prostitute. They became one and the same: outcast women.’
In this next stage of her life Rubenhold shows how a woman with limited funds had to survive:
‘Just as was the case with Polly Nichols, Annie’s precarious position as a lone woman demanded that she find a male partner, despite the fact that she was still legally married. Whether or not she wished to throw in her lot with another man, her circumstances compelled her into what society would consider a state of adultery.’
Near the end of her life, she also contracted TB, which led to brain tissue damage.
Once more when it comes to Annie’s death and the inquest that followed, Rubenhold argues her case for there being no evidence that Annie was a prostitute. Again, the author returns to the words of Sir Charles Warren from the 19th of July 1887:
‘”the police are [not] justified in calling any woman a common prostitute, unless she so describes herself, or has been convicted as such…” The order went on to state that although a police constable “may be perfectly convinced in his own mind that she is such” he should “not assume that any particular woman is a common prostitute” unless there are witnesses and proof to attest to this.’
There is no reliable evidence in Annie’s case to say she was. Yet Rubenhold notes that:
‘As the police were still of an opinion that the Whitechapel murders were committed by either a high-rip extortion gang or a lone prostitute-killer […] it was essential that the victim be identified with the sex trade. Evidently with no heed paid to Charles Warren’s order of 19 July, the police of H division simply wrote “prostitute” into the space provided for “occupation” on Annie’s forms.’
The author looks at why the women were wrongfully labelled as prostitutes and the consequences this had.
Elizabeth (1843-1888)
Elizabeth’s story starts in Torslanda, Sweden, where she was born into a farming family. As a young adult she travelled to Gothenburg to find domestic employment, which the writer comments was expected at the time:
‘In Sweden, as in other European countries, it was traditional for young women to gain experience of domestic life beyond the confines of their homes and communities. For many, the years prior to marriage spent in the kitchens, the nurseries or scrubbing floors under the auspices of other women functioned as a type of apprenticeship before they assumed command of their own households.’
Rubenhold further adds that:
‘[…] female labour in Sweden was extremely cheap and the Servant Act made it compulsory for those who did not have an income through land to find employment in service […] Nineteenth-century Swedish commentators often remarked that lower-middle-class families frequently employed more servants than there were tasks to occupy them. Art historian Henrik Cornell, reflecting back on his childhood, recalled a middle-class wife who busied her bored, under-employed maids by making them carry wet linen through the rooms in order to catch the dust before it settled.’
Details like this are what made this book such an interesting read. The author really helps you to see what life was like in different contexts and situations. Elizabeth was a young woman from the countryside and in some ways her story is not an unfamiliar one, with her leaving her employment after a while, pregnant. It is not known who the father was, and as an unmarried and expectant mother, she faced the inevitable social stigma and issues with employment.
Sexually transmitted infections and their connection with prostitution is one of the themes explored in Elizabeth’s timeline. Many European countries, in the second half of nineteenth century set up laws to tackle the spread of STIs, syphilis and gonorrhoea in particular. For example, in Britain in 1864 the Contagious Diseases Act was passed. However, as Rubenhold shows, there was a gender bias in the strategies deployed:
‘While the methods of enforcing regulation varied between countries, the concept which they all shared was that women in the sex trade should shoulder the blame for the transmission of syphilis. It was believed that if the state could control the morally corrupt fallen woman, the instrument of the disease’s spread, then the problem could be isolated. The male carrier was exempt from the regulation.’
Rubenhold describes the strategy used in Sweden, among other places:
‘In Gothenburg, as in Stockholm, Paris, Hamburg, Berlin and cities throughout Europe, women who participated in the sex trade were required to register their names and addresses with the police and submit to regular gynaecological examinations to ensure they were free of disease. However, determining who exactly should be placed on this roll was down entirely to the whim of the prostitution police patrolling various neighbourhoods. Many women who were forced to enlist themselves were not selling sex, but were suspected of what the police described as “lecherous living”.’
Unfortunately, in 1865, 6 months pregnant and with no sign of a partner, Elizabeth was forced to join the register, falling under the category of ‘“lecherous living”’. Joining the register was a dehumanising experience, with each entrant listed as a ‘public woman’ followed by a number. The inspection routine sounds appalling and traumatic. Elizabeth during one of these inspections was noted to have symptoms of syphilis, likely contracted by the father of her unborn child. Consequently, she was sent to a venereal disease hospital, where she faced horrible attitudes and medical treatments. It was there that she gave birth to a still born child. Once released from the hospital, she was without support and because she was on the register, she was prevented from gaining respectable employment. So, whilst she did not start out as a prostitute, going on to the list, meant she had no choice but to become one. I was impressed with how this book implicitly encourages you to place yourselves in the shoes of the women being looked at. Elizabeth faced several rounds of hospital treatment. At the time once the visible symptoms of syphilis disappeared, it was assumed you were cured. This was sadly not true, with the disease having devastating effects on sufferers later in life. Elizabeth finally got off the register and was taken on as a maid, although because of her having been on the register she was legally only entitled to bed and board, no wages.
This definitely feels like a punitive system, rather than one which helps women raise their living standards. It is not surprising that Elizabeth jumped at the opportunity to become maid servant for a British family going back to London. A fresh start. Like Polly she married in London, with the usual ups and downs of finances. She too left her husband when it soured. Interestingly, when she struck out on her own, Elizabeth decided to beg for money from individuals, claiming to be a survivor of the Princess Alice disaster in the Thames, which claimed 650 lives. I was also intrigued by the way she recreates her identity in Whitechapel, including letting another woman erroneously think that she was her long-lost sister. That woman was Mary Malcolm, who for five years gave her two shillings a week despite her doubts.
Looking at testimony regarding Elizabeth’s behaviour in the runup to her murder, the author argues that she was probably suffering from the final phase of syphilis – neurosyphilis. Rubenhold explains that:
‘[This] disease begins to attack the brain and the nervous system. The French physician Alfred Fournier, who conducted a study of the progress of the disease, identified “epileptic fits” as its first manifestation of the tertiary phase. Interestingly, Mary Malcolm mentions in her inquest testimony that Elizaeth had recently begun to suffer from these […] Apparently Elizabeth’s seizures were so bad that there were occasions when the police had let her off charges on account of her condition.’
Rubenhold continues:
‘[…] neurosyphilis can also lead to paralysis in some and symptoms similar to dementia in others. A victim’s memory may falter and the sufferer may become prone to hallucinations and delusions. Behaviour becomes erratic, if not irrational, inappropriate or violent. If Elizabeth was indeed suffering from the early stages of neurosyphilis then her heavy drinking was likely to have disguised these symptoms, or at least offered an easy explanation for her increasing episodes of violence and obscene language. It is also possible that the symptoms themselves drove her to further her alcohol intake in order to contend with feelings of disorientation or pain.’
Kate 1842-1888
Kate’s story begins with an early move to London after her father, George Eddowes, had to leave Wolverhampton where he worked with tin metal, as he got two months imprisonment for being a ringleader of a strike. This section was interesting in how it showed that even a man on good wages, could struggle to provide for his family when there were ineffective and insufficient ways of controlling the number of children conceived. Yet the author also looks at the realities of being a working-class mother going through back-to-back pregnancies. Kate’s mum went on to have twelve children in total and sadly Kate lost both her parents when she was 15.
The youngest children and an older sibling with learning difficulties, had to go to the workhouse, whilst Kate was sent back to relatives in Wolverhampton. You may think Kate got the better option, but things did not pan out well for her. She had ‘been educated for a life in domestic service’, yet in Wolverhampton was working as a scourer at a metal goods factory. By the age of 19 she had lost her job due to stealing and she moved to Birmingham to stay with her uncle, who was a shoemaker and amateur boxer. She fell in love with Thomas Conway, a chapman who had previously been invalided out of the army due to poor health. He had served in India, and this left him with some ‘exotic’ stories and his ‘footloose’ lifestyle would have also appealed to Kate, in comparison to the drudgery of her own life.
Kate and Thomas cohabited and working-class attitudes towards this are explored. The writer also points out the positives of the pedlar lifestyle, offering Kate an outlet for her creative gifting, but the author also shows the harsh practicalities, including having to give birth at a workhouse. Another example of interesting research in the book is the inclusion of a ballad believed to have been written by Thomas and Kate. It is called ‘A Copy of Verses on the Awful Execution of Charles Christopher Robinson, For the Murder of his Sweetheart, Harriet Segar, of Ablow Street, Wolverhampton, August 26th.’ This hanging took place in 1866 and Charles was Kate’s distant cousin.
The pair decided to move to London, but this was not good for a chapman’s career, as there was too much competition and their third child died of malnutrition. Kate spent ten years going in and out of the workhouse with her kids. It is at this stage in the book that the author discusses the introduction of industrial schools, which were ‘facilities provided by the Poor Law Union [that] offered far greater scope for a child to improve their prospects.’ Despite the word ‘industrial’ sounding rather harsh, they did have positive consequences for their pupils. Rubenhold demonstrates this by looking at Kate and her younger siblings:
‘Its success can also be measured in terms of the impact it had on the lives of Kate’s younger brothers and sister, Thomas, George and Mary, who were sent there from Bermondsey Workhouse after the death of their father. Within several years, George Eddowes had been trained as a shoemaker, while Thomas Eddowes had been taught music and was sent to join the band of the 45th Nottinghamshire Regiment of Infantry in Preston. Mary too had been successful enough in her “domestics studies” to warrant a placement as a servant. Had Kate been a year or so younger in 1857, she too may have benefited from Sutton’s educational scheme and the course of her life may have taken a very different turn.’
Kate’s relationship to Conway eventually broke down, due domestic violence (contemporary attitudes to which are explored) and Kate also developed a dependency on alcohol. These factors led to Kate sleeping rough and using doss houses. She did not retain custody of her children and unfortunately her alcohol addiction destroyed her relationship with her eldest daughter. For instance, at birth of her third child, Kate’s daughter asked her for help. Kate asked for payment for this assistance and then promptly went out to get drunk instead. This book does not attempt to whitewash the Ripper victims, nor make them appear to be saints. But what this book does do is show what factors went into shaping their lives and decisions.
The author reconstructs Kate’s final hours so well, that you are left wanting to shout, “don’t do that” or “don’t go there”. When you get to the end of each woman’s section, her life, you wish it was longer.
Mary Jane (1963-1888)
Mary Jane was the youngest of the five and it is harder to confirm much of her life history, as ‘the stories she told about herself contained some truth and some fiction, but no one has ever been able to ascertain which parts were which.’ In terms of dating events in her life, the earliest is when she makes her appearance on the West End prostitution scene between 1883 and 1884. How she got into this lifestyle is not verified. The author discusses the ease with which people could change their identity at that time, as well as the challenges of doing so:
‘In the nineteenth century creating a new identity for oneself was relatively straightforward. A move to another town or event to another district and a change of moniker was easy enough. Inventing a new persona based on a manufactured history, an alteration in dress and manners allowed many to pass successfully through different social strata, either above or below them. However, a higher quality of education and the indelible mark that it left on a person was far more difficult to either falsify or hide. An individual’s schooling came across not only in their ability to read or write, but in their speech, their bearing, their interests, and often in their artistic or musical accomplishments.’
It seems Mary Jane may have had a better degree of education as evidence from one of her landladies mentions her ‘high level of “scholarship”’ as well as her being a ‘capable artist’. Mary Jane’s life took a downward turn when she became the victim of people trafficking. Whilst she managed to escape their clutches in Paris and make her way back to England within a fortnight, her opportunities as a prostitute dropped markedly. She could no longer work within the more affluent areas that she was used to and instead had to live within more violent and desolate areas such as Ratcliff Highway. Unlike the other Ripper victims, Kate was murdered within her room, rather than one the streets. Interestingly, the book does not say much about her inquest.
Conclusion
Writing an interesting conclusion for a nonfiction book can be difficult. You want to avoid regurgitating everything you have already said, whilst not introducing a completing new topic. It can be hard for nonfiction conclusions to have something worth saying, an issue that featured in another title I read earlier in the year. However, I am pleased to say that Rubenhold’s conclusion suffers from none of these problems. Her conclusion is important and adds to the book in a meaningful way.
She begins by reviewing how the Ripper victims were viewed at the time. In some quarters there was a feeling that the Ripper was getting rid of degenerates and “bad” women. Such sentiments were voiced in the newspapers, including one letter by Edward Fairfield. This example is testament to the author’s interesting research as she points out that whilst Fairfield might see himself as better or as superior to these women, Annie Chapman ‘spent a good part of her life not far from his home’ and that her ‘family lived a fifteen-minute walk from Fairfield’s front door.’
Rubenhold challenges and criticises the limited and distorted portrayals of the Ripper victims in contemporary newspapers:
‘The truth of these women’s lives was not simple and the sensationalist nineteenth-century press was certainly not in the business of telling the whole story to readers like Edward Fairfield. Nor did any of the editors or the journalists covering this story deem it necessary or worthy of interest to delve with any depth into the victim’s biographies. Ultimately, no one really cared about who they were or how they ended up in Whitechapel.’
Moreover, the author’s conclusion does a brilliant job of summing up how hugely difficult it was for a woman to survive without a man in the 1880s:
‘Poor women’s labour was cheap because poor women were expendable and because society did not designate them as a family’s breadwinner. Unfortunately, many of them had to be. If a husband, father or partner left or died, a working-class woman with dependents found it almost impossible to survive. Society was designed to ensure that a woman without a man was superfluous.’
The lives of these five women show the problematic nature of this system which is structured to make women dependent on men.
Another theme returned to is the erroneous idea that all the victims were prostitutes. Only on Mary Jane’s death certificate was the occupation section filled with that job title. Rubenhold strongly argues that:
‘These official pronouncements must be taken as the final word on whether or not we are justified in claiming that “Jack the Ripper was a killer of prostitutes.” To insist otherwise is to fall back on arbitrary supposition informed by Victorian prejudice. Today, there is only one reason why we would continue to embrace the belief that Jack the Ripper was a killer of prostitutes: because it supports an industry that has grown in part out of this mythology.’
The idea voiced in the final sentence is a springboard for the author to challenge the current cultural legacy of Jack the Ripper. This gives the conclusion a bold and fierce ending, which I use as a compliment, as she makes a valid argument for readers to scrutinise their own attitudes in this area.
Firstly, she looks at why in this murder case, it is the murderer who takes ‘centre stage’:
‘Over the centuries, the villain has metamorphosed into the protagonist: an evil psychotic mysterious player who is so clever that he has managed to evade detection even today. In order to gawp at and examine this miracle of malevolence we have figuratively stepped over the bodies of those he murdered, and in some cases, stopped to kick them as we walked past. The larger his profile grows, the more those of his victims seems to fade.’
She then turns her attention to those who make money out of this serial killing:
‘To some merchandisers, they [the victims] are no longer human beings, but cartoon figures whose bloody images can be printed on to T-shirts, whose deaths can be laughed about on postcards and whose entrails decorate stickers. Is it any wonder that there has been no public appetite to examine the lives of the canonical five, when they have never seemed real or of any consequence to us before?’
The writer provides further examples of how Jack the Ripper is still a part of our culture and society:
‘We have grown so comfortable with the notion of “Jack the Ripper”, the unfathomable, invincible male killer, that we have failed to recognise that he continues to walk among us. In his top hat and cape, wielding a blood-drenched knife, he can be spotted regularly in London on posters, in ads, on the sides of buses. Bartenders have named drinks after him, shops use his moniker on their signs, tourists from around the world make pilgrimages to Whitechapel to walk in his footsteps and to visit a museum dedicated to his violence. The world has learned to dress up in his costume at Hallowe’en, to imagine being him, to honour his genius, to laugh at a murderer of women. By embracing him, we embrace a set of values that surrounded him in 1888 which teaches women that they are of a lesser value and can expect to be dishonoured and abused. We enforce the notion that “bad women” deserve punishment and that “prostitutes” are a sub-species of female.’
Rubenhold also importantly spells out why it is essential that the assumption Jack the Ripper killed prostitutes is debunked:
‘Insisting that Jack the Ripper killed prostitutes also makes the story of a vicious series of murders slightly more palatable. Just as it did in the nineteenth century, the notion that the victims were “only prostitutes” seeks to perpetuate the belief that there are good women and bad women […] It suggests that there is an acceptable standard of female behaviour and those who deviate from it are fit to be punished. Equally, it assists in reasserting the double standard, exonerating men from wrongs committed against such women.’
We might think this is less relevant today, but the author disagrees pointing to recent court cases where such attitudes were present.
I think this is one of the most moving examples of true crime that I have read. This is not a book which paws or pores over the victim’s mutilated bodies. It is about looking at these women when they were alive. This shift in focus is what makes this book what it is. I think this is essential reading for anyone interested in the case or for anyone planning on teaching about it. It is a great example of a book putting women back into history meaningfully.
Rating: 5/5