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Reviews tagging 'Terminal illness'
The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper by Hallie Rubenhold
20 reviews
jessi_lou95's review against another edition
4.0
Graphic: Alcohol, Alcoholism, Child death, Death, Death of parent, Murder, and Sexism
Moderate: Domestic abuse, Grief, Miscarriage, and Pregnancy
Minor: Chronic illness, Fire/Fire injury, Forced institutionalization, Infidelity, Terminal illness, and Trafficking
abi_sarah's review against another edition
4.0
Hallie Rubenhold really sets the scene of Victorian London and effortlessly introduces each of the victims with the societal norms and prejudices which forced them - in most cases - to live largely unhappy lives. She describes what itโs like to live in workhouses and what little privacy there is for those who live in them - perhaps explaining why now we value privacy so much as a society.
Graphic: Murder and Addiction
Moderate: Alcohol, Drug abuse, Alcoholism, and Drug use
Minor: Physical abuse, Rape, Pregnancy, Sexual violence, Chronic illness, Miscarriage, Terminal illness, Sexual assault, and Grief
krisha's review against another edition
5.0
Graphic: Death, Terminal illness, Trafficking, Alcohol, Alcoholism, Child death, Classism, and Forced institutionalization
Moderate: Misogyny, Domestic abuse, Grief, Miscarriage, Kidnapping, Police brutality, and Rape
thinkingcatss's review against another edition
5.0
Moderate: Chronic illness, Toxic relationship, Classism, Alcoholism, Physical abuse, Mental illness, Sexual content, Rape, Forced institutionalization, Sexism, Death of parent, Drug abuse, Abandonment, Addiction, Emotional abuse, Infidelity, Pregnancy, Sexual harassment, Terminal illness, Trafficking, Death, Drug use, Pandemic/Epidemic, Miscarriage, Medical content, Sexual assault, Domestic abuse, Child death, Alcohol, Grief, Sexual violence, Suicide, and Violence
eve81's review against another edition
Graphic: Terminal illness, Pregnancy, Pandemic/Epidemic, Sexism, Abandonment, Addiction, Alcoholism, Toxic relationship, Violence, Infidelity, Murder, Grief, Misogyny, and Injury/Injury detail
tiernanhunter's review against another edition
5.0
Graphic: Domestic abuse, Medical content, Misogyny, Sexism, Suicide attempt, Violence, Abandonment, Abortion, Child abuse, Child death, Infertility, Kidnapping, Death of parent, Murder, Trafficking, Ableism, Adult/minor relationship, Miscarriage, War, Classism, Death, Drug use, Forced institutionalization, Sexual harassment, Blood, Grief, Infidelity, Addiction, Physical abuse, Pregnancy, Alcoholism, Alcohol, Chronic illness, Emotional abuse, Incest, Pedophilia, Rape, Terminal illness, and Mental illness
jacs63's review against another edition
5.0
It gives a face, a name and a voice, to the 5 victims of JtR.
We so often only hear about the perpetrator, and not the victims.
The book discusses the fact that thru the falsehood and misinformation spread by the Metropolitan Police and journalists at the time, it was convenient for us all to think that JtR only killed prostitutes.
Only 2 of the 5 were actually known to be sex workers.
There is no evidence that the other 3 were sex workers at all, but I for one believed the misinformation that was spread.
One thing that all 5 women shared was that they are all alcoholics.
I wonder why??
Maybe because cheap alcohol was the only thing that dulled the pain, if only for a while, of the poverty; the hunger; the homelessness; the early death of family members, including their own spouses or their own babies/ children; the death sentence that they were given if their spouse died and left them, and their children, destitute; their treatment as a woman with no legal rights; the living hell that was the 'Workhouse'; the lack of education for woman; the disease; the filth and vermin; the lack of medicines; the lack of clean water and sanitation; the violence; the lack of hope, respect and dignity etc etc etc.
Basically the treatment of women/girls in the 1800's.
It's full of interesting and informative historical facts about what life, and death, was like, for women in particular, in the Victorian 1800's.
It's sad and horrific and devastating. It's a book that won't leave me for a while, I don't think.
Probably not a book to read if you are depressed or feeling melancholic.
We will never know who JtR was.
But we can know who his victims were.
These women were daughters; sisters; wives; lovers; mothers; friends.
May they never be forgotten.
RIP and love, Polly, Annie, Elizabeth, Kate and Mary Jane.
Graphic: Forced institutionalization, Child death, Addiction, Alcoholism, Blood, Chronic illness, Death, Physical abuse, Excrement, Misogyny, Medical content, Alcohol, Death of parent, Domestic abuse, Drug use, Infidelity, Medical trauma, Mental illness, Emotional abuse, Gore, Grief, Stalking, Terminal illness, Violence, Murder, and Pandemic/Epidemic
pedanther's review against another edition
4.5
Graphic: Injury/Injury detail, Misogyny, and Classism
Moderate: Murder, Alcoholism, Suicide, Child death, Domestic abuse, Pregnancy, Miscarriage, Trafficking, Physical abuse, Grief, and Infidelity
Minor: Chronic illness, Death of parent, Antisemitism, Mental illness, Abandonment, Forced institutionalization, Rape, and Terminal illness
jesshindes's review against another edition
5.0
Rubenhold's book inverts that balance - she isn't interested in the Ripper, doesn't believe it's possible to identify him, and more fundamentally questions why we are so ghoulishly entertained by him in the first place. These are issues that are being addressed more frequently now since the boom in true crime podcasts etc and I think they're very applicable here - but what's more interesting is all the original research that underpins The Five, and the detailed portraits that Rubenhold is able to paint of each of its subjects.
One of the book's primary innovations is to show that only one of the women killed - Mary Jane Kelly - was a prostitute, in the sense of this being her primary occupation. Elizabeth Stride may have participated in sex work towards the end of her life and there's no evidence that any of the other three did so at all. It's not that there's anything wrong with being a sex worker but the fact that the murders are framed as targeting prostitutes when this is evidently inaccurate does show the degree to which these women have been sidelined in the story of their own deaths. Rather than being linked by prostutution, then, what Rubenhold shows is that all five women were linked by destitution and particularly insecure housing; four of the five were killed as they slept on the Whitechapel streets. The Five is therefore largely a series of stories about descending into poverty; falling from security, even the relative and contingent security of the working class, into a position where you might wake up each morning unsure of where you'd spend that night. The causes are so simple and so painful: the breakdown of domestic partnerships. Alcoholism. A lack of access to contraception. Disease. The loss of employment. Every one of these stories is different but the common factors are telling. Rubenhold shows you these women, illustrates their problems, and in doing so makes a wider point about how easy it was to drop out of the bottom of Victorian society - especially as a woman, whose labour was worth less than a man's and whose sexual virtue was treated as both more important and more fragile.
It's no secret that I am super interested in the Victorian period but I really loved this book and would recommend it to anybody interested in women's history but also working class history. As much as anything else, it shows you the importance of the welfare state that the government is presently doing its best to dismantle ๐ We shouldn't forget these women or the thousands like them, eaten up and spat out by the hardships of the nineteenth century.
Moderate: Murder, Child death, Alcoholism, and Terminal illness
shelbyslifer's review against another edition
4.75
Graphic: Alcoholism
Moderate: Abandonment, Miscarriage, Terminal illness, Alcohol, Murder, Sexism, Child death, Classism, Death, Misogyny, Child abuse, Addiction, and Domestic abuse
Minor: Antisemitism and Trafficking