Reviews - The Five: The Lives of Jack the Ripper's Women

4.72k reviews for:

The Five: The Lives of Jack the Ripper's Women

Hallie Rubenhold

4.18 AVERAGE

anniejh's review against another edition

5.0

challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

tchallis35's review against another edition

4.0

“There is no doubt that the story of Jack the Ripper is a good yarn. It’s a gothic tale of a monster on the loose, stalking the dark, fog clouded streets of London. It contains suspense and horror, and an element of sexual titillation. Unfortunately, this is also a one sided story. And the hunt for the killer has taken center 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 gawk 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.”

This book is fascinating. It is a meticulously researched report of the five women presumed murdered by Jack the Ripper. Only one of the five seemed to have been a prostitute- despite the folklore and the fake news of that day.
The lives of women in the 19th century were unbearably hard. The had no power and very few choices. This book was worth the time.