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A review by nicolem_young
The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper by Hallie Rubenhold
4.0
Book/Story: ⭐⭐⭐.5 (rounded up)
Book Cover: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
TRIGGER(S): Prostitution, sex trafficking (briefly mentioned), domestic abuse (briefly mentioned), miscarriages/still births (briefly mentioned)
POV: Open Third Person
Series/Standalone: Standalone
Part of a series: No
Safe or Dark: Dark
DISCLAIMER: I switched between the physical and audiobook while reading this.
One of my burning questions in life is: Who was Jack the Ripper? Was he the American serial killer H.H. Holmes (who was active in America from 1891 to 1894) or someone entirely different? When I get to wherever I’m going after my life is over, that is going to be the first thing I ask whoever can give me the answer. I have read many books and watched numerous documentaries about JTR. Dare I say I’m a Ripperologist?
Almost everything you see about that time in history solely talks about that heinous human being and the women he murdered. We get details about the crimes he committed and the police investigation that followed. But we hardly ever hear about the five (possibly eleven) women themselves.
Shouldn’t we be talking about them instead of glorifying a serial killer? We know what he did and what happened, but now it’s time to turn the focus to the ones who lost their lives. That is exactly what this book does. Hallie Rubenhold flips the script when it comes to such a dark time in history, and she flips it well.
Mary Ann “Polly” Nichols
Eliza Ann “Annie” Chapman
Elizabeth Stride
Catherine “Kate” Eddowes
Mary Jane Kelly
The infamous canonical five
Five names, five victims, five "prostitutes." That’s all we know of them; that’s all we’ve been told, and because of that, it is often easy to forget that these women had lives. They had backgrounds. They had stories to be told. They had families. They were daughters, granddaughters, sisters, wives, mothers, aunts, cousins, and friends. Sometimes, we need to be reminded of that. They loved, grieved, celebrated, and lived.
I was sucked in from the moment Polly’s story started and continued to be sucked in until the very last page.
This reads nicely for a non-fiction book. It is not bogged down with tons of information, and it doesn’t drag like most non-fiction books tend to do. It reads like a novel and flows like a story. It gives us a glimpse into what day-to-day life was like for these women (and many people) in 1800s England. I love how each section of the book profiles one of the women. Getting a complete account of the women’s lives from start to finish instead of jumping around between the five of them made the information and details easy to follow. Rubenhold did thorough research prior to writing this book, and I believe it showed.
I know that one of the things about this book that seemed to bother some people was the fact that a lot of the details shared in this story were possibly assumptions on Rubenhold’s part. Phrases such as "it's possible," "she might have," and "most likely" were used more than once. But we have to remember that Rubenhold could only work with the resources that were available to her, which, to be real, isn’t a lot. Given the years that have passed and the poor record-keeping of the times, I’m surprised she was able to find as much information on the women as she did. I have to give props to Hallie Rubenhold for that.
The author is also very honest about the fact that very little information about Mary Jane Kelly’s life before her move to London had been made available (it was more or less nonexistent) and that her life most likely had been made up of lies that Kelly herself had told others.
However heartbreaking recounting the sometimes-upsetting events in these women’s lives might have been, it is so important to do so. All five of them deserve to be humanized, so they aren’t simply remembered as "prostitutes." Which not all of them were. Hell, even if they were, that wouldn’t make their lives and deaths any less valid. I don’t feel that Rubenhold was trying to make it seem like they deserved more recognition and sympathy since they in fact were not sex workers. I don’t feel like she was trying to invalidate the lives and feelings of any sex workers past or present, and I don’t feel like she was trying to tell us these women were more complex people with more meaningful lives than prostitutes. I feel as though Rubenhold was just trying to set the record straight since some of these women’s memories were built on lies that had been fed to the public. She was giving them the legacy that they deserved.
There were eleven total unsolved Whitechapel murders between April 1888 and February 1891. The other six (suspected JTR) victims, Emma Elizabeth Smith, Martha Tabram, Rose Mylett, Alice McKenzie, Frances Coles, and an unidentified woman (only a torso was found), were not included in the canonical five, but their stories and lives still deserved to be told. One day, I hope we somehow find a way to get answers. The family members of the women who lost their lives, no matter how distantly related, deserve that closure. Although not well documented Victorian-era Metropolitan Police work and the City of London Police files (including those regarding the Whitechapel murders) were destroyed in the Blitz of 1940, this will most likely and unfortunately make these murders remain a mystery forever.
TLDR: IF YOU ARE A SELF-PROCLAIMED RIPPEROLOGIST OR ARE JUST TIRED OF THE SAME OLD WORN-OUT JACK THE RIPPER NARATIVE, READ THIS BOOK!
Book Cover: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
TRIGGER(S): Prostitution, sex trafficking (briefly mentioned), domestic abuse (briefly mentioned), miscarriages/still births (briefly mentioned)
POV: Open Third Person
Series/Standalone: Standalone
Part of a series: No
Safe or Dark: Dark
DISCLAIMER: I switched between the physical and audiobook while reading this.
“Jack the Ripper killed prostitutes, or so it has always been believed, but there is no hard evidence to suggest that three of his five victims were prostitutes at all. As soon as each body was discovered, in a dark yard or street, the police assumed that the woman was a prostitute killed by a maniac who had lured her to the location for sex. There is, and never was, any proof of this either.”
One of my burning questions in life is: Who was Jack the Ripper? Was he the American serial killer H.H. Holmes (who was active in America from 1891 to 1894) or someone entirely different? When I get to wherever I’m going after my life is over, that is going to be the first thing I ask whoever can give me the answer. I have read many books and watched numerous documentaries about JTR. Dare I say I’m a Ripperologist?
Almost everything you see about that time in history solely talks about that heinous human being and the women he murdered. We get details about the crimes he committed and the police investigation that followed. But we hardly ever hear about the five (possibly eleven) women themselves.
Shouldn’t we be talking about them instead of glorifying a serial killer? We know what he did and what happened, but now it’s time to turn the focus to the ones who lost their lives. That is exactly what this book does. Hallie Rubenhold flips the script when it comes to such a dark time in history, and she flips it well.
Mary Ann “Polly” Nichols
“This was indeed Polly, as he used to call her—the woman he had once dearly loved, and married. It was Polly, who had borne six of his children, who had comforted and coddled them, who had nursed him in times of illness, the woman with whom he had shared laughter and at least a handful of joys for sixteen years. It was Polly, who at eighteen had been his girlish bride, holding her father’s arm as she walked down the aisle at St. Bride’s. They had been happy, even if only for a short while.”
Eliza Ann “Annie” Chapman
"Emily, Georgina, and Miriam could not bear to tell their elderly mother that the child she had lost to alcohol had been killed in such a gruesome and dehumanizing way. They smothered their grief as they held the hands of Annie’s two children, who would never know the fate that befell their mother.”
Elizabeth Stride
"Over the course of her life, Elisabeth had been a variety of things to many people; she had been both dark and light, a menace and a comfort. She had been a daughter, a wife, a sister, a mistress, a fraudster, a cleaner, a coffeehouse owner, a servant, a foreigner, and a woman who had at various times sold sex.”
Catherine “Kate” Eddowes
“In later years, Emma recalled her sister’s youthful personality as being “. . . lively . . . , warm hearted and entertaining,” while other acquaintances remarked that Kate “possessed an unusual degree of intelligence.”
Mary Jane Kelly
“Mary Jane was whatever she wished to be, and in the wake of her death, she became whatever Joseph Barnett wished to commemorate. It was he who insisted that the name on her brass coffin plate read “Marie Jeanette Kelly,” a moniker brimming with all the flounce and flamboyance of a Saturday night in the West End.”
The infamous canonical five
Five names, five victims, five "prostitutes." That’s all we know of them; that’s all we’ve been told, and because of that, it is often easy to forget that these women had lives. They had backgrounds. They had stories to be told. They had families. They were daughters, granddaughters, sisters, wives, mothers, aunts, cousins, and friends. Sometimes, we need to be reminded of that. They loved, grieved, celebrated, and lived.
I was sucked in from the moment Polly’s story started and continued to be sucked in until the very last page.
This reads nicely for a non-fiction book. It is not bogged down with tons of information, and it doesn’t drag like most non-fiction books tend to do. It reads like a novel and flows like a story. It gives us a glimpse into what day-to-day life was like for these women (and many people) in 1800s England. I love how each section of the book profiles one of the women. Getting a complete account of the women’s lives from start to finish instead of jumping around between the five of them made the information and details easy to follow. Rubenhold did thorough research prior to writing this book, and I believe it showed.
I know that one of the things about this book that seemed to bother some people was the fact that a lot of the details shared in this story were possibly assumptions on Rubenhold’s part. Phrases such as "it's possible," "she might have," and "most likely" were used more than once. But we have to remember that Rubenhold could only work with the resources that were available to her, which, to be real, isn’t a lot. Given the years that have passed and the poor record-keeping of the times, I’m surprised she was able to find as much information on the women as she did. I have to give props to Hallie Rubenhold for that.
The author is also very honest about the fact that very little information about Mary Jane Kelly’s life before her move to London had been made available (it was more or less nonexistent) and that her life most likely had been made up of lies that Kelly herself had told others.
However heartbreaking recounting the sometimes-upsetting events in these women’s lives might have been, it is so important to do so. All five of them deserve to be humanized, so they aren’t simply remembered as "prostitutes." Which not all of them were. Hell, even if they were, that wouldn’t make their lives and deaths any less valid. I don’t feel that Rubenhold was trying to make it seem like they deserved more recognition and sympathy since they in fact were not sex workers. I don’t feel like she was trying to invalidate the lives and feelings of any sex workers past or present, and I don’t feel like she was trying to tell us these women were more complex people with more meaningful lives than prostitutes. I feel as though Rubenhold was just trying to set the record straight since some of these women’s memories were built on lies that had been fed to the public. She was giving them the legacy that they deserved.
There were eleven total unsolved Whitechapel murders between April 1888 and February 1891. The other six (suspected JTR) victims, Emma Elizabeth Smith, Martha Tabram, Rose Mylett, Alice McKenzie, Frances Coles, and an unidentified woman (only a torso was found), were not included in the canonical five, but their stories and lives still deserved to be told. One day, I hope we somehow find a way to get answers. The family members of the women who lost their lives, no matter how distantly related, deserve that closure. Although not well documented Victorian-era Metropolitan Police work and the City of London Police files (including those regarding the Whitechapel murders) were destroyed in the Blitz of 1940, this will most likely and unfortunately make these murders remain a mystery forever.
"The cards were stacked against Polly, Annie, Elisabeth, Kate, and Mary Jane from birth. They began their lives in deficit. Not only were most of them born into working-class families; they were also born female."
TLDR: IF YOU ARE A SELF-PROCLAIMED RIPPEROLOGIST OR ARE JUST TIRED OF THE SAME OLD WORN-OUT JACK THE RIPPER NARATIVE, READ THIS BOOK!