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A review by dckathleen
The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper by Hallie Rubenhold
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
fast-paced
4.5
Everyone has heard of Jack the Ripper. Years ago I read Patricia Cornwell's book theorizing on who Jack the Ripper was, and over time I've read some other theories on the identity of the killer. The victims have never been treated as actual people with lives and families and stories of their own. They are dismissed because they were poor and were assumed to be prostitutes and their violent murders are described in great detail.
This book is a biography of the canonical five victims. It traces their lives with as much information as is available and contextualizes it by explaining what it was like to be a poor woman in Victorian London. In some cases we learn about how these women grew up and then about their adult lives. We learn about marriages and children and glimpses of happiness. We read about how working people hovered over an abyss of dire poverty at all times, where an illness or turn of circumstances could take a family from a safe apartment to a workhouse or homelessness in the blink of an eye. Once they were in that position it was nearly impossible to get out.
Several of these women were alcoholics, a few did engage in sex work, but several did not, they were dismissed as prostitutes after their murders because they were women in the poorest parts of London. Several had children. There's very little concrete information on one woman, but even in her case the author gives us an idea of what her life might have been like.
The author doesn't describe their deaths at all nor does she speculate about the killer. This book is about the women.
I found this to be a compassionate book and even beyond these particular women I feel like I have a better understanding of the incredibly tenuous lives of poor families in this time.
This book is a biography of the canonical five victims. It traces their lives with as much information as is available and contextualizes it by explaining what it was like to be a poor woman in Victorian London. In some cases we learn about how these women grew up and then about their adult lives. We learn about marriages and children and glimpses of happiness. We read about how working people hovered over an abyss of dire poverty at all times, where an illness or turn of circumstances could take a family from a safe apartment to a workhouse or homelessness in the blink of an eye. Once they were in that position it was nearly impossible to get out.
Several of these women were alcoholics, a few did engage in sex work, but several did not, they were dismissed as prostitutes after their murders because they were women in the poorest parts of London. Several had children. There's very little concrete information on one woman, but even in her case the author gives us an idea of what her life might have been like.
The author doesn't describe their deaths at all nor does she speculate about the killer. This book is about the women.
I found this to be a compassionate book and even beyond these particular women I feel like I have a better understanding of the incredibly tenuous lives of poor families in this time.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Alcoholism, Classism, Addiction, and Child death