A review by cardinalgirl75
The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper by Hallie Rubenhold

5.0

I'm going to admit that I've probably read a fair share of true crime books that delve more into the crime and the psyche of the killer than ever really examine the life of the victim.  Hallie Rubenhold, in this incredible book about the five women murdered by Jack the Ripper, dares us to question what's long been considered settled fact--that they were all prostitutes (only two were ever officially documented to have engaged in the sex trade, and there's strong reason to doubt that either of them was still in the profession at the time of their deaths).  Rubenhold presents a picture of what working-class England was like for women in the late 1880s, from having little opportunity for education because they were sent out to work in their mid-teens to the repeated pregnancies that often sapped their health, whether they were married or not.  But most of all, she honors the lives of the five women that have been almost completely ignored by history, overlooked as nothing more than the footnote to the far more interesting story of the man who killed them.