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A review by sarah984
The Five: The Lives of Jack the Ripper's Women by Hallie Rubenhold
informative
sad
medium-paced
2.0
I think this is absolutely a valuable topic for scholarship, and I commend the fact that this book is written in a way that minimizes the women's murderer in favour of describing their lives instead, but I didn't like the book itself very much. The writing comes across as very silly and melodramatic in places, and in defending the majority of the women against the posthumous charge of prostitution the author sort of winds up doing what she condemns in the final chapter: diminishing sex workers as a subclass of women who are more deserving of ill-treatment.
Graphic: Addiction, Alcoholism, Death, and Misogyny
Moderate: Child death, Chronic illness, Domestic abuse, Infidelity, Medical content, Mental illness, Miscarriage, Trafficking, Toxic relationship, Terminal illness, Suicide, Sexual violence, Religious bigotry, and Physical abuse
Minor: Body shaming, Forced institutionalization, and Religious bigotry