Hallie Rubenhold (2019) The Five. The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper.

Most of us will have heard of Jack the Ripper. Perhaps I should modify that statement and say most of us over forty will have heard of Jack the Ripper. In one film, the premise was Jack the Ripper was a crown prince or some kind of royalty. His killings were quickly covered up by members of the establishment. I couldn’t have told you how many women he killed—five—or where—Whitechapel—other than it being generally a smog filled London. No thought was given to the women he murdered. Ripper fodder.

Hallie Rubenhold reminds us, ‘The victims of Jack the Ripper were never “Just Prostitutes”; They were daughters, wives, mothers, sisters and lovers. They were women. They were human beings.’

In other words, this isn’t a book about Jack the Ripper. This is a book about poor, working-class and broken women. Only one of whom could be described as a prostitute.  Almost half of working-class women were employed in the drudge work of service. Service and servicing. A right of passage. Women had to fend off not just men, but disease, constant hunger and physical discomfort. Rape didn’t exist.  Sir Charles Warren estimated there were 1200 prostitutes among 233 common lodging houses, population 8033, a third of whom were women, 2884.   

The focus on serial killers starts with the assumption the victims somehow deserved it. The police investigation into Peter Sutcliffe’s killings, for example, began with the assumption he only killed prostitutes. No great loss. As with the Ripper, middle and upper class moralists argued he was providing a public service. When Sutcliffe tried to kill a young girl, the police assumption was he’d make a mistake.

Sex sells. A prurient interest in the murdered women by the newspapers of the day created fake headline news that would up sales.

Rubenhold makes a case for Jack the Ripper picking his victims because they were sleeping outside. Polly Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride and Catherine ‘Kate’ Eddowes could not afford the few pennies for the cheapest lodging houses in London, around Whitechapel. More likely they had drunk what they had and were savvy enough to know a doorway or out of the way place where they could shut their eyes without being moved on by a constable. Jack the Ripper found them sleeping and killed them in-situ. The elaborate arrangement of their insides came afterwards.

Mary Jane Kelly was the exception. She had a cheap room. But she’d punched a hole in the window and filled it with a rag. It was simple enough for Jack the Ripper to put his hand through the gap and open the door. Rubenhold suggests she too would have been sleeping, or dead drunk.

From dead drunk to dead. Rubenhold begins with ‘A Tale of Two Cities’. The British Empire was at its peak in 1887.  Three-quarters of the Earth is in thrall to British interests and the Golden Jubilee of Empress and Queen Victoria brings together moneyed interests to London to pay homage. The British aristocracy dressed up and put on a show.

‘There was a service of thanksgiving at Westminster Abbey, a state banquet, a military review at Windsor and even a children’s fete in Hyde Park for 2500 boys and girls who were entertained by 20 Punch and Judy puppets, 8 marionettes, theatres, 86 peep shows, 9 troops of performing dogs, monkeys and ponies as well as band, toys and ‘gas-inflated balloon.’

The unseasonably warm Jubilee summer also brought swarms of poor homeless people looking for work.   

‘Much to the horrors of observers, these campers can be seen making their morning ablutions and scrubbing their “vermin-infested” clothes beneath the nose of Lord Nelson, who peered from high atop his column.’

Rubenhold fast-forwards 12 months. Polly Nichol’s on 31^st August 1888, was the first victim. She’d been born a Londoner but had decamped from under the gaze of Lord Nelson and slept for eternity in Whitechapel. Annie Chapman followed. Then on the 30^th September the Ripper killed twice in one night, Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes. His final victim, and most extensive mutilation and evisceration, in the room of Mary Jane Kelly, 9^th November 1888 was his swansong.  

Journalists chasing a story could find no motive. Instead, they patched together the convenient narrative of five drunken drabs. Guilty of being poor. The subtext was made plain. They were selling themselves. They were guilty by association of all the ills of Victorian society. They were nothing and nobody. Rubenhold raises them up. Read on.   

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