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I read this in 2022. This is not my copy but here are my thoughts at that time:

The Five by Hallie Rubenhold - thought provoking

Chosen by The Mundane Library as May's read, I guess most people know of Jack the Ripper, "Victorian serial killer of prostitutes". But do they really know the story and, more to the point, do they know the names and stories of the women he killed? This book sets out to correct that.

Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly are known as the canonical five victims. Hallie Rubenhold has taken the time and trouble to research what is known of their lives by trawling through census, police records, workhouse records, court records etc. as well as the unreliable and contradictory newspaper reports of the time. What she found might surprise people. Only two of these women were known to have ever worked as prostitutes and only one was actively soliciting for a living when killed. They were all just working class women who fell on hard times and, in four cases, were sleeping rough when murdered. That all of them appear to have been sleeping at the actual time of their murder suggests that the Ripper wasn't actively targeting prostitutes at all and seems to have been opportunist to take advantage of the women as they slept.

I think what was brought home to me most was how easy a small thing could push a working class family and a woman, particularly, into destitution. Too many children/mouths to feed, illness of the bread winner, widowhood meant that there just wasn't enough money for rent and food and there was nothing to fall back on other than the workhouse or dossing or sleeping rough. (That this book opens with a description of the jubilee resonated strongly here - with prices spiralling and so many using foodbanks at the moment you can see how easily it all could happen at a time when there was nothing to fall back on).

Once homeless, if you could earn a few pence during the day you could pay for a bed in a doss house. If you didn't make your doss, you had nowhere else to go other than the workhouse or sleeping in a doorway. The practices of the workhouse didn't help. You could spend the night and get some sort of sustenance but then had to work the morning before you could leave - by which time you were too late to find paid work for the day and therefore couldn't earn your doss. A vicious circle.

One of the most touching things was the list of the contents of the women's pockets when they were killed. Such small posessions, the necessities of life - they had so little.

It made me think of my own family history in a new light. My ancestors were all working class, agricultural labourers then mill workers etc. Frequently one of my widowed grandmothers with a string of children round her feet married almost immediately. I knew it would be for economic reasons, but this brought home to me that there was no other choice. A woman on her own or with children to raise just could not earn enough to survive. Women's work was even more poorly paid than a man's and if she had small children to care for she couldn't find much in the way of work.

Ah, we all romanticise the past, watch Downton Abbey and the like but the reality for the majority was so far from this chocolate box image. Makes me thank my lucky stars that I was born at a time where I could get a good education and stand on my own two feet.

"It is only by bringing these women back to life that we can silence the Ripper and what he represents. By permitting them to speak, by attempting to understand their experiences and see their humanity, we can restore to them the respect and compassion to which they are entitled. 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, and surely that, in itself, is enough."

#review

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