The Five – Hallie Rubenhold

The Five are the five women murdered in the Whitechapel area of London between August and November 1888. They are known collectively as the victims of Jack the Ripper and are generally dismissed as ‘just prostitutes’ who if not asking for their fate, put themselves in harm’s way through their choice of lifestyle.

Hallie Rubenhold dismantles this misconception, victim by victim, by forensic examination of their lives and times. One by one, she tells their stories, cradle to grave, and it is often the early years that set them on a track to their tragic end in a late-Victorian world where working class women had few options. Employment in service, marriage, childbirth, and household drudgery was as good as it got. To lose a job, or worse a husband, or a husband’s job, invited financial hardship and homelessness. To ease the pain and drudgery with a sip of medicinal gin was often the start of a slippery slope to addiction, disownment, and ruin.

This broad trajectory was followed, in various forms, by Polly Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, and Catherine Eddowes, who all struggled through to their mid-forties before they were killed. None of these were actively involved in the sex trade. They were, however, homeless and formed transitory relationships with men – how else to get protection on the street, a bed for the night and something to eat? Between such times they were on their own and resourceless. But for the Victorian police and press, no distinction was made between women who walked the street at night because they had nowhere to sleep and those who did so to drum up trade. Only the last victim, Mary Jane Kelly, killed aged twenty-five, was an acknowledged sex worker.

The book gives a fascinating and highly readable insight into the social conditions in parts of late nineteenth century London, where poverty, drink, and homelessness characterised most lives. The lives of the Five are placed in this historical context and given a sympathetic airing as human beings, flawed certainly, but no less deserving to be seen and known in life as much as in death.