The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper (2019) - Book Review

MY REVIEW

Hardcover: 352 pages

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; First Edition edition (April 9, 2019)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 1328663817

ISBN-13: 978-1328663818

Click Picture for Purchase Information

“Polly, Annie, Elizabeth, Catherine and Mary-Jane are famous for the same thing, though they never met. They came from Fleet Street, Knightsbridge, Wolverhampton, Sweden, and Wales. They wrote ballads, ran coffee houses, lived on country estates, they breathed ink-dust from printing presses and escaped people-traffickers.

What they had in common was the year of their murders: 1888. The person responsible was never identified, but the character created by the press to fill that gap has become far more famous than any of these five women.

For more than a century, newspapers have been keen to tell us that "the Ripper" preyed on prostitutes. Not only is this untrue, as historian Hallie Rubenhold has discovered, it has prevented the real stories of these fascinating women from being told. Now, in this devastating narrative of five lives, Rubenhold finally sets the record straight, revealing a world not just of Dickens and Queen Victoria, but of poverty, homelessness and rampant misogyny. They died because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time—but their greatest misfortune was to be born a woman.”

After seeing a made-for-tv movie on NBC in 1985 about Jack-The-Ripper in modern day Arizona that focused on the London Bridge in Lake Havasu, I became interested in the subject.

As a result, six years later in 10^th grade, I took Sociology. Crime, investigations, and even the forensics surrounding a crime was a subject I started to get very interested. I did a report on Jack-The-Ripper for my class.

I actually had to drive to Boulder City to get one of the books I needed; incidentally I would end up borrowing it again around the same time as I got this one.

To see a book that took the point of view of the victims of this notorious and historic crime was an interesting perspective. To that point, I had ALMOST considered buying this book.

But, I turned to a library and was able to get it that way.

[The Five Victims of Jack The Ripper. Library borrow from Las Vegas Clark County Library District]

FYI: Most might know this, but a library is a great way to borrow a book if you’re on the fence as to whether you want to buy it.

Any way… 

Hallie Rubenhold’s “The Five” is no ordinary book on “Jack the Ripper”, the infamous Whitechapel serial killer from 1888.

Jack the Ripper had five (5) canonical victims. He started killing at the end of August, with no known pattern or motives, and suddenly stopped around the first part of November. The true identity has never been discovered and neither has his motive. There has been nothing to explain why he started and why he ended.

Perhaps that is why there is more focus on him than the victims. In order to understand why they were chosen, we need to learn his motives – which are unlikely to ever happen.

But, rather than focus on the motive, the killer, or the investigation itself; Rubenhold takes a different perspective – the victims. Who were they? Were they really prostitutes, or were they disadvantaged women caught in the crosshairs of a serial killer. Only two of the five could be considered prostitutes, in actuality, only Mary Jane Kelly listed that as a profession.

The reader is able to piece together the victim’s life from childhood (or as close as possible) up until the time they were reported as deceased and/or buried. Each victim’s “past” is uncovered and revealed, thus humanizing them rather than making them statistics, attempting to bring back some of their dignity –

Mary Ann “Polly” Nichols

Annie Chapman

Elisabeth Stride

Catherine Eddowes

Mary Jane Kelly

The book doesn’t discuss the grotesque details of the victim’s death – there is enough material out there. The author is careful not to place emphasis on Jack the Ripper at all, barely naming him. Rubenhold had seen that made the women merely corpses and thus dehumanizing them. The book isn’t just about the victims, but for the victims, complete with a dedication in the front to them.

Misogyny and gender are heavily mentioned as contributing factors in the deaths of the women by critiquing the standards and realities of living back in the mid-late 1800’s. Much is made of the inequality of what men were permitted to do or get by with as opposed to women. Women were treated less than men – expecting to eat less if there was little food to go around; be more pious and virtuous while men could have outside encounters with little to no chastising; barely educated; and of course, child-bearing.

While the treatment of women and lifestyle from that time would be abhorrent by today’s ideals, one cannot apply today’s standards to a decade ago, or even 200 years ago.  

Even in the blurb inside the front cover, “their greatest misfortune was to be born women”, the tone seems slightly biased. The author also describes the laws that often governed prostitutes or any woman described with “lecherous living”. And, while the laws are archaic by today’s standards – therein lies the problem. Today’s standards are used to compare the laws, moral attitudes, as well as expectations while we read about the lives of these women.

That is one of the problems with this book. It isn’t entirely the author’s fault. Not having lived in that time, it is difficult to understand that life or see it as normal. Yes, women were not nearly as equal as men were.

Many of the victims were what was referred to as “fallen women” – drunks, morally questionable, etc. They didn’t start out that way though – however in each case, save for the last one, there was always some kind of domestic issues at home that led to the final years of the victim’s life at and/or nearly homeless.

Many became homeless because of either excessive drinking or inability to care for their large families. This was true of many of the poor women of the time. There were women who were just as poor who didn’t fall victim to Jack the Ripper, and some women who had large families didn’t drink. One woman was a victim of what today is called “human trafficking”.

Their past – whatever it was – in no way excuses their murders though. That much needs to be said. Sex workers or not, whoever they were, wherever they came from – they didn’t deserve to die.

The book is well researched, though there are times I believe there was too much information presented.

This is much a societal history lesson as a book with a different focus of the 1888 Whitechapel murders. But, there is quite a bit of conjecture as well as speculation in the book, and thus should be taken at face value.

Critics have thrown out that Rubenhold has tried to make the Whitechapel Victims part of the #MeToo era, which the author denies as #MeToo hadn’t happened when she started writing the book. However, there is a definitely a “slant” in the tone of the book.  

It should be read along with the other Jack the Ripper novels and material out there to get a complete picture. Depending on how well vested someone is in this subject, the book can drag on. One reviewer stated that reading it was like “wading through mud”.

Given the type of book it was, and how it was written – I was able to finish it within a week, though there were some nights I didn’t bother to read it.

Thankfully my local library had a copy of this novel to borrow.  The two stars are for “it was ok” and yes, it was an “ok” read for the subject material.

2 ⭐⭐/ 5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

HALLIE RUBENHOLD is a social historian whose expertise lies in rediscovering the stories of previously unknown women and episodes in history. The Five is the first full-length biography of the victims of Jack the Ripper to be published since 1888. By drawing upon a wealth of previously unseen archival material and adding a much-needed historical context to the victims' lives, The Five promises to change the narrative of these murders forever.