The Five - BookWyrm

KnitAFett reviewed The Five by Hallie Rubenhold

An important book with a purpose, but still too much conjecture.

4 stars

The overall intent of this book was to re-humanize the victims of Jack the Ripper. This was definitely needed since the victims have been completely overshadowed with our obsession with the Ripper himself. Rubenhold does succeed in a sense with this attempt, but the biggest issue is that there's still far too many gaps that are attempted to be filled in with (educated) guesses. It is clarified when something is assumed and not fact, but it takes away from the initial claim of the book.

Rubenhold starts off stating that the victims were not prostitutes and deserve to have their honor cleared up. But the reality is that almost all were prostitutes at some point, but they were not believed to have been prostitutes when their lives were taken from them. There is a heavy emphasis on how skewed the mentalities were towards women during the time frame, and a …

The overall intent of this book was to re-humanize the victims of Jack the Ripper. This was definitely needed since the victims have been completely overshadowed with our obsession with the Ripper himself. Rubenhold does succeed in a sense with this attempt, but the biggest issue is that there's still far too many gaps that are attempted to be filled in with (educated) guesses. It is clarified when something is assumed and not fact, but it takes away from the initial claim of the book.

Rubenhold starts off stating that the victims were not prostitutes and deserve to have their honor cleared up. But the reality is that almost all were prostitutes at some point, but they were not believed to have been prostitutes when their lives were taken from them. There is a heavy emphasis on how skewed the mentalities were towards women during the time frame, and a lot of the romanticizing of that era is quickly pushed aside due to the stark honesty of what women were treated like.

It's an important conversation to have and I'm glad that Rubenhold gave it her best attempt. Sadly, there's just no way to clear up any of the gaps without making assumptions.

StuPC reviewed Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper by Hallie Rubenhold

Unhappy but necessary

5 stars

A tragic but much-needed reminder that the Ripper's victims were people. Highly recommended.

Bryan Fordham reviewed The Five by Hallie Rubenhold

Review of 'The Five' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Incredible book. Fascinating, and heartbreaking.

This focuses on the women, and what their lives may have been like. No real detail about their murders is discussed as the focus is not the person who killed them.

I have a lot of thoughts about this one, which I will need to write down. For now, though, I highly recommend this one.

Amber Herbert reviewed The Five by Hallie Rubenhold

Review of 'The Five' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

This is a must read for history buffs, true crime fanatics, and those interested in the way women were treated and seen in the Victorian era. Though the book is palatable on its own, I would recommend listening to the audiobook. The narration adds more life to the book that I appreciated more than I thought I would.

GG reviewed The Five by Hallie Rubenhold

Review of 'The Five' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

As the author writes, “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.” This book is not about Jack the Ripper. It places the focus on the lives of his victims and how they ended up on the street, but it’s really a fascinating account of the precariousness of working class lives in Victorian London — particularly for women. If you’re interested in reading about what actual day-to-day life was like during this era, I would highly recommend it.

Gossamerchild reviewed Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper by Hallie Rubenhold

Review of 'Five' on 'Storygraph'

2 stars

Big. Ol' Meh. I liked the idea, but overall it didn't work. There was just too much speculation. And while I enjoyed reading the history of the time period I would have preferred a straight up history, rather than a biography of women whose lives we CAN'T know much about. Does that make sense? Overall a bit disappointing.

Cassidy Percoco reviewed The Five by Hallie Rubenhold

Review of 'The Five' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

The book's divided into five sections, each telling the life story of one of the canonical victims of Jack the Ripper. They're clearly the result of intense archival research, and Rubenhold pieced together census information, workhouse records, newspaper articles, inquests, and the like to uncover so many details. The idea that all five women were sex workers came from the prejudices of the middle-class Victorian world: in reality, most of them were involved with men they weren't married to in long-term monogamous relationships (a necessity for lower-working-class women, who rarely earned enough to support themselves) and were out at night because they were sleeping rough as they lacked the money for a bed in a doss house. Most of the sections show the way that one or two stumbles could force a family into the cycle of poverty, and the toll that alcoholism could take on a marriage or a …

The book's divided into five sections, each telling the life story of one of the canonical victims of Jack the Ripper. They're clearly the result of intense archival research, and Rubenhold pieced together census information, workhouse records, newspaper articles, inquests, and the like to uncover so many details. The idea that all five women were sex workers came from the prejudices of the middle-class Victorian world: in reality, most of them were involved with men they weren't married to in long-term monogamous relationships (a necessity for lower-working-class women, who rarely earned enough to support themselves) and were out at night because they were sleeping rough as they lacked the money for a bed in a doss house. Most of the sections show the way that one or two stumbles could force a family into the cycle of poverty, and the toll that alcoholism could take on a marriage or a life.

There are times when it feels like Rubenhold is stretching a tad in order to say what emotion a person would have been feeling, but overall it's both engaging and intellectually rigorous. The research is like what I did for an exhibition several years ago, but turned up to 11 (which is something, in fairness to me, you can only do for record-keeping institutions in urban environments and with the ability to travel around), so I really appreciate the incredible amount of time and effort put in.

The common thread with this, Lady W, and Covent Garden Ladies is Rubenhold's interest in women outside the norm/ideal of their time, in terms of sexual behavior. She always treats them sympathetically and as people with agency, yet at the same time without the insistence I sometimes see that this existence was necessarily freeing. It might be nice not to feel like you had to conform, but at the same time it was not nice to have "respectable" family members shun you, landlords force you out of your lodgings, and public officials treat you with scorn and disgust, not to mention to deal with any self-inflicted pain due to internalized misogyny/prejudice against sexually-active women.