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CraftyRole4567 t1_ix84jgs wrote

Reply to comment by LiliWenFach in Completely hooked by the writing style and research into "the Five" by Hallie Rubenhold. "There are two version of the events of 1887. One is very well known, the other is not." The five are the victims of Jack the Ripper and had always been labelled prostitutes, but they were not. by LJRGUserName

Yes, and she’s absolutely right about that. May r I’m being completely unfair and criticizing the book she didn’t write, or the book I wish she’d written – I just wanted a little more nuance from her, and I don’t think it would’ve undermined her argument. I was also completely surprised to find out that the Ripper’s victims were not working prostitutes, and she’s done an amazing thing by recovering as much of their stories as she has.

As far as the media portraying them as prostitutes in a suggestion that ‘they deserved it’ – I kept thinking of the fact that the early tabloid photographer Weegee famously would carry a pair of women’s panties with him, and before he took a picture of a murder scene he would throw them down to make sure that they were in the foreground. Which is awful, but is to say that the media was trying to sell papers and the idea that prurient sex makes murder more interesting has its own disgusting history, naught to do with the truth, that intersects here– I know, she couldn’t write a book on everything!

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LiliWenFach t1_ix91aro wrote

I agree a little more nuance and repeated acknowledgement that her own hypotheses were based on educated guess work and unreliable sources would have removed some of the controversy and improved the book.

But given the scarcity of reliable information (due to reporter bias and poor record keeping) I think she's done an absolutely astounding job to gather as much biographical information as she did. She turned them from bodies on a mortuary slab to living, breathing women who lived heartbreakingly difficult, troubled and sad lives, and as she described them bedding down in the gutter I found myself desperately wishing that someone could have come along and shaken them awake and moved them on before they could become the Ripper's victim. The book left me angry at their fate, and the fates of thousands of women like them. She brought them back to life. It's not a perfect book, but it's an amazing one nonetheless.

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