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Five gory murders were committed by an unidentified serial killer in the impoverished Whitechapel district of London in fall 1888. Whitechapel was an area of East London that was overcrowded, filled with homeless people, and crime- and disease-ridden. The living conditions were horrific.
The killings grabbed the attention of the world and drew sensationalist news coverage. The culprit, who came to be known as “Jack the Ripper,” turned into a legend. He has been the subject of hundreds of fiction and nonfiction books, TV shows, movies and other media.
But little attention has been paid to the five victims of this crime. At the time and ever since, they have all been labeled as prostitutes. In the thinking of this time in history, their fallen state almost made them deserving of being killed. However, Hallie Rubenhold says, little solid evidence exists that the women were all prostitutes. And their real stories deserve to be told.
So Rubenhold tells those stories here in The Five. As she writes, “Neither did the editors nor the journalists covering this story deem it necessary, worthy, or interesting to delve into the biographical details of the victims. Ultimately no one really cared about who they were or how they ended up in Whitechapel.”
The author carefully uses all source material available to bring these women’s lives to light. She writes, “I wish to retrace the footsteps of five women, to consider their experiences within the context of their era, and to follow their paths through both the gloom and the light. They are worth more to us than the empty human shells we have taken them for…. It is for them that I write this book. I do so in the hope that we may now hear their stories clearly and give back to them that which was so brutally taken away with their lives: their dignity.”
This true crime history book is a sobering examination of the lives of the working classes in the Victorian era. It particularly shows how few opportunities were open to women. These five women started life in similar situations and fell prey to some similar problems. All ended up with nothing to their names at the end of their lives (four of them were in their forties) in Whitechapel. And only one was actually a prostitute.
My heart went out to these women and the others who lived such difficult lives in this era in history. The book is an excellent historical and sociological analysis. It’s very readable and approachable. It provides a good window into that time through the stories of five women who shared the same tragic end. (And it truly does focus on the women; there is very little shared about the murders themselves, taking away some of the power from the criminal.)
Rated: Moderate. Profanity includes 1 uses of strong language, one or two instances of moderate profanity, a couple of uses of mild language, and x instances of the name of Deity in vain. Sexual content only refers to women and men living together without being married, references to affairs and historical background on prostitution. Violence includes references to domestic violence and brief references to the methods in which the murdered women were killed and how their bodies appeared but with little detail.
