“Just Prostitutes"

A Review of Halle Rubenhold’s The Five: The Untold Lives of The Women Killed by Jack the Ripper ^[1]

By Melissa Luz Walters

Halle Rubenhold’s book, The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper ^[2] stands apart from most books over the infamous and anonymous White Chapel serial killer, Jack the Ripper. In most true crime cases the focus surrounds the killers, crimes, and investigations. Rubenhold instead, unburied the lives of Jack the Ripper’s canonical five victims: Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Catherine Eddowes, Elizabeth Stride, and Mary Jane Kelly.

The story Rubenhold paints hardly involves the murderer at all, instead she offers a new assailant against the woman, poverty, and alcoholism. Rubenhold’s work highlights the role alcoholism played in creating their impoverished lives, which forced them into sex work placing them in Jack the Rippers path. The story she weaves is full of emotions such as sorrow for the five women and indignation towards the killer for his actions and the world for its reaction. An issue that Rubenhold covers clearly is the romanticization of the time period and crime. The Five begins with a “Tale of Two Cities” where she paints the picture of 1888 London’s opposing sides – poverty stricken White Chapel and overabundant West End.^[3] Through this introduction she strips that romantic idea away from the reader and continues to unravel the wrapping carefully placed by years of period entertainment pieces with descriptions of their lives and hardships. Her book is a reminder that in violent crimes, there are always those who are disregarded and disrespected.

While largely narrative in style, Rubenhold’s book is a one-of-a-kind look into historical crime. Rubenhold’s book is a set of alluring and captivating stories about the Canonical Five, with each section written as its own standalone biographies. Usually beginning with the background of the women’s families and concluding with their legacies - children or siblings. Despite the writing style and story-like nature, her book is entirely factual, with an extensive and well-organized bibliography.

Rubenhold’s work is the first stride down the lengthy trail of returning agency to the victims of not only Jack the Ripper, but all serial murderers past and present. Her title alone is evidence of this, The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper. Rubenhold placed the five women at the forefront of the title, clarifying that this is a story not about Jack the Ripper but the five women whose lives he stripped away. Rubenhold states her intentions with this piece very openly and early, “my intention in writing this book is not to hunt and name the killer… I do so in the hope that we may not hear their stories clearly and give back to them what was so brutally taken away with their lives: their dignity.” ^[4] Rubenhold’s objective in authoring her book remains steadfast throughout its pages. Her concluding sentiments hold are just as potent as the introduction, “in order to keep him (Jack the Ripper) alive, we have to forget his victims. We have become complicit in their diminishment.” ^[5] Her words are both a castigation to society for romanticizing and mythologizing Jack the Ripper, and a call to action to reinstate the identity of not only Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Catherine Eddowes, Elizabeth Stride, and Mary Jane Kelly, but all “diminished” victims. The conclusion to Rubenhold’s work is titled “Just Prostitutes.” ^[6] The significance of her choice to title it as such originates from the notion in London society that Jack the Ripper’s crimes were not necessarily justifiable but consigned to a “subhuman” class of women. It is through this book that Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddows, and Mary Jane Kelly are given at least some of the humanity back. The humanity that was stripped away by the faceless figure Jack the Ripper as he violently killed each of them and further seized by London society’s consistent explanation for why these five women were killed.

The main downfall of Rubenhold’s book is the necessity of former knowledge regarding the Jack the Ripper case(s). Because she focuses on the victims and almost never actually references the killer’s actions, prior knowledge is necessary before reading it. The need to do additional research about the killer undoes some of Rubenhold’s success in revitalizing the memories of Chapmen, Nichols, Stride, Kelly, and Eddows. For a book that is revolutionary in its field, only having one large downfall is admirable and a true testament to the work Rubenhold put into researching, writing, and retelling these women’s stories.

[1] Halle Rubenhold, The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019). Pg. 287. The title of this review was pulled from the title of Rubenhold’s conclusion for The Five.

[2] Rubenhold, The Five.

[3] Rubenhold, The Five, 1.

[4] Rubenhold, The Five, 13.

[5] Rubenhold, The Five, 295.

[6] Rubenhold, The Five, 287.