The Five, a review - by Hallie Rubenhold

 

It's not a secret that I'm obsessed with all things True Crime, except that I haven't ever really been fascinated by Jack the Ripper. This book came to my attention, however, because I began listening to her podcast, Bad Women. This book was a different take on the True Crime trope and intrigued me on both the women perspective and the true crime perspective. We hear a lot about the Ripper but his known victims aren't considered to be much more than names or prostitutes.  So I wanted to learn more and my eyes were opened. 

What the five women had in common was not what most people know them for. They weren't prostitutes, but they were women in Victorian England who were poor, destitute, alcoholics and invisible at the time of their deaths.  They were all also likely asleep. What they really were not were prostitutes. Rubehold gives these women back their lives and their stories while at the same time exposing the misogyny of the stories that had been so integral to the women's stories previously.

Rubenhold obviously did extensive (and impressive) research in writing this book. She looked at mostly primary resources in researching this book - newspaper reports (which were often horrifically wrong), parish records, court and coroner records and birth and death records among other things.  Then, she translated all of those into an easily readable and educational and interesting narrative that was very, very compelling. I learned much about the women and their families as well. There were vivid descriptions of the places that they lived in and the environments that they navigated. I really appreciated that it called out the mysogyny of the time - a system of belief that likely contributed tremendously to authorities not capturing the infamous Jack the Ripper (because these were "just drunken, poor, nightwalkers"). In common knowledge, we knew very little about the five known victims. 

What I did really appreciate about this books was Rubenhold's excision of the women's last moments. She didn't provide any lurid details of the crimes or how the women were found or what they looked like when they were found and I really appreciated this.  It allowed me to focus on who the women were when they were alive instead of viewing them as dehumanized murder subjects to be held up as objects without a story. I found this to be very effective. Rubenhold's book is a tribute to the women who were killed at the hands of a serial killer.  Highly recommended.