Five devastating human stories and a dark and moving portrait of Victorian London–the untold lives of the women killed by Jack the Ripper Polly, Annie, Elisabeth, Catherine, and Mary Jane are famous for the same thing, though they never met. They came from Fleet Street, Knightsbridge, Wolverhampton, Sweden, and Wales. They wrote ballads, ran coffeehouses, lived on country estates; they … estates; they breathed ink dust from printing presses and escaped human traffickers.
What they had in common was the year of their murders: 1888. The person responsible was never identified, but the character created by the press to fill that gap has become far more famous than any of these five women.
For more than a century, newspapers have been keen to tell us that “the Ripper” preyed on prostitutes. Not only is this untrue, as historian Hallie Rubenhold has discovered, but it has prevented the real stories of these fascinating women from being told. Now, in this devastating narrative of five lives, Rubenhold finally sets the record straight, revealing a world not just of Dickens and Queen Victoria, but of poverty, homelessness, and rampant misogyny. They died because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time–but their greatest misfortune was to be born women.
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Exceptional research underpins this riveting study of the five Ripper victims in 1888. Well-told stories of women’s lives in mid-Victorian London. The book is specially interesting to me, because I used some of the same sources in Death at Whitechapel and Death At Glamis Castle, which I wrote with Bill Albert) as Robin Paige. More at BookScapes: https://susanalbert.com/2521-2/
OMG! This book ripped my heart out! I read it twice!
The Five by Hallow Rubenhold is such a deep and moving account of the biography of the last five women killed by Jack the Ripper. It follows each women from birth of possible, on up to death. My heart just ached for each of them. The society failed them. I had to read this book twice. The first time I was just emotional overwhelmed. The second time I was anger. If they had been born at a different time, or had different laws for women, had government programs for the poor that didn’t discriminate against women, and others. Frustrating! I felt like I knew these women due to the tremendous writing skills of this author. She really brought out the 1880’s so well that it was disgusting!
This book is a gem! I am so glad I found it! This is the same author that has a series on Hulu.
If you love history, the side that is never told, this is for you!
A Ripper narrative that gives voice to the women he silenced; I’ve been waiting for this book for years. Beautifully written and with the grip of a thriller, it will open your eyes and break your heart.
For a non-fiction book and a story that every reader knows the ending to, this book was RIVETING. Deeply engrossing. I absolutely love it. Highly recommend!
Meticulously researched and beautifully executed, The Five is a powerful and timely retelling of a story you think you already know. Rubenhold strips away decades of myths and misconceptions so that the women who were ruthlessly murdered by Jack the Ripper are no longer one-dimensional characters in a Penny Dreadful, but real human beings with very real struggles, hopes, and fears. With this important book, Rubenhold proves she is a master of narrative nonfiction: a historian with a novelist’s soul.
Hallie Rubenhold’s The Five is a meticulously researched book that shines a much-needed light on the lives of the women killed by Jack the Ripper. It does not dwell on the murders nor on the identity of the man, as so many other books have done. Instead, it brings us into the world inhabited by Polly, Annie, Elizabeth, Catherine and Mary Jane. In the introduction, the author says her aim in writing the book was to restore “that which was so brutally taken away with their lives: their dignity.” Ms. Rubenhold has succeeded. This is an important read.
Someone has finally given us a real glimpse of Jack the Ripper’s victims. Well done!
What a brilliant and necessary book.
Deeply researched and powerfully told, The Five unearths the truth behind the Victorian Age’s most sensational crime: the 1888 murder spree of Jack the Ripper. Hallie Rubenhold reaches beyond 130 years’ worth of lurid headlines and misleading reports to humanize the victims and explore their lives—and tragic, untimely deaths. The Five is a coruscating gem of a book, as necessary as it is compelling.
This book doesn’t go into much detail about Jack the Ripper or his killings, but it went into extensive detail about the lives of the five known victims (Polly, Annie, Elisabeth, Kate and Mary Jane).
PSA: This book is NOT a book about Jack the Ripper, this book IS a book about the lives of the women who were murdered by him. So do not pick up this book if you want information Ailey on JtR.
I’ve never seen a book of this fashion before in this line of topic. Either I’m super ignorant and just never seen any, or this book was one of a kind. I’ve greatly enjoyed learning about each of these five women and see how they might’ve related to each other in order to draw some conclusions on why he might’ve targeted these specific women.
Spoiler: it was not because they were prostitutes as many people have claimed over the centuries! In fact, only one of his victims was actually confirmed to have been a lady of the night at the time.
If you need further insistence to read this book, I’ll leave you with this quote: “It is only by bringing these women back to life that we can silence the Ripper and what he represents. By permitting them to speak, by attempting to understand their experiences and see their humanity, we can restore to them the respect and compassion to which they are entitled. 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.”
I picked this book up several months ago, and was excited to read it because I love true crime. The Five tells the story of the murder victims in a biographical manner, so if you’re planning to read this book, know that it does not go into the details of the crimes or the investigation into them.
However, there are a number of fascinating details that come to light about the women who were killed. The Victorian Era in England is often romanticized in movies and popular books, but the reality for those in the working class was that life was often very difficult. The Five goes into detail regarding some of these struggles, and its worth reading from that perspective.
The author clearly did her research prior to writing this book, down to the details of what each victim had in their pockets when they were ultimately found. If you’re interested in Victorian Era history, I’d recommend this book.
While much has been made of their deaths, not much is known about the lives of the five women who were murdered by Jack the Ripper in 1888. Hallie Rubenheld has done extensive research of the history of the time, newspapers articles and when possible, letters and accounts by the victim’s families. Overturning popular belief, Rubenheld reveals that, except in one case, the women were not prostitutes. They ranged from a wife and mother brought down by drink, to a gifted con artist who may have run into the wrong mark. They may have been down on their luck, but most had families and other means of supporting themselves. Rubenheld also goes into great detail about the circumstances of the times, and gives the reader a greater understanding of why the women, Polly Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Kate Eddowes and Mary Kelly, may have been out and about to run into their killer.
had this for awhile and finally got it read. It was well researched. Rubenhold personalized this victims so that you got to know their story. Even though most of the Ripper’s victims were considered prostitutes, most of these were not. They were just women based on their circumstances distitute. The only problem I had was that their was so much info about these 5 victims, the book seemed to get bogged down.
Happy Reading
All of us heard of Jack the Ripper, but do we truly know his victims? Spoiler alert: no, we don’t. It was always assumed that Ripper was the killer of prostitutes but in fact, only one of his victims, Mary Kelly, was a sex worker. The rest of them were unfortunate victims of the Victorian society, its double standards when it came to men and women, and the general desperate state of London’s lower class that had doomed them to hunger, poverty, and eventually, death at the hands of one of the first serial killers. In this meticulously researched study, the author sheds light on Jack the Ripper’s five victims’ lives, fates, personalities and – for the first time – shows them for the women they were and not just Ripper’s nameless victims. I can only imagine the amount of research that went into this incredible study that made Victorian London truly come alive along with women who lived and died in its streets and I applaud the author for writing a familiar story from such an important angle. I really can’t recommend it highly enough! Absolutely brilliant.
This is 3 1/2 stars. The majority of this book is conjecture.
This was well written with enough facts and historical information to easily see these women and the author may be close to correct in what their lives were like.
Not all of the women were sympathetic figures. I kept needing to pause and remember the time and society that they lived in.
I’m not entirely sure that these women weren’t prostitutes. It doesn’t matter if they were. They didn’t deserve to die so brutally.
It was nice that the focus was on the lives of the victims .
3.5
This book wasn’t what I thought it would be. I am not really sure what I thought it would be. . It was very slow to me. Some parts were interesting and then others I struggled to get through. I am not sure that I would recommend this book.
As a mystery lover, it’s impossible for me to deny that I am, and always have been, intrigued by the most notorious unsolved case of all times. The case of Jack the Ripper is truly what legends are made of. HOWEVER . . . what if some of the facts we have all come to accept are not true? Specifically, the nature of Jack’s victims. Since the time of the murders, we have always been led to believe the five woman (who are accepted as the canonical five) were prostitutes. The idea of a mysterious figure killing prostitutes in London’s East End certainly made for a sensational story. Rubenhold’s book examining the lives of the five women who were murdered by Jack is a fascinating read because not only did I walk away having learned so much more about London during that particular time, but that these victims WERE NOT what they have been painted to be for over a century. Which then begs the question, if the true nature of a killer’s victims is never understood, is it actually possible to solve the case? If the police and the press had not assumed these women were all prostitutes, just unfortunates down on their luck, would it — could it — have changed the way the case was investigated? Rubenhold does not try to solve the case. Her goal is to give us a better (well researched) look at the lives of Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, and Mary Jane Kelly. THE FIVE: THE UNTOLD LIVES OF THE WOMEN KILLED MY JACK THE RIPPER is captivating. Whether you’re a Ripperologist or a Victorian-era English history buff, this is a book you must at to your reading list.
In The Five: The Lives of Jack the Ripper’s Women, Hallie Rubenhold discusses the five women who are famous for being Jack the Ripper’s victims. She does not discuss what Jack did to them instead she follows their lives from the time of their birth leading to the night of their deaths. Rubenhold shows us who Polly, Annie, Elizabeth, Catherine and Mary-Jane really were and not just what happened to them in the end.
“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.”
Hallie Rubenhold has done an amazing job at giving these women back their lives. For so long, they have only been known as the prostitute victims of Jack the Ripper. Now their stories of happiness, tragedy, and loss are being told. Of the five canonical Ripper victims, only one of the women is confirmed to have been a prostitute, but as far as the world knows they all were. The media of the time exaggerated the stories of these women so much that it buried who they really were.
“The larger his profile grows, the more those of his victims seem to fade. With the advance of time, both the murderer and those he murdered have become detached from reality; their experiences and names have become entwined with folklore and conspiracy theories.”
I learned so much about what life was like in the 1800s with this book. Women had very little rights during this time. Becoming poor and homeless was extremely easy during this time for women, especially considering the working class had little understanding of birth control. These four women had to deal with abusive husbands, homelessness, starvation, alcoholism, multiple children, and also the deaths of those children. It is no wonder that so many people turned to alcohol during this time. They rarely had time to be happy or enjoy their lives.
“The cards were stacked against Polly, Annie, Elisabeth, Kate, and Mary Jane from birth. They began their lives in deficit. Not only were most of them born into working-class families; they were also born female. Before they had even spoken their first words or taken their first steps, they were regarded as less important than their brothers and more of a burden on the world than their wealthier female counterparts. Their worth was compromised before they had even attempted to prove it. They would never earn the income of a man; therefore, their education was of less importance. What work they could secure was designed to help support their families; it was not intended to bring them fulfillment, a sense of purpose, or personal contentment.”
This was an amazing book that gave these five women back their lives. It also presents a fascinating look at London society, history, and women’s rights during this time. I highly recommend this book if you are interested in Jack the Ripper.
Trigger Warnings:
– Alcoholism
– Suicide
– Death of Children
– Miscarriage and stillborn
– Grief
– Domestic Violence
– Homelessness
– Starvation
– Prostitution
I have been fascinated by Jack the Ripper since I first heard of him many years ago. Who was he? Why did he feel he could commit such horrible crimes? How did he get away with it? What is it that draws so many to his crimes? This book answers none of those really. For that I’m actually happy. In the midst of all my questions about him, I wanted to know more about these women. The prostitutes. As if that is all that mattered. As if it excused what was done to them. As if any of us are just one definable thing. Even as a young teen, I knew there was more to these women. The fact that for so many years that was all they were, murdered prostitutes, heavily influenced my belief that we should be remembering victims rather than the murderers. In my opinion, the author did just that.
Each woman had a life beyond what they were, for centuries, remembered for. They had childhoods. They had family and friends. Life experiences that played a big part in what they became famous for. Life has never been gentle for women. It has made me laugh whenever I would hear woman called, “the weaker sex.” We bear children. We have overcome difficulties that are exhausting just to read of. We have been held back, valued less, yet trusted with the future, (historically who has had the responsibility of child raising and what is the future without children who grow into adults?). But we were the weaker ones. Okay. As I listened, and read, this book, of what a woman’s life was like back then, I admired these “fallen women,” who kept moving forward no matter what they had to do to survive the day.
I listened to this book on Audible. It was narrated by Louise Brealey, who did an awesome job. I also read the Kindle book. There were some slight changes in wording that made it difficult to read along as you listen. It was easy, though, to switch between listening and reading. I would recommend the book in either form. It was as fascinating as it was informative. True crime stories can be difficult to listen to. They can also be boring. This book was neither of those. I encourage you to read it and discuss it. It is an excellent book club choice.