Ms Rubenhold Wants a Ripper Tour Mural

Yes, I think a response should be made, and I don't think it matters who writes it. There was a blog on the Waterstones site too, the "blogger", who I imagine is an employee of Waterstones, who wrote that implacable opposition towards Rubenhold's book has come from "those men who pride themselves on their Ripper expertise, otherwise known as the Ripperologists." Ripperology has quite a lot of women in its ranks, a number of whom have been critical of Rubenhold's book, and Ripperologists don't pride themselves on their expertise, they are experts and that's what makes them the people best able to assess Rubenhold's book. It's also the reason why Rubenhold wants to diminish and belittle them and manufacture a war with them. Sadly, the blog is open for replies, but appears to have been deleting them. I have asked why, but have yet to receive reply.

Folks,
I reproduce below an article that appeared in yesterday's Times.
Read it and try not to explode.

On a more serious note, is now the time for The Casebook members to rebut the accusations made by Ms Rubenhold?
Perhaps by a letter to the Times?
A letter of rebuttal would have certain logistical problems.

Who would write it?
Agreement of text in the rebuttal etc.

I for one am getting a bit annoyed by being depicted as someone with no sympathy" for the victims.

The struggle for the memory of the five women murdered by Jack the Ripper is being played out on the walls of the streets where they were killed.

Hallie Rubenhold, a historian and author, has gained the support of local councillors to create a mural for the victims in an attempt to change the narrative of “Ripper tours” that dwell on the violence of the killings.

Rubenhold, author of The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women killed by Jack the Ripper, believes that many self-described Ripperologists denigrate the unknown victims by describing them all as prostitutes, despite there being little evidence to support the claim for three of them.

Her publisher has arranged for a mural near the site of one of the murders in Whitechapel, east London, to advertise the book, while Rachel Blake and Kevin Brady, local councillors of Tower Hamlets, have backed the campaign to create a permanent memorial.

In her book, which won the Baillie Gifford Prize for non-fiction last year, Rubenhold concluded that while Mary Jane Kelly was a prostitute and that Elizabeth Stride had been arrested for soliciting four years before her death in 1888, there was no evidence that Mary Ann “Polly” Nichols, Annie Chapman or Catherine Eddowes were involved in the sex trade. They had simply been branded as such because they were unmarried and lived in flop houses.

Rubenhold said she had been compared to the Holocaust denier David Irving and had received abusive comments on social media from self-styled amateur historians who took offence at the book’s marketing message. “It suggested we, as a society, had forgotten the victims and that my book was the first full-length book to examine all five victims collectively, and not as a part of their murderer’s story,” Rubenhold told The Times.

“I can’t understand the objection to that statement. However, they were taking issue with the contents of the book before they had even read it.”

Rubenhold said she hoped any mural would be on the routes taken by Ripper tours as a reminder that the victims were women neglected by society rather than sinners who deserved no sympathy. “Whitechapel is owned by Jack the Ripper and the women have no visible presence there and they should,” she said. “A mural would help put them back at the heart of their own story.”

(The Times 11/02/2020)