Rippercast Reviews 'The Five' by Hallie Rubenhold

[Harmonica]

It sounds, from the podcast, that she is doing everything possible to deny the fact that there is decent evidence they were engaged in prostitution, and that it was sexist police that put the idea out there. However, if one types 'prostitution Victorian England' into a search bar, you get close to 1 million hits. It seems to me she is selling some strange revisionist agenda. On her twitter feed, she certainly doesn't rebuke the myriad derogatory comments about Ripper authors and ripperology in general, on the contrary, it's as though she promotes it and blocks anyone who even questions her findings or motives.
The only good that can come out of it is the possibility of a small percentage of readers the who become truly interested in the case, and move beyond her narrative to see it in all its hideous splendour. Who amongst us got sucked in by Cornwell or Knight, or by the From Hell graphic novel for that matter.
Another great podcast Jonathan, keep up the great work.

This is a really troubling and sadly common occurrence today when it comes to all manner of criticism. We live in such a divided and binary age - based on what I saw from Hallie's Twitter feed (and admittedly I haven't the interest or patience to look into it too deeply), she presents in this very unhelpfully modern fashion where every oppositional voice is that of this invisible patriarchal evil coming to tear down the voices of women thinkers. There's then this very disingenuous implication that arises from her comments which seems to attach subsequent Ripperology into this perceived dehumanisation/indignity applied to the canonical victims over time, which is frankly outrageous and the complete opposite of what so many have spent lives and careers investigating. I'm sure she could validly take up such complaints with the content and iconography of mainstream Ripper visual medias (all the trashy movies and novels about or based on it, the London Dungeon exhibits etc), but to actively shun the biggest collective ally of these women's legacy is pretty abhorrent.

[Sam Flynn]

Very nicely put, Harmonica.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Very nicely put, Harmonica.

I don’t buy many ripper books these days Sam but is it worth getting?

[Sam Flynn]

I don’t buy many ripper books these days Sam but is it worth getting?

It's a well-written book, but there are better books on the lives of the Victorian poor out there, which is primarily what "The Five" turned out to be. There's nothing particularly revelatory about the women themselves, at least not if you've read Begg/Sugden/Shelden etc, and some of what is written about them is speculative. It's not a "Ripper" book, because it doesn't delve too much into the details of the case; this would be fine, were it not for the fact that some of those details are inconsistent with some of the speculations put forward in the book. I can't finally recommend it on that basis.

[Herlock Sholmes]

It's a well-written book, but there are better books on the lives of the Victorian poor out there, which is primarily what "The Five" turned out to be. There's nothing particularly revelatory about the women themselves, at least not if you've read Begg/Sugden/Shelden etc, and some of what is written about them is speculative. It's not a "Ripper" book, because it doesn't delve too much into the details of the case; this would be fine, were it not for the fact that some of those details are inconsistent with some of the speculations put forward in the book. I can't finally recommend it on that basis.

That’s good enough for me Sam and kind of what I suspected from reading what has been written about it so far. I’ll have to get around to listening to the podcast though.

Thanks Sam

[MrBarnett]

The author claims that the women were automatically assumed to be prostitutes by the press because their bodies were found on the streets.

She takes a paragraph from a press report about Polly and amends it to support her contention.

Here’’s the paragraph in full, the words in bold are the only ones the author includes in the book

[Herlock Sholmes]

The author claims that the women were automatically assumed to be prostitutes by the press because their bodies were found on the streets.

She takes a paragraph from a press report about Polly and amends it to support her contention.

Here’’s the paragraph in full, the words in bold are the only ones the author includes in the book

Hello Gary,

I don’t know what’s worse, the fact that she was so dishonest as to use selective quoting, or the fact that she was stupid enough to assume that no one would notice? I mean, it’s not as if people study the case is it

[MrBarnett]

Hello Gary,

I don’t know what’s worse, the fact that she was so dishonest as to use selective quoting, or the fact that she was stupid enough to assume that no one would notice? I mean, it’s not as if people study the case is it

Which is why she and her acolytes have expended so much energy demonising ’Ripperologists’ on social media.

One of them claimed to have spent 53 seconds on Casebook and pegged its members as ‘morons’.

[MrBarnett]

It's a well-written book, but there are better books on the lives of the Victorian poor out there, which is primarily what "The Five" turned out to be. There's nothing particularly revelatory about the women themselves, at least not if you've read Begg/Sugden/Shelden etc, and some of what is written about them is speculative. It's not a "Ripper" book, because it doesn't delve too much into the details of the case; this would be fine, were it not for the fact that some of those details are inconsistent with some of the speculations put forward in the book. I can't finally recommend it on that basis.

Gareth,

Of course it’s a Ripper book - it has JTR in the title and it focuses exclusively on the C5. The only reason those five women were chosen is because of who may have killed them.

If it had been about any other five women who met a violent end in the East End in the 1880s, would it have received so much attention?

Gary