A Petticoat Parley: Women in Ripperology

[PaulB]

You’ll be saying that they didn’t all look like a young Barbara Windsor next.

Let's not take this too far!

[jmenges]

Since we've waded briefly into the topic of non-germane source material cited by Rubenhold to bolster one of her proclamations, another example appears when she is discussing John Kelly's inquest testimony and Kelly is questioned about the meaning of "walking the streets". He first said he, by defending Kate's honor(HR) didn't want to have her 'walking the streets' due to their lack of doss money. When asked to clarify what he meant by 'walking the streets' Kelly said "Many a time we have not had the money to pay for our shelter, and have had to tramp about".
Rubenhold goes on to say that the term "walking the streets" is described by William Booth in his book 'Darkest England' as (HR)"rough sleepers' never ending nocturnal quest for somewhere quiet to rest before a patrolling constable moved them along."
What Rubenhold doesn't mention is that when talking about the poor "walking the streets", William Booth is specifically referring to working men who stay up all night walking the streets so that they can be ready to find work at the crack of dawn.
As far as I know, there is no evidence that any of the Canonical Five victims of Jack the Ripper were workingmen, nor do I know of any evidence that any of them were planning to walk the streets so that they might find employment first thing the following morning.

JM

[harry]

By Victorian definition,to me,means the rulings of the church and the law.Was every woman walking the streets in the early hours to be considered as someone seeking a customer for sex.No one knows what Nichols meant by her remarks about earning money.Stride and Eddowes cannot be shown to have been soliciting,and Kelly's movements the day and night of her death seem more of a person spending money than earning it.Which leaves Chapman,and no one has any idea of what she was doingin the early hours.
But then to some a prostitute will always ,and at all times, be a prostitute.Will an occassional drunk always be a drunk?

[Herlock Sholmes]

Yes. Also that they didn't hang around street corners displaying their goods, or hang a card around their neck saying 'fancy a good time, dearie'. It seems to be another of HR's nonsense conclusions.

You’ll be saying that they didn’t all look like a young Barbara Windsor next.

[PaulB]

I suspect they couldn’t make a distinction unless they knew the woman from previous encounters, saw them being watched over by a pimp or witnessed them in the act. And a just seeing a woman speaking to a man wasn’t enough. The order issued by Warren prohibited a police officer from arresting someone on their mere suspicion that they’re engaged in prostitution. There had to first be a direct complaint made by a member of the public or they must have some other sort of corroborating evidence. All of this not being of the slightest relevance in a murder case, despite what Rubenhold claims in The Five.

JM

Obtaining direct complaints that a woman was soliciting and thereby causing a disturbance was slightly irrelevant when the woman was dead. As far as I know, a corpse was never taken before a magistrate at the Thames Police Court on a charge of soliciting. Or a charge of anything else really. And we know that people such as Nichols' husband and fellow lodgers, and the deputy of Chapman's lodging house confirmed that they were prostitutes, so the police were well within their rights to call them prostitutes.

[PaulB]

Are you suggesting that they wouldn’t have carried Union Membership cards Paul?

Yes. Also that they didn't hang around street corners displaying their goods, or hang a card around their neck saying 'fancy a good time, dearie'. It seems to be another of HR's nonsense conclusions.

[jmenges]

I suspect they couldn’t make a distinction unless they knew the woman from previous encounters, saw them being watched over by a pimp or witnessed them in the act. And a just seeing a woman speaking to a man wasn’t enough. The order issued by Warren prohibited a police officer from arresting someone on their mere suspicion that they’re engaged in prostitution. There had to first be a direct complaint made by a member of the public or they must have some other sort of corroborating evidence. All of this not being of the slightest relevance in a murder case, despite what Rubenhold claims in The Five.

JM

[Herlock Sholmes]

I wonder how HR thinks the police could have distinguished between a prostitute and a non-prostitute in the East End anyway?

Are you suggesting that they wouldn’t have carried Union Membership cards Paul?

[PaulB]

The whole issue has been muddled by what Rubenhold initially imagined what a Victorian prostitute was and what she later discovered about the realities of a female vagrants subsistence existence in the East End of London. The two realities conflict. Rather than go with the one reality and accept the evidence that exists as trustworthy, she dug her heels in and conjured up all sorts of theories to oppose the evidence. As an example- She’ll routinely say that “the police themselves admitted they couldn’t tell the difference between a prostitute and one who was not”. This is referring to an 1887 memo by Charles Warren in the aftermath of the false arrest for prostitution of Elizabeth Cass, who was mistakenly assumed to have been soliciting. This memo DID NOT have anything to do with dictating the proper way the police were to conduct their investigations into the background and last known movements of murder victims. Yet Rubenhold capitalizes on this memo both in her book and in her online Twitter dispatches.
She claims Polly’s jolly bonnet comment meant that Polly would try to pawn it in the middle of the night, not that it might help her attract a customer.
She ignores nearly every witness account there is in the case as if these accounts don’t even exist.
She takes the words spoken by the women who lodged with Nichols in Thrawl Street who stated they knew Polly as a prostitute and transfers them to a male press reporter and then questions what knowledge he would have had about the victim. There are many other examples.
So the issue isn’t what the definition of prostitute is, but how Rubenhold bobs and weaves around the source material because for some reason SHE has a problem with the notion that these five particular women had to resort to subsistence prostitution in order to survive.

JM

I wonder how HR thinks the police could have distinguished between a prostitute and a non-prostitute in the East End anyway?

[Herlock Sholmes]

Unless my memory is playing me false wasn’t it Martin Fido who said or wrote, after talking to East End families, that it was common knowledge that when times were tough Granny went out on the streets to earn money, and that no one thought any less of her?

Just the tragic reality of their lives.

[jmenges]

The whole issue has been muddled by what Rubenhold initially imagined what a Victorian prostitute was and what she later discovered about the realities of a female vagrants subsistence existence in the East End of London. The two realities conflict. Rather than go with the one reality and accept the evidence that exists as trustworthy, she dug her heels in and conjured up all sorts of theories to oppose the evidence. As an example- She’ll routinely say that “the police themselves admitted they couldn’t tell the difference between a prostitute and one who was not”. This is referring to an 1887 memo by Charles Warren in the aftermath of the false arrest for prostitution of Elizabeth Cass, who was mistakenly assumed to have been soliciting. This memo DID NOT have anything to do with dictating the proper way the police were to conduct their investigations into the background and last known movements of murder victims. Yet Rubenhold capitalizes on this memo both in her book and in her online Twitter dispatches.
She claims Polly’s jolly bonnet comment meant that Polly would try to pawn it in the middle of the night, not that it might help her attract a customer.
She ignores nearly every witness account there is in the case as if these accounts don’t even exist.
She takes the words spoken by the women who lodged with Nichols in Thrawl Street who stated they knew Polly as a prostitute and transfers them to a male press reporter and then questions what knowledge he would have had about the victim. There are many other examples.
So the issue isn’t what the definition of prostitute is, but how Rubenhold bobs and weaves around the source material because for some reason SHE has a problem with the notion that these five particular women had to resort to subsistence prostitution in order to survive.

JM

[Ally]

People who want to parse the definition of "prostitute" think that one can't make a distinction between saying "She was a prostitute" and "She was just a prostitute". One is never defined by any one single characteristic, except in extreme cases of the most outrageous transgressions of human behavior, like rapists or murderers, to the exclusion that the performance of those acts makes a permanent judgment on ones character. Giving blow jobs, for whatever reason, doesn't qualify at that level. And wouldn't men be quite sorry if it did.

[Herlock Sholmes]

To be honest, your guess is as good as mine. We've all been working very hard on it, but we've had to overcome lots of problems just working together. This ranges from keeping a 'database' that's up-to-date, that can be used cross-platform, trying to work around the database's habit of deleting material we've just entered... A lot of time was wasted trying to transfer the entries to a different 'database', which has delayed us. And then there's just the time-consuming day-to-day stuff like making sure the cross-referencing is in place. We have well over 1,000 entries, so that's doesn't make things easy. But we'll get there.

Sounds like a headache. I’m certain the end result will be worth it though.

[PaulB]

I haven't read HR's book,so cannot condemn or compliment her,but I have read numerous JTR books,and of course been entertained by my own and others comments on these boards.From memory,in all the years i have been posting,I have never reffered to the victims as prostitutes.Why?.Well I do not know exactly how a woman has to behave to be labelled one.I know the dictionary definition,I have been,through work and military experience,in situations which brought me into contact with
women described as prostitutes.Still I am not sure I would be correct in describing the rippers victims as of that class.
Maybe a more educated person could answer this simple question,what defines a prostitute? Should that not be first established.

It doesn't matter how we define a prostitute, but how the late Victorians defined one, and specifically the police and the press, but I don't think their definition varied much from a prostitute being someone who exchanged sexual favours for money (or kind).

[PaulB]

So I gather a response giving the reasons why the C5 were prostituting that early morning, either from their actions, their history, or the killer's victim profile, or where they were found, were given, and HR and her readers just ignored it?

Yes.

HR states on page 15, ‘Jack the Ripper killed prostitutes, or so it has always been believed, but there is no hard evidence to suggest that three of his five victims were prostitutes at all.’ (The three were Nichols, Chapman and Eddowes).

That the victims were or weren't prostitutes only matters insofar as that affects the killer's profile, but Rubenhold says that it is important to Ripperologists that Jack was a prostitute killer, something into which she reads much about attitudes towards sex, women, mysogeny and violence against women. The reality, of course, is that it isn't in any way necessary to Ripperologists that the victims were prostitutes, and the only person to whom it does matter is HR, whose whole thesis is largely based on her claim that they weren't.