A Petticoat Parley: Women in Ripperology

[Kattrup]

2. The second sentence suggests to me that at that time it was understood that casual prostitution was a form of casual labor for poor women.

I agree. Which again drives home an inconvenient point for Rubenhold et al.: even though the victims were considered prostitutes, society still spared no expense in trying to catch the killer, and the political pressure was immense.

The police and other authorities actually did not care that the victims were prostitutes, they still did their best. Shocking - and at odds with Rubenhold’s narrative.

It’s funny how Katherine Crooks slips up and writes “reconceptualised”, this ends up implying she accepts understanding prostitution “a gendered and pathologized form of sexual deviance”.

[MrBarnett]

1. I think she means the poorer classes by that.
2. The second sentence suggests to me that at that time it was understood that casual prostitution was a form of casual labor for poor women.

Thanks Linotte. I had sort of figured that out.

But if an academic doesn’t grasp the meaning of the word ‘vagrant’ and suggests prostitution - allegedly the world’s oldest profession - and manual labour are ‘unconventional’ forms of work, why should we bother to wade through her almost impenetrable prose to try to work out whether she has anything of value to say?

‘I know big words’ comes across very clearly. ‘I have a unique insight into Victorian East End life’ seems somewhat unlikely.

HR, or more often her acolytes, have played the academic card time and again when mere mortals have questioned her research.

[Linotte]

This gem comes from ‘Dr’ Katherine Crooks.

‘Newspapers identified the Ripper victims as members of the same class of vagrants from which Scotland Yard drew the majority of their Ripper suspects.’

Is that right? Were the majority of Scotland Yard’s suspects ‘vagrants’?


As for this sentence:

’Victorians’ conflation of this group of prostitutes with the men who also engaged in unconventional and unreliable forms of work suggests that Victorian prostitution might be reconceptualised not only as a gendered and pathologized form of sexual deviance, but also as a partially normalized form of labour.’


What on earth does it mean?

1. I think she means the poorer classes by that.
2. The second sentence suggests to me that at that time it was understood that casual prostitution was a form of casual labor for poor women.

[MrBarnett]

That’s why I said that academics and scholars should know better than to get on a bandwagon based on sloppy research.

The research was his own and that of his co-author, I believe. And this was his particular field. Not only was he the head of history at a U.K. university, he was also a Ripperologist of sorts (whatever that term means).

[Linotte]

There was at least one U.K. academic who challenged HR, but he subsequently published and even more dubious Ripper book. Perhaps we shouldn’t be too quick to doff our caps to ‘academics’.

That’s why I said that academics and scholars should know better than to get on a bandwagon based on sloppy research.

[MrBarnett]

This gem comes from ‘Dr’ Katherine Crooks.

‘Newspapers identified the Ripper victims as members of the same class of vagrants from which Scotland Yard drew the majority of their Ripper suspects.’

Is that right? Were the majority of Scotland Yard’s suspects ‘vagrants’?


As for this sentence:

’Victorians’ conflation of this group of prostitutes with the men who also engaged in unconventional and unreliable forms of work suggests that Victorian prostitution might be reconceptualised not only as a gendered and pathologized form of sexual deviance, but also as a partially normalized form of labour.’


What on earth does it mean?

[MrBarnett]

There was at least one U.K. academic who challenged HR, but he subsequently published and even more dubious Ripper book. Perhaps we shouldn’t be too quick to doff our caps to ‘academics’.

[MrBarnett]

Hi Linotte,

Would the laypeople we should be more patient with include the one who wrote a piece in the Times where he described Ripperology as a ‘wanker’s holodeck’ or the ‘Dr’ who claimed to have spent 17 seconds on the boards and in that time had come to the conclusion that their contributors were all morons?

Gary

[Linotte]

What Hallie is pushing is a classic white feminist narrative. She used Judith Walkowitz’s work from the 1980s and 1990s. Walkowitz’s work is valuable, but it’s dated and only explores the case through the bourgeois perspective of the “fallen woman.” Dr Katherine Crooks questions this perspective in her 2015 master’s thesis: https://dalspace.library.dal.ca/handle/10222/57214. I have reason to believe Hallie knew about the thesis while researching and writing The Five. If she knew about it and chose not to use it, then she has not been on the up-and-up and she knows it.

That being said, we should probably be much more patient with and understanding of the laypeople supporting her. They’re being misled by someone who wants to silence criticism of her work because she doesn’t want people to see that she’s a lazy and sloppy researcher and that she didn’t do her due diligence. As for the scholars and academics in the UK who are supporting her, they should know better.

And if she ends up reading this, I said what I said.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Coming to this late. Thanks so much! It was a blast participating in this with Ally and the other panelists.

I’ve actually bounced this whole dialogue about HR and The Five off feminist friends outside the Ripperology community, and they’re all in agreement with those of us on the panel. Which is odd, because I would have expected more nuance in responses. So what we can gather from this is that HR and her approach to the book resonates with a very specific demographic. HR can only silence other feminist perspectives on the case for so long. That’s why she was so angry about the podcast. So we need to keep talking about this and including others in the discussion.

That’s encouraging news Linotte. I suspect that it rankles with HR that she can’t throw out labels of ‘sexist’ or ‘misogynist’ to a panel of women? It’s important that the panel showed that to disagree in any way with HR is not a betrayal of feminism but a confirmation of it combined with a respect for truth. Up until now they’ve only heard male voices which they dismiss with labelling (unfortunately aided, I’m told, by some unpleasant comments on social media) but they can’t adopt the same tactic with a panel of women. Let’s hope that more people have their minds opened by the podcast and any future podcasts. If the balance is going to be redressed on this subject I think that it’s largely going to be redressed by women.

[Linotte]

Coming to this late. Thanks so much! It was a blast participating in this with Ally and the other panelists.

I’ve actually bounced this whole dialogue about HR and The Five off feminist friends outside the Ripperology community, and they’re all in agreement with those of us on the panel. Which is odd, because I would have expected more nuance in responses. So what we can gather from this is that HR and her approach to the book resonates with a very specific demographic. HR can only silence other feminist perspectives on the case for so long. That’s why she was so angry about the podcast. So we need to keep talking about this and including others in the discussion.

[jmenges]

Is the Fru Fru FB group still active?

It still exists but no activity in quite a while.

JM

[MrBarnett]

Is the Fru Fru FB group still active?

[Ms Diddles]

I can't tell you how pleased we are that we are getting overall positive reactions to the podcast. We will be discussing more along these lines at the upcoming panel at the online Ripper Conference as well as some of the reactions from Rubenhold (like being called a Troll Army sent by our male masters to attack her for the "optics".) Hope everyone can tune in for what will surely be a fantastically vicious time.

But thank you so much for the compliments, we are happy that some of our comments are resonating with people.

It really did resonate, Ally!

It was gratifying to hear the "feminist" narrative as dictated by Rubenhold challenged by a bunch of well informed, knowledgeable ladies.

It would always be instinctive to me to back a female writer writing from a feminist perspective in such a male dominated field, but on reading the book the reality was somewhat different.

You gotta call bulls*!t when you see it!!

I will very much look forward to logging in on the 30th to hear your next discussion, and would encourage anyone who hasn't listened to the podcast to give it a whirl!

[Ally]

I just listened to this podcast in it's entirety and loved it.

The panel summed up my feelings on The Five far more eloquently and eruditely than I could have done.

I too had such high hopes for this book, but was bitterly disappointed when it was published.

It could have been such a great work, but the author's need to sanitise the lives of these women and portray them as mere ciphers with no autonomy or volition did a disservice to them, and to the whole feminist ethos which the book purported to champion.

Prior to publication I was unaware of the books original proposed title.

Had I known, it would have set the alarm bells ringing and I would have approached it with much lower expectations and perhaps a warranted sense of trepidation.

I also really enjoyed the conversation around definitions of sexism and misogyny and individual experiences of such.

Brilliant work.

I can't tell you how pleased we are that we are getting overall positive reactions to the podcast. We will be discussing more along these lines at the upcoming panel at the online Ripper Conference as well as some of the reactions from Rubenhold (like being called a Troll Army sent by our male masters to attack her for the "optics".) Hope everyone can tune in for what will surely be a fantastically vicious time.

But thank you so much for the compliments, we are happy that some of our comments are resonating with people.