Originally posted by Semper_Eadem
View Post
The Five may have made people re-examine the victims, although I'm not sure that that is the case. It seems to me that people have uncritically bought into Hallie Rubenhold’s argument that the victims weren't prostitutes. People know that Ripperologists don't support her opinions, but to the best of my knowledge, nobody has asked them why.
The fury over Patricia Cornwell’s book had less to do with her book than with various comments she made about Ripperologists at publication time. Her book wasn’t revisionist, or no more so than many books proposing a new suspect.
Yes, revisionist history is a good thing, especially if it makes you think about the commonly accepted interpretation of an event or events. But The Five is not revisionist. As I understand it, revisionism is essentially looking at the known facts in a different way.Revisionism does not omit those facts that argue against one’s theory. The Five does that. Revisionism does not edit a source to make it appear to say something it didn’t. HR does that. For example, a police report says that Mary Nichols’ husband said he had stopped supporting her financially when he learned she had turned to prostitution, and that his actions had been upheld by the authorities. Wholly independently, women who knew Nichols and shared her lodgings stated that she earned her living on the streets. The Five claims that there is no evidence whatsoever that the victims were prostitutes. This testimony is NOT mentioned in The Five. There is no discussion of it. Not a jot of argument is offered to refute it. Ignoring the facts is not revisionist history. It’s plain bad history.
I wonder why your sister knew Ripperologists were narrow-minded and cliqish? Had she been on Casebook herself? Cliqish, I can maybe understand. I suppose any group that shares a common interest might appear to be that way, but narrow-minded is less easy to understand.
Yes, we all use the work of those who have gone before us, but we usually credit it when possible and if we’re honest we don’t claim or allow it to be claimed on our behalf that we discovered it. We don’t take the fruits of someone's labour, money and time, then knee him in the groin and paint him as a misogynist glorifying violence against women. That's what HR has done. Is it any wonder we're a bit snarky.
I’m afraid you have the wrong end of the stick about HR giving back as good as she gets. To put it bluntly, Ripperologists believe her book is wrong. In fact, we know it’s wrong. Facts are ignored, sources are edited, individuals like Edward Fairfield are misrepresented. It’s not Ripperologists being nasty about HR, its Ripperologists wanting HR to face up to the serious criticisms of her book. HR claims she’s a professional, Ripperologists want her to behave like one. We have Mark Ripper stressing he that he was not comparing her to a Holocaust denier, and we have HR straight away complaining wherever she could that Ripperologists had compared her to a Holocaust denier. This isn’t someone giving back as good as she gets, this is someone who initiates the trouble.
I agree with you that the behaviour of Ripperologists does not always reflect well on them., but then again Ripperologists are used to not being taken seriously, so from time to time their anger at being made to look foolish spills over. The merits of her work have been stated, but we’re belittled, dismissed, misrepresented and lied about. A snarky comment is small beer compared to all that, don’t you think?
Comment