A Petticoat Parley: Women in Ripperology

[PaulB]

To be fair, I re-read The Five and I can see why it has merit, in the eyes of the layman, at least it has gotten people to re-examine the Victims, and by People I mean the general layman. I remember the furor over Patricia Cornwell's book. These books with general appeal, which include a revisionist slant make you think if nothing else about the perceived view of history.
I remember the Furor, capital F over Patricia Cornwell's book. In fact when I told my sister I was posting on JTR Forums at the time I got a lecture from her why I should not waste my time with such narrow minded Cliquish People, or words to that effect.
Now I do not like Revisionists as I think Richard III was guilty as hell, but I can concede that he is not the villain that Shakespeare paints him as.
As for Ms Rubenhold's stealing others research, don't we all use the research of those who have come before us. I also want to apologize for my comment on Page 2. I am not really in a position to be challenging Ms Rubenholds book or the merits of it. Also I think the snarky comments about Ms Rubenhold are uncalled for even if she is giving back as good as she gets. This type of behavior really doesn't get us any where and should not be included in a debate over the merits of her work. There I have said my peace.

Thank you for your observations. I appreciate somebody standing up for The Five and it's interesting to read your reasons. It's also very rare to read this on a Ripper site like Casebook, so allow me the opportunity to indulge myself in a detailed reply. It's late (for me) and I am taking a break with a small coffee, so here goes...

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?

[PaulB]

As it’s been nearly 20 years since The Definitive History Paul. Any thoughts on an updated and even more extensive follow up with a chapter on The Five?

I'd love to update the book and I have been in discussions with my publisher, but currently, I'm up to my eyes with the new A to Z, which has turned into a full-time job for all of us.

[PaulB]

Semper, Rubenhold isn’t “giving back as good as she gets.” She initiated it. She began with an agenda. From the very beginning, she demonised Ripperologists. Her and her acolytes constantly and falsely accuse us of misogyny and sexism. Ripperology just reacted.
She is entirely to blame. This was her plan all along. A panel of women react and she even insults them by saying that men sent them. She has to be seen through eventually. I used to get pretty angry about her but lately I’ve been getting less so (especially after the podcast) because it’s getting so silly that I think eyes are finally being opened. I have zero time or sympathy for her.

I wish I'd said that instead of the indulgent post I made. I'm not sure that eyes really are being opened. I've not personally seen much evidence of that. It would cheer me immensely if it is true.

[Herlock Sholmes]

I'd love to update the book and I have been in discussions with my publisher, but currently, I'm up to my eyes with the new A to Z, which has turned into a full-time job for all of us.

I’d forgotten about the A-Z Paul. Any rough ideas when it will appear?

[Herlock Sholmes]

I wish I'd said that instead of the indulgent post I made. I'm not sure that eyes really are being opened. I've not personally seen much evidence of that. It would cheer me immensely if it is true.

If I’m being too optimistic then it’s a first for me Paul.

Lets hope. But I think that female voices (like the ones in the podcast) are the likeliest to get through and the most difficult to label. So the more that here from them the better. After all if they’re not going to listen to someone like you then they’re not going to listen to any male Ripperologist.

[harry]

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.

[Ally]

As for Ms Rubenhold's stealing others research, don't we all use the research of those who have come before us.

Of course we all use research of those who have come before us. The distinction is how many of us claim to be telling the "Untold Lives" of multiple people and then failing to provide a single new factual detail about those people and then claiming that the people's who research we stole have ignored the victims. See the slight difference?

. Also I think the snarky comments about Ms Rubenhold are uncalled for even if she is giving back as good as she gets. This type of behavior really doesn't get us any where and should not be included in a debate over the merits of her work. There I have said my peace.

She is not "giving back", she is giving. It is two years on from the publication of her book and she's still attacking Ripperologists for the sole reason that it gives her victimhood credit and raises her profile. She is, in short, a bully. Now if you choose to equate the actions of a bully as being no different than those of the people who are defending themselves against her, then that is of course a comparison you are entitled to make. It's not one I think can be defended from a position of reason however.

[Varqm]

Of course we all use research of those who have come before us. The distinction is how many of us claim to be telling the "Untold Lives" of multiple people and then failing to provide a single new factual detail about those people and then claiming that the people's who research we stole have ignored the victims. See the slight difference?





She is not "giving back", she is giving. It is two years on from the publication of her book and she's still attacking Ripperologists for the sole reason that it gives her victimhood credit and raises her profile. She is, in short, a bully. Now if you choose to equate the actions of a bully as being no different than those of the people who are defending themselves against her, then that is of course a comparison you are entitled to make. It's not one I think can be defended from a position of reason however.

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?

[Varqm]

Or even a link to a webpage were the reasons were given and they just ignored it?

[PaulB]

I’d forgotten about the A-Z Paul. Any rough ideas when it will appear?

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.

[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.

[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).

[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.

[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.

[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