Lucy Wolsey Documentary is here.

[Geddy2112]

After Lucy referred to the killer as 'Jack the Wwwwripper' for the fourth time I had to call it a day... I may try again later.

[etenguy]

I have enjoyed Lucy Worsley's previous documentaries, especially the series about Agatha Christie, so perhaps a bit biased in her favour, but I enjoyed the piece on Jack the Ripper and how those crimes affected media reporting.

I thought the Halle Rubenhold section was kept succinct and balanced and did high-light the need to apply critical thinking to how some of the women were described at the time - though as I read the evidence, it does support that some of the victims were selling sex on the night they were murdered.

I did not learn anything new but my non-ripper interested partner did.

[Iconoclast]

If you know jack **** about the Whitechapel murders, you will undoubtedly be entertained by Worsley's utterly facile and ultimately pointless (it's so unhelpful it would be a compliment to even call it 'derivative') wander around the case. For those of us who many, many times over many, many years have covered the points she 'covered', the programme was quite devoid of insight or usefulness. For example, she dramatically states that the September 25 'Dear Boss' letter was the first time the name entered the story ("The first time in history those words appear") without at least doffing her cap to the two rhymes which contained the name and the much-disputed September 17 'Dear Boss' letter which was signed 'Jack the Ripper'.

Her analysis includes an unforgivable sin, however, and one which everyone who wants to be on the 'right' side of history seems unable to extricate themselves from: she claims that the September 25 'Dear Boss' letter is a hoax, but (as usual when this thoroughly 'on-trend' claim is made) she provides nothing more in support of it than her opinion (as if our opinions can ever be vehicles for truth). She meets with Dr. Martin Glynn, a criminologist from the University of Birmingham, and she spoon-feeds him the direction she wants his answers to go down - which he duly swallows - and she seeks from him something that sounds like a claim that the letter was a hoax (in truth, he never actually states it as a claim - we must infer it from his tangential responses). Then - suddenly shifted to some random street corner - she comes out with the following misdirection for her viewers who may be easily misled:

"Whoever wrote it came up with this really potent brand of 'the Ripper'. It's impossible now for us to even think of a serial killer without thinking about 'Jack'. And all that from a letter that was written by someone who - I believe - had nothing to do with the actual deaths of Polly and Annie. Today, most people agree the Jack the Ripper letter is a hoax sent by a Central News Agency journalist named by a former Scotland Yard detective as Tom Bulling. But every time a serial killer is on the loose, the name 'Jack the Ripper' still gets trotted-out".

It is such an irony that she cites 'Jack the Ripper being regularly trotted-out as being a 'trope' when she herself has just put her name to one of the case's worst popular lies for - as those of us who refer only to the evidence to form what we believe all know - there is not a single scrap of hard evidence to back up such a prejudicial position.

So, in conclusion, Worsley's effort is a sort of well-produced programming filler (goodness knows how much of my licence fee was wasted on this melodramatic piece of Sunday morning ironing in front of the weekend cookery shows) and adds nothing whatsoever to our understanding of the case, whilst criminally force-feeding the ill-informed with the usual diet of tasteless social media titbits on Jack.

Oh and Rubenhold's excellent work on the five canonicals was obviously ruined by her obsession with grabbing the attention of potential purchasers with her 'But They Weren't Prostitutes' meme, so it was sad to see her double-down on it in Worsley's empty vessel show. Whether they were 'prostitutes' is as moot as claiming that Mike Barrett was a 'professional journalist'. The fact that they may have had to resort to this degradation on a few or possibly even frequent occasions is suggested by the nature of their deaths but is really not the issue at hand which - if anyone has forgotten - is uncovering who the hell Jack the Ripper actually was.

Ike

[Herlock Sholmes]

Both Hallie Rubenhold and Julia Laite are involved. I don’t see Worsley taking too controversial of a stance as she has to maintain her brand and reputation. I think she has a lot of control over where these programs go with these subjects and this is something she wants to explore.

I’m really interested to see how this plays out for Rubenhold, her claims, and her overall brand, though.

The next parts are based on my own observations and speculation, so this is all allegedly in my opinion.

Rubenhold seems to have progressively been distancing herself from the toxicity of what happened with The Five after what occurred at Capital Crime last May. There was also an incident on social media back in September where she tried to stir up some drama at the expense of Tik-Tokker Jools Lebron and the “very demure” meme. That ended up backfiring and showed that a lot of younger people in her own field don’t take her seriously, almost like they think she’s a joke. She’s also trying to establish herself as a serious crime historian. So while the Worsley documentary appearance is a good opportunity for her to present herself as such, it also puts her on a world stage and exposes her and her claims to a wider audience. It’s almost like she’s trying to rebrand herself as a serious crime historian and Ripper victim expert based more on the work and not on the drama, but all of that stuff is still easily found online.

So I’m curious to see how this all plays out for Rubenhold just given the fact that this exposes her to a wider audience, many of whom aren’t as into social media or may be offline altogether. I know she had support from a lot of academia when The Five was released and everything unfolded with that. But I think there’s just as many academics who don’t know about it or simply didn’t pay attention to the controversy. Judith Walkowitz, for example, who wrote City of Dreadful Delight, is employed at Johns Hopkins and is still producing work. I haven’t been able to find anything to confirm that she supports Rubenhold’s work on the C5 or not. My guess is that this may start up the conversation again, just in different circles, and it may yield some really interesting stuff. I think we may hear from Walkowitz about this.

And IMO, given how Rubenhold seems to be trying to leave the drama surrounding The Five behind her and bring it up as, “Oh, this is a thing I produced work on.” I think there is some peer review in the works and she knows about it. So again, I’m interested to see how this all plays out this year.

Hi Linotte,

Do you know anything about her supposed book on Florence Nightingale which never appeared? It’s still listed on Amazon.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/FLORENCE-NIGHTINGALE-LUCY-WORSLEY/dp/1474623719

It should have come out last year I believe. She’s a busy woman of course but cynical me can’t help wondering if she’s abandoned it because Florence is viewed by some in a ‘toxic’ light especially when compared to the ludicrously ‘saintly’ Mary Seacole. There does appear to have been, over the last few years, an agenda to promote Seacole at the expense of Florence by making extraordinary false claims about Seacole’s alleged ‘achievements.’ So many women of colour deserve more celebration but it seems to be the case that Seacole is the chosen one, possibly because she can be used to knock Nightingale. Another celebrated figure from our history demonised unfairly.

[Linotte]

Hi Linotte,

Do you know anything about her supposed book on Florence Nightingale which never appeared? It’s still listed on Amazon.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/FLORENCE-NIGHTINGALE-LUCY-WORSLEY/dp/1474623719

It should have come out last year I believe. She’s a busy woman of course but cynical me can’t help wondering if she’s abandoned it because Florence is viewed by some in a ‘toxic’ light especially when compared to the ludicrously ‘saintly’ Mary Seacole. There does appear to have been, over the last few years, an agenda to promote Seacole at the expense of Florence by making extraordinary false claims about Seacole’s alleged ‘achievements.’ So many women of colour deserve more celebration but it seems to be the case that Seacole is the chosen one, possibly because she can be used to knock Nightingale. Another celebrated figure from our history demonised unfairly.

No, I don’t. I’m sorry. I wish I did.

The British Library digital archives collection website was hacked and everything wiped either in late 2023 or 2024. I think they’re in the process of rebuilding it, but in the meantime, if someone wants to access the collection, it looks like they physically have to go to the library.

Helen Rappaport wrote the most recent Mary Seacole biography, I think. I can’t recall if she’s the main person pushing Seacole over Nightingale or if she just jumped on the bandwagon. My interactions with her have been cordial; I’ve seen her get upset about reviews in the oversharing online sense. I’ve never seen her outright attack people, though she is friendly with Rubenhold, who gave her a kind of pep talk in reply to the overshare post. All of that should really have occurred in a private group chat, IMO.

There’s tea about Rappaport and the Romanov hobby historian/fandom community. Apparently Rappaport got big mad after the fandom called her out on some erroneous claims in her OTMA bio. There was a bit of nastiness there. But Helen Azar, the historian who has compiled, annotated, and released the grand duchesses’ diaries came out on the side of the fandom. So it fizzled out.

[Linotte]

[QUOTE=Iconoclast;n844741]If you know jack **** about the Whitechapel murders, you will undoubtedly be entertained by Worsley's utterly facile and ultimately pointless (it's so unhelpful it would be a compliment to even call it 'derivative') wander around the case. For those of us who many, many times over many, many years have covered the points she 'covered', the programme was quite devoid of insight or usefulness. For example, she dramatically states that the September 25 'Dear Boss' letter was the first time the name entered the story ("The first time in history those words appear") without at least doffing her cap to the two rhymes which contained the name and the much-disputed September 17 'Dear Boss' letter which was signed 'Jack the Ripper'.

Her analysis includes an unforgivable sin, however, and one which everyone who wants to be on the 'right' side of history seems unable to extricate themselves from: she claims that the September 25 'Dear Boss' letter is a hoax, but (as usual when this thoroughly 'on-trend' claim is made) she provides nothing more in support of it than her opinion (as if our opinions can ever be vehicles for truth). She meets with Dr. Martin Glynn, a criminologist from the University of Birmingham, and she spoon-feeds him the direction she wants his answers to go down - which he duly swallows - and she seeks from him something that sounds like a claim that the letter was a hoax (in truth, he never actually states it as a claim - we must infer it from his tangential responses). Then - suddenly shifted to some random street corner - she comes out with the following misdirection for her viewers who may be easily misled:

"Whoever wrote it came up with this really potent brand of 'the Ripper'. It's impossible now for us to even think of a serial killer without thinking about 'Jack'. And all that from a letter that was written by someone who - I believe - had nothing to do with the actual deaths of Polly and Annie. Today, most people agree the Jack the Ripper letter is a hoax sent by a Central News Agency journalist named by a former Scotland Yard detective as Tom Bulling. But every time a serial killer is on the loose, the name 'Jack the Ripper' still gets trotted-out".

It is such an irony that she cites 'Jack the Ripper being regularly trotted-out as being a 'trope' when she herself has just put her name to one of the case's worst popular lies for - as those of us who refer only to the evidence to form what we believe all know - there is not a single scrap of hard evidence to back up such a prejudicial position.

So, in conclusion, Worsley's effort is a sort of well-produced programming filler (goodness knows how much of my licence fee was wasted on this melodramatic piece of Sunday morning ironing in front of the weekend cookery shows) and adds nothing whatsoever to our understanding of the case, whilst criminally force-feeding the ill-informed with the usual diet of tasteless social media titbits on Jack.

Oh and Rubenhold's excellent work on the five canonicals was obviously ruined by her obsession with grabbing the attention of potential purchasers with her 'But They Weren't Prostitutes' meme, so it was sad to see her double-down on it in Worsley's empty vessel show. Whether they were 'prostitutes' is as moot as claiming that Mike Barrett was a 'professional journalist'. The fact that they may have had to resort to this degradation on a few or possibly even frequent occasions is suggested by the nature of their deaths but is really not the issue at hand which - if anyone has forgotten - is uncovering who the hell Jack the Ripper actually was.

*******

@Iconoclast

The whole vibe of the documentary was…off. I don’t know quite how to express it, but I’ll try.

I think Worsley is trying to cash in on the Ripper case like and use it as part of her pivot into true crime historian/guru. But she’s trying to be ostensibly “good” about it. It struck a balance between exploring how the media covered the case, the victims, and the impacts on the area. It was almost like she HAD to have Rubenhold and Laite on when discussing the victims in particular because it would be “bad” not to.

IMO, the expert segment with Rubenhold and Laite was much lower stakes than the others. Worsley didn’t ask Rubenhold and Laite the probing questions she did the other experts. The middle-of-the-road conclusion of “no evidence of prostitution” was an interesting way to go. On the surface, it appears that Worsley has agreed with Rubenhold’s findings, which gives her credibility, esp if there’s unfavorable peer review coming. But at the same time, if Rubenhold’s claims are debunked and she’s exposed as a fraud, Worsley can very easily walk this support back.

There’s just something really performative and transactional about this whole thing. A lot of people pleasing, not being problematic, and trying to help out a friend who might going through it on Worsley’s end. But there’s still enough room to cover herself and maintain her reputation if/when Rubenhold’s claims are discredited. And as I indicated upthread, I think Rubenhold is quite aware of some kind of academic peer review or paper deconstructing her claims in progress, so she’s likely preparing for what comes. But in all honesty, this is business. This is about money and maintaining a certain brand and reputation. And if it serves Worsley best to distance herself and be all Mariah Carey, “I don’t know her” when it comes to Rubenhold, then that’s what will happen.

[Herlock Sholmes]

No, I don’t. I’m sorry. I wish I did.

The British Library digital archives collection website was hacked and everything wiped either in late 2023 or 2024. I think they’re in the process of rebuilding it, but in the meantime, if someone wants to access the collection, it looks like they physically have to go to the library.

Helen Rappaport wrote the most recent Mary Seacole biography, I think. I can’t recall if she’s the main person pushing Seacole over Nightingale or if she just jumped on the bandwagon. My interactions with her have been cordial; I’ve seen her get upset about reviews in the oversharing online sense. I’ve never seen her outright attack people, though she is friendly with Rubenhold, who gave her a kind of pep talk in reply to the overshare post. All of that should really have occurred in a private group chat, IMO.

There’s tea about Rappaport and the Romanov hobby historian/fandom community. Apparently Rappaport got big mad after the fandom called her out on some erroneous claims in her OTMA bio. There was a bit of nastiness there. But Helen Azar, the historian who has compiled, annotated, and released the grand duchesses’ diaries came out on the side of the fandom. So it fizzled out.

Thanks Linotte.

A couple of years ago I read Mary Seacole: The Making of the Myth by Lynn McDonald after reading online that some where daring to challenge what has become the established narrative. An excellent book imo.

[Linotte]

Thanks Linotte.

A couple of years ago I read Mary Seacole: The Making of the Myth by Lynn McDonald after reading online that some were daring to challenge what has become the established narrative. An excellent book imo.

When it comes to women’s history, I’m not sure why some people want to diminish one person’s story in favor of elevating another’s. It screams misogyny to continually pit women against each other like that. Like, maybe people who do things like that need to unpack their emotional baggage to figure out WHY. Sometimes things just are and there are no heroes.

[Herlock Sholmes]

When it comes to women’s history, I’m not sure why some people want to diminish one person’s story in favor of elevating another’s. It screams misogyny to continually pit women against each other like that. Like, maybe people who do things like that need to unpack their emotional baggage to figure out WHY. Sometimes things just are and there are no heroes.

Agreed. A search for the truth, or as near as we can get to it. No agendas.