the victims werent prostitutes

[jmenges]

After the publishing of the article yesterday she said publicly "Quite a lot of what I actually said here has been completely twisted." And "I think you need to read my book before coming to conclusions about what I'm saying - and not rely on what is paraphrased third hand in a newspaper."

JM

[harry]

It will be interesting to read Rubenhold's definition of prostitution and prostitutes.Despite the years I've spent perusing these boards,the times spent in countries where prostitution was rampant,in one case where favours could be bought for a few cigarrettes,I have no real grasp of how it might have affected the ripper crimes.I'll be honest,to me the women were just victims,I care nothing of what they were.Never have,and do not think it matters.In my case,and I expect quite a few others ,Rubenhold just could be correct.

[Varqm]

People uncomfortable with prostitution are making it fancy, ok ,when in the act of prostituting they were prostitutes but when not they weren't.So when Harry was in his uniform he was a cop,when at home he was Harry,the lawn mower operator,sweeper,dish washer,etc..Ok.

----

[Ginger]

To society at large who are unfamiliar with the victims of crime.
Family members, friends, and even descendants of murder victims might beg to differ.

Perhaps auhors should be allowed an attempt at redressing the balance?

JM

Propinquity does tend to skew one's perspective, yes. My mother's cracked concrete walkway is a much more real and concerning problem to me than an African village destroyed in a landslide. For the sidewalk, I'll shell out the time and money necessary, and count it very well-spent if I can fix it in such a way that it won't become a problem again. It matters to me. For the village, if someone collecting money accosts me, I'll pretend concern, and put a five in the can, and spend the rest of the day trying not to feel resentment that I've been coerced into helping what is undoubtedly a good cause, not because I care on any personal level about the African village, but rather because I live in a society which lays great stress upon the simulation of caring.

There's a deeper problem for your hypothetical author, though, in that murder victims are generally pretty normal people, at least psychologically. A serial killer most assuredly is not. The interest in a modern-day victim, one who comes from the same society as ourselves, when it *can* be sustained, generally seems to centre on how the killer used a person's normal desires and expectations against them. With an unknown killer (such as the Ripper), the victims (or perhaps more precisely, how the victims differ from those around them) become interesting for what we believe they can tell us about the identity of the killer. Why did this person end up dead, and not that one? Some physical feature? Some behaviour? Random bad luck?

If it really were the case that the lives and motivations of ordinary people are, in and of themselves, as interesting as the lives and motivations of murderers, then I think we'd see popular biographies not even of murder victims, but of regular people. The only example that I can think of is Terkel's "Working", and that, I think, has more to do with Terkel's sensibilities and voice than with any inherent fascination in the lives being revealed. You could learn what Terkel tells to you at first-hand, all by yourself, by spending half an hour chatting up the bag-boy at the grocery store. Few people do. The interest in murder victims seems mainly to me to arise from their interaction with the murderer.

There is as well an additional dimension to old crimes, solved or unsolved, to social history in general, in that the lives being discussed take place in a world that we've heard about, a world that has left its imprint upon our own, but a world in which they do things differently, for reasons that may not be obvious, and which we can never visit except in imagination. The sheer strangeness of the past can lend fascination to lives which seemed utterly commonplace and unremarkable to the inhabitants of the past. I'll pretty much guarantee that at some point in the future, the way that we of the 21st century used text-based bulletin boards to communicate is going to seem fascinating and romantic to someone, a lost technology that conjures up a time before modern advantages, with different ways of doing things, much as we today regard the telegraph.

I am, however, most assuredly all for authors having a go!

[PaulB]

To society at large who are unfamiliar with the victims of crime.
Family members, friends, and even descendants of murder victims might beg to differ.

Perhaps auhors should be allowed an attempt at redressing the balance?

JM

The point is not that victims are unimportant or uninteresting or without value in their own right, but that they are like you, me, and almost everyone else. We get up in the morning, travel to work, do our jobs, travel home, watch television, and go to bed. We don't play at Wimbledon or drive in an F1 or collect an Oscar or murder anyone. It may not be nice or right, but it's the person who steps outside the norm that attracts our attention (although not always!)

The other point is that in a murder investigation - a whodunnit, if you like - the murder victim isof interest for the clues they provide to the perpetrator. That's the case in real life as well as in books. That's not dehumanising the victim - or if it is, it's an inevitable and unavoidable consequence of the process of investigation.

I don't know, but has anybody written a biography of Andrew Borden? Or the people killed by Bonnie and Clyde? Perhaps people should write books about the victims - there is a book slated for publication about the Yorkshire Ripper's victims as well as Rubenhold's book - but my gut feeling is that they wouldn't sell. I'd like to think I'm wrong. The irony is that if Rubenhold had researched and written about five ordinary Victorian women, my feeling is that she'd sell very few copies. In fact, it would be interesting to know how well such a book would sell if all mention of Jack the Ripper was taken from the title, cover, spine and jacket blurb. It's perhaps sad, but it's Jack the Ripper that sells.

[MrBarnett]

To society at large who are unfamiliar with the victims of crime.
Family members, friends, and even descendants of murder victims might beg to differ.

Perhaps auhors should be allowed an attempt at redressing the balance?

JM

JM,

Sorry, but your second comment gives support to Rubenhold's claim that her book is one that Ripperologists do not want to see published (her words, talking about you, me and everyone else on here and JTRForums). No one, as far as I am aware, has said that HR or anyone else shouldn't write a book about C5.

It's also not the case that we are critiquing a book we haven't read. What is chiefly being objected to is that in her desperation to give her book a unique twist she has dismissed the decades of research done into the lives of the victims by many of us who do not have a mainstream publishing deal and an option on a tv mini-series.

One well respected Ripperologist pointed out to her that pretty much everything that is known about the victims' lives was in fact discovered by Ripperologists. She then twisted that and tweeted that Ripperologists are claiming that they have found everything there is to know about the victims. And she complains about journalists twisting her words??

Again in her own words (from her blog):

For nearly 130 years, we’ve been told that the five canonical victims of Jack the Ripper: Polly Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Kate Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly were ‘just prostitutes’ and remarkably, most of us have swallowed this whole. It’s as if somehow tarring them with the brush of ‘prostitute’ makes their murders understandable and their lives worthless of investigation or attention.

Is that what you've been doing since you've been interested in the subject? Or anyone else who posts on the boards? I must have missed that and dreamt the decades-long search for material on the victims. Must make a note of that: 'No Ripperologist has ever made any attempt to discover Mary Kelly's background. After all, she was 'just a prostitute'.'

I'm more than happy to wait until I get the book I ordered as soon as I heard it was due to be published before I comment on its contents. (Of course I would rather it hadn't been published at all because I'm a knuckle-dragging mysoginistic Ripperologist who fears it may distract our attention away from my hero Jack the Ripper.) But in the meantime I feel justified in challenging the gross distortion of Ripperological research that she is peddling to give her book some cred in certain circles.

I do hope that when you interview Rubenhold you find time to ask her why she felt it neccessary to start her ad campaign by slagging off Ripperologists.

Incidentally, for someone who claims we have no interest in the victims, she seemed keen to join the boards and engage with members about them.

Angry of Romford

[PaulB]

After the publishing of the article yesterday she said publicly "Quite a lot of what I actually said here has been completely twisted." And "I think you need to read my book before coming to conclusions about what I'm saying - and not rely on what is paraphrased third hand in a newspaper."
JM

Whilst people do get misquoted and misrepresented in the newspapers - and get misquoted and misrepresented by Hallie Rubenhold, so I'm a little short on sympathy here - nobody can be sure that Rubenhold has been misquoted in this case. For all we know, the newspapers have accurately reported what she said. And a lot of people won't see her claim that what she said has been twisted, so they won't even know about it. As was once made very plain to me, once you are quoted in the media, your words are there, trapped like a fly in amber. It's the danger of making statements so far in advance of the book being published. So she will be judged by people all around the world on what she has said. It's naive to think otherwise. But thousands of people will have now read the newspaper articles, will go away with the idea in their heads that the Ripper's victims weren't prostitutes and that Victorian policemen and later researchers are sexist, and they're not going to be sufficiently interested to read Rubenhold's book next March, and they won't even remember Rubenhold's name. They'll just know that some Dr said the victims weren't prostitutes - which will be fine if Rubenhold is correct, but if she's not then we'll have yet another falsehood joining the diary and the DNAd shawl.

[Robert]

I wonder if she can give examples, from the last 130 years, of people saying that the victims were 'just prostitutes'?

[MrBarnett]

I wonder if she can give examples, from the last 130 years, of people saying that the victims were 'just prostitutes'?

The one and only time I can recall the phrase being used was by the author of The Harlot's Handbook - you know, the one with a naked prostitute* on the cover.

I haven't read the HH (no point, it's out of date) but I'm sure it's full of biographical detail about the women, who I assume we're not 'just harlots' but also daughters, wives, mothers...

*The Covent Garden Ladies: Pimp General Jack the Extraordinary Story of Harris's List

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Covent-Garden-Ladies-General-Extraordinary/dp/0752437399/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1537262375&sr=8-3&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=rubenhold&dpPl=1&dpID=512MC1C4F2L&ref=plSrch

[MrBarnett]

I wonder if she can give examples, from the last 130 years, of people saying that the victims were 'just prostitutes'?

HR's accomplice, the sistersoftheabyss lady, is claiming that the 5 have traditionally been described as 'ugly'.

[Observer]

I’ve said that I’ll be the first to admit it if the book is a good one.

Why jump the gun then and say it's lining up to be another waste of ink?

[Robert]

Never mind ugly, were they SCANDALOUS?

[harry]

Varqm,
Though I wore uniforms of different kinds,none of them were a cops uniform.
Not that I blame you for being incorrect,but in the same way as you are mistaken,might not Rubenhold be pointing out a similar mistaken belief about the victims?

[Sam Flynn]

HR's accomplice, the sistersoftheabyss lady, is claiming that the 5 have traditionally been described as 'ugly'.

News to me.

[richardnunweek]

Hi.
I hope this book does reveal at least some unknown information about the victims,
I personally believe, that none of the C5 were prostitutes , they were like so many ''Unfortunates'' in the very sense of the word..They had to survive.
I remember Fiona [ Great granddaughter of Kelly's Landlord] being discussed rather unkindly when she claimed new information, I hope we can at least respect the author of this book, and not prejudge..although the term ''Dangling a carrot'' will always result in a disbelieving view from prospective buyers,
Regards Richard.