The Five

[Sunny Delight]

The word 'prostitute' has become a very loaded term and we see this with other serial murders like the Yorkshire Ripper, where the Police of the day are painted as hopeless misogynists.

What is really, really important is that we remember the lives and times of these women with sensitivity- the difficulties of everyday life- days before a welfare state, the daily violence that can occur in a slum environment, the types of addictions and mental issues that can arise for all sorts of reasons, the lack of rights(woman couldn't vote for another 30 years and even then it was restricted), there were no woman Police officers for another 30 or so years as well(and when they did join they were segregated from the men). So the times were very, very difficult for women. No rights. No real chances of employment except as domestic servants for example particularly in the slum.

What these women who died all had in common was that they only had one thing left to sell. They had tried and failed at everything else. Almost all had at one time been in the Workhouse. It was sell themselves or die. There was no DWP to go to or Housing Association. There was no PIP or DLA. And so these women took the decision to survive by any means they could. Was it prostitution? I suppose it was in the technical sense but it was also casual prostitution as a last resort when all else had failed. I can't even imagine the mental anguish these women had to go through to arrive at such a decision and have to act upon it or essentially die. It just doesn't bear thinking about.

We never met the victims so it is impossible for us to form a judgement on what they were like as people. Maybe we wouldnt have liked them. Maybe we would have liked some, not others. Maybe we would have liked them all. It really doesn't matter. We can only tell their stories.

[Linotte]

I know he's not popular here, but HoL has a 'film' on this, an hour old,

The Five by Hallie Rubenhold - Jack the Ripper facts or fiction? - YouTube

I watched/listened to it this morning. It’s not peer review. It’s a takedown. And I think, much like Rubenhold, Stow allows no room for nuance. I’m right, she’s wrong, pick a team. And IMO, he didn’t cite certain concepts and ideas when he regurgitated points other people have made about Rubenhold’s work. Not that those people would want their work identified with his atrocious brand, but you should still cite stuff so people can follow your source trail and see where you’re coming from.

They’re both ridiculous people. But of the two, I think Stow is worse. His overall vibe makes me sick to my stomach.

[Linotte]

I do know that many Ripperologists tend to paint all the women with a single street prostitute brush. Simply presuming they were soliciting at time when there is no evidence they were, that is a kind of bias towards these women. There is in fact evidence that only 2 of the alleged Ripper victims on the Canonical list were actively soliciting when they met their killer, and both personally stated that to friends the respective nights that they were killed.

What if being a working street prostitute was not a deciding factor in whether he would kill a certain victim? What if someone was trawling for those kinds of victims, and Jack wasnt? 3 of Five victim investigations did not reveal any evidence that the women were actively soliciting on their murder nights. Liz, Kate and Mary.

So it appears that the majority of murders that are attributed to Jack the Ripper did not reveal active solicitation as one of his requirements.

This along with many other facets of all the murders to me suggest that what hampers this area of study more than any other single issue is the presumption that the Canonical Group is a logically constructed series based on evident similarities, including Victimology. When it actually isnt that at all.

Its a grouping that was made based on the lack of real information about the killer..or killers.....the fact the kill zone is very small comparatively with other serial crimes, and that the murders all occurred...and remain unsolved.....within a 2 1/2 month period.

The Canonical Group premise may well be the yoke around the neck of Truth.

There’s testimony from the different inquests that indicates most of the victims relied on prostitution or transactional sex when they had to make ends meet. It was basically a side hustle for them, as it was for many poor and working class women. Walkowitz’s work gets into this, as does the work of Faure and Crooks. Even Mikki Kendall’s book Hood Feminism gets into this. Walkowitz has also just helped edit a journal that touches on the link between poverty and sex work.

And this is anecdotal, but the company I work for manages transitional housing for young adults who have aged out of the foster system or are trying to get their lives back together after being unhoused. You’d be shocked at how many had had to rely on sex work at some point prior to coming to get help.