The Five

[Linotte]

Well, looks like the video was brought to her attention. I think it goes without saying that most Ripperologists are more concerned about Rubenhold’s bad author behavior than the content of the book itself. With that being said, Stow picked this fight and her beef should be with him and not the Ripperology community. I wash my hands of it, because IMO, they’re both trash. But he’s a thousand times worse than she is.

[Geddy2112]

A lot of suspect people tend to hyperfixate on certain details and try to make them more significant than they actually are. And that can be to the detriment of people working to get a good historical understanding of the case.

That is my whole issue with Team Lechmere. They generally are the only lot to have produced a suspect in the modern YouTube age. They are keeping current by spouting loads of tenuous shite about the case. They will do anything to keep Lechmere on trend but in reality they have done Ripper Research much more harm than good.
No matter how many times people over the last decade or so have 'proved' they are incorrect they will just get the 'la la la ears' out and ignore them. Arrogant egotistical tosspots they are. Grrrr... haha.

[Linotte]

Tracey's book is a good read, even if you do not believe her 'suspect.' She certainly did not deserve the treatment she got in the HoL video for sure or the subsequent Facebook lashing either.

I thought Mr Butler's past was well documented and publicised. I've seen people bring it up on a Facebook group a few times and he does not seem to bothered. He seems very blasé about it all. As if he does not care or it can't do him any harm. The fact a top Team Lechmere supporter uses a fake name is delicious irony for sure.

I left said group as it appears himself and Holmgren are rather protected there for some reason and to be honest arguing with Holmgren is akin to banging your head against a wall, I've never has the misfortune of coming across a more arrogant egotistical and downright nasty man in my life. Any way life goes on... thanks for your opinions. Have a great weekend.

Yeah. I had an exchange with him about Polly’s TOD and when she was found and I found him to be impossible to find common ground with. I just said, “You seem to be really enthusiastic about this and I love that for you.” And I was done after that.

A lot of suspect people tend to hyperfixate on certain details and try to make them more significant than they actually are. And that can be to the detriment of people working to get a good historical understanding of the case.

[Geddy2112]

HOL seems to hold a lot of contempt for women in general. I think he’s trying to start up some chaos to bring attention to his own work. Go for it, my guy. The more attention you bring to yourself, the more likely someone is going to get nosy and find all of your baggage and make it public and destroy you. Rubenhold might not do it herself, but some of her fans are very ride-or-die like Colleen Hoover or Sarah Jane Maas’s are, to the point it’s disturbing. Rubenhold won’t need to do anything. One of her fans will likely take the initiative to do it for her, and I’m sure she knows that.

Tracey's book is a good read, even if you do not believe her 'suspect.' She certainly did not deserve the treatment she got in the HoL video for sure or the subsequent Facebook lashing either.

I thought Mr Butler's past was well documented and publicised. I've seen people bring it up on a Facebook group a few times and he does not seem to bothered. He seems very blasé about it all. As if he does not care or it can't do him any harm. The fact a top Team Lechmere supporter uses a fake name is delicious irony for sure.

I left said group as it appears himself and Holmgren are rather protected there for some reason and to be honest arguing with Holmgren is akin to banging your head against a wall, I've never has the misfortune of coming across a more arrogant egotistical and downright nasty man in my life. Any way life goes on... thanks for your opinions. Have a great weekend.

[Linotte]

He's not in it for Ripperology or the truth he is in it for YouTube clicks and £££. The House of Tenuous Links is running out of ideas, we have had bagels, tigers, Nichola Bulley and the likes trying to push his ridiculous 'Lechmere Dunnit' theory. All that is left now is for him to monotone his way around the streets of Whitechapel and pull other people's work apart in a very beige manner. He tried and failed to destroy Tracy L'anson's book and now it's HayyyyyyyLeeeeeeee's turn. Pathetic sad, desperate individual.

I haven’t read any of Tracy L’anson’s work so I can’t comment on it. She seems to do her own thing and not bother anyone, which is great, in all honesty.

I’m no Rubenhold fan. Her work on the women is mostly based on old-school white feminism and being blatantly strategic with source material. It’s nothing new; she’s been called out for doing it much more subtly in her 18th century work and her “enemies” there seem to be Austenites and Regency England enthusiasts, which includes the romance authors. Her wild behavior toward anyone who questions her work on the Ripper victims is beyond the pale. But there’s still good stuff in her work and it did a lot of good things, so that needs to be acknowledged. I’m pretty sure she’s backed off due to her stakeholders getting after her. I think she’s learned the hard way that The Five isn’t going to pay her bills forever. And I think she knows that peer review is imminent and aspects of her work and her behavior associated with it will be questioned, especially now that she’s pivoted to crime historian. She’s made a lot of bad decisions and I hope her chickens come home to roost. But for goodness sake, can we please be respectful enough to at least pronounce her name correctly?

HOL seems to hold a lot of contempt for women in general. I think he’s trying to start up some chaos to bring attention to his own work. Go for it, my guy. The more attention you bring to yourself, the more likely someone is going to get nosy and find all of your baggage and make it public and destroy you. Rubenhold might not do it herself, but some of her fans are very ride-or-die like Colleen Hoover or Sarah Jane Maas’s are, to the point it’s disturbing. Rubenhold won’t need to do anything. One of her fans will likely take the initiative to do it for her, and I’m sure she knows that.

[Geddy2112]

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.

He's not in it for Ripperology or the truth he is in it for YouTube clicks and £££. The House of Tenuous Links is running out of ideas, we have had bagels, tigers, Nichola Bulley and the likes trying to push his ridiculous 'Lechmere Dunnit' theory. All that is left now is for him to monotone his way around the streets of Whitechapel and pull other people's work apart in a very beige manner. He tried and failed to destroy Tracy L'anson's book and now it's HayyyyyyyLeeeeeeee's turn. Pathetic sad, desperate individual.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[jmenges]

Those of us who first brought many of these issues up immediately after the publication of The Five were ridiculed, lied about, attacked and threatened with legal action on social media and in the press. Hopefully we smoothed all that over for Ed to be in a safer space 5 years later. If so, you’re welcome.

JM

[Tani]

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

[Monty]

Oh, thanks Monty!

This doesn't ring any bells with me (not that that's unusual!).

Is that just supposition because a thimble was found amongst her belongings, or were there reports of her actually engaging in thimble tapping?

More the fact a thimble was found by Dr Brown laying off a finger of her right hand.

this would indicate to me that either she was just simply wearing a thimble (unusual and impractical to me), had been darning (unlikely) or….

[jmenges]

Thanks Debs,
Yes, so as to not have to publicly admit Eddowes engaged in prostitution Kelly might have completely invented the whole ‘going over to Bermondsey’ tale.

JM

[Debra A]

MORE ABOUT THE STREETS OF LONDON BY LIETENANT-COLONEL SIR HENRY SMITH, K.C.B., EX COMMISSIONER CITY OF LONDON POLICE
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine Vol 179 1906 pp 693

The Ashford hop-fields furnished the Whitechapel murderer with one of his victims. The night of Saturday, September 29, 1888, was a glorious one. It was light as day when shortly after midnight Catherine Eddowes left the police station in Bishopsgate, and not three-quarters of an hour afterwards was cut to pieces. This woman was the wife of a soldier, whom she left to live with another man. She drank heavily, and that, as I afterwards discovered, was not her only failing. She and her "husband" had made some money "hopping" and had got through it all in a week's time. On the afternoon of the 29th she pawned a pair of boots to get something for supper; but, instead of doing so, got drunk on the proceeds and was locked up, --a typical case altogether of everyday life in the "Far East" When sober enough to take care of herself she was released, the "reserve man" in charge of the cells advising her to go straight home and face the "hiding" which she said she was sure to get from her "old man." His advice she did not follow, for instead of walking away northwards in the direction of "Flower and Dean Street," one of the very worst streets in that notorious locality, he noticed that she turned left, and to the left again up Houndsditch, which would lead her inro Mitre Square, where she met her fate, presumably in the endeavour to replace by other means the money she had squandered. A ghastly sight she was by the light of the harvest moon as she lay in the corner of Mitre Square, and one not easily forgotten. Her "husband"-bad as he was, he was too good for her-I found fairly intelligent, and with a certain amount of confidence in and chivalrous feeling for the miserable being with whom he had lived. God knows how his confidence was abused! "She drank a bit, sir" he admitted, "but I a sure she would never do anything wrong." "I don't want, I assure you, " I said, "at such a time to hurt your feelings, but what was she doing about Aldgate and Mitre Square at that hour?""Well sir, you see," he replied, "this is how it was; she had a daughter, very comfortable, living in Bermondsey; and whenever we were hard up she would go across to her, and she never came back without something." This story I was disinclined to believe, seeing that he could not, or would not, tell me where the daughter lived; but after a great deal of trouble, having discovered the woman in question, I found she had not seen her mother for years. How the money was got when times were hard does not call for explanation from me. That explanation " the streets of London" will afford.

[jmenges]

John Kelly’s statements at the inquest are open to interpretation. He first denies that she’s at times forced to go out onto the streets but then later in his testimony he seems to contradict himself:
"When asked whether deceased had been in the habit of frequenting the streets, he answered sturdily, "No, sir, I never suffered her to do so."
[...]on Saturday he had parted with her on the understanding that she was going over to Bermondsey to try and find her sister to see if she could get a trifle "to prevent her going out on the street"
And later...
"I never knew her to go out for any immoral purpose - I never suffered her to do so. She was only slightly in the habit of drinking to excess. When I left her she had no money about her. She went over to see her daughter to get a trifle from her, in order that I might not see her walking the streets at night."- Daily News 5 October 1888

To me this can be read several ways.
One- that CE did have the habit of resorting to prostitution when she was very desperate for money, Kelly knew this but minimized it at the inquest, and so going to Bermondsey was a last ditch attempt to prevent her from having to solicit.
Two- Both CE and Kelly knew that they were living so close to the edge that she might have to resort to prostitution as the only way to survive, and they knew this from seeing other women in the same circumstances having to do it. But CE had never reached that point yet.
Three- Kelly knew that in her past CE had to sell sex to survive but as long as she was with him she hadn't done so, as far as he was aware, and Bermondsey was again, a last gasp plan to obtain some money so that walking the streets was avoided for one more night.

We know that its likely CE didn't go to Bermondsey to see her daughter at all. If she did, she wouldn't have located her and received any money since Annie had moved several times in the two years since she had last seen CE and purposefully didn't let CE know where she was living. We know that by 8:30 PM she was back in the East End and hopelessly drunk.

So, if their only option to keep CE from walking the streets that night was getting money in Bermondsey, and she either didn't go or in any event failed at this quest, where did that leave her option?

JM