The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper

Author: Hallie Rubenhold
Genre: Nonfiction, History
Type: e-book
Source: NetGalley
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
First Published: April 9, 2019
Opening Lines: "There are two versions of the events of 1887. One is very well known, but the other is not."

Book Description from GoodReads: Five devastating human stories and a dark and moving portrait of Victorian London—the untold lives of the women killed by Jack the Ripper.

Polly, Annie, Elizabeth, Catherine and Mary-Jane are famous for the same thing, though they never met. They came from Fleet Street, Knightsbridge, Wolverhampton, Sweden, and Wales. They wrote ballads, ran coffee houses, lived on country estates, they breathed ink-dust from printing presses and escaped people-traffickers.

What they had in common was the year of their murders: 1888. The person responsible was never identified, but the character created by the press to fill that gap has become far more famous than any of these five women.

For more than a century, newspapers have been keen to tell us that "the Ripper" preyed on prostitutes. Not only is this untrue, as historian Hallie Rubenhold has discovered, it has prevented the real stories of these fascinating women from being told. Now, in this devastating narrative of five lives, Rubenhold finally sets the record straight, revealing a world not just of Dickens and Queen Victoria, but of poverty, homelessness and rampant misogyny. They died because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time—but their greatest misfortune was to be born a woman.

My Rating: 4.5 stars

My Review: From August 1888 to November 1888, five women were murdered in the Whitechapel area of London by a person (or persons?) known only as Jack the Ripper. There have been countless articles, books and movies of the infamous crimes, with most focusing on the violence and mystery surrounding Jack's identity.

The Five takes a different view with Rubenhold focusing on the five female victims who, for more than 100 years, were labelled as prostitutes. But through tremendously detailed research piecing together the lives of the five women - Polly, Annie, Elizabeth, Catherine and Mary-Jane, Rubenhold shows readers how and why these depictions of the victims are gravely false.

The book has five chapters, one for each victim, but doesn't focus on their brutal and well-publicized deaths. Instead, it focuses on their humble beginnings up until they were murdered because these women were much more than their grisly deaths and the misconstrued labels society gave them.

What struck me the most about this book was the author's vivid and unflinching look at the lives of the lower class in the 19 century - lives that were often brutal, uncertain and set within horrific living conditions. Rubenhold also focuses on the limitations imposed upon women of the time, especially those of the lower classes. With no rights and few options available, most women were at the mercy of the men in their lives and could look forward to working to support their family at a young age, getting married, have numerous children (of whom they'd lose a significant number to disease and malnutrition) and an early death. Life was hard in the late 19th century, but significantly harder for women.

With this unique focus, Rubenhold shines a light, not on the vicious crimes of a notorious mad man, but on the five female victims. And while, at times, the book was a little info-heavy, I applaud Rubenhold for humanizing the victims of these infamous murders that have captivated the world for over a century as well as shining a light on the hardships of women in the late 19th century.

Disclaimer: My sincere thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with a complimentary digital copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.