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

by Hallie Rubenhold

However, the police were so committed to their theories about the killer’s choice of victims that they failed to conclude the obvious: that the Ripper targeted women while they slept.

Mary Higgs, who went undercover as a female tramp, was horrified to find that in her ragged dress she was continuously verbally assaulted by men. ‘I had never realised before that a lady’s dress, or even that of a respectable working-woman, was a protection’, she wrote. ‘The bold, free look of a man at a destitute woman must be felt to be realised.’

Ultimately, Annie, like so many addicts, chose a life without those she loved, rather than a life without the substance she craved.

Society was designed to ensure that a woman without a man was superfluous.

It is only by bringing these women back to life that we can silence the Ripper and what he represents. By permitting them to speak, by attempting to understand their experiences and see their humanity, we can restore to them the respect and compassion to which they are entitled. The victims of Jack the Ripper were never ‘just prostitutes’; they were daughters, wives, mothers, sisters and lovers. They were women. They were human beings, and surely that, in itself, is enough.