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

by Hallie Rubenhold

The cards were stacked against Polly, Annie, Elizabeth, Kate and Mary Jane from the day of their births. They began their lives in deficit. Not only were most of them born into working-class families, but they were born female.

To some merchandisers, they are no longer human beings, but cartoon figures whose bloody images can be printed onto T-shirts, whose deaths can be laughed about on postcards and whose entrails decorate stickers.

When a woman steps out of line and contravenes the feminine norm, whether on social media or on the Victorian street, there is a tacit understanding that someone must put her back in her place.

We have grown so comfortable with the notion of ‘Jack the Ripper’, the unfathomable, invincible male killer, that we have failed to recognize that he continues to walk among us.

By embracing him, we embrace the set of values that surrounded him in 1888 which teaches women that they are of a lesser value and can expect to be dishonoured and abused.

In order to keep him alive, we have had to forget his victims. We have become complicit in their diminishment.

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.

1 red mitten