The Five Quotes

“When a woman steps out of line and contravenes the feminine norm, whether on social media on on the Victorian street, there is a tacit understanding that somone must put her back in her place. Labelling the victims as 'just prostitutes' permits writing about Polly, Annie, Elizabeth, Kate and Mary Jane even today to continue to disparage, sexualize and dehumanize them; to continue to reinforce values of madonna/whore.”
― Hallie Rubenhold, The Five: The Lives of Jack the Ripper's Women

“Just as it did in the nineteenth century, the notion that the victims were 'only prostitutes' seeks to perpetuate the belief that there are good women and bad women; madonnas and whores. It suggests that there is an acceptable standard of female behaviour and those that deviate from it are fit to be punished. Equally, it assists in reasserting the double standard , exonerating men from wrongs committed against such women. These attitudes may not feel as prevalent as they were in 1888, but they persist - not proffered in general conversation... but, rather integrated subtly into the fabric of our social norms.”
― Hallie Rubenhold, The Five: The Lives of Jack the Ripper's Women

“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.”
― Hallie Rubenhold, The Five: The Lives of Jack the Ripper's Women

“It is for them that I write this book. I do so in the hope that we may now hear their stories clearly and give back to them that which was so brutally taken away with their lives: their dignity.”
― Hallie Rubenhold, The Five: The Lives of Jack the Ripper's Women

“I write for those women who do not speak, for those who do not have a voice because they were so terrified, because we are taught to respect fear more than ourselves. We’ve been taught that silence would save us, but it won’t. —AUDRE LORDE”
― Hallie Rubenhold, The Five: The Lives of Jack the Ripper's Women

“At its very core, the story of Jack the Ripper is a narrative of a killer’s deep, abiding hatred of women, and our cultural obsession with the mythology only serves to normalize its particular brand of misogyny.”
― Hallie Rubenhold, The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper

“At its very core, the story of Jack the Ripper is a narrative of a killer’s deep, abiding hatred of women, and our culture’s obsession with the mythology serves only to normalize its particular brand of misogyny. 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. In his top hat and cape, wielding his blood-drenched knife, he can be spotted regularly in London on posters, in ads, on the sides of buses. Bartenders have named drinks after him, shops use his moniker on their signs, tourists from around the world make pilgrimages to Whitechapel to walk in his footsteps and visit a museum dedicated to his violence. The world has learned to dress up in his costume at Halloween, to imagine being him, to honor his genius, to laugh at a murderer of women. 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 dishonored and abused.”
― Hallie Rubenhold, The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper

“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.”
― Hallie Rubenhold, The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper

“The poor were judged to be lazy and immoral paupers who refused to do honest work and bred bastards and enormous families while “living off handouts.”
― Hallie Rubenhold, The Five: The Lives of Jack the Ripper's Women

“My intention in writing this book is not to hunt and name the killer. I wish instead to retrace the footsteps of five women, to consider their experiences within the context of their era, and to follow their paths through both the gloom and the light. They were worth more to us than the empty human shells we have taken them for: they were children who cried for their mothers; they were young women who fell in love; they endured childbirth and the deaths of parents; they laughed and celebrated Christmas. They argued with their siblings, they wept, they dreamed, they hurt, they enjoyed small triumphs. The courses their lives took mirrored that of so many other women of the Victorian age, and yet so singular in the way they ended. It is for them that I write this book. I do so in the hope that we may now hear their stories clearly and give back to them that which was so brutally taken away with their lives: their dignity.”
― Hallie Rubenhold, The Five: The Lives of Jack the Ripper's Women

“They are male, authoritarian, and middle class. They were formed at a time when women had no voice, and few rights, and the poor were considered lazy and degenerate: to have been both of these things was one of the worst possible combinations. For over 130 years we have embraced the dusty parcel we were handed. We have rarely ventured to peer inside it or attempted to remove the thick wrapping that has kept us from knowing these women or their true histories.”
― Hallie Rubenhold, The Five: The Lives of Jack the Ripper's Women

“At the time of the murders, the belief that “Jack the Ripper was a killer of prostitutes” helped reinforce this moral code. However, while it served an agenda in 1888, this often repeated line fails to serve any immediately obvious purpose today. Nevertheless, it is still the one “fact” about the murders upon which everyone can agree, and yet it does not bear scrutiny.”
― Hallie Rubenhold, The Five: The Lives of Jack the Ripper's Women

“In order to gawp at and examine this miracle of malevolence we have figuratively stepped over the bodies of those he murdered, and in some cases, stopped to kick them as we walked past. The larger his profile grows, the more those of his victims seem to fade.”
― Hallie Rubenhold, The Five: The Lives of Jack the Ripper's Women

“At its very core, the story of Jack the Ripper is a narrative of a killer's deep, abiding hatred of women, and our culture's obsession with the mythology serves only to normalize its particular brand of misogyny... In order to keep him alive, we have had to forget his victims. We have become complicit in their diminishment.”
― Hallie Rubenhold, The Five: The Lives of Jack the Ripper's Women

“Interestingly, a point that never emerged in the press but that Tim Donovan revealed to the police was that Annie had specifically "asked him to trust her" for that night's doss money. This "he declined to do." Had this incident become common knowledge, it's likely that Donovan would have faced an even worse public backlash for his role in Annie's demise. "You can find money for your beer, and you can't find money for your bed." the deputy keeper is said to have spoken in response to her request. Annie, not quite willing to admit defeat, or perhaps in a show of pride, responded with a sigh: "Keep my bed for me. I shan't be long." Ill and drunk, she went downstairs and "stood in the door for two or three minutes," considering her options. Like the impecunious lodger described by Goldsmith, she too would have been contemplating from whom among her "pals" it might have been "possible to borrow the halfpence necessary to complete {her} doss money." More likely, Annie was mentally preparing "to spend the night with only the sky for a canopy." She then set off down Brushfield Street, toward Christ Church, Spitalfields, where the homeless regularly bedded down. Her thoughts as she stepped out onto Dorest Street, as the light from Crossingham's dimmed at her back, can never be known. What route she wove through the black streets and to whom she spoke along the will never be confirmed. All that is certain is her final destination. Of the many tragedies that befell Annie Chapman in the final years of her life, perhaps one of the most poignant was that she needn't have been on the streets on that night, or on any other. Ill and feverish, she needn't have searched the squalid corners for a spot to sleep. Instead, she might have lain in a bed in her mother's house or in her sisters' care, on the other side of London. She might have been treated for tuberculosis; she might have been comforted by the embraces of her children or the loving assurances of her family. Annie needn't have suffered. At every turn there had been a hand reaching to pull her from the abyss, but the counter-tug of addiction was more forceful, and the grip of shame was just as strong. It was this that pulled her under, that had extinguished her hope and then her life many years earlier. What her murderer claimed on that night was simply all that remained of what drink had left behind.”
― Hallie Rubenhold, The Five: The Lives of Jack the Ripper's Women

“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.”
― Hallie Rubenhold, The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper

“Mary Jane eventually sent Joseph a very clear message that she valued her friendship with ‘gay women’ more than she did her relationship with him.”
― Hallie Rubenhold, The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper

“If the Whitechapel murders served to expose anything, it was the unspeakably horrendous conditions in which the poor of that district lived.”
― Hallie Rubenhold, The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper

“It did not matter where she fled—to Wolverhampton or Birmingham, to the household of a pugilist or a tinplate worker. She could expect that this routine would command her life until she married. Then it would be her own mother’s life; the pain of childbearing, the weariness of child rearing, worry, hunger and exhaustion, and eventually, sickness and death.”
― Hallie Rubenhold, The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper

“It was a cough hacked into the face of the establishment.”
― Hallie Rubenhold, The Five: The Lives of Jack the Ripper's Women

“Mary Jane may have been skilled at presenting a sweet façade, but her internal life was one of turmoil and distress.”
― Hallie Rubenhold, The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper

“certainly Elisabeth strove to be all of those women—everyone and no one. She was anonymous: a woman with a mutable story, a changeable history, someone who had recognized that the world didn’t care about her, and chose to use that as a weapon in order to survive.”
― Hallie Rubenhold, The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper

“If a husband, father, or partner left or died, a working-class woman with dependents would find it almost impossible to survive. The structure of society ensured that a woman without a man was superfluous.”
― Hallie Rubenhold, The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper

“All new inmates were stripped of their clothing and whatever personal belongings they possessed. They were then required to enter a communal bath and scrub themselves in water that had been used by every other person who had gained admission that day. Following this, much like prisoners, inmates were clothed in a functional workhouse uniform, which never truly belonged to them.”
― Hallie Rubenhold, The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper

“They are worth more to us than the empty human shells we have taken them for; they were children who cried for their mothers, they were young women who fell in love; they endured childbirth, the death of parents; they laughed, and they celebrated Christmas. They argued with their siblings, they wept, they dreamed, they hurt, they enjoyed small triumphs. The courses their lives took mirrored that of so many other women of the Victorian age, and yet were so singular in the way they ended.”
― Hallie Rubenhold, The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper

“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. We enforce the notion that ‘bad women’ deserve punishment and that ‘prostitutes’ are a sub-species of female. In”
― Hallie Rubenhold, The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper

“His engaging patter would have enchanted strangers in every pub and marketplace. He was footloose and went where the wind blew him.”
― Hallie Rubenhold, The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper

“They were human beings, and surely that in itself is enough.”
― Hallie Rubenhold, The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper

“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.”
― Hallie Rubenhold, The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper

“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 dishonored and abused.”
― Hallie Rubenhold, The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper