The Five
by Hallie Rubenhold
Summary
A collective biography of the five women killed by Jack the Ripper in 1888, reconstructing their individual lives — their childhoods, marriages, work, travels, and misfortunes — from parish records, census data, workhouse registers, and newspaper archives. Rubenhold's central argument is that popular culture has reduced these women to their deaths and, falsely, to sex work, when in fact most of them were simply poor, homeless, and vulnerable in a city with almost no safety net for women in their situation. The book provoked fierce debate and is widely credited with shifting the terms on which the Ripper case is discussed, placing the victims rather than the killer at the centre of the story.
Historical Context & Significance
Rubenhold's research debunked the myth that all victims were sex workers; most were simply destitute.