The Five

I wanted to read this book as soon as I saw the reviews. It's about five women killed by the murderer known as Jack the Ripper in London in 1888. 
Polly Nicholls
Annie Chapman
Elizabeth Stride
Catherine Eddowes
Mary Jane Kelly

Probably most people will have heard his nickname - his identity remains unknown. A  whole industry has grown up around him: who he might be (there are numerous theories),  how and why he killed and mutilated a series of women on the dark streets of the  east end of London.  

'Ripperology' has spawned countless discussions, forums, articles,  maps, images, walking tours and  books, both popular and scholarly. The victims are described as fallen women, women of the night or sex workers.  While it's true that prostitution went hand in hand with destitution in Victorian London and most of these women were forced by poverty to earn what they could how they could, the author of this book, Hallie Rubenhold, has accessed records and archives to research their  lives, not their deaths. She has made astonishing discoveries about where they came from,  their families, their occupations, their relationships, their children, their high points and their low, and their descent into penury, despair and degradation, often without a place to lay their heads at night. No words are wasted in this book  on the man who took their lives, nor on the manner of their deaths, rather the author's  spotlight reveals  the knife edge existence of women left without supports and resources in Victorian Britain. It's a powerful testimony to the fact that these women  have so long remained in the shadows, as victims: helpless, blameworthy and passive. The Five did what they could to survive in circumstances where all the odds were stacked against them. 

Say their names:
 Polly Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, Mary Ann Kelly.


A personal note. I first became interested in the Spitalfields area of London when I started to research my family history and discovered that my maternal grandmother had been born there in 1872, the year after her refugee parents had arrived in London. In 1888 the mother of one of the Ripper's hypothetical victims' Catherine Millet, was living in the same street when she identified her daughter's lifeless body. It's chilling to know that my grandmother and her three sisters were , as young women, treading the same pavements as "The Five".

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