The Five by Hallie Rubenhold

 

The Five by Hallie Rubenhold.

Published in hardback February 2019 by Doubeday. Also avaialble in e-book, paperback and audio formats.

Audio version released February 2019 by Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd. Narrated by Louise Brealey.

From the cover of the book:

THE #1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
WINNER OF THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NONFICTION 2019

'An angry and important work of historical detection, calling time on the misogyny that has fed the Ripper myth. Powerful and shaming' GUARDIAN

Polly, Annie, Elizabeth, Catherine and Mary-Jane are famous for the same thing, though they never met. 

They came from Fleet Street, Knightsbridge, Wolverhampton, Sweden and Wales. They wrote ballads, ran coffee houses, lived on country estates, they breathed ink-dust from printing presses and escaped people-traffickers. What they had in common was the year of their murders: 1888.

Their murderer was never identified, but the name created for him by the press has become far more famous than any of these five women.

Now, in this devastating narrative of five lives, historian Hallie Rubenhold finally sets the record straight, and gives these women back their stories.

****************************************

The Five is a book that has been on my radar for a very long time, but it was not until the Audible version caught my eye that I actually got stuck into Hallie Rubenhold's glorious tribute to the women that history records as victims of the infamous Jack the Ripper. It is beautifully narrated by Louise Brealey, and had me spellbound from start to finish, often with tears running freely down my face, and before I was very far into the audio book, I had purchased a hardback copy to put on the forever shelf - which I then sat and read anyway!

We all know something about the mysterious Jack the Ripper, but how many of us know even the names of his victims, let alone the truth about their lives? They are consigned to history erroneously as "just prostitutes", but who were they really? 

This book brings these five women alive, painting a picture of them as daughters, wives, mothers, sisters and lovers - giving them shape and substance as real human beings who found themselves in the wrong place and the wrong time, as a result of the twisted hand of fate.

Rubenhold's research is comprehensive and compelling, and in telling the tales of our five women - Mary Ann 'Polly' Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly - she not only gives them a place in history that has long been denied to them, but she also gives the reader a detailed picture of the social history that dictated the course of their lives. I learned so much about Victorian life from these pages that I did not know before, even though I have read more than a few books about this period. I take my hat off to Hallie Rubenhold for the hours and hours she must have spent poring over documents in pursuit every available fact relating to the lives of these women and their families. 

Their stories are sad and full of tragedy, but they are the stories of real women nonetheless: women who lived lives which may have been unconventional in many ways, but they were not 'bad' women who deserved a violent death because they either chose, or were forced by circumstance, to live in a way that middle class Victorians considered disreputable. It makes me rather angry to think that their lives have been misrepresented in this way in the making of the Ripper myth. They deserve so much better, as this book clearly shows.

This is a book that fills in the missing parts of the story - the stories of the victims of the mysterious man held up as a seductively gruesome villain. Interestingly the conclusion to this book gives a shocking pause for thought in showing that the way the Ripper myth is glorified makes us all complicit in the diminishment of these women - and adds to the perpetuation of the idea that it is right for women to be portrayed as deserving of their fate if they are judged as 'bad'. Sadly, this view is still displayed time and time again in media stories and even legal cases today.

I was expecting this book to be completely fascinating, and it is, but I was totally unprepared for how emotional Hallie Rubenhold's narrative of the lives of these women would be and how much this book would get under my skin. The names of The Five are now carved into my heart and I will never forget them. This is quite simply a must read - or listen!

The Five is available to buy now from your favourite book, or audio retailer.

About the author:

Hallie Rubenhold is a social historian whose expertise lies in revealing stories of previously unknown women and episodes in history. By drawing upon a wealth of formerly unseen archival material and adding a full historical context to the victims' lives, The Five changes the narrative of these murders for ever. Rubenhold's books include Lady Worsley's Whim, dramatized by the BBC as 'The Scandalous Lady W', and Covent Garden Ladies: The Extraordinary Story of Harris's List, which inspired the ITV series 'Harlots'. She lives in London with her husband.