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

Hallie Rubenhold

Feb 2019 · Random House

About this eBook

THE MULTI AWARD-WINNING #1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

'Gripping' NEW YORK TIMES
'At last, the Ripper's victims get a voice... An eloquent, stirring challenge to reject the prevailing Ripper myth' MAIL ON SUNDAY
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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.
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Awards for The Five include:
- Winner of the BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE for Non-fiction
- HAY FESTIVAL Book of the Year 2019
- Winner of the Goodreads Choice Awards for History

PRAISE FOR THE FIVE

'Devastatingly good. The Five will leave you in tears, of pity and of rage.' LUCY WORSLEY
'Fascinating, compelling, moving.' BRIDGET COLLINS, author of The Binding
'An angry and important work of historical detection, calling time on the misogyny that has fed the Ripper myth. Powerful and shaming.' GUARDIAN
'Haunting' SUNDAY TIMES
'What a brilliant and necessary book' JO BAKER, author of Longbourn
'Beautifully written and with the grip of a thriller, it will open your eyes and break your heart.' ERIN KELLY
'An outstanding work of history-from-below ... magnificent' SPECTATOR
'Deeply researched' THE NEW YORKER

Ratings and reviews

An excellent, merticulously researched work, which shines a light where there has been darkness for so long. Hallie Rubenhold has placed these awful crimes in the context of the society in which they occured, and laid out clearly how the social, political, sexual and moral values of the time created the circumstances which allowed Polly, Annie, Elizabeth, Kate and Mary Jane to be murdered. Rubenhold does not waste time wondering about the identity of the killer, but instead creates real and vivid portraits of the women as they were in life, uncovering their back stories, examining where they came from, and showing us, in heart-breaking detail, how they came to be in Whitechapel on the nights of the their deaths. She turns a historian's eye to the hysterical and often exaggerated accounts found in the newspapers and documents of the time, uncovering facts and dismissing the fiction. A thoughly gripping and thought-provoking read.

I thought this would be about the victims of Jack the Ripper, but the author has used them to discuss Victorian life in banal tones. The victims deserved better than this. The book is full of dubiously sourced information, contradictions, and outright inventions.

Very informative. A gripping read. Offers a fresh, definitive and welcome perspective on what we hereinbefore slavishly thought were the facts surrounding the lives of the "prostitute" victims.

About the author

Hallie Rubenhold is the Number One Sunday Times bestselling and Baillie Gifford Non-Fiction prize-winning social historian whose expertise lies in revealing stories of previously unknown women and episodes in history. As well as The Covent Garden Ladies, Rubenhold's works of non-fiction include the award-winning and Number One bestselling The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper and Lady Worsley's Whim, dramatized by the BBC as 'The Scandalous Lady W'. Her latest work of non-fiction, Bad Women, the story of the disappeared wives and partner of Dr Crippen, is due to be published in 2022. She has also written two acclaimed novels Mistress of My Fate and The French Lesson which are a feminist homage to the literary tropes of the Eighteenth Century. She lives in London with her husband. Meet her @HallieRubenhold