Fantastic Book

This is such a fantastic book, the story being told is one that everyone needs to know.
It is written in such a way that you can imagine living and breathing in Victorian London on every page.
I will be highly recommending

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35 people found this helpful

Provocative and thoroughly absorbing

Famous for nothing more than being victims of Jack the Ripper, the reputations of five women have for years been tarnished by claims that they were simply prostitutes, sex workers who led selfish, pointless lives. But in truth, their stories have never been told. Now, Hallie Rubenhold uncovers the real lives of Polly, Annie, Elizabeth, Catherine and Mary-Jane and reveals how they came from a variety of backgrounds and geographical locations, including Fleet Street, Wolverhampton, Sweden and Wales. They wrote songs, owned coffee houses, lived on country estates and escaped the perils and demands of people-traffickers. They were mothers, sisters, daughters and wives whose only crimes were to fall prey to poverty and desperation.

Ever since the name of Jack the Ripper was first coined, that infamous being has reigned supreme in countless books, movies, documentaries and even tours of the murder sites. Concentrating on the grisly murders, everyone wants to know about the possible motives, the failings of the police investigation and the ever-growing list of possible suspects. It seems ridiculous that, until now, few historians have gone to the trouble of exploring the lives of the five women who made the Ripper famous.

Hallie Rubenhold has a gift for meticulous research and in this fascinating account, she brings to life the real women whose lives ended between August and November 1888. The author’s circumspect approach brings the women and the era alive and highlights that it was not prostitution but poverty, alcohol and tragedy that led them to their sudden and unwarranted deaths.

A provocative and thoroughly absorbing book.

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33 people found this helpful

Absolutely Excellent

A brilliant book, excellently narrated. A compelling and utterly moreish telling of the lives of five very different but equally tragic women whilst giving to credence to the evil that cut their stories short. I could not stop listening and highly recommend, it is not only a gripping insight to Victorian life but also feminist history.

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4 people found this helpful

Very interesting

This book will make you think how Victorian media and values shaped history. Sometimes not for the better.
A serial killer that horrifically killed prostitutes?
Maybe not.

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3 people found this helpful

Interesting and Thought Provoking

I don’t know what I expected when I chose this book. I like true crime and I like history especially London History. What I received was an insight into the complex lives of 5 Victorian women, who, apart from liking a tipple or two, had one other thing in common, they were all possibly murdered by the same killer. I became so engrossed in their lives that when I heard of my own borough being a part of Annie Chapman’s life I felt an overwhelming sense of sadness for her. Throughout the book you question whether or not all of these women were indeed prostitutes, it also transports you to present time to think if the situation were now, would society be quick to label them. I don’t think it would. I really enjoyed this book and would now like to know more about The Five.

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2 people found this helpful

very good - narrator could have been better

I thought this was very well written and very interesting. didn't love the narrator - not a memorable voice - no gravitas. just ok. let it down a bit. recommended tho

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Just brilliant

I cannot tell you how good this is. It isnt a ripper book. It dispels the misconceptions about who the women were.

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Engaging, absorbing, interesting!

Such a simple idea to look at Victorian life through the lens of the victims ascribed to 'Jack the Ripper', but nobody seems to have thought of it before! Hallie Rubenhold has managed to explore so many facets of the Victorian woman's life by telling the stories of these five ladies' lives, or what we know about them. In documentaries and films on the subject that I've seen to date, they're portrayed as unfortunate cardboard cut out cliches, whereas each one had a very different life experience, from exhausted wife and mother, to writer and singer of ballads at executions; even if all those lives were to end the same violet way. If you have any interest in the period / history generally, I'm sure you'll enjoy it as much as I have – it's so absorbing and totally focussed on their lives, rather than their deaths.

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a must read

this was a very moving account of 5 women's lives - bit more than that it also gives an insight into the hardships women and the poor endured at the time

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At last a honest look at these women

Truly worth your while, the telling of each of these women lives as their own biographies is wonderful. The explanation of these events with the crystal clear clarification of the countries developing history strips away all degradation of the popular opinion of Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly.
I was so caught up in the saga of each woman and the description of the era that I lost sight of the killer and that each of these women were to end up murdered. I thank the author for giving them a voice, for making them real people not just photographs or victims, for making me care and cry for them, for wishing that with each new situation they would have succeeded and their lives would have gone on in one of the many different possibilities.
Everyone deserves a life.

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