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

“It appeared to moral, middle-class England that in the face of this level of brutal, crippling want, every good and righteous instinct that ought to govern human relations had been completely eroded.”

The Jack the Ripper murders called attention to the extreme poverty and horrific living conditions in Whitechapel (5). However, respectable Victorian society often ignored or downplayed the systemic economic and social factors that created the problems in the East End, choosing instead to often frame issues like crime and poverty as moral failings. Such views reflect the Victorian prejudices and assumptions against poor and working-class people.

“The fibers that have clung to and defined the shape of Polly, Annie, Elisabeth, Kate, and Mary Jane’s stories are the values of the Victorian world. They are male, authoritarian, and middle class. They were formed at a time when women had no voice, and few rights, and the poor were considered lazy and degenerate: to have been both of these things was one of the worst possible combinations.”

The Social Dynamics of Poverty and Gender intersected in Victorian Britain, in ways that further disadvantaged working-class and vagrant women. For example, the lack of jobs women were allowed to have made women more financially dependent on men and more likely to fall into poverty, but sympathy for impoverished women was often in short supply. Rubenhold argues that many Victorian assumptions toward impoverished women continue to shape the narratives surrounding the five Ripper victims.

“In the Victorian working-class household, a family’s level of comfort rose and fell like the tide with each birth or death.”

In contrast to modern European states, there was not much of a social safety net in Victorian Britain, and what welfare was available usually required people to be isolated from their families in workhouses. This vulnerability meant that the illness and death of an adult man could mean the loss of the entire family’s income, while too many children could strain the resources of even a relatively well-off family.

“Work, community, family, health, industry, and moral well-being would all come together as the era’s social reformers intended.”

Victorian middle-class morality was shaped by the idea of “self-help” (109). It was believed that poverty, along with social ills like alcohol dependency, were the result of individual choices and moral failings instead of symptoms of wider systemic issues, like the class system. This meant that women who fell on hard times, like the five women in the text, often struggled to access meaningful and sustained support.

“One of the workhouse’s primary functions was to humiliate those who were forced to rely upon it.”

For most people in Victorian Britain, “indoor relief” (40) was the only form of welfare available. Indoor relief was a term describing the system of workhouses, which were deliberately designed to discourage welfare recipients. The begrudging and humiliating nature of the workhouses reinforced The Social Dynamics of Poverty and Gender that often drove women into sex work to survive.

“Whichever choice she made, Polly faced a loss of identity and complete isolation in a society that viewed a woman without a family, or a husband, with deep suspicion, or even incomprehension. The sexes had distinctly defined roles, and Polly, like every other female, would have internalized the belief that a woman required a man to guide her, govern her, and bestow meaning on her life.”

Arguably even more than in past eras, Victorian society envisioned that women were meant for domestic roles. While these attitudes were largely felt and expressed by the middle class, across the era the middle class sought to impose such ideas on working-class families.

“Whichever scenario a person might favor, everyone was certain, without so much as a single shred of actual evidence to reinforce their convictions, that Polly Nichols was a prostitute.”

A central argument throughout The Five is that, contrary to popular belief, three of Jack the Ripper’s victims—Polly Nichols, Annie Chapman, and Kate Eddowes—were not actually sex workers. This misrepresentation sprang from prejudiced assumptions and misinterpretations in the Victorian media and police and coroner’s reports, leading to The Misrepresentation of Women in History.

“When placed in such a position, it was conventional for dolly-wops to remain loyal to the regiment and seek another protector within it, or from within the barracks. However, this remedy was not without consequences; in doing so they committed themselves to a career in prostitution.”

A recurring point Rubenhold makes is that the boundary between a sex worker and a woman who engaged in relationships or sexual activities disapproved of by mainstream Victorian society was very thin. In this case, a woman who was the common-law partner or lover of a soldier would be considered a sex worker just because the soldier she was dependent on was sent overseas, forcing her to seek the protection of another partner.

“The addition of a man, who might earn a steady livelihood and act as paterfamilias, would have been most welcome. This would have been Annie’s great moment—a chance to make a success of her life, to become everything society intended for her. No longer just a helpmeet to her family, she could become the mistress of her own home and, most important, a wife and a mother.”

Social mobility in the 19th century was difficult, especially for women. Essentially, women who wished to ascend from the working class or poverty to the middle class needed the right husband. Likewise, once that husband’s support failed or was withdrawn, the woman was in danger of falling into poverty. These limited gender roles for women reflect The Social Dynamics of Poverty and Gender.

“This determination to live in sobriety went hand-in-hand with the popular philosophy of ‘self-help.’ Its proponents held that a person’s own choices and behavior were the cause of poverty and problems such as alcoholism; tough-mindedness and grit could overcome them.”

Social problems in Victorian Britain were not usually viewed in systemic ways. Even though in the era fields like sociology and economics were pioneered or developed further, social problems were seen, at their core, to be problems of moral behavior. This meant that women who fell into poverty or faced difficulties, like the five, often had few avenues or resources to improve their situations in a meaningful way.

“According to the era’s definition of womanhood, she had failed. She had proven her inability to mother her children, to maintain a home for her husband, or to care for anyone, even herself. The female drunkard was considered an abomination.”

If alcohol dependency was considered a personal and moral failing, it was even worse for women. It was regarded as a case of a woman failing to fulfill her “natural” duties toward a husband and children, undermining the moral probity of the domestic sphere.

“Just as they had with Polly Nichols’s case, the authorities began their inquiry from a fixed position: that Annie must have been a prostitute, a stance that from thereon guided the direction of their investigation, as well as the attitudes and interrogations of the coroner’s court.”

Coroners’ reports were a major source for knowing about the biographies of the “canonical” five. However, these sources were biased and sometimes took the tone of a “moral investigation” (69), with their prejudiced assumptions about the women sometimes distorting the direction of the investigation and how the women were viewed. Some of the Victorian assumptions about these women have endured into modern times, reflecting The Misrepresentation of Women in History.

“Sweden took its cue from other European nations, such as France and Germany; when faced with a similar threat, they instituted a series of strict laws designed to regulate the sex trade and ensure that the women who practiced within it were not carriers of disease.”

As governments became more centralized and the scientific study of societies and populations became more advanced, states started worrying about matters such as population numbers and public health. This concern coincided with middle-class moral attitudes and policies such as strict regulation of sex work. The policing of sex workers’ health also reflected the assumption that it was the only sex workers who were carriers of disease, instead of placing the male clients under equivalent scrutiny.

“However, as Elisabeth was pregnant with an illegitimate child, it is likely that she, like so many women of her era, would have internalized the punishment as a justifiable one.”

Importantly, Rubenhold speculates that women, and not just “the five,” had to navigate laws and social regulations that strictly policed women’s sexuality and behavior. In addition, they likely internalized Victorian values themselves, which could add to their difficulties when they faced adverse economic or social situations, such as pregnancy outside of marriage.

“She was anonymous: a woman with a mutable story, a changeable history, someone who had recognized that the world didn’t care about her, and chose to use that as a weapon in order to survive.”

This passage describing Elisabeth Stride also applies to anyone who was a vagrant in the 19th century. Vagrancy provided a certain degree of anonymity; however, the lack of a stable name and social marker also left women especially vulnerable to exploitation and abuse.

“All these factors—poverty, lack of information, and a sense of obligation to perform the role of a dutiful wife—resulted in what the nineteenth-century maternal rights campaigner Margaret Llewelyn Davies called ‘a life of excessive childbearing.’ Its toll on the physical, emotional, and material well-being of women like Catherine was enormous.”

Childbearing was one of the ways that women were disadvantaged in Victorian society. Women were expected to work through their pregnancies and to be wholly responsible for raising children. Only older daughters becoming old enough to watch after their younger siblings saw mothers get relief.

“The intention of the Dowgate School, and others like it, was to create a better sort of working-class person—one who valued themselves and the principles of Christianity and who would go forth into the labor force dignified, clean, thoughtful, and obedient.”

Before the establishment of the British public school system, there were rudimentary efforts to provide education to the poor. Since morality and social and economic society were so intertwined in Victorian thought, however, these educational efforts worked to instill certain values and behaviors within children as well.

“It did not matter where she fled—to Wolverhampton or Birmingham, to the household of a pugilist or a tinplate worker. She could expect that this routine would command her life until she married. Then it would be her own mother’s life; the pain of childbearing, the weariness of child rearing, worry, hunger and exhaustion, and eventually, sickness and death.”

Kate Eddowes’s life was circumscribed by her working-class background and the deaths of her parents, reflecting The Social Dynamics of Poverty and Gender. Despite her early education, Kate’s options were still strictly limited. Rubenhold suggests this may be why she rebelled in a sense by becoming a peddler with Thomas.

“This attitude was not out of step with Victorian working-class sentiments about domestic violence; frequently the woman was blamed for the beatings she received. A certain degree of violence within the home was thought to serve a disciplinary function.”

The acceptance of domestic violence among the Victorian working class was another way impoverished women were disadvantaged. Women like Kate Eddowes were often left with the choice of staying with an abusive husband or losing their only means of financial support and contact with their children.

“Somewhere along this route, at least once that night, a man would step close to her and tip his hat. He may have noticed that she raised the hem of her skirt an inch or so too high as she crossed the road and stepped onto the curb; however, as the busy West End was also filled with respectable shop girls leaving their places of employment for home and maids out on errands for their mistresses, he had to be careful.”

The West End was known as London’s red-light district. Although Victorian attitudes toward sex work were harsher compared to earlier eras, there were still subcultures that allowed women and their patrons to operate without legal intervention.

“By the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the trafficking of women between Britain and continental Europe had become a lucrative enterprise. The expansion of rail networks and shipping made it cheaper and easier for people to travel and goods to be shipped.”

Sex trafficking was a danger faced by women, even those who were not originally sex workers. Mary Jane Kelly narrowly avoided being sex trafficked while on a trip to France; her need to evade sex traffickers would eventually be one of the reasons she had to leave the West End for the East End. Such dangers highlight The Social Dynamics of Poverty and Gender surrounding vulnerable women.

“Following her death, Mary Jane, an otherwise anonymous resident of Spitalfields, also became what Whitechapel imagined her to be: a local heroine who had suffered at the hands of a monster still on the loose.”

Police officials and journalists at the time considered the five victims of Jack the Ripper to be “mere” sex workers and of poor moral character. However, the people of Whitechapel observed the tragedy of their deaths and responded with sympathy, elevating Mary Jane Kelly to a “local heroine.” Their response speaks to an early attempt at The Humanization of Historically Stigmatized Figures.

“Fairfield, like most of the literate public, had learned all he needed to know about the ‘vicious inhabitants’ of the East End from the newspapers. He had been educated about their disgusting, impoverished, drunken lives from the snippets of information he had read. Whatever gaps remained in his understanding of slum-dwelling women would have been filled in by that which was ‘common-knowledge’: they were all desperate, filthy, foul-mouthed prostitutes.”

Rubenhold suggests that Fairfield’s views about the five victims of Jack the Ripper would be echoed by future writers and historians, leading to The Misrepresentation of Women in History. Like him, dismissing all five women as sex workers carries the implication that they were deserving of murder in some way due to their “immoral” lives. Rubenhold counters this view by pointing out that all five women deserve to be treated with dignity and empathy.