Submitted by LJRGUserName t3_z091r9 in books
CraftyRole4567 t1_ix5patw wrote
I expect this will get downvoted, but I’m a professional historian who works on this era. And there were a few things I really didn’t love about this book.
But first— she’s completely right about the sometimes disgusting and exploitative approach that much popular media has shown toward the ripper’s victims, and the media’s assumptions that they were all prostitutes (and that that only means one thing). She’s right about all of that, and I think it’s great that she’s giving histories to these women who too often have just been portrayed as victims.
BUT… two things…
Despite what she claims, we (current historians) don’t really talk about “prostitutes” as much as we talk about “transactional sex,” which exists on a spectrum. Even from her book it’s clear that some of the five participated in transactional sex. Certainly hooking up with a man for a few weeks or months in order to provide yourself with food and shelter, then moving in to the next man. is a type of transactional sex common in this period, and is often framed as a type of prostitution, although a more stable and safer one than working in the house of prostitution, which itself is more stable and safer than streetwalking. Exchanging shelter/food/clothing/protection for sex was seen sometimes as different from taking cash (as is true now) but all are forms of transactional sex.
I was also uncomfortable with how much she seemed to need to argue that these women were not prostitutes. So what if they were? It leads her to speculate beyond her evidence. In particular, where she was arguing that a woman was out at midnight because she was planning to pawn a hat to get some money seemed like a massive reach to me, those shops wouldn’t be open at that hour— but she can’t admit that there’s even a possibility that sex was involved, and that’s a weakness.
I wanted the book to just be more up-to-date with its approach to transactional sex. If some of these women did engage in transactional sex – and there were a lot of different ways that could’ve happened – and it was also clear from the book at a couple of them did at times – well, so what? It’s a chance to talk about the social structures that made it impossible for women to earn a decent living and any disposable income in the absence of a male provider— which she does at times to her credit!— but not as much as she could’ve. She’s so busy dodging the prostitution charge that she doesn’t talk about the role transactional sex plays in a society with those kinds of restrictions… And the ways that in turn is absolutely a benefit to men in such a society.
I also wanted a little more on why there’s this prurient aspect to the media approach to the ripper’s victims. Again, if one or more of them were prostitutes, so what? That not all of them were makes it clear that the ripper was an opportunistic killer of women, and the reasons these women were so vulnerable is what unites them – regardless of whether or not one or more of them engaged in transactional sex. Adding a sex twist to murder has always sold papers, and she had a golden opportunity to talk about how easily and cheaply that was done here.
I just wanted more. And I wanted her to feel to be a little less aggressive with her “they NEVER!” She hasn’t got proof for that. What she does have is the fascinating stories of five women who have been misused by history, and who offer an important counterweight to the too-often glamorized Victorian age.
LiliWenFach t1_ix5u77b wrote
It's been a while since I read The Five, but the impression I took away from the book was her frustration that all 5 had been generically labelled as prostitutes by the Victorian press, who had made a great deal of assumptions about the lives and morality of the Ripper's victims, with many of their contemporaries viewing their deaths as 'just deserts' or even a form of social cleansing. There's a few pages dedicated to the discussion of transactional sex vs prostitution as a livelihood, and the difficulty for the Victorian public of distinguishing between the two meant that all women who sold sex were tarred with the same brush - often unfairly - and it was assumed by the Victorian press that prostitution was a chosen career for these 'fallen women's who had separated from their husbands.
Whilst I agree that there is circumstantial evidence to suggest that they may all have engaged in transactional sex in order to survive, I think that the author was right to question the claims made by contemporary press that they were all prostitutes in the sense the Victorians would have understood the name. It was an occupation mired with shame, and I think Haille may have been trying to remove some of the stigma that came from being painted as a 'lady of the night' - which might have been a mistake on her part and she might have done better to emphasize that whether it was chosen work or a role thrust upon them, none of the 5 deserved to die as they did.
CraftyRole4567 t1_ix84jgs wrote
Yes, and she’s absolutely right about that. May r I’m being completely unfair and criticizing the book she didn’t write, or the book I wish she’d written – I just wanted a little more nuance from her, and I don’t think it would’ve undermined her argument. I was also completely surprised to find out that the Ripper’s victims were not working prostitutes, and she’s done an amazing thing by recovering as much of their stories as she has.
As far as the media portraying them as prostitutes in a suggestion that ‘they deserved it’ – I kept thinking of the fact that the early tabloid photographer Weegee famously would carry a pair of women’s panties with him, and before he took a picture of a murder scene he would throw them down to make sure that they were in the foreground. Which is awful, but is to say that the media was trying to sell papers and the idea that prurient sex makes murder more interesting has its own disgusting history, naught to do with the truth, that intersects here– I know, she couldn’t write a book on everything!
LiliWenFach t1_ix91aro wrote
I agree a little more nuance and repeated acknowledgement that her own hypotheses were based on educated guess work and unreliable sources would have removed some of the controversy and improved the book.
But given the scarcity of reliable information (due to reporter bias and poor record keeping) I think she's done an absolutely astounding job to gather as much biographical information as she did. She turned them from bodies on a mortuary slab to living, breathing women who lived heartbreakingly difficult, troubled and sad lives, and as she described them bedding down in the gutter I found myself desperately wishing that someone could have come along and shaken them awake and moved them on before they could become the Ripper's victim. The book left me angry at their fate, and the fates of thousands of women like them. She brought them back to life. It's not a perfect book, but it's an amazing one nonetheless.
LJRGUserName OP t1_ix613em wrote
Transactional sex is discussed in the book, but it wasn't these women's main profession which the newspapers claimed at that time and still sticks. A woman without a man at that time really had very little and there were no social safety nets. I thought her research very thorough.
McJohn_WT_Net t1_ix6gdab wrote
I can't remember where I saw this, but apparently the later Victorians offered the excuse that women who engaged in sex work were nymphomaniacs who just weren't getting the gold pipe at home. You know, anything rather than admit that their society was structured specifically to keep women desperate and dependent, and that that could be changed.
LD50_irony t1_ix658k1 wrote
Is the other end of the spectrum of transactional sex married women, or is there another word for that?
Frankly, in that time period it seems like it was transactional sex all the way up the ladder, although the folks at the top dressed it up with legalities.
CraftyRole4567 t1_ix851fo wrote
Well that’s a can of worms – the hardcore feminists of the 1960s famously said that marriage is just prostitution with a ring!
Historians would say that it’s important to understand that companionate marriage (as we call it) is very much a 19th/20th century ideal. Most marriages have been transactional marriages, and many still are – there’s not necessarily anything wrong with that, and it doesn’t preclude seeing marriage as a type of partnership as well. Looking at our presidents, we could say the Obamas appear to have a companionate marriage, the Trumps appear to have a transactional one ;)
LiliWenFach t1_ix91k7x wrote
That pretty much sums it up, I think.
McJohn_WT_Net t1_ix6ftl8 wrote
Maybe it's like in Josephine Tey's The Daughter of Time. When the narrative for the past century and a quarter has been "The victims were engaging in a risky line of work, so obviously they were gonna get whacked" instead of admitting that at least three-fifths of them had no discernible involvement with sex work, perhaps Rubenhold perceived a need for clear, repeated, unrelenting emphasis. Like... if everyone else has always said that every woman targeted by this murderer was engaging in sex work, despite a lack of evidence, I could excuse Rubenhold for pointing out say, three, four hundred times that that's just an assumption.
Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments