My rating system is similar to yours, OP. I very, very rarely give 1 or 2 stars. If I DNF I don't feel qualified to judge the book, but if I finished a book and really disliked it then my rule is that I have to explain why. I rarely review, but I think it might be useful in extreme cases to explain why it provoked the reaction it did. I think I've made done this once on Goodreads where there was zero character growth, zero plot development and none of the characters were remotely likeable.

I didn't hate it. I was intrigued by the premise but felt quite underwhelmed by it. I probably missed a layer of subtext.

If you read the book it literally debunks the assumption that prostitution was a career choice or a chosen job. Lots of Victorian women engaged in transactional sex - but is being coerced or doing it once because you are starving and desperate the same as being a prostitute as an occupation? That's what the book explores.

That pretty much sums it up, I think.

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.

You said it was a penny for a bed. I explained it was four pence a night, which is four times dearer. A penny could be easily borrowed. Finding four pence for a bed every night was not so straightforward.

4. Only Marie Jeanette was found in her bed. The others all died outside. Liz was in a covered alleyway, but it was still in the street. Kate, Polly and Annie were all trying to sleep outdoors.

Only one victim was found in a rented room. The others died in the streets, where it was more than likely that they were trying to sleep.

Four pence per night. Which many of them didn't have.

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.

She also wrote an account of a true life scandal called 'The Scandalous Lady W' which is well worth reading and was made into a BBC mini series, also highly recommended.