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Five

Audiobook
Nonfiction: Biography, History
Unabridged   10.5 hour(s)
Publication date: 10/08/2019


Winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction
Amazon Editors' Pick

Five

The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper

Available from major retailers or BUY FROM AMAZON
Audio CD ISBN:9781684573998
Digital Download ISBN:9781684573981

Summary

Five devastating human stories and a dark and moving portrait of Victorian London—the untold lives of the women killed by Jack the Ripper.

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Product Description

Five devastating human stories and a dark and moving portrait of Victorian London—the untold lives of the women killed by Jack the Ripper.

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. The person responsible was never identified, but the character created by the press to fill that gap has become far more famous than any of these five women.

For more than a century, newspapers have been keen to tell us that "the Ripper" preyed on prostitutes. Not only is this untrue, as historian Hallie Rubenhold has discovered, but it has prevented the real stories of these fascinating women from being told. Now, in this devastating narrative of five lives, Rubenhold finally sets the record straight, revealing a world not just of Dickens and Queen Victoria, but of poverty, homelessness, and rampant misogyny. They died because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time—but their greatest misfortune was to be born a woman.

Reviews/Praise

“A must for Ripperologists.”—Publishers Weekly Starred Review

“Essential to students of Ripperiana.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Focusing on [the victims] backstories rather than the forensic details of their deaths, Rubenhold puts them back into their larger social context.”—Jezebel

“Rubenhold has produced a significant study of how poor and working-class women subsisted in an unforgiving age.”—The New York Times Book Review

Author Bio

Hallie Rubenhold, a social historian and frequent consultant for period dramas, is the author of The Covent Garden Ladies, the inspiration for the Hulu series Harlots, and The Scandalous Lady W. She is also the author of the historical novels Mistress of My Fate and The French Lesson.