Home > Work > The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper
161 " Like Ellen Holland, whose name the journalists could not even bother to confirm or record correctly, Polly was just another impoverished, aging, worthless female resident of a Whitechapel lodging house. "
― Hallie Rubenhold , The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper
162 " Neither did the editors nor the journalists covering this story deem it necessary, worthy, or interesting to delve into the biographical details of the victims. "
163 " Ellen Holland saw, in the woman who slept beside her, something deeply melancholic; a personality folding in on itself, private, alienated, and grieving. "
164 " It was Polly, who had borne six of his children, "
165 " Not only were most of them born into working-class families; they were also born female. "
166 " I forgive you as you are. "
167 " Poor women’s labor was cheap because poor women were considered expendable and because society did not designate them as a family’s breadwinner. Unfortunately, many of them had to be. If a husband, father, or partner left or died, a working-class woman with dependents would find it almost impossible to survive. The structure of society ensured that a woman without a man was superfluous. "
168 " Is it any wonder that Polly fled the comforts of the Cowdrys’ home, that Annie could not bear to tell her sisters where she lived, that Elisabeth never let anyone truly know her, that Kate fell out with her children, and that by age twenty-five Mary Jane had become an angry drunk? "
169 " in 1880 a wife could not cite adultery alone as a grounds for ending her union. While a man could divorce his wife for a sexual liaison outside the marital bed, a woman had to prove her husband was guilty of adultery in addition to another crime, such as incest, rape or cruelty. The Victorian double standard was enshrined in law, permitting a man to enjoy as many sexual dalliances as he wished, so long as he did not also rape the servants, have sex with his sister and beat his wife too severely. "
170 " This line of reasoning also explains why Polly, Annie, and Kate’s homelessness was entirely overlooked as a factor in their murders; a “houseless creature” and a “prostitute” by their moral failings were one and the same. "
171 " If the official criteria established by the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police for defining the term “prostitute” is applied to Polly, Annie, and Kate, it immediately becomes obvious that they cannot be identified as such. Even when relying on inquest testimony, there exists no proof to support these assertions. Similarly, there is no absolute proof that Elisabeth Stride returned to prostitution in the period prior to her murder. Quite simply, there is no evidence that any of these women self-identified as prostitutes and no evidence that anyone among their community regarded them as part of the sex trade. "
172 " Furthermore, on the nights they were killed, no one came forward to state that they had been solicited by Polly, Annie, Kate, or Elisabeth. "
173 " These official pronouncements must be taken as the final word on whether or not we are justified in claiming that “Jack the Ripper was a killer of prostitutes.” To insist otherwise is to fall back on arbitrary supposition informed by Victorian prejudice. "
174 " In order to gawp at and examine this miracle of malevolence we have figuratively stepped over the bodies of those he murdered, and in some cases, stopped to kick them as we walked past. "
175 " By January 1841, Ruth found herself in just such a situation. The precise day on which Annie Eliza Smith was born in September 1841 "
176 " Is it any wonder that there has been no public appetite to examine the lives of the canonical five, when they have never seemed real or of any consequence to us before? "
177 " In the eyes of society, and the army, Ruth had become a “dolly-mop”: a soldier’s woman. Though such a woman did not quite fall into the category of “professional,” she was deemed a sort of “amateur prostitute. "
178 " Insisting that Jack the Ripper killed prostitutes also makes the story of a vicious series of murders slightly more palatable. Just as it did in the nineteenth century, the notion that the victims were “only prostitutes” perpetuates the belief that there are good women and bad women, madonnas and whores. It suggests that there is an acceptable standard of female behavior, and those who deviate from it are fit to be punished. Equally, it reasserts the double standard, exonerating men from wrongs committed against such women. "
179 " For five months after Annie’s birth, Ruth’s position remained a precarious one, especially as she soon found herself pregnant with a second child. "
180 " rather, they have been integrated subtly into the fabric of our cultural norms. "