The Five

The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper

Hallie Rubenhold

• Publisher: Mariner Books
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781328664082
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Social History
• Index: History

Winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction and of the Goodreads Choice Award for History & Biography The award-winning, best-selling book that changes the narrative of the "Ripper" murders forever Polly, Annie, Elisabeth, Catherine, and Mary Jane are famous for the same thing, though they never met. They came from some of London's wealthiest and poorest neighborhoods, from the factory towns of middle England, and from Wales and Sweden. They wrote ballads, ran coffeehouses, lived on country estates; they breathed ink dust from printing presses and escaped human 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. Now, in this gripping narrative of five lives, Hallie Rubenhold finally sets the record straight and gives these women back their stories.

Index

A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z

A

alcohol and alcoholism

fetal alcohol syndrome, 108

habitual drunkenness, 106–7

homelessness and, 9–10

low-alcohol beer, 88, 106

Peabody Buildings rules, 30

society’s view of, 117

temperance movement, 105, 109

Vagrancy Committee, 129

See also Chapman, Annie Eliza; Habitual Drunkards Act; Kelly, Mary Jane; Nichols, Mary Ann “Polly”; Stride, Elisabeth

Allen, Elizabeth, 128–29

Antrobus family, 111

“Autumn of Terror,” 6–7

B

bare-knuckle boxing, 209–10

Barnardo, Thomas, 179

Barnett, Joseph, 257–59, 265, 269, 276–77, 279–83, 285

Barrett, Dennis, 278

Barry, Francis Tress, 100–104, 111, 113

Beck, Alfred, 181 n

Beeton, Isabella Mary, 88, 90

Bell’s Life in London, 209

Besant, Annie, 4

Black Country Bugle, 216, 224–25

Bloody Sunday, 5

Boekü, Eliesbeth Bluma, 271, 275

Boekü, Louis, and family, 271–72, 275

Bond, Elizabeth, 162, 183

Book of Concord (Luther), 139

Book of Household Management (Beeton), 88

Booth, Charles, 8–9, 51, 116, 118

Booth, William, 59, 246

Bridge, Candlewick and Dowgate School. See schooling and literacy

Brontë, Charlotte, 200

Broughton, Jack, 209

Brunel, Isambard Kingdom, 87

Bryce, James, 197

C

Calvert, Edmund, 200

Casual Poor Act (1882), 243

Catholic Convent of the Good Shepherd, 259

Chapman, Alfred, and family, 120 n

Chapman, Annie Eliza

alcoholism, 105–13, 115–17, 119, 132–33

common knowledge of slum-dwelling women, 285–86

at Crossingham’s, 119, 123, 127–31

fallen woman or prostitute, 124–27, 289

family ties, 122–23

fetal alcohol syndrome of children, 108

inventory of possessions, 297

lodgings on Dorset Street, 118–19

pride in her status, 102–3

separation and maintenance from John, 114, 119–21

separation from Jack Sievey, 121

silent about her past, 1...