Mary Ann “Polly” Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly...
Peter Florence began the conversation with historian Hallie Rubenhold by reading aloud the names of the victims at the centre of her Hay Festival Book of the Year-winning study, The Five.
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. Their murderer was never identified, but the name created for him by the press has become far more famous than any of these women. In The Five, Rubenhold sets the record straight.
"The whole legend of Jack the Ripper has been put forward to suggest that these five women were prostitutes and to perpetuate the idea that women who do ‘bad’ things would die," she said.
"What completely shocked me, given the plethora of books that have been published about Jack the Ripper, is how few actual documents exist from the time. Most of the information is taken from newspaper reports," she added.
"We will never know who Jack the Ripper was. And that is irrelevant... The best thing we can do in this scenario is remember the victims."
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