In The Act...or Not..... Round Two

[Howard Brown]

Thread for discussing whether the victims were actually in the act of solicitation or not on those nights they were killed.
Yep, I removed the old thread.

Lets all please be civil in discussing this issue.

Thanks in advance.

How

[A.P. Wolf]

Well, How, I feel we have moved on comfortably from some twenty years ago when it was generally accepted that all of the victims of the Whitechapel Murderer were women of the night/streets murdered in the direct act of soliciting.
Today there is a genuine doubt amongst many involved in this study that this long held concept is actually true; and that in itself expresses a desire on the part of many researchers to perhaps take a more sympathetic view of the victims, and the plight and pain they found themselves in, locked as they were into the plain and simple horrors of obtaining the basics of life on the streets of Whitechapel in the Late Victorian Period.
I think the point that both Natalie and myself have tried to make on other threads, and successfully so I believe, is that it is essentially wrong to criticise people who take whatever means are required and necessary for their basic survival in the most dire of personal circumstances... and this includes prostitution.
But you cannot damn prostitutes when they are prostitutes as a direct reult of economic deprivation; and you also can't damn them for being habitual drunks when alcohol was far safer than water, and certainly cheaper than common foodstuffs. People in the worst of human situation and condition will often resort to the use of drugs to lessen the pain of their bitter life; and people in the same situation will often do things that they would never do if their human situation and condition suddenly improved.
I'd suggest that the victims, and their killer, shared a similar motive in this whole sad saga, and that was to make the pain go away.

[Natalie Severn]

Yes Ap, you explain and encapsulate the plight of Whitechapel"s dispossessed very succinctly and with compassion.I greatly appreciate this.It was a brutal society from the top down , very clearly expressed by Charles Dickens ,living only a little earlier and which can be read about in several of his novels, as many who post on here no doubt know.
Thankyou for your words.Lets keep the real flag flying.
Norma

[Nemo]

There was always the workhouse...

[Natalie Severn]

There was always the workhouse...
I dont think so Nemo.The workhouse rules were very strict and people who were drunk were not admitted.

[Adam Went]

Some people do seem to have difficulty grasping the fact that there simply was not the opportunities and openings for a successful life for a woman in the Victorian era, as there is today, with all of the equal rights and feminist groups, etc.

I largely agree with AP's post, and I think most of us are sympathetic to the victims - the only thing is, as I've said before, the majority of these victims had chances during their lives to make something of themselves. They had been employed in some form or another. They had husbands, children, parents and siblings.

Invariably, at some stage during their lives, it would have looked to the outsider, and felt to the victim, like they were going to make a fair go of it in life. Then things changed. They lost their husbands, lost their jobs, lost contact with their families, and it was a slippery slope downhill from there. For a woman who had lost so much in that era, prostitution was often the only means for survival, even if only on a part time basis.

So basically, yes, we should be very sympathetic to these women and what they suffered, but we should also remember that partially it was the course they had allowed themselves to take, by losing their jobs and not keeping in regular contact with their families - they would have been only too aware that living on the streets might be the eventuality before it actually was. Yet they did not aid their own cause.

And that would go for the vast majority of women on the streets of London in 1888, not just Jack's victims....

Cheers,
Adam.

[Howard Brown]

AW...


The original question again... is whether these women were in the act of solicitation in your view on the nights in question. What they did before that night is of no real relevance to the original question, my man.

Tabram ? Sleeping a drunk off and killed or killed in the act of solicitation ?
What compelled her to take her business up to the second floor ?

Nichols ?
What about that location ?

Anyone else ?

[Cris Malone]

If one reads contemporary sources, and take into account the "don't speak ill of the dead" politeness... their friends, the police, the newspapers and the public believed that all of these women were killed in the line of duty.

What do we know that they didn't?

Simple as that.

[Adam Went]

Well it can be dressed up as much as people would like it to be, but yes, I do think that the vast majority of these women were in the act of soliciting at the time they were killed. At the very least they would have been open to any requests from males who came their way.

Perhaps the only canonical that this is questionable for is Kate Eddowes, purely because of her shortly before being released from her prison cell and being outdoors at the time due to that. The man she was talking to outside Mitre Square might have been a friend or someone known to her - or alternatively, and possibly more likely, Jack the Ripper soliciting her and her taking up the opportunity to make even a small percent of the money back that she had lost on Kelly's boots.

There may not be any direct evidence that they had been soliciting, but once again, a little bit of common sense needs to apply....

Cheers,
Adam.

[Caroline Morris]

Well, How, I feel we have moved on comfortably from some twenty years ago when it was generally accepted that all of the victims of the Whitechapel Murderer were women of the night/streets murdered in the direct act of soliciting.
Today there is a genuine doubt amongst many involved in this study that this long held concept is actually true; and that in itself expresses a desire on the part of many researchers to perhaps take a more sympathetic view of the victims, and the plight and pain they found themselves in, locked as they were into the plain and simple horrors of obtaining the basics of life on the streets of Whitechapel in the Late Victorian Period.
I think the point that both Natalie and myself have tried to make on other threads, and successfully so I believe, is that it is essentially wrong to criticise people who take whatever means are required and necessary for their basic survival in the most dire of personal circumstances... and this includes prostitution.
But you cannot damn prostitutes when they are prostitutes as a direct reult of economic deprivation; and you also can't damn them for being habitual drunks when alcohol was far safer than water, and certainly cheaper than common foodstuffs. People in the worst of human situation and condition will often resort to the use of drugs to lessen the pain of their bitter life; and people in the same situation will often do things that they would never do if their human situation and condition suddenly improved.
I'd suggest that the victims, and their killer, shared a similar motive in this whole sad saga, and that was to make the pain go away.

Hi AP,

So in essence, you seem to be saying here that there was nothing wrong with any of the victims having to solicit in their dire circumstances, but there is doubt that this was actually the case so it's wrong to suggest they may have been doing it. :twitch:

If it was indeed a fact of life for many, I see nothing wrong - and certainly no implied insult - in saying so and factoring it in. But whether it's true or not that a victim was soliciting when she encountered her killer, what did you need to excuse on her behalf?

Again, I'm really not getting this at all - sorry.

Love,

Caz
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