Rubenhold Sez :

[Howard Brown]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/art...lly-being-told


Rubenhold says: "No amount of women's labour in a factory, sweat shop or laundry, selling items in the street or doing piece-work from home would ever bring in an amount adequate to cover a family's needs and keep them from the workhouse."


Rubenhold says: "While separation among the working classes was not uncommon, it spelled the end of the woman’s respectable status among the ‘morally-minded’ of her community. Leaving the marital home rendered her unfit, immoral, a specimen of broken womanhood."

Not only were they regarded as a failure, after they had left a husband they couldn't remarry: any future relationship would be considered adulterous and any children of the unions illegitimate.

[Chris G.]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/art...lly-being-told


Rubenhold says: "No amount of women's labour in a factory, sweat shop or laundry, selling items in the street or doing piece-work from home would ever bring in an amount adequate to cover a family's needs and keep them from the workhouse."


Rubenhold says: "While separation among the working classes was not uncommon, it spelled the end of the woman’s respectable status among the ‘morally-minded’ of her community. Leaving the marital home rendered her unfit, immoral, a specimen of broken womanhood."

Not only were they regarded as a failure, after they had left a husband they couldn't remarry: any future relationship would be considered adulterous and any children of the unions illegitimate.

To be frank and realistic as to how it was back then, that was why the working class husband was the breadwinner and the woman stayed at home. It was up to the woman to take care of the home, and see that her husband was fed and cared for. By the societal rules of the day, he was the recognized important person in the relationship. Sorry, ladies.

But yes if the man died or was invalided or perish the thought the marriage dissolved, the family was in trouble. In the case of my paternal great grandfather, the family lived in Gateshead, County Durham, and he was a seaman on a merchant ship. He was killed when, as I understand it, he fell down a staircase aboard ship. It seems that my great grandmother may have gone into a workhouse and at least two of their three daughters ended up in the Seaman's Orphanage in Newsham Park, Liverpool.



Seaman's Orphanage, Newsham Park, Liverpool

[Howard Brown]

Rubenhold says: "No amount of women's labour in a factory, sweat shop or laundry, selling items in the street or doing piece-work from home would ever bring in an amount adequate to cover a family's needs and keep them from the workhouse."

According to Big Mouth, there weren't any widowed or single women who sustained a room or home from their earnings alone.




Rubenhold says: "While separation among the working classes was not uncommon, it spelled the end of the woman’s respectable status among the ‘morally-minded’ of her community. Leaving the marital home rendered her unfit, immoral, a specimen of broken womanhood."

According to Big Mouth, there weren't any working women with children who lost a husband who then remarried and resumed a home life.

If as Big Mouth says, 'separation was not uncommon', the community wouldn't make an issue of the woman's status...since it was so prevalent as she tries to make it sound. In short.... If everyone is doing it, there ain't nothing unique about it. No stigma.

Not only were they regarded as a failure, after they had left a husband they couldn't remarry: any future relationship would be considered adulterous and any children of the unions illegitimate.

Umm....its the same way today. If you leave your wife or husband, any future relationship is still adulterous and you can't get married again....its called bigamy....and technically, your kids would be considered illegitimate. Any 10 year old knows that.

[Chris G.]

Rubenhold says: "No amount of women's labour in a factory, sweat shop or laundry, selling items in the street or doing piece-work from home would ever bring in an amount adequate to cover a family's needs and keep them from the workhouse."

According to Big Mouth, there weren't any widowed or single women who sustained a room or home from their earnings alone. . .

Rubenhold may be a Big Mouth but she conceivably might be correct in that statement.

Don't forget, then as now, women's earnings back then as now would have been significantly below what men could earn for doing exactly the same job.

Widowed or single women who "sustained a room or home" may have had money from some other source.

Cheers

Chris

[Gary Barnett]

Rubenhold may be a Big Mouth but she conceivably might be correct in that statement.

Don't forget, then as now, women's earnings back then as now would have been significantly below what men could earn for doing exactly the same job.

Widowed or single women who "sustained a room or home" may have had money from some other source.

Cheers

Chris

Then we shouldn’t expect to see any working class women as heads of households containing young children on censuses. But we do.

Of course, it would have been harder for a woman to earn a decent wage for her family, but how would a higher-earning man, working incredibly long hours, have been able to care for his children? Particularly bearing in mind that many men had unstable/casual occupations. Who would be financially more secure, a woman charring for regular customers or a man looking for casual work on a daily basis at the docks or in the markets?

As for the social ostracism HR describes, it would have been far less prevalent in somewhere like the East End. I doubt that a woman living in Shovel Alley whose husband had absconded would have been looked down upon by her neighbours, many of whom she would have been related to.

[Howard Brown]

Thanks Gary.....all those facts Big Mouth carefully avoids commenting on in the umpteen or so book plugs she provides.

[Robert Linford]

Women have always been very good at organizing mutual support networks, looking after one another's klds etc. The big Nono is if they get the idea that an unattached woman is trying to steal their man.

[Gary Barnett]

Rubenhold sez:

Louis Boekee probably owned a portfolio of houses used as brothels. She is surprised at this since he was merely a labourer.

I can’t see how she extrapolates a portfolio of brothels from some connection (probably a tenancy) to 79, Pennington Street before the probable brothel-keeper John Miller moved in.

And far from being a labourer, he is recorded as being a gas fitter, and we don’t know whether he was an employee or an employer.

Clearly, on planet HR anyone who isn’t an academic, a professional or doesn’t work in meedja is a ‘labourer’ and obviously not in a financial position to rent a run-down hovel down by the docks.

She also tells us that Elizabeth Boekee took control of her husband’s brothel empire after his death. She and Johannes Morgenstern moved into 79, Pennington Street on the floor above the Millers.

But we know that the Millers moved out of the house around the time Mrs B moved back in.

So much for her impeccable research.

[Gary Barnett]

Rubenhold sez: The Five belonged to the Ripper.

86A04D55-51BB-4072-AD4A-56D2783A739C.jpeg

[Howard Brown]

Gary:

Maybe having children, she'd have instantly picked up on the support system Bob ( and over here, Nina) mentioned.

[Anna Morris]

Rubenhold sez:

Louis Boekee probably owned a portfolio of houses used as brothels. She is surprised at this since he was merely a labourer.

I can’t see how she extrapolates a portfolio of brothels from some connection (probably a tenancy) to 79, Pennington Street before the probable brothel-keeper John Miller moved in.

And far from being a labourer, he is recorded as being a gas fitter, and we don’t know whether he was an employee or an employer.

Clearly, on planet HR anyone who isn’t an academic, a professional or doesn’t work in meedja is a ‘labourer’ and obviously not in a financial position to rent a run-down hovel down by the docks.

She also tells us that Elizabeth Boekee took control of her husband’s brothel empire after his death. She and Johannes Morgenstern moved into 79, Pennington Street on the floor above the Millers.

But we know that the Millers moved out of the house around the time Mrs B moved back in.

So much for her impeccable research.

That is a lot worse than anything actual Ripperologists have suggested. I think the book in question was written for a fast buck...(uh, dollar....uh, pound....uh, Euro...) and sales were pushed with, IMO, fake feministic outrage.

[Chris G.]

Rubenhold sez: The Five belonged to the Ripper.

How does the Sprinkler fit in?

Maybe when the audience grows restless and starts to throw rotten fruit, the Sprinkler comes on and Ms Rubenhold makes her escape. . .

[Gary Barnett]

How does the Sprinkler fit in?

Maybe when the audience grows restless and starts to throw rotten fruit, the Sprinkler comes on and Ms Rubenhold makes her escape. . .

Perhaps the sprinkler was what saved Polly Nichol’s birthplace from the Great Fire of London.

https://www.jtrforums.com/showthread...ight=gunpowder

[Adam Went]

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, once again I would encourage anyone who hasn't done so, to read Henry Mayhew's social studies from the Victorian era. Most of it was done a generation or so before JTR's time, but there's no better insight into what life was like back then for a number of different individuals and families with many different dynamics. Suffice to say, just because the family was together with a capable man as the head of the family, didn't mean they were safe from the workhouse either. Likewise, just because women were left on their own, didn't necessarily mean that they didn't have ways and means for better supporting themselves. Much of it came down to their family situations and whether or not they had an adequate support network. Much has changed in the way of gender equality since then, and that's a great thing - but family dynamics and support networks, or lack of, still make or break individuals to this day.

I can't speak for everybody else but I certainly don't think any differently of JTR's victims for doing what they had to do in order to survive, I don't understand why there's this sudden belated stigma about it all.

Cheers,
Adam.

[Gary Barnett]

Rubenhold Sez she was the first to have published a full-length book on the five.

What about this?

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ripper-Bloo.../dp/095682479X

I’ve no idea how good it is, but it was published six years before The Five .