"Skewering The Ripperologists" Bad Women Podcast- Hallie Rubenhold

[Debra Arif]

Is the information and worksheet on the Whitechapel murders in the link below a genuine example of the quality of the information available for study in schools?!

https://schoolhistory.co.uk/industrial/jack-the-ripper/

[Gary Barnett]

It’s a pity Hallie didn’t go beyond The Five and include McKenzie in her book. Hers is the best example, I believe, of the police, press and coroner assuming from the outset that they were dealing with a prostitute murder. But hers was no. 8 in a possible series of prostitute murders. Even the Peterborough press initially assumed she had once been an habitué of their notorious Boongate. And that assumption continued until a few years ago when a local historian claimed Alice would have been known in Boongate.

[Gary Barnett]

It was really the thought of Rubenhold's book "as an example of how history should be studied" that depressed me.

I’m with you there!

[Chris Phillips]

I don’t have an issue with a greater emphasis being placed on the victim’ lives/vulnerability. It’s the surreptitious omission of the evidence that they were ‘unfortunates’ that bothers me. By all means inform your readers that there is evidence that Tim Donovan was said to have described Chapman as an unfortunate/prostitute and then give your reasons for rejecting the source material, but don’t just leave it out.

It was really the thought of Rubenhold's book "as an example of how history should be studied" that depressed me.

[Gary Barnett]

“However, the police were so committed to their theories about the killers choice of victims that they failed to conclude the obvious: the ripper targeted women while they slept.”

No one bothers asking her what "compelling evidence" exists of any of this.

JM

There is none. She accepts weak evidence when it suits her narrative, but requires official documentation in triplicate and signed in blood for anything she doesn’t want to acknowledge.

[Jonathan Menges]

“However, the police were so committed to their theories about the killers choice of victims that they failed to conclude the obvious: the ripper targeted women while they slept.”

No one bothers asking her what "compelling evidence" exists of any of this.

JM

[Gary Barnett]

It continues:

Rubenhold, whose book infuriated some self-styled “Ripper-ologists” because she wrote that there was no evidence to connect three of the five women to prostitution, said she was delighted. “I think the changes mark a real turning point in how we address the Ripper myth versus how we address the Whitechapel murders as an episode in history,” she said. “The Ripper myth, with all its assorted parts, is not history. It’s myth — and it’s a dangerous myth which teaches children that violence against women is acceptable and that it’s acceptable to demonise certain groups of women.”

Walsh, whose History is published by Hodder, said textbook authors had already started to revise their thinking but he went further than most. “In earlier iterations,” he said, “there was an emphasis on the mystery of who the Ripper was and an excessive focus on the lurid and sordid aspects of the case. This has morphed more into a wider focus on the world in which the crimes were committed.

“Students look at living and working conditions in Whitechapel, why they were so hard and how society reacted to the presence of such poverty and misery in such close proximity to the glittering opulence of late-Victorian London.”

Other recent changes in GCSE teaching include a recasting of Germany in the Second World War to show how the Nazi regime relied on collaboration rather than coercing all its citizens through fear. Scholars have also revisited the transatlantic slave trade to give a greater understanding of how enslaved people fought against it.

Rubenhold, winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction, concluded that while Mary Jane Kelly was a prostitute and that Elizabeth Stride had been arrested for soliciting four years before her death, there was no evidence that Annie Chapman, Mary Ann Nichols, or Catherine Eddowes were involved in the sex trade. They had been described as such because they were unmarried and lived in flop houses. She said: “Myths have no function in the history classroom, other than to be exploded. I’m thrilled these changes have been adopted.”


JM

In The Five, of course, HR says there is no ‘compelling evidence’ that Chapman was a prostitute. However, Chandler reported Donovan as saying precisely that:

‘…he had known her [Chapman] about 16 months, as a prostitute…’

And Donovan also told a reporter that she was an ‘unfortunate’ and at the inquest said that she frequently brought men to the lodging house.

And what might Amelia Farmer have meant by, ‘ she was not very particular what she did to earn a living and at times used to remain out very late at night.’ ?

Compelling? Perhaps not, but there’s more evidence that Chapman was a prostitute than that she did crochet work, which Hallie accepts at face value.

[Jonathan Menges]

The Times today has a report entitled "Jack the Ripper textbooks torn up to challenge ‘myths’":
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/j...yths-7t63l5bhb

The full article is behind a paywall, but it begins:
"The way the Jack the Ripper murders are taught in schools is changing after a historian argued that GCSE textbooks peddled a dangerous myth.
Pearson, which runs the Edexcel exam board, has adopted a textbook that contains fewer descriptions of the 19th-century killings to give greater emphasis to the vulnerability of the victims. It comes after the historian Hallie Rubenhold published her book The Five, which focused on the victims’ lives rather than the manner of their deaths. Ben Walsh, a former teacher and author of textbooks, read The Five and decided to use it as an example of how history should be studied."

Depressing but hardly surprising.

It continues:

Rubenhold, whose book infuriated some self-styled “Ripper-ologists” because she wrote that there was no evidence to connect three of the five women to prostitution, said she was delighted. “I think the changes mark a real turning point in how we address the Ripper myth versus how we address the Whitechapel murders as an episode in history,” she said. “The Ripper myth, with all its assorted parts, is not history. It’s myth — and it’s a dangerous myth which teaches children that violence against women is acceptable and that it’s acceptable to demonise certain groups of women.”

Walsh, whose History is published by Hodder, said textbook authors had already started to revise their thinking but he went further than most. “In earlier iterations,” he said, “there was an emphasis on the mystery of who the Ripper was and an excessive focus on the lurid and sordid aspects of the case. This has morphed more into a wider focus on the world in which the crimes were committed.

“Students look at living and working conditions in Whitechapel, why they were so hard and how society reacted to the presence of such poverty and misery in such close proximity to the glittering opulence of late-Victorian London.”

Other recent changes in GCSE teaching include a recasting of Germany in the Second World War to show how the Nazi regime relied on collaboration rather than coercing all its citizens through fear. Scholars have also revisited the transatlantic slave trade to give a greater understanding of how enslaved people fought against it.

Rubenhold, winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction, concluded that while Mary Jane Kelly was a prostitute and that Elizabeth Stride had been arrested for soliciting four years before her death, there was no evidence that Annie Chapman, Mary Ann Nichols, or Catherine Eddowes were involved in the sex trade. They had been described as such because they were unmarried and lived in flop houses. She said: “Myths have no function in the history classroom, other than to be exploded. I’m thrilled these changes have been adopted.”


JM

[Gary Barnett]

The Times today has a report entitled "Jack the Ripper textbooks torn up to challenge ‘myths’":

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/jack-the-ripper-textbooks-torn-up-to-challenge-myths-7t63l5bhb

The full article is behind a paywall, but it begins:
"The way the Jack the Ripper murders are taught in schools is changing after a historian argued that GCSE textbooks peddled a dangerous myth.
Pearson, which runs the Edexcel exam board, has adopted a textbook that contains fewer descriptions of the 19th-century killings to give greater emphasis to the vulnerability of the victims. It comes after the historian Hallie Rubenhold published her book The Five, which focused on the victims’ lives rather than the manner of their deaths. Ben Walsh, a former teacher and author of textbooks, read The Five and decided to use it as an example of how history should be studied."

Depressing but hardly surprising.

I don’t have an issue with a greater emphasis being placed on the victim’ lives/vulnerability. It’s the surreptitious omission of the evidence that they were ‘unfortunates’ that bothers me. By all means inform your readers that there is evidence that Tim Donovan was said to have described Chapman as an unfortunate/prostitute and then give your reasons for rejecting the source material, but don’t just leave it out.

[Chris Phillips]

Just to add two other things about that podcast.

(1) Rubenhold announced that a publisher of school textbooks in the UK had tweeted that they would be revising the description of all the Ripper victims as prostitutes in the light of her "groundbreaking" work.

The Times today has a report entitled "Jack the Ripper textbooks torn up to challenge ‘myths’":

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/jack-the-ripper-textbooks-torn-up-to-challenge-myths-7t63l5bhb

The full article is behind a paywall, but it begins:
"The way the Jack the Ripper murders are taught in schools is changing after a historian argued that GCSE textbooks peddled a dangerous myth.
Pearson, which runs the Edexcel exam board, has adopted a textbook that contains fewer descriptions of the 19th-century killings to give greater emphasis to the vulnerability of the victims. It comes after the historian Hallie Rubenhold published her book The Five, which focused on the victims’ lives rather than the manner of their deaths. Ben Walsh, a former teacher and author of textbooks, read The Five and decided to use it as an example of how history should be studied."

Depressing but hardly surprising.

[Caroline Brown]

Typical of the under-exposure and virtual absence of stories about male figures, equally hard pressed, is the mysterious and frankly alarming omission from any issues of the New Music Express featuring that LVP trio of East End buskers, Kozminski, Hyams, and Levy...a.k.a. The Moody Jews.

And take a bow, all those lesser known boys in blue, following on the traditions of the original Bow Street Runners, who were born again in the swinging sixties and repackaged as the little known but fabulous Bo Street Runners:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bo_Street_Runners

Another Kate Eddowes composition must surely be Needles and Pins, recorded by the aptly named Searchers.

Love,

Caz
X

[Howard Brown]

Typical of the under-exposure and virtual absence of stories about male figures, equally hard pressed, is the mysterious and frankly alarming omission from any issues of the New Music Express featuring that LVP trio of East End buskers, Kozminski, Hyams, and Levy...a.k.a. The Moody Jews.

[Gary Barnett]

Clay Pipe Alice had a song written about her.

It’s true, although in the folk tradition the details were subtly altered over the years.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kqmXLkJ8Bwk

[Gary Barnett]

How the hell can I, Gary ??? ...Everytime I listen to my English Folk Ballads ( EMI ) by that renowned trio of gee-tar pluckers, Martha, Poll, and Mylett.....I put on side A featuring Eddowes' chart toppin' classic....These Boots Were Made For Pawning.

Classic! (Your joke not Eddowes’ non-existent ballad.)

One of these days, How…

[Howard Brown]

Kate Eddowes was a famous ballad writer/performer don’t forget.

How the hell can I, Gary ??? ...Everytime I listen to my English Folk Ballads ( EMI ) by that renowned trio of gee-tar pluckers, Martha, Poll, and Mylett.....I put on side A featuring Eddowes' chart toppin' classic....These Boots Were Made For Pawning.