‘The Demonisation of the Sexually Liberated Woman’ Part 2

The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper

by Hallie Rubenhold

‘Jack the Ripper’ is one of the many English tales we know about, over time his story has been told as a warning to women and young girls after dark. The tale has been turned into a myth, a legend to scare people on Halloween. However, this legend is TRUE. ‘Jack the Ripper’ was one of the most dangerous murderers in England, 1888 – worst still – he was never caught.

Nowadays, the story of ‘Jack the Ripper’ can be found across the internet – unlike true accounts of his victims. Over the course of the investigations in 1888, newspaper headlines and police detectives had concluded the victims were prostitutes.

"newspapers eager to scandalize […] Whitechapel’s lodging houses were brothels in all but name […] majority of women who inhabited them were, with very few exceptions, all prostitutes." (p.14 Rubenhold, H., 2019)

One hundred and thirty-two years later, thanks to Hallie Rubenhold, we have an insight into who the women were. We can have some answers to how they lived their lives. Were they simply ‘just prostitutes’ [titled in the book] victims of an opportunistic killer looking to clear the streets of London? Or were they women who had reached rock bottom, trying to survive in an era where society was already against them?

Reading Rubenhold’s book as an outsider looking in, it can only be assumed that the choices these five women made, contributed to their ghastly end. Unlike England today, where divorce can be granted for both parties in the marriage, from 1857 until 1923, the law only governed the husband.

If a woman wished to leave her husband legally, she required means to pay court fees and provide evidence against her husband. The 1857 Matrimonial Cause Act, entitled men to petition the court for a divorce based on the wife’s adultery – this too required evidence. If adulty was the only proof a woman needed to procure a divorce, she would have no issues. However, the law also required evidence of ‘aggravating’ adultery (rape, incest) and/or extreme cruelty towards the wife.

A quote from Rubenhold has summed up the absurdity of the 1857 Act:

"While a man could divorce his wife for a sexual liaison outside the marital bed, a woman had to prove her husband was guilty in addition to another crime […] permitting a man to enjoy as many sexual dalliances as he wished, so long as he did not also rape the servants, have sex with his sister and beat his wife too severely." (ibid, p.48)

The double standards in the Victorian era are, in my opinion, the main cause of working-class women turning to the streets and prostitution to survive.

When a woman chose to leave her family during the early period of the Victorian era, society turned against her. When a woman walked away from her motherly duties, it was often that she did so, knowing that the father had means to support the children and she did not. Women in the Nineteenth Century expected to be solely responsible for the domestic duties and caregiver for the family. If she had been employed before marriage, all earnings now belonged to the husband. The idea of a married woman working was unprecedented.

Sex before marriage was frowned upon by middle- and upper-class society. However, the working-class labouring communities were often exposed to overt sexualisation due to cramped domestic conditions. I am neither suggesting nor assuming that all teenagers within the working-class were experimenting with their sexual desires. However, I am exploring the possibility that young girls and boys succumbed to the sexual temptation that has surrounded them since birth.

The idea that women were to explore their sexual desires in their adult lives during the early nineteenth century is unheard of outside of the prostitution lifestyle. If a single woman was found to be living alone, yet showing signs of pregnancy, she became suspected of ‘lecherous living’. Rubenhold tells her readers of the fate that Elizabeth Stride succumbed to whilst she was living in Sweden as a young woman. Circumstances turned her ideals upside and caused her suffering in life. Elizabeth was subjected to societal humiliation, the discovery of a deadly and disfiguring disease, incarceration for excruciating procedures leading to a miscarriage. Being accused of leading a lustful lifestyle, even when the women were not selling sex, was leaving the women to face public shame and no hope of finding respectable employment.

Society, police, and newspapers branded the canonical five as prostitutes. Mary Ann ‘Polly’ Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, and Catherine ‘Kate’ Eddowes were labeled as ‘casual prostitutes’ simply because of their living circumstances. The friends, families, and acquaintances that were interviewed and gave testimonies during their coronary inquests, denied the prostitution allegations. Other than Mary-Jane who self-identified as a prostitute, these women were found guilty of living a degenerate existence by society outside of their own community. A woman found to be reliant on alcohol and having relationships with men after separating from their husbands, were considered immoral in the eyes of others.

"The woman who had lost her marriage and her home through her moral weakness was viewed with no less abhorrence than the woman who had engaged in extra-marital sex. A woman who was ‘drunk and disorderly’, who embarrassed herself in public, who demonstrated no regard for her appearance, who did not have a respectable home or a husband or family to regulate her conduct, was judged to be as much of a degenerate as a prostitute. They became one and the same: outcast women." (ibid., p.137-8)

The demonisation of the sexually liberated woman can be identified anywhere, you just need to look through the right window. Miah and I thought these two very different posts belong grouped to show context can relate in other ways. Miah was inspired to discuss the freedom of sexuality today, as well as discussing the life of a sex worker in Jamaica [Here comes the Sun – Nicole Dennis-Benn]. I hope I have given you an insight into the prejudicial, double standards, and societal judgment working-class women were faced with during the Victorian era. It would be amazing to say that women are not judged for their behaviour, sexual preferences, and conduct within society today, unfortunately, it is still the case.

If I have piqued your interest in the topic of the lives of the victims of Jack the Ripper or your interest in nineteenth-century judgment and lifestyle… keep an eye out for a follow-up post to dig deeper into Hallie Rubenhold’s The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper.

Stay safe and keep reading!

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Keep smiling, Christmas is almost here!

Maria