What are you currently reading?

[Chris B]

Well, police around the world are famously willing to put lots of resources into the deaths of homeless people, so I'm sure they've all been caught.

 

Oh, and a bit of googling reveals Richard Ramirez (the Night Stalker) attacked and killed multiple sleeping women. So did Ted Bundy. For starters.

Edited June 20, 2019 by Chris B

[Brewster McCloud]

That's an irrelevant point because the police at the time of the Ripper murders put all their resources and manpower towards catching the killer. It didn't matter whether the victims were prostitutes, homeless, or whatever. It wasn't like the police at the time were like "ah, bunch of dead prozies, fuck it, let's be lazy". The very fact that the police at the time made a superhuman effort  to catch the murderer of some ripped whores rather negates your view.

[Brewster McCloud]

10 hours ago, Chris B said:

Well, police around the world are famously willing to put lots of resources into the deaths of homeless people, so I'm sure they've all been caught.

 

Oh, and a bit of googling reveals Richard Ramirez (the Night Stalker) attacked and killed multiple sleeping women. So did Ted Bundy. For starters.

You're quite right. In my defense, though, both Bundy and Ramirez also attacked people who weren't sleeping. It wasn't like that was their fetish, nor were their victims homeless and left displayed in areas notorious for prostitution, so one can speculate that breaking into their homes was enough of a violatory thrill for them. I just don't see any reason to believe that JTR attacked sleeping victims, specifically, though. He might have, but from what I've read, it seems most likely that he posed as a customer, approached the women and let them lead themselves to the sites of their own deaths. If you consider where the bodies were found, that would be the most plausible conclusion.

As for the "plucky feminist historian gets attacked by online trolls" narrative that newspapers like the Guardian have lapped up, here's Paul Begg writing before the book spawned a monster:

"I think the pre-publication publicity puffery for Hallie Rubenhold’s book is unfortunate. It should be self-evident why the unidentified murderer receives oodles more attention than the victims in books that are primarily concerned with the identiy of the murderer. We all knew the victims weren’t born in Whitechapel and that they had full lives before they ended up there. we all knew that these women had been married and had children, so there was nothing to question. The puffery makes the author sound like a total novice excited to discover something they didn’t realise everyone already knew, like a child telling everyone there was a battle fought near Hastings in 1066. Or it suggests that the book is aimed at readers who have little or no prior knowledge of the case, who will react with a ‘gosh, wow’ and be conned into thinking that Rubenhold has uncovered something new. It’s to be hoped that neither is true and that the publicist was trying to make something saleable.

I recently reviewed an awful book by Rebecca Frost which looked at the way the victims have been portrayed in books over the years. But Frost clearly had little or no grasp of the history of Ripper writing - that authors had no access to the official files until the 1970s and no easy access until the 1990s, no easy access to newspapers other than The Times or to genealogical databases such as Ancestry until the late 1990s, and so on and so on. And, apparently like Hallie Rubenhold, she didn’t appreciate that books largely concerned with attempting to identify the murderer were not much interested in the victims other than for the clues they provided to the killer’s identity (pretty much as in real life). It didn’t help that Frost was manifestly biased and determined to present Ripper authors in a poor or bad light.

Some of the comments Hallie made on Twitter suggest that she may have had the same intention in mind. I hope not. It would be a shame if someone eventually had the clout to get a major publisher interested in a book on the victims, turned it into another ill-founded attack on Ripper authors."

How prescient he was.

 

Edited June 21, 2019 by Brewster McCloud

[Brewster McCloud]

On a happier note, and the risk of raising the hackles of Houchen for double, nay triple posting (!), I'm currently reading this:

 

It's great but a bit depressing. What I'm finding most interesting so far is how Fox News got into bed with the Tea Party wackos and the militias, and how this, disastrously, became the default setting for a lot of right-leaning Americans. I'd always considered them fringe cunts and nutjobs, but this book makes it very clear how conspiracy theory has infiltrated what used to be sober discourse in the mainstream. I used to have a bit of empathy with the small government, libertarian mindset, but reading this it's quite clear that it's a path to gun nut insanity. It's all very well trumpeting freeze peach, but not when your audience are liable to take up arms and harm people as a result of the propaganda. 

The really scary thing is how Obama being elected president galvanized the loonies; they thought he was going to take their guns away and impose a fascist regime; it's horrifying to consider that people - normal people with jobs and shit - actually think this.

Edited June 21, 2019 by Brewster McCloud

[Chris B]

12 hours ago, Brewster McCloud said:

And, apparently like Hallie Rubenhold, she didn’t appreciate that books largely concerned with attempting to identify the murderer were not much interested in the victims other than for the clues they provided to the killer’s identity (pretty much as in real life).

This is exactly - EXACTLY - the point that Rubenhold is making with her book. How can she not have appreciated that?

[Brewster McCloud]

37 minutes ago, Chris B said:

This is exactly - EXACTLY - the point that Rubenhold is making with her book. How can she not have appreciated that?

Well, it's not really much of a "point", is it, given the fact that the point has already been made? I don't really know why you're getting upset about it. Begg's point is simply that most people want to read books about whodunnit, there is no conspiracy of misogynist trolls.

[BomberPat]

35 minutes ago, Brewster McCloud said:

Begg's point is simply that most people want to read books about whodunnit

Then they can read any one of the countless books that frames the conversation about Jack The Ripper around that angle, rather than complaining about one which quite explicitly doesn't. 

Quote

Slagging off the police? What more could they have possibly done given the methods available at the time?

You could try reading the book you admit to not having read before attacking a vague approximation of its conclusions, just a thought.

Quote

The only debate about the Maybrick diary is whether it was a contemporary forgery or a modern one. 

That would be the diary of James Maybrick, which has little bearing on Bruce Robinson's argument that the Ripper was Michael Maybrick.

Quote

considering the bodies were found in notorious areas where prostitutes would take their clients

A woman who exists in an area frequented by prostitutes does not a prostitute make. Your attempt to refute my earlier post is just a laundry list of all the assumptions and insinuations that I was criticising, only you've somehow attempted to present it as a defence for that same lazy reasoning. 

If you'd read the book, and I'm not convinced that you had, you'd hopefully realise that a social historian putting forth any number of reasons why women may end up on the streets alone is a more compelling argument than, "they were in an area frequented by prostitutes, so must be prostitutes". 

"Ripperology" is an incestuous boys' club of circular referencing, poor academic practice, and ahistorical nonsense in service of an established narrative. And, yes, it's rife with misogyny. 

I'm sure none of the 226 pages (on a forum where discussion of other "Jack The Ripper non-fiction" rarely goes beyond a single page, and when it does, it's unlikely to get out of single figures) of the thread about this book on the JTR forums are because the author questioned the established narrative, surely? It can't be the work of "misogynist trolls", surely? A thread I'm sure you're aware of, given that you quoted extensively from a post Paul Begg made there. 

https://jtrforums.com/showthread.php?t=28981

[Brewster McCloud]

I'm not going to read Robinson's book for the same reasons I wouldn't read any silly conspiracy book, weather it concerns Jack the Ripper, the moon landing or the JFK assassination. I love Withnalil and I as much as the next man, but that doesn't mean I think Robinson has anything worth saying regarding JTR.

The reason I quoted Paul Begg, sonny Jim, is that I consider him an expert on the case. No more no less. 

I ask you this: why is it sexist to look at the available documents and come to a conclusion based upon them? Why is it so important to you that she's right and everyone else is wrong?

[BomberPat]

15 minutes ago, Brewster McCloud said:

I ask you this: why is it sexist to look at the available documents and come to a conclusion based upon them? Why is it so important to you that she's right and everyone else is wrong?

It's not important to me that she's right and everyone else is wrong, it's important to me that the historical method relies on the fair weighting of evidence and reasonable consideration of new theories. 

What's sexist is the tone and volume of the attacks - I won't use the word criticism, as that can imply a degree of academic rigour - that are applied to Rubenhold that are at of an entirely different nature to discourse within the "Ripperology" sphere. It's an interesting, but largely unremarkable, work of Victorian social history, yet their discussion of it amounts to more than 200 pages, compared to other far more contentious assertions around the case barely stretching to 2 pages, if that. 

Every aspect of your argument suggests you haven't read the book, so I'll leave it there.

Quote

I'm not going to read Robinson's book for the same reasons I wouldn't read any silly conspiracy book

Probably best refrain from criticising its interpretation of the police's actions around the case, then, I'd have thought.

Quote

The reason I quoted Paul Begg, sonny Jim, is that I consider him an expert on the case.

Such an expert that he vouched for the likely authenticity of the "autobiography" of Jack The Ripper, as obvious a hoax as there's ever been. How's that for "looking at the available documents and coming to a conclusion based on them?", or are we not bothered about that when it's a bloke you agree with, and not a woman who disputes the suggestion that a woman out at night could only possibly be a prostitute?

[Brewster McCloud]

I haven't read the Bible from cover to cover either, but I'm pretty sure God doesn't exist. I've read several reviews of Robinson's book and they are sufficient to inform me that I probably wouldn't agree with him. Using your logic, if you haven't read everything Paul Begg has ever written, then you should should refrain from criticising him. I know Robinson was accusing Michael Maybrick, not his brother, but the only reason that name was ever mentioned in the Rippersphere was because of the diary. And no, I haven't read that either damnit. 

Nobody has ever said a women out at night could only be a prostitute - that would be ridiculous. What people have said is, based on statements made to the police at the time, Jack the Ripper's victims resorted to selling their vaginas in order to pay their rent. It's an unfortunate consequence of the poverty that was rife in the East end of London at the time, and not a reason to cast judgement I don't see why it's so problematic to say this. 

I'll ask you again, as an ignoramus who hasn't read her book and an apparent hater of women, what evidence does Rubenhold supply that the first 3 canonical victims never worked as prostitutes or that they were sleeping when they were  murdered? Did you listen to the podcast I linked to?

Edited June 22, 2019 by Brewster McCloud

[Chris B]

3 hours ago, Brewster McCloud said:

What people have said is, based on statements made to the police at the time, Jack the Ripper's victims resorted to selling their vaginas in order to pay their rent.

The way you talk about women and sex work (this and the unironic earlier use of "ripping whores") is really fucking weird.

Main reason I'm engaging at all is that it's worth acknowledging that a number of experts have made the point that penetrative sex wasn't the 'go-to' for many sex workers at the time. Your weird creepy attitude over talking about sex workers is getting in the way of all kinds of facts.

[Brewster McCloud]

It's not really weird. I perhaps used hyperbolic language in an attempt to prove my point(s). If I went too far then I apologize. I've actually found this discussion quite fruitful - you've proved me wrong about a couple of things and that's great. However, I do think I'm right about the main thing and I"m willing to go to the mat about it, because I'm fascinated by Jack the Ripper and I don't really get a chance to talk about the case in real life. 

What does having penetrative sex or not have to do with our argument? You've stumped me there. 

And, for the record, sigh, I do not think of sex workers in a discriminatory manner. They're just people doing a job to make money, often due to a terrible childhood, that's all. 

Edited June 22, 2019 by Brewster McCloud

[Chris B]

37 minutes ago, Brewster McCloud said:

It's not really weird. I perhaps used hyperbolic language in an attempt to prove my point(s). If I went too far then I apologize. I've actually found this discussion quite fruitful - you've proved me wrong about a couple of things and that's great. However, I do think I'm right about the main thing and I"m willing to go to the mat about it, because I'm fascinated by Jack the Ripper and I don't really get a chance to talk about the case in real life. 

What does having penetrative sex or not have to do with our argument? You've stumped me there. 

And, for the record, sigh, I do not think of sex workers in a discriminatory manner. They're just people doing a job to make money, often due to a terrible childhood, that's all. 

Because you used the weird phrase 'selling their vaginas', which means you're getting in the way of describing things accurately.

You asked what evidence Rubenhold had that not all the women were sex workers. You can't prove a negative. She's not saying they definitely weren't. Her point is that there's no evidence they all were, which changes the narrative. The areas where the women were killed were secluded and quiet and were used by sex workers - but they were also used by homeless people because they were quiet and secluded.

Homelessness has regularly been skipped over by people writing about the case, without being really examined. If homelessness connects more victims than sex work, that's a major shift in perspective. And it's also worth looking at how the women ended up in those places, whether or not they were sex workers. 

This is important because there's far more to learn from the case than a mystery. Learning about social conditions and how women were treated at the time, and how inequality creates victims, is absolutely worthy of study. 

Also, it can highlight how received wisdom can damage how a case is handled. Again, the Yorkshire Ripper documentary is amazing stuff for highlighting exactly this.

Edited June 22, 2019 by Chris B

[Brewster McCloud]

Fair point. I shouldn't have used the phrase "selling their vaginas" although that is generally what female prostitutes tend to do. I was being waspish, that's all. 

I agree with you for the most part - what interests me most about the case isn't the grim details of the murders, but rather what they allow one to read about concerning Whitechapel and what life was like for people there at the time. What on earth was George Hutchinson up to before Mary Jane Kelly's murder, for example? He made quite an extraordinary statement to the police and seems a viable candidate for being the killer to me, based on circumstantial evidence. It is indeed a "cast of thousands".

I know you can't prove a negative, but what Rubenhold is claiming - that there is no evidence to suggest that 3 of the canonical 5 victims had to resort to prostitution simply isn't true: there were statements made to the police from people closely associated with them that said they had. You might not consider this overwhelming evidence, but it is evidence nonetheless. It's dishonest of her to pretend it doesn't exist. We're not talking about "narratives" here, but matters of historical record that shouldn't be ignored to suit an agenda. 

Challenging predominant perceptions about anything is great, but you have to back it up if you're doing so. Hallie Rubenhold hasn't done so in my view. It reminds me of Thomas Horan claiming the Zodiac killer didn't exist and the whole thing was a hoax. At first it's sexy to listen to him - finally! someone brave enough to tell the truth! - but given enough time you realize that the emperor is naked and the boring old "narrative", was, in fact, correct. 

Edited June 23, 2019 by Brewster McCloud

[Chris B]

She acknowledges the statements, and talks about how they contradict others. She talks about them in the book, as you'd know if you read it like you said you were going to, rather than changing your mind and post the next day because you're not getting enough attention. 

Edited June 23, 2019 by Chris B