Do we all have a subconscious human tendency to take murder victims less seriously if they worked in the sex trade?
Hallie Rubenhold, author of this powerful and brilliantly researched examination of Jack The Ripper's five named victims — ‘prostitutes' whose throats he slit in the nights of autumn 1888 in Whitechapel — certainly believes so.
Soon after the murders, a reader wrote to The Times observing that the Ripper ‘at all events has made his contribution towards solving the problem of clearing the East End of its vicious inhabitants'.
Even nowadays, we tend to brush such women aside. The judge in the 2008 Ipswich serial murders trial felt the need to instruct the jury to ‘lay aside their prejudices' against the five victims who were prostitutes.
Read Full Article »