Hallie Rubenhold

are basically clues to figuring out who Jack the Ripper was.

rather than stories in themselves and people and individuals in themselves.

Absolutely.

And I think the more the media, the more TV and film, especially, and some books and video games and comic strips, graphic novels, the more these things have

have picked up on the story.

And, you know, Jack Ripper is a source of kind of endless mystery.

You know, the more these women have been completely removed from the context of their real lives and recreated as, in many cases, figments of a sort of male sexualized imagination.

You know, these women were all believed to have been prostitutes at one time, which is not true, but I'm sure we'll come on to that.

And they were highly sexualized.

So when we see images of them, for example, in films, in graphic novels and video games, they are seen as kind of shabby but vaguely attractive prostitutes, you know, sauntering beneath the gaslights.

Often people are surprised to learn that they were not young because they've been depicted as being young and attractive before.

in popular culture.

And so this image has stuck and it's really pushed to the side all of the real aspects of these women's lives.

Basically, for Victorian society, you know, there were certain set of assumptions that were applied to these women and their lives when they were found in the circumstances that they were found in.

And Victorian prejudice informed that.

So, for example, you know, women who are dispossessed, women who are on the street at night, women with no home, women who are not connected to or part of a family, women who are drunk.

women who are unacceptable are beyond the pale.

They are sort of outlaws.

They are sub-women.

And so this idea that these women were shamed and disgraced was the starting point for identifying them as being prostitutes because it was believed that they were morally diminished anyway.