HUNDREDS OF BOOKS, FILMS AND TV shows have focused on Jack the Ripper, the serial killer who preyed on women in 19th-century London and whose identity remains a mystery. His victims were known, of course, yet little ink has been spilled on their behalf. In The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), social historian Hallie Rubenhold retells the story through Polly, Annie, Elizabeth, Kate and Mary Jane, and in the process reveals a new twist.
“Jack the Ripper killed prostitutes, or so it has always been believed,” Rubenhold writes, “but there is no hard evidence to suggest that three of his five victims were prostitutes at all. As soon as each body was discovered, in a dark yard or street, the…
