Talk:Jack the Ripper

Semi-protected edit request on 20 April 2021

The women were not all prostitutes, in fact, only one was identified as such in her death certificate. To label them so is careless and demeaning. See “The Five”, written by Hallie Rubenhold, 2019. LawyerLiz2021 (talk) 03:19, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

Thank you LawyerLiz2021 (talk) 03:21, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

I don't see anywhere in the article where it actually says they were all prostitutes. Only Frances Coles and Elizabeth Jackson are identified as prostitutes explicitly, and these sentences are sourced. Elsewhere phrases like 'typically' are used not 'all'. Edit requests should provide reliable sources and request explicit changes in the format 'Please change X to Y.' DrKay (talk) 05:22, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

Also this has been discussed at length, this is one person trying to overturn in one book over 100 years of scholarship. Now there might be an argument for adding "often described" or some such, if we say they all were, do we?Slatersteven (talk) 07:25, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

The Five by Hallie Rubenhold

I see there is no reference to Hallie Rubenhold and the prize winning book she wrote on The Five - there are wiki pages on Hallie and her book - but no cross links on this page. Can cross links be added? JuliaBracewell (talk) 09:10, 8 May 2021 (UTC)

Quite rightly so there is not. Rubenhold is a fringe theorist with an agenda to push, negating 130+ years of research. This has been discussed here and upon the Whitechapel murders article (Talk:Whitechapel murders#Prostitutes?).--Kieronoldham (talk) 20:41, 8 May 2021 (UTC)

Although Rubenhold is described by Wikipedia as 'British', she's actually American, having grown up and taken her first degree in the United States. And 'prostitution' is a crime or misdemeanour across almost all of that puritanical and institutionally strange country. It has never been a crime in England. There is no need to absolve the Whitechapel murderer's innocent victims of a crime they never committed, nor any need to pretend that they weren't making ends meet in the obvious way that would lead to them being alone on the streets that late at night, and therefore having the ill luck to meet the obviously insane and sexually deranged murderer. Rubenhold's apparent suggestion that the women were killed in their sleep while kipping down rough on the streets, when they mostly had known lodgings, is a bit odd. Khamba Tendal (talk) 18:23, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

Image of one of the victims.

In this article there is an image of one of Jack the Rippers mutilated victims and the image id very disturbing and grotesque so please remove it. Jdietr601 (talk) 16:20, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

Please read wp:notcensored.Slatersteven (talk) 16:21, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

I understand that but in this case I think it should be censored because of how grotesque the nature of the image is there might be younger people who read it and will see that image. Jdietr601 (talk) 02:17, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

Its not worse than they would see in most (if not all) books on the subject. It illustrates the nature of the injuries.Slatersteven (talk) 10:16, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

I must say I agree. It's gruesome and wholly unnecessary. We can't control what's in books, but a mutilated and butchered corpse presented without warning like this is upsetting. We should remove it; it will still be accessible to those who'd like to view it. FishAndCrisps (talk) 20:04, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

I understand many can find the image nauseous (even though nobody has clarified whether the offending image in question is that of Eddowes or Kelly). It is a historically significant image pertaining to the article and is not placed here for gratuitous purposes.

When people choose to research a well-researched, sterile article of this nature, they know what to expect. Just looking at some WW2-related articles, you can find Commons images like the one I have attached (and worse). No complaints on the talk page there because they are contextually significant.--Kieronoldham (talk) 20:27, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

That's a good point, but I think those illustrate the horrors of systemic war and persecution. The Jack the Ripper murders lack that context. Besides, it's an unusually gruesome image. Is having a small gallery with thumbnails that people can enlarge out of the question? FishAndCrisps (talk) 20:42, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

Jack the Ripper is, obv., known ultimately for "certain reasons" that the epithet conjures to mind, FishAndCrisps. The Holocaust (for example) is known for calculated industrial scale extermination, bigotry, cruelty, statistics etc. and in a similar context, images you will see (or for that matter text you will read) are hardly palatable to many. Last I checked, this article has over 1,020 active watchers. Consensus would need to be reached. I have actually thought about this issue re: naive minds reading articles, but as Slatersteven has pointed out, wp:notcensored. --Kieronoldham (talk) 20:57, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

I see your point, and see I'm a minority here. I just hope nobody too young to see such images but morbidly curious isn't upset. FishAndCrisps (talk) 14:01, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

this might be of some help, but it won't prevent casual visitors of the page to see said image(s), of course. Lectonar (talk) 18:40, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 5 July 2021

On the Jack the Ripper page there is no mention of the book "The Five" by Hallie Rubenhold published in 2019 which details the lives of the five canonical victims and shows that they were not "prostitutes" as is still maintained on the Jack the Ripper page. The word "prostitutes" needs to be removed from that first paragraph leaving just the word "females" and the book citation needs adding to the Further Reading. 77.102.116.223 (talk) 17:03, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

PLease see all the talk pages threads about this in the talk page archive.Slatersteven (talk) 17:06, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

 Not done for now: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{edit semi-protected}} template. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 19:45, 5 July 2021 (UTC)