I utterly despise Victorian role play by people who try to promote the virtues of their version of ‘nineteenth century life’ as a type of lifestyle choice. ‘Victorian life’ was not ‘more sustainable’ or about ‘slow living’. 🧵



Where do we even start with this nonsense? Much of ‘Victorian life’ was powered by coal burning, perhaps the least sustainable source of fuel. Victorian industry polluted waterways with its industrial waste, the air in the cities was unbreathable in some places.

Right. So here we go again, my 3rd encounter with having my IP stolen. This time of my book, The Five. 2 years ago I was approached by @VICE productions to co-present and advise on a documentary series about the Ripper victims, which I ended up pulling out of. Here's the story.🧵

https://twitter.com/WhoresofYore/status/1546911161920245760

I was in July 2020 to participate in the series that had been commissioned by @channel5_tv . The producer told me she had read my book and wanted me to be involved. I agreed because I thought this would be an opportunity to tell the victims' stories, and not the killer's story.

This old chesnut - men say something sexist, then a woman from their camp (who lives under the shadow of misogyny and thinks the only way to cope is to become a misogynist herself) repeats the slur, thereby legitimising the slur 'because a woman said it'.

bbc.co.uk/news/uk-englan… When you think this government can't sink any lower, they always show us that the bottom lies even further below that which you had thought was the bottom.

Anyone claiming that "Today women use abortion as a means of birth control" really needs to crack open a history book about how women "controlled family size" for the past couple of millennia. The level of ignorance about women's lives in the past is just staggering. Jaw-dropping. On the front page of any 18th century newspaper was an ad for Hooper's Female Pills, taken for 'bringing on the menses' or getting rid of 'obstructions to the womb'.

Women spend so much of our lives living in fear of physical attack that most of us have completely normalised the experience. I'm not sure men fully appreciate what this is like. I've even surprised myself that I've just accepted it as 'part of being a woman'. Some examples... I never cut through a park or a woodland, walk on an empty street or down a dark alley at night. At night, I sit in the back seat of a taxi always & hold my phone. If the doorbell rings at night and I'm alone, I don't answer it. When walking at night, I always check behind me...

It's all about him, isn't it?
In fact, there's quite a lot to unpack about how this story was reported.
Here we go... The article spends a lot of time discussing how Burnell has suffered as a result of what he did. While Burnell is certainly entitled to legal representation, the newspaper decides how much of the abuser's defense it wants to print.

Has anyone else who researches19th century working class families ever noticed that people seem to either live a ridiculously long time or die tragically young? Also, anyone who still thinks the late 19th and early 20th century lower middle classes didn't have premarital sex needs to spend some time looking at family birth and marriage records.

We celebrate the conviction of a murderer while also managing to defame the victim by repeating the murderer's unsubstantiated claim that "She was also a most overbearing and dominant character". In other words, Belle Elmore asked for it. We can do better than this.

https://twitter.com/TheHistoryPress/status/1319190767223607296

We seriously need to consider what parts of a murder narrative we are parroting when we repeat a story. We need to ask, is this true? Where did this come from? Who said this? A murder victim doesn't get to give their side of the story in court. The murderer does.

Many people have asked me why I didn’t include Martha Tabram in my exploration of the lives of the women killed by Jack the Ripper. Martha is not considered one of the Canonical Five victims. However, I thought I’d briefly tell her story today, so buckle up... #thefivewomen Martha died on the 7th of Aug, 1888, several weeks before Polly Nichols was killed. Her body was found on the landing of George Yard Buildings, off Wentworth street in Whitechapel. She’d been stabbed multiple times. That’s all I'm going to say about her actual murder.

A week has passed since the murder of Anastasia Yeshchenko, a fellow female historian of the 18th & 19th centuries. Not surprisingly, there is virtually no coverage in the English language press about who she was but a lot about her murderer. I'd like redress this imbalance here. From a Russian source, @nokingbutCaesar I was sent some translations of what's being said about her in Russia. She is described as 'An honest and truthful woman who was never afraid of having an unpopular opinion if she believed it was truth'.

Jack the Ripper’s victims had to be whores. Anyone saying different risks a trolling | Stephanie Merritt theguardian.com/commentisfree/… And this issue is one faced by many historians, not just women. I believe @guywalters was subjected to similar abuse when he published Hunting Evil.

At little story about abortion, in a series of tweets.
Once upon a time abortion was illegal, but this didn’t stop women from doing everything they could to procure one. Some listened to the wives tales and took hot baths, went for vigorous rides on their horses, or even threw themselves down the stairs.

After the incident last night, when a Ripperologist at a talk I gave insisted that all 5 victims were prostitutes without having read my book, people have been asking, "why is it so important to Ripperologists that they were ‘prostitutes’?" This thread explains why... 1. The obvious reason: bad women deserve to be punished. It’s easier to dismiss the victims if you view them as less than the killer, who is often described as clever, cunning and almost ‘supernatural’. Even the recent BBC doc on the Ripper took his PoV on the killings.

It's been an incredibly exciting week, with another one to come next week, but I just wanted to give a shout out to the support I've had from a wonderful group of historians and writers in launching this book. You are the best friends and colleagues I could ever wish for. People like to think that in order to get to the top you need to push others to the side. Nothing could be less true. Friendly support, kindness and a sense of community helps us through our dark writing crises. The idea that competition makes us better creatives is wrong.

Today is publication day for THE FIVE. Writing this book has given me a sense of purpose like no other. Today the names and stories of Polly Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Kate Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly have a chance to be heard more than the name Jack the Ripper. If we tell their stories and allow ourselves to know these women as the individuals they were; the sisters, wives, mothers, daughters, servants, ballad sellers, coffee house keepers and sex workers, we can never again look upon them as anonymous victims.

I agree with what @DrEstellePrnq is saying and the frustration. There is a fine balance to be struck and some films will get it right, while others won't. There are so many factors at play that go into making a film.

https://twitter.com/DrEstellePrnq/status/1089457174131150848

Often the tone and angle of the film, which is decided at the outset, during the creative process determines the level of accuracy - if the film will be light- hearted, revisionist, faithful to history, or a 'modern' interpretation of events.

"She alienates every male adviser, marries a man for his skills at oral sex and loses her crown (and later her life) because she refuses to compromise. This makes her a Good Feminist Role Model."
Mary Queen of Scots is a bad lesson in good feminism ft.com/content/a1a0a8… So, my question is this; we are fascinated with Tudor queens, but why do we feel such an overwhelming need to constantly rewrite these women's experiences so they reflect our own modern values? Is not trying to understand their lives in their own contexts good enough?

130 years ago today, a woman who battled with alcoholism, spent time in one of the first all female rehab centres in the UK trying to overcome it before it overcame her, was murdered in a yard off Hanbury Street. Her name was Annie Chapman. Annie's father had been a soldier in the 2nd Life Guard, she had grown up between Knightsbridge and Windsor. Her father later became a gentleman's valet for a Crimean War hero, and also suffered from alcohol addiction. He cut his own throat while in Wrexham with his employer.