Whitechapel Autumn of Error by Ian Porter - #bookreview #blogtour

 Many of the women employed in the world's oldest profession were part-timers, spending much of their lives earning a pittance for long hours of tortuous work in other industries. Some attempted to live a double life of apparent respectability, keeping their night work a secret.

Maud Nash was such a woman...

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Whitechapel 1888; a killer is on the loose and the newspapers are ensuring the nation knows all about not just the crimes but the terrible living conditions in which they are being perpetrated.

Nashey, a tough, scary yet charismatic man of the night, whose mother had to prostitute herself when he was a boy, knows the identity of the killer but keeps it a secret. He believes the publicity generated by the murders is forcing the authorities to address the poverty and degradation in the area. He allows the killer to remain free (whilst ensuring no more women are attacked) so the unsolved murders continue to dominate the headlines. He meets Sookey, an eccentric middle-class slummer and civilising influence. The two of them share a mutual friend, Mary Kelly, a fiery young prostitute whose back-story tells of how she was reduced to such a life.

To fund his surveillance of the killer, Nashey agrees, against his better judgement, to assist an old adversary to commit a daring night robbery under the noses of the huge police presence in the area.

Is it too late for Nashey and Mary to correct their mistakes?

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Set in London's East End during the late 1880's when Jack the Ripper was a name on everyone's lips, the author has done a great job of capturing the menacing atmosphere in which people lived.

It has been well researched and there is more emphasis on the victims rather than Jack the Ripper himself.  The author demonstrates the poverty that Whitechapel's inhabitants lived vividly. It is obvious why so many people turned to crime and prostitution.

I liked the main characters of this book, namely Sookey, Nashey and Mary. Three very different individuals whose lives become intertwined as they experience the squalor of the area. They were well fleshed out and easy to engage with, although I did find Sookey's character took me a while to understand. However, there were women like her, Beatrice Webb/Potter springs to mind. Women who were committed to researching the lives of the poor.

The author describes the degradation and terror of living through such a time extremely well. A lifestyle that is fuelled by poverty, worry over where the next meal or nightly roof over their heads is coming from, coupled with the fear experienced of being on the streets after dark and becoming the Ripper's next victim.

Nashey discovers the Ripper's identity fairly early in the book, which gave this story a slightly different edge to the norm. The reader is let into this secret, and we follow Nashey's journey as he plots to reveal the Ripper's identity.

It is a moderately paced novel with a sufficiently interesting plot to keep the reader engaged. I think anyone who likes fiction set during this period will enjoy this book.

ISBN: 978 1805143987

Publisher:  Matador

Formats:  Paperback

No. of Pages:  384

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About the Author:

Ian Porter is a historian, lecturer, public speaker and walks guide. He has a particular interest in women's history and social history. His novels are renowned for being extremely well researched and historically accurate. Whitechapel Autumn of Error is a typically feminist, social history novel that brings the dark streets of the East End 1888 to life. He has written several other novels including the highly acclaimed Suffragette Autumn Women's Spring, set during the fight for the vote for women, and a Plague On Both Your Houses, set in both London and Berlin in 1918/19 during the final months of the Great War and the Spanish Flu. Ian is getting on a bit (well, aged 69). His grandparents were young adults living in East London at the time of the Whitechapel Murders.

(book and media courtesy of Random Things Tours)

(all opinions are my own)