The "respectable" women did not have anything to worry about, and this shows the great class distinctions in England at the time. The author continues, "They reinforced prevailing prejudices about the East End as a strange territory of savages, a social abyss, an inferno" (Walkowitz 77). To the upper class, these people did not exist, and should not exist, especially the pubic women who were forced to make their life on the streets.
In addition, after the murders, there was so much public outcry that several of the lodging houses these women relied on were raised, which made them homeless as well as desperate. The public simply wanted the problem to disappear, but it just relocated the women to an even more precarious position. There were even people that tried to profit off the women's deaths, opening up museums with wax figures of them depicted in detail. In reality, these women needed help from a society that...
Society so looked down on these women that they treated them like animals, when with guidance, most of them could have lived decent lives. This new public woman was frightening to Victorians, because she was asserting her independence, something that men in society certainly did not want. There were many other women in the East End who were working, taking care of their families, and struggling to survive, and these women were threats to the staid Victorian society that believed respectable women stayed home, took care of their husbands and families, and made no important decisions; those were all left up to the men. These public women tested the fabric of Victorian society, and that is why they were so frightening.
References
Walkowitz, Judith a. Jack the Ripper and the Myth of Male…
