Top 120 Hallie Rubenhold Quotes (2026 Update)
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101. “Is it any wonder that Polly fled the comforts of the Cowdrys’ home, that Annie could not bear to tell her sisters where she lived, that Elisabeth never let anyone truly know her, that Kate fell out with her children, and that by age twenty-five Mary Jane had become an angry drunk?”

— Hallie Rubenhold

102. “Over the course of his career as a factory owner, he would use foreign workers, death threats, spies, and imprisonment to break strikes.”

— Hallie Rubenhold

103. “His engaging patter would have enchanted strangers in every pub and marketplace. He was footloose and went where the wind blew him.”

— Hallie Rubenhold

104. “By the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the trafficking of women between Britain and continental Europe had become a lucrative enterprise.”

— Hallie Rubenhold

105. “Before the introduction of the Marquess of Queensbury’s rules in 1868, boxers were permitted to wrestle as well as throw punches.”

— Hallie Rubenhold

106. “Like Ellen Holland, whose name the journalists could not even bother to confirm or record correctly, Polly was just another impoverished, aging, worthless female resident of a Whitechapel lodging house.”

— Hallie Rubenhold

107. “If the lodging-house population was comprised of 8,530 people and a third, or 2,844, of those residents were female, and if it were to be accepted that 1,200 of these women could be identified as prostitutes, that would still indicate that the majority of them, or 1,644, were not engaged in any form of prostitution at all.”

— Hallie Rubenhold

108. “Irregular unions,” the term for couples who lived together without benefit of marriage or who carried on extramarital relationships, went against the strict regulations of the Peabody Buildings.”

— Hallie Rubenhold

109. “For five months after Annie’s birth, Ruth’s position remained a precarious one, especially as she soon found herself pregnant with a second child.”

— Hallie Rubenhold

110. “While the coffeehouse may have had its dedicated adherents, a business could rise or fall based on its location: too many pubs and too few teetotalers nearby could close the shutters of even the most welcoming coffee room.”

— Hallie Rubenhold

111. “The family, now six in number, took a house at 131 Trafalgar Street, on what was described as “a terrace of two-story brick cottages.” Although the road and its dwellings had been constructed relatively recently, shortly after 1805, they had not weathered the passage of sixty years especially well.”

— Hallie Rubenhold

112. “Ellen described her roommate as “melancholy” and said “she kept herself to herself,” as if “some trouble was weighing upon her mind.”

— Hallie Rubenhold

113. “While life in London held many benefits for a private coachman, John’s work could come and go like the tide.”

— Hallie Rubenhold

114. “Far from being a sanctuary to which sufferers could retreat for a cure, Gothenburg’s venereal disease hospital had a reputation for treating patients as prisoners.”

— Hallie Rubenhold

115. “Household income ebbed and flowed according to the number of mature earners residing under a single roof.”

— Hallie Rubenhold

116. “The courses their lives took mirrored that of so many other women of the Victorian age, and yet were so singular in the way they ended. It is for them that I write this book. I do so in the hope that we may now hear their stories clearly and give back to them that which was so brutally taken away with their lives: their dignity.”

— Hallie Rubenhold

117. “That jubilee summer had been exceptionally warm and rainless.”

— Hallie Rubenhold

118. “Whatever relationship they formed, whether it was one based on a niece’s admiration of an older family member, or common interests, Kate came to believe that her Uncle Tom would offer her the sort of home and sympathy she did not find in Wolverhampton.”

— Hallie Rubenhold

119. “Neither did the editors nor the journalists covering this story deem it necessary, worthy, or interesting to delve into the biographical details of the victims.”

— Hallie Rubenhold

120. “In the span of only three weeks, death had carried away four of the Smiths’ six children. The enormity of such a tragedy is almost inconceivable to modern, Western sensibilities, particularly as their lives might have been spared had they lived in an era of antibiotics.”

— Hallie Rubenhold

121. “Had it been safe to return to the West End, she might have continued to do business in her former manner.”

— Hallie Rubenhold

122. “While William and Rosetta pursued their relationship, they were gambling with the reputation and the secure living circumstances of both the Nicholses and the Vidlers.”

— Hallie Rubenhold

123. “Shortly after Ruth and George’s marriage in 1842, a brother, George William Thomas, joined Annie and her parents. He was followed by Emily Latitia in 1844, Eli in 1849, Miriam in 1851, and William in 1854, bringing the number of children to six.”

— Hallie Rubenhold

124. “Annie was permitted visitors as well. On December 30, shortly after she arrived at the sanatorium, the logbook recorded that “Mrs Chapman’s husband called to see her.” John, who must have worried incessantly about his wife, had begged leave from his obligations to the Barrys during the height of the Christmas social calendar to ensure that she had settled in well. It was he who was paying the expense of her treatment, at a cost of twelve pence per week.”

— Hallie Rubenhold

125. “Alfred and the three youngest were sent to Bermondsey Union Workhouse as orphans. Thomas joined them there the following day.”

— Hallie Rubenhold

126. “The pension to which George had been entitled expired with his death; in the mid-nineteenth century the law did not permit a widow to make a claim on behalf of a deceased husband.”

— Hallie Rubenhold

127. “Given the series of tragedies to have befallen the Smiths, it is likely that Annie and John remained in London on account of her reluctance to part with her mother and siblings.”

— Hallie Rubenhold

128. “Furthermore, on the nights they were killed, no one came forward to state that they had been solicited by Polly, Annie, Kate, or Elisabeth.”

— Hallie Rubenhold

129. “Mr. Ashville” called himself “a painter and glazier by trade.” Out of work for twelve months, he had spent thirty-three nights sleeping on the Embankment until the weather grew too cold.”

— Hallie Rubenhold

130. “Although they were aware that many poorer women like Kate cohabited with monogamous common-law partners, no real distinction was made between this type of “fallen woman” and acknowledged prostitutes.”

— Hallie Rubenhold