Of all the feedback I've had about The Five, both good & bad, the one accusation that never ceases to puzzle me is that I've attempted to 'save' these women from their true identity as 'prostitutes' and in doing this have upheld the notion that 'bad women deserve to be punished'.

Anyone who has read this book and still believes this, hasn't actually read it, or read anything that I've subsequently written or said about researching or writing this book. My objective in writing The Five was to show that these women were human beings and worthy of respect.

I put that argument forward clearly in the final chapter. It doesn't matter who they were or how they lived their lives, no one deserves to be murdered. 'Saving them' from their previous identity as 'prostitutes' wasn't a goal of mine, discovering the truth of their lives was.

This is how it happened: I studied the historical documentation, I read through a vast amount of secondary material and I let the documentation lead me to my conclusions. Responsible history-writing isn't about forumlating a theory and then looking for documents to support it.