Just What Do People Expect From a Jack the Ripper Exhibition?

[Limehouse]

Yes, fair point Suzi, it was a word of a bygone age. Can sympathise with you about the book cases. We have half a dozen huge ones but still have book piled on top of them to the ceiling and still more books elsewhere. I am going to pay some attention to the problem during this summer - but like you, can't bring myself to throw any away. The only book I am willing to part with is Cornwell's 'Case Closed' which will be donated to the college charity shop!

[Suzi]

Hi Limehouse-
Yep I agree about the bookcases which seem to have some sort of inbuilt sort of breeding system! Have just looked up from this to see-yes it's still there...The Patsy,next to Uncle Jack and The Diary..(I must point out though that they're not in the same place as 'The Others'...don't want any cross-infection do we!!.... ...somehow I can't bring myself to even let them go....after all they've given us all so much 'amusement' over the years...it would be like throwing an old but slightly dotty relative out onto the streets!!

Of course,my habit of 'just looking' at the book stalls at local 'Fates worse than death' doesn't help the situation!! OMG the local one is in two weeks!!.
The problem then of course is to secrete the new acquisitions in amongst the 'residents' so that they're not noticed!!!..Years of experience there though!...some of those shelves must be at least three deep!!

Suzi x

[Veritas]

I think what most people want (unrealistically) is to see the Whitechapel of their imagination - with the swirling fogs, gas lamps, Hansom cabs with a guy who looks like their worst nightmare carrying a knife.

[John Bennett]

I think what most people want (unrealistically) is to see the Whitechapel of their imagination - with the swirling fogs, gas lamps, Hansom cabs with a guy who looks like their worst nightmare carrying a knife.

Maybe some folk out there, but I don't think those who post on these boards would have been expecting anything of the kind. We know enough.

If the swirling fog / top hat / cloak and dagger /busty ladies angle had been used, then the exhibition would have been a right-off. Thankfully, it wasn't.

And hooray for that!

JB

[Natalie Severn]

Hi,
Following on from John"s post above,I saw John at the exhibition yesterday---well to be precise it was at one of the talks that are presented alongside the Museum"s exhibition of Jack the Ripper and The East End.
I must admit that most of the talk focussed on the East End rather than Jack the Ripper,but having said that I must admit I found it one of the best events I have ever been to!
In part this was because I at last was able to hear the wonderful [professor] Bill Fishman and hear him describe, in his very own words, the momentous East End event that stopped the Fascists allied to Hitler entering the East End, just before the 2nd World War.Bill then described how he himself became a street fighting 15 year old Jewish youth ,fighting alongside other youths,- Irish docker"s sons ,Jewish East Enders ,all of them united in the determination to stop Mosley and his thousands of fascists from marching down Cable Street and into the East End !
Another of our brilliant and famous historians [professor] Jerry White,author of "Rothschild Buildings"---talked aboutthe subject matter of his book "Life in an East End Tenement Block" treated us to his research into Flower and Dean Street,Thrawl Street and much more spellbinding stuff besides-at one point it even became a very respectable street apparently.
Finally,almost like the icing on the cake,there was Rachel Lichtenstein and Iain Sinclair to talk about "Rodinsky"s Room"-both were utterly mesmerising and enthralling.
Norma

[Natalie Severn]

two or three more bits of information from Professor White"s talk...

Professor White ,when discussing the waves of immigration by Jews from Eastern Europe into the East End,in the 1880"s described how women like Kate Eddowes and Liz Stride came to work for Jewish families.Because of the need to make enough of a living to keep body and soul together, many East End women had several part time jobs-among them cleaning and lighting fires for Jewish household"s on the Sabbath-it being forbidden by their faith to do so on that day.
He described how it was reciprocally beneficial to both parties such an arrangement and that these two communities living alongside one another,one in local lodging houses the other in model dwelllings,actually needed each other.He then pointed out that this throws into question the notion that the Jews "kept themselves separate" from their Gentile neighbours.
Another point he made was that since very few women were capable of earning enough money to provide for themselves or their children from the poorly paid ,part time jobs they could get,very large numbers found they had to turn to prostitution to keep their families alive,and some kind of regular roof over their heads.There was not much choice in fact,if families were not to starve.
Prof White referred to the way extortionist landlords were often very well to do[we know that one of them was the Prime Minister,himself, Lord Salisbury]and that some of them were rich Jews!He talked at some length about how , after the Autumn of Terror,the govt ordered the demolition and rebuilding of slums and how this at first brought even more misery to an East End community already living well below the bread line.This was because people were given no time to get other accomodation-they were simply evicted.He read from a report demonstrating how it created chaotic scenes and where one man [at least] died of exposure because of having to sleep outdoors in the Winter.