JTR Museum

[Wyatt Earp]

I think it should be protested, and props to the community for doing so! A scholarly museum on the history of working- class women in the East End would be great, but not this thing.

Great articles, hope the papers keep it up. Let's KEEP it closed!

Do you also want to shut down the John Dillinger Museum?

I’m among the many who don’t like the “promise one thing and deliver something else” aspect to the thing, especially when a true women’s history museum is clearly needed. In principle, however, I don’t see anything wrong with a “Jack the Ripper Museum,” as long as it’s handled in a responsible way.

[Wyatt Earp]

Proper museums are vehicles for education, just like books and articles and conferences. I should think that everyone in our field would be in favor of a Jack the Ripper Museum, if done right.

If there are controversial displays, or displays with strong graphic content, do what museums have always done; hang a sign saying some visitors might find these materials offensive.

If money is being made from a museum, who cares? I'm sure the city officials in Indiana view the Dillinger museum as a nice little money-making opportunity for their community. If the museum is worthwhile, that's what counts.

[Ianwelly]

Duped

This has been controversial. The owner Mark -Palmer Edgecumbe led people to believe in his original planning application that it was to be a Museum of Women's History.
"documenting the formidable role of women in the “social, political and cultural heritage” of London, to “celebrate the contribution of East End women”, to create an oral history archive of women living in the East End today. The images and words within the planning documents suggest a showcase of womens’ power and activism: referencing the Suffragette movement, the Matchgirl strikes, the Women’s Social and Political Union, the Eq"ual Pay marches, women of the Black Trade Unions movement, anti-racist campaigning."
A lot of people felt duped and it was prevented from opening on the first day by a protest.

http://www.thesociologicalreview.com/information/blog/still-public-still-furious-jack-the-ripper-and-cultural-misogyny.html

[Pcdunn]

Hello, Wyatt.

No I have nothing against a John Dillinger Museum. He was, after all, a real person whose biography is known, and was important to a specific place and time in United States history.

I think it is deceitful to promise one kind of a museum (The History of Women in the East End Museum) and deliver another (The Jack the Ripper Museum), and on those grounds I approve of the protesting.

[Pcdunn]

Welcome to Tombstone

Proper museums are vehicles for education, just like books and articles and conferences. I should think that everyone in our field would be in favor of a Jack the Ripper Museum, if done right.

If there are controversial displays, or displays with strong graphic content, do what museums have always done; hang a sign saying some visitors might find these materials offensive.

If money is being made from a museum, who cares? I'm sure the city officials in Indiana view the Dillinger museum as a nice little money-making opportunity for their community. If the museum is worthwhile, that's what counts.

I've been to your lovely town of Tombstone, Mr. Earp, and I really enjoyed my visits. All of the displays, museums, shops, live entertainments, and tours focused around yourself and your family, friends, and enemies are well done, and some are educational. And I am sure most residents do indeed make money from visitors interested in the "shoot-out at the OK Corral."

I think a museum on the Ripper crimes would be better titled "The Whitechapel Murders Museum" since we don't know much beyond the names of several of the victims, when, where, and how they were murdered, and some limited evidence that has survived.

[Wyatt Earp]

Well, I'm glad to hear you're not opposed to the idea of a Jack the Ripper museum, or a Whitechapel Murders museum, as you prefer to put it. I get the impression that some of your fellow protestors would not countenance such a museum under any circumstances.

[Pcdunn]

Glorification of sexual violence or historical fact? Hmmm

Well, I'm glad to hear you're not opposed to the idea of a Jack the Ripper museum, or a Whitechapel Murders museum, as you prefer to put it. I get the impression that some of your fellow protestors would not countenance such a museum under any circumstances.

Well, I can understand that in a way, if they see it as glorifying "Jack", who may not even be a single historical figure. One of the authors of a related article at a news site even called him "ficitious", which is, after all, one of the theories.

Perhaps the best we could hope for-- until "Jack" is identified -- is The Jack the Ripper Theories Museum.

[John Wheat]

It looks to me as if the owners got what he wanted a load of controversy and coverage to publicise his museum. I have no problem with a Jack the Ripper museum as long as it isn't glorifying the Ripper. Nor a museum on womens history. But the way he's gone about things is a bit bizarre using Jack the Rippers controversy in a cheap publicity stunt.

[NeilG]

Having been on one of the Ripper Tours in London during spring this year, I find the need for a museum on the subject somewhat null and void.

A museum showing the life of women in Victorian London as was the original proposal would have been much better. Naturally they could have had a small tasteful section to honour those lost to Jack. But nothing more.

I'm reading up on this subject properly for the first time and I find the quality of lives both saddening yet fascinating at the same time. More insight to these times is most welcome.

The "Museum" in question is naught more than a wolf in sheeps clothing.

[richardh]

Proper recreations of the murder locations (not the murder scenes themselves) depicting the harsh, squalid poverty of the time would be something educational and interesting. A proper recreation of Miller's Court (the whole court, not just 13) Made from real bricks and slate etc. Mitre Square and Hanbury all rebuilt OUTSIDE like they've done at the Black Country Museum. No blood, no gore, no sensationalism, just proper recreations. 'Used' latrines, shite and gutter trash, smells etc.

[Robert]

Yes, I was thinking that a reconstruction of Kelly's room would have an almost bare room with cold air pumped in and horrible smells, etc. But would customers feel short changed?

[Jon Guy]

The Ripper Experience

I don`t know if this is in bad taste or not, but they could chuck a dead pig in a dark room and you have to locate and remove it`s kidney in under 5 mins.

If you don`t fancy the Ripper Experience, then why not join the Whitechapel "mob" , who will burst into the room after 5 mins and kick hell out of the Ripper (if he`s still in there).

[NeilG]

Proper recreations of the murder locations (not the murder scenes themselves) depicting the harsh, squalid poverty of the time would be something educational and interesting. A proper recreation of Miller's Court (the whole court, not just 13) Made from real bricks and slate etc. Mitre Square and Hanbury all rebuilt OUTSIDE like they've done at the Black Country Museum. No blood, no gore, no sensationalism, just proper recreations. 'Used' latrines, shite and gutter trash, smells etc.

That would be absolutely brilliant, a perfectly captured window into the past. When I was on the walking tour I was quite saddened to see just how much of those old streets and buildings are lost.

[Silverpaw]

Here's another article, this one from The Standard: http://www.standard.co.uk/goingout/e...-10423690.html

I have to say that I do see the point of the protesters.

If someone proposed opening a museum dedicated to 'The History of Women in Seattle and Washington State', I would expect it to include exhibits on the Pioneer women who made the brutal trip westward by Conestoga wagons on the Oregon Trail, Native American women, early settlers in log cabins, and Suffragettes who helped secure the rights of women to vote.
I'd certainly expect it to include the 'Rosie the Riveter" women who labored at Boeing in WWII helping to build 98,965 aircraft (28% of US total aircraft production in WWII). Production included the B-17 “Flying Fortress” bombers used by the Eighth Air Force to assist the RAF in bombing the hell out of Nazi industrial targets, which helped us win the war!

If I visited the 'History of Women In Seattle & Washington State Museum' only to find it consisted of an historically inaccurate "recreation" of the bedroom of one of the women slaughtered by Ted Bundy or The Green River Killer, displayed their horrific autopsy photos and sold t-shirts glassware & coffee mugs celebrating the murderer as if he were a rock star, I'd picket and protest too!

If the developers want to create a Jack the Ripper attraction as a for-profit commercial venture, fine, it's a free country. But please have the decency to drop the pretense that it's a 'History of Women in the East End Museum' and - Oops! you just haven't gotten around to adding that little detail in small print to your elaborate skull & cross-bones signage.

They should just drop the word 'Museum'. Calling it a "museum" implies it will be fact-based and historically accurate, which even from the video we can all see it's not.

- As if Mary Kelly had a lovely bright apartment with cheerful clean floral wallpaper & an iron bed! Any fool can see from the photos she had a wooden bed-frame. We know it was a tiny cold dark decrepit makeshift "room" in a crowded old slum building.

It seems to me this "museum" is just another Ye Olde Ripper Gift Shoppe to sell t-shirts covered in fake blood depicting a fantasy figure in tophat & cape, which only perpetuates historically inaccurate myths.
I expect the Ripper black jellybeans or maybe "designer chocolates" shaped like mutilated body parts are next.

And Steadmand, yes I WOULD go to a real museum that really depicted the life of women and families in the East End during the Victorian era & other periods! It would be amazing.

New York City has a fantastic museum called 'The Tenement Museum' that occupies an old slum dwelling. Each apartment recreates what tenement life was like for a particular immigrant family who lived there at a specific time in its history. People have evemn donated original items from their families. I would love to visit a museum that accurately recreated East End Life over the centuries, wouldn't you? Think of all the East Enders who could donate original family photographs, histories and heirlooms to make the AUTHENTIC past come alive.

NY's TENEMENT MUSEUM: http://www.tenement.org/

Best regards,
Archaic

Totally agree. The project to set up an actual museum dedicated to the history of the women of the East End is moving on apace. If anyone on here would like to contribute skills/expertise to help make it happen then please make contact via Twitter - @EEWomensMuseum

It will very likely include a respectful account of the lives of the Whitechapel murder victims

[Silverpaw]

Roll up! Roll up!

http://www.museumsassociation.org/museums-journal/museums-journal-blog/13082015-house-of-horrors