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Post by dem bones on Jul 19, 2015 12:10:14 GMT
There Goes The Neighbourhood .... again. Walking home along Cable Street, saw that a couple of chippies were busy at work inside one of the former pubs. Then I looked up and read the mural..... Jack The Ripper MuseumIt opens next Friday.
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Post by dem bones on Aug 1, 2015 16:23:56 GMT
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Post by ripper on Aug 2, 2015 10:48:00 GMT
Dem, please do let us know what is inside if you decide to pay it a visit when it opens.
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Post by dem bones on Aug 2, 2015 13:06:00 GMT
Dem, please do let us know what is inside if you decide to pay it a visit when it opens. The BIG PLAN is to borrow the brides camera and nip out early tomorrow morning to nab some photo's of the exterior, but be warned: my photo's are uniformly shite. In the meantime, here's the floor-by-floor guided tour as advertised on their site. About the museumWaxworks, basement 'Mortuary' - it all sounds very London Dungeon to me.
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Post by ripper on Aug 2, 2015 15:25:33 GMT
I think for Ripperologists the most interesting exhibits would be the artifacts that actually have a connection to the crimes such as the whistle etc. I hope the wax figures are historically accurate to help dispel the impression that films present of the victims being young, buxom, attractive women, rather than the middle-aged (but looking much older), poorly-dressed, badly nourished women they actually were, forced by circumstance to sell themselves for 2d in some reeking back alley, in order to rent a filthy bed in a vermin-infested doss house. I also hope that the museum presents those women as individuals, rather than just bodies for the Ripper to mutilate. They all have stories to tell of what happened in their lives to bring them to the situation that ended in their demise.
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Post by andydecker on Aug 2, 2015 19:02:11 GMT
I think for Ripperologists the most interesting exhibits would be the artifacts that actually have a connection to the crimes such as the whistle etc. I hope the wax figures are historically accurate to help dispel the impression that films present of the victims being young, buxom, attractive women, rather than the middle-aged (but looking much older), poorly-dressed, badly nourished women they actually were, forced by circumstance to sell themselves for 2d in some reeking back alley, in order to rent a filthy bed in a vermin-infested doss house. I also hope that the museum presents those women as individuals, rather than just bodies for the Ripper to mutilate. They all have stories to tell of what happened in their lives to bring them to the situation that ended in their demise. O yes. Remember the glamorous cast of From Hell?
This sounds like an interesting project. I guess the Ripper will never lose its appeal.
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Post by dem bones on Aug 3, 2015 13:53:05 GMT
Operation Don McCullin has been postponed until early hours of tomorrow morning while I take a crash course in finding the button that makes things go click. Latest development: Hundreds to picket Jack The Ripper museum
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Post by dem bones on Aug 4, 2015 8:22:33 GMT
This is what comes of letting a walking corpse loose with a camera at 6 am... Gloomy Sundae/ Vault Digital Library "Visit Jack's Sitting Room Explore the Mitre Square Murder Scene Examine The Evidence In The Police Incident Room See One Of The Murdered Women's Bedroom And Hear Why Women Were Part Of The Underclass In The Victorian Times Visit The Morgue And See The Autopsy Reports Of The Murdered Women
Who Was Jack The Ripper? Come Inside And Find Out!" How long do you suppose it will last?
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Post by ripper on Aug 4, 2015 9:28:15 GMT
It will be interesting to see how this ends up. Sounds as if the owners have spent a fair bit of money in setting up the place. Am I right in thinking this is the first time a permanent museum to the JTR crimes has been created in the capital?
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Post by ripper on Aug 4, 2015 9:33:10 GMT
I've never attended one, but I just wondered if those JTR walking tours also met with any protests.
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Post by David A. Riley on Aug 4, 2015 9:41:20 GMT
Your black and white photo, dem, makes the place look much better than the full-colour one in the newspaper article. That pink looks hideous!
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Post by jamesdoig on Aug 4, 2015 10:13:01 GMT
"Visit Jack's Sitting Room I'm there!
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Post by dem bones on Aug 4, 2015 10:45:10 GMT
It will be interesting to see how this ends up. Sounds as if the owners have spent a fair bit of money in setting up the place. Am I right in thinking this is the first time a permanent museum to the JTR crimes has been created in the capital? Surprisingly not, although I don't think anyone has attempted one in this scale. During the 'nineties, in the face of much local condemnation, the then-landlord of The Alma Public House (RIP) converted his beer garden (!) into what the press claimed was a "Ripper Museum". There's some more info HERE. I've never attended one, but I just wondered if those JTR walking tours also met with any protests. Bloody 'Ripper Tours'! You can't move for 'em around here. I stopped to have a drag on the wall outside Christ Church one evening last week, and two of the bastards trooped warily past in the time it took to grab a few lungfuls. They're a farce. There's nothing remotely interesting left to see of the original sites unless you enjoy staring at a multi-storey car park and listening to some idiot drone on about how Millers Court is buried somewhere beneath it. The only one I ever tried was hosted by a certain gent from the London Vampire Group, and I even abandoned that when we hit the first off licence. For my money, Steve Pemberton's Ed Buchan in the first series of Whitechapel is a deadly accurate portrayal of a Ripper Tour guide except Ed's lovable. Your black and white photo, dem, makes the place look much better than the full-colour one in the newspaper article. That pink looks hideous! I'm so versatile! To be truthful, that 'pink' is very red when you see it glowering at you on the street. Remains to be seen if the murals will look quite so spick and span should the local anarchists get to re-enact the Battle of Cable Street tomorrow evening ....
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Post by ripper on Aug 4, 2015 12:16:52 GMT
Very interesting stuff, Dem, and ta very much for the information. I wonder if that name change for the 'Ten Bells' was prompted by the popularity of the BBC's documentary the previous year with Barlow and Watt investigating the case...just a passing thought.
Yes, I can't really see why walking around locations that now are so vastly different to how they appeared in 1888 is quite so popular. I just wonder if many of those going on a tour are actually expecting to see the murder sites as they used to be and don't realise how much the area has changed--interesting to speculate how many might be overseas visitors, who probably wouldn't appreciate how time, successive governments and the Luftwaffe changed the area. I remember the scene in the 1967 documentary 'The London Nobody Knows' in which presenter James Mason visits Hanbury Street and knocks on a door--number 29 I assume--and asks the occupier if he can come in. Rather than telling him to bugger off she lets him in and we get to see the back yard where Chapman was killed--all gone now I presume. I did sit through a Youtube video of a JTR walking tour years ago and it did seem rather dull. You're probably better off leafing through books showing photographs of the area as it was back then.
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Post by dem bones on Aug 4, 2015 13:08:10 GMT
Very interesting stuff, Dem, and ta very much for the information. I wonder if that name change for the 'Ten Bells' was prompted by the popularity of the BBC's documentary the previous year with Barlow and Watt investigating the case...just a passing thought. Yes, I can't really see why walking around locations that now are so vastly different to how they appeared in 1888 is quite so popular. I just wonder if many of those going on a tour are actually expecting to see the murder sites as they used to be and don't realise how much the area has changed--interesting to speculate how many might be overseas visitors, who probably wouldn't appreciate how time, successive governments and the Luftwaffe changed the area. I remember the scene in the 1967 documentary 'The London Nobody Knows' in which presenter James Mason visits Hanbury Street and knocks on a door--number 29 I assume--and asks the occupier if he can come in. Rather than telling him to bugger off she lets him in and we get to see the back yard where Chapman was killed--all gone now I presume. I did sit through a Youtube video of a JTR walking tour years ago and it did seem rather dull. You're probably better off leafing through books showing photographs of the area as it was back then. Is The London Nobody Knows the documentary that plays out to a funereal version Ain't It Grand When You're Bloomin' Well Dead? If so, some of the tramps featured were still knocking around into the new century. That was a terrific piece of film making. Hanbury Street still stands but is much cleaner than the mid-sixties (or even early 'nineties) model. Truth is, you're better off devising your own walk, taking in the few remaining pockets of weird Whitechapel that "regeneration" has yet to destroy, rather than rely on any guided tour (and I'll bet it's the same in Manchester, Newcastle, Liverpool, Birmingham ... any city that's been sanitised to the point of death in the name of said regeneration over past three decades). From what I've seen of 'em, the tours are popular with American, European and Chinese tourists, and Goths (but only when the LVG were running them). No surprise the Jack The Ripper Museum will be hosting their own. Just ransacked a pre-Vault file to exhume this short entry on what was surely the first, modest attempt at a 'Museum' (apologies for lack of sources and dates; I never used to both with them over-much). Terrors of the wax museum To the aged proprietor of a shabby Whitechapel waxworks emporium, the murders presented a heaven sent opportunity to boost his pension fund. A dash of red paint here, a lick or two there, and a trio of redundant models were suitably reupholstered to take centre stage in a new exhibit billed as Horrible Whitechapel Murders: see the George Yard, Bucks Row, Hanbury Street victims. The revamped attraction was promptly shut down on the (not entirely groundless) premise that it caused an affront to public decency. With the police far too busy to enforce the ban, our entrepreneur simply ignored it, and the death tableau was soon packing 'em in. Here's the considered verdict of one lucky punter, as delivered in the Pall Mall Gazette. "There is at present almost opposite the London Hospital a ghastly display of the unfortunate women murdered by what the slummers call 'that bloody demon' ... an old man exhibits these things, and while he points them out you will be tightly wedged in between a number of boys and girls, while a smell of death rises into your nostrils, and you feel as if your throat were filled up by fungus".The waxworks emporium operated at 259 Whitechapel Road, the very same "derelict greengrocers" where Sir Frederick Treves had first set eyes on The Elephant Man in November 1884. It is now home to the East End Saree Store. And, from an issue of VAT's wretched 'zine, Hope All Your Dreams Come True, a "journal entry" dated November 9 1995, relating to the London Vampire Group's Ripper walk. Evening. Fell in with Louis De La Nuit's JACK THE RIPPER TOUR. Bit of a washout due to small attendance & wildly inclement conditions (pissed down all night & everyone's "souvenir programme" got soggy. Louis gamely led us around the back of Whitechapel station and explained how, on a previous visit, his friend saw a ghostly face projected on the wall of the crumbling board school in Bucks Row and a sudden gust of wind blew paperwork relating to the murders out of his briefcase. Louis has got this big thing about Saucy Jack having been a "Vampire", so, you know, did he get TOO CLOSE and was this the Ripper's way of WARNING HIM OFF?
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