Tag: Jack the Ripper Museum

Deborah Orr did a nicely blistering piece about the Women-Murderer “museum” in August.

Mark the Ripp-Off, otherwise known as Mark Palmer-Edgecumbe, is the man behind a new museum in Cable Street in the East End of London. Except he isn’t. He’s behind a lurid new tourist attraction in Cable Street in the East End of London, which is dedicated to exploiting an already much-cultivated fascination with the unknown killer of five women between 1888 and 1891.

I hadn’t properly taken in the extent and grotesquery of the fascination until this “museum” came along. What is this sick shit? There’s nothing cool or nostalgic or fun about the serial murders of desperately poor prostitutes in late 19th century London. We don’t consider Willy Pickton cool or dapper or interesting, so why is there this idea that the X who killed those women in Whitechapel was? Is it just because it was late-Victorian London so we think “oh hey, Sherlock Holmes and fog and hansoms, must be cool”?

This joint is called the Jack the Ripper Museum, from which one can deduce that it exists to commemorate a crude and ugly piece of invented nomenclature that surely has already proved itself to be quite enduring enough, thank you very much. Certainly, someone killed five women, with extreme savagery. But that person was not Jack the Ripper. Jack the Ripper is an invented villain, a figure of gothic melodrama who serves the purpose of making five murdered women also seem like inventions, mere accessories after the fiction.

Like something out of a movie – Norman Bates or Hannibal Lecter.

Mark the Ripp-Off says otherwise. He seems to be suggesting that that the name of the “museum” is a clever ploy, aimed at reeling in customers. They will turn up expecting gory details about a misogynistic serial eviscerator, only to discover – delightedly, I’m sure – that the “museum” instead offers a meditation on the condition of women in the East End of London during the Victorian era, using the situation of the women who were slaughtered as a “starting point”. They’ll all be stampeding past the promised crime-scene tableau to get to that stuff, I’m sure.

Well now that the “museum” is open and Fern Riddell has reviewed it, we know there is no “that stuff” to get to.

Does this guy think it’s funny to say that he’s going to open a museum celebrating women’s history, then actually open one celebrating a notorious killer of women? Does he think it’s funny that people are up in arms against his new project, having believed that something more serious and useful was going to be sited in the area instead? Somehow, either of these is not as bad as imagining that he really believes that his exploitation of the murder of women isn’t part of the problem, but instead is part of the solution.

How can anyone think that the way to understand the social existence of women is by speculating about why some unknown killer annihilated them, or detailing how their situations made them vulnerable to him?

Oh, he doesn’t think that. He just pretends to, for the look of the thing.

Or you could just take a shortcut and go to the Jack the Mutilating Murderer of Women “museum” shop’s page. That tells you all you need to know about this “museum.”

There’s a wine glass for £8.00, the shot glass we’ve already seen for £6.00, a “latte glass” for £7.00, a mug gold-rimmed for £10.00, and the poshest of all –

For more on the horrifying Jack the Ripper “museum” check out the historian Fern Riddell on Twitter, starting with her Storify of her visit to the “museum” itself.

I’m in the middle of doing that now, so I’ve just encountered this tweet:

Fern Riddell ‏@FernRiddell Sep 30
@tkingdoll no, they’ve made a change apparently, just not on any of the shop stuff…

Because there’s just nothing funnier than the murder and mutilation of women.

Sian Norris had a Twitter exchange with the PR guy for the shiny new Jack the Ripper museum in east London the other day.

Today, on Twitter, the museum’s PR representative attempted to defend the tourist attraction from charges that Jack the Ripper’s murders were sexually violent. In a clumsy attempt to prove that the museum was not condoning sexual violence, he instead denied that the murders had anything to do with sexual violence at all.

…

When I suggested that he was wrong to ignore the sexually violent aspect of these murders, he accused me of “sensationalising” – arguing that it isn’t known what Jack the Ripper’s motives were.

Disregard the fact that the victims were all prostitutes. It would be sensationalistic to draw any conclusions from that.

It’s true that there are many things we don’t know about Jack the Ripper. We don’t know his name and, on some level, we don’t know his reasons for killing women. However, the one thing we do know is that he targeted women in prostitution and that after he cut their throats he deliberately ripped out their wombs. From those facts, we can make a pretty good guess at at least one of his motivations. He was a man who hated women. He was a misogynistic killer who targeted women’s bodies in a highly gendered way.

My, what a sensationalistic thing to say. Feminists are so dramatic.

The Ripper Museum, and the defence of its existence, would perhaps matter less if such crimes were confined to the past. But the simple truth is that male violence against women is not a historical curiosity. It is not a mystery to be explored via an audio tour and a few exhibition boards. It is happening to women today all over the UK and all over the world.

In the UK, between January and August this year, an estimated 85 women have been killed by men. That’s one woman every 2.8 days. Many of these women will have been killed by current or former partners – in fact, on average, two every week. At the same time as the Ripper museum opens its doors, government cuts mean the refuges which save women’s lives are closing theirs.

But we don’t know that they are killed because they’re women. Maybe it’s because they burned the potatoes.

When the museum’s PR tries to deny that sexual violence had a part to play in these murders, when newspapers look to the nagging or cheating wife in spousal homicide cases, they are ignoring the stark and frightening reality of male violence against women. As a society we are all too quick to ignore the fact that Jack the Ripper, and violent men throughout history, choose to abuse and kill women. In Jack’s case, our decision to ignore that has led to him becoming a cult figure who exerts a grotesque fascination over the public imagination.

On the museum’s merchandise, Jack the Cult Figure stands tall and menacing under the lamppost.

The women he killed are reduced to a smudge of blood at his feet.

Really? So I clicked on the link, and saw how the “museum” is advertising their lad Jack.

That is one very romanticized image. He looks Byronic and dashing. His victims? Oh nobody wants to look at them, they were poor and lumpen and female and whorey.

I just read some of the autopsy reports. They’re not very glamorous.

Updating to add:

I forgot to point out the ad copy on the page for the Jack the Ripper shot glass £6.00.

We can neither confirm nor deny that Jack The Ripper did shots. But if he did, he probably had a neat looking shot glass.

Isn’t that just adorable?