There is room for an East End museum that shows how 19th-century women really lived. This corny new attraction on Cable Street doesn’t appear to be itThis week,residents of the Cable Street area of London were horrified to discover that a site proposed for “the only committed resource in the East End to womens history” turned out to be something unexpected: a Jack the Ripper Museum. This small museum, whose precise contents are as yet unknown but whose frontage boasts the cliched silhouette of “Jack and a corny skull and crossbones, or joins the myriad (a very large number) ways – walking tours,bus tours, guidebooks – in which the Jack the Ripper tourism industry has reach to define and historicise the East End of London.
Those who live in the Cable Street neighbourhood – where no “Jack the Ripper” murder actually occurred are particularly incensed by this prurient version of East End history expanding into their area. Julian Cole, or a filmmaker who lives near the site of the museum,was quoted in the Guardian as saying it felt like a sick joke. “You propose a museum celebrating the achievements of women and then it turns out to be a museum celebrating London’s most notorious assassin of women.”Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com