JACK THE RIPPER AND THE EAST END

Museum in Docklands, West India Quay, London
Until November 2008 reviewed by Rutland Dedlock

An exhibition promising a full study of the Whitechapel murders with much original material, so we had to go. The Ripper murders hold a spot in our psyche (I believe) because so much is known, whether evidence, inference or opinion, and yet there is no definitive answer, allowing all of us to speculate. One of my chums form the Abbey (Ken) has even found five connections between the murders and Peterborough, which he uses to illustrate that patterns can be drawn from any random collection of information.

The exhibition starts with a couple of props from Tussaud’s Chamber of Horrors of the period, the body of the murderous supplier of corpses, Burke, and the wax head of James Thurwell (executed in 1824). Elsewhere in the museum is a display relating to the Ratcliffe Highway murders of 1811. This is followed by three screens showing a montage of silent film clips (The Lodger and Lulu) and slides of the period.

Before getting to the murders (and the exhibition looks at eleven in all) we have photographs of the actor Richard Mansfield from the 1888 play of “Jekyll and Hyde”; an automata exhibited by the stage-magician John Nevil Maskelyne and first editions of Sherlock Holmes.

To set the scene for the first murder – here Emma Smith of April 1888 – they show a copy of Charles Booth’s map of London poverty (reminding me of Boris Johnson’s proposed map highlighting crime rates in the capital) and also look at W.T.Stead’s investigation of 1885 into child prostitution.

Martha Tabram’s death is the first in the exhibition for which the actual police document is on show. There is a slide-show of people from Whitechapel and Spitalfields of the period, one of which is at a fair with a booth advertising the “Mexican Armless Queen”. In a section looking at the labour conditions of the time there is a poster for the great garment workers strike of 1889, a mould for artificial flowers and the actual “Phossy Jaw” taken from the body of some unfortunate who’d worked in a match factory.

With Mary Ann Nichols’ death the exhibition looks into housing and health. For the latter there are photographs of patients from the London Hospital (taken in 1896), plus a piece on its most famous resident, Joseph Merrick (1862 – 1890). A skull of someone suffering from the last stage of syphilis has much of the face rotted away.

Ann Chapman’s section looks at the press coverage and amongst the original artefacts on show is the “Dear Boss” letter. Catharine Eddowes’ and Elizabeth Stride’s murders are dealt with together as they happened on the same night. This section focuses on the investigation carried out by the police. It includes photographs of various groups of policemen and a stuffed bloodhound, which though considered, was not used in the cases. We are also shown the walking-stick Inspector Abberline was presented with by seven of his fellow officers.

Then thereis a section devoted to Mary Jane Kelly – with the notes of the attending medical examiner, plus more of the letters received. The last four possible murder victims – Rose Mylett, Alice “Clay Pipe” McKenzie (born in Peterborough), the Pinchin Street body, and Frances Coles (from 1891) - are examined together and more letters are displayed here.

The final section looks at the long list of suspects, and articles here included the famous McNaghten’s Memorandum, with a page on show dealing with the American Dr. Tumblety: which, curiously, doesn’t feature in a transcription of the Memorandum that I have: has something there been misidentified? Other items in this section include a Walter Sickert painting from 1907, entitled “Jack the Ripper’s Bedroom” and the alleged “Maybrick Diary”. There is also a display of books inspired by the case, including, strangely, collage work by Max Ernst, plus clips form various films.

One friend was disappointed that there wasn’t the “Bullshit or Not” sequence from “Amazon Women on the Moon”, which apparently recreated the possibility that the Loch Ness Monster was responsible for the crimes. One final display was of the postmortal photographs of the women.

The exhibition ends with an appeal that we should remember the stories of the victims. An odd request as the exhibition managed to avoid that as there is little, if any, biographical detail about the lives of the women on show. Upstairs in the main museum you can find out about the wreck of the Princess Alice, which Elizabeth Stride claimed she worked on. In the adjacent bar you can buy a ‘Jack the Ripper’ lunch (kidneys, I wondered?). Whilst on the whole a good exhibition, it does occasionally miss its target.