As an historian, this place is insulting to history in general. As someone always interested in "off-the-beaten path" museums, I hate this thing exists. It reminds me of all the tourist trap museums that only needs 10 minutes to walk around and offer nothing of substance in Prague. Your ideas for a potential Jack The Ripper museum were far more interesting.
It can't really be called a museum if you don't come out of it with more knowledge than when you went in. At best this socalled museum is little more than a pointless exibition of Victorian odd and ends with a murderer tacked on.
heard and read numerous accounts of the Jack the Ripper being just a massive waste of time and money. It's a bit like social media - all fluff and heresay, and no actual substance
.......and for anyone who cares about who the victims were, there's Hallie Rubenhold's book "The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper". And as for the countless people who died prematurely at that time through poverty and disease....
I was going to comment about this. The book does an excellent job of writing a history of women in the East End, unlike this tourist trap that's unworthy of the name museum. After reading it, I am not even convinced all 5 women were killed by the same person.
And for those actually attempting to ignore Jago's advice on looking up the room photo online, well let's just say one can be glad colour photography hadn't been a thing back in 1888.
You are so correct that a "Jack The Ripper" museum could be a really good gateway into explaining more about the lives of working class Victorians, and specifically women. So much of what we have remaining of Victorian London is the top crust of beautiful architecture for the wealthy or impressive infrastructure projects (and even the standing structures built as philanthropic gestures to help the poor tend to look lavish and beautiful to modern eyes). I visited Sydney earlier this year and the Hyde Park Barracks museum, which housed convicts transported from the UK to Australia, as well as later housing orphans and single women, fantastically incorporated the history of how the area was first colonised, the violence against the aboriginal communities, what life was like for transported convicts, women and children in the 19th century, as well as ending with perspectives of descendants of some former occupants of the building as well as the aboriginal people of the area (some sharing ancestry with the aboriginal people and the transported Europeans). It was incredibly affecting, and would be amazing if a Jack The Ripper museum could provide a similarly broad and engrossing experience to represent the life of Londoners in the late 19th century.
There are quite a few museums telling the stories of the people of the Victorian age, but few of them feel the need to concentrate their focus on a serial killer turned celebrity.
Several years ago we visited NYC and toured the Tenement Museum which was a very well-preserved building with rooms restored to different periods to tell the stories of immigrant families who had lived there between the 1880s and the 1930s. I thought it was the perfect example of a thoroughly researched and curated history museum. On the trip I had also been reading "How the Other Half Lives" by Jacob Riis, which dovetailed nicely with the visit, illustrating what Riis was talking about regarding cramped conditions, lack of ventilation, and poor fire safety. We also visited Mulberry Bend and a few of the cemeteries-turned-parks for which Riis had campaigned, and more than a century later the living are still enjoying the open spaces once reserved for the dead.
Meanwhile in their sister attraction, the Jack the Hazzard Museum, you can enjoy the apocryphal history of the Tube. The earliest underground trains ran along the roads pretending to be trams. This was wholly unacceptable to the government, who cut the services and shut down the companies, known as Cut & Shut. An American entrepreneur named Xerxes came and put the trains underground. These trains were electric, and because this was the third kind of railway, it was known as the Third Rail system. To make the Tube more efficient, tunnels were bored in straight lines following a master plan by Harry Beck.
The Council aren't happy about it pretending to be a women's history museum when it applied for its planning permission and the local residents and local historians don't like it there. The building is currently for sale.
Thank you for making this video Jago. Because of the international folklore marketing of Jack the Ripper, there are a lot of tourists from the rest of the UK or abroad who are overly interested in these murders. And that is probably enough to keep this "museum of the history of women" in business. I'm hoping that your review will dissuade people from giving £12 quid to the person that set this place up and that the building will be sold to someone that uses it for a more interesting purpose. The Whitechappel Murders would be much better served by an exhibit in the Museum of London.
Another flaw with the historical accuracy is the brick wall they have built for the grafitti. They have used stretcher bond, whereas a Victorian wall would be English, Flemish or some other traditional solid wall bond.
I went there on my first trip to London in 2019 and was shocked at how low-rent it was. It reminded me of a cheap voodoo museum in New Orleans. As an American tourist, I didn't know about the circumstances of how the museum came to be, and figured it was probably more silly than anything, but I wasn't prepared for how silly. Fortunately, on my way there, I got off at Tower Station, realized the Tower was right there, and spent 4 hours touring that before walking over to this museum, so the day wasn't a total loss!
To comment readers: toget a better sense of the women of Whitechapel, take a look at "The Five" by Hallie Rubenhold. She gives a biography of each women. The uniting link between the women is how poverty left them exposed. It was easy to happen - loss of a job, loss of a spouse, and other misfortunes, and suddenly you are sleeping in the rough, or using prostitution to get enough food. Very good job of providing context, and showing how each story of these murdered women was different. To Jago - thanks for exposing a museum that isn't all that interested in the truth.
Jago, do not hesitate in truthful reviews of anything London(ish) like this. I had once considered going to this museum, but I can now see it does not have anything that I might learn from.
The start of Alan Moore & Eddie Campbell's _From Hell_ puts it best: 'This book is dedicated to Polly Nichols, Annie Chapman, Liz Stride, Kate Eddowes, and Marie Jeanette Kelly. Youn and your demise: of these things alone we are certain. Goodnight, ladies'. I'd heard about the museum when it opened, thought it would have quietly closed down by now, it just looks like exploitative tourist bait.
I always felt that place was exploiting violence against women rather than a genuine exploration of the events that occurred. It was heavily protested against in its early days. You saved me twelve quid and two tube fares, thanks.
The Jack the Ripper industry in general is crass and the museum is just one example. I think the exploitative sensationalism really stems from Victorian rather than modern attitudes. Their supposed prim and proper attitudes were a very thin veneer.
As a tour guide I usually say that in the past they might’ve dressed well but they had stupid rules. It’s a reminder that not all of the past was good. Just as are present there’s things we don’t like. There’s things they did that were just…weird or to back up your statement putting on a facade.
@@ayindestevens6152 ironically, part of the reason they dressed the way they did back then, was to hide their lack of hygiene and draw attention away from all the maladies everyone suffered from due to terrible food and living conditions. The people and the society back then was all about facade while they were rotten on the inside. It's a pure miracle anyone survived to the 20th century
The drawing at 1:50 is by John Tenniel, who did the illustrations for Lewis Carroll's Alice books ( It goes without saying that Carroll himself has been accused of being the Ripper).
I have a real problem with the idea of turning real life murder, mutilation and terror into entertainment. The Ripper case is probably the foremost example of this, but there are plenty of others. Cities such as Edinburgh and York are full of tours, displays, and alleged museums dedicated to this sort of thing - to say nothing of all the books, films, TV shows and stage productions etc - and there's a narrow line between "exploration" and "exploitation". How many years have to pass before a shocking murder is suitable to be the subject of a "fun family day out"?
For whatever reason, many people find looking at horror interesting, hence all the places and things you mentioned. I don't get it myself, but it's been with us forever, look at gladiators or public executions, so I don't think it's going to go away and there's nothing wrong with leveraging that to educate. Pull them in with the Ripper, let them out with an education on the life of the Victorian underclass and women specifically. An intelligent museum could easily do that, this one unfortunately doesn't.
I was expecting them to push a lycanthropic Duke of Clarence and Avondale as the Ripper, just because it's the bottom of the barrel option and they were clearly scraping it. A middle class surgeon fits the naffness of it all, I guess.
With what you said about the Planning Permission being for a museum of Womens History, I love the "Temporary Sign" to try and avoid getting on the council's radar with signage (or equally, because the council will likely refuse given it's not for something they applied for)
There’s an excellent podcast series that focuses on the lives of the women involved, and explores Victorian attitudes towards women at the time. It’s called Bad Women. Highly recommended!
That facade with the text "|Way Out|Soup Kitchen|○1662○1902○|For The Jewish Poor|Way In|" at the end of this video makes me curious. There is two hundred and forty years of history behind it, probably with much more factuality than the museum of Jack the Ripper. Would be nice to see a video from Jago about that❗ 😳 I was mistaking 🥴, it's NOT 1662 but year 5662 (Hebrew calendar), see reply below❗
That's not what it says. It's the year 5662 in the Hebrew calendar which is 1902 in the Christian calendar, the year it was built. It's now flats. (Sorry, I mean "luxury apartments".)
Re: using the case as a lens to look at the lives of women at the time, there's a good book that does this: 'The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper', by historian Hallie Rubenhold
I find the obsession with this case to be distasteful. It's really just testament to the fact that impoverished women did not have any chance of getting justice.
as long as the victims are treated with proper respect I see no problem in discussing the case, but the problem is they weren't treated with proper respect back then and it's also disrespectful to just ignore that the murders happened.
@@eadweard. It's quite obvious, surely. The media's stigmatisation of 'women of the streets' who were simply working class people trying to earn a living, and the police's contempt for them were widespread then, led to the failures of the police during the 1980s Peter Sutcliffe murder spree and are still evident today.
ah that's cool dude :D, i work at 4D modelshop! Sorry it was closed :( they have been short staffed in the shop and so sometimes need to close for lunch :/ i make the lil trees, would love to say hi if you pop by again!
The stripped down honest version of the notorious episode in London's history. The crimes were awful and the victims very vulnerable. Times were harsh.
This video gives your honest opinion of the museum and even suggestions on things they could do to improve it. Also now I can save my money and I thank you for that.
It sounds like 'The Talons of Weng-Chiang' (a Doctor Who serial from 1977, set a few years after the murders) was more respectful to the Ripper's victims than that museum.
What another great video, the museum was even worse than I was expecting it to be. I love how you manage to summarise the deep contradictions in this case and the hilarious/cringy state of Ripperology.
@@alanclarke4646 jack the Ripper wasn't fictional, Sherlock Holmes on the other hand is fictional, so I'd expect genuine Arthur Conan Doyle exhibits. If these are not represented then the word "museum" should be deleted.
The Sherlock Holmes house is more of an imagining of his rooms based on Doyle's works IIRC but I went over 10 yrs ago. It wasn't earth shattering tbh I wouldn't recommend waiting any longer than 15min to get in and its queues get rediculous!
@@daveboss2994as someone else has noted, Conan Doyle and his creation is probably better represented in the Portsmouth City Museum. He was after all an unsuccessful local doctor and goalkeeper in Southsea for a while.
There is not a shop he frequents by the Sherlock Holmes Exhibition and therefore doesn't have to "kill time" for a premises lunch break, unless you can persuade the model shop owners to move nearer to it and alter their lunch break by one hour earlier!?!
Must say I never visited this despute working in the area for decades. In a similar way I found the Clink Prison Museum also a bit disappointing; more factual history but a disproportionate, if not disturbing, concentration on torture and the instruments thereof.
Ive frequented the 4D model shop, indeed i tried to get a job there, unsuccesfully. This was actually one of the best concise documentaries of the Ripper case I've seen. Some years ago a friend of mine, for his birthday, signed up for a Jack the Ripper walking tour, inviting friends along. And while not my 'thing' he was a friend so i went along. At one point the guide took us to a location where one body was found. Feeling a little uncomfortable I stood a little way off as the guide enunciated on the killing, feeling uneasy about standing on the exact spot. Unfortunately, he concluded saying he'd now take the group to to the exact spot the body had lain - it was right wear i stood.
Thanks for this video, Jago. I really enjoyed it. This ‘museum’ is in my neck of the woods and I remember the outrage when it first opened. I didn’t know it was still running, to be honest, so thanks for sacrificing your £12 to review this place, so the rest of us don’t have to. Based on your review, I am now certain of two things: 1. The people who protested about this place at the time were right. A historical context would’ve been useful, but what we have here is exploitation of these poor women - again. And as you quite rightly said, there’s plenty of material and interpretation of the Ripper case done much better than this. And; 2. I will not be troubling this ‘museum’ with my patronage. Your final line: “You are the coherence to my display.” Was a most excellent shade to that shameless rip off. Nicely done, Jago. Nicely done. Oh, one more thing (as Columbo would say). If anyone happens to be in the area, do visit Wilton’s Music Hall. It really is magnificent.
He's quite good with his language, is Mr Hazzard. I suspect he also studied Latin, or at least had a passing acquaintance with the language, it crops up in quite a few of his videos. For example Sic Transit Gloria Mundi is in one of his station videos, I believe...
I think he was referring to the human trait of don't look and we peer through our fingers type of thing and then one way or another (Depending on if it's gruesome or rip off) we wished we didn't look!?!
Just round the corner from the Battle of Cable Street Mural in St George's Gardens can be found the remains of an actual mortuary ('Old Mortuary and Nature Study Museum).
Yes, and there has long been a section of society fascinated with such macabre things. It was quite popular in Victorian times, even before Jack the Ripper operated, if I understand right. It varies from society to society and from one time period to another. I grew up with the fascination, and I wish I hadn't.
I guess like it or not, it is part of history. I've explored the area a few times not just to see the locations of the ripper murders- and if folk are expecting eerie Victorain passages and gas lit streets they'll be very disappointed - but as much for the history of the east end in general; it is very rich in history. To add, I made a point of visiting the graves of some of the poor victims of the ripper as a mark of respect.
There is actually more relevance to "ripperology" in Jago's video on the Cleveland Street scandal than there is in this museum. The ripper had to have been a local man, with a detailed knowledge of the area, a lifestyle and profession that gave him plausible reasons to be out in the early hours, and manners and appearance that made him an unremarkable "every-man" that didn't attract attention. The notion that this place entertains, that the the ripper could have been a member of the upper classes or even royalty like Walter Sickert, William Gull or Prince Albert is absurd. The ripper needed to go about his crimes unnoticed. Can you imagine anyone like that wandering the east end unnoticed in the early hours of the morning? Just imagine Jacob Rees-Mogg wandering around Brixton in the early hours of the morning informing the locals he was "looking for business" and you'll get the idea. (Sorry I can't provide mind bleach for that image). What Jago demonstrates in the Cleveland Street scandal video is that members of that strata of society took their pleasures in discreet premises in safe neighbourhoods close to home. The fact that Henry Fitzroy could defend his reputation by claiming he thought 19 Cleveland Street contained "naked women posing artistically" shows that places supposedly offering that service existed, and that it was socially acceptable for men in his position to frequent them. Of course we can all reasonably assume what poses the "naked ladies" adopted in "private viewings".
You missed one of the rooms. That one identifies a number of alternative Ripper candidates before concluding that the Ripper was none other than... Charles Yerkes!
The version of the quickly removed wall writing that stuck with me is "The Juwes are not the Men who will not be blamed for Nothing", which really irritates me because of the way it forces you to wrap your brain around the triple negative to work it out.
*Just wondering, how did Prostitution become a thing & work back in the 1888 days?* …considering Contraception itself was invented in the 20th Century.
Before the rise of the Labour Party we had terrible rich people controlling the UK. Those immoral rich people were doing things like using Rotten Boroughs to "elect" MPs in Parliamentary seats that had no voters, rich people in the countryside throwing people off of "their land" (land that their ancestors "won" at the point of a sword) and poor people being driven into towns and cities. There was no benefit system. Poor people were often forced to work in workhouses (which was not much better than slavery) and people without a place to live would have to pay to sleep indoors or sleep on the streets. Some of the women who were forced into prostitution, by their circumstances, were people who had children and who needed to pay people for beds or the penny rope, so their kids did not have to sleep on the streets. The bottom line is that, if you have no welfare state and you deprive women of money and make it harder for them to get jobs, that creates a situation where the level of prostitution increases. Prostitution was also common south of the river Thames, where the Church made massive profits from people leaving the City of London to go to visit prostitutes, and then denied them a church burial. The hypocrisy of the past Britain is massive. Whitechappel was just to the east of the City of London, so you have the same thing where men can leave London to get services that are banned in London. When it comes to the Jack the Ripper case, the existence of prostitution is irrelevant anyway. This is the story of a scumbag (or maybe more than one scumbag) who felt entitled to murder people. And it is a story of a Britain that abandoned these women to their fate. And the story of the following decades is a story of people wanting to make money off of the back of the tragic end of those murdered women. In recent times, we have had a bunch of people pushing for "Britain to return to traditional values". And this is the Britain we used to have, before women got the vote and the welfare system was created. This was a shameful country that failed it's people. When Britain had wars, the lower classes were expected to fight and die for their country. When Britain had peace it did nothing for the lower classes. And it is not a country I want to live in. The Britain I love started when we had the "A land fit for heroes" culture, and there was an expectation that the government had a contract with all of it's people and there would be respect both ways. I want to live in a forward living Britain, where prostitution is treated in a sensible way and the country takes steps to reduce or remove factors that push people (it's not just women) towards a life of prostitution. And for those who are able to avoid prostitution, but who still choose to do it, we need to be lowering the risks associated with prostitution.
This is the "oldest profession". And while effective contraception might have been developed in the twentieth century, many less effective means have been about for a very long time. Much of this history is too gruesome for Google comments. I recommend the Foundling Hospitals museum in London if you wasn't to see how the luckier unwanted children of the poor were treated. It also has a great music room (GF Handel was a major patron in the eighteenth century).
@@DavidShepheardNicely concluded. I'd only want to add that it wasn't just "its people" that it failed. It had an Empire after all - so it could also go out and fail all the people in the pink bits on the globe.
I hope the model shop was a lot lot better. My grandfather was born in Whitechapel in 1877, so I have heritage in the area. His WW1 military record claims Aldgate birth, 1911 census St George in the East. Seems socially you avoided the issue.
It's a museum of women's history in the same way that Jack the Ripper is known, very, very loosely... (Also I'm in the camp of suspecting Dr Francis Tumblety, I think a JR museum should definitely explore all the theories people had in the day)
Thank you for the warning at the beginning. If only the creators of all the other Jack the Ripper content I've started watching with my kids had exercised the same common courtesy.
On the subject of a tube/horror cross-over does anyone remember the film 'Death Line' (1972) with Donald Pleasance? Not a great movie - but it really creeped me out as a kid!
I used to work in Devonshire Square (warehouses converted into offices). One of the security guards told of a JtR tour that passed though and the guide said that Jack lived in one of the flats there - which back then were all warehouses.
Excellent video Jago, good review to save us the trouble. 👍 I don't know London well enough to say how far away this is, but I reckon Tim Hunkin's Novelty Automation on Princeton Street is a far better use of twenty or more minutes. Very odd amusements courtesy of the man who brought you The Rudiments of Wisdom for years in The Observer, and the superb Secret Life Of Machines on Channel 4.
@@stryke-jn3kv In B5 the Vorlons spirited him away as they needed his "talents". After he finished his "testing", he just wanted to be allowed to die. He was well over 300 years old.
Three hours and I'm the first person to thumbs-up, therefore presumably the first person to understand! If anyone wants to visit the address is 23 Railway Cuttings.
Outside of this after all these years recently a Jack The Ripper waxwork was placed into the current Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussauds despite the famous no identity no waxwork rule. It’s baffling.
Yes, thank you for putting us into the picture of this "alternative facts" exhibition which is, as I can tell from your footage, not even enthusiastic designed. You have saved some people of questionable interests at least some money and everybody learns more from any railway museum, which I do strongly advise to spend the time and money on. Allthough it is kind of funny how persons of bad behaviour, murderers, kiminals of war and other miscreants of the past keep media of all kinds busy and show up quite regular (some really misleading documentaries are permanently shown in our television program and here on youtube on WW2 and its main characters, who I would call nothing but massmurderers and terrorists). But on the other hand the TV program is full of murderers, attracting viewers every evening; does dci Barneby go home before the third or fourth corpse? And now for something completely different: Thanks for all the nice videos, each one is a gem. I'm always waiting for your next excursion. Best Albrecht
"Alternative facts" shouldn't be used as a synonym for lies or un-evidenced claims. The term comes from when a disreputable (i.e. "mainstream") journalist had just tried to floor the spokeswoman for the Trump campaign with a set of cherry-picked, unrepresentative facts that were unfavourable to her side. She said something to the effect of, "well, how about we consider these alternative facts... " and listed more representative facts favourable to her case. As normal with anything connected with Trump, the mainstream media mis-represented what was said. They avoided having to take into account _her_ facts by unanimously agreeing that "alternative facts" meant alternatives _to_ facts, rather than alternatives to their _tendentiously selected_ facts. The spokeswoman used the term absolutely correctly and literally, but was pilloried as lying, and making up a stupid term to cover it up. They projected their complete lack of honour onto _her._
@@kgbgb3663 Thank you for your detailed response on my comment. I shall take this in concideration next time in communication and be more carefull using terms like the above mentioned. Thanks again.
@@alyro-ls1dv My pleasure. It's very easy to innocently pick up these carefully-designed propaganda memes without knowing where they came from. All honour to you for being happy to learn the origin and adjust accordingly.
For around 30 years my office was in Folgate Street next to Spitalfields Market. We used to get a lot of tourists to look at Denis Severs' almost unrestored silk weaver's house. I had a pair (I will leave the readers to guess their nationality) come up to me and ask: "Say does Jack the Ripper still live round here?" "Yes" was my answer "but he now runs a Bangladeshi restaurant in Brick lane. His Murgh Phall has killed more tourists than he ever stabbed in his heyday."
You know something is wrong when you see the reproduction grafitti on a wall with stretcher bonding. That must surely rank with one of the worst faux pas of the exhibition, despitr not being mentioned in thr video.
In the 1980s and 1990s there was a lot of interesting discussion about the case and it was tastefully done. It is only in the last 20 years or so - since the Johnny Depp film and the advent of Social Media - that everything surrounding the case has become tacky.
i know jago was probably at the model shop for train related purposes but part of me is picturing him looking to add some new troops to his 40k chaos space marine army
