Um, @MNHQ, why exactly has this been moved from the Feminism Chat section into the Sex and Gender Discussions sub-section please?
GoodieMoomin The Five is excellent, isn’t it (thank you for recommending it to people, I was too cross to think to).
FunnyInjury
Proper academic research & associated publishing on literally all topics is vital; & well-done popular history is, in its own way, just as important. The problem is that so much of the latter isn’t well done - & when it comes to figures like Jack the Ripper even now there is a huge degree of sensationalism at the expense of the dignity of the victims. People quite literally don’t know who Jack was (so how can the people at this event “meet” him?) but it’s also rare for people to know who Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Polly Eddowes & Mary Jane Kelly were. Whether or not they know names, most people think they were prostitutes - there’s no evidence at all three of the five were anything other than homeless women murdered as they slept on the streets as they often did when unable to afford a lodging house. This is just yet another crass cashing-in: a pseudo-intellectual version of something like London Dungeons.
TheMarzipanDildo
There is at least that - and I have a truly dreadful suspicion that a lot of people would choose to if the event organisers were to give them the option. And not just because they might have already seen (as in studied, not just had a glimpse of) Joseph Merrick’s skeleton.
learieonthewildmoor
Oof yes there is absolutely a sex imbalance when it comes to so-called “Ripperologists”isn’t there? Including the people who run the walking tours in Whitechapel - & everyone behind that awful bait-&-switch museum was male IIRC. Femicide being seen as practically death by natural causes amongst a certain sort of woman was so painfully widespread - the level of Othering by class (even before reaching Rough vs Respectable and then The Truly Criminal & Fallen Women) was staggering. One of the starkest examples was probably the Commons debates on VAWG that framed the need for some kind of DV laws in terms of brutish working class men rolling out of pubs (having drunk all the housekeeping money) and, on staggering home, battering their wives and children.
AsTreesWalking
The mercifully-now-defunct bait-and-switch Ripper museum produced all sorts of tourist tat like rubbers & pens etc. I find it a wee bit odd the Titanic in Belfast has quite the range it does (eg surprisingly jolly children’s clothes & stationery; rubber ducks; food) but odd rather than anything like that kind of awful. Then of course you have the owner of Jack The Chipper outraged at being boycotted because it was all so long ago. And the shop give women 50% off, so how could they be offended by that map of where the murders took place? The owner (& his son) also don’t seem to understand how boycotts work; because apparently they think that people coming into the shop & making purchases being happy must mean everything is, in fact, fine. As for “we didn’t have this problem in Whitechapel” - quite spectacular lack of thought about demographics of customers and shop locations; and a huge display of ignorance of the social & cultural history that ties together the north and south of the East End of London. To be fair, the viewers of “Good Morning” seem to have been blankly ignorant of those; and incapable of making the mental leap that anyone boycotting the chip-shop is doubtless also boycotting the tours/films/video games/stickers/clothes/merchandise of any & all other kinds & boycotted the dreadful museum (that I sincerely hope can now be converted into the women’s museum permission was granted for).
TheCountessofFitzdotterel
Just frustrating it took so long for it to be written/this wee bit of rebalancing to happen.
Mrsscrubbingbrush
It might be, worryingly, that the syllabus itself is still making those claims - I know your DD has a while until her exams, but being able to reference The Five accurately will ensure she doesn’t lose marks. I’m not meaning trying to learn chunks by heart or memorise page numbers or anything to be clear, just making sure she spells “Hallie Rubenhold” correctly & remembers to say if something she’s saying came from there. But she could cover herself if there’s a question on who
the victims were with a brief bit about covering what they’re taught in school & then go on to point out the issues with that using Rubenhold’s work. (Apologies if you already know [how] to do all that &/or feel it’s spectacularly obvious.)