Misrepresented Women in Media: the Victims of Jack the Ripper
victims. It stems from the book, "The Public Historian," and comes from the chapter "Waxworks and Wordless Women," by Claire Hayward. Jack the Ripper was an unidentified serial killer active in the largely impoverished areas in and around the Whitechapel district of London in 1888. The essay starts with the history on which the museum is placed; a neighborhood in which the 1888 Match Girls Strike took place which later inspired unionization across the country, as well as the 1936 Battle of Cable Street when locals were refusing to let Oswald Mosely and his British Union of Fascists pass through. Needless to say, the East End of London has been home to many of London's historic events. The article then went on to highlight what the Tower Hamlets council has been quoted saying that the museum would be "the first womens' museum in the UK." This essay disproves this statement by displaying how the museum is situated, presented, and advertised, and essentially, focusing on the identity of Jack the Ripper.
One of the most convincing arguments this article displays is how the victims versus Jack the Ripper is presented. The story of Jack the Ripper haunted Victorian London, but did not do nearly as much damage as he had done to the victims and their families. The museum decided to focus on the "mystery" of Jack the Ripper to feed into the popular culture that journalists, historians, and 'Ripperologists' perpetuated. Similarly, the essay points out that the museum has also failed to link the history of the murders to the lives of the women within the broader context of Victorian life. This essay works to to point out the hypocrisy of the museum in which they have made a point to say it is a "museum for women" while simultaneously dismissing the livelihood of the women murdered.
As many people know, there are many commonalities between all of Jack the Ripper's murders, including how they were killed and the fact that they all were sex workers. Although it is unclear as to the number of victims Jack the Ripper had murdered, the most widely known are Mary Ann Nicholls, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddows, and Mary Jane Kelly. The museum speaks about the lives of these five women, specifically focusing on their extreme poverty, alcoholism, and protistution. However, even with this small glimpse into their lives, the museum then asks the audience "Could the murdered women have avoided their terrible fate?" This essay may just be a criticism about one poorly thought-out museum, but their depiction of violent murders of women is how much of our society is based around. It seems as though there hasn't been much progression from Victorian England in the way that people view women today, specifially sex-workers, single women, or those impoverished. This text particularly was helpful in the understanding of how media was presented in the Vicorian Era. Newspapers, specifically the "Police Illustrated News" made it so people of any class can stay up to date on the news, even those that were impoversished and illiterate. Along with the rise of democracy within this period, newsapers continued to recirculate stories like Jack the Ripper that appealed to a wide range of social classes. Not only were these series of murders news worthy, but they also display how society reacts to horror. Victorian London reacted so that the women and their families couldn't get justice, but so that they find out who "Jack the Ripper" really was.
Waxworks and Wordless Women works to highlight the blatant disrespect presented within the Jack the Ripper museum, while also explaining the importance of women's voices in history. Not having women's perspectives, ideas, and knowledge within a "museum for women," is just as bewildering as blaming victims for being murdered. I suppose this is a massive way in which Victorian culture still is present in today's society. It’s time in which women are no longer menial victims, with small roles, in the lives of anonymous men.
Hayward, C. (2017). Waxworks and Wordless Women: The Jack the Ripper Museum. The Public Historian, 39(2), 51–57. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26420987
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