{"id":1173,"date":"2015-11-03T13:50:51","date_gmt":"2015-11-03T12:50:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ounews.co\/?p=1173"},"modified":"2015-11-03T13:50:51","modified_gmt":"2015-11-03T12:50:51","slug":"acid-bath-murderers-and-poison-why-dark-tourism-is-important","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/arts-social-sciences\/history\/acid-bath-murderers-and-poison-why-dark-tourism-is-important\/","title":{"rendered":"Acid bath murderers and poison: why dark tourism is important"},"content":{"rendered":"

People love all things spooky and gory. I was reminded of the truth of this when I visited the Museum of London\u2019s new exhibition The Crime Museum Uncovered<\/a>. It was a tantalising prospect, promising \u201cnever-before-seen objects from the Metropolitan Police\u2019s Crime Museum\u201d on display \u201cfor the first time ever\u201d. This Crime Museum was established in the mid-1870s by serving officers but was only ever open to police professionals and invited guests.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n

Spade used by Dr Crippen to bury his wife Cora in 1910.<\/span>
\n\u00a9 Museum of London<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Now open to the public, the Museum of London\u2019s exhibition has been particularly popular, no doubt due to the draw of being in the presence of real things from notorious cases such as the Krays<\/a> and Dr Crippen<\/a>. No doubt it would have been particularly full over Halloween weekend, when the lure of dark tourism is at its strongest. Objects relating to the 1949 murder of Olive Durand-Deacon by the \u201cAcid Bath Murderer<\/a>\u201d have a similar appeal to the public orgy of fangs, bloody cleavers and bandages.<\/p>\n

Tourism gone dark<\/h2>\n

Tourism is defined as dark when it involves<\/a> visiting sites associated with death, disaster and tragedy \u201cfor remembrance, education or entertainment\u201d. It isn\u2019t hard to find examples of independent museums who make no bones about exploiting their darker sides. Just think of The Clink<\/a> or the London Dungeon.<\/p>\n

But the outrage over the recently opened Jack the Ripper Museum<\/a> in London shows how controversial dark tourism can be and how easy it is to get wrong. This museum clearly intended to target particular visitors, and ignored the fact that the subject is much more complex, including a number of important concerns around womens’ rights, poverty and crime. As a small, ill-informed enterprise they crossed ethical boundaries.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n

Medicine case belonging to poisoner and Jack the Ripper suspect Dr Neil Cream c. 1892.<\/span>
\n\u00a9 Museum of London<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

These grey boundaries mean that the brand of dark tourism is something that the partners of this latest exhibition (The Museum of London, The Metropolitan Police Service and The Mayor\u2019s Office for Policing and Crime) have tried to distance themselves from. It\u2019s obvious that they are anxious to safely anchor the exhibition away from all things gory.<\/p>\n

They do so by introducing academic themes around museology and historiography and by linking each of the 24 cases featured to developments in crime detection or law. They are also keen to emphasise the need for discretion and respect for the victims. They exhibit no individual cases post 1975 and, as part of the ethical process of selection and in compliance with the Human Tissues Act 2004<\/a>, they display no human remains. But the objects undeniably invite a similar interest to that of the stalwarts on the dark scene.<\/p>\n

For the last 11 years, I\u2019ve curated another police museum. So the dilemmas of keeping and displaying contentious artefacts and documents are all too familiar to me.<\/p>\n

Spotting dark tourists<\/h2>\n

So, I asked myself as I sat in front of the panel about the Kray twins: what does a dark tourist look like? I considered the party of white-haired ladies who gathered in hushed discussion and who could, for all intents and purposes, have been WI members tutting over a disastrous sponge cake. The Kray twins were strange celebrity\/gangster hybrids. Fearsome gang leaders, their glamorous nightclubs also served as portals through which the rich and famous were able to briefly pass, tasting a parallel world on the \u201cother side of the law\u201d. A form of reality dark tourism, perhaps?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n

The Krays \u2013 briefcase with syringe and poison.<\/span>
\n\u00a9 Museum of London<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The original Crime Museum did something similar. Based in New Scotland Yard\u2019s notorious Room 101, it indeed housed some truly horrific items and, because it was never intended to be a \u201cmuseum\u201d, but rather a training resource, it had no boundaries around ethics. The small space created a melting pot where men in shiny, squeaky shoes and creased trousers rubbed shoulders with celebrities, politicians, historians and potential criminals (in the visitors\u2019 book for 1905 is the signature of Frederick Seddon, who later murdered Eliza Barrow).<\/p>\n

In the past<\/a>, dark tourism was everywhere. Now it\u2019s tainted, something that major museums are keen to distance themselves from: modernity has separated us from the daily immediacy of death. Yet we still have a basic human desire to understand the incomprehensible and to push at our own ethical boundaries.<\/p>\n

As such, all museums play an important role in education, remembrance and entertainment and most hold numerous artefacts relating to death in some way. How many millions of visitors have stared at the grotesquely distorted figure of Lindow Man in the British Museum? Or the human-shaped voids at Pompeii? Do such displays fall into the dark tourism net?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n

Pin cushion embroidered with human hair by Annie Parker, 1879.<\/span>
\n\u00a9 Museum of London<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

So the dilemmas, particularly for museums of crime, are around how to manage the boundaries between entertainment and the perception of profiting at the expense of others pain. Profit, though not touched upon in this exhibition or supporting material, can\u2019t have been far from the Metropolitan Police\u2019s mind: with the sale of New Scotland Yard and with massive cuts across all police forces it needs to earn its keep. In August 2013 the Express<\/a> posited a similar thought: \u201cIf entrance was charged at \u00a315, the exhibition could look to bring in up to \u00a34.5m\u201d. (Adult entrance is \u00a312.50).<\/p>\n

Despite this pecuniary background, correctly managed, dark tourism is actually quite light at the edges. When emphasis is placed on remembrance and education it is a healthy part of building on our life experiences and the term should not be shied away from. It\u2019s important to engage with and talk about our fascination with death.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Angela Sutton-Vane<\/a>, PhD candidate, The Open University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

This article was originally published on The Conversation<\/a>. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

People love all things spooky and gory. I was reminded of the truth of this when I visited the Museum of London\u2019s new exhibition The Crime Museum Uncovered. It was a tantalising prospect, promising \u201cnever-before-seen objects from the Metropolitan Police\u2019s Crime Museum\u201d on display \u201cfor the first time ever\u201d. This Crime Museum was established in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":1182,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[528,1023,1075,1184,1489,2250],"class_list":["post-1173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history","tag-crime","tag-halloween","tag-history","tag-jack-the-ripper","tag-museum-of-london","tag-tourism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1173\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}