Eleven women were brutally murdered in London's East End between 1888 and 1891. The Whitechapel murders, as they became known, provoked horror, making front-page headlines.
The presumed lone killer was nicknamed Jack the Ripper, though his identity remains unknown. Now infamous, he and the murders have become an integral part of East End history and wider culture.
The Museum in Docklands' exhibition Jack the Ripper and the East End displays for the first time some of the documents from the original police investigation. But the Jack the Ripper element is misleading in places; the real strength of the exhibition lies in its presentation of the Victorian East End.
The Museum in Docklands is in Canary Wharf, only a couple of miles from Whitechapel, but the surrounding bars, cafes and shopping malls where today's workers spend their wages couldn't be further from the East End life portrayed in the first of the exhibition's two rooms.
It features a copy of Charles Booth's map of London poverty, which was published in 1889. Booth coined the term "poverty line" and he deemed that one third of those living in the East End were below it.
From his detailed research he produced a map that colour-coded each street according to residents' living conditions. Whitechapel's colours ranged from black to purple; that is, "lowest class, vicious, semi-criminal" to "mixed, some comfortable others poor".
Opposite the map is a book of Gustave Doré's drawings of the East End, which is open at a page showing the over-crowded conditions of the area's slums. If Doré's drawings appear to verge on caricature, a nearby slide show of photographs from the turn of the 20th century puts them in perspective.
Closer inspection of a picture of smiling children reveals how dirty and torn their clothes are. Another image shows three generations of women, and although they must all be under-60 their faces are lined, their expressions hard, and they look altogether worn out.
Other sections in this room briefly discuss employment and organisations that tried to help the poor, either with general welfare or with specific problems such as alcoholism. There is also a brief section on prostitution, relevant because many of the victims of the Whitechapel murders were prostitutes.
But while these certainly give a flavour of East End life, it isn't thorough enough to explain why this poverty is linked to Jack the Ripper other than through location. As the exhibition unfolds, too many questions remain that could have been answered here.
Some of these questions are raised in a video discussion with the US playwright and critic Bonnie Greer. Throughout the exhibition there are videos of experts in various fields: Ellen Armstrong from Safe Exit (an initiative to help prostitutes in London) discusses prostitution; a criminal psychologist applies present-day techniques to talk about the "profile" of Jack the Ripper; journalist Eve Pollard looks at the press.
Greer makes some interesting points about how the impact of unemployment and the rise of the women's movement may have affected men, and thus the killer. But it's difficult to judge these remarks because they are given no context elsewhere in the exhibition.
The latter part of the first room and all of the second room focuses on the investigation of the Whitechapel murders. We are introduced to members of the team from H Division CID, and are given a brief insight into Victorian policing.
Visitors can glean that methods were very different then; for example there was no single police surgeon or crime-scene photographer, though it's not clear what impact this may have had.
We find out a little bit about the suspects - those men who were suspected at the time and since. Of course today's theories can only be speculative, but it shows how the case has stayed ingrained in popular culture.
We also learn very little about the murdered women. There is a panel for each of the 11 victims but these tell us very little about their lives, and it's not because the information is unknown.
The final section of the exhibition, which rather unnecessarily shows post-mortem photos of the women, contains a file with detailed information on each. But this file is very easy to overlook, and sidelining the women overlooks a link to east end life and feels exploitative.
Documents in the exhibition include police reports and letters written by people purporting to be Jack the Ripper. This name was coined by the author of the first such letter, which was sent to a news agency, which syndicated the story. The publicity spawned a multitude of copycats, many creepily written in blood-red ink.
In fact, the press played another role, one that links the discussion of poverty to the murders, although it is underplayed in the exhibition. If visitors read the front page of The Star on the wall in the first room, they will see that by making headline news the crimes also drew national attention to conditions in the East End, creating consternation and debate.
By the time of Charles Booth's final survey of the East End in 1903, slum clearance had begun and the colours are brighter around Whitechapel. If this sounds positive, it is worth remembering that Tower Hamlets, the borough in which the murders took place, is still one of the most deprived areas of the UK.
The Whitechapel murders certainly took place in the East End, but that seems to be the best connection this exhibition can offer between the two subjects. And in discussing the investigation as the hunt for a single perpetrator of 11 murders, the exhibition is being slightly disingenuous.
The Metropolitan Police now believe that it is most likely that six of the women were murdered by "the Ripper" - all in 1888 - and the other five are victims of other killers. This puts a rather different light on some of the information presented here.
Jack the Ripper and the East End feels like two exhibitions, and is almost presented as such. The most interesting part is the social history, but there is the worrying feeling that Jack the Ripper is just being used as a draw.
Rachel Souhami is a freelance curator and a lecturer in science communication at Imperial College London
The presumed lone killer was nicknamed Jack the Ripper, though his identity remains unknown. Now infamous, he and the murders have become an integral part of East End history and wider culture.
The Museum in Docklands' exhibition Jack the Ripper and the East End displays for the first time some of the documents from the original police investigation. But the Jack the Ripper element is misleading in places; the real strength of the exhibition lies in its presentation of the Victorian East End.
The Museum in Docklands is in Canary Wharf, only a couple of miles from Whitechapel, but the surrounding bars, cafes and shopping malls where today's workers spend their wages couldn't be further from the East End life portrayed in the first of the exhibition's two rooms.
It features a copy of Charles Booth's map of London poverty, which was published in 1889. Booth coined the term "poverty line" and he deemed that one third of those living in the East End were below it.
From his detailed research he produced a map that colour-coded each street according to residents' living conditions. Whitechapel's colours ranged from black to purple; that is, "lowest class, vicious, semi-criminal" to "mixed, some comfortable others poor".
Opposite the map is a book of Gustave Doré's drawings of the East End, which is open at a page showing the over-crowded conditions of the area's slums. If Doré's drawings appear to verge on caricature, a nearby slide show of photographs from the turn of the 20th century puts them in perspective.
Closer inspection of a picture of smiling children reveals how dirty and torn their clothes are. Another image shows three generations of women, and although they must all be under-60 their faces are lined, their expressions hard, and they look altogether worn out.
Other sections in this room briefly discuss employment and organisations that tried to help the poor, either with general welfare or with specific problems such as alcoholism. There is also a brief section on prostitution, relevant because many of the victims of the Whitechapel murders were prostitutes.
But while these certainly give a flavour of East End life, it isn't thorough enough to explain why this poverty is linked to Jack the Ripper other than through location. As the exhibition unfolds, too many questions remain that could have been answered here.
Some of these questions are raised in a video discussion with the US playwright and critic Bonnie Greer. Throughout the exhibition there are videos of experts in various fields: Ellen Armstrong from Safe Exit (an initiative to help prostitutes in London) discusses prostitution; a criminal psychologist applies present-day techniques to talk about the "profile" of Jack the Ripper; journalist Eve Pollard looks at the press.
Greer makes some interesting points about how the impact of unemployment and the rise of the women's movement may have affected men, and thus the killer. But it's difficult to judge these remarks because they are given no context elsewhere in the exhibition.
The latter part of the first room and all of the second room focuses on the investigation of the Whitechapel murders. We are introduced to members of the team from H Division CID, and are given a brief insight into Victorian policing.
Visitors can glean that methods were very different then; for example there was no single police surgeon or crime-scene photographer, though it's not clear what impact this may have had.
We find out a little bit about the suspects - those men who were suspected at the time and since. Of course today's theories can only be speculative, but it shows how the case has stayed ingrained in popular culture.
We also learn very little about the murdered women. There is a panel for each of the 11 victims but these tell us very little about their lives, and it's not because the information is unknown.
The final section of the exhibition, which rather unnecessarily shows post-mortem photos of the women, contains a file with detailed information on each. But this file is very easy to overlook, and sidelining the women overlooks a link to east end life and feels exploitative.
Documents in the exhibition include police reports and letters written by people purporting to be Jack the Ripper. This name was coined by the author of the first such letter, which was sent to a news agency, which syndicated the story. The publicity spawned a multitude of copycats, many creepily written in blood-red ink.
In fact, the press played another role, one that links the discussion of poverty to the murders, although it is underplayed in the exhibition. If visitors read the front page of The Star on the wall in the first room, they will see that by making headline news the crimes also drew national attention to conditions in the East End, creating consternation and debate.
By the time of Charles Booth's final survey of the East End in 1903, slum clearance had begun and the colours are brighter around Whitechapel. If this sounds positive, it is worth remembering that Tower Hamlets, the borough in which the murders took place, is still one of the most deprived areas of the UK.
The Whitechapel murders certainly took place in the East End, but that seems to be the best connection this exhibition can offer between the two subjects. And in discussing the investigation as the hunt for a single perpetrator of 11 murders, the exhibition is being slightly disingenuous.
The Metropolitan Police now believe that it is most likely that six of the women were murdered by "the Ripper" - all in 1888 - and the other five are victims of other killers. This puts a rather different light on some of the information presented here.
Jack the Ripper and the East End feels like two exhibitions, and is almost presented as such. The most interesting part is the social history, but there is the worrying feeling that Jack the Ripper is just being used as a draw.
Rachel Souhami is a freelance curator and a lecturer in science communication at Imperial College London
Project data
Cost: £300,000
Curator: Julia Hoffbrand, Alex Werner
3D design: Museum of London, Museum in Docklands
2D design: Norton Allison
Principal contractor: Devonshire House Associates
Lighting: Sutton Vane Associates
Showcases: Click Netherfield, Britannia Storage Systems
Introductory AV: Sim-O
Exhibition ends: 12 November
Cost: £300,000
Curator: Julia Hoffbrand, Alex Werner
3D design: Museum of London, Museum in Docklands
2D design: Norton Allison
Principal contractor: Devonshire House Associates
Lighting: Sutton Vane Associates
Showcases: Click Netherfield, Britannia Storage Systems
Introductory AV: Sim-O
Exhibition ends: 12 November
