An illustrated newspaper report showing a woman being lured to her fate by Jack the Ripper. From the exhibition at Museum in Docklands. © Museum in Docklands
A charity that provides services for women involved in prostitution has commented on how the new Jack the Ripper exhibition highlights a continuing problem.
Safe Exit at Toynbee Hall, a partnership project based in London, features in the exhibition just opened at Museum in Docklands, Jack the Ripper and the East End.
Co-ordinator Ellen Armstrong, from Safe Exit, talks to visitors in an audio-visual in the exhibition on the parallels between the lives of local women involved in street prostitution in 1888 – the time of the Whitechapel Murders - and today.
More than 100 years after the time of Jack the Ripper, women are still driven into the trade for similar reasons, and are still tragically vulnerable to violence, rape and murder.
"In 1888 impoverished women were frequently addicted to gin and sold sex to earn the four pence needed to pay for lodgings for the night," say Safe Exit.
"Today as many as 95 per cent of women selling sex have a crack/heroin addiction, not unusually exceeding £100 a day, and often work to fund a boyfriend/partner's drug habit as well."
John Henry Henshall, Behind the Bar, 1882 (detail). From the exhibition, Jack the Ripper at Museum in Docklands. © Museum in Docklands
A key authority on the issue of prostitution today, the Safe Exit project emphasises the need to address the demand for prostitution as vital to reducing its harmful impact on women and communities.
Many women in the sex industry are caught up in the criminal justice system. Safe Exit plays a part in helping them by running a scheme that offers a supportive alternative to court fines. The organisation also challenges the view that buying sex is a legitimate activity in its 2007 report, entitled 'It's just like going to the supermarket: Men buying sex in East London.'
Many of the women Safe Exit works with have chronic health and mental health problems, and many are homeless. The exhibition draws attention to the fact that many of the problems faced by the poor and dispossessed in late Victorian times are still issues today.
Read Caroline Lewis' review of the Jack the Ripper exhibition, showing at Museum in Docklands until November 2 2008.
