Museum of London

Follow the cat to ....

the museum of London

Statue at the entrance.  Not sure why these were in B&W

The temporary accommodation we were staying at was literally across the road from the Museum of London.  After the frenzied hordes of the Natural History museum the relative obscurity of this museum was a welcome reprieve.  Now that we are Londoners, we can visit the more popular museums in the low season.

There was a good exhibition on London street photography showing photos from the 1800's through to present day.  That was really interesting, but then I like photography, unfortunately photos of the photos were forbidden.

One thing which was cool was seeing the photos of Brick Lane from the 1960's.  Brick Lane is famous for it's food, in particular Indian, but back in the 1960's it was the scene of many battles between the National Front party and anti-fascist protesters, due to the large Bangladeshi community living there.  So there were a number of photos of Bangladeshis walking along the streets with swastikas and KKK and NF slogans painted on the walls.  Let me just say that the Brick Lane of now is completely different, at least in terms of the graffiti and numbers of fascists present.  But it was interesting to see the history of the area I then ate at later that day.

A model of a Selfridges lift, the first store to have lifts in London

Another interesting thing in the photos was seeing how much dirtier children were back in the 1800's and early 1900's.  They were filthy!

There was a lot of stuff in the museum, it was more of a collection of stuff than an in-depth look at the rise of London and it's various events.  One such thing they had was one of the first lifts from Selfridges.  Selfridges is a very posh department store, I suppose David Jones is trying to emulate it.  Apparently they were one of the first stores to have escalators as well.  I think the story went that when the customers first rode the escalator they were given smelling salts at the top by the shop attendants.


They had a couple of quite good sections in the more modern history sections, so from the 1600's-present day.  One section was a

Selfridges lift

recreation of the pleasure gardens of the 1800's.  Here people would wander around gardens and lords would rub shoulders with the peasants.  There was a movie running continuously which was a little strange, of the typical goings on in the gardens at night.

Another section was a Victorian recreation of a town centre.  So they had all the typical shops set up with things they would sell. 

One of the best exhibits was on the suffragettes of the UK.  There were recordings of the women's experiences with the police and government as they were fighting for their rights.  Some of the stories sounded really quite brutal.  Just out of interest the UK didn't give women the right to vote (universally) until 1928, which compared to New Zealand's 1893 was actually quite late in terms of so-called developed nations.  Though all women in Australia didn't get the vote until 1962, which was far worse.

Grocery store in the Victorian-era

It was interesting hearing about those women's fight in the late 1800's to early 1900's and then carrying on through the rest of tthe museum up to the present day.  The suffragettes were certainly not the only group fighting for their rights as time went on, and you got a sense of where the 60's fit into the broader scheme of things.

There was also a section on the very early history, the fossils and prehistoric remains found on the site of London.  There were some more mammoth fossils, which I can't get enough of.  There was even a skull of a cave bear, which to me is another mythical animal. 

Would I recommend it?  Perhaps not if you only had a few days in London, but if you were staying a bit longer I would certainly give it a go.  It gives you a good feel of where London (and England as a whole) has come from.

That's one wide dress

Can't get over my mammoth fossils, that's a tusk and a jawbone and to the left is a cave bear skull