Street women's initiative put view in new Ripper exhibition

Thursday, 15 May 2008 15:48

TOYNBEE Hall-based Safe Exit, a project aiming to improving services for women prostitution and their impact on communities, features in the 'Jack the Ripper and the East End' exhibition at the Docklands Museum opening on May 15.

Contributing a talking head to the exhibition Safe Exit Co-ordinator Ellen Armstrong draws parallels between the lives of local women involved in street prostitution in 1888 - the time of the Whitechapel murders - and today.

She claims women are driven to street prostitution for similar reasons and are tragically still very vulnerable to violence, rape and murder.

The group challenges one view that buying sex today has become a legitimate leisure activity.

In 1888 impoverished women were frequently addicted to gin and sold sex to earn the 4 pence needed to pay for lodgings for the night. Today, they claim, as many as 95% of women selling sex have a crack/heroine addiction, not unusually exceeding £100 a day, and often work to fund a boyfriend/partner's drug habit as well.

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