Crime in England 1880-1945 by Barry Godfrey

Author:Barry Godfrey [Godfrey, Barry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General, Study & Teaching, World, Social Science, Criminology
ISBN: 9781134609376
Google: keneAQAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-10-30T04:53:32+00:00

Cyber–dark tourism

Almost all gaol, police, and court museums now have websites to advertise their attractions, but they are still primarily places that you have to physically visit. To fully participate in the convict experience visitors will have to feel the cold dampness of a stone prison wall, feel the claustrophobic conditions of a cramped cell, and lie on an uncomfortable prison mattress and feel every lump and bump of the basic metal bed below. I am not saying that this fully reproduces the experience of being a prisoner – after all, visitors are not locked in a cell twenty-three hours a day for months on end. However, there is something valuable in standing on a Victorian prison landing; or standing in the dock of, say, St George’s Hall (Liverpool Assize Court) and feeling how exposed and vulnerable a defendant appearing there must have felt – Florence Maybrick, for example, who was prosecuted there in 1889 (Watson 2004). At the moment there are no virtual environments which attempt to recreate the Victorian or Edwardian prison (although it is possible that one will be developed at some point); however, some heritage sites do have very sophisticated ‘online doorways’ through which you are led in order to further entice you to visit the actual site itself.

So to some extent we can journey to dark sites of pain and punishment whilst sitting at home in front of the laptop. When we do, the interpretation of what we are seeing becomes even more important. It also becomes much harder, for it is difficult enough for museums to devise interpretive devices which present information to visitors in person at the site, but trying to appeal to the hugely divergent set of online viewers in the short period of time that ‘surfers’ spend on a website must be impossible. Museums must feel constrained by the divergent needs to both educate and entertain online viewers as they do for visitors to the physical site itself. Museums are, after all, trying to keep their financial heads above water, and an overly didactic website full of academic text may put off some who might otherwise have been tempted to visit. The jarring nature of some website blurb reveals the strain of trying to be authentic to the experience whilst also seeking to gather in the greatest number of ‘bums on seats’: ‘Many families planning a visit to Alcatraz worry about bringing children to a former penitentiary – they often ask us if it is appropriate for them. Our answer is a definite “yes!” There is no reason to hesitate bringing children to the Rock’ (http://www.nps.gov/alca/forkids/index.htm). The intention of gaol museum websites is to attract people to go there; they encourage inclusive involvement, which is a good thing. The vast majority of people will never have the opportunity of visiting a prison and therefore going to a gaol museum (even a former one which may have closed years or decades earlier) might encourage some insight into what life is really like for prisoners today.

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