The Clink Prison Museum - London, UK

30th August 2013, £7.50

Bring money

London, exceeding any city of which I'm aware, has a morbid titillation with the gruesome chapters of its past. We revel in the thumb-screws, the Halifax gibbet and the Tyburn Tree. We retrace the steps of the Krays and Guy Fawkes, and feel a rush of adrenaline when told the specifics of a Victorian madman tearing prostitutes apart. This may well be the saturnine aspect of all humanity, but nowhere is it more celebrated than the big smoke. 

I stood outside The London Dungeon and took a deep breath. Part of me was disgusted I was about to scratch that cerebral itch of the macabre, another part guilty I hadn't yet reviewed the British Museum (that'll come, I promise). However, much to my chagrin, the main reason I didn't review the London Dungeon was the entrance charge. Adults: £24.60. At least Dick Turpin had the good grace to wear a mask, I tell you! I stormed along the Thames, downstream and incandescent at the extortion. I was one Yorkshire stereotype away from sticking a ferret down my trousers while rolling down a hill in a tin bath. My indignant march took me right past the Tate Modern and Shakespeare's Globe, and to the front gate of The Clink Prison Museum, as if that was the next best thing. A poor man's poor man. 

The Clink Prison Museum is set on the original site of the medieval prison nicknamed 'The Clink' (from where the generic term for prisons originates) and was in use until the mid 18th Century. Originally, the prison was private, inmates would have to pay for their sentence including food and jailor services. Luckily the good people at The Clink Prison Museum have kept that spirit well alive by fleecing its visitors £7.50 on entrance (Ee Bah Gum!). Of course I was reluctant to cough up the best part of a tenner for something I didn't exactly have the highest hopes for, but compared to the audacity of the Dungeon, this was small change. And anyway, what fun would it be if I only reviewed the Louvre?

My entry was auspicious when an old lady, cockney as a knees-up in the blitz, confided in me:

"Ask for a guide, my love. They won't just give you one, you need to ask."

"Oh, thanks a lot. One please and a guide," I said to the girl in period dress by the electronic till.

"That's £9.50."

"Eh, these cost two quid." I said to the old lady.

"The robbing bastards, did you charge me for this..."

"What's that mummy?"
"Why, that's what happens when 
you have a penny-pinching
museum director, darling."

I didn't get involved: hell hath no fury like a Cockney ripped-off. Heading through the suitably gloomy entrance, one's confronted by the tone of this museum: tat. Their ersatz mannequins make the uncanny valley seem like the last five minutes of It's a Wonderful Life. The first information board (and certainly not the last) sets the agenda for the museum: top half of the sign is for adults, bottom, for kids. Although, given the manner in which information is divulged, they might as well have one plaque for everyone as they've nicked it all from QI anyway. The mascot of the children's experience is a wise-cracking, time-travelling rat that is no way nicked wholesale from the wise-cracking, time-travelling rat in the excellent Horrible Histories. No, this is a very different wise-cracking, time-travelling rat. Loads different.

A lot's made of the 'original site' angle, which is usually a badge of honour for any museum, but I somehow doubt the original prison was a two-bit, windowless den of concrete breeze blocks painted 'ghost train' black. Just being trapped in the poorly fitted rooms was enough to instil in me the misery of the time. I joke of course, the stories were harrowing. An audio track described the story of a woman who'd reported her landlord's pressure to become a prostitute and, as a result, landed herself in prison for some absurd accusation like being a scold or witchcraft. The story was shocking and very sad yet, true to form, The Clink managed to balls it up with an audio track that sounded like a goose rapping through a Sega Mega Drive. This is a recurrent problem with The Clink, the appalling tackiness of its exhibits separates the audience from the lives of its erstwhile inmates. 

It's hard to express how cheap the place is. A narrow corridor boasted a long map of Elizabethan London above a panel of what we might find if we dug beneath us (skulls, swords etc). To give things that Las Vegas sheen, they'd installed a pound-shop strobe light to act as substitute lightning that clicked on and off to give the room that authentic thunderstorm atmosphere. What's worse was the 'wobble-board-in-a-church' mp3 they'd used to mimic the thunder that came before the lightning. Who needs researchers, eh? Or an education.

Roxanne...

Half of the museum is a dedicated torture exhibit, and with it came a rather inappropriate tone. Visitors aren't informed of the horrors and injustice of a legal system based on the doctrines of a medieval 'if she floats she be a witch' logic, but invited to join in with the toothless yokels. On show is an arseless chair into which felons (or otherwise) were strapped and subsequently tortured to the whims of the guard. Guests are invited to sit in the chair, strap in and har-har-har the fun ensues. I witnessed a Canadian tourist strap in his wife for a good ten minutes. Other customers laughed and pointed whilst he tickled her and jokingly walked away, then things turned a little sour. She started to panic and some people suggested he release her. He made some fat-headed, ironically 50s era remark and left her there. She started to shout and try to force her way free and eventually, was released. The debacle was witnessed by a good twenty people including children and made for excruciating viewing. Now I know The Clink aren't directly responsible for this, but what did they think would happen? Would the tortured lady look to her husband and say,

"You know what, lodestar of my life? This experience has brought me that much closer to the victims of this unfair justice system and the senseless era of torture in which our ancestors lived."

No. Instead we got,

"Get me out of this shit now you fat fuck before I kick your poutine-hole back to Alberta."

Despite its glaringly malapropos tone, the torture section did pique my interest in some respects. There was a gallery of restraining devices such as a ball and chain that we could inspect and try out, thumbscrews to muck about with and various other torturous bagatelles to whittle away the hours. The intrigue of this meant diddlysquat, however, as across from the gallery was a morning star (see picture below) that children were challenged to hit against a metal plate and 'see if you can make a dint'. Dear reader, there wasn't a torture in renaissance Spain as demonic, inhumane or effective as a fat lad from Essex in a Chelsea shirt hitting a bit of sheet metal with another bit of metal completely out of time. I would've confessed anything to anyone right then (except telling that kid what I really thought of his efforts - damn you, social anxiety).

Best weapon ever? Spiky ball on a chain, please.

As I briefly touched upon before, bring your reading glasses, a chair, a packed lunch and some aspirin because your reading duties border on the biblical. There are some interesting titbits to be gleaned from the text: such as the word loo possibly coming from Gardez l'eau, a phrase exclaimed when privy users defenestrated their excretia onto the streets; or Henry VII pretty much buying himself into heaven; or the local prostitutes being labelled 'Winchester Geese' because of their apparel; and the local prostitute cemetery the 'Cross Bones Graveyard'. However, this wasn't nearly enough. Some of the signs were factually incorrect, outdated and often typo-laden. I appreciate that spellcheckers weren't around in the medieval period but this was unacceptable. For example, what are the most famous statues in the world? David? The Kiss? Liberty? How about Acton Burnell? You've never heard of it? Well I'm not surprised because it's the 'Statute of Acton Burnell'. Maybe the bucolic Shropshire village has a statue commemorating an obsolete legal practice from fourteenth century England, but I fucking doubt it. 


And, wow, is this place short. I looked at every signpost and display there because I'm duty bound to do so but some of the families whizzed through the thing like dysentery. When presented with the entrance charge of The Clink and the London Dungeon, your choice of patronage seems obvious, however, I believe this to be a false economy. Sure, I can tell the Dungeon's going to be crass, glib and dumb, but I'm sure I'll be entertained. Here I felt ripped off and bored. 

An oubliette, as shown here by
John Terry's Key Stage 3 artwork

In the excellent Museum of London (why didn't I go there?) is a small room furnished with the walls of an eighteenth century prison cell, graffiti and all. It's a sobering experience that isn't trying to do anything but educate and move. Compare that to The Clink, a catchpenny basement thrown together on a summer weekend, and you'll see how poorly the same idea can be executed. I think it's a good idea, especially for kids. Little boys love blood and guts and bile and sick and snot and mucus and urine and sweat and faeces exploding out of people, and where better to provide that than in a prison museum? There are ideas here that could capture any kids imagination, like the Oubliette, a covered hole dug into the basement floor of the clink into which impudent prisoners were cast. When the Thames flooded, they were overcome in a well of human waste. Show me a kid who wouldn't be spellbound by that. These examples of the horrendous conditions of the time could be balanced by the incredible work of prison reformers like Elizabeth Fry, a pioneer who, in this dungeon of a dungeon, is reduced to a barely readable plaque above the exit. 

It feels cruel to be so harsh on a small, independent museum such as this, but The Clink lacks the saving grace of all such institutions: charm. It feels a bit like watching someone pick on a quiet kid at school until you discover the kid shoots cats, opens his brother's christmas presents and spits at his granddad. To call this the worst museum in London is to disrespect the country's other cities. I'll search for something worse, but I hope I never find it. 

The Clink also holds seances and filmed an episode of Most Haunted there so, whatever shit's flung at it...

If you'd like to see the original death
mask of Oliver Cromwell, 
please go somewhere else

Upon returning to the blinding light of the South Bank, feeling heavy of heart and light of pocket, something stayed with me: the Cross Bones Graveyard. A hundred metres south, in the shade of the Shard, sits a small undeveloped patch of land (the scourge of the realtor). Here is the resting place of many of London's prostitutes and people of humble birth. As if in response to the claims of London being a cold place, the gate is laced with hundreds of flowers, bows and messages to the dead and the long dead. Ribbons to the memory of a tanner, entwined in the obituary of a recently deceased call girl. There's talk of this area being developed into a much needed residential complex, but I implore Southwark Council to use their imagination and turn this place into a shrine to the lives of history's forgotten people. What a beautiful thing that'd be. A jewel of the south.

Cross Bones Graveyard, Redcross Way, SE1