Curators at the London Dungeon, a museum of horrors which is part of a chain with outlets in Amsterdam, Edinburgh and other cities, were dismayed recently when a digital poster they had placed on the London Underground was banned by the Advertising Standards Authority for overstepping the limit of acceptability. The ad, entitled “Bloody Mary: Killer Queen”, featured Queen Mary transforming into a red-eyed zombie. Several parents complained that the ad frightened their children, and the ASA quickly stepped in and forced its removal. It isn’t our place to comment on that, but we saw the ad and thought it was pretty cool, if extremely brief. Plus we liked the London Dungeon’s website. 

Despite Shelton's takedown of two highly respected medical figures, there has been surprisingly little resistance to his assertions so far. Researchers of the 1700s usually obtained medical specimens from hospitals or morgues, and were known to employ graverobbers as well. But such specimens would have been diseased, aged, or physically damaged, whereas Hunter and Smellie would have needed young, physically fit subjects. According to Shelton, this prompted them to employ henchmen who most likely supplied bodies via “burking,” a technique named after serial killer William Burke, in which a person is slowly suffocated, thus leaving no damage to the cadaver and no detectable signs of foul play to alert police. Shelton's exhaustively researched study allegedly proves that no other method could have produced the steady stream of healthy mothers-to-be Hunter and Smellie desired. When interviewed about his claims by England’s Guardian newspaper, Shelton admitted they were shocking, but quoted Sherlock Holmes: “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, is the truth.”     

The National Gallery in London has just opened a new art exhibit based on one of our favorite cities—Amsterdam. The exhibit is stirring up quite a controversy because of its explicit content, which critics describe as tasteless and “designed to shock.” The artists responsible, Ed and Nancy Kienholz, created partial versions of some of Amsterdam’s famous brothels back in 1983. Their new installation, “The Hoerengracht,” or the Whore Canal, features these pieces arranged to replicate a realistic walk through Amsterdam’s famous De Wallen red light district, complete with mannequins dressed as prostitutes and garish neon lights. These were among the final pieces worked on by Ed Kienholz, who died in 1994. By that time he had achieved widespread acclaim, but even so, this is perhaps the first time his and his wife’s work has been featured in a venue as conventional and respected as the National Gallery. It is the venue’s break from its traditional roots that has generated both criticism and publicity. Now that the exhibit is open, it’s the public’s turn to decide. “The Hoerengracht”—the closest thing to Amsterdam without going there—runs through February 2010.

Above we have a well-worn On the Q.T. from November 1963, with Christine Keeler on the cover. Keeler, at upper right and below, was a London showgirl who had a brief relationship with Britain’s married Secretary of State for War, a man named John Profumo. The two met at a party in Buckinghamshire, in a mansion owned by Lord Astor, and though Keeler wasn’t a full-time prostitute, she occasionally made herself available to wealthy and powerful men and they sometimes gave her cash gifts. She and Profumo were involved only a few weeks, but that was long enough for people to notice. When Profumo was paraded before the House of Commons and asked to answer to the rumors, he claimed there had been no impropriety between him and Keeler. It wasn’t just the lie that sank him—members of the government were alarmed because Keeler’s many acquaintances included Yevgeny Ivanov, a Russian attaché at the Soviet embassy in London. With the Cold War in full swing, officials feared Keeler was working Profumo for nuclear secrets on behalf of Ivanov and the Russkies.

The mess cost Profumo his job and reputation, and also may have brought down conservative Prime Minster Harold Macmillan, who resigned six months later for “health reasons.” It was the scandal of the century in Britain, and really, it still is. Never since have sex, politics, and state secrets been fused in such a way. There are many detailed retellings of the story, but for people interested in an inside account, Keeler published an autobiography in 2001 that sparked an outcry because she wrote that actress Maureen Swanson was one of the girls who attended privateorgies arranged by Dr. Stephen Ward (in sunglasses on the magazine cover). Ward was an osteopath who dabbled in pimping, and his orgies were infamous. Open only to the rich and powerful, they featured not only beautiful girls, but the occult, sadomasochism, interracial sex shows, and so forth. Maureen Swanson later became the Countess of Dudley through marriage to Lord Ednam, so Keeler’s naming of her as a participant caused quite a bit of embarrassment to British nobility. But interestingly, Lady Dudley never sued.

We could go on, but life is short and history’s intrigues are many. For cinematic types, the 1989 film Scandal, starring Joanne Whalley and Bridget Fonda, is an entertaining way to learn more about the event. We watched it, and, while Whalley is fine in the lead role and Fonda is good as always, only reading Keeler’s own words can convey the sense of ’60s liberation and breeziness that was such a large part of her personality, and which the British public reacted to with such revulsion. More than one writer of the period observed that when Britain crucified Keeler, they were really trying to destroy a part of themselves. Keeler said it herself: “I took on the sins of everybody, of a generation, really.”

In Great Britain, controversy is building around an upcoming documentary depicting the loose journalistic ethics of London tabloids. Entitled Starsuckers, the movie is the brainchild of Taking Liberties director Chris Atkins and a group of colleagues, whose goal was to prove, in a comical way, that modern tabloids cannot be trusted to print the truth. To do this, they decided to anonymously call tabloid tip lines with fabricated stories. Their first test involved ringing up the Daily Mirror claiming to have seen singer Avril Lavigne passed out in a nightclub. The story appeared in the Mirror the next day, embellished with a few taunts to the effect that the singer was a “lightweight.” In the next few weeks the Starsuckers team planted false stories in the Daily Express, the Daily Star, the Sun, and most of the other London tabloids, all using the same method—anonymous tips that were not in any way questioned. The planted stories often spread from one tabloid to the next with no evidence any attempts at corroboration had been made. One fabrication about Amy Winehouse’s hair catching fire spread to all the daily tabloids, a New York Post blog, and even to the Times of India. Starsuckers promises to show not only that Rupert Murdoch-style sell-first/ask-questions-later journalism has infected the entire tabloid industry, but that it has spread to mainstream media, and in turn made consumers vulnerable to social, economic and political manipulation. The London tabloids have thus far declined comment on the claims made by Starsuckers and Atkins. Later this month the public will have an opportunity to judge the truth of these matters for itself when the movie debuts at the London Film Festival.     

One hundred twenty-one years ago today, residents of London began to understand that a serial killer was stalking the dark streets of Whitechapel and London. Jack the Ripper had killed before—he had murdered Mary Ann Nichols in late August, and Annie Chapman the second week of September. But when two more women died in the same night Londoners flew into a panic. A malevolent entity had beset their city and suddenly it was clear his thirst would not easily be slaked. The two murders were called “The Double Event.” While some historians feel they were unconnected, Ripper orthodoxy holds that the second murder occurred because the first was unconsummated. Which is to say, the Ripper was robbed of a chance to inflict his signature mutilation on the first victim because he was interrupted by a passerby, so he immediately went out and found a second victim to kill in the intricate method his compulsion demanded. 

Less than an hour later Jack the Ripper found the privacy he sought—and another victim. Catherine Eddowes had spent the night of September 29 in the drunk tank at Bishopgate police station. The cops let her go just about the time Elizabeth Stride was being murdered not far away in Whitechapel. At 1:35 a.m. Eddowes was seen by three witnesses having a conversation with an unidentified male. Her body was found at 1:45, so police of the time and historians of today agree she was talking with the Ripper. In those ten minutes he walked with Eddowes to secluded Mitre Square, justinside the London city limits, then killed her, mutilated her, and removed her kidney. The kidney—or part of it—resurfaced along with a letter addressed to George Lusk, head of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee. The letter bore a header “From Hell,” and the text boasted of how nice the missing piece of kidney tasted fried. The letter was signed: “Catch me when you can.” But neither Lusk nor anyone else managed it. And the killings continued.

Is it art? We we wouldn't presume to judge, but it’s certainly weird enough to be pulp. The prestigious National Portrait Gallery in London has just acquired British artist Marc Quinn’s unique sculpture “Self,” which Quinn created in 1991 from nine pints of his own frozen blood. When originally exhibited the piece triggered both revulsion and admiration, and soon became a symbol of the BritArt movement, as well as something of a sensation outside art circles. Its notoriety grew even more when a rumor circulated that it had melted after its storage freezer was accidentally unplugged, but Quinn has refused to confirm or deny that particular tale. Even if it had thawed, the sculpture is allegedly designed to be refrozen if needed, which means the original “Self” and three others Quinn has created over the years to embody his essence and chart the course of his aging all survive in the hands of various collectors and museums. Quinn’s incandescent genius has inspired us here at Pulp Intl. to create a piece that embodies our essence. We’re thinking of a liver made from frozen beer. 

Here’s a beautiful True Detective from November 1965, with an exposé on Guenther Podola. In July of 1959 while living in London, Podola stole a cache of jewelry and the police got on his trail. When they caught up to him in Kensington he fatally shot an officer in the heart. He tried to claim at his trial that he had amnesia about the event because the cops had beaten him, but a jury convicted him of murder after a rather expeditious thirty-eight minutes of deliberation—thirty of which we suspect were spent eating the free lunch. So Podola was sentenced to death and executed at Wandsworth Prison, becoming the last man hanged for murder in England. If you get a sense of déjà vu come Monday morning, that's because you’re reading our new history rewind feature, and you’ll have come upon an item about Ruth Ellis, who on July 13, 1955 became the last woman hanged for murder in England. So today we’ve presented you with the first half of a rather gaudy matched pair. Keep reading the history rewind for the second, and keep your eye out for other additions coming to Pulp Intl.     

Some people claim he killed himself in the woods surrounding the Maxwell-Scott’s home, but most believe him to still be at large. He was a professional gambler—a skill quite useful for a man needing to support himself off the books—and he had friends all over the world that might have sheltered him. There have been a number of false alarms over the years—one person claimed to have seen him in Tahiti, and in 2007 he was even briefly believed to be living in a car in New Zealand. But the stories were investigated and dismissed, and Lord Lucan remains missing. After thirty-five years, he has become a legend on the order of Bigfoot—a mystery that fascinates and bewilders the British public, and probably will continue doing so for many years to come.     

Just to show that virtually no author escaped the pulp wave, here are two pimped out book covers for George Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London and 1984. Orwell was already a literary immortal by the time these editions hit the streets, but hey—it’s never too late for an extreme makeover. The covers aren’t dishonest, per-se, but trying to make these two extremely important books look like John D. MacDonald capers is like trying to make Dame Judi Dench look like Megan Fox. But at least we know the publishers took the propagandist lessons of 1984 to heart. From the age of doublethink—greetings!