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Due to the nature of this attraction, you should be aware that the images below are of a graphic nature.
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The London Dungeon

The London Dungeon chronicles the most grisly chapters in London’s colourful history using a combination of grizzly scenes, a cast of costumed actors and 2000 years of history, brought chillingly to life.

The Dungeon touts itself as a gruesome museum of everything that Madame Tussauds’ famous Chamber of Horrors were too scared to show you. Built into rustic archways along London’s Tooley Street, the attraction hopes to capture visitors’ morbid curiosity by telling the tales of the London Plague, the Great Fire, and recreating the steps of the infamous monster, Jack the Ripper.

If you prebook or book online, you will miss out on the first shock of many; the queue to get in. The outside of London Dungeons has been much photographed with broody statues and flaming lanterns, the characteristic arched entrance emblazoned with the gloomy adage “Enter at Your Peril”.

The queue, you will soon learn, is for another queue. Once inside, you wait in a gloomy graveyard to have your photo taken with your head in a pair of stocks.

Once done, you queue up again, this time for tickets before you enter the Dungeons.

Once inside, visitors mill around the around the darkened catacombs which exhibit the oft-grotesque forms of torture offered to the more promiscuous citizens of medieval times including being bludgeoned to death in their own homes (a popular choice for the ladies) and simply being drowned.

These first scenes give a good indication of what lies ahead. This isn’t the history of London presented palatably with the gory finer details withheld, this is the story of London told from the gritty perspective of blood, gore, death and misery.

Aside the opening scene, your tour around the London Dungeon is guided in its entirety. Once you have absorbed the grim reality of medieval life, you are beaconed into a dark room from which your tour in earnest begins.

The charismatic introduction by a battered-looking member of staff warns us of the grisly sights we’re about to see before we are cast into the Labyrinth of the Lost.

The Labyrinth of the Lost is apparently the largest such mirror maze in the world with corridors and archways being patrolled by a sinister ‘crypt keeper’ who uses the mirrors to hide and jump out when you least expect it.

While you enter the maze as a large group of about thirty, the group soon fragments through the many passageways and corridors and the maze becomes more and more effective. Even more so when every seemingly possible avenue of escape has been explored to no avail; there is seemingly no way out, before through the catacombs the sound of a bell tolling and the haunting cries of “bring out your dead” guide you towards a now opened doorway and into a 17th century London street.

As the door slams shut behind you, a dishevelled old hag explains how the bubonic plague spread through London in the fateful summer of 1665. Travellers ‘like us’ helped the plague spread through the ill-fated city with the help of rats, fleas and people escaping the city, helping it to spread to other British cities.

In total, 100,000 people died, and as death knocks on the door of London, it is time to meet one of the dearly departed. We make our way down a London street, with red crosses painted on doors, and poorly residents spluttering and sneezing at us before we enter a grimy post mortem examination room.

A sickly looking female doctor wearing a nose-gay full of flowers nervously enters stage left before taking us on a graphic tour of the symptoms of the bubonic plague. In a fairly nonchalant performance, we discover that as well as flu-like symptoms, black blemishes would form and eat away at your body.

The tour of the decomposing body includes shocking observers with a surprise squirt of water before in a comically inept movement sits up (with a movement not dissimilar to how toast pops out of a toaster) to the sound of dramatic music as our panicky doctor ushers the fairly serene audience out and into the next room.

This autopsy shows the Dungeons’ true colours; a flimsy horror pretext overlaid with a token sniff of educational worth, embellished with hammy acting and a fairly tiresome comedy routine.

In the next room, a loud-mouthed hag rounds up our rabble before giving us a graphic guide to period instruments of torture. Once again, the educational merit is there if you look hard enough, although the jokes and innuendo are at the forefront.

The gore is left to your imagination as certain instruments are pointed menacingly at one member of the group. Most involve cutting or removing various parts of your body; whether your tongue, or (males) your, well, y’know.

Suitably belittled, we are ordered to put our hands on our heads and are frogmarched into a courtroom.

Almost as if an instrument of torture itself, despairing visitors are subjected to a pantomime performance by the court clerk and judge, along with a gallery of six unconvincing waxwork jurors who call various members of the group up to the dock and accuse them of crimes ranging from public nudity and being ugly.

Bombarded with a clear display of comedy one-upmanship between the two actors, it is entirely possible I nodded off at the back of the class, but I for one could not see how exactly this courtroom drama added a single string to London Dungeon’s bow. Nothing about it was educational, and certainly nothing gory.

Nevertheless, we are condemned to hell by the stroppy judge and are ushered off through a brief maze of chickenwire, illuminated with a flashing red strobe before we get to the much lauded ‘Traitor! Boat Ride to Hell’.

Touting itself as the most terrifying ride in London, eight passengers board a boat which makes the journey to Traitor’s Gate at the Tower of London to meet their inevitable fate.

Despite the grim expectations, Boat Ride to Hell is a veritable pleasure... i.e., it’s not in anyway scary. Slightly irritating, but definitely not scary.

Your doomed boat passes through the stagnated waters of the Thames towards Traitor’s Gate. After a few choice insults from a robotic animatronic who is “having a really bad day” your boat goes down a shallow backwards drop before you alight.

Ironically, Boat Ride to Hell lacks the misery and discomfort of Blackpool’s Valhalla, so is a failure of the highest order.

But, as we abandon all hope, London Dungeon pulls an ace from its sleeve.

19th century London played host for one of the most prolific serial murderers of all time; Jack The Ripper.

Our host, a reporter for the local rag, explains that he is following the bloody trail of Jack The Ripper, a wicked and mysterious character who earned his name by brutally murdering and dissecting so called ladies of the night in 1888.

His creepy account of events is made all the more chilling as he reveals the barely recognisable remains of his first victim, slumped on the ground under some steps in a Whitechappel courtyard.

Concerned for our safety, he takes us into a dimly lit street where he assures us a policeman will soon be here to make sure we don’t become the Ripper’s next victims. In a clever twist, the policeman never arrives, with instead our safe passage being assured by a vigilante.

Such was the concern in 1888, the public took the law into their own hands in the quest to capture the elusive Whitechappel murderer. Of course, as a vigilante our host many stories to tell, and what follows is the most convincing, nostalgic and educational performance by any actor in the London Dungeon.

Of course, the tale of Jack the Ripper is the perfect horror story for London Dungeon, and as you stand in a dimly lit street being told about how victims were mercilessly killed in quite grotesque detail.

A film in a cinema follows, and through a grubby upstairs window the film explains the story in more depth, chronicling one of the murders where the audacious Ripper forced his way into the home of one of the murdered prostitutes.

We then go into a police mortuary, where we look down upon a bloodied body on the slab with two doctors examining it. A narrative explains how nobody actually knew the final identity of Jack the Ripper.

As already explained by the vigilante we met earlier, he was already known as Jack the Ripper as this was how a letter to the police was signed. Projections of various suspects appear on the wall above the autopsy; including proven lunatics, people who even admitted to being the Ripper (although not proven, they were hanged) as well as a priest (suspected due to his views on ladies of the night).

Rather randomly, this presentation concludes with some non-descript and non-sensical ramblings from the spirit of Jack the Ripper (oh, per-lease) before the presentation confusingly concludes with a fireball exploding from an opened door in the wall.

Your passage takes you towards a set of gallows, before you go down some steps underneath the stage above. As the crowd gather around, with a thud the wooden trapdoors above burst open before the legs of one of the assumed murders fall into view.

The final chapter of London Dungeon is to tell the story of the Great Fire of London, London’s second-such fire (the first being in 1212) which destroyed 13,000 houses and 87 churches, including St. Paul’s Cathedral starting from a baker’s oven.

A slideshow and narration shows us a fairly dull pictorial account of the event as we huddle in Pudding Lane, the epicentre of the fire. In the distance you can make out the dim glow of the fire before you are hastily ushered out through a burning passageway into the attraction’s gift shop.

So, is London Dungeon a truly hair-raising experience, or simply an instrument of torture? Does it strike a balance between gore and education, or is just an inane bloodfest?

Honestly? None of the above. Not in its entirety, anyway.

Fortunately, London Dungeon doesn’t rely on blood and gore throughout, but at the same time it isn’t as educational as it perhaps could have been. Despite being poorly presented, the Great Fire of London scene is educational, and Jack The Ripper is exactly what I expected from the Dungeon; education, atmosphere with some blood and guts thrown in for good measure, yet leaving some to the imagination, too.

The courtroom, Labyrinth of the Lost and Traiter! Boat Ride to Hell are all much-advertised fluff that add absolutely nothing of credit to the London Dungeon. No blood, no gore, nothing to scare you, and certainly nothing educational.

Those who haven’t visited London Dungeon for a few years will be surprised how much the attraction has changed. While you were previously left to your own devices explore the dark recesses of the dungeon, London Dungeon is now a guided tour.

With each scene having a different host, you can expect a lot of waiting around, even on busy days. The very worst example of this is at the start of the Jack the Ripper scene, where you must wait for the chronically low capacity Boat Ride to Hell to ship ‘traitors’ to Whitechappel for the tour to continue.

There is also too much onus now on elaborate sets with speeches being given by actors or having the guest watch a film. Like having a lecture without the luxury of a notebook, much of the information bombarded will go over your head, and without the opportunity to explore the subjects of interest yourself, London Dungeon is fairly blandly presented in terms of educating you.

It would be wrong to discourage a visit to the London Dungeon. You certainly learn a lot about London’s history, but the biggest scare is inevitably the amount it costs to get in, and how little the attraction delivers against expectations.


MS 14 October 2005

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