Anne Fanshawe's dress, c.1751 (silk brocade), English School © Museum of London, UK
On Friday 28 May 2010 Sir Michael Caine unveiled the New Galleries of Modern London at the Museum of London, a spectacular £20 million redevelopment of the Museum’s galleries.
Over 7000 objects, together with interactive exhibits, film and changing displays, transport visitors through London's tumultuous history, rich with drama, triumph and near disaster. The Museum offers new items on display as well as old favourites and as image partners Bridgeman is pleased to be able to add to its existing collection from the museum to include images featured in the new galleries.
Every artefact tells a personal story as Londoners reinvent their city, and are changed by it.
Anne Fanshawe’s extravagant 1750s court dress will make visitors wonder how its wearer was able to walk through a door with its two metre-wide skirt. Other fascinating items in the collection include Nelson's sword and Wellington's duelling pistols.
Moving into the twentieth century the flurry of political campaigns and voices of protest is exposed in photographs and posters of suffragettes fighting for women’s votes and London's poor and dispossessed are represented in photographs of the East End slums.
View all images in the Museum of London collection.
'Suffragette', 1912 (colour litho) by English School, (20th century) © Museum of London
Hooky Alf of Whitechapel (b/w photo) by John Thomson (1837-1921) © Museum of London