Hello everyone! My name is Giusy and I’m a host at the Museum of London, London Wall.
Many of you may know me and the other hosts personally but if you come to the Museum for the first time you certainly cannot miss us. We are those friendly and caring people in bright pink shirts who run up and down doing tours, workshops, and assist visitors throughout their stay.
It is the first time that I have written a blog ever and I am very excited at the idea of telling you about us on an open and informal platform. There’s no better means than a blog to get to know us a bit better, unless you come and pay a visit to our museum.
I’ll start by telling you about the Museum of London Docklands latest exhibition Pirates: The Captain Kidd Story and the fun had by both staff and public who attended our special pirate themed late event on the 27 May.
The hosts who went along got very excited at the opportunity of dressing up as pirates and exploring Captain Kidd’s fascinating story.

I unfortunately was unable to join them, but looking at the pictures I am filled with envy! In addition to the fun from dressing up they were also joined by our curators, Tom Wareham and Hilary Davidson, for a free tour about Captain Kidd which were very instructive!
Nick enlightened me with some very interesting facts he picked up at the event, such as intriguing aspects about Captain Kidd’s life, as well as something that I actually had not known before…
Did you know that textiles have in fact a very distinguished heritage when it comes to pirates? It is common for gold and jewellery to be associated with pirates, but it is fabrics that tell us more! According to our curator of fashion and decorative arts Hilary, it seems that between the 16th and 17th centuries Indian patterns featured prominently in pirates’ fashion – particularly on bandanas.
It had the advantage of being easy to wash and at a certain point it became a very fashionable and valuable type of cotton textile to be exported to many parts of the British Empire. I think these types of garments possessed a sort of exotic charm in those days…
Later in the evening, to the groups great suprise, they realised that one of the team was wearing an exact copy of one the Museum puppets outfits…without a beard.

Later on, Elizabeth discovered that the blue and white bandana she was wearing as part of her pirate outfit was a paisley pattern -just what Captain Kidd would probably have worn. And she had bought two for a bargain price of only £1.50!
Hilary used Elizabeth’s bandana as an example to show the audience the authentic way of folding it. I am sure she must have looked like a proper woman pirate.
Did you know that a significant minority of historical pirates were female? Anne Bonney, Charlotte de Berry, Jane de Belville were among the most famous ones in history.
Pirates would occasionally capture parrots or monkeys due to the price they fetched on the market once they returned home. In those days tropical animals were a real ‘must have’ accessory and would be considered more unique than they are today.
Pirates are not believed to have actually kept them as pets, but I love to savour the image of a parrot on a pirate’s shoulder just like Long John Silver was portrayed in Treasure Island, a fact that clearly inspired Anna…

Our late events are proving to be very popular (I hope you can see why from the pictures and stories I shared above). I understand that our next late event at the Museum of London will have a 50s theme and will take place on 11 August (check out our website from 04 July for booking details).