So this so called cookie/cache virus (what is a cookie/cache virus btw?) was released the very day apple released 5.0, it automagically infected pretty much every iPad out there, nobody knows about it, it can outlive a device reinstall, there's a 0-day in safari's "HTML jpeg" decoding code, you're one of the 5 few happy people who will soon be famous for unraveling a critical issue in a core component of the most popular tablet, and the first thing you do is come on an apple forum to mention it?
Can I be skeptical?
In the meantime, pretty much all affected devices are logging "Out of memory" crash reports for safari like there's no tomorrow, and we're in the midst of an iCloud debacle where 5.0 managed to take battery life down to single digit, 5.0.1 didn't exactly fix the problem, but softened it and made it available to everybody.
I'd rather go with the pragmatic approach: 5.0 and/or safari 5.0 are using too much ram for the iPad 1's 256MB, and Safari crashes because the device simply runs out of memory.
Or the ipad 1 is affected by a subtle iCloud bug, like the iphones are.
I vote for option 1, my ipad 1 is definitely much slower since the 5.0 update and it looks consistent with a "no ram is available and the cpu isn't powerful enough" problem.
Hopefully apple will fix it with 5.1, or 5.2, or maybe never, you never know what's their next move.