Museum meant to celebrate women instead devotes itself to Jack the Ripper

The site on Cable Street in London was originally earmarked for a space to celebrate the suffragettes and women from the East End of London.

However, shocked Londoners were confronted with the building below which will focus instead on a man who brutally murdered several women in the 19th century.

Tower Hamlets gave permission for UK's first Women's Museum - and instead the owner opened a "Jack the Ripper" museum http://t.co/JtTKkFB7id

— Bloomsbury Politics & Area Studies (@BloomsburyPol) July 30, 2015

Locals told The Evening Standard that council planners had been “hoodwinked” by the developers last year.

The paper reported that the original planning application had photos of suffragettes and equal pay campaigners and designs for a museum called the Museum of Women’s History.

The council approved the change of use application for the premises in October, and approved an application to add a three-storey extension and an extra floor last January.

Former Google diversity chief Mark Palmer-Edgecumbe, who is behind the scheme, said: “We did plan to do a museum about social history of women but as the project developed we decided a more interesting angle was from the perspective of the victims of Jack the Ripper.

“It is absolutely not celebrating the crime of Jack the Ripper but looking at why and how the women got in that situation in the first place.”

The Jack the Ripper Museum story gets more interesting. Says this on the site, but ... pic.twitter.com/akecFLwMFl

— Lee Jackson (@VictorianLondon) July 29, 2015

Resident Julian Cole said: "My neighbour thought it was some kind of sick joke."

Many agreed with Julian on Twitter.

Disgusting. Museum of Women's History on Cable Street turns out to be a Jack the Ripper Museum... http://t.co/rT4xjCItOr

— Helen Ritchie (@_Helen_Ritchie) July 29, 2015

If the Jack the Ripper museum is 'about women' then I need to move my copy of American Psycho to my feminist anthropology shelf

— Will Black (@WillBlackWriter) July 29, 2015

.@PalmerEdgecumbe If a Jack the Ripper museum celebrates women, would a Dennis Nilsen museum celebrate gay men? http://t.co/ZYgWN8TT6q

— Jessica Twentyman (@jtwentyman) July 29, 2015

'Jack The Ripper' Museum to open in London on Friday. Isn't this trivialising violence against women? http://t.co/g99VGWpsvs

— Men Against Violence 🇺🇦 (@MAV_Preston) July 30, 2015

It's REALLY disturbing that they were told it was going to be a suffragette and women museum and instead they put in Jack the Ripper.

— Jinxe (@jinxeptor) July 29, 2015