Jack the Ripper Museum Replaces Proposed Women's History Museum

Last October, former Google diversity chief Mark Palmer-Edgecumbe won approval from London's Tower Hamlets council to turn a disused Victorian-era shop and apartment building into the Museum of Women’s History. The proposal promised to "retell the story of the East End through the eyes, voices, experiences and actions" of prominent British suffragettes. But this week, when the Cable Street facade was revealed, East End residents were shocked to see signage for a Jack the Ripper Museum—a legendary and unidentified serial killer who brutally murdered at least five prostitutes between 1888 and 1891—instead.

"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," Palmer-Edgecumbe told London Evening Standard. "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."

Locals aren't happy, complaining that council planners had been "hoodwinked" into supporting the project.

"My neighbor thought it was some kind of sick joke," Julian Cole, 51, told the paper.

The council seems disappointed with the turn of events as well, saying, "Ultimately the council has no control in planning terms of the nature of the museum," but that "the council is investigating the extent to which unauthorized works may have been carried out."

That said, the museum is set to open next Tuesday.

[h/t The Cut]