A museum that was intended to be dedicated to women’s history in London’s East End has been revamped into a museum about Jack the Ripper, the 19th century serial killer who butchered female sex workers. The man behind it all is Mark Palmer-Edgecumbe, a former diversity head at Google.
Palmer-Edgecumbe tried to spin the switch, made after the proposal for the museum was approved by the local government council:
“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,” he told The 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.”
Londoners are not happy about the change, branding the museum a “sick joke.” They say the museum is not only offensive, it is also inaccurate, because Jack the Ripper actually committed his crimes in a slightly different part of London. Cable Street, on the other hand, is widely known for “The Battle of Cable Street,” an anti-fascist march in 1936.
On the museum’s website, Palmer-Edgecumbe said that the venue “in no way glorifies or glamorises Jack the Ripper, quite the opposite, it presents the women of the East End’s story for the first time.”
The museum’s gift shop offerings tell a different tale: