A new museum originally billed as a celebration of east London women and the suffragettes has been branded a “sick joke” by local residents after it opened as a venue dedicated to the crimes of Jack the Ripper.
In the planning application for the site, a few hundred metres from the Tower of London, residents were promised “the only dedicated resource in the East End to women’s history”. It was approved by Tower Hamlets council earlier this year.
But it was only when the covers came down last week that residents found the museum’s subject matter had changed so dramatically. The Ripper was the name given to the man behind a series of barbarous and unsolved murders of sex workers in London’s East End between 1888 and 1891. He has never been definitively identified.
“It’s like some sort of sick joke,” said Julian Cole, a film-maker who lives near the Cable Street site. “You propose a museum celebrating the achievements of women and then it turns out to be a museum celebrating London’s most notorious murderer of women. I don’t have any objections to a Jack the Ripper museum, it’s a commercial enterprise like the London Dungeon and Jack the Ripper walking tours, but what I’m miffed about is the fact that we seem to have been completely deceived, in a way that is rather unpleasant.”
Above the museum’s black and red livery frontage are two signs made to resemble London’s official English Heritage blue plaques. One of these names the notorious Whitechapel murderer as suspected culprit George Chapman, and the other names his fourth victim, Lizzie Stride.
The man behind the venture is Mark Palmer-Edgecumbe, a former diversity chief at Google. The detailed planning document sent last July by his architects, Waugh Thisleton, in support of the building’s conversion from disused flats into a museum, included pictures of suffragettes and 1970s Asian women campaigning against racial murders around Brick Lane.
It said: “The museum will recognise and celebrate the women of the East End who have shaped history, telling the story of how they have been instrumental in changing society. It will analyse the social, political and domestic experience from the Victorian period to the present day.”
The document cited the closure of Whitechapel’s Women’s Library in Old Castle Street in 2013 to stress that the “Museum of Women’s History”, as it was billed, would be “the only dedicated resource in the East End to women’s history”.
Jemima Broadbridge, an east London campaigner and community organiser, said that local residents were not told about the change. “We haven’t had anything through our doors,” she said. “Fair enough he’s a businessman, but we object to him not being honest with the council and residents. Don’t pretend to build a museum about women – and this is a prime area for that, we have a lot of philanthropists around here – and then choose to do this.”
She added that Cable Street was “known for Oscar Wilde and Charles Dickens, not Jack the Ripper”.
Jenni Boswell-Jones, a resident in the area for more than 30 years, also spoke of the museum’s poor location. “I was very surprised when I saw what museum it was going to be,” she said. “I don’t think anybody in the area is against enterprise and somebody doing something new and exciting, but Jack the Ripper has nothing to do with Cable Street. Cable Street was the home of the anti-fascist march in 1936, that’s what it’s known for. The Ripper murders took place on Batty Street and the Spitalfields area.
“The blue plaques are extraordinary. There would be public uproar if we put up a museum devoted to Fred West, or Myra Hindley, or others. People are fascinated with these murders because they were so brutal. It’s not just someone strangling and poisoning, it’s physically defiling women. It feels very mercenary and callous.”
Jane Squire, who lives on an adjacent street, said: “I’ve got four kids aged four to 15, I don’t want them walking past there. I don’t want to have to explain to my teenage daughter that this man butchered women and ripped out their wombs.”
Palmer-Edgecumbe told the Evening Standard that he planned to open a museum about the social history of women, but that as the project developed he decided a more interesting angle was from the perspective of the victims of Jack the Ripper. “It is absolutely not celebrating the crimes of Jack the Ripper but looking at why and how the women got in that situation in the first place,” he said.
But the residents claim the council was “hoodwinked” and are calling for the authority to check whether there had been any contravention of planning laws. “When the original application went in I did think it was slightly odd,” Cole said. “I thought how are they going to pay for this, are they getting some sort of grant? It’s very difficult to get planning permision to change a building from a residential one to a commercial one. A women’s museum would appeal to planners because it’s a worthy cause.”
The change-of-use application for the museum’s premises was approved in October, and the application to add a three-storey extension was approved in January of this year.
The museum is due to open next Tuesday. When the Guardian visited on Wednesday, builders were still putting some finishing touches to the interior.
A Jack the Ripper tour guide, dressed in a tuxedo, bowler hat and red bow tie, told passersby of the history of the area, as well as his belief that Jack the Ripper was his great grandfather.
“I like the museum but it might put me out of business,” John Pope-De-Locksley joked.
A spokesman for Tower Hamlets council said: “Planning permission was granted in October 2014 for the change of use of the premises to space for a museum. The council was advised at that time that the premises were intended to be used as a women’s museum and supporting information was submitted with the application to suggest that the vision of the museum was to tell the story of women of the East End of London.
“Ultimately, however, the council has no control in planning terms of the nature of the museum.
“The council has subsequently granted consents for extensions to the premises and the refurbishment of the front of the building. The council is aware of the Jack the Ripper imagery and is investigating the extent to which unauthorised works may have been carried out at the premises.”