Jack the Ripper Museum

The Jack the Ripper Museum is a museum and tourist attraction that opened in August 2015 in Cable Street, London. It purports to recreate the east London setting in which the unsolved Jack the Ripper murders took place in 1888. It exhibits some original artifacts from the period as well as waxwork recreations of crime scenes and sets including the bedroom of Mary Jane Kelly, one of the victims. Its exhibits includes the whistle used by police constable Edward Watkins to summon help when he discovered the body of Catherine Eddowes, another victim. It also has PC Watkins' notebook, handcuffs and truncheon and a recreation of the police station in Leman Street where detectives attempted to identify the murderer. The museum was founded by Mark Palmer-Edgecumbe, a former head of diversity for search engine Google's EMEA operations and governor of the Museum of London Docklands. Controversy: The museum's planning application to Tower Hamlets Council gave no indication of its final use, instead claiming it would be a women's history museum. It stated: "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." When the museum opened, there followed several days of protests outside. Andrew Waugh, the museum's architect, described it as "salacious, misogynist rubbish" and claimed he would not have touched it "with a bargepole" if he had known how it would ultimately be marketed. John Biggs, then the mayor of Tower Hamlets, said the council's planning officers had been "misled". The museum defended its position, saying its "initial, vague idea" was to tell the stories of "many different women from the East End" but a "stronger central focus" was needed to ensure mass appeal. By focusing on the Ripper's victims, it said it avoiding "sidelining" them. It said the Ripper theme would serve as a "primary platform" from which the stories of other East End women would be told. Palmer-Edgecumbe said he had informed his architects and the local planning authority that Jack the Ripper would form a significant part of the museum's offering. He said he "clearly stated" that it would be based "to a large extent" on a Jack the Ripper exhibition which ran at the Museum of London Docklands during his time as governor and that the planning application was illustrated with several images from that exhibition. In October 2015, further protests were threatened by Class War, an anti-gentrification organisation. This was sparked by a Hallowe'en event at which visitors were invited to pose for photographs with actors playing the killer and his mutilated victims.