Mark Palmer-Edgecumbe told everybody he was building a museum “celebrating the achievements of the women of the East End” of London. His proposal included images of suffragettes and equal pay campaigners and promised to share the stories of women workers in factories and sweatshops. Everybody was incredibly excited, of course, as this would be the FIRST women’s museum in the UK.
But local residents realized something else was afoot when they noticed a sign on the building saying it was a “Jack the Ripper” museum.
So… what happened?
Palmer-Edgecumbe said he had a change of heart halfway through the building process and thought the victims of Jack the Ripper would be a more “interesting” angle than the social history of women. He told Evening Standard:
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.
On its website, Palmer-Edgecumbe stressed that the new museum would not glorify the mass murderer.
“The Jack the Ripper Museum in no way glorifies or glamorises Jack the Ripper,” the statement read. “Quite the opposite, it presents the women of the East End’s story for the first time.”
But local residents are outraged.
From BuzzFeed:
Jeanne Sutton, a co-founder of Ireland’s first digital women’s museum, said she was disappointed in the focus on female victims rather than their achievements.
Sutton said that although Jack the Ripper story is an essential chapter in London’s crime and sex worker history, “there’s a lot more to women’s history than dead bodies”.
She told BuzzFeed News: “It’s rather disappointing that Mr Palmer-Edgecumbe chose to focus on the most salacious aspect of East End history, using female victims in a bid to attract visitors.”
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