Man builds jack the ripper museum instead of women's museum because it's 'more interesting'

It was supposed to be the "first women's museum in the UK." Instead, it will be dedicated to Jack the Ripper, a madman who brutally murdered prostitutes in London's East

End during the late 1800s. Mark Palmer-Edgecumbe, the former head of diversity and inclusion for Google, was approved to build a "world class" museum in an old building in the

Whitechapel district. In documents, architects Waugh Thistleton said the museum would "retell the story of the East End through the eyes, voices, experience, and actions" of women,

the _London Evening Standard_ reports. Now that area residents know about the new direction Palmer-Edgecumbe took, they're not happy. "We feel we have been completely hoodwinked

and deceived," filmmaker Julian Cole said. "My neighbor thought it was some kind of sick joke." The museum is set to open Tuesday, and Palmer-Edgecumbe says he's not

going to glorify the murderer. "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 _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." SUBSCRIBE TO THE WEEK Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives. SUBSCRIBE & SAVE SIGN UP

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