Skip to main content
Hello! We use cookies to improve your experience by providing insights into how the site is being used. Find out more.

To: Tower Hamlets Council

Celebrate Suffragettes not serial killers

Tragically the "museum" is still running, as it proved impossible to have their planning permission revoked due to a legal loophole.

So the campaign against it switched tack and decided to out do the poor taste exhibit by opening up the "Women's History Museum" that we'd all been promised in the first place.

First up campaigners held big weekly demonstrations outside the museum
https://home.38degrees.org.uk/2015/08/05/jack-the-ripper-museum-protest/

Next we fundraised and opened up our own museum right around the corner
"East End Women, the real story"
https://home.38degrees.org.uk/2016/05/27/east-end-women-real-story/
https://www.timeout.com/london/blog/a-pop-up-museum-of-womens-history-is-opening-around-the-corner-fromthe-jack-the-ripper-museum-052316

Next we fundraised and bought the billboard across the road from the Ripper exibit announcing "Don't go to the Jack the Ripper museum, come to the East End women's museum instead"
https://home.38degrees.org.uk/2016/05/24/suffragette-billboard-unveiled/

After a long stay at the original location, the East End Women's museum is now on tour. And we replaced the billboard across the road from the Ripper museum with panels from the Women's History museum too.

Revoke the planning permission for the new museum on Cable street or force it to close down and re-open as the women's history museum we were promised.

Why is this important?

A new museum gained planning permission by promising ‘the only dedicated resource in the East End to women’s history’, but has now been unveiled as a venue dedicated to the violent crimes of Jack the Ripper

Originally billed as a celebration of East London women and the suffragettes this museum now celebrates the life of the serial killer who viciously murdered women across London's East End, from 1888 and 1891.

The original application for the museum 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 the local Whitechapel’s Women’s Library 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”.

Now we are faced with a museum that celebrates gory violence against women.

The founder (a former Head of Diversity at Google) claims "It is not celebrating the crimes of Jack the Ripper but looking at why and how the women got in that situation in the first place”. This victim blaming attitude is unacceptable and cannot be condoned.

Shut this museum down now.

Cable Street, London

Maps © Stamen; Data © OSM and contributors, ODbL

Updates

2015-10-26 21:49:06 +0000

10,000 signatures reached

2015-08-05 21:37:37 +0100

5,000 signatures reached

2015-07-31 16:42:29 +0100

1,000 signatures reached

2015-07-30 22:10:48 +0100

500 signatures reached

2015-07-30 14:14:10 +0100

100 signatures reached

2015-07-30 11:50:01 +0100

50 signatures reached

2015-07-30 11:20:29 +0100

25 signatures reached

2015-07-30 11:14:23 +0100

10 signatures reached