Location | 12 Cable Street, Tower Hamlets, London, E1 8JG |
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Coordinates | 51°30′39″N0°04′05″W / 51.510805°N 0.067972°W |
Website | www.jacktherippermuseum.com |
The Jack the Ripper Museum is a museum and tourist attraction that opened in August 2015 in Cable Street, London. It recreates the East end of London setting in which the unsolved Jack the Ripper murders took place in 1888, and exhibits some original artefacts from the period as well as waxwork recreations of crime scenes and sets. The museum was founded by Mark Palmer-Edgecumbe, a former head of diversity for Google. [1]
The project's planning application described it as a "Museum of Women's History". Its change of focus to Jack the Ripper was only revealed when the facade of the building became visible a year later, leading to numerous protests.
The five-room exhibition includes a recreation of the police station in Leman Street where detectives attempted to identify the murderer, of the bedroom of victim Mary Jane Kelly, and the scene of Catherine Eddowes' murder, with an effigy of PC Edward Watkins standing over her. [2] A mocked-up morgue in the basement includes shrines to the "canonical five" victims - Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly - as well as Emma Elizabeth Smith, Alice McKenzie and Frances Coles. [2]
One exhibit is the whistle used by police constable Edward Watkins to summon help when he discovered the body of Eddowes, and the truncheon and notebook case he was carrying. [2]
The change-of-use planning application from Palmer-Edgecumbe's architects in August 2014 described plans to convert the disused Victorian building into the "Museum of Women's History", which it described as the first women's museum in the United Kingdom. The application featured illustrations of suffragettes and equal pay campaigners, and made reference to the closure of Whitechapel's Women's Library in 2013, saying that this museum would be "the only dedicated resource in the East End to women’s history". [3] The application 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." [1]
When covers were removed from the site in 2015, local residents were shocked to instead see a "Jack the Ripper Museum", dedicated to the unsolved murders of local women. [3] They had not been informed of the museum's change of focus. [1] Protests were repeatedly staged outside, [4] with anti-gentrification organisation Class War threatening further protests after a Hallowe'en event at which visitors were invited to pose for photographs with actors playing the killer and his mutilated victims. [5] [6]
Andrew Waugh, the museum's architect, described the venture as "salacious, misogynist rubbish" and described himself as having been "duped" into offering a low fee to work on a museum celebrating women in politics in the East End. [7] Waugh said he would not have touched the project "with a bargepole" if he had known how it would ultimately be marketed. [8] John Biggs, the mayor of Tower Hamlets, said that the council's planning officers had been "misled by the applicant". [7] [9] In 2016 the museum's owners were refused retrospective planning permission for its shop front and ordered to change the museum's signage and to remove the roller shutter installed without planning permission in 2015 after protestors smashed a window. [10] The Planning Inspectorate considered the shop's frontage to be detrimental to Cable Street, a conservation area. [11] By 2017 the museum had lost an appeal to the Secretary of State and failed to comply with the change of signage and removal of the shutter. [4] In 2018 the museum redesigned its frontage.[ citation needed ]
The museum defended its position, Palmer-Edgecumbe saying that "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." [3]
Palmer-Edgecumbe had been involved in an exhibition about the serial killer at the Museum of London Docklands in 2008, and was co-director of a "Jack the Ripper Museum (London) Limited" company in 2012. [7] He said he had "clearly stated" during planning discussions that the Museum of Women's History would be based "to a large extent" on this Jack the Ripper exhibition, and that the planning document included a number of images from it. [12]
The building was put up for sale in April 2021 and the museum is expected to close when the building is sold. [13]
From Hell is a graphic novel by writer Alan Moore and artist Eddie Campbell, originally published in serial form from 1989 to 1998. The full collection was published in 1999 by Top Shelf Productions.
Peter William Sutcliffe, also known as Peter Coonan, and dubbed in press reports as the Yorkshire Ripper, was an English serial killer who was convicted of murdering thirteen women and attempting to murder seven others between 1975 and 1980. He was sentenced to twenty concurrent sentences of life imprisonment, which were converted to a whole life order in 2010. Two of Sutcliffe's murders took place in Manchester; all the others were in West Yorkshire.
A series of murders that took place in the East End of London from August to November 1888 was blamed on an unidentified assailant who was nicknamed Jack the Ripper. Since that time, the identity of the killer or killers has been widely debated, and over 100 suspects have been named. Though many theories have been advanced, experts find none widely persuasive, and some are hardly taken seriously at all. Due to the extensive time interval since the murders, the killer will likely never be identified despite ongoing speculation as to his identity.
The "Saucy Jacky" postcard is the name given to a postcard received by the Central News Agency of London and postmarked 1 October 1888. The author of the postcard claims to have been the unidentified serial killer known as Jack the Ripper.
The "From Hell" letter was a letter sent alongside half of a preserved human kidney to George Lusk, the chairman of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee, in October 1888. The author of this letter claimed to be the unidentified serial killer known as Jack the Ripper, who had murdered and mutilated at least four women in the Whitechapel and Spitalfields districts of London in the two months prior to Lusk receiving this letter, and whose vigilance committee Lusk led in civilian efforts to assist police in efforts to identify and apprehend the perpetrator.
Elizabeth "Long Liz" Stride is believed to have been the third victim of the unidentified serial killer known as Jack the Ripper, who killed and mutilated at least five women in the Whitechapel and Spitalfields districts of London from late August to early November 1888.
Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution is a book written by Stephen Knight first published in 1976. It proposed a solution to five murders in Victorian London that were blamed on an unidentified serial killer known as "Jack the Ripper".
Catherine Eddowes was the fourth of the canonical five victims of the notorious unidentified serial killer known as Jack the Ripper, who is believed to have killed and mutilated a minimum of five women in the Whitechapel and Spitalfields districts of London from late August to early November 1888.
Martha Tabram was an English woman killed in a spate of violent murders in and around the Whitechapel district of East London between 1888 and 1891. She may have been the first victim of the unidentified serial killer Jack the Ripper.
In criminology, a calling card is a particular object sometimes left behind by a criminal at a scene of a crime, often as a way of taunting police or claiming responsibility. The name is derived from the cards that people used to leave when they went to visit someone's house and the resident was absent. A calling card can also be used as an individual's way of telling someone they are alive after they have run away or disappeared without revealing themselves or having direct contact with that person. It is often left at a bed side table while the person is asleep, at the living room floor and sometimes even at a grave yard if they know the times someone goes to visit their loved ones. However, some criminals choose not to leave a calling card, as it may be used by authorities or detectives to trace the criminal, and eventually arrest them.
Aaron Kosminski was a Polish barber and hairdresser, and suspect in the Jack the Ripper case.
Jack the Ripper, the notorious serial killer who terrorized Whitechapel in 1888, features in works of fiction ranging from gothic novels published at the time of the murders to modern motion pictures, televised dramas and video games.
The Servant Girl Annihilator, also known as the Austin Axe Murderer and the Midnight Assassin, was an unidentified American serial killer who preyed upon the city of Austin, Texas, between 1884 and 1885. The sobriquet originated with the writer O. Henry. The series of eight axe murders were referred to by contemporary sources as the Servant Girl Murders.
Jack the Ripper was an unidentified serial killer active in and around the impoverished Whitechapel district of London, England, in the autumn of 1888. In both criminal case files and the contemporaneous journalistic accounts, the killer was called the Whitechapel Murderer and Leather Apron.
Events from the year 1888 in the United Kingdom. This year is noted for the first Whitechapel murders.
The Whitechapel murders were committed in or near the largely impoverished Whitechapel district in the East End of London between 3 April 1888 and 13 February 1891. At various points some or all of these eleven unsolved murders of women have been ascribed to the notorious unidentified serial killer known as Jack the Ripper.
Joseph Lawende was a Polish-born British cigarette salesman who is believed to have witnessed serial killer Jack the Ripper in the company of his fourth victim, Catherine Eddowes, approximately nine minutes before the discovery of her body on 30 September 1888.
Flower and Dean Street was a road at the heart of the Spitalfields rookery in the East End of London. It was one of the most notorious slums of the Victorian era, being described in 1883 as "perhaps the foulest and most dangerous street in the whole metropolis", and was closely associated with the victims of Jack the Ripper.
Jack the Ripper is a 1988 Anglo-American co-production by Thames Television and CBS television film drama based on the notorious Jack the Ripper murder spree in Victorian London. It was first broadcast on ITV.
Police Superintendent Thomas Arnold was a British policeman of the Victorian era best known for his involvement in the hunt for Jack the Ripper in 1888. It was his opinion that Mary Jane Kelly was not a victim of the Ripper.