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A museum devoted to Jack the Ripper was today branded a “sick joke” after it emerged that it was originally proposed as a celebration of women in the East End.

Former Google diversity chief Mark Palmer-Edgecumbe, who is behind the scheme, promised “the first women’s museum in the UK” in plans given the green light by Tower Hamlets council last year.

But when the covers were removed from the site on Cable Street in Whitechapel last week, residents were shocked to find its subject matter had changed to the brutal unsolved murders of prostitutes between 1888 and 1891.

The Jack The Ripper Museum, which has as its logo a sinister silhouette of a man in Victorian dress above the museum name written in blood red, has outraged residents, who claim it is now about misogyny rather than women’s achievements.

Residents claim that council planners had been “hoodwinked” when they approved two planning applications submitted last year.

A document sent by Mr Palmer-Edgecumbe’s architects, Waugh Thistleton, last August to support the building’s conversion from a disused Victorian shop and flats into a museum included pictures of suffragettes and equal pay campaigners and designs for a museum called the Museum of Women’s History.

It promised the “world class” museum would “retell the story of the East End through the eyes, voices, experiences and actions” of women and show their contribution to British history.

The change of use application for the premises was approved in October. The application to add a three-storey extension and an extra floor was approved in January this year.

The museum is set to open next Tuesday. Residents want the council to look at whether they can reverse the decision to give it the green light.

Film maker Julian Cole, 51, said: “We feel we have been completely hoodwinked and deceived. My neighbour thought it was some kind of sick joke. ”

Jemima Broadbridge, 45, a government press officer, said the museum was historically inaccurate because none of Jack the Ripper’s supposed victims were murdered on Cable Street.

She said: “The history of the East End is not just about misogyny: it’s about the Battle of Cable Street, it’s about Oscar Wilde and The Picture Of Dorian Grey, among other things.”

Mr Palmer-Edgecumbe said: “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.”

Tower Hamlets council said: “Ultimately the council has no control in planning terms of the nature of the museum ... The council is investigating the extent to which unauthorised works may have been carried out.”

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