When we originally learned that the Jack the Ripper museum was originally supposed to be dedicated to the women murdered and remembering them rather than the murderer himself, I was very shocked that this was not reversed back to its original purpose as a result of people protesting the change. If I had been in London when the switch was announced, I would have protested for a variety of reasons. First, when I think about being a family member of the women who were murdered and them seeing the man who killed their loved one being glorified over their loved one being remembered, it makes me feel terrible for them. Also, I think dedicating a museum to a killer is a terrible way to project that what he did was indeed horrific and not something that should be honored. Finally, I think this transition also undermines the celebration of women in society, and transfers that attention towards a male figure, and in this case, a dreadful one. As far as the whole reason of why they made this change, I completely disagree. It is obvious that they changed it into a Jack the Ripper museum for attraction and profits. The reality is that much less people would want to see a women’s history museum over a glorified serial killer attraction site.

In this situation, I truly feel sorry for the families who had to first deal with their family member being murdered, and in addition to it, had to be informed that a museum that would honor the women who were killed would be transformed into a museum dedicated to Jack the Ripper himself. The amount of grief and anger that they had to go through during this is more than I could comprehend, so I would want to protest in honor of these families who may not have been strong enough to fight themselves.

In light of the legal system, I really don’t understand what sense it makes to create a museum to honor and remember someone who disastrously broke the law and ruined so many families. If a city wants its citizens to abide by the law, they should utterly shame people who break it, especially heinous murderers. But instead, they decided to change a museum originally made for women’s history into a remembrance of a serial killer. This promotion and famous attraction of Jack the Ripper’s actions portrayed them as something that should be honored and repeated, not something that should be shamed and looked down upon.

Lastly, I think this change of subject of the museum could be shown as a prime example of how men were more prioritized and praised over women in this time period. As gender as always been something that has separated people throughout history, typically with women being on the lesser side, it cannot be ignored in the making of this decision. It ponders the idea that if it was a woman killer who murdered and mutilated male prostitutes; would she earn the same praise and have a museum dedicated to her or would she be negatively portrayed as a serial murderer should be?

As I mentioned before, it is very clear that his museum underwent this change due to the fact that it would attract more customers and create more profits for the founders of this museum. From a business perspective, this is no doubt the best option. However, in my opinion, museums should not be about profit. They should be about assisting to educate the public about historical events that happened and create a visual and interactive environment for them to do so. I also think that museums are made to show the true emotion of the historical time period it shows. As mentioned before, the Jack the Ripper museum more glorifies his actions and creates a suspenseful and intriguing story rather than describe the actual fear and sadness the community went through during this time. Overall, I would absolutely protest this change of the museum focus to stand up for the families involved, enforce true justice as well as women’s rights, and to promote the true purpose of museums so that they do not eventually just become profit-based tourist attractions.