Another angry demonstration hit east London’s controversial Jack the Ripper Museum at the weekend with women picketing the sombre, black-painted building which has refused to take down its blood-read sign.

%image(14926191, type="article-full", alt="Demonstrators confront police outside "exploitation" Ripper show. Picture: Vickie Flores/What's in Wapping")

Some 40 protesters turned up in Shadwell and besieged the premises in Cable Street, near the Tower of London, on Saturday in a demo by Class War action group.

The police were called after a poster was ripped down from the shop front.

The venue, criticised as a “tacky exploiting the murder of women”, has been plagued by protests since it opened more than two years ago in breach of planning regulations.

The Bishop of Stepney, the Rt Rev Adrian Newman, and Tower Hamlets mayor John Biggs have both joined pickets outside the premises in one of the many demos since 2015.

%image(14926192, type="article-full", alt="Protests against Ripper venue continue... more that two years after it opened in breach of a planning application. Picture: Vickie Flores/What's in Wapping")

The venue operates as a permanent show of the 1888 Whitechapel Murders rather than as an East End women’s heritage centre promised in its original 2014 planning application.

The application used the closure of the Whitechapel women’s library in Old Castle Street the year before as its purpose for opening up.

The owners have been refused retrospective planning permission by Tower Hamlets Council for a Ripper museum and have also lost an appeal to the Secretary of State, yet have still not complied with a planning order to remove its ‘Jack the Ripper’ street sign.

The East End Women’s Collective, meanwhile, has held “alternative” exhibitions at the nearby St George’s-in-the-East church about “the true story of women’s heritage”.