Mark Palmer-Edgecumbe had promised to open "the first women's museum in the UK" when seeking planning approval for the museum from Tower Hamlets Council in London.
But when the museum was unveiled last week, residents discovered it had shifted focus to the infamous murderer Jack the Ripper. The killer is linked to the brutal unsolved murders of prostitues between 1888 and 1891.
The museum has angered residents, who say council planners were "hoodwinked" into approving the planning application.
Local Julian Cole told the London Standard that "we feel we have been completely hoodwinked and deceived".
"My neighbour thought it was some kind of sick joke," he said.
But the museum's creator said the museum still is about its original topic of women.
Mr Palmer-Edgecombe said he 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," he said.
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