We have tried to offer you the most atmospheric Jack the Ripper tour route in London. Unlike other London walks we actually start our tour in the area where the Jack the Ripper murders occurred.
Our starting point is Aldgate East Underground Station. This is situated at the convergence of two roads that frame the streets where the murders took place and the roads on which the victims themselves lived.
A few steps away and you turn beneath a sinister arch and find yourself pitched headlong into Jack the Ripper’s London. A cobblestone Street leads you past a pub where one of the leading suspects lived and worked in 1890.
This is your gateway into Victorian London, a time tunnel through which you step back into that long ago era of foggy and sinister shadows. Within two minutes you are standing on the site of the building where what at the time was believed to be the first murder occurred.
Then its off into a charming knot of streets and alleyways where the ambience of the 19th century Metropolis still hangs heavy. Each one of the buildings passed has survived the ravages of time and gives you a true insight into how the area looked in the autumn of 1888.
Our walk through these streets is a slow one, in order that you get the time to absorb and react to your surroundings.
From there we claim an exclusive, because ours is the only one of the Jack the Ripper London Walks that takes you to the old police station where the officers who hunted the ripper through the passageways and alleyways of the neighbourhood were based. No other tour of this kind visits this police station.
Next we slip into a tiny and narrow passageway where we discuss one of the most important developments of the whole Jack the Ripper saga, and reveal the biggest blunder that the police of the time made, a blunder that turned five sordid East End Murders into an international phenomena and guaranteed the solitary killer of five prostitutes a morbid immortality.
To the hub of the investigation next, where we pass around a photograph of the spot on which you are standing, and where you will be surprised to see how little changed the surroundings are. This truly is living history, your opportunity to have the past brought vividly to life.
A towering, some say sinister looking, church; a pub that has changed little since the ripper’s victims sought shelter within its historic walls; an old market that is much as it was in the autumn of 1888 are but a few of sites of old London that stand before you.
All the above and much, much more awaits you on London’s finest Jack the Ripper Walk. So please don’t settle for second best, book yourself onto the London walk that everybody is talking about but please, please, please stay away from the shadows.
