Jack The Ripper Tour, Whitechapel

Just as we arrived to start our Jack the Ripper tour at 7.30pm on Sunday night, near Aldgate East station, down came the rain. It had been sunny when we left Pimlico, so did we have brollies? No. Well, it only lasted half an hour, and then cleared up, having created an appropriate atmosphere for a Jack the Ripper tour.

Our tour leader was actually named Jack! (Well, John, really). He had a good loud voice, a great sense of humour, and an encyclopaedic knowledge of the Jack the Ripper mystery. Listening intently are Andy and Joan, carrying a plastic bag of books on the subject that we had just bought at a nearby shop.

Here's The Bell pub, that figured in the Ripper story. We walked from point to point, gathering around to hear Jack tell us anecdotes relating to the overall saga, along with his own views about possible culprits.

As we stood in front of the tall iron gates of Christ Church, Whitechapel, suddenly another character from 1888 joined us, a senior police officer (dressed appropriately), who engaged Jack in a conversation about a letter that Jack the Ripper had sent to the police department. Very nicely done.

Despite this part of London (Spitalfields, Whitechapel, all that area behind Liverpool Street station) having new glass and metal tall new office blocks built on much of it, there is an amazing amount that is just as it would have been back in 1888 when most of the inhabitants were impoverished, and social conditions were very poor and overcrowded into slums.

Jack used an optical projection device to show pictures of what the streetscape was like in the past as we sheltered beneath a modern building, as he told of the gruesome murder that occurred there in September 1888. We are in St James' Passage near Mitre Square in this image, close by the sites of murders committed by Jack the Ripper.

Andy can be seen following the walking tour along Mitre Street, a cobbled laneway, with the modern landmark, the 'Gherkin' at 30 St Mary Axe (Aldgate) towering above. Shortly after, we headed for home to read our books we'd bought: "Jack the Ripper, the Whitechapel Murderer", by Terry Lynch, and "Jack the Ripper - Catch me when you can".