“No Such Thing As Bad Weather” Guided Walk December 2023
The last Jack the Ripper walk of 2023 had a full complement of 12.
A strong wind was blowing through the lanes of Whitechapel, but Tracey and Bruce from Lancashire, the Wood family from Washington, DC, and Nissa and Austen from Texas were dressed for the weather when they joined me as we explored Whitechapel on our Jack the Ripper site tour.
My new tour-guiding system has added to my Jack the Ripper walk.
It was only the third outing for my new addition to the tour, and it was a hit. With a direct connection from my radio microphone to the receiver on the ear of each group member, no matter what else was happening, I could share details of the Jack the Ripper story with them all.
One big advantage of the tour guiding system is being able to share the story of these Whitechapel murders as we walked the same streets that the women whose lives were ended by Jack the Ripper once walked. And able to do it at a strolling pace.
From the start, there are solid reminders of those bygone days. Right across the road from where we meet is a fine 18th-century building. Completed in 1757, The London Hospital continued in that same building until 2016, when it moved to the new buildings behind it. Fortunately, the old building remains and is now the Tower Hamlets Town Hall.
It was in The London Hospital on the 4th of April 1888 that Emma Elizabeth Smith died. She had been brutally attacked in the early hours of the 3rd of April and, with help, had managed to get to the hospital. Her injuries were so severe that the medical staff were unable to save her.
There are some experts on the Whitechapel murders who believe that Emma Elizabeth Smith was a victim of the unknown serial killer known as Jack the Ripper.
The same claim is made for Martha Tabram, who was discovered in a stairwell in George Yard Buildings, Whitechapel, on the 7th of August 1888. She had been stabbed 39 times.
My Jack the Ripper tour starts in front of The Working Lads’ Institute.
A reminder of that terrible crime stands right where we gathered to start our tour last night. Right next to Whitechapel Station is The Working Lads’ Institute. The inquest into Martha Tabram’s death was in the library of The Working Lads’ Institute.
The inquests into the deaths of the first two of the five victims, known as the ‘canonical five’, were held in that same building.
We moved through Whitechapel Station as I began describing the events of August 31st 1888. Events that happened right at our next stop.
The wind was chasing the clouds, so we were treated to the sight of an almost full moon. On such a night, Buck’s Row felt especially eerie as we looked at the very spot where Jack the Ripper’s knife ended Polly Nichols's life.
As I explained to the group, after the murder, people began referring to Buck’s Row as ‘Murder’ Row. The residents of Buck’s Row were unhappy and demanded a name change, so today, Buck’s Row is called Durward Street.
We made our way west through Vallance Gardens and on toward Old Montague Street and the site of the Old Montague Street Mortuary, where the bodies of Polly Nichols and the second of the ‘canonical five’, Annie Chapman, were taken for the post-mortem examinations.
It is in these quiet streets that I like to give a little of the background of these women. One of the many advantages of starting at Whitechapel Station is that we don’t compete for space with any of the other Jack the Ripper tours. It’s only when we get to Brick Lane that we meet them.
By the time we reached the Spitalfields area, many of the other Jack the Ripper tours had moved on, but we still passed half a dozen that were all well attended.
We were within minutes of Jack the Ripper’s lair.
Most of the 200 common lodging houses or doss houses operated in this area on either side of Commercial Street.
Eight thousand people a night would pay their fourpence. The first four victims, Polly Nichols, Annie Chapman, Liz Stride and Kate Eddowes, used the doss houses here when they had the fourpence to pay for a bed.
Mary Jane Kelly, the fifth victim, rented a room in Miller’s Court in the same area. So, all five of Jack the Ripper’s victims lived within a five-minute walk of each other.
In 2008, the Metropolitan Police at Scotland Yard did a geographical profile of Jack the Ripper and decided he lived within five minutes of each of the victims and within 20 minutes of each of the murder sites.
So when we ended our Whitechapel murder sites walk, we were within minutes of Jack the Ripper’s lair.
The family from Washington, DC, set off for Brick Lane, looking forward to a fine curry. The rest headed for their hotels. They were all terrific company, and I’m looking forward to next week when both my Thursday and Friday tours are almost fully booked.
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