Where to start your Jack the Ripper walking tour?
The Working Lad’s Institute in Whitechapel Road is where my Jack the Ripper walk begins.
Hello, I’m Richard Walker, and I guide a small group Jack the Ripper walking tour. The group is small so that you won’t be trailing behind 30 or 40 the maximum number will be 12.
I make sure you hear every word because I use a microphone and radio transmitter.
You get a receiver and earpiece, so wherever you choose to stand and no matter what is going on around you, you will have my voice in your ear.
If you decide to take a Jack the Ripper site tour, you will find that you can start at Tower Hill, Aldgate or Aldgate East, depending on which of the Jack the Ripper tours you decide to join.
For 15 years, I started at Tower Hill, but during lockdown, with the time and space to reread and rethink, I decided that Whitechapel Station was a better place to begin the Jack the Ripper story.
The murder of Polly Nichols, believed to be the first of five women killed by Jack the Ripper, took place behind Whitechapel Station.
The inquest into Polly Nichols’s murder took place right next to Whitechapel Station. The inquest into the murder of the second of the five victims also took place there.
At the time of the Whitechapel Murders, the Whitechapel district did not have a coroner’s court, and an inquest would often be held in a convenient pub.
Coroner Wynne Baxter decided that The Working Lads Institute was a more appropriate venue, and members of the press agreed.
On Saturday, 15th September 1888, the East London Advertiser gave Wynne Baxter a pat on the back.
“A word may be said as to the great advantage there is in selecting such a place as the Lads Institute for coroner's inquiries. The hall is lofty and light, while there is plenty of room for everyone. The improvement upon the custom of hiring a public house room is manifest, and the new departure inaugurated by Mr. Wynne Baxter cannot be regretted..."
Many of the people featured in the Jack the Ripper story entered The Working Lads Institute.
The inquest into Polly Nichols, the 43-year-old homeless woman believed to be the first of Jack the Ripper’s victims, was held at The Working Lads Institute.
Witnesses included Polly Nichols’s father, Edward Walker; Police Constable John Neil, the police officer who discovered Polly’s body; Dr Llewellyn, who examined her body at the scene of the crime and who later carried out the postmortem examination. And Charles Allen Letchmere, the witness featured in my earlier posts.
The inquest into Annie Chapman, the 47-year-old homeless woman believed to be the second victim of Jack the Ripper, was held here.
Among the witnesses in that case were Divisional Police Surgeon Dr George Bagster Phillips and eyewitnesses John Richardson and Elizabeth Long, all of whom feature in my previous blog. They and many others connected to the case entered The Working Lads Institute to give evidence.
Other inquests of victims of the Whitechapel Murders also took place in the Working Lads Institute. Martha Tabram, a 39-year-old homeless woman, was murdered on August 7th, 1888; Alice Mckenzie was murdered on July 7th, 1889; and Frances Cole was murdered on the 13th of February, 1891.
All of these murders remain unsolved, and some believe that the unknown serial killer that we call Jack the Ripper was responsible for more than just five murders. Some believe ‘he’ killed Martha Tabram, Alice McKenzie and Frances Cole, as well as Polly Nichols, Annie Chapman, Liz Stride, Kate Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly
My Jack the Ripper tour starts at The Working Lads Institute.
You can see it if you join me. It stands as a reminder of the brutal murders of the women murdered in Whitechapel.
Building work began on The Working Lads Institute in 1884, and the extension at the rear of the building was completed in 1887 in time for Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee and just one year before the Whitechapel Murders began.
The tall gabled front would have risen impressively above anything else in Whitechapel Road then. In a book written about the Methodist minister Thomas Jackson, William Potter described it as the ‘loftiest building in the East End’.
A banking crisis in 1891 put the project in jeopardy until the Reverend Thomas Jackson came up with £8000 to save it “to supply a counter attraction to the low Music Halls and other east end resorts for the young, which are so fatal to their social and moral well-being”,
Reverend Jackson continued his good work in Whitechapel until he died in 1932.
In 1997, the upper floors were converted into nine flats.
Thank you for checking out this post.