This short description is designed to assist you in finding the sites associated with the famed 'Whitechapel murderer'. You’ll be using the London Underground system and travelling to the east of the city, to Tower Hamlets. Due to the ongoing renovation of this neighbourhood, and constant changes in road patterns, we cannot guaranteee the accuracy of every instrcution below and you may find you have to make one or tow detours during the course of your walk!

You are obviously advised to take all of the normal precautions you’d take as a tourist exploring an area with which you are unfamiliar, and Back-Roads Touring Co. Ltd cannot be held responsible for any problems you might experience. If you are following our route in the evening, you may well bump into one of the many organised ‘Jack-The Ripper walking tours’. If you believe that there’s ‘safety in numbers’ then you might want to join one for the evening – an excess of 100 persons are regularly to be seen training behind a single guide on one of these tours!

The Tower Hamlets is traditionally one of the more run-down areas of the city. There is a great deal of renovation underway and it is generally safe to travel here as a tourist, but how different in those autumn months of 1888 when the Ripper stalked the foggy, gas lit streets and the smell of death was in the air...

The tour begins at Aldgate East Station underground (metro) station and ends at Liverpool Street station. The underground is easy to use. We recommend that you buy a ‘one-day travel card’ as this allows you full use of all tubes and London buses for the day.

Aldgate East underground station is on the District (green) line.

The tour should take you about two hours to complete and involves about a two-and-a-half mile walk. You will be visiting the sites where the bodies were found but not in the order that they were found, as this would involve too much back-tracking along our route.

Had you arrived here in 1888, the first thing to assail your senses would have been the smell – many glue making factories and abattoirs were built here. Then you’d have been instantly aware of the poverty. To middle-class Londoners of the period, the area was known simply as the ‘Abyss’.

Just around from the station you’ll find ‘Tubby’s roadside fish stall’. If you want a taste of the East End, try a traditional plate full of jellied eels or cockles.

Carry on down Fenchurch Street until you see Leadenhall Street on your right, turn right here and then immediately into Mitre Square. The Ripper’s fourth victim, Catherine ‘Kate’ Eddowes (also known as Anne Kelly), aged 43, was found here outside number 45.

Alas, poor Catherine had only earlier in the evening of September 29^th been safely drunk in police custody. Now she was dead, horribly murdered in a frenzied attack, and probably just a few hours after the Ripper claimed his third victim.

Imagine the scene at the discovery (and don’t bring up your jellied eels!). She was found lying, her legs apart, and badly cut up. Part of her nose and eyelids were missing, and her intestines were pulled out and draped across her body, and part of her liver was missing.

It was here that the so-called ‘Goulston Street Graffitti’ was found chalked seemingly by the murderer, on a door immediately above where the body lay. The words ’The Juwes (sic) are the Men who will not be blamed for nothing’ have excited much speculation ever since – especially as this possibly vital piece of evidence was destroyed by the police, fearful of anti-Semitic riots.

Let’s retrace our steps and walk back past the underground station along the Aldgate before turning right into Commercial Road. Approximately half a mile away, two streets along on the right, is Berner Street.

It’s probable that ‘Long Liz’, formally known as Elizabeth Stride, was murdered here just before Catherine Eddowes met her maker. Perhaps the Ripper was startled in the act as Long Liz’s body was discovered virtually without mutilation. Her throat was slit from ear to ear, however.

So, back to Commercial Road, turn right and then first left into New Road. At the junction with Whitechapel Road, turn right and walk to Whitechapel Underground Station. Behind the station there’s a road called Bucks Row. In the early hours of August 31^st Mary Anne Nicholls' body was found here. She was the Ripper’s first victim. She had been jabbed into the lower part of her abdomen, twice, and the blade drawn up from her groin to her breast bone. Cut from throat to belly.

You’ll probably have noticed both the Mosque and the large number of ethnic Asians as you’ve walked up to this point.

Whitechapel has always welcomed immigrants, from the Hugenots who arrived fleeing the Spanish Inquisition, through the Jews and Irish of the mid 19^th century, and now to the vast numbers who are arriving mainly from Bangladesh.

Also, on the Whitechapel Road are a few traditional pubs. If you’re feeling thirsty and relish a drink at a pub that was the site of a famous early nineteen-sixties gangland murder, then call into the ‘Blind Begger’. Here, the infamous Kray Twins shot a victim in full sight of the bar.

You have to walk back along Whitechapel Street. On certain days there’s a street market here. A walk of about half-a-mile brings us to Brick Lane, to our right.

This is one of London’s most interesting streets. It took its name from the refractories in the area. You’ll note that London buildings are made of brick. This is where bricks were made in the kilns that dotted this area from the 1400s onward.

This was known as the heart of Jewish East End, although now, as you can see, it’s home to a hundred curry shops!

Halfway down, on the junction with Fourier Street, you’ll see a Sikh temple. This began life as a Christian church, then changed to a synagogue before becoming the temple. This reflects the changing nature of the street over the last 200 years.

While you’re looking at the temple, it’s worth walking down Fourier Street to look at the wonderful architecture of the 18^th century houses. There are few remaining like this anywhere else in the city. Look at the ornate doors, and look up at the old silk weaving sheds on the roofs.

Brick Lane was also the scene of bloody street fighting in 1936 when the British Union of Fascists marched down the road to intimidate the local Jewish community. Heavy fighting drove the black shirts out not only from the East End but also from Britain itself.

About six hundred metres away you’ll come to a small crossroads where Hanbury Street crosses Brick Lane. You’ll profit from walking down Brick Lane another 100 meters before turning back down Hanbury Street as you’ll find the old Truman’s Brewery. Outside are some old canons, taken from Napoleon’s army at Waterloo, and now used as barriers to stop horses mounting the pavement. If you’re following this tour on a Sunday morning then follow the crowds to the Brick Lane street market.

Back to Hanbury Street. At no. 29, the severely mutilated body of Annie Chapman (aka ‘Dark Annie’) was discovered. Her head was almost severed from her body. Her stomach was opened and her intestines drawn over her shoulders. Her uterus was gone, as were parts of her bladder and vagina.

It is thought that the Ripper was a cannibal. We leave the rest to your imagination.

At the corner of Hanbury Street turn left. You’re opposite the old Spittlefields Fruit and Vegetable Market. It’s now a very ‘trendy’ meeting point with a Sunday market and some fine small restaurants and wine bars taking up the old Victorian offices.

On this street corner you might see the occasional prostitute looking for business. It’s illegal in the UK to solicit on street corners but these girls still take the risks. They are not at the ‘top end’ of the flesh market.

One hundred meters on your left is the Ten Bells pub. This has many Ripper connections with certainly several of the victims taking their last drink here before staggering out into the damp fall night to meet their horrific ends.

The pub is virtually as it was in 1888. On the walls are newspaper clippings and some old police newspapers of the period. You can buy souvenirs here.

Don’t come between 7 and 9 pm if you can avoid it. This is the epicentre of the Jack the Ripper ‘industry’ and all of the walking tours congregate here. Sometimes it’s literally impossible to get through the doors for the throng of Ripper tourists.

Next door is the beautiful church of St Johns, under which is a hostel for those without fixed abodes. Don’t be alarmed by the somewhat dishevelled appearance of some of the people you’ll see here.

Mary Kelly, an attractive, 25 year old, Irish lass had her ‘pitch’ outside the Ten Bells. On the night of 9^th November, after a few drinks of her favourite drink, gin, she walked off to find a ‘trick’ for the night.

The Ripper was, by now, reaching a crescendo of violence. Each killing was worse than the last. Mary’s dispatch was almost beyond belief. It was the only one perpetuated indoors so maybe the time available allowed him full, undisturbed vent to his warped feelings.

Poor Mary. She was not merely stabbed. She was sliced up, bit by bit. Skinned. Her nose and breasts had been cut off and placed on a table at her bedside. Both her arm and head were attached to the torso by the merest strand of flesh. Bits of flesh hanged from the picture rails.

Could it be more horrible? She was three months pregnant.

Cross the road from the Ten Bells and walk to Dorset Street retracing Mary’s last walk. Turn right down Dorset Street, it then dog-legs into White’s Row and onto Middlesex Street.

There are many theories. Certainly there are more suspects than there are bodies.

There are more web sites dedicated to the Ripper search than there are even suspects!

Our place here is not to outline the various theories but we will take you past the home of one of the more likely suspects.

James Maybrick was a cotton trader from Liverpool. He spent time in Whitechapel, even keeping an apartment locally. In 1992, a sixty-three page diary was unearthed in which Maybrick claimed responsibility. It was a controversial find and many suspected forgery (although scientific dating does place the diary into the last decade of the 19^th century).

Maybrick died in 1889, ironically murdered by his wife using arsenic poisoning. According to the diary, Maybrick embarked on his killing spree for motives of vicarious revenge at the behaviour of his wife, who was having an affair with another Liverpool merchant.

He was a long-term drug addict and may well have performed the dreadful deeds while ‘high’. Whitechapel was selected as a joke to parallel the Whitechapel district in Liverpool.

You’re on Middlesex Street. It was on this, now much-changed street, that Maybrick had his flat. Living in such close proximity to the murders would explain how the murderer was able to easily disappear. It might also explain the mystery of why there was so little blood at some of the crime scenes – perhaps Maybrick done the deed at home and dumped the bodies later.

Whatever, with Maybrick dead, the killings stopped.

The final irony. If you turn right on Middlesex Street, you’ll come to the Liverpool Street rail station. It was called this too in 1888.

You can catch the underground back to central London from here. You’re lucky. You’ve walked the streets of Whitechapel and lived. Which is more than five women in the fall of 1888 did.