The travels of Tim and Megan: Jack the Ripper Walk

Greetings fans

On Friday night we did the Jack the Ripper walk through the dark back streets and narrow cobbled alleys of east London. Alright, so it wasn't scary, but it was very interesting and very gruesome.

There are dozens of organisations that run Jack the Ripper walks around London, taking hundreds of people around every night, such is the fascination people have with Jack the Ripper. We didn't know a great deal about Jack the Ripper before the tour, but we are now qualified experts.

Interesting facts: While often credited with dozens of murders, it is likely that only five murders were committed by Jack the Ripper. The five murders all took place between 31 August and 9 November, 1888. All of the victims were prostitutes. The scenes of the murders were all within a very compact area in central/east London. After five gruesome murders in 71 days, they just stopped! Perhaps Jack died, or was imprisoned for something else? Strangely the police closed the case in 1892 without giving a reason and it remains unsolved.

The tour was very good. We visited the sites of most of the murders and followed the path that Jack apparently took when he fled the scene of his fourth murder. The tour guide had several black and white photographs of what the streets and buildings looked like in 1888 and of some of the victims and crime scenes (very disturbing).

The little courtyard/square where the fourth murder took place looks almost exactly the same as it did in 1888 and the little alleyway leading off the side of the square is the same one that Jack fled down. We walked down that alley and east a few blocks (following the path that Jack took, dripping blood as he ran) to the doorway of the building where the blood-soaked apron that had belonged to the victim was found. It is thought that Jack had used the apron to wrap up and carry the kidney that was missing from the mutilated body of the victim. God knows what he did with the kidney after he ditched the apron...it was never found.

The photograph of the fifth victim (Jack's most gruesome murder) was sickening. This murder was different from the other four, in that it took place inside the woman's flat, rather than in the streets and alleys, so Jack had more time to mutilate the body. While all of the murders followed the same pattern, this was by far the most revolting. The woman's body was barely recognisable in the picture. Her internal organs had been scattered about the room and her heart was missing. Not particularly nice.

Despite many theories, even today no-one really has any idea as to the identity of Jack the Ripper. However, our guide, a self-confessed "Ripperologist", is adamant that he lived close to the area of the murders in east London and not in the upper-class West End as many theories suggest. Some theorists believe that Jack was a doctor or lawyer from the West End, or even linked to the Royal family, but our tour guide thinks Jack must have been able to roam the poor, rough streets of east London unnoticed. He thinks he was probably a labourer, but may have been a soldier or sailor!

After the tour, we set off for nearby Brick Lane for a curry! Very nice.

On Saturday, after Megan met Anna for a spot of shopping, we wandered through St James' Park and fed the squirrels. The park is beautiful this time of year, with the autumn colours and the leaves falling from the trees and the squirrels are really fat and playful. They seem to hate pigeons as much as we do. We then did a mini-pub crawl, stopping in at the Sherlock Holmes pub, the Silver Cross and The Feathers, which offers around 20 differnt types of sausage...

Sunday was a beautiful day. We headed off for our second visit to the Natural History Museum, this time we left the majority of the screaming children behind and explored the volcanic section and the "Earth's Treasury" area. The precious stones part was the best with famous stones like the Hope Diamond on display - some were so big they looked completely false!

The rest of Sunday involved shopping and getting ready for another week at work - a pretty reaxed weekend in London in all. One of our last for a while as we've got some flat hunting ahead of us - turns out our current flat is so good our landlord wants to live in it herself, so watch this space for more details...