Leading a Jack the Ripper tour for a night in London's East End

You can re-trace Jack the Ripper's footsteps.

A Jack the Ripper walking tour is an essential item on many visitors to London to-do lists.

TO THE uninitiated it may seem like the swarms of people furtively darting down a non-descript alleyway off Aldgate High Street after dark are involved in the kind of nefarious behaviour that characterised the East End of old.

Exploring the alley itself will not provide much more insight: all that is there is a cobblestoned square surrounded by office buildings and a school playground. The only thing particularly striking about it is that it is a dark place for, one can only assume, particularly dark deeds.

It is precisely this quality that makes Mitre Square one of the City of London’s most abstract and beguiling attractions. Straddling the border of the City and the eastern boroughs, Mitre Square plays a central role in one of the most notorious stories in London’s sordid history. In the early hours of 30 September, 1888, the body of local prostitute Catherine Eddowes was found in Mitre Square. She had been brutally butchered in a matter of minutes on the very cobblestones that cover the square to this day.

She was the fourth victim of the City’s most infamous serial killer of all time. She was the fourth victim of Jack the Ripper.

As gruesome as it may be, ‘dark tourism’ is a subsection of modern travel that has experienced rapid growth in recent years. There is something inappropriately fascinating about revisiting sites that hold such a history of terror and, depending on your views on morality, evil in its purest form. This is what makes a Jack the Ripper walking tour through East London an essential aspect of many travellers’ to-do lists.

World-renowned Ripperologist Donald Rumbelow, former curator of the City of London Police’s Crime Museum, leads one such walk departing from Tower Hill Underground Station. Rumbelow was the man chosen to instruct Johnny Depp on Ripper lore in preparation for his role in the feature film From Hell and speaks with great authority on the wild variety of theories associated with the identity and motives of the murderer lurking in the shadows of 1888.

I took Rumbelow’s tour of the Ripper’s murder sites in the summer, at a time when I was far less confident wandering around areas like Whitechapel, Stepney and Bethnal Green than I would become as the year went on. When my housemates made the passing comment a few weeks ago that they would love to do a Ripper walk themselves, the solution became clear: I would lead my own tour of the East End. I would become, for the night at least, a Ripperologist.

The rendezvous point for the Inaugural Paul Bleakley Ripper Tour was at Crosswall, a stone’s throw from the Tower Hill Station and within walking distance of the first noteworthy sites associated with Jack’s reign of terror: the prostitute’s church St Botolphs-without-Aldgate and the place where Catherine Eddowes met her untimely end at Mitre Square.

Jack the Ripper's London.

My unofficial tour has its first awkward moment on a corner in Goulston Street, the place where the Ripper infamously left a piece of Eddowes bloody apron as he fled the scene of her death. It is on this corner, as I explain some of the more fantastical conspiracy theories related to the Ripper legend, that we cross paths with an official walking tour consisting of around thirty amateur historians trying to crack the case of the Jack the Ripper 124 years after the killing spree ended. The awkward moment was averted when the official tour group takes position on an adjacent corner. I chalk this up as a win for my first tour group in the notoriously competitive industry of Ripperology.

The tour twists and turns its way through the streets of East London, stopping off at the increasingly brutal murder sites on White’s Row (now a parking lot), Hanbury Street (empty office space) and Durward Street (renamed after the street’s original name ‘Buck’s Row’ became synonymous with prostitution and murder). I have tried to cater for everything on my first ever tour as a Ripperologist: we stop on Brick Lane for the standard Bangladeshi curry and I have accounted for the time it would take for a pint at two separate ‘vintage’ pubs along the way.

Following the path of the Ripper is the perfect, albeit disturbing, way to explore the rich history of London’s inner east. On a cold winter’s night it is easy to imagine the foggy alleyways that Jack would have walked, and the terror that would have been felt by every person living in the rough and tumble world of Victorian London.

A letter allegedly sent by the Ripper to chief of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee George Lusk challenged those in pursuit to “catch me if you can”. Over a century later, the hunt is still on. It is up to the amateur historians walking in the Ripper’s footsteps to do the best they can. Answer the call, join the hunt. And get yourself a decent curry along the way.

http://www.australiantimes.co.uk/ripperologist-for-a-night-how-to-lead-a-jack-the-ripper-walking-tour/

Jack the Ripper 1888 - Mad killer of London's East End

THE EAST END OF LONDON IN 1888

SLUM LAND LONDON?

The East End of London in 1888 is often depicted as being one vast slum that was inhabited by an immoral and criminal population who were little better than savages.

Whereas this was most certainly true of certain sections, it is, perhaps, a little unfair to tarnish the entire district with the reputation of being a hotbed of vice, villainy, drunkenness and debauchery.

It should be remembered that many of the writers and journalists who portrayed it in this way had vested interests in so depicting it, be it to attract attention to the area's more unsavoury aspects and locations in order to bring about social change, or simply because there was little newspaper-selling shock value in calling attention to the law abiding, hard working citizenry that also lived in the East End of London, and which may well have made up the majority of the local population.

LONDON'S MANY GHETTOES

Of course parts of the East End were, without doubt, lawless ghettoes where the people lived in appalling conditions.

But this was also the case with the rest of London. Chelsea, Westminster, Lambeth, Marylebone and even the City of London, all had their enclaves that were as bad as, if not worse than, the East End slums.

THE RIPPER MURDERS FOCUSED ATTENTION

However, largely as a result of the huge amount of press coverage afforded the Jack the Ripper murders - which did take place in one of the East End's most densely populated, crime-ridden and vice infested quarters - it is the reputation and appearance of the small section where the murders occurred that has, to an extent, become the most enduring image of the East End as a whole.

AN UNDESERVED IMAGE

But it is an image that was greatly undeserved by much of the East End in 1888 and, more importantly, was largely undeserved by the district of Whitechapel - the name of which is now synonymous the world over with the Jack the Ripper crimes.

Yes, Whitechapel had its slums, its no go areas and its criminal populace. But it also had some very respectable areas and the large percentage of those who lived there were extremely hard working and exceptionally law abiding.

CANON BARNET'S OPINION

Indeed on the 19th September 1888, at the height of the Jack the Ripper scare, Canon Samuel Barnet, the vicar of St Jude's church on Commercial Street - who was an ardent campaigner for social change in the area and who was, therefore, familiar with the slum areas - wrote to The Times newspaper and pointed out that "... The greater part of Whitechapel is as orderly as any part of London, and the life of most of its inhabitants is more moral than that of many whose vices are hidden by greater wealth..."

But, of course, these were not the type of people that the social reformers and philanthropists could utilise in their battle to bring about change. Nor were they the type of people that journalists could shock their readers with in order to increase newspaper sales. Their sensation seeking readers thirsted after salacious accounts of crimes and criminals, or rogues and unfortunates, drunken brawls and dark deeds of infamy.

Thus the honest, hard working East Enders found themselves largely ignored, and it was the areas, admittedly large, underclass that became the stereotypical East Ender in the eyes of many.

As one commentator has put it:-

"A shabby man from Paddington, St. Marylebone or Battersea might pass muster as one of the respectable poor. But the same man coming from Bethnal Green, Shadwell or Wapping was an “East Ender”; the box of Keating’s bug powder must be reached for, and the spoons locked up… it became a concentrated reminder to the public conscience that nothing to be found in the East End should be tolerated in a Christian country."

http://www.jack-the-ripper.org/east-end.htm

Did London's serial killer Jack the Ripper play for the Marylebone Cricket Club?

Jack the Ripper lurked across London's East End in 1888.

Jack the Ripper is the name given to an unidentified serial killer who operated in the largely impoverished areas in and around the Whitechapel district of London in 1888. Attacks ascribed to him typically involved female prostitutes who lived in the slums in the area. The large number of murders in the East End during this period adds uncertainty to how many victims were killed by the same person.

Five of the eleven Whitechapel murders, called the Canonical Five, are widely attributed to this notorious serial killer, because of the similarity of injuries of the victims and apparent lack of motive in the crime. All the five victims had their throats cut from left to right, and their abdomen mutilated after death.

Despite police investigations and many studies afterwards, Jack the Ripper was never identified. He remains one of the most intriguing characters in the criminal history of England. In this article, Sports-nova explores the life of one of the key suspects in the Jack the Ripper murders, a fine cricketer of the time whose mysterious evanescence towards the end of 1988 marked the end of the Ripper murders.

Montague John Druitt (15th August 1857 – December 1888) was noted for his skills as a bowler. He played for the Kingston Park Cricket Club, and the Dorset County Cricket Club during the start of his cricket career. In 1882-83 he toured the West Country with Incogniti, which is said to be the third oldest wandering cricket club. In 1883 he played for another wandering team, the Butterflies.

Montague Druitt.

While working at Blackheath, Druitt joined the local cricket club, Blackheath Morden, and became the club’s treasurer. It was a well-connected club, the President being politician Sir Charles Mills and Stanley Christopherson, who later became President of the Marylebone Cricket Club, was one of the players. As the club grew, it merged with other local sports association and came to be known as Blackheath Cricket, Football and Lawn Tennis Company. Druitt soon took over as the company’s secretary and director.

Druitt’s prowess at the game came to public notice while playing for Blackheath. On 5 June 1886, in a match between Blackheath and a touring team called the Band of Brothers, led by Lord Harris, Druitt bowled Harris for 14 and took three other wickets. Blackheath won by 178 runs. A few weeks later, he dismissed England batsman John Shuter, who was playing for Bexley Cricket Club, for a duck, and Blackheath won the game by 114 runs.

The following year, Shuter returned to Blackheath with a Surrey County side that included Walter Read, William Lockwood, and Bobby Abel, whom Druitt bowled out for 56, but Blackheath lost to Surrey.

Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC):

On 26 May 1884, Druitt was elected to the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) on the recommendation of his fellow Butterflies player Charles Seymour, who proposed him, and noted fielder Vernon Royle, who seconded his nomination. One of the minor matches he played for MCC was with England bowler William Attewell against Harrow School on 10 June 1886 where MCC won by 57 runs.

Early life and career:

Druitt was born in Wimborne Minster, Dorset, England. He was the second son and third child of prominent local surgeon William Druitt. He was educated at Winchester College, where he excelled at many sports, especially cricket. On 17 May 1882, two years after graduation, Druitt was admitted to the Inner Temple, one of the qualifying bodies for English barristers. In 1885 he set up a practice as a barrister and special pleader. He is listed in the Law List of 1886 and 1887 as active in the Western Circuit and few other places.

Apart form this, to supplement his income and help pay for his legal training, Druitt also worked as an assistant schoolmaster at George Valentine’s boarding school at Blackheath, London from 1880.

Disappearance and death:

On 30 November 1888, Druitt was dismissed from his post at the Blackheath boys’ school. Quoting his brother William’s testimony to a local newspaper, he was dismissed because he “had got into serious trouble”. But records fail to provide further clarity on that. He then disappeared mysteriously.

The next records of him were found in the Blackheath Cricket Club’s minute book, that recorded on 21 December 1888 that he was removed as treasurer and secretary in the belief that he had “gone abroad”.

On 31 December 1888, his body was found floating in the River Thames, off Thornycroft’s torpedo works. His body was in possession with large amount of money in cheque and in gold. It was believed that he had committed suicide but the reason behind that remained unearthed.

Druitt and Jack the Ripper:

Removal of organs after mutilation of the abdomen of the Canonical Five victims gave rise to the speculation that the murderer had some surgical knowledge. In February 1891, the MP for West Dorset, Henry Richard Farquharson, announced that Jack the Ripper was “the son of a surgeon”. The description of the man as was announced resembled Druitt to a large extent.

George R. Sims, a Victorian journalist noted in his memoirs, The Mysteries of Modern London (1906) about the Ripper: “body was found in the Thames after it had been in the river for about a month”. There were many other similar comments that strangely matched Druitt.

While the murders were apparently motiveless and the mutilation of the bodies appallingly screamed of mental illness of the mysterious Jack the Ripper, there are evidences that Montague John Druitt also suffered from an hereditary psychiatric illness. His mother suffered from depression and was institutionalised from July 1888. She died in an asylum in Chiswick in 1890. His maternal grandmother committed suicide while insane. A note written by Druitt and addressed to his brother William, who was a solicitor in Bournemouth, was found in Druitt’s room in Blackheath. It read, “Since Friday I felt that I was going to be like mother, and the best thing for me was to die.”

Druitt’s story also matches the descriptions of one of the three unnamed suspects in Major Arthur Griffiths’ Mysteries of Police and Crime (1898); Griffiths was Inspector of Prisons at the time of the Ripper murders.

Griffiths’ memorandum, the near coincidence between Druitt’s death and the end of the murders, the closeness of Whitechapel to Druitt’s apartments in the Inner Temple, the insanity that was acknowledged by the inquest verdict of “unsound mind”, and the possibility that Druitt had absorbed the rudimentary anatomical skill through observing his father at work, led many experts to believe that he might well have been Jack the Ripper.

However, some experts hold the Ripper as the culprit of two more murders outside the Canonical Five. Though such an inclusion is heavily debated, they would certainly remove any possibility of Druitt being the Ripper: one of the murders occurring after his death and the other at a time when he was playing a cricket match far away. But as most believe that the Ripper was responsible only for the Canonical Five murders, Druitt continues to be remembered as one of the key suspects.

https://www.the-newshub.com/cricket/jack-the-ripper-a-serial-killer-who-played-for-the-marylebone-cricket-club

Jack the Ripper: Maggots, mortuaries, bullets - Wellcome Collection opens Forensics exhibition

Camera supposedly used to photograph 

Jack the Ripper © Metropolitan Police, Heritage Centre

The Wellcome Collection's murderous new exhibition concludes a multimillion pound development in dark and unflinching styleClick on the picture to launch

Maggots from the body of a 1930s murder victim, a sketch of Jack the Ripper’s fourth victim on the mortuary slab, a piece of scalp alongside the bullet that pierced it. Forensics: The Anatomy of Crime could easily have been a macabre gore-fest. Instead, with the Wellcome Collection’s characteristic blend of art, history and medicine, it becomes much more.

The opening of Forensics marks the conclusion of the Wellcome’s multi-million pound transformation. With The Institute of Sexology continuing to draw huge audiences upstairs, the two temporary exhibitions – on sex and death – show that the full spectrum of human experience remains at the heart of the new Wellcome Collection.

Poison bottle, blue for arsenic in

 solution© Wellcome Library, London

The exhibition is dark and unflinching but ultimately focused on very human stories. It traces the course of a forensic investigation from crime scene to courtroom, and from the emergence of the field through to today. Along the way, the exhibition features notorious cases and ground-breaking techniques, including the development of mugshots, fingerprinting and DNA profiling.

Throughout, the personal stories of victims, accused and professionals remain central. For instance, Isabella Ruxton and her maid Mary Rogerson were murdered by Isabella’s partner in 1935.

The case is known for its innovative use of forensic methods, including facial reconstruction. The technique, whereby photographs of the victims were superimposed onto photographs of skull fragments and cross-referenced in order to identify the remains, is displayed here in a sequence of haunting images.

Famous pathologist Bernard Spilsbury – whose cases included Dr Crippen and the ‘Brides in the Bath’ murders – features throughout the exhibition. The meticulous index cards detailing autopsies that he conducted provide an insight into Spilsbury’s dogmatic, borderline obsessive approach which would later bring his objectivity into question.

Liver with stab wound and knife© Barts

 Pathology Museum, Queen Mary

 University of London

By contrast, a series of videos with today’s forensic professionals clearly demonstrates their dedication, skill and respect for both the dead and those that they leave behind. Their frank testimonies are inspiring and humbling in equal measure.

There are no shortage of shocks in the exhibition. It is direct and at times unsettling. In ‘The Morgue’, you can see gruesome forensic illustrations from across history and listen to a real-time recording of an autopsy.

However, this is tempered by thought-provoking juxtapositions of past and present. Nine watercolours from 18th century Japan depicting the decomposition of a body are displayed opposite artistic photographs of a contemporary ‘body farm’. It shows that what we might think of as a very modern discipline is rooted in a much deeper understanding of the workings of the body.

Hold up man killed (1941)©

Courtesy Michael Hoppen Gallery, UK

Elsewhere, our enduring fascination with the darker side of human nature is highlighted. From a pamphlet – subtitled “The Naughty Doctor” and released to mark the execution of Dr Crippen – to clips from modern murder mysteries and courtroom dramas, it is hard to escape the pull that this dark side has exerted on us for centuries.

Across the exhibition, contemporary art, films and photography offer a different perspective. Installations exploring the mass execution of prisoners in the Chilean desert in 1973, war crimes in former Yugoslavia and a specially-commissioned piece on the aftermath of the Bosnian war powerfully convey the role and significance of forensics in unexpected circumstances.

This is not, as you might expect, an exhibition to turn the stomach, but rather one to tug at the heartstrings and one that, you suspect, will linger long in the mind.

You can see Forensics: the Anatomy of Crime at the Wellcome Collection, London until June 21 2015.

http://www.culture24.org.uk/science-and-nature/art519133-maggots-mortuaries-bullets-and-jack-the-ripper-wellcome-collection-opens-forensics-exhibition

Jck the Ripper: Introducing Michael Ostrog - arrested in a Burton pub

RIPPER SUSPECT . . . Michael Ostrog was dramatically arrested in a Burton pub.

Murder at the Inn.

Burton Bridge Inn.

THE infamous story of Jack the Ripper has captured the imagination of many over the years but few will know of Burton's very own connection to the tale.

Now, in a chapter of a new book, author James Moore has revealed the dramatic story of a man that would one day be a prime suspect in the Jack the Ripper case.

He was arrested in what now is the Burton Bridge Inn.

The story goes that, on October 5, 1873, Michael Ostrog, who was being hunted by police, was tracked down to the pub in Bridge Street, that was then known as the Fox and Goose Inn.

The author, 42, said: "Michael Ostrog had a really chequered history for various different thefts and crimes.

"They tracked him around the country until they made a dramatic arrest in what is now the Burton Bridge Inn.

"When he was arrested the officer threw all the cutlery across the room away from Ostrog so that he couldn't use any of it as a weapon.

"What they didn't do though is search him, as he later pulled a gun on them at the police station."

Serial killer Jack the Ripper went on to commit his famous crimes in 1888 by which time Ostrog was free again and catapulted towards the top of the suspects list.

To this day, no-one can be sure that Ostrog was not the man behind the hideous crimes.

Mr Moore said: "In a time where were losing pubs every week it's really important to highlight the history of them.

"The book reveals a lot of aspects about many pubs that are still in business today including in this case the darker side of crimes that took place in them."

The book charts the relationship between crime and drinking institutions across the country, including the chapter based in Burton.

Mr Moore is a journalist living in Cheltenham and his book 'Murder at the Inn' is his seventh book.

The book is now on sale at bookshops and also available online.

Read more: http://www.burtonmail.co.uk/James-Moore-s-book-reveals-Burton-s-Jack-Ripper/story-26113474-detail/story.html#ixzz3U9DB9zB8

Jack the Ripper: The five most-convincing theories

There have been over 100 suspects investigated for the Jack the Ripper murders that occurred in Whitechapel, London between 1888 and 1891. 

Some are pretty unlikely - suspects include charity founder Thomas John Barnardo and Alice in Wonderland author Lewis Carroll - but there are 5 outstanding theories that are pretty difficult to ignore.

Read on and decide for yourself... who was Jack the Ripper?

1. The Vital Shawl Theory

The Suspect: Aaron Kosminski

Who? Polish barber and mental patient

Supporting Evidence: Mitochondrial DNA found on a shawl belonging to Ripper victim Catherine Eddowes implicates polish barber Aaron Kosminski.This theory has only solidified in recent years, causing a furore in the press... but what do you think?

Read the Book: Naming Jack the Ripper - Russell Edwards 

2. From London to Chicago

The Suspect: H.H. Holmes 

Who? Doctor, hotel owner and verified serial killer

Supporting Evidence: Holmes was certainly a brutal killer, but his origins are shrouded in mystery. A composite computer sketch based on previous witness testimony does seem to indicate a striking resemblance to 'America's First Serial Killer', H.H. Holmes. Is it possible that the most notorious serial killer in British history was also the dread terror of America?

Read the Book: Bloodstains - Jeff Mudgett 

3. The From Hell Theory

The Suspect: Sir William Withey Gull 

Who? Famed physician to the British royal family

Supporting Evidence: Gull is certainly the most popular Ripper candidate in popular culture - the theory being that a prostitute was going to bear an illegitimate heir to the throne - so authorities unleashed a madman (with medical knowledge, which Gull had) to disguise her death in a spate of killings...

Read the Book: From Hell - Alan Moore 

4. The Painted Devil Theory

The Suspect: Walter Sickert 

Who? British painter

Supporting Evidence: After botched surgery to correct a fistula on his penis, Sickert was unable to have intercourse. His accusers allege that this gave him great rage against women - and that his paintings reflected poses seen on the Ripper's victims.

Read the Book: Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper, Case Closed - Patricia Cornwell 

5. The 'Jack the Ripper was a Woman' Theory

The Suspect: Lizzie Williams 

Who? Infertile wife of royal physician John Williams

Supporting Evidence: Williams was suspected of the murders, which many think she committed out of anger at her inability to bear children of her own - leading her to vent her frustrations by attacking the sexual organs of other women. Sherlock Holmes author Arthur Conan Doyle famously supported the female villain hypothesis, writing on what he called 'Jill the Ripper'.

Read the Book: Jack the Ripper: The Hand of a Woman - John Morris

http://moviepilot.com/posts/2015/02/27/the-5-most-convincing-jack-the-ripper-theories-2731057?lt_source=external,manual