OUR TOUR TAKES A TRULY ATMOSPHERIC ROUTE.

WE'LL PROVE IT BY TAKING YOU ROUND IT STEP BY STEP HERE AND NOW.

Our Jack the Ripper Walk starts at Aldgate East Underground Station and meets outside the Toynbee Hall Exit of the Station.

This is situated at the junction of Whitechapel High Street and Commercial Street and is right at the heart of  Jack the Ripper's London.

Further down the page we will take you step by step around our Jack the Ripper route and show you photographs of our route so that you can see for yourselves just how atmospheric the route from Aldgate East really is.

CLICK HERE FOR THE JACK THE RIPPER WALK DATES OF OPERATION

ALDGATE EAST UNDERGROUND STATION  IS THE ONLY PLACE TO START YOUR JACK THE RIPPER WALK.

Aldgate East, which is in zone one on the Underground, is THE ONLY place to begin your Jack the Ripper Walking Tour of London. If you start at  Tower Hill Underground Station, you will be walking for thirty to forty minutes before arriving at a Jack the Ripper murder site, or even having walked along a street that survives from 1888.

Those thirty to forty minutes are spent walking through modern, well lit streets, lined by 1970's and 1980's office blocks. Even the first murder site that these walks visit (that of Catherine Eddowes, the fourth victim of Jack the Ripper), is surrounded by modern, soulless office blocks that are distinctly lacking in atmosphere.

OUR WALK IMMEDIATELY TRANSPORTS YOU BACK TO THAT LONG AGO ERA OF GAS-LIT SHADOWS.

By starting at Aldgate East (which is one stop after Tower Hill on the Underground) you get the true atmosphere of jack the Ripper's London from the off.

The route that our walk takes has been designed to get straight into the area where the murders occurred and give you a better understanding of what the neighbourhood was like when Jack the Ripper stalked the very alleyways and passageways through which you will immediately start walking.

Within one minute we are passing a building that survives from 1888 and where one of the major suspects actually worked!

This is The White Hart Pub, a true Jack the Ripper landmark, in the basement of which George Chapman worked as a barber in 1890.

Once past the pub, we turn through a sinister arch, and wander along a cobble-stoned alley where Martha Tabram (who some maintain was Jack the Ripper first victim) was murdered in August 1888.

Five minutes later we have arrived outside the Princess Alice Pub, itself connected with the police's main suspect, Leather Apron.

Less than five minutes walk from there is the Frying Pan Pub where Mary Nichols the first accepted victim of jack the Ripper was seen shortly before her body was discovered.

 Moments later we have turned into a warren of atmospheric old streets where all the houses look exactly as they did in 1888. These delightful old streets lead us to Hanbury Street where Annie Chapman, the second victim of Jack the Ripper was murdered.

 WITH OUR TOUR YOU HAVE DONE ALL THE ABOVE IN JUST 30 MINUTES AND THE NIGHT IS STILL YOUNG!

In short, our Jack the Ripper tour has covered all this in the first forty minutes, by which time the tours that start from Tower Hill Underground have just reached Mitre Square, and have yet to pass a building or a street that actually survives from 1888 (with the exception of the Tower of London, which they gaze at from the opposite side of a very busy main road as they begin the tour).

NOW WE'LL TAKE YOU STEP BY STEP AROUND OUR ROUTE.

We honestly believe that our Jack the Ripper Tour route offers you more atmosphere than any other Jack the Ripper Walk In London. Indeed, so convinced are we of this fact that we are happy to give you step by step directions of the route we take, together with photographs of the buildings and places you will see in the course of our walk.

We leave the Toynbee Hall Exit of Aldgate East Underground and turn left out of the exit to cross over the traffic lights onto Whitechapel Road.

A little way along we arrive at the White Hart Pub. It was here that major suspect George Chapman worked as a barber in 1890.

Immediately after the pub we turn left into Gunthorpe Street. This cobbled little alley still has the ambience of 1888 and a little way along on the left we pause outside a building that dates from 1886.

Straight away the ambience of the Victorian era engulfs us as we begin our introduction to Jack the Ripper's London.

Continuing along Gunthorpe Street, which in 1888 was known as George Yard, we pass the site of George Yard Buildings where in August 1888 Martha Tabram was murdered. At the time she was considered a victim of Jack the Ripper, and some experts still maintain that she was, indeed, the first victim of the Whitechapel fiend.

Exiting Gunthorpe Street we cross over Wentworth Street, and pause alongside a red brick archway that displays the date it was built, 1886. Jack the Ripper's victims, and no doubt Jack the Ripper himself, would have passed this archway on a daily basis.

On the opposite side of Wentworth you will see the City Darts pub, which in 1888 was known as The Princess Alice and was a haunt of the police's main suspect Leather Apron.

Continuing down Wentworth Street we turn left into Thrawl Street, and right into what is still Thrawl Street where Mary Nichols, now widely acknowledged as the first of Jack the Ripper's victims was living at the time of her murder.

At its end is the Sheraz Indian Restaurant which occupies a building that in 1888 was The Frying Pan Public House. Mary Nichols was seen leaving this pub shortly before her mutilated body was discovered in nearby Bucks Row. Although the usage of the building has changed, we point out the two Frying pans that can still be seen high up on its exterior, as well as the name Ye Frying Pan.

From here we turn left along the colourful and bustling Brick Lane, where the appetising aroma from the Indian curry houses that line it hangs tantalisingly and appetisingly in the air.

We take the second left into Fournier Street, to look up at a huge 18th century building that truly reflects the changing demographics of the area. Now a Mosque, it has in the past been a Christian Chapel and a synagogue.

We pause opposite it and look along Fournier Street where the houses have survived from 1888 and are typical of those in which the victims of Jack the Ripper and the people who lived in this area lived when terror stalked these streets.

Having explained how these houses and their layout helped Jack the Ripper evade detection and capture we take a slow stroll along Fournier Street and turn right into Wilkes Street. A little way along we pass Puma Court on the left and Princelet Street on the right, both of which are lined with houses that have survived from 1888.

At  the end of Wilkes Street we turn right onto Hanbury Street and pause at the site of number 29, in the backyard of which Annie Chapman, the second victim of Jack the Ripper, was murdered on 8th September 1888. Although the murder site has now been obliterated by an ugly brewery building, several houses opposite are as they were in 1888, and because you have walked through streets that are more or less identical to what Hanbury Street looked like, you will be able to picture what the house was like. But even if you can't we pass round photographs of number 29, and of Hanbury Street itself, taken shortly after the murder.

REMEMBER AT THIS POINT PEOPLE WHO STARTED THEIR TOUR FROM TOWER HILL UNDERGROUND STATION ARE ONLY JUST ARRIVING AT THEIR FIRST MURDER SITE AND HAVE YET TO SEE A BUILDING, OR EVEN WALK ALONG A STREET THAT HAS SURVIVED AS IT WAS IN 1888.

ASK YOURSELF,

WHICH ROUTE WOULD YOU RATHER HAVE TAKEN?

Next we walk to the end of Hanbury Street and turn right onto Commercial Street. A little way along, on the left, you will find the former Commercial Street Police Station, where many of the detectives who investigated the Jack the Ripper murders were based.

Backtracking along Commercial Street we pass Spitalfields Market on the right, which dates back to 1887 and was, therefore, in existence as a functioning market in 1888. If it's raining we often shelter underneath its main entrance.

Opposite stands the Ten Bells Pub which is indelibly linked with the Jack the Ripper Story and which still looks much like it did in 1888.

Crossing Commercial Street, we pause by the Whites Row Car Park and pass round a photograph of Commercial Street which was taken shortly after the murders. You will see the Ten Bells and Spitalfields market, as horse drawn carts and carriages pass by them. You will also see the Britannia Pub, which stood on the corner of Dorset Street where Mary Kelly, Jack the Ripper's final victim, lived in Millers Court.

We make our way along what was Dorset Street and pause by what was the entrance to Millers Court (it is still visible!) to tell you of Mary Kelly's last hours and of the discovery of her horribly mutilated body. We pass round photographs of the entrance and of the room in which she was murdered.

We continue to the end of the former Dorset Street and turn left. The looming bulk of the Providence Row night Shelter towers over us on the opposite side of the road. In 1888 this was a Convent that offered shelter to the poor and destitute of the district. It also features in one of the more bizarre theories concerning the identity of Jack the Ripper.

From here we keep ahead over Wentworth Street and into Goulston Street where, on the left, we pause outside the Wentworth Street Model Dwellings, built in 1886. It was in a doorway of this building that Jack the Ripper left his only clue and where a chilling chalked message was found scrawled upon the wall.

A little further along we turn right and then left into Middlesex Street, better known the world over as Petticoat Lane. It stands on the boundary of the City of London and the East End of London. At the end of Middlesex Street we enter the night of the double murder (30th September 1888.)

We begin by telling you of the murder of Elizabeth Stride whose body was found at 1am in nearby Berner Street. Although Berner Street has now changed beyond recognition, we show you a photograph of it taken shortly after the murder. We also reveal how a witness may well have seen Elizabeth Stride in the act of being murdered.

We pass through a subway and re-surface in the City of London. Here we explain how the night of the double murder brought another police force, the City of London Police, into the hunt for Jack the Ripper.

We walk along Aldgate High Street, where Catherine Eddowes, Jack the Ripper's third victim, was arrested for being drunk and disorderly on the evening of the 29th September 1888. We pass the building to which she probably headed after her release at 1am on 30th September. We stand by the site of the passageway outside which a witness saw her talking to a man at 1.30am. Then we walk into Mitre Square and stand on the site where her body was discovered at 1.45am. We pass round several photographs of Mitre Square taken shortly after the murder so that you can get the true ambience of the spot on which you stand.

It is here that we tie up the loose threads of the evening and end by revealing the identity of Jack the Ripper.

Back to the Jack the Ripper Walk.