Author: Richard Jones

Well, the time has arrived for our fourth Jack the Ripper Quiz of the year, and what an intriguing set of questions have been put together to challenge your knowledge of the Whitechapel Murders. If you are a […]

Newgate Prison dominated the crime pages of the newspapers throughout much of the 19th century, and on into the early 20th century when it was demolished. Until 1868, executions were carried out in public in the square in […]

Robert Paul was a 31-year-old carman – that is a delivery driver in today’s terms – who, at just before 3.45 on the morning of August the 31st 1888, left his home in Foster Street, in Whitechapel, to […]

The following report, which appeared in The Scotsman on Wednesday the 11th of October 1876, in many ways, reminiscent of the Lambeth poisoning case by Dr. Thomas Neill Cream that occurred in 1892. DOUBLE MURDER IN LONDON YESTERDAY […]

One of the major reasons for murders being committed in Britain, and in particular London, during the 19th century was drunkenness. Many a drunken brawl escalated into fatal violence when one or both of the participants were under […]

Spare a thought for Mrs. Elizabeth Gibbs, a Victorian resident of this street, Ebury Street, in the Belgravia district of London, just a stone’s throw from Buckingham Palace. Hers is not a name that many people are familiar […]

At the junction of Fashion Street and Commercial Street you will find a former pub that featured in the stories of at least two of the Jack the Ripper atrocities. The Queen’s Head was the pub in which […]

Come the 19th century, the fame of the Aldgate Pump had spread far and wide. The The Liverpool Daily Post wryly observed that:- “More persons have heard of the Aldgate Pump than could find their way to Aldgate […]

By the time of the death of Mary Kelly, which took place on Friday the 9th of November, 1888, in Miller’s Court of Dorset Street, the newspapers had learned from experience that the public appetite for any information […]

Whitechapel in the 19th century was a place of extreme poverty, unsanitary living conditions, and a unique and diverse local culture. Located in the East End of London, the area was home to a large population of working-class […]