Author: Richard Jones

Father Damien (1840 – 1889) was a Roman Catholic priest from Belgium who, from 1873 to his death on 15th April 1889 (which is now Father Damien Day), led a mission for lepers in the Hawaiian Kingdom. In […]

The Bystander was a British weekly tabloid magazine that was founded in 1903 by George Holt Thomas (1869 – 1929) and which was published from Fleet Street until 1940. On Wednesday, 17th September, 1919 the magazine published the […]

Maria Fitzsimmons was murdered on 20th February 1869, and, despite the fact that several men were arrested for her murder, charges against them were dropped, and, by the end of the year, it seemed that, just like the […]

On Saturday, 20th February, 1869, the body of Maria Fitzsimmons was found under the bed of her room at 44 Baines’s Lane, Sunderland. The Shields Daily Gazette, published the story of the circumstances behind the murder in its […]

The Victorian hackney carriage drivers – the predecessors of today’s London black cab drivers – were a hardy bunch who were compelled by their occupation to be out on the streets of London in all types of weather. […]

In June, 1892, the people of London were alerted to another murderer in their midst who was, apparently, poisoning women in the Lambeth district of London. The fact that the women who had died were drawn from the […]

Goodness me, the year is half over, and what a strange year it has been. But, although our regular Jack the Ripper tour is not actually taking place, we haven’t gone away, and we have launched a Virtual […]

On Thursday, 2nd June, 1892, The Manchester Evening News carried a story which informed its readers of a tragedy and crime that had occurred at a hotel in Lambeth in London:- FRENCH TRAGEDY LONDON Yesterday afternoon, a shocking […]

Alice McKenzie was murdered in Castle Alley, off Whitechapel High Street, on the 17th of July, 1889. However, eleven years before her murder, on the 1st of June, 1878, the Street had been the scene of another mysterious […]

Robert Claudius Billing (1834 – 1898) was the Rural Dean of Spitalfields from 1878 to 7th July, 1888. This was a period that saw huge changes in Spitalfields, as vast acreages of some the worst streets in London were […]