CHILDREN ON THE TOUR

Is The Walk Suitable For Children?

We do get children on the tour and leave it to parental discretion as to whether they think the tour suitable. As a general rule we would not recommend the tour for children under the age of 14, with more details why as follows…

  • IT CONTAINS ADULT CONTENT – The Jack the Ripper tour covers the brutal murders of five prostitutes in the East End of London in 1888. We go into a lot of detail about Victorian prostitution in the area and we also detail the gruesome details about the crimes themselves. The tour is aimed at an adult audience, not a young audience, and, although we handle the subject with great sensitivity, we pitch the narrative at an adult level and are unable to tone it down should children be present.
  • IT’S A TWO HOUR WALK – The tour is a walking tour that covers a fairly large distance. The tour is conducted at a leisurely pace but, again, it is intended for adults and the amount of walking involved might prove too tiresome for tiny legs.
  • IT’S NOT A THEME PARK ATTRACTION – The Jack the Ripper Walk is not a London Dungeon style attraction with costumed actors running around shouting “Boo!” at you. It is a serious study and introduction to the crimes that shook London in 1888. Whereas adults find the history, facts, and mystery fascinating, young children might find that the subject matter, social history and other matters covered in the walk to be a little beyond their comprehension.

Whilst we don’t ban children under 14 from coming on the walk, we don’t actively encourage or suggest it.

However, you know your child better than anyone and if you think they will enjoy the tour, so as long as you take into account the aforementioned reasons why we don’t think it is suitable, you are welcome to bring them along.

Jayne Lewis brought her twelve-year-old son on the tour in March 2010.

The tour on that particular night was conducted by John Bennett and here’s what she emailed to tell us afterwards:-

“I just wanted to write to say firstly we, all of us, greatly enjoyed the tour [With John Bennett] and much appreciated the factual element unlike the rather exaggerated voices of other tour guides we overheard as we went round with yourselves.

We came away discussing the information given and pondering over how it all could have happened. It was suggested that we went on your tour by a friend of mine at my place of work, here in Macclesfield, as she is trying to organise a break in London and wants to go on your tour, so I will be passing on tremendously positive feedback – thank you very much for such a good time.

Secondly, thank you for being so tactfully considerate over my son when he was obviously not keen to see some of the pictures. He said afterwards that he didn’t feel made a fuss of and that you made it very easy to cope with not seeing the photographs after he saw the first, without feeling that the rest of the group were looking at him.

He really enjoyed the tour and was talking all the way home about possible theories of how Jack the Ripper did it. However he wasn’t upset when he talked and he concluded that Jack the Ripper had to be someone who knew where to look for the organs, and was someone every one was used to seeing about and was never given a second thought to – similar to magic tricks, illusions and the art of creating a diversion so you don’t see what is actually there.

He also wished you were his History teacher! So please don’t think automatically children of this age should be excluded. We had a smashing time in London with my friend for three days, you really did provide quite the highlight to the visit…”