When you think of Jack the Ripper you, inevitably, thing of foggy and gas lit streets. Now, in all honesty, on the nights when the murders took place fog was conspicuous by its absence.
For that matter, as was often pointed out at the time of the murders, so too was gas light.
Indeed, the lack of adequate lighting in the area was one of the reasons why the Whitechapel murderer was able to carry out his crimes with apparent impunity and then escape from the scenes of his murders without been seen was probably because of the number of unlit thoroughfares in the districts of Spitalfields and Whitechapel.
But, thanks largely to films and television programmes which, for dramatic purposes, almost always depict Jack the Ripper as a sinister figure stalking his victims through swirling fog, the image of murder by gaslight in foggy streets has well and truly lodged in the public imagination. So much so that one of the comments we often get on our Jack the Ripper Tour is “will it be foggy?”
Well, last night it was. Yesterday, was bitterly cold in London. Apart from the cold it was one of those lovely winter days. Crisp, cold weather with blue skies.
But as darkness descended, and we prepared for our nightly Jack the Ripper Walk, the fog suddenly descended across the streets of London and made the East End look like a film set.
The old back alleyways became even more atmospheric, not to say even more sinister, and, despite the cold, our clients go the perfect opportunity to see Jack the Ripper’s London just as they imagined it would be.