There are several things that our clients love about our Jack the Ripper Walking Tour of London’s East End.
Firstly, we are not like the Tower Hill Cattle drive tours that cram as many people as possible onto one walk and then herd them around the streets in an unsightly scrum that is so large the guides often have to resort to using amplifiers just to be heard.
This, in turn, is causing no end of disruption to local residents to the extent that Tower Hamlets Council have recently got involved and are in the process of looking at ways of reigning in these disruptive cattle drive walks.
We’ve never had any problems in this respect since we limit the size of our tours to a sensible and manageable number, which is the reason we ask you to book for the tour. We’v never agreed, nor have we wanted to be a part of the pile ’em high, only take cash, herd ’em round school of Jack the Ripper walks.
That’s why we have always operated a booking system on our tours. That way we can keep our group numbers manageable and everyone’s a winner. Those who live in the area get an undisturbed evening. Tower Hamlets Council don’t get bombarded with complaints about the noise and disruption. The guide doesn’t have to shout to be heard, or have to use an amplifier. And, most important of all, you, the client, get a more intimate tour where you can interact with your guide and fellow walkers and are not left struggling to hear and keep up.
But we also are different when it comes to the credentials of our guides. We are the only Jack the Ripper Tour to be consistently led by the acknowledged experts on the subject, published authors who have been publishing their findings on the case for the best part of thirty years. In fact, we don’t offer just one internationally renowned expert on the case. We offer four of them.
Philip Hutchinson, John Bennett, Lindsay Siviter and Richard Jones have, between them, written eight books on the Jack the Ripper mystery and on East End history in general.
Alan Drake, is a BAFTA nominated actor who starred alongside Simon Pegg in A Fantastic Fear of Everything, he even took Simon Pegg around on his own private Jack the Ripper guided walk!
Speaking of celebrities, Richard Jones has also taken Joan Rivers, Green Day, Vic Reeves and Iron Maiden front man Bruce Dickinson round on tours as well. John Bennett even took around the descendants of Charles Dickens on a private walk. So you might say we’re internationally and historically recognised as the go to experts!
Our guides have been guest speakers at almost every Jack the Ripper conference worldwide in the course of the last 20 years. We still remain the only one of the London walks to have produced our own acclaimed drama/documentary on the case “Unmasking Jack the Ripper”, which journals such as Ripper Notes and Ripperologist have hailed as one of the best – “if not the best” – ripper documentary of recent years.
John Bennett co-wrote the Channel Five documentary Jack the Ripper The Definitive Story, which featured expert interviews with Philip, Lindsay and Richard. And lest we be accused of showing favouritism in this regard, it is worth mentioning that almost every Jack the Ripper documentary of the last twenty years has featured interviews with Lindsay, Philip and Richard, for one reason and one reason only – they have long been considered the go to experts when it comes to the history of Jack the Ripper.
Richard even appears on the DVD The Making of From Hell, featuring alongside Johnny Depp and Heather Graham.
And, finally, there is the little matter of our mentions in the A to Z of Jack the Ripper, the book that has been hailed as “the bible of Ripper studies.”
To be singled out for a mention in its pages you have to be the real deal, a true and acknowledged expert on the case. Well, we receive not one, not two but four separate mentions in its pages. That’s right, both Richard Jones and Philip Hutchinson are singled out by the authors as being only a tiny number of Jack the Ripper guides worth taking a tour with.
So, when we say ours is an expert led Jack the Ripper walk, we are not making an idle boast, or a false claim, we are telling the un-garnished truth, which we can prove, and which you can check out for yourself and verify independently.
We are the experts on the case and, when you join our tour, you get detailed analysis, the most up to date information, some of it even based on our own ground breaking research, and a great tour conducted at an unhurried pace that really will take you into the old alleyways and streets that provided the backcloth against which the mystery unfolded.
As we say, when it comes to London walks, we really do offer you a welcome difference.