London - Jack the Ripper

On our visit to London, Evan (16)  had requested a tour of the Jack the Ripper area.  Now I had never done this, nor without his enthusiasm would I have been likely to have done so.  In that case I would have missed out on a unique experience and also the chance to meet up with Philip Hutchinson, the guide for the event.  Hutchinson is an authority on "Jack" and with a book under his belt about it, he's a serious "ripperologist."

Jack the Ripper did his dreadful deeds in the summer and autum of 1888 in the East End of London.  It was a difficult and dangerous sector of the city and one where immigrants and the very lowest order of society lived and tried to eke out an existence.  Hutchinson was nothing but realistic in his descriptions of how women with no income managed to stay alive and pay for a bed for the night.  It was not a pretty scene.
Into these cobbled streets and dark corners on the night of August 31st, a murderer took one of the women, Mary Ann Nichols, slashed her throat and eviscerated her body leaving the evidence of his crime in the gutters of Bucks Row, Whitechapel.  Even for a society inured and over-exposed to the basest side of life, the crime shocked.  When he struck again on September the 8th it sent the locality into a panic.  After five (or perhaps a couple more as today's experts are not totally sure) the killing stopped, leaving one of the biggest question marks in the history of unsolved crimes.
At the end of the two-hour tour, Hutchinson gave a round up of the most likely suspects that have been "found" over the century and a quarter of detective work.  Most of them are "way out there."  But read his book and find out for yourself. http://www.amazon.com/JACK-RIPPER-LOCATION-PHOTOGRAPHS-Collection/dp/1848687842
Oh by the way, the photo is not of one of the sites, but it was the best that I could find on the site under the heading "cobbled streets."
The site for the tour is http://www.jack-the-ripper-tour.com/  It cost 8 pounds and is well worth it.