Jack the Ripper

Jack the Ripper

Within the shadow of the City walls is London's oldest synagogue, the Bevis Marks, while Whitechapel is where the Salvation Army was founded and the original Liberty Bell was forged. However, what everyone remembers most about this area is the Victorian slum streets that were stalked by the most infamous serial killer of all, Jack the Ripper.

At No. 90 Whitechapel High Street once stood George Yard Buildings, where Jack the Ripper's first victim, Martha Turner, was discovered in August 1888. A second murder occurred some weeks later, and on Hanbury Street, behind a seedy lodging house at No. 29, is where Jack the Ripper left his third mutilated victim, "Dark" Annie Chapman. A double murder followed, and then, after a month's lull, came the death on this street of Marie Kelly, the Ripper's last victim and his most revolting murder of all. He had been able to work indoors this time, and Kelly, a young widow, was found strewn all over the room, charred remains of her clothing in the fire grate. Jack the Ripper's identity never has been discovered, although theories abound, which, among others, include a cover-up of a prominent member of the British aristocracy, the artist Walter Sickert, and Francis Twomblety, an American quack doctor.