“He came silently out of the midnight shadows of August 31, 1888. Watching. Stalking. Butchering raddled, drink-sodden East End prostitutes. Leaving a trail of blood that led…nowhere.”

As I read the brochure for The Original London Walks’ Jack the Ripper tour, I could scarcely contain my excitement. Not only was I going somewhere, I was going somewhere without kids. Somewhere interesting! At night! The two-hour walking tour of the nineteenth century’s most famous serial killer’s slashing ground promised to “evoke an atmosphere of gaslight, fog, menacing shadows and stealthy footsteps.”

But wait it got better.

The guide, Donald Rumbelow, was Britain’s most distinguished crime historian. He was the author of The Complete Jack the Ripper. He was the senior consultant for every Ripper film ever made. He was the former curator of the City of London Police Crime Museum. He was . . . recovering from foot surgery.

With my enthusiasm flagging only slightly, I boarded the train for London from my home in the sleepy Surrey suburbs to rendezvous with the substitute guide. An evening without kids, after all, is an evening without kids.

*

As I pulled up in a black cab, I saw a group of tourists gathered at the entrance to Tower Hill tube station. Across the street, the Tower of London glowed eerily in London’s ubiquitous and justifiably famous fog. The guide, Russell, beckoned me near and took my £5. He may not have been the internationally recognized authority on all things Ripper, but as he called my attention to the remnants of a 2,000 year-old wall that had once surrounded the Roman settlement of Londinium, I forgot all about that.

The wall, Russell told us, had played a key role in the Ripper story. History’s most famous serial killer cannily struck on both sides of this ancient boundary. This threw the Victorian investigation into chaos as the rival police forces of the City of London and the City of Westminster argued over jurisdiction and ownership of key evidence.

Next we came to Mitre Square. Here Catharine Eddowes had been strangled. Here, with a very big knife, her uterus had been removed, and her cheeks slashed. Here her still-warm body had been found by a terrified beat cop on his nightly rounds. Here I discovered that practical-joking locals like to sneak up behind Jack the Ripper tours in the dark and frighten them for fun.

“BOO!” shouted a voice from the shadows, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t lead the short-lived, but panicky, stampede that resulted. It sounds silly now, but of course everything is scarier in the dark.

It happened twice more as we tiptoed in the footsteps of the five unfortunate prostitutes were chosen, stalked, murdered, and mutilated in and around the murky recesses of Petticoat Lane (Boo!), Miller’s Court (Boo!), and Spitalfield’s Market.

Our last stop was Whitechurch Lane behind the notorious Ten Bells Pub. Today the street is lined with posh restored eighteenth-century brick townhouses, but when Annie Chapman was disemboweled behind a flophouse there in 1888, it was not quite so upscale. Although it was never found, forensics of the day concluded that the murder weapon was-as usual-a very broad, fourteen-inch knife.

There in the chilly shadow of the imposing Christ Church, Russell concluded our tour. Ultimately, he told us, the murders were pinned on Montague John Druitt, a dead man who was conveniently unable to defend himself. Although the murders did stop after his alleged suicide, modern criminal profiling absolves him.

So who was Jack the Ripper? To this day, there is no real consensus. Twenty-first century sleuths can take their pick from among the acknowledged suspects. There was a local abortionist, a misogynistic tailor, a grieving father, a syphilitic Royal, a polygamous poisoner, a psychopathic sailor, and a bankrupt butcher, to name only a few. Whoever he was, eyewitnesses accounts all paint a similar picture: Jack the Ripper was a prosperous-looking, well-dressed man in his forties. He was about five-foot-ten, with brown hair and a brown mustache.

And tucked under his arm, he always carried a broad, flat fourteen-inch parcel wrapped in brown butcher-paper.

Boo!

*

The Jack the Ripper walking tour is for big kids only.  Obviously.  The company recommends children younger than 13 take a pass.  I’d say 15.  If you’ve got younger ones, browse their Walks for Kids.  Try the Harry Potter tour, maybe.  You can have just as much fun without all the gore.

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