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Tracing history in the Ripper's killing ground
By IRENE WOODBURY LONDON -- "The mystery, the legend, the gore," college student Laurie Turner listed as her reasons for taking the "Jack the Ripper Haunts" walking tour on a chilly night last November. The tourist from Toronto seemed to be on target as she waited with others in the gathering dark of London's East End. The 21/2-hour tour, offered by The Original London Walks seven nights a week, is a closeup look at the Ripper's gruesome, unsolved, killing spree that left five prostitutes dead between the nights of Aug. 31 and Nov. 9 in 1888. But the walking tour is more than just a recap of the murders: it is also a history lesson moving through the squalid underbelly of Victorian society -- beyond the lace doilies and delicate place settings normally associated with that era of overstated manners. Although I had taken many walking tours in London over the years, I was always hesitant about the Ripper walk. I feared it would be too disturbing. I also wondered what more a nighttime walk could bring to a subject that had been written about and examined in so many formats for more than a century. My curiosity was spiked, though, by publicity surrounding the movie From Hell, the buzz generated by a book on the Ripper by mystery writer Patricia Cornwell and word-of-mouth raves from those who had taken the walking trip. On a recent trip to London, my husband, Dick, and I took the Underground to the Tower Hill station and handed over 5 pounds each (about $7.50) to the trip guide. We joined dozens on the tour led by noted crime historian Donald Rumbelow. Tension, more than a century laterA retired London police sergeant with 30 years on the force, Rumbelow wrote the meticulously researched The Complete Jack the Ripper in 1975 and is considered an expert on the subject. He has been guiding the walk for 10 years and had taken Johnny Depp on a Ripper tour earlier last year, as part of Depp's preparation for his role as Inspector Abberline in From Hell.
Best of all, the 61-year-old Rumbelow possesses the natural talents needed in a superb guide: the herding instincts of a sheepdog, the protective impulses of a great cop, and the resonant voice and stage presence of a professional actor. Winding our way through a labyrinth of East London streets, he kept the large group in a cohesive unit and repeatedly cautioned us to be careful as we crossed the street. He often lagged behind to see that everyone was across before he made his way to the front of the group with his brisk stride. Although the case is 114 years old this month, tour participants felt the intensity of the Ripper's killings and subsequent investigation, thanks to Rumbelow's expertise. With tousled gray hair, wire-rim glasses framing his alert eyes, and a bemused expression, Rumbelow has a somber demeanor yet offers a sense of irony in recounting the tale. He was wore an olive-drab duster, similar to those worn by Old West ranchers. In one hand he carried a bag containing copies of his book and, in the other, a plastic stool on which he climbed to address his crowd at each of the 10 stops. As we moved fairly swiftly through the darkness, Rumbelow dispelled some of the myths surrounding the Ripper case and offered insight into why it remains unsolved. Standing at the remains of the medieval London Wall, which divided the jurisdictions of Scotland Yard and the City of London Police in 1888, he explained that intense turf wars between the forces caused key evidence to be destroyed and thus impeded the investigation. Sad lives, grisly deaths
Along the way, Rumbelow described the squalor of life in Victorian East London. The City of London -- a municipality within the much-larger area -- was then considered one of the richest square miles in the world, while nearby East London was an overcrowded slum for impoverished immigrants. Our guide pointed out chic residences that were once Victorian lodging houses where seven, eight or nine people lived in one room, where people lived in cellars with pigs, and where 55 percent of the children died by age 5. Leading us through a damp underpass near where the Ripper's first victim was found, Rumbelow refuted myths about the era's prostitutes, a false glamour made popular in some current media: "In these films and TV shows, the women wore cartwheel hats, red satin dresses, high heels and were often depicted standing on a table in an East End pub dancing and singing, 'Isn't life wonderful as an East End prostitute?' " While some in the crowd laughed, Rumbelow explained the sordid reality: "Most of these women were in their 40s and had left husbands, children, lovers, boyfriends. They had missing teeth, cuts and bruises on their faces, and wore all the clothes they owned -- usually three or four greasy, dirty skirts, splattered from the horse-drawn carriages pushing dirt at them from the streets" because they had no room in which to leave their extra clothes. "They often wore work boots because of the weather and so they could run and fight other prostitutes or customers if they had to." Rumbelow had his audience's attention, and he related that these women were paid paltry sums for their services -- "Three pennies, two pennies, or a loaf of stale bread." Often they had nowhere to sleep. If they could afford a place, it was usually in lodging houses, where the cost for a night was "eight pennies for a (two in a) bed, four pennies for a single bed, or two pennies to lean on a rope stretched across the room." (That is a scene in the Depp film, with the landlord simply untying the rope without waking the women, some of whom fall to the floor with the sudden loss of support.) Details of the murdersRumbelow next led us to center of the Ripper's killing spree. Pointing out the streets, cobblestone square and rooming house locations where the five bodies were found, the guide described the mutilated condition of each. His tone was more objective and professional than gratuitously ghoulish. As he described each victim's death, our guide also revealed harrowing details of their lives that set the scene of where and probably how they met the Ripper. This helped make the five women -- each a mother, all but one in her 40s -- more real, and their deaths all the more horrifying: The first victim, Polly Nichols, had left her unfaithful husband after their fifth child was born. "She was drunk, filthy, had five teeth missing but was wearing a new hat" when she picked up the Ripper as a customer. The second, Annie Chapman, had had a fight with another prostitute over a bar of soap shortly before her death. Because her chest had been bruised, she did not want any customers. But she needed money for a place to sleep, so she went to a pub to find customers. She met her killer at some point. The third victim was a mother of nine named Elizabeth Stride. A salesman driving a pony and cart to his home at 1 a.m. used his whip to hit what he thought was a bundle, on the side of the dark street. He went into a club to get a candle, returned to that place and discovered the bundle was the body of Stride. The fourth victim, Catherine Eddowes, had been arrested earlier on the night she died because she was so drunk she could not stand up. She was released from jail at 1 a.m. and was picked up by someone she thought was a customer but who was the Ripper. She was found dead at 1:45. And the fifth victim, Mary Kelly, in her 20s, was heard by a witness singing the peculiar verse, "It was only a violet I plucked from my mother's grave," as she walked away with a man who was the Ripper. Rumbelow said that the serial killer apparently was masterful at disguising himself to blend into a crowd. No criminologySuch details about the victims' sad, desperate lives were the most memorable aspect of the walk because they created some identity or individuality for the women beyond simply, "victim of the Ripper." Rumbelow now gathered us around him in a small, cobblestone courtyard. He reminded us that there was neither fingerprinting nor DNA analysis in 1888. Even the differences between animal and human blood could not be determined. Thus, finding a murderer in this era almost meant catching the killer in the act. And so the Ripper remained undetected and was able to kill five people within a three-month period. That these women were prostitutes made their deaths sensational but not necessarily a priority for the police forces. At one intersection, Rumbelow directed our attention to the majestic St. Botolph's Church, towering before us against a black, starless sky. Built in 1741 and named for the Anglo Saxon abbot who cared for travelers, St. Botolph's was known as the "prostitutes' church" during Victorian times because they walked around the block to avoid arrest and to find customers on the busy roads leading to and from the nearby Spitalsfields Market.
Rumbelow led us to Goulston Street, where two key pieces of evidence in the Ripper case were found. Near the entrance to some dark, red brick flats, he pointed to where the apron of the fourth victim, Catherine Eddowes, was found after she was killed in a nearby square. Her apron had been used to wipe a bloody knife. Nearby, a mysterious message was scrawled on a wall with chalk and later was rubbed off by one of the police forces in protest of the other's trespassing into its territory. Rumbelow also pointed out Dorset Street, where the police estimated they were, at one point, 10 minutes behind the Ripper: They found water where he had washed blood from his hands. As we stared at these dark, silent buildings, doorways and streets, Rumbelow's skills as a storyteller transformed them into a kind of real-life stage. Toward the end of the walk, we squeezed into The 10 Bells Pub, the watering hole where the second victim, Annie Chapman, had been seen drinking just hours before her death on Sept. 8, 1888. The long history of the tiny 10 Bells is twined with the Ripper case: Its grubby walls are covered with faded newspaper clippings and pictures of both the suspects and the victims. Now the pub sells black T-shirts with red lettering that reads, "The 10 Bells Pub" on one line and "Jack The Ripper" beneath it. There was one left the night we were there; the bartender said he couldn't keep them in stock. As most of the crowd surged forward to buy drinks, Rumbelow stood at the end of the bar, happily signing copies of his book, in between sips of beer. Twenty minutes later our refreshed guide took us through The 10 Bells' old, dark wooden doors and across the street to Christ Church. Rumbelow gathered us around him, rattled off the list of Ripper suspects, and commented on currently named ones. "Every other month, new names get added to the list. One of the latest is Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice in Wonderland." The crowd chuckled. Rumbelow pointed out that Queen Victoria's grandson, the Duke of Clarence, is also a suspect -- the theory being he had a secret marriage and that the five victims were witnesses to it, so they had to be killed. Another chuckle ensued. A couple of days later, over the final sips of a late Sunday afternoon cup of tea near the Tower of London, where Rumbelow's next walk would soon begin, I asked him the question: Who did he think the Ripper was? "I think it was someone local -- someone who had an intimate knowledge of the area because the killing area is 15 minutes across and he doesn't move out of the killing ground." As Rumbelow was putting on his canvas duster against the cold, rainy night ahead, I asked him why he thought the killings stopped after Mary Kelly, on Nov. 9, 1888. "Oh, he probably was put in prison for something, or maybe he committed suicide," Rumbelow said with a shrug of his shoulders. Then he trudged into the darkness, where dozens of walkers already were gathering. -- Irene Woodbury is a freelance writer living in Denver.
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