Whitechapel, 1888

Between 3 April 1888 and 13 February 1891 eleven women were murdered in the East End of London in the file the police kept as the Whitechapel murders. Five of them, Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly, are the canonical five usually attributed to one hand. Despite enormous enquiries and several arrests nobody was ever convicted; James Sadler was held for the killing of Frances Coles and released on 3 March for lack of evidence. The murders did do one thing: the conditions they exposed fed directly into the housing reform acts of 1890, and the worst of the slums were pulled down over the following two decades. Guided walks run most nights from Aldgate East and Tower Hill. The good ones spend their time on the women and on the East End they lived in, which is the part worth your evening.