A Journey Into Whitechapel By Night - September 1888.

In the aftermath of the murder of Annie Chapman, a reporter from the Central News agency headed into the East End of London to explore the streets of Whitechapel by night.

In this video, you can explore the streets with him, and experience what it was like in the East End of London after one of the Jack the Ripper murders.

The video features evocative contemporary images that show the streets mentioned in the article as they were at the time.

[Rollin_L]

The description of the gaslight and its inability to allow for seeing detail, be it facial features or trace of anything on clothing, truly illustrates how difficult it must have been. Those known witnesses of some of the victims, perhaps just moments before their murder, would have an almost impossible task of identifying sufficient detail. The discoverers of Polly Nichols and Elizabeth Stride, not even able to recognize that it was a body lying there initially. Same for the police who, even having some description, could have so little ability in the dim light and maze-like passages to recognize most any sign of a crime until someone virtually tripped over the victim. It is no wonder, that we will always wonder, who the murder was. Thanks, Mr. Jones, for another magnificent description of that contemporary Whitechapel experience.

[kalicom]

I have to say that this is one of the best videos I have seen for trying to capture the Whitechapel area at the time of JTR. It really gives a sense of how someone like that could roam around and really not be noticed.

[omarhamid]

By pure chance I happened to find myself in Whitechapel the other day and had the opportunity to walk around the streets. I must confess that it is through this fantastic channel and the content you produce, to such a high standard, that I made the trip to that side of London. I felt totally inspired and watch each video with a keen eye. As a student of history visiting Whitechapel was certainly an eye opener but your channel is the one that truly educated me and helped me to see each place from a position of knowledge and insight. Thanks Richard! 👏

[amHlam]

From Manchester, I used to live in the triangular shaped area on your map, at the bottom of Osborn St, for a few years. I loved living in the east end. Really enjoy your accounts, thanks for sharing your work. 👍

[foxgloved]

Perfect timing I'm listening to it while I fix our Sunday supper

[robertaller]

Wonderful background with great period detail. I always enjoy the literate lilt of period newspaper reporting and the dramatic narration perfect as always!

[TefiTheWaterGipsy]

This was brilliant. I almost felt I was there. Superbly narrated and such great photos. I used to work near there and loved wandering the few existing lanes and courts, even if they do look all smart and presentable. This, to me, was more real and evocative of Whitechapel than wandering around it.

[itsjohndell]

Another excellent one Richard! The amount of research you do is amazing.

[StacieFoss]

Really enjoying your site the stories are fascinating and very well put together

[mathewlawton]

Thank you Richard love seeing your channel pop up u make my day

[dollyhorton]

I'm very happy to find your channel. I love these sorts of 'true crime history scary stuff' stories. No one does a mystery like the British!

[ruiseartalcorn]

Another great presentation! Many thanks :)

[keithnaylor]

Another excellently narrated video.
The book which mentally and vividly took me back to the Whitechapel of 1888 is the book:
Autumn of Terror by Tom Cullen, 1965.
I wonder if he had actually visited the murder sites? There is film of James Mason going to the rear yard of 29 Hanbury Street as late as 1967!

[sciencefirst]

The police at the time(both departments) searched every home, shack, room and outhouse in the East End and they found nothing...it is and has always been my belief that JTR was not from the East End.

[scratchy]

Yet another great video 👌.Love the pictures that come with it.

[leslierock]

Thank you really enjoyed this, the police didn't have or didn't want the authority to question anyone ' no wonder jack was having all the luck!

[simonyip]

The reality is that Whitechapel and Spitalfields and the rest of East London were populated by a great number of poor people, but there are maps that denote the social status of each street of Victorian London and other maps that list each parish/ward/district by the percentage of different social classes.

On Booth's poverty maps from the late 1880's and the late 1890's, there are large groups of streets coloured to denote 'poor' and 'very poor' and 'mixed poor & respectable working class' but the streets that were coloured black to denote 'vicious & semi criminal' were relatively small in number, compared to the rest.

At a quick glance, the maps of Whitechapel and Spitalfields show that the 3 poorest and worst and lowest types of residents only consisted of roughly half of the district, which is obviously shows that the area had a lot of poor and very poor residents, but also shows that the other half of the residents were living fairly comfortable and decent lifestyles.

The maps that show the percentage of the different social/economic classes are similar, with 30-40-50% of the population living in varying levels of poverty and distress, but it also means that 50-60+ percent of the inhabitants were not living in squalor and poverty.

The number of people who we usually associate with the stereotypical Whitechapel resident, as living in Common Lodging Houses, committing street robberies and other violent crimes and were the type of people who would have lived in places like Dorset Street/Flower and Dean Street/Old Montague Street/Great Pearl Street/George Yard and the other black 'vicious/semi criminal' streets and alleys were no more than 3 or 4% even in the worst districts.

I remember reading that the street criminals and Lodging House occupants even in Spitalfields and Whitechapel numbered a few thousand or around 3% of the total population, and even when the 3 groups that were living below the poverty line (ie black = vicious/semi criminal, dark blue = very poor and light blue = poor) were added together, they were roughly 40% of the local residents.

It's still a very high percentage of people who were living in poverty, but it's far from the image that we usually have of the East End. There were tens of thousands of poor people in Whitechapel but they were no more than 40-50% at the most.

[chrisguerra]

The atmosphere keeps me coming back...

[bigmofarah]

Thank you! Excellent video as usual. Where do you find the information used for videos like this?

[stevenmcghee]

Come out of The Ten Bells pub at closing time on a rainy evening, turn left into Fournier Street and head towards the Wilkes Street area and it can still feel very creepy. It's nothing like as bad as described in this video but it's very atmospheric. However I think Flower and Dean Street is now Flower and Dean Walk and very gentrified with modern apartments buildings now?