Monday Mystery

The Mystery is Solved! We now know who Jack the Ripper was! One of our favorite things we did in London was to take the Jack the Ripper tour.

Let me begin by telling you how the first few days went. We arrived on Saturday and got to our hotel around 12:30. We immediately checked in and headed across the street to St. Paul's Cathedral.

We had to do a quick tour. After, Stephanie, Elizabeth and Pat headed to The Tower of London, while Karolyn, Nancy and I went to the Dickens Museum.

The museum was really nice, but the truth of it is that Charles Dickens only lived here for 2 years. Still, they had the largest collection of his original manuscripts and tons of letters. It was interesting and I'm glad we did it.

Afterwards, we were walking around and came upon this:

Part of the original wall of London. We actually saw parts of it all over. That was really cool to just be strolling along and then come across it.

Okay, I can see that this post will get too long for Monday Mystery, so I'm going to jump right to Monday night---the Jack the Ripper tour.

The walking tour was an hour and forty five minutes---which we didn't find out about until we arrived. We were already tired and had sore feet before we even got there. I talked to the tour guide right at the beginning to tell him we might exit the tour if it was too much for our feet. As it turned out, it was so interesting that we stuck it out the whole time.

Although White Chapel is cleaned up and a nice area now, there were plenty of old places still from the time of Jack the Ripper. We were told to beware of pick pocketers---our "Ripperologist" pointed out many places that are locations Dickens mentions in his novels.

One of the Ripper's victims lived here--I don't remember which one. It was sort of a home for indigent women. They were taught a skill and then hired out. Some still had to turn to other efforts to make money.

We strolled down this alley where the prostitutes would ply their trade. Still old and spooky.

When we completed the tour, the guide told us his "theory" along with facts to back it up. His story totally made sense and really played to the book we had just read for our book club meeting in England. The book is called The Lost Seamstress. Although the book is not about the Ripper, it paralleled the story from insane asylums, the Masons, the prince, bastard babies and innocent girls. Check it out and be sure to take this tour if you ever make it to London!

Really, the only mystery remaining---where was the fog?