Dutfields Yard interior photograph, 1900

[Howard Brown]

Dear Simon:

With all due respect to your opinion: "I find it hard to believe that, 12 or 13 years after the event, all these people turned out just to showcase a murder scene for the benefit of a photographer. It's bizarre, to say the least..."

Is it really so strange? After all, West Enders and even non-British citizens were already slumming throughout the area. Dollars to doughnuts, I'll bet a lot of the people who gawked ( and paid to gawk ) out of the back windows of 29 and 27 Hanbury would have paid as well just to stand on the spot Mrs. Chapman was murdered. Just my two cents.

[Cap'n Jack]

How, a question for you.
How long after the Whitechapel Murders was it before the first commercial tour of the Jack the Ripper murder sites took place?

[Sam Flynn]

How long after the Whitechapel Murders was it before the first commercial tour of the Jack the Ripper murder sites took place?

As Howard has already indicated, the ball started rolling almost immediately after Annie Chapman's murder, AP, when residents of Hanbury Street charged a small fee for ghoulish spectators to ogle at the scene of crime. I should imagine that East Enders found that living near a Ripper site was a nice way to earn a bob or two from then on in.

[Cap'n Jack]

Yes, Sam, that trend was evident in 1888 through to about 1895, with the Roadside waxworks and the like, but by 1899 nobody remembered who Jack the Ripper was, that is until Rumble-on realised there was a fair few Yankee dollars to be earnt out there.
But surely that would have been after the war?
Not the first, but the second.

[Howard Brown]

Dear A.P.

Baroness D'Orczy, the author of The Scarlet Pimpernel also mentioned Idle Rich types frequenting the area not long after the bodies were not long cooled down. Some enterprising types undoubtedly took advantage of the sensation at the time to capitalize on the interest the WM created. You and I both know,dear friend, how it caused such a sensation in New York City alone.

Anyway, instead of a few of us...no one in particular... in the community being skeptical of the motives of say,Mr. Rumbelow, who I know personally and he has a great deal of passion for the WM, we ought to be very,very grateful that he saved letters and photographs for our collective researching and that any remuneration he gains from his tours with tourists is karma for what he's done for us.

The same may be said for Mr. Richard Jones, who as an historian,adds insight as to the times as well as the crimes on his tours...and most of all that he hired Phil Hutchinson and got him off the dole.

I recall reading an excerpt from a book on Project Gutenberg , where an American woman discussed going through Whitechapel/Spitalfields on an "excursion", if I remember the terminology correctly, back around 1910 or so. I couldn't find it at this moment...but I know what I read. It was her reminisces of travelling abroad and it mentioned the Ripper murders.

I don't see anything negative emanating from conducting Ripper tours to be truthful. My city has so many of these tours ( Liberty Bell,which was made in Whitechapel, Valley Forge,Franklin Institute,Rodin Exhibit,Free Library, Independence Hall, etc...) that if we in the community single out Ripper tours, then we might as well close down all historical sites and claim that they are what is being inferred here: cash cows.

No, historical sites and tours need to be kept alive in my view so people can know where they came from. I know this might sound schmaltzy,but man, its the truth.

[Monty]

AP

By 1899 no one remembered who Jack was?

Come on, thats quite a foolish statement.

[Cap'n Jack]

'I don't see anything negative emanating from conducting Ripper tours to be truthful.'

Neither do I, How, but 'personating a fire engine comes close.

[Howard Brown]

Dear A.P.

Thats sort of similar to going out on a date with Elizabeth Hurley and complaining to your buddies afterwards that one of her nails were chipped.

[Sam Flynn]

No, historical sites and tours need to be kept alive in my view so people can know where they came from. I know this might sound schmaltzy,but man, its the truth.

Worth bearing in mind, also, that the 19th Century saw the first blossoming of what would later be dubbed "the tourist industry", certainly amongst ordinary people. Whilst the 18th Century arguably saw the zenith of the wealthy young blade's "Grand Tour", and the early/mid-19th Century gave rise to the "Voyages of Adventure" beloved of gentleman scientists like Darwin and Wallace.

This was also the period when the middle- and working-classes got into "spectator tourism" and the industries that grew up around them. From the early decades of the 19th Century onwards, it was bathing huts at Margate, the Great Exhibition, Pleasure Piers, steam boats and train-rides, and the prurient paraphernalia of Madame Tussaud's and the Chamber of Horrors. If there was one characteristic that rivalled the ingenuity of the Victorians, it was their curiosity.

[Graham]

I recall reading an excerpt from a book on Project Gutenberg , where an American woman discussed going through Whitechapel/Spitalfields on an "excursion", if I remember the terminology correctly, back around 1910 or so. I couldn't find it at this moment...but I know what I read. It was her reminisces of travelling abroad and it mentioned the Ripper murders

.


Wasn't there a Canadian female journalist who visited Whitechapel around 1900? She went to 13 Miller's Court to interview the-then resident, and said that there were still blood-stains on the floor and walls.

I don't see anything negative emanating from conducting Ripper tours to be truthful. My city has so many of these tours ( Liberty Bell,which was made in Whitechapel, Valley Forge,Franklin Institute,Rodin Exhibit,Free Library, Independence Hall, etc...)

Hi How,

Yes, I always thought Cleveland Ohio worth a visit...

Cheers,

Graham

[Rob Clack]

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle went on a tour of the murder sites in 1905.

Hi Graham,

I think your refering to Kit Watkins. There's a dissertation on the casebook about her 'Kit, Kit Kitty' or something like that. It's by Andy Aliffe.

Rob

[Graham]

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle went on a tour of the murder sites in 1905.

Hi Graham,

I think your refering to Kit Watkins. There's a dissertation on the casebook about her 'Kit, Kit Kitty' or something like that. It's by Andy Aliffe.

Rob

Hi Rob,

And strange it is that not once in the entire Holmesian canon is the WM mentioned...

Kit Watkins it is - I just found my A-Z. It was 1891 when she visited Miller's Court. She also referred to the murder of Kitty Ronan in Elizabeth Prater's old room in the Court.

I'll read Andy's dissertation tomorrow, when I should be working...

Cheers,

Graham

[Sam Flynn]

And strange it is that not once in the entire Holmesian canon is the WM mentioned...

...what about The Sign of Five? Sorry... that's an obscure one from outside the Holmesian canon

[mac-the-kipper]

Which implies, I suppose, that you didn't mean what you wrote.

I suppose we should be used to that by now.

I don't know what you mean.

[Robert]

I once wondered if "The Cardboard Box" had been inspired by the case, but Jeff Bloomfield told me that it actually echoed something that happened to Harriet Beecher Stowe, if memory serves.