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I had wanted to go on one of the many Jack the Ripper tours for some time. We went through the entrance in the London Wall, walking onto the side where the East End of London begins (officially). The guide explained the striking contrasts between lives on the east side and the west side of the wall during the Victorian period. Walking through a Victorian railway arch we were told to avoid the walls against which so many Victorian prostitutes did the doing with their clients – We visited most of the murder sites and heard the gory stories. It is astonishing how many Victorian tenements, buildings, streets, lanes, alleyways, walls, shops still remain exactly the same and so close to the city, though there is an abundance of curry houses and takeaways. I spotted an old bill poster from 1931!
The tour took us through the brilliant Whitechapel Market and afterwards I went in to see The Ten Bells pub which still retains not only the original furnishings but the original toilets too! It is a small pub with no lights except at the bar – Perfect Place.
On the way back we passed Dirty Dick’s pub
At Dirty Dick’s and Sloppy Joe’s
We drank our liquor straight,
Some went upstairs with Margery,
And some, alas, with Kate;
Before the Ripper tour, however, I meandered to Covent Garden. Covent Garden is one of the Earthly replicas of heaven, an Earthly Paradise. It is as if one has died and gone to heaven. There is never an unseemly sight, never an ugliness of any sense. It is a perpetual delight, a continual hum of people and of colours, sounds and smells. If I could stay there forever I would be in Paradise. A Pygmalion or even a Galatea.
The tour took us through the brilliant Whitechapel Market and afterwards I went in to see The Ten Bells pub which still retains not only the original furnishings but the original toilets too! It is a small pub with no lights except at the bar – Perfect Place.
On the way back we passed Dirty Dick’s pub
At Dirty Dick’s and Sloppy Joe’s
We drank our liquor straight,
Some went upstairs with Margery,
And some, alas, with Kate;
Before the Ripper tour, however, I meandered to Covent Garden. Covent Garden is one of the Earthly replicas of heaven, an Earthly Paradise. It is as if one has died and gone to heaven. There is never an unseemly sight, never an ugliness of any sense. It is a perpetual delight, a continual hum of people and of colours, sounds and smells. If I could stay there forever I would be in Paradise. A Pygmalion or even a Galatea.