# Jack the Ripper Tours Bring Whitechapel's 1888 Murders Back to Life

Visitors to London can join guided walking tours through the Whitechapel district that retrace the unsolved 1888 Jack the Ripper murders, departing year-round from the East End. The most distinctive option, the Jack the Ripper Tour with Ripper-Vision, uses handheld projectors to display Victorian-era images of the very streets where the killings took place — turning a modern London evening into a window onto the autumn of terror that gripped the British capital more than 130 years ago.

The Crimes That Shocked Victorian London

In the late summer and autumn of 1888, an unidentified killer murdered and mutilated several women in the East End of London. The crimes were concentrated in Whitechapel, then one of the most impoverished districts in the capital, where overcrowded lodging houses, poorly lit alleys and grinding poverty created the conditions in which the killer was able to strike and disappear without trace. The murderer was never identified, and the case remains one of the most studied unsolved crimes in modern history.

The tours focus on the geography of those killings — the courtyards, pubs and street corners where bodies were discovered and where police, journalists and vigilance committees searched in vain for a suspect. Walking the route at night, with the same narrow streets still recognisable, is the closest most visitors will come to the atmosphere of the original investigation.

The Ripper-Vision Tour

The Jack the Ripper Tour with Ripper-Vision lasts approximately 1 hour and 45 minutes and is priced from $24.90 per person, according to its Viator listing. The tour begins at the Whitechapel Gallery, 77–82 Whitechapel High Street, London E1 7QX — directly beside Aldgate East Tube Station, Exit 3 — and finishes at 101 Commercial Street, London E1 6BG, near Spitalfields Market.

The defining feature is the RIPPER-VISION™ handheld projector. As the group stops at each location, guides project archival images of how Whitechapel looked in 1888 onto walls and pavements, allowing visitors to compare the gentrified East End of today with the slum streets the Ripper actually walked. Guides cover the established facts of the murders alongside the long list of conspiracy theories and suspect names that have accumulated over more than a century.

Other Active Ripper Walking Tours

Whitechapel supports several competing tours, all currently bookable through Viator. The standard Jack the Ripper Walking Tour in London runs about 2 hours and starts from $23. A 90-minute version is also offered, priced from $33.63. The Original Jack the Ripper guided tour, also approximately 2 hours, finishes at The Ten Bells pub at 84 Commercial Street, London E1 6LY — a Victorian public house historically associated with at least one of the canonical victims and a fixture in Ripper folklore. A two-hour guided walking tour focused specifically on Whitechapel is also available from $23.

A full overview of currently operating options can be found on the Viator London crime tours page, where most tours offer mobile tickets and free cancellation. For exact start times and group sizes, contact the operator directly via the booking page.

Practical Information

Meeting point (Ripper-Vision tour): Whitechapel Gallery, 77–82 Whitechapel High Street, London E1 7QX.

Nearest Underground: Aldgate East (District and Hammersmith & City lines), Exit 3.

Duration: Approximately 1 hour 45 minutes for the Ripper-Vision version; other tours run 90 minutes to 2 hours.

End point: 101 Commercial Street, London E1 6BG, near Spitalfields Market — well placed for a drink or meal afterwards in one of the East End's many restored Victorian pubs.

What to bring: Comfortable walking shoes and weather-appropriate clothing. Tours run in the evening, when the projection technology is most effective and the atmosphere of the streets most closely resembles 1888.

Why It Still Matters

More than 130 years after the murders, no consensus exists on the killer's identity. Walking Whitechapel after dark is not only a way to engage with one of history's most enduring criminal mysteries — it is also a tour through the social history of Victorian London, its press, its policing and the world of the women whose deaths shaped the modern crime story.