Jack the Ripper Tours in London

Nearly every Ripper walk covers the same square mile: Whitechapel High Street, the lanes of Spitalfields, and the edge of the City at Mitre Square. What changes is where you meet, so read your ticket carefully.

• Aldgate East and the Whitechapel Gallery. The Ripper-Vision tour meets outside the Whitechapel Gallery, and See Your City, Eternal Experiences and Side Routes all start at the St Mary's Whitechapel church memorial nearby.
• Aldgate (a different station). See The Sights Tours and Meet the Street Tours meet at Aldgate, a few minutes' walk from Aldgate East. People turn up at the wrong one every night.
• Tower Hill. Golden Tours Gray Line London starts by the Tower Hill Tube exit and ends near Liverpool Street, which is handy after a day at the Tower.

Endings vary: the Ten Bells on Commercial Street, Mitre Square, Gunthorpe Street, or Spitalfields. If dinner matters, a tour that finishes at a pub or near Brick Lane saves a walk.

Getting back is easy. Aldgate, Aldgate East and Liverpool Street stations are all within a short walk of the finish points. On Friday and Saturday nights the Central line runs all night through Liverpool Street, and TfL runs overnight Windrush line trains between Highbury & Islington and New Cross Gate, which pass through Whitechapel and Shoreditch High Street. Traveling as a family or group? Eternal Experiences and Side Routes both sell private versions of their walks.

The facts of the case are fixed, so the format is what you are really choosing.

• Ripper-Vision. Guides on the Secret Chamber Tours walk carry handheld projectors and throw five-foot photographs, maps and press drawings onto the walls. It is the best way to picture streets that have been rebuilt. Groups can reach 35, so stand near the front.
• Victim-focused walks. See Your City frames its tour around the five women and adds an online case file with suspects and an 1888 map. Eternal Experiences hands out a detective pack and ends with a suspect debate at Mitre Square.
• Then-and-now photos. Side Routes uses historical photographs at each stop, which works well if you prefer evidence to theater.
• Pub tours. The Ripper pub walk starts at the White Hart and stops for drinks, including at the Ten Bells. It is adults-only and new, with just 7 reviews so far.
• Ghost combos. If you want ghosts rather than true crime, book a separate ghost walk; see our London night tours guide.

Be ready for this: the murder sites themselves are mostly gone. Buck's Row, where Mary Ann Nichols was found, is now Durward Street. Miller's Court and Dorset Street, where Mary Jane Kelly died, were swept away by redevelopment. Mitre Square, where Catherine Eddowes was found, survives as a square on the edge of the City.

What survives is the texture. Gunthorpe Street keeps its cobbles and its narrow arch. The Ten Bells and the White Hart still pour pints. Parts of Whitechapel and Spitalfields have changed little since 1888, and a good guide can rebuild the rest in your head. This is why projections and photographs matter more here than on most walking tours.

Tours run from 90 minutes (Meet the Street Tours) to 2–3 hours (See The Sights Tours), all on foot and mostly on pavement. In November it is dark before most evening tours leave: sunset falls at 4:35pm on November 1 and 3:57pm by November 30, so even an early walk happens under streetlights.

On age, the operators disagree. Ripper-Vision sells youth tickets from 10, Meet the Street Tours takes ages 10 and up, and See The Sights Tours recommends 14 and up because it covers murder and prostitution and won't soften the script. The pub tour is 18+. Our rule: if your teenager can watch a true-crime documentary, they can do this walk.

Wear comfortable shoes and bring a waterproof: Ripper-Vision says it runs in all weather, and you should assume yours does too.

Five women anchor the case: Mary Ann "Polly" Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly, killed between August 31 and November 9, 1888. For a century they appeared in Ripper lore mostly as bodies and crime-scene diagrams.

That has shifted. Hallie Rubenhold's The Five, which won the 2019 Baillie Gifford Prize for non-fiction, rebuilt their lives and challenged the lazy assumption that they were all sex workers. Several operators now lead with those lives instead of the gore.

Our advice: pick a guide who uses the women's names and stories, and skip any tour that sells itself on blood. You'll learn more about the East End, and the evening will sit better with you afterward.