Jack the Ripper Curriculum Tour
A tour designed for the UK school history syllabus, focusing on the victims' lives and the social conditions of 1888.
By visiting places that were part of the victims' day-to-day life—from the Whitechapel washhouses to the precarious Itchy Park—your group will learn more about what everyday life would have been like for Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly. They will also understand more about Victorian policing methods, crime and punishment, and how investigations and forensic methods were much different back then.
Key sites include:
• The first ever housing built by the Peabody Estate in 1863.
• Christchurch Spitalfields, an iconic landmark that the victims would have seen daily and that still dominates the skyline.
• Hanbury Hall, where Annie Bessant and Sarah Chapman organised the 1888 "Matchgirls' Strike" that changed history forever.
• 'Itchy Park', where the down on their luck would be forced to sleep.
• The old Spitalfields market building, remarkably intact.
• The original facade of the 1845 Whitechapel Washhouses.
• The original Providence Row shelter building, providing shelter for the homeless in Victorian times and beyond.
• Toynbee Hall, where intellectuals of the day would gather to try and solve the horrendous poverty of the era.
Duration: 90 minutes
Start Point: Aldgate East Station Exit 1
End Point: Spitalfields Market