The phamplet!
Our guide for the tour is this cute little old guy at the left of the picture. I think his name was Antonio... but I can't remember. Oops. He said he was 76, I think, and even though he has a cane he often out walked us. One of the men on the tour with us even mentioned it, making a joke out of it.
The Tour starts at the bottom of the steps when you get off of Tower Hill Station, in a little shop. From there you walk up the steps and to Trinity square, which you can see more clearly in the picture above.
Antonio told us that London is broken into four quadrants which are listed on all the signs. They are EC1, EC2, EC3, and EC4 us to remember. Get it? Cute huh?
Antonio also frequently asked me where I was from. Every time I told him Utah, but he kept forgetting. Which is funny, because the first time he asked and I told him Utah, he said "Are you a ten percenter?" Ha! It actually took me a moment to figure that one out. Then when he asked me the second time I said, "A ten percenter, remember."
After the third time he asked me, if he looked at me I just assumed he was going to ask me where I was from and would beat him to the punch by saying "Utah."
There were two couples there, a British couple and a Canadian couple, that were so amused by the fact that he kept forgetting. They kept telling me to be prepared for the next time he asked me.
There was also a younger couple. The two really tall ones in the pictures, from Germany. They were pretty funny too. Everyone was really nice.
First stop on the tour was at the Roman Wall. It was one of the coolest things I've seen yet. Antonio said that this was a wall constructed originally by the Romans and then others added to it later on. It's called the Roman Wall... what? I remembered that.
He told us that this section is the best preserved part of the wall in the city. It was pretty awesome. Anyway, off to the left of the wall was a passage through the wall and off to the area where one of the Jack the Ripper murders took place.
The Angel pub is one of the oldest buildings in London and wasn't destroyed during the Great fires of 1666. It's in the American Square. Antonio asked me again where I was from then gave me a shout out for it being American Square. I told him that it didn't look the way I remembered it... He didn't get it.
Anyway, round here somewhere is where one of the murders happened. He told us that when Jack the Ripper was killing, they didn't have the term "serial killer," so he was called a "mad man!" (With umph.) I think that's a pretty accurate description.
This was another location that he took us too. I had been standing between the tall guy in the white and the guy in the purple shirt. I stepped away to take a picture of the group while Antonio told the story about one of the women that was murdered right where I had been standing!
By the way, the man on the bench to the far right, wasn't part of the tour. He just happend to be there, and we sort of surrounded him. He ended up participating in the story and asked questions. It was amusing.
While Antonio was telling the story he pointed at me and said that Jack's victim had been "Rrrrripped up her middle, right where you are standing." So of course I had to take a picture of it.
This was actually quite interesting because this was the night when he killed two women. By this point he had already killed two women and I believe that he had sent notes to the police dubbing himself Jack the Ripper by this point as well. So of course they had increased police in the area. Apparently there were cops going around every corner of the area about every 15 minutes or so. Meaning that Jack had to slit the women's throats, cut them up the center, remove organs, and get away all within a space of about fifteen minutes.
On the night he killed the two women, he had just slit the throat of one of the women when someone came out of no where, interrupting him and he had to run away. He must have been desperate to finish what he'd started so he killed a second victim not too long after the first. Creepy!
This is another street close to where a victim was found. If you'll notice, the shops that are closed all have letters of the alphabet on them.
Near this area, Jack the Ripper after one of the murders, had taken the apron of the woman he had just killed and left it in a different area of the city with a message written on the wall that said something about how Jews would never be suspected of the crime.
One of the cops on duty asked the man in charge if they should take pictures of the message Jack had left or if the should get someone out to make an exact copy of it. The man in charge said no because he was afraid that the message would upset the Jews in the area. So he took something to the message right then and there and destroyed it.
Lots of evidence went missing or was destroyed, and interestingly enough, right after the last murder they closed the case and stopped trying to find Jack the Ripper... As if they knew it was his last murder? They also had hundreds of hours worth of interviews and evidence. Not too long ago the case file was brought out again and they were going to try and solve it, but the file was nearly empty. Spooky. A conspiracy, perhaps?
This was a street that wasn't destroyed by the Great Fires. Antonio told us that this street has been practically untouched since then. It too was around the area where the murders happened.
This is a post that was set up back when wagons were the main form of transportation, to protect the sides of buildings from the wagons. Antonio told us that wagons would make turns going around buildings and would go too fast and crash into the corners, which is why they put up the posts. What's extra especially cool about this one is that first it's an original, and second is that it's made out of a canon and a ball, and then painted. The canons were no longer needed after the war and were obviously durable so the were placed up all over the city as barriers. Talk about recycling.
What you see here is a building with a wall about five feet away from the actual wall of the building. This is how they conserved the old buildings that were falling apart. They still wanted to use the space, but needed a new building so they did this to avoid taring the old building down completely. Interesting.
This is another one of the few buildings that wasn't destroyed by the The Great Fires. It's a temple, but I can't remember what for. It's significant on this tour for two reasons. First, because across the street from here is where one of Jack the Ripper's victims was murdered, and second, because across the street in another direction is where she had her last drink before she was murdered.
This is the Pub were the victim mentioned above, had her last drink before she was murdered. The temple is just across the street to right of this picture. Across the street to the left of the picture is where the tour ends. It was really interesting and Antonio was so cute. I highly recommend it to anyone.
