Jack the Ripper Tour

A Whitechapel walking tour company with its own guides

Jack the Ripper Tour runs its own guided walking tours about the 1888 Whitechapel murders, entirely in London's East End. It is an operator, not a reseller: the site describes its guides as "actual experts and authors, who have written their own books on the subject," and every product it lists is a version of the same walk through Whitechapel. Public tours leave from "Outside the Whitechapel Art gallery Exit 3 of Aldgate East Station," and the footer gives an address at 88 Whitechapel High Street, London E1 7QX. If your trip does not include London, this company has nothing for you; if it does, the route covers the streets where the case unfolded.

The homepage headline is "London's Number 1 Jack the Ripper Tour," and the site says it was "Voted number 1 by Tripadvisor." Those are the company's own claims, and the site does not give a year or a review count to go with them. Its signature is Ripper-Vision, which the homepage describes as "Top of the range handheld projectors which emblazon 5ft images upon the dark streets and alleyways of Whitechapel." The school page adds that the team has "over 25 years of experience" and that most guides were involved in organizing a long-running series of annual Jack the Ripper conferences.

The tours on the menu

The public walk is the core product. The tour information box gives a duration of "1hr 45mins" and a schedule of Monday to Wednesday at 7:30pm and Thursday to Sunday at 5:00pm and 7:30pm. Elsewhere the homepage says the tour "runs every night and day of the week at 5pm and 7.30pm," so the two statements do not quite agree; the weekday split in the booking box is the more specific of the two. The homepage says the guide uses the projector "at several stops to show you rare and previously unseen crime scene photographs, right where the events unfolded," and it claims the walk visits "more crime scenes than any other tour." For people who would rather not walk in the dark, the menu offers a day tour ("Scared of the dark? book a day tour").

Private group tours let you set your own date and time. The homepage says that if you are staying nearby the guide will "stop by to pick you up," and that a private tour can include a drink in one of the original Victorian pubs on the route and dining arranged before or after.

VIP tours are the extended version, with "your very own designated guide," starting "at any time, day or night." The optional extras listed are pub stops en route, an extended walk to see all the murder sites, food at a recommended restaurant (The Monsoon, Brick Lane Brasserie, Mr. White's English Chophouse, The Arbor Hotel "and many more"), and "Exclusive Jack the Ripper guidebooks outlining all the suspects and evidence." The VIP itinerary names the murder sites of the five canonical victims, Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly, plus locations tied to Emma Smith, Martha Tabram and Alice McKenzie from the wider Whitechapel Murders files. It also lists Goulston Street, Christ Church, a stop at the Ten Bells pub and an optional dinner at the Happy Days fish and chip restaurant on Goulston Street. The VIP page names celebrity guests, among them Charlie Sheen, Milla Jovovich, Richard Wilson and Matt Goss.

The menu also lists Pub Tours, a Virtual Tour, Halloween Tours and Christmas Parties, plus Team Building Activities in London, which the company describes in some detail. The site also runs a shop and sells gift vouchers.

School groups and team building

School tours get a full page. The site says that "By tailoring our service to the modern curriculum, our school tours are perfect for A-Level or GCSE students," covering the Victorian era, 19th-century police investigation and how policing then compares with policing now. It describes the content as built from police reports, eyewitness testimony and criminal profiling, and says the tour "doesn't deal in sensationalism or fiction." Private school tours "can be carried out at any time that suits your group, on any day," and the homepage mentions a quality badge for learning experiences outside the classroom. The site pairs the school tour with an online casebook covering the victims, suspects, letters, the police investigation and suggested coursework questions for GCSE and A-Level students.

The team-building page pitches the walk as an evening activity for a conference or retreat. The company says a guide can meet a group at its venue or restaurant, plan a route that ends somewhere for food and drink, and adapt the content, for example by having teams present their own theories about the killer after the walk. It describes the walk as "some gentle outdoor exercise."

How it works on the day

The public tour meets at the front doors of the Whitechapel Gallery by Exit 3 of Aldgate East Station and runs on foot through the surrounding streets. The site carries a clear warning in its footer: "The Jack the Ripper Tour contains graphic descriptions, stories and images that some people may find upsetting. Parental guidance is advised." The school page adds that the tour lays out historical facts "without shying away from gruesome details." Families with younger children should read that as the company intends.

The site does not publish a maximum group size for the public walk, does not say what languages the tour runs in, and does not address accessibility for visitors with limited mobility. It gives no guidance on what to wear or whether tours go ahead in bad weather.

Booking and terms

The booking box offers "Book Online or call 07803067544," and the school page gives the email info@thejacktherippertour.com plus a contact form for school and group enquiries. No ticket price appears for any tour; public tour prices sit behind the online booking step, and for school tours the homepage says to "Contact us now for the best prices." The footer links to a Purchase Policy and to Gift Voucher Conditions, so gift vouchers exist, but the tour pages themselves do not state a cancellation window, refund rules or payment methods.

What the site leaves open, and who it suits

The gaps are practical ones. There is no published price for any product, no group-size cap for the public tour, no stated length for a VIP tour beyond "customised to suit your needs and timings," and no cancellation terms on the tour pages. The two different schedules on the homepage mean it is worth checking the booking calendar for the exact day before planning around a 5pm start.

The strengths are just as clear. This is a single-subject specialist with a fixed meeting point, a published duration, departures every day of the week and guides the company presents as published Ripper historians. Ripper-Vision gives the walk a visual element that the site makes central to every tour. It suits adults and older teenagers with an interest in Victorian crime, school groups studying the period, and companies looking for an evening event in the East End. It is less suited to anyone who wants to know the price before starting to book or who would find graphic crime scene images hard to sit through.