In the summer of 2004*, on a beautiful night in June that was my last in London, I decided to take a "Jack the Ripper" walking tour. Following the instructions on the brochure I picked up at the British Tourist Office across the street from my host hotel, the 186-room Sofitel St. James, I took the Underground to Tower Hill Station. The Tower itself stood across the Thames, alone and serene. As our "London Walks" guide identified herself to the gathering group and began to take our money, I glanced over to that grim prison-cum-palace, seemingly unchanged since its Tudor heyday—although it's now quite possible to hold events there (as well as at three other notable residences through Historic Royal Palaces).
But on my side of the Thames, it was a different story. Around me was a modern neighborhood, maybe a little untidy, but basically indistinguishable from any large city's central business district.
That would change. As we trotted at a lively pace through the concrete canyons, a building peeked out in the distance that looked like a giant cigar in its wrapper. "What is that?" I asked. "That's 30 St. Mary Axe," the guide yelled back, as she rushed us to the scene of a grisly murder. Having just opened the month before, the avant-garde exterior of 30 St. Mary Axe, headquarters for Swiss Re, the global reinsurance company, was still causing a furor. Some call it the Faberge egg, some call it the "Gherkin"—and those are the ones who are being polite. However, at 40 stories tall, the building commands, at its cigar-tip top, a restaurant with a ravishing view of London. Private parties "by permission of the landlord" can be done with dinner seating for 75 and reception space for 260.
Unfortunately, we had no time to gab about The Gherkin—daylight was burning and we had a date with a curb. Hey, I'm not kidding. "I want you all to use your imaginations," implored our guide for the first (but not the last) time. We all stared intently at the curb at Mitre Square as she began to describe atrocities committed there to Catherine Eddowes on September 30, 1888—the last of the Ripper's outdoor victims. The surroundings are now genteel, but hearing detail heaped on gory detail (slashing and ritual disemboweling), my imagination did indeed kick in. Addressing the singular anonymity of the site, the guide said that the crime scene was once commemorated by a plaque, but it was pried out and stolen within a matter of hours.
On we went. The murky, dangerous Whitechapel slums, where Jack the Ripper escaped detection while killing and mutilating his victims, have pretty much disappeared, reformed and made wholesome by time and the fierce determination of city planning. Some buildings, like Christ Church—which date from the period—and Spitalfields Markets (revamped in the '20s) are still around, and several area pubs, like the Ten Bells, one of the original pubs where hapless prostitutes plied their trade, capitalize on the notoriety. Even so, the guides really do have their work cut out for them. At one point, having been exhorted once again to "use my imagination" to envision Victorian London around me, I saw, instead, the spanking-modern Travelodge London City in front of me. It was then that my imagination took a back seat to my common sense, which told me, "This is your last night in London. Stop looking at things that aren't there!"
With that, the walking tour now became a brief but aerobic exploration of living London. Our group whisked through "Banglatown," filled with colorful shops, throbbing music, and intriguing Asian restaurants. We walked up back lanes, some of which still looked dicey, and some that were offering luxury condos with preserved historical facades.
I guess having been brought up on a diet of Masterpiece Theatre costume dramas, I expected London to be frozen in time. Certainly, there were many efforts to preserve the past; the Sofitel St. James, which had invited me on this inspection, was the former Cox's and King's Bank. Behind its historic exterior, each office had been converted in a deluxe room (with meeting and conference space for up to 170 on the lower level). A previous walk had taken me across the Millennium Bridge to the fabulous London Eye, the phenomenal Ferris wheel that can transport up to 25 passengers in one of its private capsules. Those developments were in what was always the hoity-toity part of town; but, in fact, even London's East End has been undergoing an astounding renaissance, particularly the docklands of Canary Wharf and the Isle of Dogs, where luxury properties and venues are springing up.
The Ripper tour concluded in what looked like a village, but what was, of all things, low-income "council" housing. As a Q&A period took place under a streetlight, I looked around in the gloaming, envying the people, their homes, and their well-kept community.
Lord knows what they thought of me. These Ripper tours, which have always been popular (after all, it's Jack the Ripper!), were the brief subject of unrest back in 2001, when anticipation of the film From Hell swelled the tour numbers into the hundreds around the clock. At the time, this had angered locals, who resented a gawking mob clogging the sidewalks. By last year, however, the tour I attended had subsided to a still-respectable 50, which was then divided in two.
As applause and people scattering marked the end of the tour, I wondered in hindsight: If I were planning a group's night out, I would certainly put this on the itinerary—but not on the last night of the trip, should anyone want to revisit some of the remaining historic sites. Some of those shops and restaurants had looked really tantalizing, and the crew at the Ten Bells was certainly lively. I wished I had time to regroup and do all those things, and go up in the Eye, too. But no, it was late, I had already lost my sense of direction, and still had to go back to the hotel and pack.
Looking back on this experience, I will just have to use my imagination.
*Originally published May 2005, in Successful Meetings magazine
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