The Jack the Ripper Dossier.
This is the tenth episode of Richard Walker’s new, weekly podcast series on Jack the Ripper.
It’s Part III of the life story of the second “canonical” victim – Annie Chapman. It’s Annie’s end times. It’s a moving, gripping, harrowing story. How harrowing were Annie Chapman’s end times? In my (David’s) podcast for November 22nd I wrote about Charon, the ferryman of the underworld – he of the feverish and fierce eyes who rows the souls of the dead across the Styx to Hades. Waiting for Charon there in Dorset Street – “the worst street in London” – Annie Chapman was in Hades. That’s what we get in this podcast – a tour of that promontory, a tour of the outpost in Whitechapel that Hades had colonised. To go there, to see that, to walk in Annie Chapman’s shoes the last weeks of her life is to experience vicariously – and thank goodness it is vicarious – experience vicariously how and why “the fight had gone out of Annie Chapman just a few hours before a knife sliced through her carotid artery and she became a name in the saga of Jack the Ripper.”
It’s a podcast. But it’s also great guiding.
It all comes down to the guiding. You want the best, you get a great guide. He – or she – will take it from there. Does the rest. Takes you there.
Guide Richard Walker – he of the gravelly but mellifluous voice – is the actor, adventurer (he sailed across the Pacific in a tiny two-man skiff) and learned, splinter-sharp Ripperologist performance artist who’s created a new version of the Ripper Walk. His walk is called Jack the Ripper’s Whitechapel. It’s an exclusive VIP Ripper walk (it’s a guaranteed small group tour – the numbers are strictly limited).