Among our London walks is the ever popular Jack the Ripper tour of the East End. Every night our tour sets out to explore the streets and places associated with the infamous crimes of 1888. If we were to ask the average person on our London walks to name another very gruesome 19th century murder the chances are they would be hard pushed to do so.
But had you asked a Londoner the same question in the early 1880’s the same question the chances are that they would have nodded and told you about the Ratcliffe Highway Murders.
We do cover this series of murders on several of our London walks around Docklands, in particular on our Wapping walking tour (it goes down particularly well on our Historic London Pub Walk Pirates, Murder and Pressgangs!)
In 1811 the area around the Highway (then known as Ratcliffe Highway) was a Mecca for sailors on shore leave. It was packed with taverns and slop-shops. Its population was an abundance of petty criminals and prostitutes.
Later Charles Dickens would describe it as the “area generally referred to as down by the docks and “home to a good many people - to too many if I may judge from the overflow of local population into the streets - but my nose insinuates that the number to who this is Sweet home might easily be counted.”
At midnight on 7th December 1811 Mr Timothy Marr, who ran a linen drapers shop at 29 Ratcliffe Highway (now simply The Highway), sent his servant girl out for some oysters before he and his apprentice closed the shop for the night.
When she returned she found the shop locked and no matter how loudly she banged on the door she apparently couldn’t rouse the Marrs’. A night watchman was called but he too was unable to get the door opened.
Finally a neighbour managed to force the door and found the draper and shop boy murdered in their blood-spattered downstairs room, whilst the wife and baby were dead upstairs. The weapons that had been used, a ripping chisel and maul, lay on the shop floor. The motive was evidently robbery but the savagery of the deed complete with the elimination of an entire family of ordinary people shocked the nation.
A few days later a young man who was lodging at the nearby Kings Arms managed to escape from an upstairs window by a sheet and ran naked down the street crying “They are murdering people in the house.” The alarm raised, the neighbours rushed to the pub only to find the landlord, Mr Williamson together with his wife and their maidservant, lying dead, their skulls fractured and their throats cut.
Terror spread from Wapping throughout the country and rewards were offered for information that might lead to the apprehension of those responsible for the murders.
More than 40 people were arrested and subsequently exonerated of involvement.
John Williams, a sailor who lived at the nearby Pear Tree Inn came under suspicion. A search of his belonging uncovered a bloodstained knife and the murderer it appeared had been caught.
Unfortunately he hanged himself before proceedings against him could begin and neither his motives nor his guilt were ever established. He was duly buried at the cross roads of Cannon Street Road and Cable Street, which we cover on our Wapping by night London walk, with a stake driven through his heart - the customary way of dealing with suicidal murderers in those days.
As a result of the crimes all the night watchman in the neighbourhood were dismissed and new patrols armed with cutlasses and pistols were established.
There were calls for London to be given a full time professional police force, but as horror for the murders abated so too did the arguments for a police force and it would not be until 1829 that Sir Robert Peel’s Metropolitan Police act was passed.
This part of the capital is a place of contrasts and its time spent exploring its streets and gardens is not time wasted. It illustrates how London is best seen on foot, since coaches find it really difficult to drive through these narrow riverside streets. These are just the places that our London walks lend themselves perfectly to helping you to get in to and once you discover them, the chances are you will want to return over and over again.
