No Jack the Ripper walk is complete without a visit to this toilet, which is forever linked to the legend of London’s best loved serial killer due to an incident that took place in 1888 when Annie Chapman, a keen amateur prostitute, was approached by a mysterious stranger who then pulled out a knife and attempted to stab her. Chapman managed to get away, and ran into the conveniences in the hope of hiding, only to make a fatal mistake: crouching in one of the cubicles she noticed that the toilet had not been flushed so pulled the chain out of habit. The silence of the East London night was immediately broken and the Ripper, alerted to her whereabouts, ran down into the facility in hot pursuit; whilst Chapman evaded him once more he eventually caught and brutally murdered her on nearby Hanbury Street.
Decades later, however, Ripperologists used the incident in an attempt to prove the briefly fashionable theory that the Ripper was in fact Queen Victoria, arguing that she had taken to prowling the streets and committing murders in an attempt to rid London of undesirables. Their ‘proof’ was that Victorian morality would have prevented a man from entering a ladies’ toilet, so the killer must have been female, but critics pointed out that a deranged and maniacal murderer would have paid scant attention to such a piece of social etiquette, and the theory was swiftly discredited.
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