The Indie Collaboration Presents: Tales From Darker Places Read online

Women of the lowest class plied their pitiful trade in badly lit streets, selling their bodies for the cost of a bed for the night or a glass of Geneva liquor. This was the London of Her Majesty Queen Victoria in the declining years of the Nineteenth Century and it was dark and deadly for the poor, although the Empire spanned a quarter of the world. This was the age of steam-travel, science and ever-growing knowledge. The superstitions of the past were waning, and the queen was the moral idol of many. This was a time of literature and of discovery, of social unrest and discontent.

  Victorian Britain was a country of contrasts; in the capital of, perhaps, the greatest modern Empire, there were those whose lives were filled with fear, shame and the direst poverty. Venereal disease, alcoholism and assault were commonplace and life was, unfortunately, cheap. Women and children often paid the ultimate price. The enlightened Victorians often turned their sight away from the darkness which crawled through the streets and the terror and despair which lurked around every corner for the poor.

  In the autumn of 1888, things were about to get worse…much, much worse.

  To this day no one knows the true identity of the Britain’s most infamous serial killer, although many have put forward theories – from a Prince of the Realm, to a mad midwife, to a doctor, to a sailor, to an American, to a Jew. He took the lives of five poor women, perhaps more, in the most brutal of ways, and he became a terrible legend. Some have called him the first modern murderer, for no one knew why he killed as he did. For three months he held London in terror then he disappeared. Yet his legacy lived on for many years. Even now this man, if he was a man, fascinates students of true crime but the truth remains as elusive as the shadowy figure of Jack the Ripper…

  ****

  1888, Whitechapel, London.