There are two types of crowd than can ruin a sightseeing walk. The first is the crowd you can be sharing your walk with. Recently we saw a Jack the Ripper walk with 200 people on it! The company who do this tour do not lay on extra guides when numbers are large – just one guide with 200 people! Not only is it a struggle to see and hear, but when one arrives at, for example, small cobbled iconic Mitre Square, where one of the murders took place, 200 people fill the square and ruin the atmosphere of the place. And such a guide can’t show photos or take his group into the atmospheric little alleys and streets still existing today that the victims and killer would have used. Large groups have to stick to the wide roads and pavements, many of which don’t have any connection with the murders at all.

The other problem is that even if the group you’re in isn’t too large, if you’re one of the 7 or 8 groups which all arrive within a few minutes of each other at the last two murder sites, which are obvious bottlenecks, you’re going to be sharing the sites with a few hundred other people. The problem is caused by most of the bigger groups all starting at a set time, either 7.00 or 7.30.

The great thing about our private walks is that you are the sole arbiter of how many people are on the tour; you also choose what time we start and finish the walk (we recommend starting no later than 6.50 or after 7.50 to avoid the crowds at the last two murder sites), and we take you where the other groups can’t, down narrow scarey, atmospheric alleys so we don’t see another group for much of the time.