A Grim Almanac of Jack the Ripper's London 1870-1900

Did you know? On 15 November 1892 as Dr Neill Cream dropped through the gallows trap at Newgate he declared 'I'm Jack the …'. (Cream was in prison in America at the time the Ripper murders were committed). In November 1887, there was a pitch battle in Trafalgar Square between those so poor they took to camping there and 2,000 policemen and soldiers. The event became known as 'Bloody Sunday'. In December 1884, after bombs had been successfully detonated near Trafalgar Square and Scotland Yard a terrorist dropped another over one of the parapets of London Bridge and only succeeded in killing himself. By the mid-nineteenth century, the graveyards of London became so full a vast cemetery was established at Woking in Surrey. Opened in 1854 and known as Brookwood Cemetery or The London Necropolis it was even served by its own railway - the Necropolis Light Railway where the deceased's last one-way ticket could even be bought in first, second or third class. Neil Storey's macabre calendar chronicles the darker side of life in the London between 1870 and 1900. Murderers and footpads, pimps and prostitutes, riots, rebels, bizarre funerals, disaster and peculiar medicine all feature. The book will be illustrated with engravings, newspaper reports, photographs and original documents.