London Bridge and Jack the Ripper

I'm a little behind, but only because the past few days have been so packed with goodness that I have not had the time/energy once home to write it all down. So here goes Monday-
Monday we had to buy a travelcard for Zones 1-2 that the PMC will reimberse us for, so most of us took this as a hint to do a lot of tube riding. Accordingly, I struck out after dinner for London Bridge. Turns out that what you think of as London Bridge no longer exists. Instead, there is only a sad, pitiful, modern thing with various signs and engravings letting you know what it is. However, it did lead to a delightful little jaunt in the financial district. I also stumbled upon the Bunhill Fields Burial Ground, which was a really old cemetary. There were some gems in there such as William Blake, Daniel Defoe, and John Bunyan.
We then all met at Stamford Brook (except Victoria who was a whopping 45 minutes late) to go to the Emery Walker House. Emery Walker was a good friend of William Morris', and through various causes, his house is still very much intact from when he lived in it. We had two tour guides, one the cataloguer and expert, the other an old lady volunteer. You could tell it was hard for them to share. Afterwards, we chilled in the pub and debriefed. The PMC payed for everyone to get a pint, though some got coke instead and Laura and I (after they forgot about us) got tea.
Then a group of us went to Tower Hill to do the Jack Ripper tour. We had time to grab a quick dinner of fish and chips (which were DELICIOUS) at a nearby pub before it started. We were then lead around east london by Donald R-, who is one of the foremost historians on Jack the Ripper. He would take us around to various locations and explain their signifigance to the story. Some of the best tidbits were:

• London Wall- a wall built around the old city of london, which is still the center of london. you can see the old Roman foundations of parts of the wall, as well as the medieval layer on top of that. The city of london has it's own police force and mayor, which was part of the difficulty to Jack the Ripper, since he kept zig zagging back and forth between the city of london and london proper.
• Houdsditch- this was a ditch outside of the wall. it's called this because during the Bubonic Plauge, they thought dogs and cats were the carriers, so they killed them all. to get rid of the bodies, they chucked them over the wall into the ditch.
• "The Ripper"- the name Jack the Ripper came from a fake note, but stuck because of the press. the latter half of the name comes from his MO. After slitting the victim's throat back to the spinal cord (in two cases it looks like he tried to cut their heads completely off), he would 'rip' them open from their vagina to their breast bone. His last murder was so butchered up that they had to recognize her from her location, her ears, and her hair.
• "From Hell"- a comic book version by Alan Moore (of Watchmen, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and V for Vendetta) was made into a movie with Johnny Depp some years back

The funniest part was at the end when Emma was getting her copy of his book signed, and the rest of us were joking about William Morris being Jack the Ripper. He heard us and ended up dedicating her book to "William Morris and Emma". He joked about adding Rossetti, Burne-Jones, and Ruskin too. He was really good at leading the walk, as he always managed to end each portion on a cliff hanger or high point, and had us walking through the most grusome and sketchy parts as it was getting dark. It was well worth the five pounds.