On the day of the “Legal Inns of Court” walking tour, we were to meet up with our female guide at the Holborn Tube (Underground) Station. Instead we found a large man with a booming voice. Replacing our guide (who was ill) was a retired City of London police officer named Donald Rumbelow. He was considered at that time to be one of the best Ripperologists (an expert on Jack the Ripper) around. He had written a very thoroughly researched and knowledgeable book on the subject, which I had read. I was planning on taking his Saturday night “Jack the Ripper” walking tour later that week.
We had a relatively small group for the “Legal Inns of Court” tour, so we were able to ask plenty of questions. He was very conversant about everything he was showing us and quite personable as well. Mom and I were glad we had him for the tour. He also charmingly told my Mom that he would look out for me on the Jack the Ripper tour as she didn’t plan to go.
Our first stop was Gray’s Inn. Anyone who wants to be a barrister in England or Wales must belong to an inn of court. There are four — Gray’s Inn, Lincoln’s Inn, the Inner Temple, and the Middle Temple. Gray’s Inn dates back at least as far as 1370 and includes Sir Francis Bacon, William Cecil, and Thomas Cromwell among some of its prominent members. At one point, it was the largest by membership (when Queen Elizabeth I was its patron). But, after the English Civil War, during which the entire process of being educated as a lawyer and being “called to the bar” was suspended, became the smallest. Shakespeare’s play The Comedy of Errors was first performed there at the Inn’s hall.
To study law, one could attend Oxford or Cambridge or one of the Inns of Chancery. The only surviving example of the latter is Staple Inn which dates from 1585. Each Inn of Chancery was tied to a specific Inn of Court. The students here would go on to Gray’s Inn to actually practice law. The side of the main building that faces the street is half-timbered, while the side that faces the courtyard is brick. Some solicitors have offices here.
The difference between a solicitor and a barrister is that the solicitor is the lawyer who handles legal matters outside of a courtroom, while the barrister is the lawyer who argues the case before the court. Normally a person would hire a solicitor. Then, if a barrister is needed, the solicitor will refer the case to the barrister. There is a really good, on-the-edge-of-your-seat kind of thriller with both barristers and solicitors called “The Escape Artist”. It has been broadcast on PBS in the States.
Next we paid a visit to Lincoln’s Inn. This is the largest by physical size. It is thought to date back to 1310. John Donne, William Gladstone, Sir Thomas More, Margaret Thatcher, and Tony Blair were all members of Lincoln’s Inn.
For many, many years there was a tradition that unwanted babies could be left in the undercroft of the chapel at Lincoln’s Inn — no questions asked. These children were all given the last name of Lincoln and placed in orphanages until they could be adopted or came of age. Many families in the USA who think they might be descended from Abraham Lincoln might actually be descended from a baby abandoned at Lincoln’s Inn. I have the name “Lincoln” in my family too and have found no connection to Abraham Lincoln.
The Inner and Middle Temples were next. Until their abolishment in 1312, the Temple area belonged to the Knights Templar. Both the Inner Temple and the Middle Temple became Inns of Court in roughly 1388.
The Inner Temple contains the Temple Church, which was built by the Knights Templar in 1185 and contains the effigies of some of the knights and the bodies of several more. I have several knights in my family ancestry and some joined the Templars later in their lives (after having been married and fathered children). I am aware of three that were buried at Temple Church. The Inner Temple Gateway that leads from Fleet Street to the church has been there since the Templars built it, but was rebuilt in the 1600s and again in the 1700s.
The garden in the Inner Temple was where William Shakespeare set the start of the War of the Roses when the House of Lancaster selected a red rose and the House of York selected a white rose. I wonder if that really happened or if he was just using poetic license. I think it was the latter, but it is more romantic to think it might have really happened that way. Whatever way it actually happened, they did have those roses as their symbols.
The first production of Shakespeare’s play Twelfth Night was performed in Middle Temple Hall in 1602. Sir Francis Drake was also feted there after defeating the Spanish Armada. The hall survived the Great Fire of 1666 as well as the London Blitz so remains unchanged from when it was built
The last stop on the tour was the Royal Courts of Justice building. The criminal cases are tried in the Old Bailey. The Royal Courts of Justice contains the High Court and the Courts of Appeal for England and Wales. The public can view cases there. So Mom and I did just that for the fun of seeing everybody in their robes and wigs.
After touring all of this legal real estate, we decided to join “The Footsteps of Sherlock Holmes” walking tour the next day. While it covered Covent Garden, the Lyceum Theatre, Maiden Lane, the Opera House, and the Sherlock Holmes pub (on Northumberland), it disappointingly did not include the Criterion (where Holmes and Watson met), 221B Baker Street (the Sherlock Holmes Museum), the Charing Cross Hotel or Old Scotland Yard. The guide still managed to tell many of the tales of what happened where, so it was an entertaining, though not thorough, tour.
Since Mom wasn’t up to running around Whitechapel in the dark, I went off to Tower Hill Tube Station to join the Jack the Ripper walking tour alone. Our guide, despite having a very large number of people on the tour, remembered me from a couple days earlier, kept his promise to my mom, and took me under his wing. I stuck to him like glue. I wanted to make certain that I didn’t miss a thing.
A couple of the murder locations, such as Hanbury Street (Annie Chapman) and Mitre Square (Catherine Eddowes) hadn’t changed at all since 1888. Two others, Berner Street (Elizabeth Stride) and Buck’s Row (Mary Ann Nichols), had changed their street names, but still looked quite spooky in the dark of the night. The one location where I really had to use my imagination was the last murder (Mary Jane Kelly). The street (Dorset Street) and the cluster of buildings (Miller’s Court) no longer existed.
In Goulston Street, which was where a piece of a bloody apron was found with some graffiti written on the wall above, some of the neighbors apparently weren’t too happy about the tour as they opened their windows and blasted loud music out of them. Rumbelow’s booming voice could still be heard, however, and he finished with what he wanted to show us there before moving on.
In addition to the murder sites and Goulston Street (which also hadn’t changed much), we were taken to a building that had been a doss house at the time. A doss house was a pay-as-you-go rooming house. This doss house was near both Miller’s Court and the Ten Bells pub. The pub has been associated with two of the victims (Annie Chapman and Mary Jane Kelly). It has also been thought that perhaps the Ripper himself had a few drinks there. Across the street is Christ Church Spitalfields, which is a very large, very nice church.
At the end of the tour (after visiting the Ten Bells), we all trooped down Commercial Street to where it intersected with Whitechapel Road to take the Tube back to wherever we came from initially, which in my case was the Embankment Tube Station.
Back in 1888, when those murders took place, there wasn’t much opportunity for a woman with no education or skills to be able to support herself. Women were expected to be married or be supported by a relative. But some women were abandoned by their husbands and/or abused by their husbands. Or maybe their husband died. There were also women who became addicted to alcohol or drugs. For some of them, the only way to survive was prostitution. For that way of life, many of them lost their lives — not just the victims of Jack the Ripper.
