Whitechapel slum in 1888, the year Jack The Ripper struck
The alley gaped like a wound in the heart of Whitechapel, narrow and festering. Brick walls rose on either side, pitted and stained, bearing silent witness to generations of squalor. The cobblestones beneath were slick with filth, each step a gamble against the mire that sought to claim all who trod there.
Women and children huddled in doorways and upon upturned crates, their faces gaunt and hollow-eyed. They were creatures of twilight, these denizens of the slum, existing in the half-light between life and death. A babe wailed, its cry thin and reedy, quickly swallowed by the oppressive air. An old woman, bent like a twisted tree, muttered incantations to ward off evils both seen and unseen.
