The Night of the Ripper

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On the night of August 5, 1888, Eva Sloane stepped out of the Paragon Music Hall and emerged in Hell.

Hell is murky.

That’s what Shakespeare wrote, long ago, but he might have used the same words to describe London.

Beneath the black pall of smoke shrouding the city the gaslights flared and flamed as the lost souls stumbled down the shadowy streets of Inferno.

Demons dwelt here — drunken navvies reeling into suckcribs, mucksnipes lurking before netherskens, square-rigged swells prowling in search of buors.

Eva wondered what Papa would say if she told him. A respectable country vicar wasn’t likely to know that a “suckcrib” was a beer-shop, that “mucksnipes” were down-and-outers, “netherskens” were cheap lodgings, and “square-rigged” swells seeking “buors” were well-dressed dandies looking for prostitutes.

But after these months in the city she’d learned the language of the streets, and visiting music halls added to her education.

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