A nightmare of old comes a-haunting this week.
Jack the Ripper sowed fear through Whitechapel in 1888, before fading back into the London fog as mysteriously as he appeared.
His identity has been shrouded in mystery ever since.
Until now.
Dunedin author and actor Carol Krueger finally reveals the secret of the 120-year-old mystery in I Know Who Jack The Ripper Is, which opened at the Globe Theatre last night.
The play chronicles the life and times of 14-year-old Emily Whiter, who lived in Whitechapel during the Ripper's years of terror.
Krueger based the story on the memories of her grandfather, Vernon Whiter.
"I've been interested in Jack the Ripper since I was a teenager, because my family are from that area.
"I've used real characters in the play, based on people and events my grandfather told me about," she says.
"My family is from Bethnall Green Rd, by Whitechapel Rd, and my grandfather used to tell me stories about his father, who was a young boy when the Jack the Ripper murders happened, and living in the East End.
"I remember looking at maps of the area and it was like seeing my family history.
"All of my family were christened at the Shoreditch Mortuary where the fifth victim, Mary Jane Kelly, was buried."
London was in turmoil in the mid-1800s, after a flood of immigration from Ireland, eastern Europe and Russia.
A massive underclass developed in the East End as the city became increasingly overcrowded.
As employment and housing conditions deteriorated, robbery, violence and alcohol dependency became common and poverty drove many women to prostitution.
By October 1888, halfway through the Ripper's purge, the London Metropolitan Police estimated there were at least 1200 working prostitutes and more than 60 brothels in Whitechapel.
Jack the Ripper carried out the horrific murder and mutilation of five women in Whitechapel during a bloody 10-week rampage between August and November, 1888.
The victims were prostitutes Mary Ann Nichols (42), Annie Chapman (47), Elizabeth Stride (45), Catherine Eddowes (25) and Mary Jane Kelly (25).
The Ripper is known to have killed these five women, but may have killed up to 13 others, as a series of brutal murders continued in Whitechapel up to 1891.
The first victim was Mary Ann Nichols, who was found in Buck's Row (now Durward St), Whitechapel, on Friday, August 31, 1888.
Her throat had been cut and her body mutilated.
The killer was originally known as "Leather Apron", until an anonymous - and probably hoax - letter was sent to a London newspaper, purporting to be from "Jack the Ripper".
The press and public lapped it up. From that day on, Jack the Ripper it was.
Krueger is convinced she knows the identity of the Ripper.
"There's still a lot of controversy about Jack the Ripper. Even today, all these years later," she says.
"I think it was [Liverpool cotton trader] James Maybrick. I'm sure of it. He died a few months after the murders stopped. After he died, they found a watch which had his name engraved on the back and the words 'I am Jack'.
"There were also five sets of initials engraved around the dial. They were the initials of the five women murdered at Whitechapel."
Maybrick was based in Liverpool, but regularly visited London, and Whitechapel, on business.
"In 1992, [Liverpool scrap dealer] Mike Barrett found a diary, which belonged to James Maybrick and was signed 'Jack the Ripper'," Krueger says.
Barrett claimed he had found the diary, which gave a full account of the Ripper's activities from April, 1888, to May, 1889, in Maybrick's old family home, Battlecrease House in Riversdale Rd, Liverpool.
The diary has since been discredited by historians and document experts, who say that the handwriting differs from Maybrick's and that the ink contains a preservative which wasn't available until 1974.
Barrett also later admitted in Liverpool Court on January 5, 1995, that the diary was a fabrication.
His confession can be found at www.casebook.org/suspects under James Maybrick.
Bizarrely though, Barrett's lawyers later withdrew his admission, saying he was not in full control of his faculties when he made the statement.
The Ripper's trail went cold after his last victim, Mary Jane Kelly, was discovered on November 9, 1888.
He is then believed to have either died, been imprisoned or emigrated.
But, the mystery has never been solved.
East End children still remember him today with this skipping rhyme:
"Jack the Ripper's dead.
And lying in his bed.
He cut his throat.
With Sunlight soap.
Jack the Ripper's dead."
