Israel Schwartz had apparently been in Britain only a matter of days when he became embroiled in history's most famous murder mystery. At about a quarter to one on the morning of September 30th, 1888, Schwartz was walking up Berner Street from Commercial Road when;

"he saw a man stop & speak to a woman who was standing in the gateway. The man tried to pull the woman into the street & threw her down on the footway & the woman screamed three times but not very loudly".

Perhaps and maybe are words that Tony Williams and his co-author, Humphrey Price, use frequently in discussing `Uncle Jack`, their candidate for Jack the Ripper. Indeed, these words occur eight times in a single page of their book, suggesting a lack of conviction in their own theorising. Making accusations that erode the good name and reputation of long-dead eminent Victorians has become something of a cult in the vast literature that has grown up around Ripperology. Sir William Gull suffered at the hands of Stephen Knight and others and, now, Sir John Williams receives similar treatment from a family descendant. It is a pity that the reputation of such a distinguished man has been tainted by accusations of criminality based on weak circumstantial evidence.

The murder of Mary Ann Nichols in the early hours of 31st August 1888 put Buck's Row on the crime map of London for good, as the Whitechapel Murders did for many other streets during the 'Autumn of Terror'. This non-descript, narrow and ill-lit thoroughfare was by all accounts the home of respectable, working class types at the time, but less than a century earlier it had been partly rural, going by the name of Ducking Pond Row on account of the said ducking pond being situated at its junction with what is now Brady Street. The industrial age and the development of the London Underground system was largely responsible for the type of building that took place on Buck's Row during the Victorian era and this was pretty much how it remained for many years after that fateful morning in 1888.

It could so easily be missed, this little chalkland village, as many miles from Salisbury as it is from Shaftesbury and once an insignificant settlement on the Northern rim of Cranborne Chase. The Ebble Valley road follows a winding westward course from Salisbury between the ancient downland ridges of the Shaston Drove and the Ox Drove, but at Broadchalke a spur sweeps round the church to run even deeper past succulent cressbeds and heron-haunted trout ponds. Here, at Bowerchalke, William Thick was born on November 20th 1845.