The Millennium pedestrian bridge joining the City of London and the South Bank. — Photos by Percy Rowe

Jack the Ripper, by certain horrendous modern standards, hardly counts as a serial killer. Yet his appeal endures. Movies, an opera and an endless stream of books have kept the memory of this unknown killer of five 19th century London prostitutes alive. And so do nightly guided walks of his haunts.

As many as 1,000 people turned out one night; 300 is normal. A group of 300 participants is split into three. The problem is everybody wants to go with Donald Rumbelow, recognized as the authority on the Ripper. A former curator of the City of London Police Museum, Rumbelow is also the author of a book on what is possibly the best known unsolved crime in history.

Rumbelow has another distinction. He is the only guide of The Original London Walks organization to use his surname.

Normally, Judy, Steve, Emily, Andy or one of many other guides lead about 20 people on their two-hour walks. These can cover the Londons of Shakespeare, Sherlock Holmes, Dickens, the architect Sir Christopher Wren, Oscar Wilde, the Beatles, lawyers, the Blitz.

Each tour starts outside a specified subway station at a specified morning, afternoon or evening time.

A group slowly congregates -- tourists from North America, Japan, Manchester -- and a few minutes before takeoff, the guide. He or she is usually indistinguishable except for a handful of London Walks brochures. But he soon introduces himself and sets about collecting the fee -- about $13 from each adult, $10 from seniors.

On this day, our guide Alan is quite distinguishable. A former croupier, he dresses like Oscar Wilde: Flowing cloak, broad-rimmed hat, tie with stickpin, gold watch-chain and green carnation.

The Saturday morning tour, starting at 11 from the north entrance of Green Park station, doesn't stray far from Piccadilly -- Wilde's realm in his later, controversial years. This Man For All Faults who said "he could resist anything but temptation" used to smoke 100 hand-rolled Turkish cigarettes a day and buy expensive silver cigarette cases for his young men.

Not all the hotels he frequented are still there -- Alan points out the drug store that has replaced the Berkeley.

The guide is not judgmental. He notes that while Wilde was one of history's most famous homosexuals, he loved his wife ("constant Constance") despite flinging off epigrams in the nearby Cafe Royal, such as "relatives don't know how to live and haven't the sense to die."

Alan shows us clubs and theatres -- like the St. James' where the author's plays were premiered -- that Wilde frequented. We end up in the upstairs actors' bar of the Golden Lion so Alan, after two hours of talking and walking, can "wet his whistle."

On the evening Thameside Pub Walk with Shaughan, the George Inn in Southwark was the final stop. This is the oldest surviving pub in London. In the 1700s hostlers would bridle horses in its coach yard. On my extraordinarily mild February night there, patrons were outside at picnic tables.

The tour had started at Blackfriars subway station -- named Blackfriars for a monastery on the site in the 12th century. As we crossed to the south side of the Thames, Shaughan swept his arm back towards the City of London and proclaimed "one mile square, 8,000 residents, 400,000 workers in daytime and what's it all about? Money, money, money."

Next he sang a song of wassail, ordered us to join the chorus, and then moved to the first pub -- The Founders' Arms -- for a glass of special ale called "a winter warmer."

London Walks guide Alan dressed as Oscar Wilde.

But the tour wasn't all about drinking. As we walked beside the Thames we learned that the St. Paul's Cathedral was the sixth on the site and a new towering office block was known as the "Gherkin," while the Millennium Pedestrian Bridge was "The Wobbly Bridge" because of its opening shivers.

There was more learning before the next stops -- The Market Porter pub and the restored Shakespearean Globe Theatre, the only thatched roof in London -- an act of parliament was required to allow it.

Then it was on to the centuries-old Clink Prison, now a museum of torture instruments, Southwark Cathedral, a replica of Sir Francis Drake's Golden Hind and Borough Market (started in the 9th century) before winding up at the George for a final half-pint.

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BOTTOM LINE

WALKABOUTS: Other London Walks cover Soho, Westminster, Bloomsbury, Kensington, the Docklands, Hampstead, Greenwich, spies, classic crimes, ghosts. There are also day-long excursions to Cambridge, Canterbury, Hampton Court, Oxford, Stonehenge, Windsor Castle. The company also runs walks of Paris (in English.) For more information, write The Original London Walks, P.O. Box 1708, London NW6 4LW, or london@walks.com.