On the corner of Commercial Street in Spitalfields stands a London pub that has seen things most places would rather forget. Its tiled walls give little away, but step inside and the air is heavy with stories from centuries ago.
Supposedly the most haunted pub in England, it’s a place where lives began and ended, where secrets were traded, and where fear once stalked the narrow alleys outside. During the late 19th century, the pub became forever linked to the murders of Jack the Ripper.
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This old public house has seen four centuries of London life pass through its doors. It has served gin to dockworkers, beer to weavers, and cheap spirits to women who worked the streets for survival. But how has it earned its nickname, and how many ghosts roam its corridors?
The Story Behind the Name
The Ten Bells Pub has stood in Spitalfields since the 1600s, although not always in its current location. The first version of the pub sat a few yards away and was known as the Eight Bells Alehouse, named after the nearby Christ Church and its eight ringing bells. When the church added two more, the pub followed suit and became the Ten Bells.
Records show the name appearing officially in the 1790s, long before the stories that would make it infamous. When Commercial Street was redeveloped in the 1850s, the pub was moved slightly to its current corner, where it has remained ever since.
It has only changed its name once, in the 1970s, when a brewery rebranded it as Jack the Ripper to lure tourists. The decision drew outrage, and campaigners from Reclaim the Night fought to restore the old name. The sign above the door returned to The Ten Bells, and it has remained that way ever since.
Life in the East End
Step outside the Ten Bells and you face Christ Church, the tall white steeple that has watched over Spitalfields since the early 1700s. Its architect, Nicholas Hawksmoor, gave the East End a landmark that could be seen from the alleys. The church bells set the rhythm of the neighborhood long before the murders turned those streets into headlines.
A few steps away, Old Spitalfields Market shows how the area made its living. A royal charter in the 1680s allowed a market to trade fresh produce here. For two centuries, the stalls pulled in growers, hawkers, and porters who filled the market with hustle and bustle.
Walk down Fournier Street and you meet the homes of Huguenot silk merchants who settled here in the 1700s. Tall Georgian houses with attic workrooms tell the story of weaving looms and a trade that shaped the streets. Many of these houses still hold panelled rooms and narrow staircases. The silk industry drew skilled workers and their families, and left a built record that survived slum clearances and bombs.
Turn a corner and the story darkens. Dorset Street sat at the heart of the rookery, a warren of lodging houses and rooms let by the night. People called it the worst street in London. Mary Jane Kelly was killed in her room off this street in 1888. Men and women who drank at the Ten Bells would have known its name, its pawnbrokers, and its landlords, because this was where the cheapest beds were found.
By the late nineteenth century, the area carried a hard reputation. Poverty maps colored these blocks in dark shades. Charities tried to pull people out of the lodging houses. Music halls and pubs offered light and heat for the price of a drink. The Ten Bells sat in the middle of this world, close to the market, under the church tower, within earshot of streets where people lived day to day.
Jack the Ripper and the Ten Bells
By the autumn of 1888, the streets around the Ten Bells had turned into a hunting ground. The women who drank here lived close by, moving between the pub, the market, and the crowded lodging houses of Dorset Street. A night’s rent cost fourpence, a bed shared with strangers under thin blankets.
Annie Chapman was seen in the Ten Bells shortly before her death. Some said she sat alone at the bar that evening, quiet and pale. Hours later, her body was found in a backyard on Hanbury Street, a short walk from the pub. The details of her death filled the newspapers, but the reports never agreed on her last movements. The only certainty is that she knew the Ten Bells well.
Mary Jane Kelly spent even more time near the pub. She worked the corner outside for years and often came inside for a drink when she had the money. On the night before her murder, she shared drinks here with a friend. No one else saw her alive after she left. Her body was found the next morning in her room on Dorset Street, a few steps from where she’d last been seen.
Some say the man who killed them might have watched them from across the room, waiting for the right moment to follow them out into the cold. There’s no proof, only rumor, but the connection has held for more than a century. The Ten Bells remains a stop on every Jack the Ripper tour.
The Hauntings
The Ripper’s story made the Ten Bells infamous, but it’s what happened long after his time that earned the pub its haunted reputation. Staff who lived in the rooms upstairs began to tell stories that unsettled even the most skeptical.
In the late 1990s, several tenants reported waking up at night to find a man lying beside them. He looked Victorian, dressed in old-fashioned clothes, and would vanish the moment they cried out. Some moved out after only a few weeks, unable to sleep knowing he might return.
A landlord, hoping for answers, invited a psychic to walk through the building. She made it as far as the top floor before she refused to go on. She said something terrible had once happened in one of the rooms, involving a 19th-century baby.
Years later, a researcher climbing into the roof space found a sack hidden behind a water tank. Inside were small, decayed baby clothes that dated back to the Victorian era. The garments had been cut with a knife. The discovery was directly above the room the psychic had refused to enter.
The stories didn’t stop there. In 2001, a tenant heard footsteps and laughter outside his room, despite knowing he was alone in the building. He’d go to check the corridor and find it empty. Some nights, as he headed down to the bar, he felt a shove from behind, a hand that wasn’t there.
No one knows who these spirits might be, or if they belong to the same past that gave the pub its darker fame. But in a place where so many lives ended in fear, few doubt that something lingers.
The Pub Today
Step inside the Ten Bells today, and it feels like nothing much has changed over the years. The tiled walls, mirrors, and woodwork have seen centuries of hands, glasses, and laughter. Much of the interior dates back to the Victorian era, including murals that once celebrated the local Spitalfields weavers.
A newer mural, added in 2010, sits beside them. This one features modern-day residents, Gilbert and George, the artist duo who have lived and worked in Spitalfields for decades and are known for transforming everyday East End life into art.
The building now holds listed status, which protects its historic features from change, so it isn’t hard to imagine what it would have been like in the 18th and 18th centuries. While the Ten Bells acknowledges its connection to the Jack the Ripper murders, it no longer leans on them for tourism and trade. There are newspaper clippings, photographs, and a single mural that nod to that grim history, but the focus is on the people who shaped Spitalfields before and after those crimes.
Today, the pub serves craft beers, ciders, and cocktails, and classic pub food. The rooftop terrace offers a view of Christ Church and the city skyline beyond. If you visit, there is no guarantee you’ll meet a ghost, but you will have the opportunity to walk into a piece of English history.
