THE streets are lit by gas and the shadows are deep in the doorways. The gaslamps struggle to penetrate the dense pea-soup fog and shine only in a weak halo.

In the doorways lurks danger - the very first "ripper" armed with a razor-sharp knife that glints in the gaslight.

He steps out to murder, and once his victim is eviscerated and her blood is draining away onto the rough cobbles of the backstreets, he melts into the darkness and is never caught.

There have since been other rippers - notably in Yorkshire and now in Ipswich - but mere mention of the word conjures up visions of the Victorian streets in which Jack killed at least four, probably six and possibly eight prostitutes in the autumn of 1888.

The word "rip" - meaning to cut, pull or tear something away from something else - has always had violent, bloody overtones. Shakespeare used it viciously in Macbeth: "MacDuff was from his mother's womb untimely ript".

But when the press first caught up with Jack the Ripper, they called him "Leather Apron". This was the nickname given by London prostitutes to a client who wore protective clothing and a deerstalker cap. He liked to threaten "to rip them up".

When a second prostitute, Annie Chapman, was found dead, a leather apron was soaking in a backyard basin nearby.

Police soon arrested a man, John Pizer, on suspicion of being "Leather Apron".

It was a racist nickname, as leather aprons were typically worn by Jewish workers, from butchers to tailors, and for a while the East End of London was on the brink of anti-Semitic riots.

The nickname didn't stick, though, as Pizer produced alibis to prove he was not Leather Apron.

Instead, when PC Watkins discovered a fourth dismembered body, that of Catharine Eddowes, he picked up on the word used by Leather Apron. "The body," he said, "had been ripped open, like a pig in the market."

Two days later - October 1 - the Daily News published a letter purportedly sent to The Boss of the Central News agency. It began "Dear Boss..." and in bloodthirsty fashion taunted the police.

"That joke about Leather Apron gave me real fits," it said. "I am down on whores and I shan't quit ripping them till I do get buckled."

The letter finished by coining the word that still reverberates through history. It said: "Yours truly, Jack the Ripper."

There was a PS: "Don't mind me giving the trade name."

Most Ripperologists believe the letter was a fake - probably written by a journalist, Tom Bulling, who worked at the agency and fancied a scoop. But the epithet stuck because it is a word evocative of the violence required to slash open a body, and because Jack the Ripper was the first serial killer of the media age.

Newspapers flourished in late Victorian England because of advances in the printing press, in the telegraph and in people's ability to read. They were as lurid as today's tabloids, and they latched onto Jack the Ripper as fear stalked the streets, terror gripped the capital and the poor old bobbies blundered about blindly in the pea-soupers.

It is, perhaps, fortunate that the fake nickname did stick because "the Yorkshire Leather Apron" does not have the same ring to it.

Chris Lloyd is giving two free talks on Tuesday about his newly reprinted book, Memories of Darlington 3. The illustrated talks, entitled Four Scandals and a Gooseberry, concern the Northgate area of Darlington, and can be heard at the library in Crown Street at 2pm and at Cockerton library at 6.30pm. All are welcome.