Next tour:
* Date: Friday 31 March 2023, 5.30pm.
* Meet: Central Library, St Peter’s Square.
* Booking: Please press here to register with Eventbrite.

Forget Jack the Ripper and the dark corners of the East End, Manchester is gloomier, seedier and more atmospheric.

It is also the setting for some really nasty stories which you can hear about in the comfort that they happened many years ago and won’t happen again.

We’re talking about abductions, grave-robbing, cold-blooded murder from an axe-wielding maniac, cold-blooded murder from Britain’s worst serial killer (until another one came along) and the last “official” hangings on English soil.

We finish up where they used to hang folk and then you can go home.

* And if you think we shouldn’t be mentioning any of these things, as one daft guide (Ray Hoerty) claimed and a number of journalists (geezer from the Oldham Chron, geezer from the Sun) have intimated, think again. We believe in braving history, not hiding it away. It is precisely because people never said anything that many of these awful things happened. Consider this: Jimmy Savile was treated as a hero and a national treasure for many years and Harold Shipman was said to be a great family doctor. Someone has to explain these stories. Nobody else will.