More than one district of London can lay claim to being the scariest. There’s Waterloo, where under the station runs a damp and icy network of badly lit tunnels, and nearby is the London Dungeon. Whitechapel, with all the Jack the Ripper stories. Or Southwark, where the prison museum Clink is — but something much eerier, too. A place where men would clamp opium-soaked rags over the mouths of women strapped down and wide-eyed with fright, before taking a blade to their flesh.
These men were hailed as heroes. They were surgeons, operating for three decades in the first half of the 19th century before anaesthetic was used. They worked at what is now a museum, the Old Operating Theatre and Herb Garret. It is a place of two parts, the latter leading through to the former.
