Modern policing would have stopped the Jack the Ripper in his tracks, according to a former murder squad detective.

Trevor Marriott, who brings his show The UK’s Worst Serial Killers to Fairfield Halls on Thursday (November 5), said: “Without any shadow of a doubt (he would have been caught).

“When you look at Jack the Ripper, you have got to look at the police to start off with.

“They did the best they could in 1888 and, of course, first of all they had never had to find a serial killer before so they were going along blindly in that respect.

“Also you have got to look at the fact that senior officers in Scotland Yard in those days were not promoted through the ranks.

“They had been brought into the Metropolitan Police as senior officers straight from the military so they had no experience at all. You had people at the top who were blind leading the people at the bottom. They were disadvantaged to start off with.”

Clearly policing has made us much safer since the Victorian era but Trevor said modern breakthroughs have done so even more recently.

“Without a doubt, as far as serial killers are concerned, we are safer,” Trevor said.

“With modern technology and modern investigative methods – DNA etc – it sometimes tends to catch the killers before they are elevated to the status of serial killer.

“We don’t get so many now as we did in the 60s, 70s and early 80s before DNA came into play.”

Trevor was in the police for 18 years, including a stint on the murder squad. It is his experience which has led him to write several books on killers and transfer them into stage shows. And there is a ready audience waiting to hear the macabre tales.

“Maybe it is a morbid fascination, I don’t know,” he said. “But certainly it seems to appeal to more women than men. We also get a lot of students come along.”

This show came out of his recent World’s Worst Serial Killers show.

He said: “It was very, very successful and of course people were coming up to me saying ‘why aren’t you talking about this serial killer or that particular killer, some of which were from the UK.

“I decided to put together a show based on the UK’s worst serial killers. I wanted to include a lot of serial killers that people weren’t familiar with. Some go back as far as early Victorian times, so it has made it interesting for the audience because they come along and they see and hear about serial killers they haven’t heard about before.”

These include Kenneth Erskine – also known as the Stockwell Strangler – who killed and raped elderly people across south London in 1986, starting with 78-year-old Nancy Emms in Wandsworth.

Trevor said: “I highlight the killers, the crimes, the victims, how they were caught and the sentences they received. We talk about things around sentencing and the death penalty.

“I involve the audience in discussion and surveys on what they think about aspects of criminal law. Does it work satisfactorily?”

He added: “There’s not too many horrific photographs or images or videos in this particular show. It’s not gory or horrific in that sense.”

The UK’s Worst Serial Killers is a Croydon’s Fairfield Halls on Thursday, November 5. Go to www.fairfield.co.uk