Annie Chapman

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For other people with the same name, see Anne Chapman (disambiguation).
Annie Chapman
Annie Chapman 1869.jpg
Chapman in 1869
Born c. 1841
London, England
Died (1888-09-08)8 September 1888 (aged 47)
Body discovered 29 Hanbury Street in Spitalfields, London
51°31′13.35″N 0°4′21.20″W / 51.5203750°N 0.0725556°W / 51.5203750; -0.0725556 (Site where Annie Chapman body was found in Whitechapel)
Occupation Flower seller, crocheter, beggar
Spouse(s) John Chapman
Children Emily Ruth Chapman
Annie Georgina Chapman
John Alfred Chapman
Parent(s) George Smith
Ruth Chapman

Annie Chapman (born Eliza Ann Smith, c. 1841 – 8 September 1888) was a victim of the notorious unidentified serial killer Jack the Ripper, who killed and mutilated several women in the Whitechapel area of London from late August to early November 1888.

The canonical five
Jack the Ripper victims

Life and background[edit]

Annie Chapman was born Eliza Ann Smith. She was the daughter of George Smith of the 2nd Regiment Life Guards and Ruth Chapman. Her parents married after her birth, on 22 February 1842, in Paddington. Smith was a soldier at the time of his marriage, later becoming a domestic servant.

Marriage and children[edit]

On 1 May 1869, Annie married her maternal relative John Chapman, a coachman, at All Saints Church in the Knightsbridge district of London.[1] For some years the couple lived at addresses in West London, and they had three children:

  • Emily Ruth Chapman, born on 25 June 1870.
  • Annie Georgina Chapman, born on 5 June 1873.
  • John Alfred Chapman, born on 21 November 1880.

In 1881 the family moved to Windsor, Berkshire, where John Chapman took a job as coachman to a farm bailiff. But young John had been born disabled, while their firstborn, Emily Ruth, died of meningitis shortly after at the age of 12. Following this, both Chapman and her husband took to heavy drinking and separated in 1884.[1]

By the time of her death, young John was said to be in the care of a charitable school and the surviving daughter Annie Georgina, then an adolescent, was travelling with a circus in the French Third Republic.[1]

Life in Whitechapel[edit]

Annie Chapman eventually moved to Whitechapel, where in 1886 she was living with a man who made wire sieves; because of this she was often known as Annie "Sievey" or "Siffey".[2] After she and her husband separated, she had received an allowance of 10 shillings a week from him, but at the end of 1886 the payments stopped abruptly. On inquiring why they had stopped, she found her husband had died of alcohol-related causes. The sieve-maker left her soon after, possibly due to the cessation of her income. One of her friends later testified that Chapman became very depressed after this and seemed to give up on life. Her friends called her "Dark Annie", for her dark brown hair.

By 1888 Chapman was living in common lodging houses in Whitechapel, occasionally in the company of Edward "the Pensioner" Stanley, a bricklayer's labourer. She earned some income from crochet work, making antimacassars and selling flowers, supplemented by casual prostitution. An acquaintance described her as "very civil and industrious when sober", but noted "I have often seen her the worse for drink."[3]

In the week before her death she was feeling ill after being bruised in a fight with Eliza Cooper, a fellow resident in Crossingham's lodging house at 35 Dorset Street, Spitalfields. The two were reportedly rivals for the affections of a local hawker called Harry, but Eliza claimed the fight was over a borrowed bar of soap that Annie had not returned.[4]

Last hours and death[edit]

Mortuary photograph of Annie Chapman. She was 5 feet tall and had blue eyes and wavy dark brown hair.[5]
Two views of the back yard of 29 Hanbury Street in 1967. The lower view, facing the rear of the house, is the location of or close to the location of where Chapman's body was found.
The location of 29 Hanbury Street in 2008.

According to the lodging house deputy Tim Donovan and the watchman John Evans, at about 1:45 a.m. on the morning of her death, Chapman found herself without money for her lodging and went out to earn some on the street.[6] At the inquest one of the witnesses, Mrs. Elizabeth Long[7] testified that she had seen Chapman talking to a man at about 5:30 a.m. just beyond the back yard of 29 Hanbury Street, Spitalfields. Mrs. Long described him as over forty, and a little taller than Chapman, with dark hair, and of foreign, "shabby-genteel" appearance.[8] He was wearing a deer-stalker hat and dark overcoat.[8] If correct in her identification of Chapman, it is likely that Long was the last person to see Chapman alive besides her murderer. Chapman's body was discovered at just before 6:00 a.m. on the morning of 8 September 1888 by a resident of number 29, market porter John Davis. She was lying on the ground near a doorway in the back yard. John Richardson, the son of a resident of the house, had been in the back yard shortly before 5 a.m. to trim a loose piece of leather from his boot,[9] and carpenter Albert Cadosch had entered the neighbouring yard at 27 Hanbury Street at about 5:30 a.m., and heard voices in the yard followed by the sound of something falling against the fence.[10]

Two pills, which she had for a lung condition, part of a torn envelope, a piece of muslin, and a comb were recovered from the yard. Brass rings that Chapman had been wearing earlier were not recovered, either because she had pawned them or because they had been stolen.[11] All the pawnbrokers in the area were searched for the rings without success.[12] The envelope bore the crest of the Sussex regiment, and was briefly thought to be related to Stanley who pretended to be an army pensioner, but the clue was eliminated from the inquiry after it was later traced to Crossingham's lodging house, where Chapman had taken up the envelope for re-use as a container for her pills.[13] The press claimed that two farthings were found in the yard, but they are not mentioned in the surviving police records.[12] The local inspector of the Metropolitan Police Service, Edmund Reid of H Division Whitechapel, was reported as mentioning them at an inquest in 1889, and the acting Commissioner of the City Police, Major Henry Smith, mentioned them in his memoirs.[9] Smith's memoirs, however, are unreliable and embellished for dramatic effect, and were written more than twenty years after the event.[14] He claimed that medical students polished farthings so they could be passed off as sovereigns to unsuspecting prostitutes, and so the presence of the farthings suggested the culprit was a medical student, but the price of a prostitute in the East End was likely to be much less than a sovereign.[9]

The first officer on the scene was inspector Joseph Luniss Chandler of H Division, but Chief Inspector Donald Swanson of Scotland Yard was placed in overall command on 15 September.[15] The murder was quickly linked to similar murders in the district, particularly to that of Mary Ann Nichols a week previously. Nichols had also suffered a slash to the throat and abdominal wounds, and a blade of similar size and design had been used. Swanson reported that an "immediate and searching enquiry was made at all common lodging houses to ascertain if anyone had entered that morning with blood on his hands or clothes, or under any suspicious circumstances".[16] The body was conveyed later that day to Whitechapel mortuary in the same police ambulance, which was a handcart just large enough for one coffin, used for Nichols by Sergeant Edward Badham.[17] Badham was the first to testify at the subsequent inquest.

Inquest[edit]

The inquest was opened on 10 September at the Working Lad's Institute, Whitechapel, by local coroner Wynne Edwin Baxter. Evidence indicated that Chapman may have been killed as late as 5:30 a.m., in the enclosed back yard of a house occupied by sixteen people, none of whom had seen or heard anything at the time of the murder.[18] The passage through the house to the back-yard was not locked, as it was frequented by the residents at all hours of the day, and the front door was wide open when the body was discovered.[19] Richardson said that he had often seen strangers, both men and women, in the passage of the house.[20] Dr George Bagster Phillips, the police surgeon, described the body as he saw it at 6:30 a.m. in the back yard of the house at 29 Hanbury Street:

The left arm was placed across the left breast. The legs were drawn up, the feet resting on the ground, and the knees turned outwards. The face was swollen and turned on the right side. The tongue protruded between the front teeth, but not beyond the lips. The tongue was evidently much swollen. The front teeth were perfect as far as the first molar, top and bottom and very fine teeth they were. The body was terribly mutilated ... the stiffness of the limbs was not marked, but was evidently commencing. He noticed that the throat was dissevered deeply; that the incision through the skin were jagged and reached right round the neck ... On the wooden paling between the yard in question and the next, smears of blood, corresponding to where the head of the deceased lay, were to be seen. These were about 14 inches from the ground, and immediately above the part where the blood from the neck lay. ...

The instrument used at the throat and abdomen was the same. It must have been a very sharp knife with a thin narrow blade, and must have been at least 6 to 8 inches in length, probably longer. He should say that the injuries could not have been inflicted by a bayonet or a sword bayonet. They could have been done by such an instrument as a medical man used for post-mortem purposes, but the ordinary surgical cases might not contain such an instrument. Those used by the slaughtermen, well ground down, might have caused them. He thought the knives used by those in the leather trade would not be long enough in the blade. There were indications of anatomical knowledge ... he should say that the deceased had been dead at least two hours, and probably more, when he first saw her; but it was right to mention that it was a fairly cool morning, and that the body would be more apt to cool rapidly from its having lost a great quantity of blood. There was no evidence ... of a struggle having taken place. He was positive the deceased entered the yard alive ...

A handkerchief was round the throat of the deceased when he saw it early in the morning. He should say it was not tied on after the throat was cut.[21]

Her throat was cut from left to right, and she had been disembowelled, with her intestines thrown out of her abdomen over each of her shoulders. The morgue examination revealed that part of her uterus was missing. Chapman's protruding tongue and swollen face led Dr Phillips to think that she may have been asphyxiated with the handkerchief around her neck before her throat was cut.[22] As there was no blood trail leading to the yard, he was certain that she was killed where she was found. He concluded that she suffered from a long-standing lung disease, that the victim was sober at the time of death, and had not consumed alcoholic beverages for at least some hours before it.[23] Phillips was of the opinion that the murderer must have possessed anatomical knowledge to have sliced out the reproductive organs in a single movement with a blade about 6–8 inches (15–20 cm) long.[24] However, the idea that the murderer possessed surgical skill was dismissed by other experts.[25] As her body was not examined extensively at the scene, it has also been suggested that the organ was removed by mortuary staff, who took advantage of bodies that had already been opened to extract organs that they could then sell as surgical specimens.[26] In his summing up, Coroner Baxter raised the possibility that Chapman was murdered deliberately to obtain the uterus, on the basis that an American had made inquiries at a London medical school for the purchase of such organs.[27] The Lancet rejected Baxter's suggestion scathingly, pointed out "certain improbabilities and absurdities", and said it was "a grave error of judgement".[28] The British Medical Journal was similarly dismissive, and reported that the physician who requested the samples was a highly reputable doctor, unnamed, who had left the country 18 months before the murder.[29] Baxter dropped the theory and never referred to it again.[30] The Chicago Tribune claimed the American doctor was from Philadelphia,[31] and author Philip Sugden later speculated that the man in question was the notorious Francis Tumblety.[32]

Dr Phillips's estimate of the time of death (4:30 a.m. or before) contradicted the testimony of the witnesses Richardson, Long and Cadosch, which placed the murder later. Victorian methods of estimating time of death, such as measuring body temperature, were crude, and Phillips highlighted at the inquest that the body could have cooled more quickly than normally expected.[33]

Funeral[edit]

Annie Chapman was buried on 14 September 1888. At 7:00 a.m. that day, a hearse supplied by Hanbury Street undertaker H. Smith went to the Whitechapel Mortuary in Montague Street, the utmost secrecy having been observed, and none but the undertaker, police, and relatives of the deceased knowing anything about the arrangements. Her body was placed in a black-draped elm coffin and was then driven to Harry Hawes, a Spitalfields undertaker, who arranged the funeral. At 9:00 a.m., the hearse (without mourning coaches so as not to attract the public's attention) took the body to the Manor Park Cemetery, Sebert Road, Forest Gate, London, where she was buried in a public grave.

Her relatives, who paid for the funeral, met the hearse at the cemetery and, by request, kept the funeral a secret and were the only mourners to attend. The coffin bore the words "Annie Chapman, died Sept. 8, 1888, aged 48 years."[34] Chapman's grave no longer exists; it has since been buried over. In 2008, the cemetery authorities decided to mark her grave with a plaque.

Aftermath[edit]

Ghastly murder in the East End. Dreadful mutilation of a woman. Capture: Leather Apron
Newspaper broadsheet referring to the killer as "Leather Apron", September 1888

A leather apron belonging to John Richardson lay under a tap in the yard, placed there by his mother who had washed it.[35] Richardson was investigated thoroughly by the police, but was eliminated from the inquiry.[36] Garbled reports of the apron probably fed rumours that a local Jew called "Leather Apron" was responsible for the murders.[37] The Manchester Guardian reported that: "Whatever information may be in the possession of the police they deem it necessary to keep secret ... It is believed their attention is particularly directed to ... a notorious character known as 'Leather Apron'."[38] Journalists were frustrated by the unwillingness of the CID to reveal details of their investigation to the public, and so resorted to writing reports of questionable veracity.[39] Imaginative descriptions of "Leather Apron", using crude Jewish stereotypes, appeared in the press,[40] but rival journalists dismissed these as "a mythical outgrowth of the reporter's fancy".[41][42] John Pizer, a Polish Jew who made footwear from leather, was known by the name "Leather Apron"[43] and was arrested, even though the investigating inspector reported that "at present there is no evidence whatsoever against him".[44] He was soon released after the confirmation of his alibis.[45] Pizer was called as a witness at Chapman's inquest to clear his name, and demolish the false lead that "Leather Apron" was the killer.[46] Pizer successfully obtained monetary compensation from at least one newspaper that had named him as the murderer,[47] and the name "Leather Apron" was soon supplanted by "Jack the Ripper" as the media's favourite moniker for the murderer.[48]

The police made several other arrests. Ship's cook William Henry Piggott was detained after being found in possession of a blood-stained shirt while making misogynist remarks. He claimed that he had been bitten by a woman, and the blood was his.[49] He was investigated, cleared and released.[50] Swiss butcher Jacob Isenschmidt matched the description of a blood-stained man seen acting strangely on the morning of the murder by a public house landlady, Mrs Fiddymont. His distinctive appearance included a large ginger moustache, and he had a history of mental illness. He was detained in a mental asylum. German hairdresser Charles Ludwig was arrested after he attempted to stab a man at a coffee stall shortly after attacking a prostitute. Isenschmidt and Ludwig were exonerated after another murder was committed while they were in custody.[51] Other suspects named in the police files and contemporary newspapers include Friedrich Schumacher, pedlar Edward McKenna, apothecary and mental patient Oswald Puckridge, and insane medical student John Sanders, but there was no evidence against any of them.[52]

Edward Stanley was eliminated as a suspect as his alibis for the nights of two of the murders were confirmed. On 30–31 August, when Mary Ann Nichols was killed, he was on duty with the Hampshire militia in Gosport, and on the night of Chapman's murder he was at his lodgings.[53]

Portrayals[edit]

  • Jack the Ripper: The Definitive Story (2011) TV Played by Dianne Learmouth
  • The Real Jack the Ripper (2010) TV Played by Sharon Buhagiar
  • Jack, the Last Victim (2005) Played by Michelle Jeffry
  • From Hell. (2001) Film Played by Katrin Cartlidge
  • Love Lies Bleeding (1999) Played by Michaela Hans
  • Jack the Ripper (1988) TV Played by Deirdre Costello
  • A Study in Terror Film Played by Barbara Windsor

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b c 'Annie Chapman: Jack the Ripper Victim A Short Biography'. Written and published by Neal Shelden (2001)
  2. ^ Evans and Rumbelow, p. 66
  3. ^ Amelia Farmer, quoted at the inquest by Wilson and Odell, p. 27
  4. ^ Fido, p. 28
  5. ^ Evans and Skinner, The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Sourcebook, pp. 50–51, 69
  6. ^ Evans and Rumbelow, p. 66; Evans and Skinner, The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Sourcebook, p. 73; Fido, pp. 28–30; Wilson and Odell, pp. 27–28
  7. ^ Newspaper reports also refer to her as Mrs Darrell, which caused authors such as Martin Fido to mistakenly think Darrell and Long were two different women (see Fido, pp. 30–31, 94). In the police records, however, she is identified as "Long Mrs. alias Durrell" (HO 144/221/A49301C f. 136, quoted in Evans and Rumbelow, p. 289).
  8. ^ a b Begg, p. 153; Cook, p. 163; Evans and Skinner, The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Sourcebook, p. 98; Marriott, pp. 59–75
  9. ^ a b c Fido, p. 31
  10. ^ Begg, p. 153; Evans and Skinner, The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Sourcebook, p. 100; Marriott, pp. 59–75
  11. ^ Fido, pp. 31–32
  12. ^ a b Evans and Rumbelow, p. 69
  13. ^ Fido, p. 32
  14. ^ Fido, pp. 50, 120
  15. ^ Evans and Rumbelow, pp. 69, 85
  16. ^ Report of Superintendent Swanson, 19 October 1888, quoted in Evans and Skinner, The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Sourcebook, p. 68
  17. ^ Marriott, p. 46
  18. ^ Coroner Baxter quoted in Marriott, p. 71
  19. ^ Evans and Skinner, The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Sourcebook, p. 71
  20. ^ Evans and Skinner, The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Sourcebook, p. 78
  21. ^ The Times, 14 September 1888, quoted in Evans and Skinner, The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Sourcebook, pp. 85–88
  22. ^ Evans and Rumbelow, p. 72; Fido, p. 34
  23. ^ Phillips's inquest testimony quoted in Marriott, pp. 53–54
  24. ^ Cook, p. 221; Evans and Rumbelow, pp. 71–72; Evans and Skinner, The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Sourcebook, pp. 67–68, 87; Marriott, pp. 26–29; Rumbelow, p. 42
  25. ^ Fido, p. 35; Marriott, pp. 77–79
  26. ^ Marriott, pp. 77–79
  27. ^ Evans and Rumbelow, p. 89; Evans and Skinner, The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Sourcebook, p. 106; Fido, p. 35; Marriott, p. 73
  28. ^ The Lancet, 29 September 1888, quoted in Evans and Rumbelow, pp. 89–90
  29. ^ British Medical Journal, 6 October 1888, quoted in Evans and Rumbelow, p. 92 and Fido, p. 36
  30. ^ Evans and Rumbelow, p. 90; Fido, p. 36
  31. ^ Chicago Tribune, 7 October 1888, quoted in Evans and Rumbelow, p. 93
  32. ^ Evans and Rumbelow, p. 93
  33. ^ Evans and Rumbelow, pp. 73–74
  34. ^ The Daily Telegraph, 15 September 1888, p. 3
  35. ^ Evans and Rumbelow, p. 69: Marriott, p. 38
  36. ^ Donald Swanson quoted in Evans and Rumbelow, p. 73, see also p. 75
  37. ^ Cook, pp. 63–64; Evans and Rumbelow, p. 69; Wilson and Odell, p. 232
  38. ^ Manchester Guardian, 6 September 1888, quoted in Begg, p. 98
  39. ^ Begg, p. 214
  40. ^ e.g. Manchester Guardian, 10 September 1888, and Austin Statesman, 5 September 1888, quoted in Begg, pp. 98–99; The Star, 5 September 1888, quoted in Evans and Rumbelow, p. 80
  41. ^ Leytonstone Express and Independent, 8 September 1888, quoted in Begg, p. 99
  42. ^ See also 'Daily News, 10 September 1888, quoted in Fido, p. 37
  43. ^ e.g. Marriott, p. 251; Rumbelow, p. 49
  44. ^ Report by Inspector Joseph Helson, CID 'J' Division, in the Metropolitan Police archive, MEPO 3/140 ff. 235–8, quoted in Begg, p. 99 and Evans and Skinner, The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Sourcebook, p. 24
  45. ^ Begg, p. 157; Cook, pp. 65–66; Evans and Skinner, The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Sourcebook, p. 29; Marriott, pp. 59–75; Rumbelow, pp. 49–50
  46. ^ Fido, p. 38
  47. ^ O'Connor, T. P. (1929). Memoirs of an Old Parliamentarian. London: Ernest Benn. Vol. 2, p. 257, quoted in Begg, p. 166 and Cook, pp. 72–73
  48. ^ Evans and Skinner, Jack the Ripper: Letters from Hell, pp. 13, 86; Fido, p. 7
  49. ^ Evans and Rumbelow, p. 83
  50. ^ Evans and Skinner, The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Sourcebook, p. 89
  51. ^ Evans and Rumbelow, pp. 86–88
  52. ^ Evans and Rumbelow, pp. 80, 84, 88
  53. ^ Report by Inspector Frederick Abberline, 19 September 1888, quoted in Evans and Skinner, The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Sourcebook, p. 64

Bibliography[edit]

  • Begg, Paul (2003). Jack the Ripper: The Definitive History. London: Pearson Education. ISBN 0-582-50631-X
  • Cook, Andrew (2009). Jack the Ripper. Stroud, Gloucestershire: Amberley Publishing. ISBN 978-1-84868-327-3
  • Evans, Stewart P.; Rumbelow, Donald (2006). Jack the Ripper: Scotland Yard Investigates. Stroud, Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing. ISBN 0-7509-4228-2
  • Evans, Stewart P.; Skinner, Keith (2000). The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Sourcebook: An Illustrated Encyclopedia. London: Constable and Robinson. ISBN 1-84119-225-2
  • Evans, Stewart P.; Skinner, Keith (2001). Jack the Ripper: Letters from Hell. Stroud, Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing. ISBN 0-7509-2549-3
  • Fido, Martin (1987). The Crimes, Death and Detection of Jack the Ripper. Vermont: Trafalgar Square. ISBN 978-0-297-79136-2
  • Marriott, Trevor (2005). Jack the Ripper: The 21st Century Investigation. London: John Blake. ISBN 1-84454-103-7
  • Rumbelow, Donald (2004). The Complete Jack the Ripper: Fully Revised and Updated. Penguin Books. ISBN 0-14-017395-1
  • Wilson, Colin; Odell, Robin (1987) Jack the Ripper: Summing Up and Verdict. Bantam Press. ISBN 0-593-01020-5

External links[edit]

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