Annie Chapman - Wife, Mother, Victim: The Life & Death of a Victim of Jack The Ripper

by Covell, Mike

  THE WHITECHAPEL TRAGEDY. - The inquest into the death of Annie Chapman, the latest of the Whitechapel victims, was concluded on Wednesday. The Coroner, in his summing up, caused much sensation by surmising that the crime was attributable to a desire on the part of the perpetrator to dispose of a portion of the mutilated body to a pathological collector. He stated that he had placed the police in possession of the information he had obtained, and it was probable that some explanation would be elicited from the American authorities. The jury returned a verdict of wilful murder against some person or persons unknown.

  The Penny Illustrated Paper, a London based newspaper, featured the following, dated September 22nd 1888,

  THE WHITECHAPEL MURDERS. Edward M'Kenna, who was taken to Commercial street Police station on Friday night, and there detained, was confronted on Saturday by several witnesses, who failed to recognise him, and he was in consequence liberated. It was ascertained that he had slept at a common lodging house in Brick lane on the night of the murder of Annie Chapman in Hanbury street. Charles Ludwig, forty, a decently attired German, who professed not to understand English, and giving an address at 1 Minories, was charged on Tuesday, at the Thames Police Court, with being drunk and threatening to stab Alexander Finlay, of 51 Leman street, Whitechapel. The prosecutor said that very early that morning he was standing at a coffee stall in the Whitechapel road, when Ludwig came up in a drunken condition. In consequence, the person in charge of the stall refused to serve him. Ludwig seemed much annoyed, and said to witness, “What are you looking at?” He then pulled out a long bladed knife, and tried to stab witness with it. Ludwig followed him round the stall, and made several attempts to stab him, until witness threatened to knock a dish on his head. A constable came up, and he was then given into custody. Constable 221H said when he was called to take the prisoner into custody, he found him in a very excited condition. Witness and Constable Johnson had previously received information that Ludwig was wanted on the City ground for attempting to cut a woman's throat with a razor. On the way to the station the prisoner dropped a long bladed knife, which was open, and when he was searched a razor and a long bladed pair of scissors were found on him. Mr. Saunders said it was clear the prisoner was a dangerous man, and ordered him to be remanded for a week. Considerable excitement prevailed in the neighbourhood, owing to a report that the prisoner, a German barber, was connected with the recent murders in Whitechapel, and that some important discoveries would result from his capture. Detective Inspector Helson, J Division, after the prisoner was remanded, had an interview with him in his cell; but, owing to the prisoner professing not to understand the English language, no information could be got out of him. It is stated that on the day of the murder of Annie Chapman (the 8th inst.) a man was seen in the lavatory of the City News Rooms, Ludgate Circus buildings, changing his clothes. He departed hurriedly, leaving behind him a pair of trousers, a shirt and a pair of socks. Me. Walker, proprietor of the News Rooms, did not hear of the occurrence until late in the afternoon, when his attention was called to the clothes in the lavatory. He did not at the time attach any importance to the fact, and the clothes were thrown into the dust box and placed outside, being carted away in the City sewers' cart on the Monday. On the following Tuesday, however, he received a visit from a man who represented himself to be a police officer, and who asked for the clothes which had been left there on the Saturday. Mr. Walker replied that if he wanted them he would have to go to the Commissioners of the City Sewers, telling him at the same time what he had done with them. Two detectives called on Thursday week, and had an interview with Mr. Walker, and they succeeded in finding a man who saw the party changing his clothes in the lavatory, and he has given the police a description of him. He is described as a man of respectable appearance, about thirty years of age, and wearing a dark moustache. Edward Stanley, the pensioner who was stated to have been frequently in the company of the murdered woman Chapman, on Sept. 14. placed himself in communication with the police, and satisfactorily accounted for his movements. The same day, the funeral of Annie Chapman took place, the utmost secrecy having been observed, and none but the undertaker, police, and relatives of the deceased knew anything about the arrangements. Shortly after seven o'clock a hearse drew up outside the mortuary in Montague street, and the body was quickly removed. At nine o'clock a start was made for Manor Park Cemetery. No coaches followed, as it was desired that public attention should not be attracted. Mr. Smith and other relatives met the body at the cemetery. The black covered elm coffin bore the words: “Annie Chapman, died Sept. 8, 1888, aged 48 years.” Mr. Wynne Baxter on Monday resumed the inquest relative to the death of Mary Ann Nicholls, who was found murdered in Buck's row, Whitechapel, on the 31st ult. The evidence did not throw any new light on the mysterious tragedy, and the inquiry was further adjourned till Saturday. The foreman of the jury expressed the opinion that if a substantial reward had been offered with regard to the first murder in the district the last two murders would never have been perpetrated. The scene of this murder was depicted in The Penny Illustrated Paper for Sept. 8, and the site of the murder of Annie Chapman was illustrated in the Issue of this paper for Sept. 15. Mr. Montagu's offer of £100 reward for the discovery of the murderer of Annie Chapman holds good. On Wednesday Mr. Wynne Baxter resumed the inquiry into the death of Annie Chapman; Dr. Phillips again giving important evidence.

  The St. James's Budget, a London newspaper, featured the following, dated September 22nd 1888,

  THE SPITALFIELDS MURDER. The adjourned inquest on the body of Annie Chapman was resumed on Wednesday. The most important evidence given was that of Dr. Bagster Phillips, who stated the further results of the examination. There were three scratches below the lower jaw and bruises on the face. He thought the face was bruised at the same time that the incision in the throat was made. The rest of the surgical evidence, however, is mainly unfit for publication, beyond the fact that several vital portions of the body were missing. The doctor added that the weapon used must have been at least from five to six inches long, and probably longer. It must also have been very sharp, and the mode in which the abdominal wall was removed indicated a certain amount of anatomical skill. There were also other indications that the murderer had made certain calculations consequent upon the possession of anatomical knowledge. The coroner: How long would all the injuries take to inflict? The witness: I could not have performed all the injuries, even without a struggle being made, under a quarter of an hour. If I had done it in a deliberate way, such as would fall to the duty of a surgeon, it would probably have taken me the best part of an hour. The inquest was then adjourned until next Wednesday. Nearly £300 has been subscribed towards the reward fund.

  The British Medical Journal, dated September 22nd 1888, featured the following,

  THE WHITECHAPEL MURDER. DR. GEORGE BAXTER PHILLIPS gave some remarkable evidence at the adjourned inquiry respecting the mutilations found on the body of Mary Anne Chapman, who was found in the back yard of 29 Hanbury Street, Whitechapel, on the morning of September 8th. He express the opinion that the length of the weapon, which must have been very sharp, was at least five or six inches, probably more. The mode in which the knife had been used, he said, seemed to indicate some anatomical knowledge. The reposts published in the daily press are incomplete. It is there desirable to state that the parts removed were a certain portion of the abdominal wall, including the navel; two thirds of the bladder (posterior and upper portions); the upper third of the vagina and its connection with the uterus; and the whole of the uterus.

  The Daily Telegraph, a newspaper published in London, England, featured the following, dated September 22nd 1888,

  “DARK ANNIE'S” spirit still walks Whitechapel, unavenged by Justice. Most miserable, most desolate, most degraded, most forgotten and forsaken of all her sex in this vast Metropolis, Destiny also reserved for her to perish most awfully and mysteriously of all the recent martyrs of neglect by the hand of some horrible assassin, who, not content wit
h slaying, desecrated and mutilated the body of his victim. The inhuman murderer still comes and goes about our streets free and unpunished, hiding in his guilty heart the secret known only to him, to Heaven, and to the dead. And yet even this forlorn and despised citizeness of London cannot be said to have suffered in vain. On the contrary, she has effected more by her death than many long speeches in Parliament and countless columns of letters to the newspapers could have brought about. She has forced innumerable people who never gave a serious thought before to the subject to realise how it is and where it is that our vast floating population - the waifs and strays of our thoroughfares - live and sleep at nights, and what sort of accommodation our rich and enlightened capital provides for them, after so many Acts of Parliament passed to improve the dwellings of the poor, and so many millions spent by our Board of Works, our vestries, and what not. It is comparatively easy to be virtuous when one retires, at the first feeling of sleep, to a cosy bedroom, with luxurious appointments, all kinds of comforts, and the bright firelight, perchance, dancing upon soft pillows and snowy sheets. It is easy to be respectable even with simple comfort without luxury; but “Dark ANNIE'S” dreadful end has compelled a hundred thousand Londoners to reflect what it must be like to have no home at all except the “common kitchen” of a low lodging-house; to sit there, sick and weak and bruised and wretched, for lack of four pence with which to pay for the right of a “doss”; to be turned out after midnight to earn the requisite pence, anywhere and anyhow; and in course of earning it to come across your murderer and to caress your assassin. The lodging-house keeper's evidence at the inquest upon ANNIE CHAPMAN said: “She was, in her way, a decent woman, and would pay eight pence, which is the price of a double bed, instead of four pence, so that she might have it to herself. At about a quarter to two in the morning I found her sitting by the kitchen fire, and asked her if she was not going up to bed. She said she had no money, and I saw her out of the house, she remarking as I did so that she would soon get the price of a bed and would then come back again.” As all know, she never did come back, and Mr. MATTHEWS, who will not spend a hundred pounds of public money to find her butcher, has not the ghost of an idea where to look for him. Nevertheless, “Dark ANNIE” will effect in one way what fifty Secretaries of State could never accomplish. By her ghastly fate, incurred upon that hard errand to earn a few hours' sleep, she has constrained all London to meditate once more upon these hideous holes and corners where our very poor huddle at night to hide and slumber; these four penny and eight penny resting-places; these filthy dens and gloomy cellars of the slums, whither the poverty and misery of our huge population settle down after daylight, as the dregs fall to the bottom of a vessel in the dark; these foul breeding-places of vice and filthy refuges of recklessness, where womanhood must unsex itself, and self-respect abandons everything to despair, and where to be decent is out of the question and to remain virtuous is unpermitted and impossible. Some mention was made at the inquest upon ANNIE CHAPMAN of a wild proposal to photograph her glazed eyes, and so try if the dying retina would present any image of the cruel monster who killed and mutilated her. Better have listened with ear of imagination at her poor swollen lips, for, without much fancy, a Home Secretary or a Chairman of the Metropolitan Board of Works might have heard them murmuring, “We, your murdered sisters, are what the dreadful homes where we live have made us. Behind your fine squares and handsome streets you continue to leave our wild-beast lairs unchanged and uncleansed. The slums kill us, soul and body, with filth and shame, and spread fever and death among your gentry also, while they are spawn beds for crime and social discontent. When it is possible for the poor of London to live and sleep in decency you will not pick up from backyards so many corpses like mine.” Such, we take it, is one main lesson of the Whitechapel crime, and an effort was made yesterday to show how easy it would be, and also how profitable, to reform and rebuild these back-slums of the Metropolis, where Society positively, as things now stand, propagates disease and cultivates crime. Our Correspondent, a “Ratepayer,” in his letter headed “A Safe Four per Cent.,” pointed out, in a way not to be controverted, how certainly an adequate financial return would be derived from capital judiciously invested in pulling down the worst portions of low-life London, and erecting in the vacant spaces commodious, wholesome, and homelike residential structures. If it be said that official organisations supported by Acts of Parliament already exist for this very purpose, the answer is that they have fallen utterly short of their duty. We have been passing Acts and waiting for the Metropolitan Board of Works to put them into force ever since 1875, and the issue of it all is that, after thirteen years, new and decent dwelling accommodation has been provided for no more than twenty-five thousand nine hundred and fifty-three persons. The work is now necessarily interrupted by the episodical task of deodorising, purifying, and rebuilding the Board of Works itself, and, meantime, many outrageously foul and dangerous blocks, which have been condemned by sanitary authority, remain standing, and putting much money, wrung from misery, into the pockets of vestrymen, among others. For the pathetic fact stands that there is a sufficient revenue to pay interest upon capital in this speculation. Dorset-street, where “Dark ANNIE” lodged, makes up seven hundred beds, Flower-and-Dean-street, near by, one thousand one hundred and fifty, so that the latter locality has a budget in sixpences - earned Heaven knows how - of about two hundred pounds per week. In their worst from, these lodging-houses are the lowest grade of descent for poor families. Below them are only the arches, the entries, and the pavement stones; above them are those tenements, let in apartments, single or double, where again the struggling industrials pay a weekly rent which would more than provide a high yearly interest on the sums necessary to furnish rooms fit for human beings. And think how much depends upon the decency and cleanliness of the home, however humble! How can a woman remain womanly in a hole which she cannot beautify, or tidy, or keep in any way above the level and the look of a dog's kennel? How can girls and boys grow up innocent, or husbands and brothers remain unbrutalised, in dens, known to the authorities, reported to them as nuisances, surveyed, condemned - but still left reeking in dirt and disease. The death rate of these dingy sinks into which the dregs of our population trickle is very large, especially among little children, being thirty-five and forty per thousand; but when we move the inmates to abodes like those erected by the associations headed by Lord RADSTOCK and Lord ROTHSCHILD it sinks at once to eighteen and nineteen. And as the letter of “Ratepayer” showed by incontrovertible figures, not only by demolishing slums and rebuilding them should we save all these lives; not only should we protect the community at large from infectious diseases; not only should we go far to extirpate crime, and to provide London artisans with plenty of employment; but there is a safe and certain four per cent. to be made out of the business - at the very least. In a word, nothing would pay better than doing that which must be done somehow or other, if we would not see the dark shadow of London misery perpetually extending, like a fatal curse, behind the wealth and grandeur of London. Millions and millions of money are eagerly seeking profitable investment in these days of diminished returns from almost all good securities; and people send it abroad to foreigners, sink it in bogus companies, lend it to wild-cat speculators, while, all the time, a perfect mine of gold exists in undeveloped London at their back-doors. The tenants, asking for decent abodes, are there in hundreds of thousands, their money is somehow always forthcoming, the demand for healthy lodgings and homes is incessant, measureless, certain. What, then, blinds sharp-sighted builders and capitalists to the splendid opportunity presented by the slums of our capital? We purposely abstain from dwelling upon the philanthropic aspect of the question - charity dribbles; we want to see a freshet, a flood of capital springing from practical sources and taking the direction of this channel of Pactolus. The best enterprises are those which pay, because they do good all round; and here is one which, with proper management and wise administration, would be better th
an preference shares in the best railways, or Prussian stock, or any foreign rentes. A net and safe four per cent. is something to be desired; but our correspondent has been almost too careful; more than that - sometimes considerably more - has been and can be secured; and the investors in the social improvement of London might farther consider it as a slight bonus thrown in, that they would be doing much more good to their generation and their fellow-men than if they gave all the money away in alms. A famous preacher, once, in inviting contributions from his congregation finished by saying, “ `He that helpeth the poor lendeth to the LORD' - if you like the security, my brethren, down with your cash!” We do not put it on that high ground. What London wants she can pay for, and will handsomely pay for; the weekly rentals of the poor now compose a tribute far in excess of a heavy interest upon all the money needed to transform the slums into decent, commodious, lofty, healthy ranges of edifices, sheltering a cleanly, orderly, and contented proletariat. “A Safe Four per Cent.” There is the charm which, by the magic of financial arithmetic, ought to regenerate the poor quarters of the Metropolis, and, if capitalists will take the momentous matter in hand, Parliament and the public will have a care that red-tape, and Home Secretaries never at home when wanted, shall no more hamper their proceedings.

  The East London Observer, a newspaper published in London, England, featured the following, dated September 22nd 1888,

  THE MURDER MYSTERIES. The inquiry into the circumstances attending the death of Mary Ann Nichols, who was brutally murdered in Buck's-row, Whitechapel, on the 31st ult., was resumed on Monday by Mr. Wynne E. Baxter, at the Working Lads' Institute. Whitechapel-road. Further evidence having been given, the Coroner asked the jury if they would close the inquest or have it adjourned. The jury elected to have it adjourned, so as to give the police a chance to make more inquiries, the foreman intimating that in the opinion of the jury the Government should offer a substantial reward. The inquiry was accordingly adjourned. On Wednesday the Coroner resumed his inquest respecting the death of Annie Chapman, who was found murdered in a yard in Hanbury-street, Whitechapel, on the 8th inst. Dr. Phillips, the divisional surgeon, who made the post-mortem examination, was recalled, and entered into detailed particulars as to the nature of the mutilations inflicted upon the victim. A portion of the body had been removed, and he inferred that it was to obtain possession of this that the operation had been performed. The manner in which the incision had been made indicated a certain amount of anatomical knowledge, and the witness could not himself have effected it, even if there had been no struggle, in less than a quarter of an hour. One other important piece of evidence was that of a woman who saw the deceased talking with a shabby-genteel-looking man, whom she judged to be a foreigner, at half-past five on the morning of the 8th, near the spot where the body was discovered half an hour later. - Edward Stanley, the man referred to as “the pensioner,” also gave evidence as to his association with the deceased, but nothing was elicited connecting him in any way with the crime. - After the evidence, a juryman asked. -Is there any chance of a reward being offered by the Home Secretary? - The Foreman: There is already a reward of £100 offered by Mr. Samuel Montagu, M.P. There is a committee getting up subscriptions, and they expect to get about £200. The coroner has already said that the Government are not prepared to offer a reward. - A Juror: There is more dignity about a Government reward, and I think one ought to be offered. - The Foreman of the Jury: There are several ideas of rewards, and it is supposed that about £300 will be got up. It will all be done by private individuals. - The Coroner: As far as we know, the case is complete. - The Foreman of the Jury: It seems to be a case of murder against some person or persons unknown. - It was then agreed to adjourn the inquiry until next Wednesday before deciding upon the terms of the verdict.