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

by Covell, Mike

  September 30th 1888

  Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper, published in London, featured the following, dated September 30th 1888,

  HANBURY-STREET TRAGEDY. STARTLING STATEMENT - VERDICT. Mr. Wynne Baxter resumed the adjourned inquest at the Working Lads' institute, Whitechapel, on Wednesday, on the body of Annie Chapman, which was found on the morning of the 8th inst., dreadfully mutilated in the backyard of 29, Hanbury-street. The coroner at once proceeded to sum up the evidence to the jury. He congratulated them that their labours were now nearly completed. Although up to the present they had not resulted in the direction of the criminal, he had no doubt that if the perpetrator of this foul murder was eventually discovered their efforts would not have been useless. He then recalled the important facts of the case, which have already been fully detailed in evidence, remarking that “the glimpses of life in those dens which the evidence in this case discloses is sufficient to make us feel that there is much in the 19th century civilisation of which we have small reason to be proud; but you, who are constantly called together to hear the sad tale of starvation, of semi-starvation, of misery, immorality, and wickedness which some of the occupants of the 5,000 beds in this district have every week to relate to coroners' inquests, do not require to be reminded of what life in a Spitalfields lodging-house means. It was in one of these that the older bruises found on the temple and in front of the chest of the deceased were received, in a trumpery quarrel, a week before her death. It was in one of these that she was seen a few hours before her mangled remains were discovered. There is some conflict in the evidence about the time when the deceased was despatched. It is not unusual to find inaccuracy in such details, but this variation is not very great or very important. She was found dead about six o'clock.” HOW THE DEED WAS COMMITTED. After describing the finding of the body, he said as to the deed: “All was done with cool impudence and reckless daring; but, perhaps, nothing is more noticeable than the emptying of her pockets, and the arrangement of their contents with business-like precision in order near her feet. The murder seems, like the Buck's-row case, to have been carried out without any cry. Sixteen people were in the house. The partitions of the different rooms are of wood. The brute who committed the offence did not even take the trouble to cover up his ghastly work, but left the body exposed to the view of the first comer. This accords but little with the trouble taken with the rings, and suggests either that he had at length been disturbed, or that as the daylight broke a sudden fear suggested the danger of detection that he was running. There are two things missing. Her rings had been wrenched from her fingers and have not been found, and the uterus has been taken away. The body has not been dissected, but the injuries have been made by some person who evidently had considerable anatomical skill and knowledge. There are no meaningless cuts. The organ had been taken by one who knew where to find it, what difficulties he would have to contend against, and how he should use his knife, so as to abstract the organ without injury to it. No unskilled person could have known where to find it, or have recognised it when it was found. For instance, no mere slaughterer of animals could have carried out these operations. It must have been someone accustomed to the post-mortem room. The conclusion that the desire was to possess the missing organ seems overwhelming. If the object were robbery, the injuries to the viscera were meaningless, for death had previously resulted from the loss of blood at the neck. The difficulty in believing that the purport of the murderer was the possession of the uterus is natural. It is abhorrent to our feelings to conclude that a life should be taken for so slight an object; but when rightly considered, the reasons for most murders are altogether out of proportion to the guilt. A STARTLING COMMUNICATION.”It has been suggested that the criminal is a lunatic with morbid feelings. This may or may not be the case, but the object of the murderer appears palpably shown by the facts, and it is not necessary to assume lunacy, for it is clear that there is a market for the missing organ. To show you this, I must mention a fact which at the same time proves the assistance which publicity and the newspaper press afford in the detection of crime. Within a few hours of the issue of the morning papers containing a report of the medical evidence given at the last sitting of the court, I received a communication from an officer of one of our great medical schools, that they had information which might or might not have a distinct bearing on our inquiry. I attended at the first opportunity, and was informed by the sub-curator of the Pathological museum that some months ago an American called and asked him to procure a number of specimens of the organ that was missing in the deceased. He stated his willingness to give 20l. a piece for each specimen. He stated that his object was to issue an actual specimen with each copy of a publication on which he was then engaged. He was told that his request was impossible to be complied with, but he still urged his request. He wished them preserved, not in spirits of wine - the usual medium - but in glycerine, in order to preserve them in a flaccid condition, and he wished them sent to America direct. It is known that this request was repeated to another institution of a similar character. Now, is it not possible that the knowledge of this demand may have incited some abandoned wretch to possess himself of a specimen? It seems beyond belief that such inhuman wickedness could enter into the mind of any man, but unfortunately our criminal annals prove that every crime is possible. “I need hardly say that I at once communicated my information to the detective department at Scotland-yard. Of course I do not know what use has been made of it, but I believe that publicity may possibly further elucidate this fact, and therefore I have not withheld from you the information. By means of the Press some further explanation may be forthcoming from America, if not from here. Gentlemen, I have endeavoured to suggest to you the object with which this crime was committed, and the class of person who must have committed it. If the theory of lunacy be correct (which I very much doubt) the class is still further limited; while. If Mrs Long's memory does not fail, and the assumption be correct that the man who was talking to the deceased at half-past five was the culprit, he is even more clearly defined. In addition to his former description, we should know that he was a foreigner, of dark complexion, over 40 years of age, a little taller than the deceased, of shabby-genteel appearance, with a brown deer-stalker hat on his head, and a dark coat on his back. If your views accord with mine, you will be of opinion that we are confronted with a murder of no ordinary character, committed not from jealousy, revenge, or robbery, but from motives less adequate than the many which still disgrace our civilisation, mar our progress, and blot the pages of our Christianity.” The jury consulted for a minute, when The Foreman said: We can only come to one conclusion, and that is that a brutal murder has been perpetrated by some person or persons unknown. That is all we can find as out verdict. I think that will meet the case. The Coroner: Quite so. The Foreman: If that would meet the case we don't want to add anything more. We were to add a rider as regards the mortuary, but that having been done by the previous jury we will allow that to stand as it is. There is only one thing that we may ask. We have sat here for five days, and the majority of the jury now wish to be excluded for at least two years from attending any other coroner's jury in your district. The Coroner: We will endeavour to meet your views; but I am sure, if any important case occurred, you would not be unwilling to serve, as, from your residence in the district, your attendance would be important.

  The People, a newspaper published in London, England, featured the following, dated September 30th 1888,

  CAN IT BE TRUE? In the course of his summing up at the inquest on the body of Annie Chapman, the coroner made a statement to the jury which throws a possible new light of an entirely unexpected kind upon two at least of the four fearful crimes which have been popularly included in the now historic term, “The Whitechapel Murders.” Mr. Wynne Baxter stated in effect that it had come to his knowledge on unimpeachable testimony, that some months ago a request was made by an American to the authorities of more than one of the London hospitals for a number of spec
imens of the particular organ which was missing from the body of the unfortunate Chapman. The American professed to wish to issue a specimen of that organ with every copy of a work on which he was engaged; and he offered as much as £20 a piece for them. Here, then, we have at once a possible solution of the mystery. As the coroner said, “the object of the murderer appears palpably shown by the facts, and it is not necessary to assume lunacy, for it is clear that there is a market for the missing organ.” Take the fact of such a proposal having been made, and connect with it the very considerable knowledge of the anatomy of the human body displayed by the murderer, who, says the coroner, “must have been one accustomed to the post mortem room.” What is, at first sight, the obvious conclusion? That some abandoned villain, who had himself been asked to provide these specimens, or who knew that they were desired, deliberately started out to assassinate wretched women for the sake of the considerable sum offered for each specimen. This theory, horrible as it is, is undoubtedly strengthened by the fact that the murderer evidently knew exactly how to compress the throat of his victim in such a way as to prevent a single cry escaping and to produce strangulation. Furthermore, the case of Nicholls the Buck's row victim, indicates that she, too, was murdered with the same ghastly intention though the assassin was unable to complete his work on her dead body and carry off that which he sought. As to the two previous murders and the one at Gateshead they can on this theory have no connection with the cases of Nicholls and Chapman for the injuries inflicted did not point to any attempt to do anything but hack and mutilate the bodies with blind and savage fury. While, however, admitting to the full importance of the clue which is now in the possession of the, as yet, baffled police we cannot but think that there is a disposition on the part of the press and the public to jump immediately to the conclusion that the mystery has been solved except as concerns the detection of the actual criminal. It is only natural that this disposition should exist. After the painful suspense of the past weeks, and the utter absence of any trace of the assassin, the public mind rests with a sense of relief on any coherent explanation of the motive of these fantastic exploits in assassination. For that very reason, that we are all so anxious to solve the problem, we should all remember that the proposed solution is as yet but a theory. And plausible as that theory is, there is yet a good deal to be said against it. The persons who take it as proved that some one who knew that certain specimens were wanted set forth at once to slay his fellow creatures in order to obtain them seemed to imagine that the specimens could be obtained in no other way. That is utterly erroneous. Of course, the authorities of a hospital would never consent to provide them; anything of the kind would be a flagrant transgression of the rule which obtains, we believe, at all such institutions that no portions of the human body may in any circumstance be taken outside the hospital. Nowadays, a medical student who wants to remove a specimen for dissection or study must do so more or less surreptitiously, and no such request as that of which the coroner was informed could possible, we undertake to say, be granted by any responsible official. But it requires no very intimate knowledge of the ways of hospitals to understand that there are always a certain number of irresponsible underlings about the place who, for a sufficient consideration would undertake to procure specimens of any organ in the human body. Assuming it to be known in any one of our large hospitals that there was £20 to be had as the price of a small organ such as the one in question, there would be no lack of persons ready to get possession of specimens in a more or less legitimate way of the thing required. The last plan which would occur to any one connected with a hospital would be murder of this kind, with all its risk of detection. We admit that there is much to be said at first sight for the theory, and we are also aware that the unexpected happens more frequently in criminal than in many other matters. But, without losing sight of those considerations, we are far from satisfied, for the reasons we have alleged that the latest theory, which has succeeded to so many others, is really correct. THE EAST END HORRORS. INQUEST ON ANNIE CHAPMAN. Startling Disclosures - A Revolting Theory. The inquest respecting the death of Annie Chapman, whose body was found in a mutilated state in the back yard of the house, 29 Hanbury street, Spitalfields, about six o'clock on the morning of the 8th inst., was resumed on Wednesday afternoon by Mr. Wynne E. Baxter and a jury, at the Working Lads' Institute, Whitechapel road. The coroner, in the course of an elaborate and very remarkable summing up, said: I congratulate you, gentlemen of the jury, that your labours are now nearly completed. Although up to the present they have not resulted in the detection of the criminal, I have no doubt that if the perpetrator of this foul murder is eventually discovered our efforts will not have been useless. Deceased was a widow, 47 years old, named Annie Chapman. Her husband was a coachman living at Windsor. For three or four years before his death she had lived apart from her husband, who allowed her 10s. a week until his death at Christmas, 1886. She had evidently lived an immoral life for some time, and her habits and surroundings had become worse since her means had failed. She no longer visited her relations, and her brother had not seen her for five months when she borrowed a small sum from him. She lived principally in the common lodging houses in the neighbourhood of Spitalfields, where people herd like cattle. She showed signs of great deprivation, as if she had been badly fed. The glimpses of life in those dens which the evidence in this case discloses is sufficient to make us feel that there is much in the nineteenth century civilisation of which we have small reason to be proud; but you who are constantly called together to hear the sad tale of starvation, or semi starvation, of Misery, Immorality, and Wickedness which some of the occupants of the 5,000 beds in this district have every week to relate at coroners' inquests, do not require to be reminded of what life in a Spitalfields lodging house means. It was in one of these that the older bruises found on the temple and in front of the chest of the deceased were received, in a trumpery quarrel, a week before her death. It was in one of these that she was seen a few hours before her mangled remains were discovered. On the afternoon and evening of Friday, September 7th, she divided her time partly in such a place as 35 Dorset street, and partly in the Ringers public house - where she spent whatever money she had; so that between one and two in the morning of Saturday, when the money for her bed is demanded, she is obliged to admit that she is without means, and at once turns out into the street to find it. She leaves there at 1.45 a.m. She is seen off the premises by the night watchman, and is observed to turn down Little Paternoster row into Brushfield street, and not in the more direct direction of Hanbury street. On her wedding finger she was wearing two or three rings, which appear to have been palpably of base metal, as the witnesses are all clear about their material and value. We now lose sight of her for about four hours, but at half past five, Mrs. Long is in Hanbury street on her way from home in Church street, Whitechapel, to Spitalfields market. She walked on the northern side of the road going westward, and remembers having seen a man and a woman standing a few yards from the place where the deceased was afterwards found. And. although she did not know Annie Chapman, she is positive that that woman was the deceased. The two were talking loudly, but not sufficiently so as to arouse her suspicions that there was anything wrong. The words she overheard were calculated to do so. The laconic inquiry of the man, “Will You?” and the simple assent of the woman, viewed in the light of subsequent events, can be easily translated and explained. Mrs. Long passed on her way and neither saw nor heard anything more of her, and this is the last time she is known to have been alive. She was found dead about six o'clock. She was not in the yard when Richardson was there at 4.50 a.m. She was talking outside the house at half past five when Mrs. Long passed them. Cadosh says it was about 5.20 when he was in the back yard of the adjoining house, and heard a voice say “No,” and three or four minutes afterwards a fall against the fence; but if he out of his reckoning but a quarter of an hour, the discrepancy in the evidence of facts vanishes, and he may be mistaken, for he admits that he
did not get up till a quarter past five, and that it was only after the half hour when he passed Spitalfields clock. It is true that Dr. Phillips thinks that when he saw the body at 6.30 the deceased had been dead at least two hours, but he admits that the coldness of he morning and the great loss of blood may affect his opinion; and if the evidence of the other witnesses be correct, Dr. Phillips has miscalculated the effect of those forces. But many minutes after Mrs. Long passed them cannot have elapsed before a mutilated corpse in the yard of 29 Hanbury street, close by where she was last seen by any witness. The House in Hanbury street. This place is a fair sample of a large number of houses in the neighbourhood. It was built, like hundreds of others, for the Spitalfields weavers, and when hand looms were driven by steam power, these were converted into dwellings for the poor. Its size is about such as a superior artisan would occupy in the country, but its condition is such as would to a certainty leave it without a tenant. In this place seventeen persons were living, from a woman and her son, sleeping in a cat's meat shop on the ground floor, to Davis and his wife and their three grown up sons, all sleeping together in an attic. The street door and the yard door were never locked, and the passage and the yard appear to have been constantly used by people who had no legitimate business there. There is little doubt that the deceased knew the place, for it was only 300 or 400 yards from where she lodged. If so, it is quite unnecessary to assume that her companion had any knowledge - in fact, it is easier to believe that he was ignorant both of the nest of living beings by whom he was surrounded, and of their occupations and habits. Some were on the move late at night, some were up long before the sun. A carman named Thompson left the house for his work as early as 3.50 a.m.; an hour later John Richardson was paying the house a visit of inspection; shortly after 5.15 Cadosh, who lived in the next house, was in the adjoining yard twice. Davis, the carman, who occupied the third floor front, heard the church clock strike a quarter to six, got up, had a cup of tea, and went into the back yard, and was horrified to find the mangled body of the deceased. It was then a little after 6 a.m. - a very little, for at ten minutes past the hour Inspector Chandler had been informed of the discovery while on duty in Commercial street. There is nothing to suggest that the deceased was not fully Conscious of What She was Doing. It is true that she had passed through some stages of intoxication, for, although she appeared perfectly sober to her friend who met her in Dorset street at five o'clock the previous evening, she had been drinking afterwards, and when she left the lodging house shortly after two o'clock the night watchman noticed that she was the worse for drink, but not badly so, while the “deputy” of the lodging house asserts that though she had evidently been drinking she could walk straight. Dr. Phillips is convinced that she had not taken any alcohol for some time. The deceased, therefore, entered the house in full possession of her faculties, although with a very different object to her companion. From the evidence which the condition of the yard affords and the medical examination discloses, it appears that after the two had passed through the passage and opened the swing door at the end, they descended the three steps into the yard. On their left hand side there was a recess between those steps and the palings. Here, a few feet from the house and a less distance from the paling, they must have stood. Fiendish Work. The wretch must have then seized the deceased, perhaps with Judas like approaches. He seized her by the chin. He pressed her throat, and while thus preventing the slightest cry, he at the same time produced insensibility and suffocation. There is no evidence of any struggle. The clothes are not torn. Even in these preliminaries the wretch seems to have known how to carry out efficiently his nefarious work. The deceased was then lowered to the ground, and laid on her back; and although in doing so she may have fallen slightly against the fence, this movement was probably effected with care. Her throat was then cut in two places with savage determination, and the injuries to the abdomen commenced. All was done with cool impudence and reckless daring; but, perhaps, nothing is more noticeable than the emptying of her pockets, and the arrangement of their contents with businesslike precision in order near her feet. The murder seems, like the Buck's row case, to have been carried out without any cry. Sixteen people were in the house. The partitions of the different rooms are of wood. Davis was not asleep after 3.0 a.m., except for three quarters of an hour, or less, between 5.0 and 5.45. Mrs. Richardson only dozed after 3.0 a.m., and heard no noise during the night. Mrs. Hardiman, who occupies the front ground floor room, did not awake until the noise succeeding the finding of the body had commenced and none of the occupants of the houses by which the yard is surrounded heard anything suspicious. The brute who committed the offence did not even take the trouble to cover up his ghastly work, but left the body exposed to the view of the first comer. This accords but little with the trouble taken with the rings, and suggests either that he had at length been disturbed, or that as daylight broke a sudden fear suggested the danger of detection he was running. “No Unskilful Person.” There are two things missing. Her rings had been wrenched from her fingers, and have not been found, and the uterus has been taken from the abdomen. The body has not been dissected, but the injuries have been made by some one who had considerable anatomical skill and knowledge. There are no meaningless cuts. The organ has been taken by one who knew where to find it, what difficulties he would have to contend against, and how he should use his knife, so as to abstract the organ without injury to it. No unskilled person could have known where to find it, or have recognised it when it was found. For instance, no mere slaughterer of animals could have carried out these operations. It must have been some one accustomed to the post mortem room. The conclusion that the desire was to possess the missing abdominal organ seems overwhelming. The Murderer's Object. If the object were robbery, the injuries to the viscera were meaningless, for death had previously resulted from the loss of blood at the neck. Moreover, when we find an easily accomplished theft of some paltry brass rings and in internal organ taken, after, at least, a quarter of an hour's work, and taken by a skilled person, we are driven to the deduction that the abstraction of the missing portion of abdominal viscera was the object, and the theft of the rings was only a thin veiled blind, an attempt to prevent the real intention being discovered. Had not the medical examination been of a thorough and searching character it might easily have been left unnoticed that there was any portion of the body which had been taken. The difficulty in believing that the purport of the murderer was the possession of the uterus is natural. It is abhorrent to our feelings to conclude that a life should be taken for so slight an object; but when rightly considered, the reasons for most murders are altogether out of proportion to the guilt. It has been suggested that the criminal is a lunatic with morbid feelings. This may or may not be the case, but the object of the murderer appears palpably shown by the facts, and it is not necessary to assume lunacy, for it is clear that there is A Market for the Missing Organ. To show you this, I must mention a fact which at the same time proves the assistance which publicity and the newspapers afford in the detection of crime. Within a few hours of the issue of the morning papers containing a report of the medical evidence given at the last sitting of the court, I received a communication from an officer of one of our great medical schools, that they had information which might or might not have a distinct bearing on our inquiry. I attended at the first opportunity, and was informed by the sub curator of the Pathological Museum that some months ago an American had called on him and asked him to procure and number of specimens of the organ that was missing in the deceased. He stated his willingness to give £20 a piece for each specimen. He stated that his object was to issue an actual specimen with each copy of a publication on which he was then engaged. He was told that his request was impossible to be complied with, but he still urged his request. He wished them preserved, not in spirits of wine, the usual medium, but in glycerine, in order to preserve them in a flaccid condition, and he wished them sent to America direct. It is known that this demand was repeated to
another institution of a similar character. The Coroner's Theory. Now, is it not possible that the knowledge of this demand may have incited some abandoned wretch to possess himself of a specimen? It seems beyond belief that such inhuman wickedness could enter into the mind of any man, but, unfortunately, our criminal annals prove that every crime is possible. I need hardly say that I at once communicated my information to the Detective Department at Scotland Yard. Of course, I do not know what use has been made of it, but I believe that publicity may possible further elucidate this fact, and therefore I have not withheld from you the information. By means of the press some further explanation may be forthcoming from America, if not from here. Gentlemen, I have endeavoured to suggest to you the object with which this crime was committed, and the class of person who must have committed it. The greatest deterrent from crime is the conviction that detection and punishment will follow with rapidity and certainty, and it may be that the impunity with which Mary Anne Smith and Anne Tabram were murdered suggested the possibility of such horrid crimes as those which you and another jury have recently been considering. It is, therefore, a great misfortune that nearly three weeks have elapsed without the chief actor in this awful tragedy having been discovered. The Detectives and the Clue. Surely, it is not too much even yet to hope that the ingenuity of our detective force will succeed in unearthing this monster. It is not as if there were no clue to the character of the criminal or the cause of his crime. His object is clearly divulged. His anatomical knowledge carries him out of the category of a common criminal, for that knowledge could only have been obtained by assisting at post mortem examinations, or by frequenting the post mortem room. Thus, the class in which search must be made, although a large one, is limited. Moreover, it must have been a man who was from home, if not all night, at least during the early hours of the 8th of September. His hands were undoubtedly bloodstained, for he did not stop to use the tap in the yard, as the pan of clean water under it shows. If the theory of lunacy be correct (which I very much doubt) the class is still further limited; while if Mrs. Long's memory does not fail, and the assumption be correct that the man whop was talking to the deceased at half past five was the culprit, he is even more closely defined. In addition to his former description we should know that he was a foreigner of dark complexion, over 40 years of age, a little taller than the deceased, of shabby genteel appearance, with a brown deerstalker hat on his head and dark coat on his back. If your views accord with mine, you will be of opinion that we are confronted with a murder of no ordinary character, committed, not from jealousy, revenge, or robbery, but from motives less adequate than the many which still disgrace our civilisation, mar our progress and blot the pages of our Christianity. The Verdict. The jury consulted for a minute, when the foreman said: We can only come to one conclusion, and that is that a brutal murder has been perpetrated by some person or persons unknown. That is all we can find as our verdict. I think that will meet the case. The Coroner: Quite so. The Foreman: If that would meet the case we do not want to add anything more. We were to add a rider as regards the mortuary, but that having been done by the previous jury, we will allow that to stand as it is. There is only one thing that we may ask. We have sat here for five days, and the majority of the jury now wish to be excluded for at least two years from attending on any other coroner's jury in your district. The Coroner: We will endeavour to meet your views; but I am sure, if any important case occurred, you would not be unwilling to serve, as, from your own residence in the district, your attendance would be important. THE WHITECHAPEL MURDERS. An Alleged Confession. The Story Discredited. A man, giving the name of John Fitzgerald, gave himself up at the Wandsworth Police Station on Wednesday night, and made a statement to the inspector on duty to the effect that he committed the murder in Hanbury street. He was afterwards conveyed to the Leman street Police Station, where he was detained during the day, but his story was not worthy of credence. The police have succeeded in tracing his antecedents, and have ascertained definitely where he spent the night of the murder, as well as his movements on the following morning. Their information shows conclusively that he could not have committed the crime. It is expected he will be released. An Unsuccessful Search. The clue afforded by the coroner at the inquest is, of course, being followed up by the police, who have now had the information in their possession for a week, but it has not transpired whether it has yet led to any tangible result. The inquiries of the police would necessarily extend to America, and on that account it may be some time before fresh facts would be in the hands of the public. An important point yet to be made clear is as to whether the object of the murderer was the same in the cases of the woman Nicholls and of Annie Chapman. The coroner in the former case, when he summed up last Saturday, appeared to think that it was, and at the time of expressing that opinion he must have been in receipt of an important communication from the sub curator of the Pathological Museum attached to one of the metropolitan hospitals, to which he referred in his summing up on the body of Annie Chapman. The opinion he expressed last Saturday regarding Nicholls's case thus carries weight. The “shabby genteel” man who was seen in Chapman's company shortly before her murder is being sought for, but up to the present, it would appear, without success. From inquiries made at some of the great medical institutions it has been ascertained that requests similar to that of the American gentleman have before been made, but the peculiar conditions attaching to the requests could not possibly be complied with unless the operations were performed before or immediately after death. Ever since the coroner communicated the facts to the police authorities no stone has been left unturned to follow up the clue, and active inquiries are still proceeding.