The police checked with the authorities at London Hospital to see whether a man covered with blood had asked for treatment. An injured man had sought treatment in the early hours of the morning, but his injuries were not severe enough for him to have been the man the police were seeking. According to the doctors, he was a seafaring man, and after treatment he was allowed to go.
Writing of these events, Leeson said:
There was tremendous excitement now among the police engaged on the case, as it really looked as though they were hot on the trail of the Terror. Next day the excitement spread to the people outside, and big crowds assembled in front of Leman Street Station waiting for the news that Jack the Ripper had been laid by the heels at last.
That night a man was arrested in a Whitechapel public house and taken in for questioning. Whitechapel went mad. The news of the man’s arrest spread rapidly, and everyone took it for granted that the Ripper had at last been caught. There was quite a scuffle when the man was taken into the police station, and a crowd stood outside demanding his blood. If the crowd had managed to seize him he would surely have been lynched.
The arrested man gave his name as James Thomas Sadler, and he said that he was a ship’s fireman from the S.S. Fez in London Docks. He seemed to be ignorant of the murder, but the police were sure he was their man, and he was duly charged with the wilful murder of Frances Coles.
Sadler protested his innocence from the very beginning, but the police badly needed a conviction and public opinion was greatly inflamed. Moreover, the evidence against him was damning. Not only did he admit meeting Frances Coles, but he even said that he had bought her a hat. However, he stated emphatically that after leaving her lodgings at 12:40 A.M. he had not seen her again.
While Sadler was in Holloway Prison stories highly prejudicial to his case were being circulated about him. Some of these tales were so outrageous that questions were asked in the House of Commons, and the Home Secretary spoke of his regret that the newspapers should seek to gratify public curiosity in this way.
With the police and public convinced of his guilt and no one lifting a finger to help him, Sadler, still protesting his innocence, wrote a despairing letter to the Stokers’ Union of which he was a member: “What a godsend my case will be to the police if they can only conduct me, innocent as I am, to the bitter end—the scaffold!”
This pathetic eleventh-hour acclamation of innocence was passed on to Mr. Harry Wilson, who agreed to undertake Sadler’s defence. Wilson soon discovered that the charges against Sadler were not at all what they seemed to be. To begin with, the circumstances of Coles’s death did not altogether match those of the previous victims of the Ripper, and three ship’s captains gave references upholding Sadler’s character and conduct. This certainly disposed of the scurrilous attacks made on Sadler, painting him as a wild-eyed demon with fits of destructive temper.
But the most telling blow in Sadler’s defence was yet to come. Mr. Wilson was able to establish that Sadler had been attacked twice on that night, and thus a major deficiency was exposed in the prosecution’s case.
The police, however, were reluctant to let their man go, and although they managed to draw out the proceedings, it was plain that there was no longer a case against James Sadler. After the magistrate had consulted with the Attorney-General it was decided that no more evidence could be brought against Sadler, and he was duly discharged.
There was a story that a newspaper took one of its competitors to court over the Sadler affair, claiming damages on the sailor’s behalf for articles which had maligned his character. Apparently a sum was awarded to Sadler, and after signing on with a vessel bound for South America he was never seen or heard of again.
Yet another interesting sequel to these events took place when Mr. Wilson was walking down Bow Street a few nights later. He claimed that he was suddenly accosted by a short, thick-set man dressed in black. “Who are you?” asked Wilson. “I am Jack the Ripper,” replied the unknown man, adding, “Perhaps there will soon be some more work for you to do, Mr. Wilson.” The man made off into the darkness, but Wilson noticed that he was clutching a black bag.
Reluctantly in some instances, the police, Press, and public had to admit that Jack the Ripper still eluded them, and that the man Sadler should never have been arrested on that charge at all. The Spectator remarked:
It is almost beyond doubt that, black as the evidence against Sadler originally looked, he did not kill the woman; and it is more than possible, it is almost probable, that she was killed by “Jack the Ripper,” as the populace have nicknamed the systematic murderer of prostitutes in Whitechapel.
The murder of Frances Coles was the last killing in Britain that could be even remotely attributed to Jack the Ripper. Nevertheless the mysterious Jack has become almost a legend, and certainly a standard by which to measure the enormity of the crime of murder. The names of many murderers since 1888 have been coupled with the Ripper, and as recently as 1961 a murderer in Brooklyn known as “The Mad Strangler” was said by the inspector in charge of the case to be “worse than Jack the Ripper.”
After the last Ripper murder in London there came reports of similar murders abroad. From America and Russia came news of such killings during the years 1886 to 1894, and in January 1889 a newspaper in Tunis reported that the Ripper might have been caught there. Apparently the French police had rounded up a number of bandits. Among them was a Briton whose description was said to answer that of a man wanted in connection with the East End murders in London. This man, however, was eventually cleared of suspicion on this count.
From Texas and Jersey City, in the United States, came reports of Ripper-like killings between 1890 and 1892. These led to a careful surveillance of Americans in London, which caused embarrassment to a few visitors and added to the frustration of the police.
The killing of a woman called “Old Shakespeare” in a dock-side hotel in New York in April 1891 again brought the Ripper’s name to people’s tongues. “Has Jack the Ripper arrived?” asked one New York newspaper. This was a good question, because the New York Police Department had smirked at the inability of Scotland Yard to capture the Ripper, and had said that if the notorious Jack started his games in New York City he would be arrested in a matter of hours.
No doubt with extra diligence, the New York Police Department set about catching Jack the Ripper now that he was operating in their territory. “Old Shakespeare,” a drunken wretch, familiar to all the water-front dives, had been strangled and atrociously slashed with a filed-down cooking-knife. Her body had been found lying on the floor of her room in the East River Hotel, and the knife was discovered on the floor by the bed. Some reports remarked that the sign of the cross had been cut upon her thigh. This was given special significance, and even hailed as the mark of Jack the Ripper.
“Old Shakespeare,” whose real name was Carrie Brown, had been seen to arrive at the hotel with a man about 11 P.M. on April 25th. The man was described as medium-sized, stocky, blond, and having the appearance of a seaman. A short while later the police arrested a man who filled this description in general terms, and who was known to frequent that neighbourhood. Locally he answered to the name of “Frenchy,” and as he could not speak English, it was only with difficulty that the New York police established his identity. He was an Algerian-Frenchman named Ameer Ben Ali.*2 Further investigations followed, and by April 30th the police were convinced of “Frenchy’s” guilt. “Frenchy” protested his innocence, and in court his inability to understand English added greatly to the confusion. The jury found “Frenchy” guilty of second-degree murder, and on July 10th, 1891, he was sentenced to prison for life. This was later followed by his admission to a hospital for the criminally insane.
This was not the end of the matter, however, for fresh evidence came to light, and this was to help “Frenchy.” It appeared that a man who was known to have been in “Old Shakespeare’s” company had been observed in the vicinity just prior to the murder. He was never
seen again after the night of the murder, but in his abandoned room the police found a bloodstained shirt and a key which fitted the door of “Old Shakespeare’s” room.
On the strength of this new evidence “Frenchy’s” sentence was commuted, and he was eventually allowed back to his native Algeria. Clearly the police were satisfied that “Frenchy” was not Jack the Ripper, and the man involved by the new evidence was never traced. In fact, the New York police were experiencing some of the frustrations that had beset London’s Metropolitan Police during those terrible months of 1888.
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If “Frenchy”—Ameer Ben Ali’s name—was only loosely connected with that of Jack the Ripper, there were others who had more serious claims to the mantle of the Whitechapel killer. One of these was George Chapman, who was executed at Wandsworth Prison in 1903 for murdering three women.
There were many facts about Chapman’s career that led some people to believe that, apart from the poisonings for which he was executed, he was also responsible for the Whitechapel murders. Chapman was actually of Polish origin, and his real name was Severin Klosowski. He was born in the Polish village of Nargornak in 1865, and there was evidence to indicate that he chose a career in the medical profession. Whether or not he obtained a medical degree is a matter of doubt, but he did serve as a hospital assistant or “barber surgeon.” In Poland this was a post that was technically known as Feldscher, an appointment corresponding to that of a junior surgical assistant.
Klosowski was in Warsaw in 1887, where he met a hairdresser’s traveller from London by the name of Wolff Levisohn. Levisohn later saw Klosowski in London about 1888–89 when the Pole was living in Whitechapel. Klosowski obtained work as a hairdresser’s assistant in Whitechapel High Street, and it was in this capacity that he again met Levisohn.
Severin Klosowski made numerous changes of address until he acquired his own shop in Tottenham’s High Road. However, this business venture failed, and he took jobs in Shoreditch and then in Leytonstone. On August Bank Holiday 1889 he married a Polish woman, and they lived for a while in Cable Street, Whitechapel. Soon afterwards they went to America together, but in February 1891 Mrs. Klosowski returned to England, leaving her husband in the United States.
Klosowski himself reappeared in London’s East End in 1893, and after a while his wife left him altogether. Returning to his hairdressing, Klosowski met a woman named Annie Chapman,*3 and they lived together as man and wife. In fact, Klosowski then adopted the name of George Chapman, but it was not long before Annie Chapman left him. It was then that he set about his murderous ways.
George Chapman, alias Severin Klosowski, murdered three women by antimonial poisoning. His first victim was Mrs. Spink, whom he had met as early as 1895 when he was at Leytonstone. Mrs. Spink, who was separated from her real husband, had private means, and after she “married” Chapman, as Klosowski then called himself, she made several withdrawals from the bank to set him up in a hairdressing business. Mrs. Spink died on Christmas Day two years later.
Chapman next “married” Bessie Taylor, some time between 1898 and 1900. Bessie Taylor had replied to an advertisement for a barmaid that Chapman had inserted in one of the papers. He had by that time acquired a public house, but after living with Chapman for a year or two Bessie Taylor also died.
Maud Marsh, the third victim, also answered an advertisement for a barmaid. She became “married” to Chapman in August 1901, and she died on October 22nd in the following year. Three days after her death Chapman was arrested, and he was duly found guilty of poisoning the three women.
When Chapman was arrested Inspector Abberline, who had featured in the search for the Whitechapel murderer, was said to have remarked to a colleague, “You’ve got Jack the Ripper at last.” Indeed, after Chapman had been convicted of the poisonings the police thought that there was some connection between the poisoner and the Ripper.
The police questioned Chapman’s first wife, the Polish woman who had left him, about his nightly habits at the time of the Ripper murders. She said that he was often out as late as 3 and 4 A.M., and she could offer no reason for these absences. The theory gained ground that long before Jack the Ripper killed Marie Kelly he had become aware of the tremendous risks that he was taking. If George Chapman was Jack the Ripper, then the safer and more subtle means of killing that poisoning offered might have suggested itself to him. Furthermore, having changed his technique, he also changed his class of victim.
Other factors supporting the comparison between Chapman and the Ripper were put forward. The description of the man seen with Marie Kelly would have fitted Chapman, and Chapman, with his medical background, could easily have performed the mutilations on the Ripper’s victims, which in some cases were said to have demanded skill. Moreover, he was living in the Whitechapel area throughout the period of the murders, and when he went to America the murders in the East End stopped. And whilst Chapman was working in a barber’s shop in Jersey City there were reports of a similar outburst of murders in that locality.
Finally, Chapman passed himself off as an American and frequently used Americanisms in conversation. This it was thought could account for the Americanisms such as “Dear Boss” used in the Ripper’s correspondence. This claim, however, was not borne out very faithfully in the letters which Chapman wrote whilst in prison. The following is an example of their style:
Believe me, be careful in your life of dangers of other enimis whom are unnow to you. As you see on your own expirence in my case how I was unjustly criticised and falsly Represented. Also you can see I am not Believed. Therefore you see where there is justice….
This extract seems to bear little resemblance to the letter signed “Jack the Ripper.” There were other inconsistencies too, for some of those who had at one time voiced the opinion that the Ripper was a Polish Jew and believed that this tied in with Chapman forgot that the latter was in fact a Roman Catholic. Whilst it must be admitted that there were similar aspects in the careers of the Ripper and George Chapman, it would seem odd that a man could readily change from killing at least six women by ferocious knifing to tamely poisoning three others.
Many people, among them Inspector Abberline, felt that Chapman was the Ripper, in spite of indications to the contrary. This view was certainly held by other police officers, and Inspector A. F. Neil wrote: “We were never able to secure definite proof that Chapman was the Ripper….In any case, it is the most fitting and sensible solution to the possible identity of the murderer in one of the world’s greatest crime mysteries.”*4
Lord Carson described Chapman as looking “like some evil beast. I almost expected him to leap over the dock and attack me.”*5 No matter how foreboding his appearance, nothing was ever found in Chapman’s personal effects which incriminated him as the killer of Whitechapel prostitutes. If he had any such secrets, then he carried them with him to the gallows.
Another celebrated murderer whose name was linked with that of Jack the Ripper was Dr. Neill Cream. Cream was charged in 1892 with the murders of four women. He too was a poisoner, using strychnine to eliminate the street-walkers of Waterloo and Lambeth. Cream’s association with the Whitechapel murders stemmed from a report that when actually on the scaffold he shouted, “I am Jack the…” just as the bolt was drawn. The truth of this utterance was sworn to by the executioner.
Again there was much about Dr. Neill Cream that would have suited the circumstances of Jack the Ripper’s crimes. Cream received a medical training in Canada, and he graduated from McGill University in 1876. He completed his professional training in Edinburgh, where he became a member of the Royal College of Surgeons and Physicians. Dr. Cream returned to Canada and set up in practice in Ontario, but when one of his patients died after an abortion Cream packed his bags and left for the United States.
In Chicago where he next practised medicine he became involved in two cases of suspected abortion, but nothing could be proved against him. Still sailing close to the wind, Cream was involved in a more se
rious incident in Chicago in 1881. He fatally poisoned the husband of his mistress by putting strychnine in the man’s medicine. Cream might well have got away with this, but, being a supreme exhibitionist, he wrote to the coroner and district attorney alleging that a blunder had been made by the druggist who made up the medicine. All that this action achieved was to throw suspicion on Cream himself.
Dr. Cream hastily made off for Canada, but was brought back to the States for trial, where he was convicted of murder. He was sentenced to life imprisonment, but was released in 1891 after serving ten years. Cream arrived in England in October of the same year, and in the course of the next few months murdered four women. Having failed to learn his lesson in America, Cream, after poisoning his first victim, wrote to the coroner offering to provide information which would lead to the murderer’s arrest. He signed the letter with a fictitious name and the title of detective.
During the course of his murderous career in London Cream wrote many letters, some of them constituting blackmail. One of these letters caused his undoing, and he was arrested and charged with attempting blackmail. In the meantime the police were able to establish evidence identifying Cream as the Lambeth poisoner.
Nowadays Cream would probably have been found insane, but as it was he paid the supreme penalty. Cream has been described as a sadist, a sexual maniac, and a drug fiend, and one of the suggested motives for his murderous activities was that he took the lives of prostitutes because of having contracted venereal disease. There was no medical evidence to support this, but it was established that Cream suffered from agonizing headaches on account of failings in his sight. This it was thought drove him quite out of his mind at times.
The Big Book of Jack the Ripper Page 26