by Ray Black
There is usually no particular victim ‘profile’, the satisfaction simply comes from the killing itself. There is no set pattern, the victim could just as easily be a man, woman, a child or even an animal, the fact that they are responsible for killing something is in itself enough. To these sick people the ritualistic torture, mutilation and sadism are important elements of killing, without it there is simply no ‘thrill’.
George Chapman
George Chapman, otherwise known as Severin Antoniovich Klosowski was dubbed ‘The Borough Poisoner’. Klosowski was one of the suspects in the case of Jack the Ripper because he arrived in London shortly before the murders began, and they stopped after he went to America. He had also studied medicine and surgery in Russia, so he had experiences with human bodies . . .
Severin Antoniovich Klosowski was born in the Polish village of Nargornak on December 14, 1865. His mother was Emile and his father, Antonio, was a carpenter who apprenticed Severin to a senior surgeon named Moshko Rappaport. Severin studied to be a surgeon from December 1880 until October 1885, after which time he finished his studying at the hospital of Praga in Warsaw. Records are uncertain as to whether he actually qualified as a junior surgeon, or indeed when he exactly moved to England. The most likely date appears to be around spring of 1887.
Once in England he started a career as a hairdresser’s assistant, working for a man named Abraham Radin. He stayed in this job for around five months and then started running a barber shop at 126 Cable Street, in the East End of London. It is most likely that this is where he resided during the times of the Ripper murders. In the year 1890, Severin took a similar job in a barber shop on the corner of Whitechapel High Street and George Yard. This is also significant in the Ripper case because Martha Tabram, who was murdered in August 1888, was found in the George Yard buildings, only a few yards from the barber shop.
Severin soon proved that he was a competent barber and gradually moved up from assistant to proprietor of the shop around October 1889. Then he met and married Lucy Baderski in a German Roman Catholic ceremony. He had only met her five weeks before in a Polish Club in Clerkenwell. This was a big mistake for Klosowski, who was already legally married to his first wife whom he had left back in Poland. Somehow, she found out about his bigamous marriage and moved to England in an effort to force Lucy to leave. It appears the three of them cohabited for some time, that is until his first wife had had enough and left. Severin and Baderski had a son, Wladyslaw or Wohystaw, and the family never seemed to live in any one place for very long. Again the dates are a little difficult to prove, but around 1891 they emigrated to New Jersey. It could possibly have been due to the death of their son from pneumonia which prompted their move from London.
Once in New Jersey Klosowski found work once again in a barber’s shop, but by this time the couple were arguing constantly and he ended up attacking Lucy with a knife. Lucy was pregnant at the time, and understandably was very perturbed by the assault, so she returned to live in London in February of 1892. She lived with her sister at 26 Scarborough Street in Whitechapel and their second child, Cecilia, was born on May 15. Klosowski returned to London in June that year and the couple were reunited for a short while, before finally ending the relationship.
In 1893 Klosowski met a woman named Annie Chapman in a hairdresser’s shop in South Tottenham. May I add at this point it was not the same Annie Chapman that was murdered by the Ripper. They became romantically involved and lived together for around a year, that is until Severin started to roam once more. Annie was upset and walked out on Severin even though she was expecting his baby. When Severin eventually found out from Annie about their baby he offered her no support whatsoever. They had no more contact whatsoever, but he did keep one thing from their relationship – her surname. He decided to call himself George Chapman in the hope that he could escape the tangled web of his previous love affairs. But as George Chapman he was no less of a philanderer than Severin Klosowski.
In 1895 Chapman became an assistant in William Wenzel’s barber shop in Leytonstone, and he resided at a lodging house in Forest Road. He soon became friends with an alcoholic called Mary Spink. Mary was down on her luck, she had been deserted by her husband who had also taken her son with him. The relationship developed and they had a mock wedding ceremony at which time Mary signed over the proceeds of a £500 legacy over to Chapman. They leased a barber’s shop in a poor section of Hastings. However, the venture soon turned sour so they moved their location to a more profitable site. They became famous for their ‘musical shaves’ whereby Mary would play the piano whilst her husband would service the customers. Business thrived for a while and soon they had sufficient funds for Chapman to buy himself a boat, which he named ‘Mosquito’. However the success in their business venture did not reflect on their personal relationship and Mary became the subject of brutal beatings. Mary was often heard by the neighbours crying out in the middle of the night. They also witnessed that she had bruises and cuts on her face on many an occasion, and at least once noticed that she had bruise marks around her throat.
On April 3, 1897, Chapman purchased a one ounce dose of tartar-emetic from a pharmacy in the High Street. Tartar-emetic is a white powder which dissolves in water. It contains a substance called antimony which is a colourless, odourless and almost tasteless poison, the effects of which were little known in the late nineteenth century. If the powder were to be taken in large doses it is likely that it would make the person sick and therefore reject it from their system. On the other hand, if it were to be administered in small, regular doses it would induce a slow, gradual and extremely painful death. One interesting side-effect of the poison, however, is that it would preserve the body of the deceased for many years after their death. Soon the business at the barber shop declined rapidly and Chapman resorted to becoming a manager at the Prince of Wales public house in Bartholomew Square. It was while he was working at the pub that Mary started suffering from severe stomach pains and nausea. They called in Dr. Rodgers but he could find no cure, and it was her husband who sat religiously by her bedside. She finally died on Christmas Day, with the cause of death being recorded as phthisis, better known as consumption. Mary had been nursed by two ladies Elizabeth Waymark and Martha Doubleday during her sickness, who later remarked on the condition of Mary’s body, which they said was just a mere skeleton. Doubleday also commented on Chapman’s behaviour after the death of his wife. She said he just stood beside the body and cried ‘Polly, Polly, speak!’ Then he went into the next room and cried, and then went downstairs to open the pub as normal.
His grieving, however, did not last for long. Chapman hired a former restaurant manageress called Bessie Taylor to work at the pub. He didn’t waste any time in getting to know her personally and soon a romance blossomed. Once again there was a fake marriage and once again he started to abuse his new ‘wife’. Bessie started to suffer from the same symptoms as Mary – violent stomach cramps and nausea. She had an operation but it did nothing to improve her rapidly failing health. By now Chapman had left the Prince of Wales pub and was working in another pub called The Grapes in Bishops Stortford.
His next career move was to lease the Monument Tavern in Borough, and all the while Bessie’s condition was deteriorating. Bessie died on what should have been a romantic occasion for her, Valentine’s Day, 1901. The cause of death was recorded as ‘exhaustion from vomiting and diarrhoea’.
Bessie had a good friend by the name of Mrs. Painter who visited her almost every day throughout her illness. She was the constant butt of Chapman’s sick jokes and on more than one occasion would answer ‘Your friend is dead’, when she enquired after her health. However, when she visited on the 15th and asked how her friend was, Chapman simply replied that she was much the same, but much to Mrs. Painter’s indignation she later learned that she had actually died on the previous day. Around the time of his wife’s death Chapman attempted arson on the Monument Tavern as it was about to lose its lease.
; The next ‘Mrs. Chapman’ was a woman named Maud Marsh. She had been hired as a barmaid in the Monument Tavern in August 1901. Again, another bogus marriage which survived barely a year before Chapman turned his attention to Florence Rayner. He pleaded with Florence to leave for America with him, but she flatly refused saying that he already had a wife downstairs. To this he snapped his fingers and said it wouldn’t take much for her not to be Mrs. Chapman any more. Just like his other two victims, Maud became the victim of his vicious beatings. Just like her predecessors she started to have strange symptoms.
POST MORTEM REVEALS ALL
Maud’s mother noticed how keen Chapman was to administer her daughter’s medicine, and out of concern called in another doctor for a second opinion. Chapman panicked and administered an extremely strong dose of the poison. Maud only survived one more day and died on October 22, 1902. The doctor was very suspicious and would not issue a death certificate until a post mortem had been carried out. When they examined the body they found traces of arsenic and 7.24 grains of antimony in Maud’s stomach, bowels, liver, kidneys and brain. Chapman’s days as a wife poisoner were now over.
Chapman was arrested on October 25, at which time they discovered that Severin Klosowski and George Chapman were one in the same person. They exhumed the bodies of his two previous wives and discovered both had large amounts of metallic antimony in them, and what was even more remarkable was the fact that they were remarkably well preserved.
Chapman was charged with the murders of Maud Marsh, Mary Spink and Bessie Taylor. He was only charged with Maud’s murder, even though evidence was submitted for the other two. On March 20, 1903, the jury took just eleven minutes to find him guilty.
After he was put in prison Chapman became exceptionally quiet, restless and irritable, and continued to protest his innocence. When his appeal was turned down he was put on suicide watch. Chapman was finally hanged at Wandsworth prison on April 7, 1903.
WAS HE JACK THE RIPPER?
George Chapman was on the high suspect list of the Ripper case. There were many similarities that sparked off the suspicion. First on the list was the time he arrived in England and the time he left, which seemed to coincide with the time span of the Ripper murders. Second, he was known to have studied as a surgeon in Russia, and the first murders were definitely committed by someone with a medical knowledge. Moreover, his crimes of poison were certainly carried out with someone with more than a little knowledge of medicine.
The Ripper was known to be a man who had freedom to roam the streets at night, and Lucy Baderski even admitted that her husband was in the habit of staying out until the very early hours of the morning. Added to this we know that he was capable of extreme violence and even murder, albeit that it was a different method. So the question still remains that although the man was a misogynist, a man with a very high sexual appetite, a good medical knowledge, and a foreign appearance that fits the description of certain witnesses, could he turn from a savage mutilator into a calculated poisoner just seven years later?
Graham Frederick Young
Graham Young was a smartly dressed and intelligent child – or so it appeared on the outside! He killed three people who he poisoned by administering doses of thallium in cups of tea, he so kindly made for them at work.
Graham Frederick Young was born on September 7, 1947 in Neasdon, a suburb of Greater London. His mother died the year he was born and he was raised by an aunt and uncle until his father remarried in 1950. He had a sister who was eight years older than him, and although she remembered him as a bright child, she admitted he always like to be on his own. As he grew older his intelligence was certainly above average, and he achieved exceptionally high marks for both English and chemistry whilst at school. As a child Graham was obsessed with anything to do with the Nazis, and Adolf Hitler was his hero. He was also intrigued with black magic and potions, and loved anything to do with chemistry. What did go unnoticed though was the fact that he became very interested in the effects of several kinds of poison, and over the years this would become a complete obsession.
In his teenage years his obsession with the Nazis grew even stronger and he learned all he could about their movement and their leader. He later said that he envied Hitler because of the power he had over other people and he was determined to reach the same status. Ironically, it was his growing knowledge of poisons that would help him achieve this empowerment.
In 1961, instead of spending money on the normal things that teenage boys buy, Young would purchase small doses of antimonium and digitalis. This was to be the year that he slowly started to poison members of his family. He didn’t give them lethal doses that would kill them instantly, but it was enough to make them feel nauseous. When asked why he was buying the toxic substances, he told his family that he needed them for experiments he was doing at school in his chemistry lessons. With that as an excuse he was able to accumulate huge amounts of poison, it was estimated that he had enough to kill at least three hundred people.
It appeared that in his sick mind Graham was using members of his family as a sort of laboratory experiment. He later admitted that he was experimenting with poison so that he could measure the time between the dosage administered and the first sign of discomfort in the victim. On occasion he would forget which portion of food he had poisoned and would himself suffer from vomiting and stomach cramps. Another tactic he used to put himself above suspicion, was to administer small doses of the poison to himself. Sometimes he would use his best friend to test out his poisonous concoctions, which would result in the same severe debilitating symptoms.
After a while the diseases that the Young family were haunted with, were starting to cause some concern. Graham’s aunt Winnie was well aware of his peculiar obsessions and she didn’t really trust him. The family arranged for him to see a psychiatrist, and in a roundabout way Graham told the doctor that he had control over his family’s health. The doctor subsequently warned the police of his suspicions and on May 23, 1961, a couple of police officers called round to the house and found Graham at home. Being a bright lad he realised it was futile to lie and so he confessed to what he had been doing, but what he omitted to tell them was that he had given his grandmother a lethal dose.
Graham Young was arrested and held in custody, where he tried to commit suicide by hanging himself. When asked why he wanted to kill himself, he told the psychiatrist that he felt helpless because he didn’t possess any poison. When his case went to trial in 1962, although he admitted to poisoning his family, he still omitted to say anything about what he done to his grandmother. It was too late anyway to carry out a post mortem on her body – she had already been cremated.
Medical experts suggested that Young be placed in a psychiatric institution, and the judge committed him to fifteen years in Broadmoor secure psychiatric hospital. During his years spent in Broadmoor, Young spent much of his time studying medical books and, indeed, any other book that could teach him anything about his beloved chemicals and poisons. Nine years later, when he professed to have been cured, he was an expert in the subject he loved so much. He was released from Broadmoor in February 1971 and allegedly told a nurse when leaving, that he intended to kill one person for every year that he had been detained.
On his release, Young was sent to a government training centre where he befriended and then poisoned, although this time not fatally, thirty-four-year-old Trevor Sparkes. Not long after his training he took a job as a shopkeeper in Bovingdon, Hertfordshire. His supervisor was not informed of his past record and the very day before he started his new post, he bought some antimonium and thallium. Graham had only been working at the shop for a very short time when there was an unusual spate of sickness sweeping through the other workers. The bug was nicknamed the ‘Bovingdon Bug’. Many fell victim to the bug, including the storeroom manager, Bob Egle, who eventually died from the fatal dose of poison that Young had been secretly slipping into his tea. The death of Bob Egle came as a terrible shock to his work c
olleagues, and Young appeared to be particularly upset. Several weeks later, Bob Egle’s successor, Ron Hewitt, also fell ill. He decided that the safest thing was to quit his job and thereby saved his own life. The number of employees that were showing the same symptoms continually grew – up to seventy of them suffered from vomiting and diarrhoea. Many were admitted to hospital because their symptoms were so severe, but luckily there were no more deaths. The cause of the mysterious bug still remained a mystery. Many of the victims became sick after drinking a cup of tea or coffee, but they did not seem to think that there was any connection between the drinks and the illness. They all just assumed that there was some sort of highly-infectious virus going round which they had all succumbed to.
Several months later this mystery ‘virus’ infected the distribution manager, Fred Biggs. He was hit particularly hard and in an effort to get to the bottom of strange bug, he was taken to the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases in London. However, they were unable to save him and he died as well. After the second death the authorities decided that this mysterious virus needed further investigation. Young asked one of the investigators whether he had considered the possibility of a large-scale thallium poisoning.
Some of Young’s work colleagues were starting to get suspicious and wondered whether he really was as innocent as he made out. Young had already bragged about his hobby – studying the effects of toxic products – and so his colleagues reported him to the chief. He immediately told the police of their suspicions, and they started to check to see whether Graham Young did in fact have any criminal past. When they delved into his files they couldn’t believe what they found and Young was immediately arrested. Following the arrest the police searched him and found a lethal dose of thallium in his pocket.