That encounter had left Annie with a number of bruises and a black eye, and she was still feeling very unwell, but not just as a result of this confrontation. According to her friend Amelia Farmer, Chapman had been looking pale and weak for several days.
It would later be determined that she was actually seriously ill, possibly even dying, from a disease which was affecting the membranes of her lungs and also her brain. It’s uncertain precisely what the disease was, but it was most likely tubercular meningitis, or maybe, bearing in mind her part-time occupation, meningovascular syphilis.
Possibly because of the fight with Eliza Cooper, but most likely because she’d been in and out of the infirmary, Chapman hadn’t stayed at the lodging house for the last week of her life, but was seen elsewhere in the area by friends and acquaintances.
Amelia Palmer had met her in Dorset Street on 3 September, a few days after the brawl, and Chapman told her she was thinking about going hopping – hop-picking – down in Kent.
Palmer also saw her on the following day near Spitalfields Church, when Annie Chapman again complained that she was feeling extremely unwell and thought she might even go and stay in the casual ward at the local workhouse for a few days.
‘I’m desperate, Amelia,’ Chapman said at their meeting. ‘I’ve got no money, no money at all, and I haven’t eaten or drunk anything all day. It’ll be the spike for me if I can’t sort myself out soon.’
The threat of the workhouse was enough for Palmer to do what she could for her friend. She took out two pennies and handed them over to Chapman: that small sum was all she could spare.
‘Here, Annie,’ she said. ‘Take this and at least get yourself some tea. All I ask is that you don’t use it to buy rum.’
On 7 September, Chapman was in and out of the lodging house for most of the day, and had clearly obtained money from somewhere, because she spent at least some of the time drinking.
Amelia Palmer again saw Chapman in Dorset Street at about five in the afternoon. Palmer was surprised that her friend hadn’t travelled to the Stratford market as she usually did every Friday, but Chapman said she still felt too ill to do anything. They parted for the last time some minutes later.
As she walked away, Annie Chapman said: ‘I must pull myself together and get some money or I shall have no lodgings.’
At about 11.30 on the evening of Friday, 7 September, Timothy Donovan, the Crossingham’s Lodging House deputy, spoke to Annie Chapman in the kitchen of the doss house. Shortly after midnight, she was seen in the kitchen by another lodger in the premises, a painter named William Stevens, and at about half past one in the morning, Annie Chapman was again in the kitchen, chatting to other lodgers and eating potatoes.
Concerned about her payment for a bed, Donovan spoke to her again.
‘I need your rent money, Annie, if you’re going to stay here tonight. Have you got it? It’s eight pence, as you know.’
Donovan noted at the time that she seemed to be intoxicated, but was not completely drunk.
‘I haven’t got it,’ Chapman replied. ‘I am weak and ill and have been to the infirmary.’
A few minutes later, Donovan sent John Evans, the nightwatchman at the lodging house, to ask her again for the lodging money, but shortly afterward Chapman herself appeared in the deputy’s office.
‘I haven’t got the money, not enough to pay for a bed. But I’m going out now and I’ll make enough to pay for it twice over. You’ll see.’
Donovan was unsympathetic.
‘Look, Annie, you’re not looking very good and you’ve told me you’re not feeling well. But I know you’ve had enough money today to buy gin or other spirits. Don’t you think, in your condition, that you’d have been better using what you had to pay for your bed instead of buying drink?’
But Chapman seemed unconcerned and in good spirits.
‘Don’t you worry about me,’ she replied. ‘I know what I’m doing. I’m going out now, but I’ll be back soon, so don’t let anyone else buy my bed.’
At about two in the morning she walked out of Crossing ham’s Lodging House, wearing old and grubby clothes comprising a black figured jacket and black skirt, and a brown bodice and lace boots. The night-watchman, John Evans, watched her as she headed down Little Paternoster Row into Brushfield Street and then saw her turn towards Spitalfields Church.
But for over three hours, Chapman had no luck in finding a client, and by 5.25 she was making her slightly unsteady way down Hanbury Street. As she did so, she became aware of a man standing on the pavement outside number 29, some yards in front of her.
To say that the area was rundown was a grotesque understatement. Most of the crumbling and disease-ridden four-storey houses had been built in the second half of the eighteenth century, at a time when that part of London had been prosperous and the citizens – many of them Huguenot silk-weavers – very affluent. But by 1888, the buildings had fallen into a state of almost total disrepair, grimy, decaying and literally falling to pieces, each with a larger population of rats and mice and other pests than human beings. It was one of the worst areas in the whole of Whitechapel, and that meant in the whole of London.
Nobody else seemed to be about and Chapman was getting desperate, not having found any clients at all in the previous three hours. That was why she had, as one last throw of the dice, decided to try the Hanbury Street area.
The man in front of her had a beard and was of slight build. He didn’t look threatening in any way – he certainly didn’t resemble the black-clad fiend carrying a doctor’s bag who was popularly believed to be the murderer – and was dressed in good-quality dark clothes and wearing a deerstalker hat.
Chapman realized that he was probably her last chance of earning enough money to buy herself a bed for what was left of that night, and so she boldly strode straight across to him.
‘Are you looking for a bit of business, love?’ she asked him.
The man looked her up and down, and then nodded.
‘I might be,’ he replied softly, in accented English. ‘What are you offering?’
Chapman recognized that he was a foreigner, which didn’t bother her, and that fact also allowed her to hike up her price.
‘Whatever you want, my dear. I’ve seen it all and I’ve done it all. I can give you whatever you want for eight pence.’
Eight pence was the price of her double bed at the lodging house.
‘Will you?’ the man replied.
‘Yes.’
At that moment, a woman named Mrs Long appeared from the darkness and walked past the two of them, close enough to overhear the last two sentences of their conversation. Then she continued on her way.
The bearded man looked thoughtfully at her retreating figure for a few seconds, then back at the woman standing in front of him, and handed over some coins.
Annie Chapman reached out, took his arm, and led him confidently around to the back of number 29 Hanbury Street, where she knew that there was a quiet and dark backyard. She was very familiar with that area, which was only about a five-minute walk from Dorset Street. In the yard, she turned and led him across to the fence which divided number 29 from the next door property, 27 Hanbury Street, and then bent forward to lift up her skirt and petticoats.
But even as she did so, some intimation of danger must have crossed her mind, for as the man reached out towards her face, a pad of cloth held in his right hand, she suddenly called out: ‘No!’
That was all she had time to say.
Saturday, 8 September 1888
Whitechapel, London
Number 29 Hanbury Street had been leased by an elderly lady named Amelia Richardson who operated a small business from the premises, manufacturing packing-cases, and let out the remaining rooms in the property to lodgers. She had both long- and short-term tenants – a few had been there for as long as twelve years – and several of them worked in the Billingsgate and Spitalfields markets and left the building for their day’s work in some cases as early
as one in the morning. Even the late risers were usually walking out of the premises by about four or five.
Altogether, the building was occupied by no less than seventeen people, and both the passage between it and the adjoining property, and the yards located at the rear of the row, were known to be frequently used by local prostitutes for their assignations with their clients. Sometimes, these women had been found entertaining men actually inside the building, the doors to which were normally left unlocked because of the large number of people who lived there and the almost constant stream of traffic in and out of the building. But none of the local ‘unfortunates’ had ventured down into the back yard that night, or at least not at that time, and despite the number of occupants of 29 Hanbury Street, nobody in the building apparently saw or heard anything unusual.
One of these residents was a man named John Davis, who had had a largely sleepless night, lying awake in bed with his wife, on the top floor of 29 Hanbury Street. He’d dozed until the clock in the tower of the Spitalfields Church struck 5.45 and then got up, ready for another day’s work at Leadenhall Market. Davis was a carman – a driver of a horse-drawn carriage or a tram – and at about six that morning he went out into the backyard of the building to start walking to his place of employment. Almost immediately he saw a lumpy shape lying close beside the fence.
In the predawn darkness, he was unable to see exactly what the object was, and so he strode across to the fence to get a better look.
What he saw was a sight that would be etched into his brain for the rest of his life. It was the body of a woman. She was lying flat on her back, with her head very near the steps which led up into the property, and Davis saw at once that she was dead, not least because a section of her intestines had been pulled over her left shoulder.
He stumbled backwards, shrieking with fright, and ran out of the yard and into the street to get help.
Out there in the street were two men – James Green and James Kent – who worked for the Bayley brothers at 23A Hanbury Street, another manufacturer of packing cases, and walking along the road nearby was a box maker named Henry John Holland. All three men were startled by the sudden appearance of a small and elderly man, who moved with a pronounced stoop, and who burst out into the street with wild eyes, yelling and screaming at the top of his voice.
Davis saw the three men in the street and calmed down slightly, recognizing that they could help him.
‘You men,’ he shouted, ‘come here!’
The three of them followed Davis along the passage until the body came into view, and then stopped, transfixed by the scene in front of them.
‘Dear God,’ Green muttered. ‘What kind of a fiend could do such a thing?’
Holland took a couple of paces forward, then stepped down into the yard to examine the body.
‘What are you doing?’ Davis called out. ‘Don’t touch her.’
‘Don’t worry, I won’t. I just want a closer look.’
Holland strode over to where the corpse lay, while the other three men remained close to the back door of the house, staring down at the horrific sight. Then he retraced his steps.
‘It’s a woman,’ he announced, unnecessarily, ‘and she’s dead. We need to find a police constable, as soon as we can.’
Davis and the three men left the premises, splitting up so that they would be more likely to find a patrolling constable quickly.
The first officer to arrive at the scene was Inspector Joseph Chandler, who had been on duty near the corner of Hanbury Street and Commercial Street, and by the time he arrived a sizeable crowd had already gathered in the passage and around the rear door of the building. In view of the state of the body and the appalling mutilations, none of the spectators seemed inclined to approach it closely.
Chandler did his best to clear away the onlookers, then turned his attention to the dead woman. In the terse and almost clinical words of the official report he wrote later, he stated that in the backyard he had ‘found a woman lying on her back, dead, left arm resting on left breast, legs drawn up, abducted, small intestines and flap of the abdomen lying on the right side of the right shoulder, attached by a cord with the rest of the intestines inside the body; two flaps of skin from the lower part of the abdomen lying in a large quantity of blood above the left shoulder; throat cut deeply from left and back in a jagged manner right around the throat.’
It was immediately obvious to him – to anyone, in fact – that the woman was dead, but Chandler still had to go through the motions. As soon as the first police constables arrived on the scene, he issued appropriate instructions to them.
‘You there,’ he instructed, ‘go at once ask and Dr Phillips to come here as quickly as he can.’
As the first constable turned and ran off into the darkness, Chandler turned to a second man, and ordered him to run to the local police station to request additional officers and also to arrange for an ambulance to be sent to the premises.
More constables quickly arrived, and Chandler was able to take further measures.
‘You two men. Get rid of all those gawking spectators and clear the passage. I don’t want to see anybody anywhere near this yard who isn’t a policeman or a doctor, understand? And somebody find me a coat or something to cover up this poor woman.’
One of the constables returned a few minutes later with a length of sacking, which he and Chandler then placed carefully over the body of the dead woman, for the sake of modesty.
Dr Phillips, a courtly and old-fashioned surgeon who was extremely popular with officers on the force and very competent in his work, arrived on the scene at about half past six. He listened carefully to what little information Chandler could supply him with, then had the sacking removed so that he could examine the corpse.
The moment the length of sacking was lifted up, Phillips drew in a sharp breath as he saw the body for the first time.
‘I can tell you that she’s definitely dead,’ he murmured, with a weak attempt at humour.
‘I think we already knew that, doctor,’ Chandler replied. ‘Can you give us an estimate of the time of death before we have the body removed?’
Phillips bent down beside the mutilated corpse and carried out a perfunctory examination, which consisted of little more than feeling the temperature of her limbs and what was left of her torso.
‘Because of the state of the body and the conditions in this yard,’ he said, ‘I can’t be certain, but a good guess would be two hours, perhaps less. The body temperature would have dropped quickly, because of what has been done to her, and she’s lying on cold stones as well.’
‘So not earlier than 4.30 this morning?’ Chandler asked.
‘Yes, very approximately,’ Phillips replied. ‘There’s nothing else I can do for her here, so we might as well arrange to have the body removed. Could you have it taken to the Whitechapel Workhouse Infirmary Mortuary, please? It’s in Eagle Street, and I can do the autopsy there.’
The ambulance arrived a few minutes later, and the two men watched as the corpse was manhandled into a battered coffin shell – a lightweight wooden box used for collecting bodies – and placed in the back of the vehicle.
‘Is there anything else I can do here, or will I see you at the post-mortem?’ Phillips asked.
‘Actually, doctor, there is,’ Chandler replied. ‘Before we get any more spectators and police officers trampling their way through this yard, could we search it, just the two of us?’
Phillips nodded agreement, and the two men quartered the yard, conducting a thorough search as they looked for the murder weapon – though Chandler was not optimistic about finding that – or any other clues. In the vicinity of the location where the body had been found, they discovered about half a dozen spots of blood on the rear wall of the house, and a number of other smears and patches of blood nearby. None of that was entirely surprising.
But they also found a piece of muslin cloth, a pocket comb in a paper case and a small toothcomb. These objects app
eared to have been the contents of one of the victim’s pockets, and presumably had either been placed on the ground or had fallen from her clothing.
Close to where her head had lain, they also found a part of an envelope that contained two pills and the back of which bore the words ‘Sussex Regiment’, while the other side displayed the handwritten letter ‘M’ and ‘Sp’ – possibly the start of the word ‘Spitalfields’ – and a postmark in red which was ‘London, Aug. 23, 1888’.
They also found a number of other objects during their search, including a piece of flat steel, an empty nail box and, close beside the water tap in the yard, a leather apron which was saturated with water.
During the commotion which had followed Davis’s discovery of the body in the back yard of the property, numerous other residents of the building had appeared on the scene, including the man’s wife, who came down to find out what was going on. She nearly fainted when she saw the state of the body, and later talked to a reporter.
She said: ‘The poor woman’s throat was cut, and the inside of her body was lying beside her – quite ripped open.’
The last clause of her sentence was a prophetic foretaste of what was to come, and of the name that would later be applied to perhaps the most notorious serial killer of all time.
Saturday, 8 September 1888
Whitechapel, London
When Detective Inspector Abberline walked into the Bethnal Green police station that morning, he found the place in an uproar.
‘There’s been another one, Fred,’ Inspector Moore called out to him as Abberline stepped in through the main door. ‘And this one’s a hell of a lot worse than anything we’ve seen before. She’s been totally butchered.’
The Ripper Secret Page 18