Mid-Month Murderer

Jack The Ripper

After Mary Anne Nichols’ murder the police believed that the case could be solved quickly. Other murders in the East End could be linked to gangs, but eight days later they would find out that this case was not going to be that simple. 

Annie Chapman

Annie Chapman was born in September 1841 in Paddington, her father was a Private in the 2nd Battalion of Lifeguards and she was the eldest of five children. Annie's parents were not married when she was born but they did get married in the February of the following year. 

Drinking was a favourite past time in Victorian society, but this would quickly turn to an addiction, this is what happened to Annie Chapman, her own brother, Fountain Smith, commented that Annie 

'first took a drink when she was quite young' 

This would become a pattern in Annie's life and sadly it would be her ruin. 

Annie married a coachman called John Chapman in 1869 when she was 28, they had three children, Emily, John and Annie. The family had a good life and in 1881 they moved to Windsor as John was hired as a domestic coachman. By all accounts the family had a good life, John's job was very good and the family where happy. Sadly in 1882 Emily (aged just 12) died of Meningitis, if that wasn't bad enough, John who was born with a disability was moved to a 'Cripple's school'. It was now that Annie's drinking began to worsen. The death of her daughter affected her deeply. Their other daughter Annie is believed to have been sent to a school in France.

In 1884 Annie and John separated, although it was said to have been mutual, a police report had stated that she had been arrested for her 'drunk and immoral ways', so it could have been that John was not happy with Annie's drinking, it could even have affected John's job. Nevertheless, John sent Annie 10 shillings a week on a semi regular basis, via the post office.  

Annie would also help herself by working to add to the money John sent her. However, when he died on Christmas day in 1886 the money stopped and Annie needed to make extra money so turning to prostitution seemed to be her only option. By 1888 Annie was lodging in Crossingham Lodging House in Spitalfeilds. She was regularly seeing a man called Edward Stanley, he would lodge with her from Saturday to Monday, they had known each other since Annie lived in Windsor and he would sometimes pay for her lodgings. 

Stanley seemed to care for Annie a lot as he was even heard saying to the deputy of the lodgings that if Annie turned up with any other men he was to refuse her entry. To me it shows that he didn't want Annie to be a prostitute, this was his way of trying to stop her as well as paying for her lodgings, but maybe he didn't take into consideration her drinking habit.

A few days before her murder Annie and a fellow lodger were involved in a fight, it was either over jealousy for Stanley or a bar of soap that Annie had borrowed and not returned. Annie ended up with a black eye and a bruise on her breast.

On the 7th September, Annie was seen by her friend, Amelia Palmer, on Dorset Street at about 5 pm,  Annie told her 

''I must pull myself together and go out and get some money or I shall have no lodgings ''

By 11.30 pm Annie turned up at Crossingham and asked if she could use the kitchen which she was allowed to do and stayed there with another lodger drinking until 1 am. She went to see the House Deputy and asked if he could keep her bed free for a little while so she could try and get her money together, she said she wouldn't be long so he agreed. 

At 1.30 am Annie walked back to the lodgings this time eating a baked potato, she still did not have the money for her lodging, but she asked them to still hold her room and she would go and get it. Elizabeth Long was the last person to see Annie alive, she saw her on Hanbury Street, Annie was talking to a man, he had his back to Elizabeth so she couldn't see him, she knew it was 5.30 am as she heard the clock on the Brewery House chime. 

A little after this Albert Cadosch, a carpenter that lived on Hanbury street, had gone to use the outhouse, he heard a thud against the fence, he thought nothing of it and went back to bed. This thud was more than likely Annie being killed. 

At 6 am Annie's body was discovered by a man called John Davis, he ran out onto the street and saw Henry John Holland and James Green who were on their way to work, he called them over and all three men went to try and find a police officer. Davis ran to the police station on Commercial Street and told them what he had found. Inspector Joseph Chandler arrived on the scene, inspected the body and sent for Dr George Phillips, he also sent word to Scotland Yard, informing them of what had happened. 

When Dr Phillips arrived and noted the scene, Annie's left arm was placed over her breast and her face was swollen, her neck had been cut badly and there was blood on the fence and the ground, probably from where she had hit the fence and then fell. Phillips and Chandler did a search of the scene, they found a leather apron near the body. They also found Annie's belongings which seemed to have been deliberately placed next to her. 

Inspector Addeline of Scotland yard arrived and after talking to Chandler and finding out what had happened they agreed that Annie and Mary Ann had been murdered by the same person. Annie's body was removed and taken to Whitechapel Workhouse Infirmary Mortuary, when Dr Phillip's arrived he was angry to find that two nurses had already washed Annie's body, 

Doing the post-mortem, Phillips found that Annie's face and tongue were swollen, the cut to her neck was so bad that it went right through to her spine, nearly taking her head off. Two thumb prints were found on the top of her chest and one to the right hand, they were large which made Phillips believe they were made by a man. From these marks he also thought that the killer would have held Annie by her jaw before cutting her throat. 

Her abdomen had been cut open and while on the scene her intestines had been pulled out, still attached slightly by a cord and placed above her right shoulder. When she was moved it was noted that the underside of the intestines were still warm. Part of her stomach had been removed and placed above her left shoulder and there was a lot of blood. While doing the post-mortem Phillips discovered that Annie's uterus, fallopian tubes, ovaries and the upper part of her vagina had all be removed and were missing. Something like this would have taken a doctor being careful an hour, Phillips himself said he would have struggled to have done it in 15 minutes.  

The killer must have had anatomical knowledge because of how he had managed to remove those organs so quickly, a portion of Annie's bladder had also been removed. It also seems that Annie had been strangled before her throat was cut, as her face, lips and hands all showed signs of asphyxiation. 

From the injuries Phillips said that the cut to the throat and stomach were made by the same knife, and that it was something like a slaughter knife. 

At the inquest, again preformed by Wynne Edwin Baxter, Dr Phillips said that the murder must have taken place at about 4.20 am, this would go against all the witness statements made, as Elizabeth saw Annie alive at 5.30. I think the witness time line adds up more than Phillips’ time of death, otherwise Annie's intestine would not have still been warm. Baxter came up with the theory that the murderer was killing these women and stealing their organs to sell them to medical students. Although this theory was never carried over to the other murders. 

The public sadly started to come to their own conclusions as to who the murderer was, people were saying that this kind of crime couldn't have been done by an Englishman, that it must have been a Jewish man that did this, thankfully the police stepped in and stopped any riots beginning. Annie was buried in Manner Park Cemetery in a private ceremony, her family asked that the details were not released so it could be kept quite. 

The next murder wouldn't be for a couple weeks but sadly Jack would strike twice in one night when he eventually came back. 

In my next post I will look into Annie Chapman, but for now if you would like to learn more I have put a list together of my sources, so please feel free to have a read, listen and watch : 

- 'The Mammoth Book of Jack the Ripper' By Maxim Jakubowski and Nathan Braund 

- Rippercast: The Whitechapel Murders Podcast by Karl Coppack 

- Histfest The Five - Hallie Rubenhold and Rebecca Rideal

- BBC iplayer - Jack The Ripper - The Case Reopened

- The Five - Hallie Rubenhold

Thank you 

The History Chronicle

Jack The Ripper

I have always had a little bit of an obsession with serial killers. I like to try and understand why they do what they do and how someone can take another persons life. So I am starting a little series called Mid-Month Murderer. 

Each month I will focus on a different murderer from across history, I will look into their life and back story and also into their victims’ lives. I wanted to start with one of the most famous murderers of the Victorian era, Jack The Ripper. With this being my first instalment of the series, I will be doing it a little bit different, because there is a lot of information to take on. Therefore, each victim will get her own day, then on Saturday I will look into different possibilities as to who Jack The Ripper actually was. I hope you enjoy reading these blogs as much as I have enjoyed researching them. 

Mary Ann 'Polly' Nichols

From August 31st till November 9th 1888, Whitechapel London was a very scary place to live, a mysterious figure known only as 'Jack The Ripper' was stalking the streets killing women. Even now 132 years later we still have no idea who he/she was. 

At this time in London there was a very big divide between the rich and the poor but the divide was not always a  geographic one. Some places we would consider 'posh' now like Chelsea still had a fair share of poor and working class families living there. The East End of London had a high poverty stricken population. Whitechapel in particular had a high influx of Irish Immigrants, from 1846 onwards, caused by the potato famine. There were also Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe escaping persecution. By the time 'Jack The Ripper' struck in 1881, the population of Whitechapel alone was 50,000 people. 

Antisemitism was rife at this time, Jewish people were treated like second class citizens and in a future blog I will show how the hatred made its way into the Ripper investigation. The Ripper Murders are said to have started with Mary Ann Nichols (known as ''Polly'' to her friends) on the 31st August. I think that ''Jack'' began the murder spree earlier. I will tell you all about Polly's injuries later but from the multitude of book's I have read and show's I have watched about murderers those kind of attacks are hardly ever done by a first timer. They would have worked up to it.

In the months leading up to the Ripper killings two women were murdered in a similar method, Emma Elizabeth Smith was found to have had an instrument inserted into her vagina and Martha Taburn was stabbed 39 times all over her body. With the over kill on the other five women, consisting of stabbing and genital mutilation I think that these two could have been the beginning of the Ripper, sadly I cannot say for certain that they were both killed by 'Jack' but I think the evidence points to it. 

Mary Ann Nichols was born 26th August 1845 in Dean Street, she got married to a man called William in 1866, he was a printer machinist and the couple went on to have 5 children. During this time alcoholism was everywhere in Victorian London and Polly Nichols was no different, her excessive drinking was what caused William to end the marriage in 1881, but Polly would say it ended because he was having an affair with a midwife, said to have been the midwife that helped Polly during one of her labours.

William paid Polly an allowance of 5 shillings a week for about a year, this wasn't enough for Polly to live on and be able to drink so she turned to prostitution to top up her money. When William found out he stopped paying the allowance. In April of 1888 Polly sent a letter to her father telling him she had become a maid in the household of the Cowdry family. They were a religious family and did not drink, Polly worked there for a while but her love of alcohol took over and in July she left, but not before stealing clothing from them. 

Polly had gone back to prostitution, she began lodging with her friend Emily Holland. On the 31st August she had spent most of her day in the Frying Pan Pub on Brick Lane in Whitechapel, Emily and Polly would use lodgings on Thrawl Street, but earlier in the night Polly had been turned away as she didn't have the money to pay for it. At about 2:30 in the morning Emily saw Polly on the corner of Osborn Street and Polly told her 

''I've had my dose money 3 times over and spent it''

Polly had had a new bonnet and was sure it would help her to get more money for lodgings so off she went, Emily later explained how Polly was

''so drunk she was clinging to the walls for steadiness''

That was the last time Polly was seen alive. At 3.40am Charles Cross (aka Charles Lechmere) found Polly's body on Bucks Row, he was joined by Robert Paul. Polly was laid on the ground with her skirt pulled up, the men couldn't agree if she was dead or unconscious so they left her where she was and went to inform a policeman, pulling her skirt down as they left to preserve her dignity. 

A few moments later PC John Neale stumbled across her body, he was later joined by PC Jonas Mizen who was informed of Polly's whereabouts by Cross and Paul. After examining Polly they agreed that she was dead and sent for Dr Henry Llewellyn, a surgeon who would preform Polly's post-morterm. He arrived at 4.00am and he was the one who discovered the full extent of Polly's injuries. A later inquest by Wynne Edwin Baxter would find the police at fault for not finding Polly's injuries earlier. He also spoke about how there wasn't a lot of a blood at the scene, which might mean that she had been killed somewhere else and then her body had been dumped there, this was later found to be wrong as the blood had soaked into her clothing and hair. Her body was then removed and Llewellyn went to do the post-morterm.

There was a bruise to Polly's face that looked like it had been made by a thumb and another on the left side of her neck, Llewellyn stated that this could be proof the murderer held her head down. She received 2 cuts to the neck, both starting on the left side just underneath her ear, one cut was 4'' the other was 8'', both wounds were so deep they reached Polly's vertebrae. There were two 3'' wide cuts in a jagged pattern along with several more wounds all to the abdomen. Finally a few more cuts ran down her left side. After examining Polly, Llewellyn deduced that the killer had been in front of her when he cut her throat, doing this so that she could not scream and with the direction they were in, the killer would have been left handed, the killer would also have to have some basic knowledge of anatomy because of the jagged cuts, the whole thing would have taken no more them 4-5 minutes.

Her clothing had been checked and had labels for a workhouse in Lambeth, where the police managed to track down one of Polly's friends, Mary Ann Monk, she was able to identify her body. William was found and he also went to identify her, when he saw her her said

''Seeing you as you are now, I forgive you for what you have done to me''. 

Polly was eventually buried on the 6th September at the City of London Crematory, William and their eldest son Edward were present at the funeral.

Polly was only 5ft 2, with her height and being very intoxicated she must have seemed like an easy target for ''Jack'', as I said earlier, to me, her wounds do not seem to have been made by a first timer. The attack was quick and the killer knew what they were doing, they only had a brief time between police patrols in the area, not to mention that any any point someone could have walked past. This was done by someone who wasn't scared and didn't second guess what they were doing, to me that was an experienced person. 

In my next post I will look into Annie Chapman, but for now if you would like to learn more I have put a list together of my sources, so please feel free to have a read, listen and watch : 

- 'The Mammoth Book of Jack the Ripper' By Maxim Jakubowski and Nathan Braund 
- Rippercast: The Whitechapel Murders Podcast by Karl Coppack 
- Histfest The Five - Hallie Rubenhold and Rebecca Rideal
- BBC iplayer - Jack The Ripper - The Case Reopened
- The Five - Hallie Rubenhold


Thank you
The History Chronicle