George
Chapman (1865 - 1903)
a.k.a. Severin Antoniovich Klosowski
Born as Severin Antoniovich Klosowski in the Polish village of Nargornak
on December 14, 1865 to Antonio and Emile Klosowski. His father, a carpenter,
apprenticed Severin to a Senior Surgeon in Zvolen named Moshko Rappaport,
whereupon he entered into a career as a surgeon from December 1880 until
October 1885, after which he completed his studies in the Hospital of Praga
in Warsaw. Rappaport claimed he was "diligent, or exemplary conduct,
and studied with zeal the science of surgery." Another unnamed source
spoke of Klosowski's "very skilful assistance to patients." Depending
on your source, he either failed to become a junior surgeon (Rumbelow,
Lane) or succeeded in becoming an assistant surgeon in 1886 and a qualified
Junior Surgeon in 1887 (Begg et alia). There is also discrepancy concerning
when he arrived in England, as Rumbelow and Lane date his arrival "sometime
in 1888," while Begg et alia give the month of June 1887. The
best estimate is sometime soon after February 1887, as a receipt for hospital
fees paid by Klosowski in Warsaw indicate he was still there at the time.
Also of importance is the discovery by Sugden of some papers, written in
Russian and Polish, which documented Klosowski's early life in Poland.
They are consistent until February 1887, when they end abruptly.
Therefore, the best estimate is that Klosowski emigrated to London in either
late February or early March of 1887.
He entered into a career as a hairdresser's assistant in either late
1887 or early 1888, working for an Abraham Radin of 70 West India Dock
Road. This job soon was soon discontinued after only five months, and Koslowski
is next seen running a barber shop on his own at 126 Cable Street, St.
George's-in-the-East. The Post Office London Directory of 1889 lists
this as his address, so it is most likely that this was his residence in
the fall of 1888, during the Ripper murders.
In 1890, Klosowski took a similar job in a barber shop on the corner
of Whitechapel High Street and George Yard.
This is significant, as Martha Tabram (killed August, 1888) was murdered
in the George Yard buildings, which were only a few yards from this shop.
Also of significance is that Klosowski was referred to by others as Ludwig
Schloski. The reason for the first name is unknown, but the last name
is probably the result of the incapacity of the English tongue to pronounce
Klosowski.
Anyhow, Klosowski soon proved his worth, and gradually moved from assistant
barber to full-fledged proprietor of the shop sometime before October 1889,
when he married Lucy Baderski with the rites of a German Roman Catholic
wedding. He had met her only five weeks previously at the Polish Club in
St. John's Square, Clerkenwell.
Unfortunately for Klosowski, he was still legally married to his first
wife, whom he had left back in Poland. She, however, seemed to have gotten
wind of her husband's infidelity and moved to London in an attempt to oust
Baderski. The two women appear to have cohabited for a time, until Klosowski's
legal wife finally gave up and left, possibly because of the birth of her
husband's and Baderksi's son in September of 1890. They moved around quite
a bit, living in Cable Street, Commercial Street and Greenfield Street,
respectively, until they finally emigrated to New Jersey later that year.
The exact date of their emigration is not known for sure, but the last
occurence of the name in any records were in the national census of 1891,
which listed them as living at 2 Tewkesbury Buildings, Whitechapel. This
survey was taken in early April of that year.
It may be assumed, but without solid evidence, that it was the death
of their baby boy (Wladyslaw or Wohystaw Klosowski, dead of "pneumonia
asthenia" on March 3, 1891) which prompted the move, and so it would
be likely that they left soon after the survey was taken, in April of 1891.
Klosowski found work in another barber's shop in Jersey City, New Jersey.
The couple fought bitterly, supposedly over Klosowski's cheating heart.
Soon after, he attacked Lucy with a knife, as was reported in the Daily
Chronicle of March 23, 1903:
Klosowski's real wife, Lucy Klosowski, who was present in the Central
Criminal Court last week, has made a startling statement as to what occurred
in the New Jersey shop. She states that on one occasion, when she had had
a quarrel with her husband, he held her down on the bed, and pressed his
face against her mouth to keep her from screaming. At that moment a customer
entered the shop immediately in front of the room, and Koslowski got up
to attend him. The woman chanced to see a handle protruding from underneath
the pillow. She found, to her horror, that it was a sharp and formidable
knife, which she promptly hid. Later, Klosowski deliberately told her that
he meant to have cut her head off, and pointed to a place in the room where
he meant to have buried her. She said, 'But the neighbours would have asked
where I had gone to.' 'Oh,' retorted Klosowski, calmly, 'I should simply
have told them that you had gone back to New York.'
Lucy was understandably upset, and pregnant to boot, so she
returned to London without her husband in February of 1892, living with
her sister at 26 Scarborough Street, Whitechapel. Her second child, named
Cecilia, was born on May 15th of that year. Around the first of June, Klosowski
was to return, and the two reunited for a bit before ending the relationship
for good.
In the winter or late fall of 1893, Klosowski met a woman named Annie
Chapman (not the Ripper victim) in Haddin's hairdresser shop at 5 West
Green Road, South Tottenham, where he had been working as an assistant.
They lived together for almost a year, but near the end of 1894, Klosowski's
eye began to roam once again, and he brought home a woman to live with
himself and Annie. Understandably perturbed, Annie Chapman walked out a
few weeks after, pregnant. In January of February of 1895 she told Koslowski
about the baby, but he offered no support whatsoever.
And so he left everything behind but her surname, which he took for
his own in order to escape the tangled web of his previous affairs. He
may have had a new identity, but George Chapman wasn't about to become
any less a misogynist than Severin Klosowski.
Sometime after in 1895, Chapman became an assistant in William Wenzel's
barber shop at 7 Church Lane, Leytonstone, lodging at the house of John
Ward in Forest Road. He soon took up acquaintances with an alcoholic named
Mary Spink, whose husband had left her and took her son. The two joined
hands in a fake marriage (Mary forwarded the proceeeds of a 500 pound legacy
to him) and began living together, leasing a barber's shop in a poor section
of Hastings. It soon went sour, and they moved the shop to a more prosperous
location, where their "musical shaves" became almost legendary
-- Mary would play the piano while her husband serviced the customers.
This provided a sizeable income for a while, and Chapman eventually purchased
his own sailing boat, which he christened the "Mosquito."
The success in the business world did not transfer over to success in
their relationship, and Mary became the subject of many a brutal beating.
A Mrs. Annie Helsdown, who lived in the same residence, claimed to have
often heard Mary crying out in the middle of the night. She also saw abrasions
and bruises about her face on various occasions, and at least once noticed
marks around her throat.
It was about this time, on April 3, 1897, that Chapman purchased a one
ounce dose of tartar-emetic from the shop of William Davidson, a chemist
in High Street. Tartar-emetic is a white powder, easily soluble in water,
and contains antimony, a colorless, odorless, and almost tasteless poison
whose effects were little known in the late nineteenth century. Given in
large doses, antimony is likely to be regurgitated and expelled, but in
smaller, timed doses it would case slow, gradual, and painful death. An
interesting side-effect of the drug, however, is that it preserves the
body of the deceased for many years after their death.
The musical shaves must have soon lost their notoriety, because the
shop met the same fate as the previous one, and Chapman soon resorted to
managing the Prince of Wales pub off City Road in Bartholomew Square.
It was there that Mrs. Sprink began uncharacteristically suffering
from severe stomach pains and nausea. A Dr. J. F. Rodgers was called in
to attend, but it was her husband who was by her side religiously throughout
the entire affair. She finally gave out on Christmas Day of that year,
the cause of death being given as phthisis, or consumption.
Questioned at Chapman's later hearing, both Elizabeth Waymark and Martha
Doubleday (who both nursed Mrs. Spink) remembered the condition of their
late patient. Elizabeth told the prosecutor, "I prepared the body
for burial. It was a mere skeleton."
Doubleday commented on Chapman's actions immediately after the death
of Mary: "He stood at her bedside, looked down at her body and said
'Polly, Polly speak!" Then he went into the next room and cried. After
that he went downstairs and opened the pub."
Not
one to remain bereaved, Chapman soon hired a former restaurant manageress
named Bessie Taylor to work at the pub, and a relationship soon blossomed.
Another bogus marriage was entered into, and again Chapman began to abuse
his "wife." According to Elizabeth Painter, Chapman "shouted
and thre things at Bessie and on one occasion threatened her with a revolver."
Interestingly enough, Bessie began suffering from the same disease as
her predecessor, and to avoid controversy, Chapman left the Prince of Wales
and left for The Grapes in Bishop's Stortford. After an operation, her
condition remained poor, and the two moved back to London.
Chapman leased the Monument Tavern in the Borough, were she grew steadily
worse. She was to die, just like her predecessor, on what should have been
a joyous holiday: Valentine's Day, 1901. Cause of death this time was said
to have been "exhaustion from vomiting and diarrhoea."
Mrs. Painter visited her friend almost every day during her illness,
and was more than once the butt of many a cold joke from George Chapman.
On more than one occasion, when she would enter the house and inquire as
to Bessie's health, Chapman would reply, "Your friend is dead."
Painter would run upstairs, already grieving the loss, only to find her
still alive in the bed. When Mrs. Painter visited on the 15th, Chapman
told her that Bessie was "much about the same." To her indignation,
Mrs. Painter later learned she had died the previous day.
Of interest at this time is the fact that Chapman had attempted to
commit arson on the Monument Tavern, which was quickly losing its lease,
around this time.
Mrs.
Chapman III was soon to be found in a woman named Maud Marsh, who was hired
as a barmaid for the Monument Tavern in August of 1901. Again, a bogus
marriage was performed. But after only a year, Chapman grew tired of Maud
and turned his attention to a Florence Rayner, who refused his requests
to leave for America with him. When Rayner insisted, "No, you have
your wife downstairs," Chapman snapped his fingers and said "Oh,
I'd give her that, and she would be no more Mrs. Chapman."
And like his other two victims, Chapman beat Maud without abandon.
Maud confided in her sister on a tramride down Streatham Hill one day,
warning her: "You don't know what he is."
And so she began suffering strange symptoms similar to those of her
predecessors. Mrs. Marsh noticed how eagerly her daughter's lover insisted
on preparing her medicine and called in an independent doctor to examine
her. This frightened Chapman into giving her a tremendous dose of the poison,
and Maud was to succumb to it the next day, October 22, 1902. The doctor
refused to issue a death certificate, and when traces of arsenic and 7.24
grains antimony were found in Maud's stomach, bowels, liver, kidneys, and
brain in the post mortem, Chapman's days of wife-poisoning were ended for
good. (It turns out that it was the antimony which killed her -- the arsenic
was only there as an impurity in the antimony). He was arrested by Inspector
Godley on October 25th, upon which it was discovered that Severin Klosowski
and George Chapman were one in the same.
The bodies of his two previous "wives" were exhumed in November
and December of 1902. Bessie's corpse had a mouldy growth upon it but was
otherwise fresh, while Mary (having been buried five years) was remarkably
well preserved. As Elizabeth Waymark said, "She looked as if she had
only been buried about nine months.. The face was perfect." Large
amounts of metallic antimony were found in the bodies of both women.
Chapman was charged with the murders of Maud Marsh, Mary Spink, and
Bessie Taylor, but although evidence was submitted on all three, he was
convicted only of Maud's death on March 20, 1903. The jury took only eleven
minutes to come to a decision of guilty.
Chapman said nothing after his incarceration in way of a confession;
in fact, he continued to protest his innocence for the rest of his life.
He was restless and irritable, but above all he was quiet. After his appeal
was disregarded by the Home Secretary he was put on suicide watch.
Chapman was hanged at Wandsworth prison on April 7th, 1903.
Here is where Chapman's story ends and Abberline's begins. Once Godley
had arrested Chapman, Abberline is said to have remarked to him, "You've
got Jack the Ripper at last!" Although there is reason to believe
this remark was actually made when Chapman was convicted and not
arrested (Sugden), the fact remains that Abberline held strong suspicions
toward this man. From there on, George Chapman has been a serious Ripper
suspect. But why did Abberline pick Chapman?
His statement is quoted in the Pall Mall Gazette:
I have been so struck with the remarkable coincidences in
the two series of murders that I have not been able to think of anything
else for several days past -- not, in fact, since the Attorney-General
made his opening statement at the recent trial, and traced the antecedents
of Chapman before he came to this country in 1888. Since then the idea
has taken full possession of me, and everything fits in and dovetails so
well that I cannot help feeling that this is the man we struggled so hard
to capture fifteen years ago...
As I say, there are a score of things which make one believe
that Chapman is the man; and you must understand that we have never believed
all those stories about Jack the Ripper being dead, or that he was a lunatic,
or anything of that kind. For instance, the date of the arrival in England
coincides with the beginning of the series of murders in Whitechapel; there
is a coincidence also in the fact that the murders ceased in London when
Chapman went to America, while similar murders began to be perpetrated
in America after he landed there. The fact that he studied medicine and
surgery in Russia before he came over here is well established, and it
is curious to note that the first series of murders was the work of an
expert surgeon, while the recent poisoning cases were proved to be done
by a man with more than an elementary knowledge of medicine. The story
told by Chapman's wife of the attempt to murder her with a long knife while
in America is not to be ignored.
Other striking similarities arise among the personal characteristics
of Chapman and those most believe the Ripper must have had. Chapman had
a regular job, as did the Ripper (since the murders all occured on weekends).
Chapman was single and free of family responsibility, as was the Ripper
(to allow for his being out at all hours of the night). Lucy Baderski even
goes so far as to say that her previous husband was in the habit of staying
out into the early hours of the morning.
Furthermore, Chapman had an outrageous sexual drive, if his many affairs
and relationships are any guide to go by (The Ripper was a sexual serial
murderer). He was also a misogynist (as the Ripper must have been), having
beaten at least four of his lovers and killed three. Perhaps most importantly,
however, Chapman was a known multicide. This should not be taken
lightly, as there were many men who fit the description of the Ripper in
1888, but few who known to actually be able to commit murder, and
even fewer known to be able to commit serial murder.
Still, Abberline did admit there was one problem with Chapman's being
the Ripper:
One discrepancy only have I noted, and this is that the people who
alleged that they saw Jack the Ripper at one time or another, state that
he was a man about thirty-five or forty years of age. They, however, state
that they only saw his back, and it is easy to misjudge age from a back
view.
This is true, but no witness made the Ripper out to be as young
as Chapman was in 1888 (twenty-three years old). The youngest estimates
were by PC Smith (28) and Schwartz and Lawende (30). Yet, Lucy's brother
and sister all claimed that Chapman's appearance changed very little the
entire time they knew him. If we take this at face value, then perhaps
it would be possible for Chapman to have looked a bit older than his age.
Regardless, what should we make about the vast difference in M.O.s
between a cold, calculating wife-poisoner and a brutish mutilator of prostitutes?
Abberline's answer to that question was also printed in the Pall Mall
Gazette:
As to the question of the dissimilarity of character in the crimes
which one hears so much about, I cannot see why one man should not have
done both, provided he had the professional knowledge, and this is admitted
in Chapman's case. A man who could watch his wives being slowly tortures
to death by poison, as he did, was capable of anything; and the fact that
he should have attempted, in such a cold-blooded manner, to murder his
first wife with a knife in New Jersey, makes one more inclined to believe
in the theory that he was mixed up in the two series of crimes... Indeed,
if the theory be accepted that a man who takes life on a wholesale scale
never ceases his accursed habit until he is either arrested or dies, there
is much to be said for Chapman's consistency. You see, incentive changes;
but the fiendishness is not eradicated. The victims too, you will notice,
continue to be women; but they are of different classes, and obviously
call for different methods of despatch.
Ex-Superintendant Arthur Neil, who also believed in the Chapman
theory, was even less precise in his answer to the same question:
Why he took to poisoning his women victims on his second
visit to this country can only be ascribed to his diabolical cunning, or
some insane idea or urge to satisfy his inordinate vanity.
Admittedly, we can not expect either Abberline or Neil to have
had the knowledge we now have today concerning M.O.s and serial offenders.
Although many still contend that M.O.s rarely change, especially so drastically
as from a violent mutilation to a non-physical and calculating poisoning,
John Douglas of the American F.B.I. disagrees:
Some criminologists and behavioural scientists have written that
perpetrators maintain their modus operandi, adn that this is what links
so-called signature crimes. This conclusion is incorrect. Subjects will
change their modus operandi as they gain experience. This is learned behaviour.
Still other quesitons must arise, such as Chapman's capability to actually
converse in the English language in the fall of 1888, having just emigrated
to London only a year previously. Many witnesses claim to have heard him
conversing with the victims, some even going so far as to say the Ripper
conversed in an "educated manner." Would a Polish immigrant,
after having lived no more than a year in London, be able to sustain such
conversation?
Finally we come to the subject of the "similar murders committed
in America" referred to by Abberline and others as evidence for Chapman's
being the Ripper. Actually, there was only one similar murder, that
of an elderly prostitute named Carrie Brown, or
"Old Shakespeare" for her affinity for quoting the author when
drunk. She was murdered in a common lodging house in Jersey City, New Jersey
on April 24, 1891, first strangled and then savagely mutilated.
Mary Miniter, assistant housekeeper at the lodging house, saw the man
with whom she entered and described him as:
Apparently about thirty-two years old, five feet eight inches in
height, of slim build, with a long, sharp nose and a heavy moustache of
light colour. He was clad in a dark-brown cutaway coat and black trousers,
and wore an old black derby hat, the crown of which was much dented. He
was evidently a foreigner, and possibly a German.
The description is far from perfect, but it does hark back
somewhat toward Chapman. But the important question here is timing -- was
Chapman even in Jersey City at the time of the murder?
On April 5, 1891 the English census was taken, and Chapman was listed
as still living in Tewkesbury Buildings, Whitechapel. There are no more
listings for Chapman until when he returns to England a year later. Unfortunately,
there are no records of Chapman's being in Jersey City before April
24th. The only assumption that can be made is, again, that it was the death
of their son in March that prompted Chapman and Baderski to move to America.
Therefore it would logically be as soon as possible after his death on
March 3rd, and after the census register of April 5. That leaves nineteen
days for Chapman to pick up and move out, settle into Jersey City, and
murder Carrie Brown. It would be a tight fit, but not entirely impossible.
So what is the verdict? Chapman was a misogynist with medical skill
and American experience, with a foreign look similar to those of witness
descriptions. He resided in the immediate area of the murders throughout
the Autumn of Terror, and the London murders ceased once he moved to America,
where another was killed in a similar fashion. Everything fits except for
his M.O.. The question to ask here is whether or not a savage mutilator
can, in a way, reform himself to being a calculating poisoner seven years
later.
