The Five

by Hallie Rubenhold

  The Smiths were heartbroken at the path Annie had chosen, and do not seem to have refused her small amounts of financial assistance when she requested it. However, her younger brother, Fountaine, may have offered her slightly more than this. In his rather confused testimony at the coroner’s inquest, Annie’s sibling seemed to indicate that he had met with her on two occasions: once, on the Commercial Road and also, in an apparently unplanned encounter, in Westminster. In one instance, Fountaine stated he lent her two shillings, while in another that he gave her this money. That which the newspapers did not report is that, like Annie, her brother was also an alcoholic, though one who had, at least temporarily, held down a job as a manager in a printer’s warehouse. In truth, Fountaine may have seen more of his sister than he was willing to indicate, either to the public or to his family. As someone who was equally fond of the bottle, her brother would have been a softer touch and good for standing her a drink or two. Neither would chastise the other for their weaknesses, and in a family of teetotalers, Fountaine’s behavior would have been subject to as much scrutiny as Annie’s. The five pence that Annie procured from “her relatives” on September 7, 1888, likely came from Fountaine, who lived nearby, in Clerkenwell (directly opposite St. Bartholomew’s Hospital), rather than from her sisters in Knightsbridge.

  By 1888, Annie had also begun to benefit from a steadier relationship with Edward Stanley, a “florid-faced” forty-five-year-old “man of a respectable appearance,” who worked for a local brewery.10 Although Ted, or “the Pensioner,” as he was commonly called, claimed that he had known Annie for two years, their part-time cohabitation had started only that summer. By then, Annie had become a regular at 35 Dorset Street, a lodging house known as Crossingham’s, where she and Ted would pass the weekends together. According to Timothy Donovan, the deputy keeper there, Annie used to wait for Ted at the corner of Brushfield Street on Saturday, when the couple would go to the pub. He usually remained with Annie until Monday morning, during which time he did what was expected of any Victorian man in the company of a woman—he footed their expenses, which included the cost of Annie’s lodging until at least Tuesday morning. At the lodging house, Annie and “the Pensioner” were recognized as a couple. Stanley even made it clear to Tim Donovan that he understood his relationship with Annie to be exclusive and, as a jealous partner, asked the lodging-house keeper to prevent her from becoming involved with anyone else. Interestingly, in the time that she knew “the Pensioner,” it was claimed that Annie had purchased some brass rings, which she wore on her left hand. Only Ted confidently stated that they were two in number—“a wedding ring and a keeper” (an engagement ring), which he claimed was “of a fancy pattern.”11 These rings were not a gift from Ted, yet apparently Annie wore them to affect an air of marital respectability, regardless of her true circumstances.

  Although Annie was by the standards of the nineteenth century considered both a “broken woman” and a “fallen woman,” she was not a prostitute, and should not have been characterized as one by police or journalists. According to orders issued by the police commissioner, Charles Warren, on July 19, 1887, roughly a year before Polly Nichols’s murder, “the Police are [not] justified in calling any woman a common prostitute, unless she so describes herself, or has been convicted as such . . .” The order went on to state that although a police constable “may be perfectly convinced in his own mind that she is such,” he should “not assume that any particular woman is a common prostitute” unless there are witnesses and proof to attest to this.12 As in the case of Polly Nichols, no reliable evidence exists to suggest that Annie Chapman either worked as a prostitute or identified herself with the trade. Contrary to romanticized images of the Ripper’s victims, she never “walked the streets” in a low-cut bodice and rouged cheeks, casting provocative glances beneath the gas lamps. She never belonged to a brothel nor had a pimp. Neither is there any evidence that she was arrested or even cautioned for her behavior. Following “enquiries made amongst women in the same class . . . at public houses in the locality,” the police could find not a single witness who could confirm that she had been among the ranks of those who sold sex.13 Those who worked in the trade were generally well known, not only to one another but frequently to the police, as well as to their neighbors and local publicans. In impoverished areas like Whitechapel, where little stigma was attached to the sale of sex, a woman’s friends, family, and associates were not bashful about openly identifying her as a prostitute when she genuinely was one.

  As the police were still of an opinion that the Whitechapel murders were committed by either a “high rip” extortion gang or a lone prostitute-killer (believed, early in the investigations, to be John Pizer, known as “Leather Apron”), it was essential that the victims be identified with the sex trade. Evidently paying no heed to Charles Warren’s order of July 19, the police of the H Division simply wrote the word “prostitute” in the space designating a victim’s occupation on forms documenting Annie’s murder. Just as they had with Polly Nichols’s case, the authorities began their inquiry from a fixed position: that Annie musthave been a prostitute, a stance that from thereon guided the direction of their investigation, as well as the attitudes and interrogations of the coroner’s court.

  The newspapers were not inclined to question this assumption either. As this murder occurred in the middle of the inquest into Polly Nichols’s death, the press seized the opportunity to link them. These two similar killings, committed within weeks of each other, whipped the papers into a frenzy of excitement. The number of journalists in Whitechapel swelled. Murders sold newspapers, and the editors spun out the stories for as long as possible. The papers wanted to capture the sense of “moral panic”; they wanted interviews, site visits, opinion pieces, and detailed coverage of the Chapman inquest. The result was a panicked pandemonium of writing far more extensive than that inspired by the Nichols case. A chaos of contradictory statements derived from hearsay, badly transcribed notes, and testimony reframed to fit particular journalistic angles emerged in the newspapers. Yet again, as with Polly Nichols’s case, the official transcripts of what was actually said at the coroner’s inquest, as well as most of the police documentation, does not survive; we lack a definitive set of records. As a result, virtually all that is known about Annie Chapman’s life in White­chapel is drawn from this morass of confused “facts” reported in newspapers.

  Statements from the coroner’s court testimony of Amelia Palmer, Tim Donovan, and the night manager at Crossingham’s, John Evans (those most familiar with Annie and her habits), vary markedly from publication to publication. Placed side by side, one account often directly contradicts another. On September 9, theGuardian writes that Palmer stated, “As a regular means of livelihood she [Annie] had not been in the habit of frequenting the streets, but had made antimacassars for sale. Sometimes she would buy flowers or matches with which to pick up a living.” This claim was repeated in a number of syndicated northern newspapers, including the Hull Daily News and the Eastern Morning News. By contrast, on the eleventh, theStar,which tended to take the most sensationalist angle, has Amelia claiming, “I am afraid the deceased used to earn her living partly on the streets.” Other newspapers, including theTelegraph,cite Amelia’s testimony more ambiguously, and refer only to the fact that Annie “was out late at night at times.” Some publications even omitted a reference to her mode of life altogether. As a definitive version of this statement does not exist, Amelia’s actual words can’t be confirmed and therefore can’t be used to support a claim that Annie prostituted herself.

  Reports from Donovan’s and Evans’s testimonies contain similar vagaries. According to the Morning Advertiserof September 11, John Evans said, “I have known that the deceased was out at nights, but I have known only one man with whom she was associated,” and Tim Donovan asserted that “I could not say whether the deceased walked the streets.” Donovan was most likely telling the truth; it’s unlikely that he had taken much notic
e of or interest in the daily activities of one among his many lodgers until circumstances forced him.

  Even when it’s possible to pick through the journalistic inconsistencies for information that accords with a historical understanding of how impoverished women lived, Donovan’s carefully crafted testimony does not provide much compelling evidence to suggest that Annie made her living by the sex trade.* According to several publications, Donovan was asked about Annie’s associations with men, as was another witness, Eliza Cooper, who was known to have an antagonistic relationship with Annie and had recently come to blows with her over a borrowed bar of soap. Moreover, Annie had once been connected with Cooper’s current partner, Harry the Hawker. Both the deputy keeper and Eliza asserted that as far as they knew, Annie had been connected with only two men, Harry and Ted Stanley. However, Cooper later claimed to have seen Annie “with several other men,” though she added that “[Annie] only brought them casually to the lodging house.”14 If this were the case, then according to Tim Donovan, these men didn’t get very far. In his testimony Donovan explained that Ted Stanley had instructed him “not to let the bed” if Annie came to Crossingham’s with another man. The deputy keeper maintained that he kept to his word and in his defense cited that “As a rule [Annie] occupied a double bed by herself.”15 Neither of the two witnesses were questioned about this discrepancy between their stories, nor asked whether Annie was ever successful in obtaining entry in spite of Donovan’s alleged bar, nor what she did in the event she was denied access. Neither is the character of Annie’s relationship to these other men known, or whether they were as “casual” as Annie’s rival in love suggested that they were. Even Charles Warren’s police order had recognized the difficulties in distinguishing a prostitute and her behavior from that of other poor, working-class women. This was, and remains especially the case, when the context of a woman’s actions, as well as her own voice, are missing from the equation.

  The Victorian newspapers ignored such fine distinctions. Stories were crafted on top of assumptions, and the biggest assumption of all was that Annie Chapman was a prostitute. As theStar confidently declared, “We are able to see the kind of existence that women of CHAPMAN’S unfortunate class are compelled to live . . . Probably she did not rise until the shades of night enabled her to ply her hideous trade, and she then seems to have spent her time in passing from liquor shop to liquor shop with the fitting companions, male and female, of such orgies.”16 The Star, and other publications, failed to view Annie as an individual, but rather saw her as a cipher within a large “unfortunate class,” a category that lumped together all impoverished women, regardless of age or particular circumstances. As the Daily Mail pointed out, “No criminal centre is wholly criminal, and to represent even the lodging houses of Dorset Street as wholly inhabited by the utterly depraved would be wrong.”17 Though theStarsuggested as much, Annie did not sleep all day in order to rise when “the shades of night enabled her to ply her hideous trade.” She sewed and crocheted, intent on earning money through what Amelia Palmer referred to as her own industry. Such depictions of her also did not take into account the state of her health. Annie was seriously, if not terminally, ill with tuberculosis. In addition to tablets, two bottles of medicine and what appear to have been letters of prescription given to her during a visit to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital were recovered from among her belongings after her death. This, as much as her desire to spend the night with Ted Stanley, would explain her insistence on having an eight-penny double bed. Not only were these “doubles” surrounded by a wooden partition, which afforded a rare degree of privacy, but as Elizabeth Allen, a fellow lodger at Crossingham’s, commented, “an eight penny bed” carried “with it greater advantages than those accorded by a four penny . . . doss. The lodgers having the cheaper bed . . . were expected to turn out earlier in the morning.” Toward the end of her life, Annie would have valued an extra hour in bed before being put out on the street at midmorning, feverish, aching, and racked by coughing fits.

  In the last few months of her life, as her health deteriorated, Annie became increasingly dependent on Ted Stanley to fund the cost of her lodgings. When he stayed with her on the weekend of September 1, he gave Annie enough money to pay for her bed until Tuesday, as he usually did. On that afternoon, Amelia Palmer spotted her friend “looking very pale” and walking slowly by Christ Church, Spitalfields. Annie confessed that she was feeling ill and thought she might go to the infirmary. Completely penniless, she “had not even had a cup of tea that day.” Amelia gave her two pence and instructed her not to buy rum with it. She next saw Annie on that Friday, the seventh, lingering on Dorset Street, looking just as unwell. Amelia asked her if she would be going to Stratford to sell her crochet work. “I am too ill to do anything,” Annie answered wearily. When Amelia returned to the spot ten minutes later, she was quite alarmed to see that her friend had not moved. Annie hadn’t a penny and was too sick to earn the sum she so urgently needed for a bed. “It’s no use in my giving way,” she said to Amelia, recognizing the gravity of her situation. “I must pull myself together and go and get some money or I shall have no lodgings.”18

  One of the mysteries that the journalists covering Annie’s story seemed unable to solve was the issue of where precisely she had gone during that last week. Timothy Donovan confirmed that when she left 35 Dorset Street on that Tuesday afternoon, he did not see her again until Friday. It is believed that Annie went to the infirmary at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, but as her name does not appear on the in-patients register, it is likely she was examined by a doctor and sent away. Similarly, her name is absent from extant admissions records at the casual wards; even if she did go to such a place, this would account for only two nights. On the whole, this is not inconsistent with Annie’s past behavior; there is no evidence that she ever stayed in a London casual ward or workhouse. This was almost certainly because such a sojourn would entail going without a drink. According to a study conducted by the 1904 Vagrancy Committee, those truly addicted to alcohol preferred sleeping rough to the restrictions they would face by placing themselves in the care of institutions.19

  As Annie never sought shelter from her siblings, and no one among Whitechapel’s lodging-house keepers or residents came forward to claim that she regularly slept anywhere other than Crossingham’s, it is unlikely that she did. Yet, at the same time, Elizabeth Allen asserted that Annie only ever had money enough to stay “3 or 4 nights a week” at 35 Dorset Street, the period that she spent with Ted Stanley. Logically, this would imply that Annie had no bed at least three nights out of every week.

  It is unrealistic to suppose that an impoverished, sickly addict, whose primary concern was finding money for drink, would have had a regular bed every night. According to the social commentator Howard Goldsmid, Whitechapel, like the Embankment, Hyde Park, and London Bridge, was “night after night, thronged with dossers, who have no money for a night’s shelter.” He witnessed many who slept “crouched in a doorway, or huddled in a heap upon the pavement.” “Dozens of homeless creatures, male and female,” whom he described as “hungry, ragged men and women,” congregated near Christ Church, Spitalfields, where they might be found “hanging onto the railings, or crouching down by the walls,” while others half-leaned and half-lay on the low rail-topped wall that surrounded the buildings. Goldsmid commented that most of these people had been turned out of their usual lodging houses on Thrawl Street, Flower and Dean Street, and Dorset Street because they couldn’t produce their doss money. “When you enter the kitchen of a doss-’ouse, it would be a mistake to suppose that all the people you meet there are going to spend the night under its roof,” he wrote.

  Many of them are reg’lar ’uns, who, in consideration of their constant patronage are permitted to spend the evening, or a portion of it, before the blazing coke fire, for though the deputy will give no trust, he knows better than to offend a regular lodger. As the evening wears on, however, these poor wretches become rest
less and moody. They pace the floor with their hands in their otherwise empty pockets, glancing towards the door at each fresh arrival to see if a “pal” has come in from whom it may be possible to borrow the halfpence necessary to complete their doss money. At last, their final hope being gone, they shuffle out into the streets and prepare to spend the night with only the sky for a canopy.20

  On the night of September 7, Annie Chapman was faced with just this scenario. According to Timothy Donovan, Annie reappeared at Crossingham’s that afternoon, and after explaining that she was unwell and had been to the infirmary, asked if she could sit downstairs in the kitchen. Donovan granted her request, but in the early evening (about the time when she encountered Amelia) she went out again. By around midnight, Annie was seen back in the kitchen, asking a fellow lodger, William Stevens, to fetch her a pint of beer from a nearby pub. In doing so, she seemed to indicate that she had “been to her relations” and managed to beg five pence. That money, which might have paid for a bed, was quickly converted into drink. After she finished her pint with Stevens, she set off to the Britannia, a pub on the corner of Dorset Street and Commercial Street. Having taken her fill, Annie returned once more to Crossingham’s kitchen and ate some potatoes. By then it was about 1:45 a.m., the time when Donovan began to clear the kitchen of those who did not have the pennies for their doss. He asked the night watchman, John Evans, to go downstairs and do the collecting. Annie came up short but went to Donovan’s office to plead for her usual bed, number 29.