Annie Chapman - Wife, Mother, Victim: The Life & Death of a Victim of Jack The Ripper

by Covell, Mike

  The Daily Telegraph, a London based newspaper, featured the following, dated September 10th 1888,

  Another most horrible murder has been perpetrated in Whitechapel. At an early hour on Saturday morning, the body of a woman was found lying in the corner of a yard in Hanbury-street, a low thoroughfare, not far from Buck's-row, the scene of a similar tragedy ten days ago. The deceased's throat was cut, she had been disembowelled, and there were other circumstances of the most revolting barbarity. The body proved to be that of Annie Chapman, a widow, who had for many years been separated from her husband, and had of late been leading a somewhat loose life, taking up her quarters principally in the poorer sort of East-end lodging-houses. There is at present no very tangible clue to the murderer, but the police have issued a description of the man who is “wanted” for the deed. The coroner's inquest will be opened this morning.

  It is not to be wondered at that, in the absence of any large political question or event of general importance, the attention of the public should at this hour be concentrated on the horrible murder in Whitechapel, which makes the fourth of a series of similar atrocities recently committed in the same locality. Not long ago the corpse of a woman was found near the Whitechapel-road who had been killed at night by the thrust of a stake or iron rod driven right through her body. No revelation was made of the assassin, and shortly afterwards, at Osborne-street, near the first-mentioned spot, a woman was again discovered lying dead, bearing more than thirty wounds, most of them directed to some vital part. This crime, known as the “George's-yard-buildings murder,” also lacked any explanation; the murderer remained at large, and no light of any kind could be thrown on the deed. The third assassination in the same quarter took place at Buck's-row, also close by, where a helpless creature, named NICHOLLS, a street-walker, like the others, was found dreadfully hacked and pierced; and only on Thursday last the body of this third victim was carried to burial through Hanbury-street, Whitechapel, her murderer remaining unknown, notwithstanding the anxious investigation of the police and the increasing excitement and publicity which these consecutive crimes naturally caused in the vicinity. And now, on Saturday morning last, in that very thoroughfare through which the body of the third victim was thus borne, and quite near to Osborne-street and Buck's-row, the scenes of the two preceding slaughters, a woman of the same class and character has been discovered terribly and barbarously butchered, and so mutilated that no wild beast in its fury could have displayed a fiercer rage to rend and destroy than the again unknown perpetrator of this latest enormity. The circumstances under which the fourth victim of so shocking a series of murders was seen weltering in her blood and disembowelled are fully given in another portion of our columns, and we may, therefore, spare ourselves and the public a repetition here of the ghastly details. Assuredly no surprise can be felt that with the recurrence of such startling crimes in a circumscribed space, committed upon miserable women of the same sad category, and with reiterated evidence of the existence of some perfectly fiendish being, possessed with a murderous frenzy, as cunning as he is cruel - no surprise, we say, can be felt that the whole quarter of London wherein these frightful acts have been perpetrated is at present in a state of consternation and horror, and that the attention of the Capital itself should be concentrated upon them. Repulsive in almost all particulars, sordid and vulgar in scene and surroundings, and in indications of the low, unhappy, reckless lives going on in our midst, the terrible character of these acts still causes universal pity for the victims, while the Metropolis at large cannot but thrill with anger and apprehension to know that the miscreant concerned in such a series of abominable offences goes to-day undetected and at full liberty to commit new horrors about its streets and lanes. We say “the miscreant,” adopting therein the common theory which has taken possession of the public mind, although nothing is known as yet to prove that these four murders have really been committed by one and the same hand. The considerations, however, which lead to that view are certainly strong. First, it is to be noticed that the sufferers have all been females of the same class - poverty-stricken and hopeless street-walkers, who would repulse no approaches, and would thus offer the very readiest victims to an execrable wretch seeking to gratify the double passion of possession and of destruction. They would know the nooks and corners of the locality perfectly well - perhaps he would also - and it is notable here that the latest of the four poor creatures was found, like the others, in a bye-place, out of sight of casual wayfarers. Then the time chosen for the frightful deeds appears to have been much the same - the early hours of morning, just before the industrial classes turn out to their work; a time when London, even in the East-end, is often as quiet as a desert. Next, the characteristics of each murder show a rage of cruelty, a fantastic brutality, which is strangely marked and individual. The thrust which pierced the first miserable prey of the supposed assassin through and through; those thirty-six deadly wounds rained upon the body of the second; the savage hurts inflicted upon MARY ANN NICHOLLS, the third; and now the almost decapitation and disembowelling of this last poor woman, ANNIE CHAPMAN - all point to some single villain too uniquely hideous in his mania for murder and mutilation to have an accomplice or an imitator. Any desire of plunder can have mingled very slightly, if at all, with these detestable crimes, because the most ignorant or the most destitute assassin - were he a foreign sailor half intoxicated or a reckless and ruffianly tramp - would surely know there was nothing to be purloined of value from such women. The hapless prostitute butchered on Saturday morning in the back-yard of No. 29, Hanbury-street, had in her pocket two bright farthings only - possibly passed off upon her as half-sovereigns - and it is still only a suspicion that her rings of base metal had been wrenched from the fingers. Indeed, the two strongest points sustaining the belief that these crimes have been wrought by one and the same person are, first, the circumscribed locality in which they have taken place, and next, the frightful identity of method displayed in the swift and merciless silencing of the victim by one deadly stroke on the throat, and afterwards the savage reduplication of blows and the insensate maiming and mutilation of the corpse. We are certainly led by these elements in the appalling series of homicides to imagine the existence of some baleful prowler of the East-end streets and alleys, who, in his own particular quarter, knows every bye-place well, who is plausible enough in address to beguile his victims, strong enough to overcome them the moment homicidal passion succeeds to desire, cunning enough to select the most quiet hour and the most retired spot for his furious assaults, and possessed of a certain ghastly skill in using the knife, which seems to be his weapon. The evisceration of the wretched woman found on Saturday evening last - performed as it must have been in the gloom, and amid momentary possibilities of discovery - while it, perhaps, evidences the desperate wantonness of a madman, also suggests a hand practised in some shambles or knacker's yard. For the act of mutilation itself there can be conceived, we think, only three possible explanations. Either the scoundrel was carried away with sanguinary fury, and sought pleasure in utterly destroying his victim; or he was possessed with an insane desire to horrify society by an unexampled atrocity - a feeling which has been exhibited ere now in criminals bitten with the lust of notoriety; or, finally, he was recklessly, yet not incapably, drunk, and has each time escaped, by an evil chance, in the hardihood lent by that condition. All this is but conjecture, which we must hope, will soon be confirmed or rectified by the capture of the author, or authors, of these shocking murders. In pursuit of that object the intelligence and interest of the whole metropolitan community will now be enlisted in aid of the police, who will themselves, for every reason, spare no effort to bring the perpetrator of such atrocious outrages to justice. The inquest to be held to-day may throw some fresh light upon the crime; but meanwhile we are not at all inclined to agree with those who have commenced an outcry against the local police for not preventing a repetition of these Whitechapel murders. In a labyrinth of bye-ways and back-yards
like that surrounding Whitechapel-road ten times the number of constables now on duty could not know or see what is nightly going on. This latest murder was committed in the rear premises of a three-storeyed lodging-house full of people, and yet none of them knew or heard of it until an inmate rose early and passed downstairs - how, then, should the police have witnessed it? When we pass to the question of detective skill there is more to say, and it is to be hoped that, with so many willing eyes and ears to help them, the investigation of these abominable crimes will be conducted with judgement, promptitude, and success, so that the streets of the East-end may be purged from the Red Terror which now lurks in them, and the minds of the citizens be quieted. Moreover, if the monster in human form whom we have imagined be captured, it must not be too lightly advanced or admitted that he is insane and irresponsible. There are natures “mad” only in being immeasurably bad - beings who look like men, but are rather demons, vampires, of whom society has the right to be quickly rid, without too much attention to the theories of mental experts. It may be trusted that, if no clue be found to the perpetrator of this latest horror, his own cunning will eventually fail him, and that the villain will, by some garrulity or imprudence betray his guilty knowledge. Failing this, and in the hope that he may have some confidant, if not accomplice, a large reward ought, we think, to be offered for his apprehension. It is not because “Dark ANNIE” and her fellow victims were the “lowest of the low” that Justice must spare a single effort to arrest and punish the wretch who has thus alarmed and horrified a whole capital.

  The Daily News, a London based newspaper, featured the following, dated September 10th 1888,

  Another shocking murder, with still more atrocious mutilation of the victim than in the previous case, was perpetrated between five and six o'clock in Saturday morning, in Whitechapel. The scene of this crime was the yard of 29 Hanbury street, and the murdered person, Annie Chapman, was again a woman of low life and in the poorest circumstances. No clue to the murderer had up to last night been obtained. These repeated murders in the Whitechapel district have produced an amount of alarm and anxiety in that neighbourhood bordering on panic. The inquest will be opened today, when evidence of the finding of the body and of the mutilations will be given. THE FOURTH WHITECHAPEL MURDER. On Saturday one more crime was added to the ghastly series of Whitechapel murders. Just before six that morning a woman was found murdered and mutilated at a lodging house in Hanbury street, Whitechapel road. She was of the same class as Mary Ann Nicholls, and she was butchered in much the same way. If there was a difference, it was in favour of the earlier victim. The head of Annie Chapman, the latest, had been nearly severed from her body by one stroke of a sharp knife, and her mangled remains had been disposed about her in a way that suggested a delight in the slaughter for the slaughter's sake. The details, for those who are able to endure the recital of them, will be found elsewhere. The house in Hanbury street is open all night. People are coming and going at all hours, mostly if not wholly, on perfectly lawful business, as many of them are labourers and market people. The body was found in the back yard. At twenty minutes past five a lodger went into the yard and noticed nothing to excite his suspicion. At a few minutes to six another lodger went there, and saw a sight that sent him screaming through the house. All, then, had been done in half an hour. In that time the murderer had decoyed the woman into the house, slain her in the yard, robbed her of her sham rings, inflicted nameless indignities on the dead body, indignity upon indignity, horror upon horror, and got clean away. The house teemed with life; it was near the hour of rising for most of the inmates, yet no human being heard a cry or an alarm. The swiftness of it, the perfect mystery of it, are heightening effects of terror. The wildest imagination has never combined in fiction so many daring improbabilities as have here been accomplished in fact. It is a positive relief to escape from the fact to the theory of the crime. There can no longer be any doubt that we have to deal with some form of malignant insanity. No person could murder at these risks, and for these gains, with any sense of purpose in his acts as purpose is known to the sane. A monster is abroad. The murders defy all rules of motive; they only suggest a union, not at all uncommon in insanity, of the utter absence of a moral sense with the most finished cunning in the adaptation of means to ends. Both are abnormal - the cunning and the worse than tigerish passion for blood. The first is quite as remarkable as the last, and its very perfection suggests a mind completely off its balance - that is, quite undeveloped on one side. The dreadful surety of the stroke would have been impossible to any being of ordinary mould. Every cut must have been given with the unerring precision of the slaughterhouse. One stroke took the head from the body, the others went straight to the mark of that elaborate desecration with which the crime was brought to a close. There was no more waste of effort than there is in the killing of a sheep. There could have been no more pity, or anger, or violent passion of any sort. The police have to find for us one of the most extraordinary monsters known to the history of mental and spiritual disease, a monster whose skull will have to be cast for all the surgical museums of the world. No other theory is admissible. Who could have done such things for gain alone or in the prosecution of any definite scheme of revenge? No “blackmailer” of unfortunate women would ever cut himself off from his market in this way. The thief never deals a useless stroke. The public are looking for a monster, and in the legend of “Leather Apron” the Whitechapel part of them seem to be inventing a monster to look for. This kind of invention ought to be discouraged in every possible way, or there may soon be murders from panic to add to murders from lust of blood. A touch would fire the whole district, in the mood which it is now. Leather Apron walks without making a noise, Leather Apron has piercing eyes and a strange smile, and finally Leather Apron looks like a Jew. The last is brutal as well as foolish, and it has already had its effect in a cry against Whitechapel Jews. Already, as our columns show today, the list of savage assaults in the neighbourhood has shown an alarming increase since the discovery on Saturday. Every man who can say a reasonable word ought to say it, or worse may follow than all we have already known. Much depends on the police. It is hardly too much to say that the peace of a whole quarter of London is now, in an especial manner, in their hands. We have already commented on the inadequacy of the Force in the district affected by these crimes. Hanbury street must have been poorly patrolled if so much could have passed there in half an hour, and have left no trace behind. The police have a good deal of lost ground to recover. In the past year or two they have failed to bring many terrible offenders to justice. The Kentish town murder is still one of the mysteries of crime, and so is the murder at Canonbury. A lady was murdered near Bloomsbury square last year - the murderer has not been found. At about the same time a solicitor's clerk was murdered in Arthur street with precisely the same result. It is certain that no effort will be spared; but the public will hardly be satisfied with an assurance of that sort. The police must somehow contrive to win this time. Whatever the event, the crimes must remain a kind of public disgrace. It is sickening to think of the way some of us live now, as revealed in the incidental particulars of this tragedy. It is difficult to believe that no sound was heard at the critical moment. Sounds pass unheeded in Hanbury street - that is all. The lodger who came down at 5.25 fancied he hard a slight scuffle, with the noise of someone falling against the pailings, but he took no notice of that. They take very little notice in Hanbury street, even of strangers to the house, who sometimes turn in for a sleep on the stairs before the markets open. The murdered woman used to sleep in a lodging house in Dorset street, when she had the money. When she had not, she went out to earn it. She had come out on a quest of this sort the night of the murder. It was not her only vicissitude that week. At the beginning of it she had been rather severely knocked about by another woman in a stand up fight. She had thought of taking a turn at hop picking, if she could get a pair of boots. A few hours after her body had been discovered, another of her sex
was nearly murdered in Spitalfields Market. But there was mystery in this affair. It was only a blind man quarrelling with the woman who served as his guide - wrangling as he walked along, and stabbing as he wrangled. So, tens of thousands of us live now in the greatest capital of the world.