George Chapman (1865 - 1903)
A.K.A. Severin Antoniovich Klosowski
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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.
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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.
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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."
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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,
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