Following the murder of Polly Nichols in Bucks Row, the Metropolitan Police had their suspicions as to the culprit(s) and thought it would only be a matter of time before the guilty were brought to justice.Any number of violent gangs of the East End, who blackmailed prostitutes or simply extorted them wherever possible, fell under the watchful gaze of Metropolitan H Division. When Emma Elizabeth Smith was attacked in April 1888, as she claimed, by a group of assailants rather than one murderous man, it justified that belief. Once arrested and questioned, it would not be long before gang members would willingly give up their former pals in order to save themselves. However, though they didn’t realise it at that point, the police were about to deal with the more untraceable assassin – one who had no link whatsoever to his prey.
Even in 1888 the majority of attacks and murders were conducted by people who knew the victims and were thus easier to apprehend, but the deaths of Martha Tabram and Polly Nichols led the authorities to new and horrifying ground.
Intense media pressure didn’t help. Come the late 1880’s numerous newspapers and sheets sprung up with barely disguised agendas against the police and the Home Office. They wanted to know just how the biggest city in the world, which sat at the hub of the Empire, could fail to protect its own daughters.
The simple truth was that the police were trying to find the smallest of needles in an ever-growing haystack. Their man looked no different from the tens of thousands of innocent city dwellers who strolled around Whitechapel each day while his targets were equally keen to avoid police interference as they went about their business. How could you protect women who led potential killers into places where they could be murdered?
It was on or around the day of the Bucks Row atrocity that another prostitute was attacked in Whitechapel. This time it was not a murder, but a fight between two destitute women.
Accounts vary into how the brawl came about, but the outcome was that a woman called Eliza Cooper gave another, a 48 year old named Annie Chapman, a black eye and bruised chest. Depending on which tale you prefer, the women were rivals for the affection of a local man, Edward Stanley, and either fought over him, a half-penny piece or an unreturned cake of soap – not a story to excite the papers. Either way, Annie was not well and upon bumping into her friend Amelia Palmer a day or so later, told her that she was meant to go to Stratford but felt too ill. However, she would have to earn some money for her lodgings in Crossingham’s lodging house at 35, Dorset St, Spitalfields.
This is the first time that Dorset St is mentioned in the case but it won’t be the last. Generally known as ‘the worst street in London’ and was renowned for being the epicentre of local crime – a kind of Victorian Mos Eisley. Crowded with lodging houses and dimly-lit pubs, it was where people went when they were at the lowest point of their lives. In 1963, some 75 years after the murders, the writer Ralph L. Finn described it thus.
“It was a street of whores. There is, I always feel a subtle difference between an whore and a prostitute. At least we used to think so. Prozzies were younger, and more attractive. Whores were debauched old bags. It teemed with nasty characters – desperate, wicked, lecherous, razor-slashing hoodlums. No Jews lived there. Only a few bold ‘choots’ (immigrant Dutch Jews) had the temerity even to walk through it. There were pubs every few yards. Bawdy houses every few feet. It was peopled by roaring drunken fighting-mad killers”
(Dorset Street as it appeared in Jack London’s book The People of the Abyss)
Annie came to Dorset St by an all too familiar route. She was once a semi-respectable woman living in Windsor, working along with her husband John in domestic service. However, she was a notorious drinker and soon became something of an embarrassment to her employers. The couple split up in 1884, possibly because of her habits though John too was had alcohol issues, and Annie moved to London. She had three children by then – Emily Ruth, Annie Georgia and John. Emily died of meningitis aged eleven while John was a cripple and in the care of a charitable school.
There was clearly some affection remaining from the marriage as John still paid Annie an allowance of ten shillings a week, made payable to the Commercial St Post Office. This meant that, at the time, she did not have to resort to prostitution. Indeed, she added to her income by crochet work and selling flowers. However, in 1886, John died, succumbing to dropsy and cirrhosis of the liver and the payment stopped. It tore Annie’s world apart and she soon cut a melancholy figure who would often discuss her cruel luck. As she became hopelessly addicted to alcohol with little means of paying for it, she sank and sank before finding herself in Dorset St like so many before her.
She soon became a fixture around Spitalfields and was known either as Dark Annie or Annie Sivvey as she once took up with a man who sold sieves. She was known for her good teeth – a rarity then – and striking blue eyes. She was small and stout.
Dorset St no longer exists. In 1904 the name was changed to Duval Street, but even that was demolished in the 1920s to make way for the London Fruit and Wool Exchange building. It was reduced further to being nothing more than a service road between the Exchange and an unappealing car park. It is now completely demolished and is today it is merely a building site.
(Looking down what would have been Dorset St in 2016 with Brushfield St to the right)
The only surviving mainstays from that time are the Ten Bells pub on the corner of Commercial St and Fournier Street and Christ Church – the Nicholas Hawksmoor church which dominates the area. Any passers-by today will see at the same edifices that Annie looked at as she hobbled around the streets looking for clients. That past still lives today.
(The Ten Bells pub where Annie drank and Christ Church)
Although the murders had scared the local ‘unfortunates’ they still had to make a living and on the late evening of 7th September – a week after the murder – and early hours of Saturday 8th, Annie Chapman found herself in such a predicament. She had no money for her doss and was desperate for funds. The house deputy manager at Crossingham’s, one Timothy Donovan, had allowed her to sit in the kitchen earlier that day and did so again at around 11.30pm. She claimed to have been in the infirmary all week though there is no record to show that she did. It is more likely that she had picked up some medicine or other. She certainly had some pills in her possession. A fellow inmate of the lodging house, William Stevens, said that the box in which she kept them had broken so she had wrapped them in a piece of envelope she had found on the mantelpiece. This would become relevant later.
She headed out to the Britannia pub – locally known as ‘Ringers’ after the publican – on the corner of Dorset St and returned back at around 1.30am a little worse for drink.
(Commercial St. Ringers is the pub on the left. The Ten Bells is visible on the right with the pillars outside.)
The night watchman, John Evans who went by the nickname of ‘Brummy,’ told her that she must leave if she could not pay for her doss. She agreed, but went looking for Donovan with whom she had the following exchange.
Annie: I haven’t sufficient money for a bed, but don’t let it. I shall not be long before I am in.
Evans: You can find money for your beer and you can’t find money for your bed?
Annie: Never mind, Tim. I shall soon be back. Don’t let the bed.
Polly Nichols had had almost the same conversation in nearby Thrawl Street a week earlier.
A short walk from Dorset St, behind the Ten Bells, lies Hanbury Street. It was at the other end of Hanbury Street where Robert Paul and Charles Lechmere met the policeman to report the body of Polly Nichols, but Spitalfields lies about half a mile further to the east. It connects Vallance Road, later to be the home of the Kray brothers, to Spitalfields Market so was usually busy at all hours.
Number 29 was on the north side of the street and consisted of a three storey building with an attic area and cellar. There were eight rooms in it with which 17 people lived. The owner, Mrs Amelia Richardson, ran a packing case business in the cellar while right hand side of the building consisted of a cat’s meat shop (Note: Meat for cats, not, as some suggest, meat made from cats!). Such was the transitory nature of its inhabitants the front door was seldom locked. A small passageway ran through the building and led to a yard with an outhouse.
(The actor James Mason visits 29 Hanbury Street in the 1960s in the quirky film documentary The London Nobody Knows)
(The passage way at 29 Hanbury Street)
Enterprising prostitutes were always on the looking out for quiet areas to bring clients so it wasn’t uncommon for residents to find strangers about the place. After all, there could be no passing policemen in a backyard. Equally, there was no way the police could protect anyone who was in there with strange men.
At 4.45am on the morning of 8th September, Amelia Richardson’s son, John, sat on the steps overlooking the back yard. He was having some difficulty with one of his boots and tried to trim a wayward piece of leather with a house knife. He gave up and went to work five minutes later. He saw nothing unusual.
At 5am a market worker, Mrs Elizabeth Long, left her house in Church Street on her way to work. Dawn had broken nine minutes earlier. She would later state that she heard the clock in the Black Eagle Brewery on Brick Lane sound the time as she passed down Hanbury Street. It was 5.30 as she approached No. 29 where she saw a couple talking outside. The woman was Annie Chapman who was facing her. The man had her back to her, but she noticed he was wearing a brown deerstalker hat and was of ‘shabby genteel appearance’ (good clothes with had faded with age and damage) She heard a brief snatch of dialogue.
Man: Will you?
Annie: Yes.
The man – who was only a little taller than the woman (Annie was five foot tall) – had a foreign accent.
At 5.15am next door in No. 27 a man called Albert Cadoche entered the yard next door to relieve himself. He heard voices from over the fence, though the only word he was able to make out was ‘No.’ The poor man was suffering from a urinary infection so there were many trips to the yard in the night. At 5.30am, he returned to the yard and heard the sound of someone slumping against the fence. His curiosity was not sufficiently aroused as he knew full well what the yard was often used for. He went back indoors without further investigation.
Shortly before 6am, John Davis, a resident at 29, entered the backyard. He would never forget the sight that met his eyes.
“Annie was lying on her back, parallel with the fence, which was to her left; Her head was about two feet from the back wall and six to nine inches left of the bottom step; Her legs were bent at the knees; Her feet were flat on the ground, pointing towards the shed; Her dress was pushed above her knees; Her left arm lay across her left breast; Her right arm at her side; The small intestines, still attached by a cord, and part of the abdomen lay above her right shoulder; Two flaps of skin from the lower abdomen lay in a large quantity of blood above the left shoulder; Her throat was deeply cut in a jagged manner; A neckerchief was around her neck.”
Davis ran straight into the street and confronted two men, James Green and James Kent, and told them about the body while in an understandable state of panic. Another man, Henry Holland, arrived and went into the yard while the others stood in the passage. They soon went their separate ways to summon the police.
(The backyard to 29 Hanbury Street. The body was found to the right of the steps between the door and the fence)
An Inspector Chandler arrived to find a crowd in the passageway. He soon cleared the area and sent for the Divisional Surgeon, Dr George Bagster Phillips, who duly arrived in minutes. He later announced.
“Estimated time of death was viewed as c.4.30am.”
This has been a discussion point for many years. Phillips seemed adamant that this was the time of death, but Cadoche, Long and Richardson are only at their stations by an hour later. Bearing in mind where he was sitting at 4.45am, did John Richardson really not notice a ripped and decaying corpse directly in front of him?
Granted, there are discrepancies between the statements (Cadoche was convinced he heard ‘No’ fifteen minutes before Long had passed the couple) but it is the medico’s judgement which is the most out of kilter.
One thing was for certain and that was that the murderer had started to find his feet. While Polly Nichols had been ‘ripped’ her slaying was nothing compared to the Chapman murder. Bagster Phillips, according to press reports, gave a more detailed description of the wounds (WARNING: This is graphic)
“He noticed the same protrusion of the tongue. There was a bruise over the right temple. On the upper eyelid there was a bruise, and there were two distinct bruises, each the size of a man’s thumb, on the forepart of the top of the chest. The stiffness of the limbs was now well marked. There was a bruise over the middle part of the bone of the right hand. There was an old scar on the left of the frontal bone. The stiffness was more noticeable on the left side, especially in the fingers, which were partly closed. There was an abrasion over the ring finger, with distinct markings of a ring or rings. The throat had been severed as before described. the incisions into the skin indicated that they had been made from the left side of the neck. There were two distinct clean cuts on the left side of the spine. They were parallel with each other and separated by about half an inch. The muscular structures appeared as though an attempt had made to separate the bones of the neck. There were various other mutilations to the body, but he was of the opinion that they occurred subsequent to the death of the woman, and to the large escape of blood from the division of the neck.
The deceased was far advanced in disease of the lungs and membranes of the brain, but they had nothing to do with the cause of death. The stomach contained little food, but there was not any sign of fluid. There was no appearance of the deceased having taken alcohol, but there were signs of great deprivation and he should say she had been badly fed. He was convinced she had not taken any strong alcohol for some hours before her death. The injuries were certainly not self-inflicted. The bruises on the face were evidently recent, especially about the chin and side of the jaw, but the bruises in front of the chest and temple were of longer standing – probably of days. He was of the opinion that the person who cut the deceased throat took hold of her by the chin, and then commenced the incision from left to right. He thought it was highly probable that a person could call out, but with regard to an idea that she might have been gagged he could only point to the swollen face and the protruding tongue, both of which were signs of suffocation.
The abdomen had been entirely laid open: the intestines, severed from their mesenteric attachments, had been lifted out of the body and placed on the shoulder of the corpse; whilst from the pelvis, the uterus and its appendages with the upper portion of the vagina and the posterior two thirds of the bladder, had been entirely removed. No trace of these parts could be found and the incisions were cleanly cut, avoiding the rectum, and dividing the vagina low enough to avoid injury to the cervix uteri. Obviously the work was that of an expert- of one, at least, who had such knowledge of anatomical or pathological examinations as to be enabled to secure the pelvic organs with one sweep of the knife, which must therefore must have at least 5 or 6 inches in length, probably more. The appearance of the cuts confirmed him in the opinion that the instrument, like the one which divided the neck, had been of a very sharp character. The mode in which the knife had been used seemed to indicate great anatomical knowledge.”
That last sentence was vital. The inference being that Jack knew what he was doing.
That said it’s important to note that this does not necessarily mean the Ripper was a mad doctor as so many depictions on screen have had him, merely that he had some rudimentary knowledge of anatomy. A horse slaughterer, for example, would know the best way to kill with the minimum fuss and Jack was not a messy murderer when it came to the actual ending of life. The police had already noted that he had cut Polly Nichols’ throat from left to right, slicing the left carotid artery and thus minimising the spray of blood. An amateur, choosing right to left, would be covered in an instant. Also, it seemed that he first throttled his victims to render them insensible AND lower their blood pressure before cutting their throats which would also result in a less bloody kill. He’d thought ahead even though his choice of prey was seemingly random.
Phillips also noted that Annie’s personal effects – two combs, a piece of coarse muslin and a ripped piece of envelope containing the letter M and the stamp of the Royal Sussex Regiment – lay at Annie’s feet. Rather, he felt they were specifically placed or laid there, though he could not say why. He also noted there was a bruise on her finger where a brass ring had been tore off. What could a man want with such a useless cheap trinket? Then again, what could he want with a bladder?
The police were interested in the envelope. Remember that Martha Tabram and her friend Pearly Poll had been seen with two military men on the night of that murder. However, it wasn’t long before William Stevens told them about the lodging house incident with the pill box and the torn off envelope.
It was around this time that the name of a suspect came up. Not from the police as such, but from the people who knew the area. A man known as Leather Apron would hang around the streets and was known to threaten prostitutes with a knife. Desperate for any lead, Whitechapel H Division investigated further.
Then they saw it.
In the yard of 29 Hanbury Street, not two feet from Annie Chapman’s eviscerated corpse lay a saturated leather apron.
The press went to town on the discovery and there was some also relief for the police. On the Monday following the murder, Sergeant William Thick called at 22 Mulberry Street and arrested John Pizer. Thick had known Pizer for eighteen years and recognised that this was the man they wanted. Pizer had acquired that nickname as he wore a leather apron in his work as a boot finisher. Furthermore, in accordance with Elizabeth Long’s description he was a Polish Jew.
Pizer was aware of the press reports and that the East End was baying for blood so he kept quiet. He dare not go to the police himself lest he be torn to pieces by a lynch mob. He seemed almost relieved when Thick arrived.
Of course, he wasn’t the murderer. On the night of the Nichols’ murder he was in Holloway – a fair distance away – staying at Crossham’s lodging house (not to be confused with Crossingham’s of Dorset Street). He, like many east-enders, had watched the fire at Shadwell Dry Dock on the night of the Bucks Row murder. Furthermore, he had chatted to both the house owner and two policeman about it several miles away from the incident. He had a similarly strong alibi for the Chapman killing.
He later received damages from the press for damaging his reputation, which seems only fair. Not a good man by any stretch, but also not a psychotic serial killer either.
As for the apron in the yard of 29 Hanbury Street, it belonged to a resident there. His mother had washed it and left it outside to dry overnight.
The public were not satisfied and demanded vengeance.
Local idiots didn’t help. On the evening of the murder, the fantastically named Emmanuel Delbast Violenia of Hanbury St told the police that he had seen a man threatening a woman with a knife that morning outside number 29. Upon Pizer’s arrest he picked him out of a police line-up, but it became clear that the man was just seeking attention as his story changed on several occasions. He was eventually reprimanded for wasting police time.
Another interesting suspect arose in the Prince Albert pub which stood at the corner of Brushfield Street (which lay to the north and parallel to Dorset Street) and Steward Street. The wife of the proprietor, the equally splendidly named Mrs Fiddymont was in the bar at 7am, an hour after the murder, with her friend Mary Chappell when a man came in and order a half pint of ‘four ale’. She noticed that he had blood spots on the back of his hands and appeared anxious. He saw the ladies looking at him through a mirror at the back of the bar so swallowed his drink in one gulp and strode out. They followed him but lost him almost immediately.
A few days later, Inspector Abberline later arrested a butcher called Jacob Isenschmid who was known locally as the Mad Pork Butcher. Isenschmid was often violent and was seen with a large knife, but Abberline lacked the evidence to hold him. The fact that he was clearly insane didn’t help. He was sent to the Islington workhouse and then Bow infirmary. He fits Mrs Fiddymont’s description perfectly but was not the Ripper and the murders continued when Isenschmid was miles away. Luckily for him, he was not lynched either.
Annie Chapman was buried in an unmarked grave in Manor Park cemetery. The family asked that the funeral be kept secret from the press, finally affording her at least some dignity.
Today, 29 Hanbury Street is nothing more than a private car park. Access is available at weekends when it becomes an indoor market but there is nothing to mark the spot where she met her death.
(The green dot marks the spot where Annie was found. Photo taken in January 2016)
It wasn’t much of a life for Annie and her exit from it was demeaning to say the least – ripped to pieces next to a urine soaked fence in a backyard which nobody cared about.
It would be three weeks before the murderer struck again. A long delay given the other killings, but on this occasion one was not enough and Whitechapel awoke to not one murder, but two.
Next week: The Double Event
The Monkeys and the Monkeys 