A Suspect In The Case Of Annie Chapman’s Brutal Murder
My first two blog posts looked at a suspect who, while admittedly less colourful than many other suspects, should have been investigated at the time.
As the ex-superintendent, Andy Griffiths, said, “Certainly in the modern age, you couldn’t prosecute anybody else without eliminating him first because obviously, you’ve got someone who’s been with the body very close to the point of death.”
Criminologist Dr Gareth Norris said that the killer would have been an unremarkable local man. Would have had a troubled background and be in their mid to late 30s or even early 40s.
And several researchers, including the Swedish journalist Christer Holmgren, have said that he lied to the police.
One other bit-part player in the Jack the Ripper story had a similar profile.
A man who has avoided the in-depth scrutiny that has been applied to Walter Sickert, Aaron Kosminsky, Carl Feigenbaum, James Maybrick - and, since the 2015 publication of Bruce Robinson’s They All Love Jack, James’s younger brother Michael Maybrick.
Indeed, there are more than a hundred charismatic contenders for the crown of king of all serial killers.
Like Charles Allen Letchmere, he admitted that he was at one of the crime scenes around the time the murder took place.
Like Letchmere, he was an unremarkable local man in his thirties, and he was interviewed during the investigation. And, like Letchmere, he lied to the police.
He entered the Jack the Ripper story shortly after the discovery of Annie Chapman’s body in the yard behind 29 Hanbury Street on September 8th, 1888.
“She had been dead for at least two hours, probably more.”
The investigation began when Dr George Bagster arrived on the scene at 6:20. His opinion was that “She had been dead for at least two hours, probably more.”
One police officer who knew him well was Chief Inspector Walter Drew, who gave his opinion of Dr George Bagster Phillips.
"He was a character. An elderly man, he was ultra old-fashioned both in his personal appearance and his dress. He used to look for all the world as though he had stepped out of a century-old painting. His manners were charming: he was immensely popular both with the police and the public, and he was highly skilled.”
Bagster Phillips was the Divisional Police Surgeon. He had read Dr Rhys Llewelyn's autopsy report on Polly Nichols. He said Annie Chapman’s murder was similar.
She was killed when the left carotid artery was severed. That didn’t happen until she was lying on the ground, and there was no sign of a struggle to get her on the ground.
A frenzy of mass hysteria
The newspapers had whipped up a frenzy of mass hysteria with their reporting about the murder of Polly Nichols. As a result, there was a huge amount of interest in the case throughout London’s East End, so word quickly spread about the discovery of a second similar murder.
Hanbury Street was soon filled with people eager to learn anything first-hand. Naturally, the police were not allowing sightseers into this latest Whitechapel murder site, so people who had houses that could offer a view of the yard behind 29 made a good living.
The witness called John Richardson
John Richardson did make it into the yard. He was the 35-year-old son of the landlady at 29 Hanbury Street and had information that could help the police investigation.
He arrived, explaining that he had just heard about the murder while working as a porter at Spitalfields’s Market.
He added that he had visited the yard on his way to work. He had not entered the yard but stayed in the doorway from where he could check the padlock on the cellar door. He said that it was a quarter to five, and he said the yard was empty at that time.
His evidence meant that Annie could not have been murdered at least two hours before 6:20, as Dr George Bagster Phillips had said.
The witness called Mrs Elizabeth Long
This evidence was backed up by Mrs Elizabeth Long, who told the police she had seen a man and a woman near 29 Hanbury Street. This information gained her access to the mortuary, where she identified the corpse as being that of the woman she had seen talking in Hanbury Street at 5:30.
That was just half an hour before Annie was discovered murdered and mutilated. It meant that when Dr George Bagster Philips was saying, “She had been dead for at least two hours, probably more”, she had been dead for less than 45 minutes.
Many experts have accepted Mrs Long’s evidence
In Jack the Ripper: Scotland Yard Investigates, Donald Rumbelow and Stewart Evans go to great lengths to support the eyewitness testimony and show why Dr Phillips got it wrong.
“Doctors often disagreed when calculating the time of death.”
They explain, “Doctors often disagreed when calculating the time of death. After the Kelly case on November the 9th, estimates made by Dr Thomas Bond and Dr George Bagster Philips, both police surgeons, were 3 to 4 hours apart, which does nothing to instil confidence in their accuracy.”
The Complete History of Jack the Ripper
In his book, The Complete History of Jack the Ripper, Philip Sugden succinctly states the accepted theory of how and why these murders took place:
“Indeed, his victims, prostitutes all, accustomed to accosting men and taking them to dark and unfrequented byways and yards for sex, greatly facilitated his crimes.”
Donald Rumbelow and Stewart Evans also accept this as the most likely explanation for these crimes.
Mrs Long’s evidence supports this theory. Annie Chapman was accosting a man in Hanbury Street at 5:30 a.m. Dr George Bagster Phillips’s evidence lacks this incriminating detail.
Therefore, if you have decided that the victims were largely responsible for their brutal murders because of their reckless behaviour, then you are less likely to subject Mrs Long’s evidence to rigorous analysis.
Any rigorous analysis will be reserved for the testimony presented by the man described by Chief Inspector Walter Drew as “immensely popular both with the police and the public, and he was highly skilled.”
Was Dr Bagster Phillips’s estimate of the time of death wrong?
In Jack the Ripper: Scotland Yard Investigates, Stewart Evans and Donald Rumbelow explain why Dr Bagster Phillips’s estimate of the time of death was at odds with the evidence of both John Richardson and Elizabeth Long.
“First, he failed to use a rectal thermometer to check body temperature and admitted that it was cold that morning.”
At the inquest, Bagster Phillips said:
“The body was cold, except that there was a certain remaining heat, under the intestines, in the body.”
That statement seems clear with or without a rectal thermometer.
Later, when asked for his estimate of the time of death, he said:
“I should say at least two hours, and probably more, but it is right to say that it was a fairly cold morning and that the body would be more apt to cool rapidly from its having lost the greater portion of its blood.”
His caveat that the body would have cooled more quickly due to a combination of blood loss and the cold morning is used as evidence that Annie could have been alive and well at 5:30.
Then she could have taken her man along to 29, entered through the front door, passed through the passageway and out the backdoor into the yard. Minutes later, she was suffocated. Then, she was murdered and mutilated. So, how long did that take?
Dr Phillips was asked that question, and he said:
“I myself could not have performed all the injuries I saw on that woman and effect them, even without a struggle, under a quarter of an hour. If I had done it in a deliberate way, such as would fall to the duties of a surgeon, it would probably have taken me the best part of an hour. The whole inference seems to me that the operation was performed to enable the perpetrator to obtain possession of these parts of the body.”
So the timing again is that at 5:30, she’s talking to a man in Hanbury Street. She walks him to the front door of 29, and then they tiptoe through to the backdoor. So it's not earlier than 5:35 that the killer has her in position, and it is then that she is suffocated.
Then, the work begins. We will assume it is not done in “a deliberate way”. But even so, it’s not “under a quarter of an hour”. The work is finished at 5:50.
Less than 40 minutes later, Dr. Bagster Phillips finds her cold except for some “remaining heat” under the intestines.
True, he adds that the body cooled more quickly because of the cold temperature. But he didn’t revise his estimate of the time of death. Nor did give any support to the eyewitness evidence.
Comparing the temperature of the body of Annie Chapman with that of Kate Eddowes
It’s worth comparing what Dr Brown reported about Kate Eddowes.
First, the minimum temperature on the night that Kate Eddowes was murdered, September 30th, was 43 Fahrenheit or 6 Celsius. The minimum temperature on the night Annie Chapman was murdered, September 8, was 46 Fahrenheit or just under 8 Celsius.
So when Kate Eddowes was murdered, it was cooler than when Annie Chapman was murdered. The mutilation of Kate was even more savage than that of Annie, so there would certainly have been as much blood lost. And Kate was discovered in a more exposed place than the backyard of 29 Hanbury Street.
Dr Brown was checking Kate Eddowes about 40 minutes after the time of death. He said: "The body had been mutilated and was quite warm - no rigor mortis."
So Kate Eddowes was more mutilated, lying in a more exposed position on a cooler night, and yet 40 minutes after her murder, she was "quite warm."
If we accept Mrs Long’s evidence that at 5:30, Anna Chapman, a 47-year-old woman in poor health, was doing business in Hanbury Street a little way from 29’s front door then, allowing for time for her and her killer to get into position, suffocation and mutilation to take place, it means at least 15 minutes have passed since Mrs Long saw her at 5:30.
That makes it 5:45. Less than 40 minutes later, Dr Bagster Phillips is not saying she was "quite warm.” He’s saying: “The body was cold, except that there was a certain remaining heat, under the intestines, in the body.”
Then, of course, there is the point made in Jack the Ripper: Scotland Yard Investigates about rigor mortis. They say it is not a reliable indicator of the time of death. Although it usually occurs between 2 and 4 hours.
And we know that Dr Brown, who examined a body in broadly similar conditions, said there was “no rigor mortis."
Dr George Bagster Phillips said of Annie Chapman’s body: “Stiffness of the limbs was not marked, but it was commencing.”
If we accept Mrs Long’s evidence, then we have to believe the stiffness, the rigor mortis, began less than 45 minutes after her death. And the cold temperature would delay, not hasten, the onset of rigor mortis.
So what about the more damning evidence presented by Stewart Evans and Donald Rumbelow in In Jack the Ripper: Scotland Yard Investigates.
“Doctors often disagreed when calculating the time of death. After the Kelly case on November the 9th, estimates made by Dr Thomas Bond and Dr George Bagster Philips, both police surgeons, were 3 to 4 hours apart, which does nothing to instil confidence in their accuracy.”
Estimating the time of death of Mary Jane Kelly posed a serious problem for the doctors involved.
The police arrived at the scene of the crime at around 11:00 in the morning, but because they were waiting for Sir Charles Warren, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Force, to arrive, nobody entered the scene of the crime until 1:30. Warren had resigned the day before but failed to let everybody know.
The doctors didn’t get access to the body until 2:00 in the afternoon. Three hours after the discovery of her body and many hours after her murder.
That alone would make an accurate estimate impossible.
But then add to this that the mutilation of Mary Jane Kelly went way beyond that inflicted on Kate Eddowes or Annie Chapman.
Parts of her face had been scraped off. The flesh from her legs and both breasts had been sliced off, and every organ had been cut out and placed outside her body.
Both Dr Thomas Bond and Dr George Bagster Philips admitted it was impossible to estimate the time of death accurately.
But we have to acknowledge that the eyewitness statements of John Richardson and Elizabeth Long seem to offer reasonable evidence that Annie was murdered later than Dr George Bagster Phillips’s estimate of “at least two hours: probably more”.
So, in the next blog, we will consider their evidence.
Thank you for checking out this post.