Annie Chapman - Was the Second Victim of Jack the Ripper
Photograph of Annie Chapman taken on her wedding day in 1869
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Annie Chapman was the second of Jack the Ripper’s victims and she was discovered in a yard behind 29 Hanbury Street on September the 8th. That was just 8 days after the murder of Polly Nichols, the day after Polly’s funeral and during the inquest into her death.
The body was discovered at 6 in the morning and Inspector Chandler arrived just 10 minutes later. In his report written the same day he said he sent for the Divisional Surgeon, Dr Phillips, who stated that: “The woman had been dead for at least two hours”.
He also said that the woman had been identified by Timothy Donovan the Deputy at Crossinghams Lodging House at 35 Dorset Street, Spitalfields. Donovan said that he had known her about 16 months, as a prostitute. He said:
“At 1.45 a.m. on September 8th she was in the kitchen, the worse for liquor and eating potatoes, he Donavan sent to her for the money for her bed, which she said she had not got and asked him to trust her which he declined to do she then left stating that she would not be long gone: he saw no man in her company.”
Then Inspector Chandler gives her description. “Annie Siffey age 45, length 5 ft, complexion fair, hair (wavy) dark brown, eyes blue, two teeth deficient in lower jaw, large thick nose; dress black figured jacket, brown bodice, black shirt, lace boots, all old and dirty.”
Acting Superintendent West added that the murder appeared to have been committed by the same person who committed the murder of Polly Nichols in Bucks Row.
So who was she and where did she come from?
Her mother was Ruth Chapman, who as young teenager had moved from the countryside of Southern England to work in London. Her father was George Smith who had left Lincolnshire when he was 15.
Being bred in the country rather than in polluted London he was a strong healthy lad and although under age he got himself enlisted into the Life Guards.
George and Ruth were still in their early 20s when their daughter Annie Eliza Smith was born sometime in September 1841. Over the next dozen years the family grew so that Annie ended up with five younger siblings.
One big advantage of growing up in an army family was that they were able to attend the regimental school. Like Polly Nichols Annie received an education up to the age of 15. She could read and write and as a girl she learned a range of needlework skills.
Kensington in the 19th century
Her childhood was spent in a very different world to that of Whitechapel; Annie grew up between Kensington and Windsor.
But even elegant Kensington was not immune to disease and in 1854 Annie and her parents watched helplessly as 4 of her 5 siblings died in the space of just 3 weeks. 3 died of scarlet fever and 1 of typhus.
It had to have been devastating for Annie and her parents. However George and Ruth appear not have been defeated. Ruth gave birth to 2 more daughters and in 1861 20 year old Annie got a new brother.
By then Annie was working as a house maid in Duke Street and her father had become valet to his commanding officer. Then in 1862 his commanding officer left the army and at the age of 43 George followed him to continue as his valet.
The following year, while he and his master were visiting Wrexham, George was discovered in his hotel bed. He had cut his throat with his razor.
For Annie, her mother and her siblings this must have been yet another family tragedy to be dealt with. It seems Ruth rolled up her sleeves and did what was necessary. She moved into 29 Montpelier Place, Knightsbridge a house that allowed her to take in paying guests.
One of those guests was a young coachman who shared the same surname as Ruth’s own maiden name; Chapman, although it seems that was mere coincidence.
At some point John Chapman met Annie and they obviously got on because 27 year old Annie married the 24 year old coachman. They memorialised their marriage with a studio photograph which shows them looking respectable and confident.
Her husband was not a hackney cab driver but a coachman to a wealthy family which placed him in the upper ranks of the family’s servants.
Ten years after their wedding they moved with their two daughters to Windsor. John Chapman had done well he had found a position as head coachman to the very wealthy Francis Tress Barry who had a country estate that enjoyed a magnificent view of Windsor Castle.
For Annie living conditions were a great improvement their coachman’s cottage offered a comfort level above anything she would have experienced in London. Life was good for Annie Chapman as Halle Rubenhold writes in her excellent book The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper:
The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper by Halle Rubenhold
“This might have been Annie’s story in its entirety: it might have ended in quiet, middle-class comfort on a gentleman’s estate with the Chapman’s carefully saving their pennies to pay for their children’s schooling and John’s retirement to a little house in Windsor. Their girls might have grown up and married middle-class men: a shopkeeper, a clerk, even a solicitor. The courses of all their lives might have ended quite differently had Annie Chapman not been an alcoholic.”
Alcohol was a legal intoxicant, available and heavily promoted so Annie was not alone. All five victims of Jack the Ripper enjoyed the temporary relief that alcohol offered. But Annie Chapman was the one most affected by alcohol.
However, it must be said that alcohol affected the whole of Victorian society.
Through the 19th century huge technological advances were made in brewing and distilling processes and these advances combined with the beginnings of the modern advertising industry combined to turn alcohol into a mass-produced commodity. And this mass-produced commodity became available to an expanding consumer market.
The problems associated with this new relationship with alcohol raised political, moral, and medical concerns across Britain. Victorian society became geared towards alcohol consumption. Beer houses, gin palaces, oyster bars, private clubs and public houses competed for custom from dawn till dusk and on into the wee small hours.
Growing Conern About Drunkenness
Concerns about drunkenness drove political campaigns to reform the licensing system in Britain and in the 1860s the drink question topped party political agendas.
The Liberal Party aligned with the temperance campaigns that sought radical reforms of the licencing system. The Conservative Party sided more with the drink trade which had mounted a political campaign defending the right to buy and consume alcoholic drinks.
The big money was with the families that controlled the highly profitable brewing and distilling companies. It was an unequal contest.
An unequal contest made more unequal by the amount of revenue that the sale of alcohol generated for the government whichever party happened to be running the show.
There Were 20,000 Pubs in London in 1888
The result was that Annie Chapman could choose from around 20,000 pubs in London. 20,000 is a huge number. Today there are 3,500 pubs in London and the population is now 9 million in 1888 it was under 5 million.
After Annie’s murder her sister Miriam wrote to The Pall Mall Gazette. She wrote:
“Just before I was six years old, my father cut his throat, leaving my mother with five children, three girls older, and one child younger than myself.”
It’s a dramatic opening especially as Miriam’s sisters all believed that their father was an alcoholic and it was this that led him to take his own life. So, it’s no surprise that Miriam went on to say that she and her sisters were so deeply affected that they decided to sign the pledge never to drink alcohol.
Miriam went on to say that Annie was unable to commit to a life of abstinence. Miriam wrote:
“We tried to persuade the one given to drink to give it up. She was married and in a good position. Over and over again she signed the pledge and tried to keep it. Over and over again she was tempted and fell.”
Miriam said that Annie gave birth to 8 children but 6 died because of Annie’s drinking.
“Annie desperately did want to give up drink but found it impossible.”
As Halle Rubenhold says, “What becomes obvious from Miriam’s letter is that Annie desperately did want to give up drink but found it impossible.”
By November 1882 Annie was in a bad way. Her 12-year-old daughter died of meningitis. Annie wasn’t present. She had disappeared and was taking refuge in one of the pubs around Windsor.
Annie’s sisters moved quickly, and they arranged for her to enter the Spelthorne Sanitorium in Feltham on the western edge of London. She agreed to a year long stay for which John Chapman paid 12 pence a week.
After a year in the sanatorium, she returned to her family in. Windsor. According to Miriam she came out a changed woman. A sober wife and mother. It was not to last.
A few months after returning home John had to take his master out in the coach. He was suffering from a bad cold and snow was falling. John took a glass of hot whiskey to fortify himself.
According to Miriam, he drank it and came to kiss Annie before departing. The fumes of alcohol were transmitted, and all the cravings came back.
According to Miriam that kiss brought about the death of everything he had fought to achieve she must have turned over every room for that bottle it didn't matter in the end whether she found it she went out and in less than an hour she was a drunken madwoman.
“It was of no use, no one knew the fearful struggle.”
Mariam said that Annie never tried again.
Annie said, “It was of no use, no one knew the fearful struggle - unless I can keep out of sight and smell, I can never be free”.
Francis Barry at this point gave John an ultimatum; Annie must go. John had two children one of whom was severely disabled, so he did what had to be done. He arranged for Annie to receive a payment of 10 shillings a week which she would receive in. London.
He no doubt hoped that the companionship of her sisters and her mother would help Annie back on the right track.
It was not to be. Miriam said, “She would always keep out of our way, but she must and would have the drink”.
Within weeks Annie escaped the reproachful glances surrounding her at 29 Montpellier Place. She didn’t have to move far from the area where she had grown up to find a cheap room in a neighbourhood where her drinking would not be considered that unusual a habit.
The East End of London Was Not the Only Place of Deprivation in London.
In his book The People of the Abyss Jack London wrote that,:
“Nowhere in the streets of London may one escape the sight of abject poverty, five minutes’ walk from almost any point will bring one to a slum”.
Just north of Hyde Park is Notting Hill which in the 19th century had acquired a solid reputation for the level of deprivation found among its streets. Many of its streets shown on the poverty map created by Charles Booth are coloured black and described as hopelessly degraded.
Here Annie found a room where she could enjoy her addiction away from disapproving eyes. For Annie her move to Notting Hill was her first step down, not Alice’s rabbit hole, but into Jack London’s ‘Abyss’.
1884: A Year of Major Change in the Life of Annie Chapman.
She had left her husband and her children. In Victorian society that alone marked her as a fallen woman. Beyond that she was an alcoholic. An addict. A drunk.
And it wouldn’t have only been Victorian society that would have dismissed her in that way. She herself would have been deeply ashamed. And her shame would have encouraged her to find a bottle.
Annie had grown up in a family that valued respectability. Even her father who was an alcoholic valued respectability. He was chosen to be a valet - a gentleman’s gentleman.
George Smith was an alcoholic but he was a functioning alcoholic. Even Annie’s husband, John Chapman, was, if not an alcoholic, a heavy drinker. But, like her father, her husband was able to hold down a responsible job.
He died of cirrhosis of the liver but the alcohol never interfered with his ability to function effectively while he was employed.
Perhaps one thing only needed to have changed for Annie Chapman to have mitigated the damage that alcohol did to her. She just needed to have been born a man. As a woman society viewed Annie’s addiction by a very different standard to that which was applied to a man.
Annie couldn’t become a man but she could improve her situation by pairing up with a man.
Somewhere in Notting Hill Annie Met Jack Sievey.
His surname apparently originating from the fact that this Jack made wire sieves. No doubt she was as useful to him as he was to Annie. Although her ten shillings a week maybe have been her star attraction.
By the end of 1884 they had moved to Whitechapel. Her past glories as the daughter of a trooper in the elite cavalry regiment of the Life Guards; her life as wife of a head coachman to a successful entrepreneur; all was forgotten.
In Whitechapel she was Jack Sievey’s missus. She was Mrs Annie Sievey or Mrs Siffey as Inspector Chandler spelt it in the initial police report of her murder.
The Couple Ended Up Living in Doss Houses.
Jack London wrote about London’s doss houses in his book The People of the Abyss. He says:
“While 300,000 people of London live in one room tenements, and 900,000 are illegally and viciously housed, 38,000 more are registered as living in common lodging houses known in the vernacular as doss houses.
There are many kinds of doss houses but in one thing they are all alike, from the filthy little ones to the monster big ones paying 5% and blatantly lauded over by smug middle class men who know but one thing about them, and that one thing is there uninhabitableness. By this I do not mean that the roofs leak or the walls are draughty, but what I do mean is that life in them is degrading and unwholesome.”
Jack and Annie favoured Crossingham’s a doss house at 35 Dorset Street. Dorset Street was practically filled with doss houses so that people locally referred to it not as Dorset but Dossit Street. And Dorset Street earned the title of the worst street in London.
The Worst Street in London
Social reformer Charles Booth described it as the worst street he had ever seen. And the local police inspector who escorted him said it was the worst street in respect of poverty, misery and vice in the whole of London.
It was in their doss house in Dorset Street that Annie made a friend, Amelia Palmer. Amelia described Annie as a very respectable woman who she never heard use bad language. She said Annie was straightforward and a very clever and industrious little body when she was sober.
There is a tragedy here.
But, as Halle Rubenhold says in The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper:
“The true tragedy of Annie’s situation is that, unlike the majority of women by whom she was surrounded, she needn’t have lived in such reduced circumstances ‘on the worst street in London’. Jack Sievey would have brought in an income, and failing that, they could always rely on her 10 shillings a week, which would have paid for a better room elsewhere, as well as for food and coal. Instead it paid for alcohol - at least until December 1886.”
In December 1886 the 10 shillings a week suddenly stopped arriving. Annie learned that her husband, John, was very ill. In the middle of winter she set off on foot to cover the 25 mile journey to Windsor.
John Chapman Died of Cirrhosis of the Liver on Christmas Day 1886.
She arrived shortly before his death but apparently didn’t stay to witness it. Annie’s sister Miriam described John Chapman then as a white-haired, broken hearted man. John Chapman died of cirrhosis of the liver on Christmas Day 1886. He was just 45.
Amelia Palmer said that after the death of her husband she seemed to give away altogether.
In early 1887, perhaps because the ten shillings was no longer arriving, Jack Sievey decided it was time to move on. For a short while she took up with a paddler called Harry the Hawker. It didn’t last.
By 1888 she had begun a steadier relationship with Edward Stanley who worked for a local brewery. Although ‘Ted” or “the Pensioner’ as he was commonly called said he’d known Annie for two years they only began their part-time cohabitation during the summer of 1888.
Perhaps it was the fact that she shared a bed with these men that led Timothy Donovan to describe Annie as a prostitute.
Just as Polly was described as a prostitute after leaving her family and then pairing up with two different men. Depending on your moral view you might agree with Donovan’s description.
However it is not evidence that Annie Chapman or Polly Nichols were, in the words of Philip Sugden, accustomed to accosting men and taking them to dark and unfrequented byways and yards for sex.
Amelia Palmer said Annie wasn’t happy. She became a pitiful case marked by drink and despondency; hunger and sickness.
Although Amelia said she did crochet work and antimacassars which she would sell at Stratford Market where traders gathered from all over the East End, Kent and Essex. And despite her worsening condition in the summer she told Amelia she still intended make her way to Kent for the hop-picking.
But by the evening before she was found murdered she had lost hope. When Amelia asked if she was going to walk to Stratford Market the next day Annie said that she was too ill to do anything.
The fight had gone out of Annie Chapman just a few hours before a knife sliced through her carotid artery and she became a name in the saga of Jack the Ripper. Annie Chapman: Jack the Ripper’s second victim.
It's perhaps worth noting that all five victims lived within about 150 yards of each other. They were all less than five minutes’ walk from Spitalfields Market.
Annie Chapman lived on Dorset Street, Polly Nichols had been spending time at Wilmott’s lodging house on Thrawl Street, Liz Stride and Kate Eddowes both lived in doss houses on Flower and Dean Street and the 5th victim, Mary Kelly, lived just off Dorset Street in Miller’s Court.
In 2008 the Metropolitan Police at Scotland Yard did a geographical profile of Jack the Ripper and they decided that he lived very close to where all his victims lived and within a 20 minute walk of each of the murder sites.
Now of course, at the time of the murders the police didn't know anything about geographical or any other kind of profiling so, yes, they were at a disadvantage.
They were also at a disadvantage in that they had a total trust of eyewitness evidence. Even today for many people eyewitness evidence is very compelling. You've got somebody who was actually there and saw something.
It is very appealing. However we now know, from forensic science and particularly since the use of DNA testing, that eyewitness evidence maybe compelling but it is also very unreliable.
The second time I did my Jack the Ripper Whitechapel walk just two people had booked for that night. As we set off the guy said to me, “I'm really excited about doing this tour”.
I asked him if he had a particular reason and he said, “Well for 25 years I worked homicide in the Bay Area”. I said, “Wow, you're a homicide detective. That's fantastic. Listen anything that you think I get wrong please let me know.”
We got to Brick Lane and I was explaining how eyewitness evidence was now not considered as trustworthy as it once had been and he said, “Richard, let me tell you, you could get four eye witnesses describing the same scene and you wiould get four different eyewitness accounts”.
When we think about the investigation into the murder of Annie Chapman it's worth keeping in mind the changed attitude toward eyewitness evidence.
29 Hanbury Street
On September the 8th 1888, eight days after Polly Nichols was found murdered in Buck’s Row and during the inquest into her death, and just the day after her funeral, the second of Jack the Ripper’s victims was discovered at 6:00 in the morning in the little yard behind number 29 Hanbury Street.
The yard behind 29 Hanbury Street
She was laid out on the ground with her head near the steps that led from the house into the yard.
Jack the Ripper: Scotland Yard Investigates by Stewart Evans and Donald Rumbelow
In their book, Jack the Ripper: Scotland Yard Investigates, Donald Rumbelow and Stewart Evans say that Annie’s body was discovered at 6:00 in the morning and just 20 minutes later, at 6:20, Dr George Bagster Phillips, the police surgeon arrived and began examining her.
Her Uterus Had Been Cut Out And Taken Away.
He said that she entered the yard alive and, like Polly Nichols, there was no sign of a struggle; she was killed while lying down and death occurred when the left carotid artery was severed.
But this time the killer had left her with her clothes pulled up, her stomach ripped open, her intestines pulled out and thrown over her shoulder. And when he did the full post mortem examination Dr Phillips discovered that her uterus, her womb, had been cut out and taken away. He said he thought it indicated some anatomical knowledge.
He also said she was sober at the time of the murder.
When the deputy keeper, Timothy Donovan said, “At 1.45 a.m. on September 8th she was in the kitchen, the worse for liquor” was this a man who had turned a middle aged woman in por health out onto the streets and feeling perhaps it was not the moment to give out a glowing character refrence.
Dr Phillips added that she was in very poor health. She was malnourished and in an advanced stage of tuberculosis.
She’d Been Dead For At Least Two Hours, Probably More.
This Dr Phillips, a police surgeon with more than 20 years experience estimated that she’d been dead for “at least two hours”, and, having said “at least two hours”, he added, “probably more”. So once again the killer had committed his crime under cover of darkness and before most people were out of bed. Jack had struck sometime before 4:20.
Eyewitness John Richardson
However evidence was then given that changed this. John Richardson, the 35 year old son of Amelia Richardson, a woman who lived at number 29 said he went to the yard on his way to work as a porter at Spitalfields Market.
He said he didn’t go into the yard he just looked in to check the padlock on the cellar door. He said the yard was empty at that time and that was at quarter to five.
Eyewitness Mrs Elizabeth Long
Then a Mrs Elizabeth Long claimed that she had seen the victim talking to a man in Hanbury Street at 5:30; just half an hour before her dead body was discovered.
Mrs Long’s eyewitness evidence was enough to convince the Coroner that Dr Philips was wrong in his estimate of time of death. And many experts today are also convinced.
In Jack the Ripper: Scotland Yard Investigates Donald Rumbelow and Stewart Evans go to great lengths to support the eyewitness evidence and show why Dr Phillips got it wrong.
“Doctors often disagreed when calculating time of death.”
They explain that: “Doctors often disagreed when calculating 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.”
It must be pointed out that estimating the time of death for Mary Jane Kelly was a far more difficult task than was the case for Annie Chapman.
The mutilation inflicted on Mary Kelly was far greater than that performed on Annie Chapman.
The flesh from her legs and abdomen and been removed. Her breasts had been sliced off and every internal organ had been cut out and placed outside her body. On top of that Mary was wearing only thin slip Mary.
How any estimate of time of death could have been calculated in those circumstances is difficult to understand.
But when you add to that the fact that these police surgeons, because of a breakdown in communications, were unable to have access to Mary Kelly’s body until 1:30 in the afternoon and didn’t begin the autopsy until 2pm (around 10 hours after the presumed time of death) estimating a time of death would be impossible.
Dr Bond and Dr Phillips agreed that it was impossible to give any estimate of time of death with any degree of accuracy.
They both gave an estimate of anything between 2 am and 8 am.
In the case of Annie Chapman if the witnesses evidence is believed then Annie had been dead for at the most 45 minutes. Dr Phillips was an experienced police surgeon it would seem likely that he would know the difference between a body that has been dead for less than 45 minutes and one that has been dead for - in his words - “At least 2 hours. Probably more”.
You can find more evidence in support of the evidence Dr Phillips in my blog.
Of course Mrs Elizabeth Long’s evidence is very appealing especially as there is so little that is solid to hold onto in the mystery of Jack the Ripper. Anything that offers a glimpse of our hero is not to be lightly dismissed.
The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Sourcebook.
As shown in The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Sourcebook. Stewart Evans and Keith Skinner say in their comments introducing the original source material about Annie Chapman’s murder. “The true facts in this regard are shown in the following reports. The first probable sighting of the killer, by the witness Mrs Long, also occurred in this case.”
Eyewitness evidence is appealing but also very unreliable.
There have been many miscarriages of justice as a result of relying on eyewitness evidence as the Innocent Project in the USA has proved.
“In 1984 Kirk Bloodsworth was convicted of the rape and murder of a nine-year-old girl and sentenced to the gas chamber—an outcome that rested largely on the testimony of five eyewitnesses.”
“After Bloodsworth served nine years in prison, DNA testing proved him to be innocent. Such devastating mistakes by eyewitnesses are not rare, according to a report by the Innocence Project. Since the 1990s, when DNA testing was first introduced, Innocence Project researchers have reported that 73 percent of the 239 convictions overturned through DNA testing were based on eyewitness testimony.”
In the case of Jack the Ripper Mrs Elizabeth Long is a celebrated eyewitness and her evidence is included in almost every book published on the subject. The reason is explained in The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Source Book: “The first probable sighting of the killer, by the witness Mrs Long, also occurred in this case.”
In the hunt for Jack the Ripper a ‘probable sighting’ has to be a big deal.
And in Jack the Ripper: Scotland Yard Investigates which Stewart Evans coauthored with Donald Rumbelow they expand on why the police surgeon’s evidence of time of death is unreliable.
At the same time they go to some lengths to explain any contradictions in the eyewitness evidence. Eye witness evidence which is incompatible with the time of death given by the the Divisional Police Surgeon, Dr George Bagster Phillips.
These writers are not alone.
The Complete History of Jack the Ripper
In his book The Complete History of Jack the Ripper Philip Sugden explains these murders by saying, “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.”
Mrs long’s evidence of course supports this theory and Philip Sugden writes that:
“At about 5 in the morning a Mrs Elizabeth Long left her home at 32 Church Street to go to work at Spitalfields Market. It was 5:30 as she walked westwards through Hanbury Street. She was sure of the time because she heard the clock of the Black Eagle Brewery, Brick Lane, strike the half hour just before she got to the street. A man and a woman were standing on the pavement near to number 29 . . . the woman had her back to Spitalfields Market and hence faced Mrs Long as she approached, and the man’s back was turned towards Mrs Long and Brick Lane. Mrs Long’s evidence is crucial for she later visited the mortuary and positively identified Annie Chapman as the woman she had seen. Her companion was almost certainly the murderer.”
Mrs Long’s eyewitness evidence
At the inquest Mrs Long did her best to describe him. Mrs Long said she didn’t see the man's face, but noticed that he was dark. He was wearing a brown low-crowned felt hat.
He had on a dark coat. He seemed to be a man over forty years of age. He appeared to be a little taller than the deceased. He looked like a foreigner. He looked like what I should call shabby-genteel. And she passed by just in time to overhear him say, ‘Will you?’ and hear her reply, ‘Yes.’
“This man was almost certainly the murderer.”
Philip Sugden says Mrs Long’s crucial evidence shows that this man was almost certainly the murderer. And so of course it shows exactly what he - and most modern experts - believe that Annie Chapman brought about her own death by accosting a man and taking him to a dark and unfrequented yard for sex.
At 5:30 29 Hanbury Street was neither dark nor unfrequented.
There’s a very good description in Philip Sugden’s book. He says:
“As the sun rose at 5:23 there were plenty of people about. Spitalfields Market opened at 5. This end of Hanbury Street was clogged with vehicles.”
And Philip Sugden goes on to write:
“When the killer and his victim entered number 29 the house itself was rapidly coming to life. In slaughtering Annie when and where he did the murderer had thus taken an extraordinary risk.”
Evidence she was giving 11 days after the murder.
It definitely all makes for an exciting story. Of course that whole tale hangs on Mrs Long and her crucial evidence.
Evidence she was giving on September the 19th - 11 days after the murder. Was she such a strong witness that her evidence could overturn Dr Philips expert opinion of the time of death.
Given what modern studies have shown about false memory and the unreliability of eye witness accounts Mrs Long’s recall seems truly remarkable.
Especially when you consider that when the Coroner asked her if it was unusual to see a man and a woman standing there talking at that hour? She said:
“Oh no. I see lots of them standing there in the morning that's why I didn’t take much notice of them”.
Of course, in saying she didn’t take much notice of the couple Mrs Long was simply explaining why it took her three days before deciding that the police might be interested in her crucial evidence.
And the police were sufficiently interested that she was granted access to the mortuary where she was able to say that she sure that one of the faces she walked past four days earlier during her half hour walk to work was the face of the murder victim. It’s impressive.
Perhaps it’s worth thinking of a busy street you were walking down three days ago and then try to describe to yourself one of the people you passed by who you didn’t take much notice of and check the level of your recall against the detailed description given by Mrs Long of the foreign looking gentleman.
Of course, if three days ago you walked past Donald Trump or your mother you’d have no trouble but Mrs Long didn’t know Annie Chapman.
Annie Chapman said she was too ill to do anything.
But if Mrs Long was right - as the Coroner and indeed modern writers seem to think - then it certainly confirms the theory that this 47 year old woman who was in very poor health and had had no sleep since she told a friend the evening before that she was too ill to do anything - managed - after being kicked out of Crossingham’s doss house just before 2 in the morning - to search the streets for three and a half hours before arriving at the west end of Hanbury Street. Where - among “the many people and clogged market vehicles” - she finally found a man who she could accost and take - after the September sun had risen - through the front door of a house which, as Philip Sugden says, was busy with people going to work.
Did Mrs Long make up her story?
Now it could have happened that way. But do you think it could be possible that Mrs Long made up her story in order to get her 15 minutes of fame and a free pass to view Annie Chapman’s dead body in the mortuary?
What if Annie Chapman leaves Crossingham’s doss house and rather than searching the streets for three and a half hours she walks 500 yards to a house she knows well.
And she did know it. When John Richardson’s mother Amelia Richardson saw Annie’s body she recognised her. She said that many times Annie had called at number 29 and Amelia Richardson said she had bought needle work and crochet work that Annie had made.
So Annie knows the house. She knows that it is let out in rooms and as a result the front door and door to the yard are left unlocked. She goes through to the yard and then this little woman huddles down between the steps and the fence and, exhausted, falls into a deep sleep.
A few hours later John Richardson arrives and checks out the padlock on the cellar door. He holds open the door to the yard. A door that is hiding the sleeping Annie. He leaves and then another man checks out the yard and there huddled in the corner he sees her. It’s just irresistible fun. And who’ll miss one more drab little woman?
And there’s another possibility.
John Richardson, the man who claimed the yard was empty at a quarter to five, lived two minutes walk from 29 Hanbury Street in what was called John Street and is now called Dray Walk.
John Street was close to where the five victims lived and less than 20 minutes to each of the murder sites.
The police were interested in John Richardson because he changed his story.
Around 7am he returned from Spitalfields Market saying he had just heard about the murder. He told the police that he had called in to Number 29. on his way to work although he didn’t go into the yard. He just looked in to make sure that the padlock on the cellar door was okay and then he went to work.
It was pointed out at the inquest that the door to the yard hinged on the left and opened into the yard and so he couldn’t have known that Annie wasn’t lying near the fence because the door would have hidden her body.
So on the second day of the inquest when he gave his evidence he said what he actually did was sit on the top step with his feet in the yard so he would have seen that area of the yard.
He was asked, seeing that he was on his way to work, why did he sit on the top step. He said that there was a piece of leather on his boot that he needed to cut off.
With What Did You Cut That Leather?
Now that was interesting to the good folk at the inquest. So he was asked what he used to cut the leather. He said a knife. Accompanied by a police officer John Richardson went to get the knife.
The knife he showed the inquest was a blunt and broken desert knife.
Clever because it could not possibly done the damage to Annie Chapman. However it was pointed out that neither could it have cut the leather. So John then said that he made a mistake he had to borrow a knife when he got to Spitalfields Market.
He would have had no trouble of course because an essential tool needed to deal with sacks, string and rope was a sharp knife for all market porters. The question that perhaps should have then been asked was why he was going to work carrying a blunt and broken desert knife which couldn’t even cut leather.
Did Mrs Long’s eyewitness evidence save John Richardson?
The police however lost interest when Mrs Long arrived and told everybody that Annie Chapman was alive and well half an hour after John Richardson was busy being a porter at Spitalfields Market which opened at five o’clock.
Fournier Street
It might be worth pointing out that Church Street is now called Fournier Street and Number 32 is a very convenient 2 minute walk from Spitalfields Market and indeed less than 3 minutes from 29 Hanbury Street.
What was Mrs Long doing for the other 27 minutes that meant she was walking down Hanbury Street at 5:30.?
Now it’s possible she had a Pilates class.
But nobody asked her why, since Spitalfields Market opened at 5o’clock, she told the inquest, “I left home at about 5 o’clock” and then deliberately made herself late for work that morning by taking a half hour detour.
What if the police surgeon was right?
Dr George Baxter Phillips said: “she’d been dead for at least two hours. Probably more.
So before 4:20. When it was still dark and Spitalfields Market had yet to come to life.
Did John Richardson kill Annie Chapman?
What if John Richardson was checking for anybody dossing in the yard before 4:20. He sees the sleeping Annie curled up between the steps and the fence. He grabs her by the throat and then pulls out his knife. And then made up a story about the yard being empty at quarter to five to give himself an alibi.
Mind Hunter by FBI Special Agent John Douglas
On the subject of John Richardson being a suspect - he does fit an 1988 FBI profile by Special Agent John Douglas, who suggested that the suspect known as Jack the Ripper might have had the following traits.
• Aged between 28 and 36 - Tick.
• Local, ordinary (He lived right here. And he was a porter at the Spitalfields Market) so Tick.
• Domineering mother/weak or absent father (His mother Amelia was very religious, and she ran the family packing business. His father was deceased) so Tick.
• Had likely been interviewed during the investigation. Yep - Tick.
It’s possible.
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