Annie Chapman

Annie Chapman was born Eliza Anne Smith in September 1841, and was killed on September 8, 1888. Although she is not described as an alcoholic, she frequently got in trouble because of her drinking, which might have caused her separation from her husband John Chapman (he drank heavily as well), whom she married in 1869. He died about two years prior to her murder.

Chapman lived in the Dorset lodging house after May 1888. After a fight with another woman living in the lodging house, possibly over a man with whom they both had a relationship, in late August 1888, Chapman complained of feeling ill. On the day of her murder, a friend Amelia Palmer found her sober and claiming to be too ill to practice her trade.(1) Later in the evening, Chapman, by then "worse for the drink,"(2) was in and out of the lodging house a few times, leaving the last time at 1:35 AM, claiming she would return with sufficient money to pay for her bed. Nearly four hours later at 5:30 AM, Annie Chapman was seen for the last time by Elizabeth Long, who saw her talking to a dark complexioned man at 29 Hanbury Street. Long claims the man asked Chapman, "Will you?" and she replied, "Yes."(3) Moments later, Albert Cadoch, the resident of the house next door, 27 Hanbury street, went through his backyard. He heard a woman say, "No!" and then heard something fall against the fence that separated the two yards.(4)

Dr. George Baxter Phillips’ first examination of the body at the scene of the crime revealed that she had a swollen tongue, evidence of asphyxiation of some sort. Her throat was cut like all Ripper victims, and the significant blood loss from that wound suggests that she was not dead before the incision was made. Even though there was a great similarity in the cuts made to the abdominal areas of Chapman and Nichols, and there was an absence of these cuts in the previous cases, the newspapers still reported on these crimes as though they and the ones preceding them (before Nichols) were the work of one man. However, the newspapers were correct in saying that that "each successive crime has gained something in atrocity upon … its predecessor."(5)

Click here for a description of the body of Annie Chapman, taken from inquest testimony and the post-mortem examination.

(1) http://www.casebook.org/victims/chapman.html?show=3
(2) When her body was examined, no alcohol was found in Chapman’s stomach, as reported in the Times (London), 10 September, 1888. The article claims that this fact disproves "many reports that when the woman was last seen alive she was the worse for drink."
(3) http://www.casebook.org/victims/chapman.html?show=4
(4) Ibid.
(5) The Times (London), 10 September, 1888. "Another Murder at the East End"

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