The Serial Killer - Part XXXII
George Chapman was a was a Polish serial killer known as the Borough Poisoner. Born Seweryn Antonowicz Kłosowski in Poland, he moved as an adult to England, where he committed his crimes. He was convicted and executed after poisoning three women, but is remembered today mostly because some authorities suspected him of being our friend Jack the Ripper.
His motives for the murders are unclear. In one case, his victim had given him £500, but he gained nothing from the other two victims.Chapman took several mistresses, who often posed as his wife, three of whom he subsequently poisoned to death. They were Mary Spink (died December 25, 1897), Bessie Taylor (died February 14, 1901) and Maud Marsh (died October 22, 1902). He administered the compound tartar-emetioc to each of them. Rich in the metallic element antimony, improper usage of tartar-emetic causes a painful death with symptoms similar to arsenic poisoning. According to a certificate found in his personal effects after his arrest, he was apprenticed at age 14 to a provincial feldsher (a sort of nurse-practitioner), whom he assisted in procedures such as the application of leeches for blood-letting. He then enrolled on a course in practical surgery at the Warsaw Praga hospital. This course was very brief, lasting from October 1885 to January 1886 (attested to by another certificate in his possession) but he continued to serve as a male nurse, or doctor's assistant in Warsaw until December 1886. He later left Poland. Witness testimony at his trial seems to indicate that he arrived in London between 1887 and 1888, precicely the time of the Ripper murders.
Suspicions surrounding Marsh's death led to a police investigation. It was found that she had been poisoned, as had the other two women, whose bodies were exhumed.
An indictment for murder could contain only one count and Chapman was therefore charged only with the murder of Maud Marsh. He was prosecuted and convicted on March 19, 1903, and hanged on April 7, 1903.
One of the detectives at Scotland Yard, Frederick Abberline, is reported to have told George Godley the policeman who arrested Klosowski: "You've got Jack the Ripper at last!" In two 1903 interviews with the Pall Mall Gazette, Abberline spelled out his suspicions, referring to Klosowski by name. Speculation in contemporary newspaper accounts and books has led to Chapman, like fellow serial killer Thomas Neill Cream, becoming one of many individuals cited as a possible suspect in the infamous Jack the Ripper murders of 1888. In The Complete History of Jack the Ripper, Philip Sugden argued that Chapman is the most likely candidate among known Ripper suspects, but that the case is far from proven. As far as is known, Chapman was not a suspect at the time of the murders either under his proper name, or as "Ludwig Schloski", a name he was using in London. Chapman was a later surname borrowed from one of his common-law wives whom he did not poison — Annie Chapman (not to be confused with the Jack the Ripper victim of the same name).
The case against Chapman rests mainly on the point that he undoubtedly was a violent man with a misogynistic streak. Chapman is known as a poisoner and not a mutilator, but was known to beat his common-law wives and was prone to other violent behaviour. In one incident often used as an argument to link him to the Ripper crimes, while living in the United States, Chapman allegedly forced his wife, Lucy Klosowska, down on their bed and began to strangle her, only stopping to attend to a customer who had walked into the adjoining shop he owned. When he left, she was said to have found a knife under the pillow. He reportedly later told her that he had planned to kill her, even pointing out the spot where he would have buried her and reciting what he would have said to their neighbours.
Inspite of this, there is a lack of any hard evidence that would link Chapman to the Ripper murders. Most scholars also believe the Ripper selected victims who were previously unknown to him, while Chapman killed acquaintances. In Jack the Ripper: An Encyclopedia John Eddleston rates Chapman at only 2 ("a remote possibility") on his 0 to 5 rating of Ripper suspects. He argues that although Chapman did live in Whitechapel it was not particularly near the murders, and as a 22-year-old immigrant he is unlikely to have had detailed knowledge of the area which the Ripper seems to have had.
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