Chapman: a case for

[Ben]

Hi CD,

As you point out, their suspicions can not alter facts one way or another but to my mind they give Chapman's candidacy a degree of legitimacy

It largely depends on the reasons for their suspicions, and in Abberline's case, it was based to a hefty extent on press errors and some unpalatable theorizing, in my view. He believed, for example, that Klosowski the ripper was an "expert surgeon" acting upon an organ-harvesting commission from another expert surgeon in America, and that he crossed the pond to retrieve more innards when he realized he didn't get enough in the East End. Unfortunately, the theory doesn't become any more plausible just because it was Abberline who suggested it.

Similarly, Sugden is to be respected as an historian, but that doesn't mean that his actual reasoning (with respect to Klosowski) makes the suspect any more viable.

Best regards,
Ben

[Dan Norder]

Sugden doesn't exactly endorse Chapman/Klosowski as having been the killer, but he argues that he should be the most likely candidate out of a list of pretty bad candidates. While I don't necessarily agree with him on Klosowski being the best, it's not like the other people trotted out as suspects by various police officials make a whole lot of sense on the face of it either. Klosowski was at least a proven killer, unlike the others. In fact, most of the other police suspects sound like fluffy kittens in comparison. Police at the time and authors who followed later have had to stretch and twist the evidence to even make the others sound potentially threatening in any way.

[c.d.]

Sugden doesn't exactly endorse Chapman/Klosowski as having been the killer, but he argues that he should be the most likely candidate out of a list of pretty bad candidates. While I don't necessarily agree with him on Klosowski being the best, it's not like the other people trotted out as suspects by various police officials make a whole lot of sense on the face of it either. Klosowski was at least a proven killer, unlike the others. In fact, most of the other police suspects sound like fluffy kittens in comparison. Police at the time and authors who followed later have had to stretch and twist the evidence to even make the others sound potentially threatening in any way.

Hi Dan,

Yes, that is exactly what I have been trying to say. The best of a bad lot.

c.d.

[Ben]

Oh, I'd agree with the view that he's a more plausible suspect than most of the others offered up by contemporary police officials; a cut above the likes of Druitt and Tumblety, for example. Still a long way from being the best known suspect for JTR though, IMO.

Cheers,
Ben

[c.d.]

Oh, I'd agree with the view that he's a more plausible suspect than most of the others offered up by contemporary police officials; a cut above the likes of Druitt and Tumblety, for example. Still a long way from being the best known suspect for JTR though, IMO.

Cheers,
Ben

Forget the whole poisoning thing. Chapman's biggest flaw is that he is not Hutchinson.

c.d.

[Ben]

...Or William Bury, or James Kelly, or Joe Fleming, or Hyam Hyams or William Grant Grainger...if we're going that route.

[Fisherman]

C.d. writes:

"Forget the whole poisoning thing. Chapman's biggest flaw is that he is not Hutchinson."

He is NOT? Geez, c.d, that means that I am going to have to rethink it all from the beginning...
And there is no doubt about it?

Ben, you write that Chapman is "a cut above the likes of Druitt and Tumblety", and I can see the relevance of it. But actually, since we have nothing that shows us how either of these men would go about killing a woman, I am inclined to think that Chapman is "given away" to such an extent that the circumstances connected to him actually places him a cut UNDER the two.

Just my wiew on it, though...

The best,

Fisherman

[tradesman121]

Surely Chapman's only flaw as a suspect is his M.O.But can't this be explained by his mysogonystic streak differentiating between women he doesn't have a personal relationship with being despatched like animals in a slaughterhouse,whereas those where it was personal requiring the subtle method.?The intervening 9 years between the 2 sets of murders brought about mental and emotional changes too,which could have been attitude altering.

[c.d.]

Hi Fisherman,

Actually I was just having a little fun at Ben's expense and his fondness for Hutchinson as a suspect. Still rumors abound that Chapman was not Hutchinson. Go figure.

c.d.

[Ben]

Hi Tradesman,

Surely Chapman's only flaw as a suspect is his M.O.

There's also the strong likelihood that he couldn't speak English at the time of the murders, as evinced from the testimony of Wolf Levisshon, which in turn suggests an incompatibility with some of the more reliable witness descriptions to have emerged from the Whitechapel investigation. The chances of him having built up any familiarity with the murder district in so short a space of time are also pretty remote, with Cable Street being eccentrically out of the way for anyone wishing to effect an escape from Mitre Square via Goulston Street.

But can't this be explained by his mysogonystic streak differentiating between women he doesn't have a personal relationship with being despatched like animals in a slaughterhouse,whereas those where it was personal requiring the subtle method.?

But rather than changing the murder style, why not chose either to get "personal" (i.e. enter into a relationship) with the earlier victims if he wanted to poison them OR not get personal with the later ones if he wanted to rip them?

Best regards,
Ben

P.S. Funny, I've never seen Hutch and Severino together.....

[Nicola]

Hello,all.

I am by no means an expert but I don't believe Chapman was JTR. To me,there is a whole world of difference between poisoning women and cutting them up. Beyond a hatred of women and being psychopaths,I don't see any connection between Chapman and JTR. Serial killers do change their methods,but to go from a cold poisoner to a gleeful cutter seems to be a bit much.

I just tend to think a poisoner doesn't want to get their hands dirty,aside from administering the poison. To assault and literally rip a human being apart is completely different from giving a shot of arsenic. I don't think a poisoner would want to rip flesh and remove organs. Chapman seems to have offed people for monetary gain,quite different from JTR,who I think did those horrors to feed a deep and perverse need.

Chapman looks quite freaky in his pic but him being JTR? I say no.

[Fisherman]

Nicola writes:

"Chapman looks quite freaky in his pic"

Yes, he rather does, doesn´t he? But that is our contemporary wiew on him. In his day, he was known as quite a womanizer, a handsome fellow who could pick and choose among the women.

Incidentally, I think you are absolutely right on the cutting/poisoning bit – the stretch is incomprehensible to me too!

All the best, Nicola!

Fisherman

[DVV]

Hi all,
Chapman's motive for murdering women seems more similar to a Landru's than to JtR's.

Amitiés,
David

[Fisherman]

Absolutely, David – Landru seems to me much of a carbon copy of Chapman!

The best,
Fisherman

[caz]

But he wasn't merely switching from knife to poison, Stan. He was switching from extreme use of a knife to inflict heretofore unimaginable carnage on strangers in the street... to domestic poison. We're not talking about the transformation from your average stabber or even throat-cutter; we're talking a dramatic shift downwards in gear.

Hi Sam,

Whoever killed MJK did take a dramatic shift downwards in gear immediately afterwards. So I take it you have likewise dismissed anyone else who remained free and presumably capable of ripping up women after November 9 1888 but didn't?

My belief is that, by not focusing on the poisoning issue, there's a real tendency to lose track of the known fact that Chapman was... a poisoner.

But he was a man first. So was the ripper. Before the ripper ripped (on perhaps just a few occasions in his whole life) he wasn't a ripper. The day he stopped ripping he became an ex-ripper. Before Chapman poisoned he wasn't a poisoner; when he was caught he became an ex-poisoner.

Both men had the capacity for taking female human life, as and when it suited them and they got the opportunity, and in whatever way it suited them at the time. Very few ripper suspects are known to have inflicted physical harm on any woman, never mind ended one's life.

The intervening 9 years between the 2 sets of murders brought about mental and emotional changes too,which could have been attitude altering.

Exactly, tradesman. Whoever the ripper was, he certainly wasn't the same man 9 years after MJK, mentally, emotionally or physically, when he had ceased ripping.

Of all the arguments against Chapman, I find the change of MO thing the weakest by far and most illogical. It's akin to saying that a young man who hits his girlfriend or gets into a fist fight on just a few occasions after taking drugs can't quit the drugs and settle down over the next decade, or equally would never take up robbing a few banks or mugging a few old ladies; or someone who plays a mean game of rugby in his teens but shows no interest in playing cards would never go on to play poker in his thirties long after his last appearance on the rugby field.

It's all within the scope of human behaviour, much as we'd like to put a special label on the man who can mutilate women and the man who can poison them, to mark the two out as much from each other as it marks them out from the rest of mankind.

Love,

Caz
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