Can George Chapmam reform himself to being a calculating poisoner seven years later?.

[HelenaWojtczak]

1 Dutfields Yard
2 Torso
3 Swedish Church
4 Mortuary
5 Stride & Kidney (Devonshire Street)
6 Severin Klosowski
7 Martha Tabram (Star Place)
8 Henry Birch's Milk Stand

A Joseph Martin, Photographer
B The Old Rose

Map made with assistance of Rob Clack - Roy

Hi Roy

May I ask, what is that map supposed to show us please? I'm bewildered because it does not show all the ripper murders...

Helena

[Natalie Severn]

At the hairdressers' shops where they work, of course.

Where's the evidence that Klosowski worked two or more barber shops at the same time?

No 'ofcourse' about it.You write in ignorance.These are the tools of the trade they had to buy themselves during their apprenticeship.They are precious to them as a rule and they take them from salon to salon in small black purses.Each has his or her very own which they have had for ten or more years quite often.

Look it up under press reports etc.Its obvious that he worked in The Whitehart ,George Yard at the same time as he had the lease to the barber shop in Cable Street ie during late 1888 and during 1889.

[Natalie Severn]

I know all about the knife the ripper used!

I didn't say the ripper used a razor for crying out loud!!!!!!

Quote:I said:

There was a barber in Fleet Street who murdered a number of his clients. The tale has been exaggerated

Ben replied:
No. The "exaggerated tale" has resulted in the fictional notion that "there was a barber in Fleet Street who murdered a number of his clients".

----------I could give you half a dozen links to the story but why don't you at least bone up first Ben?:


By Mark Gribben
The Real Sweeney Todd



Throat cut scene from the play
The Demon Barber Sweeney Todd is the English bogeyman: the character older children call upon to frighten their friends and younger children. Unruly youngsters are cautioned against misbehaving with threats of being attacked by Sweeney and served up in a meat pie.

To most people, the Demon Barber who used a trap door and trick chair to slaughter his clients was the stuff of urban legend. After all, the events connected with his story are almost unbelievable. His exploits prey upon very common human fears: being attacked while vulnerable, and being served up as food or unknowingly consuming someone else. Who hasn't sat in the chair and felt a shiver as the barber or hair dresser takes out that straight razor, sharpens it on the strop and then applies it to the back of the neck? Or taken a bite of a meal and wondered just what the origin of the hair in the hamburger was? So it was for years, as the legend of Sweeney Todd was passed on from generation to generation, people wrote off the story as pure fiction.

But most myths and legends have a basis somewhere in truth, and Sweeney Todd is no different. There really was a mad barber, he really did use a trapdoor and straight razor to rob and kill customers, and most did end up as filling for meat pies. Extensive, painstaking research by British author Peter Haining has shown this without a doubt. Todd's life and exploits are not nearly as romantic as Sondheim would have us believe, but then who would pay to see a movie or musical about a psychopathic mass murderer unless there was more to the story?

What follows is the true story of the Demon Barber of Fleet Street. There is little romantic or even melodramatic about the life and times of Sweeney Todd. He was an amoral, bitter man who lusted for money and was not averse to killing to get it.

[Natalie Severn]

More fun and games from Peter Haining,researcher:

The story begins with Todd's birth, to gin-soaked parents, in a Stepney slum on 26 October 1756. He endured a short, poverty-stricken childhood (during which his main fascination was with the instruments of torture at the Tower of London) before being orphaned aged 12. He survived by becoming apprentice to a vicious cutler (specialist in razors), John Crook. Two years later, he was jailed for petty theft and sentenced to five years in the notoriously harsh Newgate Prison. There he learnt his trade as "soap boy" to the prison barber. By the time he walked out of the gates in the autumn of 1775 he was "a morose, bitter and cruel young man of 19", according to Haining. He then found work as a "flying barber" of no fixed abode, before settling in the infamous premises next to St Dunstan's Church on Fleet Street, then a haven for drunkards and robbers. "Easy shaving for a penny - as good as you will find any," ran the shopfront sign, next to which were displayed jars with teeth he had pulled and blood he had let - references to the surgical duties of a barber.

In Haining's account, Todd's first reported victim was a "young gentleman from the country" who fell into conversation with the barber on a street corner. "The two men came to an argument and all of a sudden the barber took from his clothing a razor and slit the throat of the young man, thereafter disappearing into the alleys of Hen and Chicken Court." As evidence Haining quotes the Daily Courant of 14 April 1785, which reported the murder with horror and fascination.

It was soon after that the legendary trick barber's chair supposedly came into use. Customers unlucky enough to find themselves in a dark, empty shop and unwise enough to flaunt their wealth met their grisly end beneath the floorboards. Todd pulled a lever, which tipped the victim headfirst through a revolving trapdoor on to the cellar floor (there was an identical chair bolted to the other side of the trapdoor which swung up, to allay the suspicions of passers-by). He would then descend the steps to cut their throat from ear to ear.

Todd initially left the bodies in the underground passages below the church but, worrying about the rapidly growing pile, instead devised the idea of employing Margery (some say Sarah) Lovett's piemaking skills.

He dismembered the bodies, stripping the flesh, heart, liver and kidneys into a box to carry to Mrs Lovett's bakery at nearby Bell Yard. Bones and heads were piled in the Weston family vault beneath the church - later to be discovered by unfortunate detectives, tipped off by churchgoers upset by the stench of rotting flesh (which must have been overwhelming to be noticed above the festering stink of Georgian London).

Gossip about disappearing sailors eventually led to the pair's arrest. Lovett confessed everything before committing suicide in prison, apparently, while Todd's trial in 1801 is said to have generated feverish excitement. He stood accused of just one murder - enough to hang him, if convicted - that of a seaman, Francis Thornhill, on his way to deliver a string of 16,000 pearls when he decided to stop for a shave. A pawnbroker's clerk gave evidence that the pearls were later pawned by Todd and the prosecution described how his house "was found crammed with property and clothing sufficient for 160 people" - causing a "thrill of horror" to run round the court.

The man Haining believes was the Demon Barber blamed his mother: "I was fondled and kissed and called a pretty boy," went his dubiously reported testimony. "But later I used to wish I was strong enough to throttle her. What the devil did she bring me into this world for unless she had plenty of money to give me that I might enjoy myself in it?"

The jury took 10 minutes to find him guilty and he was hanged, aged 45, on 25 January 1802 at Newgate Prison, in front of a crowd of one thousand.

[m_w_r]

Hi Norma,

Unfortunately there's no documentary evidence to support Haining in any of this. It's an abberant and discredited theory.

Regards,

Mark

[Wickerman]

Hi Norma,

Unfortunately there's no documentary evidence to support Haining in any of this. It's an abberant and discredited theory.
Regards,
Mark

I have both Haining's book on Sweeney Todd and Griffiths, The Chronicles of Newgate.

Haining claimed Todd had been imprisoned in Newgate, alas no such name exists in the Chronicles. It has been often claimed that the story of Sweeney Todd was inspired by true events, but sources disagree on what, where & when. Somehow the Scottish murderer/cannibal Sawney Bean was promoted as the inspiration for Sweeney Todd, but Sawney Bean also suffers from the same lack of reputable sources.

Anyway, not to drift off topic....
Regards, Jon S.

[Roy Corduroy]

May I ask, what is that map supposed to show us please? I'm bewildered because it does not show all the ripper murders...

Good morning Helena, it illustrates Natalie's quote that Klosowski was near the Stride murder. Also shows other points of interest nearby.

A map showing all the murders is here (click)

Roy

[HelenaWojtczak]

Thanks Roy. WIth my failing eyesight, I cannot read the maps. Is there a much larger version available?

[Wickerman]

Good morning Helena, it illustrates Natalie's quote that Klosowski was near the Stride murder. Also shows other points of interest nearby.

And just off the map to the north, across Commercial Rd was Greenfield St., the location of the Kosminski family in 1888.
Strange that Kosminski & Klosowski should live so close in the East End, considering that Kosminski was born at Klodawa in Poland only 10 miles from Kolo - Klosowski's home town (Rob House, p.31), ...something in the water perhaps?

Regards, Jon S.

[Roy Corduroy]

On that note, Jon, in an unrelated thread, Gareth said:

Severin Klosowski also lived for a time in Greenfield Street, as did Sergeant William Thick.

Helena, I'd like to be of more help. To your left, in the Photo Archives section, there are close up maps of the individual murder sites showing detail.

Roy

[Natalie Severn]

Thanks Roy for illustrating the proximity of Dutfields Yard to that of Cable Street.


Jon S,
I understand the scepticism.I have the same sort of scepticism about a man such as George Hutchinson or Maybrick having been Jack the Ripper!
However , a hundred years earlier than JtR there was immense corruption and distortion of just about everything to do with the law and those who broke it [and those who were alleged to have broken it] in the entire 18th century.Try to find a reliable source about the London Monster and you are similarly hard pressed.But on balance I believe this London 'Monster' did exist and I think the same is probably true of Sweeney Todd---at least in so far as he is based ,however loosely ,on a real character .The Fielding brothers had done a lot to improve the establishment of a reliable 'police force' with new powers from a magistrate to put into effect an arrest but there was still a great deal left to be desired in terms of widespread corruption and bribery and records reflect the disarray and the corruption of those days.
This was my source anyway and I thought at the time it was well thought through and referenced:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-509190/Revealed-The-truth-REAL-Sweeney-Todd.html

Best,
Norma

[Ben]

“No 'ofcourse' about it.You write in ignorance.”

Hmmm, don’t think so.

You’re the one mutating Sweeney Todd into a real historical figure and putting barber-shop tools in the newspaper package of PC Smith’s man. If you have any evidence for the “traditional” practice of hairdressers carting their kit around in the small hours of the morning, you ought really to provide it. Otherwise, the sensible assumption is that they did no such thing.

“Its obvious that he worked in The Whitehart ,George Yard at the same time as he had the lease to the barber shop in Cable Street ie during late 1888 and during 1889.”

Doesn’t look like it, I’m afraid. By the time he was working at the White Hart, he was probably living in Greenfield Street, which was after 1888, and after his time in Cable Street.

Sweeney Todd is almost certainly a fictional character, which is why people are "sceptical" of claims to the contrary. I have no idea what you mean when you describe this scepticism as comparable to that levelled at Hutchinson or Maybrick having been the ripper, but it hardly makes sense as a comparison. The latter two were both real, flesh-and-blood individuals, and are suspected for entirely different reasons.

But meanwhile, back on topic….

[HelenaWojtczak]

Good morning Helena, it illustrates Natalie's quote that Klosowski was near the Stride murder. Also shows other points of interest nearby.

A map showing all the murders is here (click)

Roy

Thanks Roy but I cannot read it. Not even with my spex on. I saved it and when I zoom in, it just blurs. Doesn't anyone have a hig-res picture that will fill my screen with map?

[ChrisGeorge]

And just off the map to the north, across Commercial Rd was Greenfield St., the location of the Kosminski family in 1888.
Strange that Kosminski & Klosowski should live so close in the East End, considering that Kosminski was born at Klodawa in Poland only 10 miles from Kolo - Klosowski's home town (Rob House, p.31), ...something in the water perhaps?

Regards, Jon S.

I am sure there were many examples of Eastern European Jews from communities fairly close to each other in Poland who ended up in closer proximity in the East End.

Chris

[Wickerman]

I am sure there were many examples of Eastern European Jews from communities fairly close to each other in Poland who ended up in closer proximity in the East End.

Chris

As an aside, I though Rob House made an interesting point concerning the tension which divided the Jewish community in the East End. That those Anglesized Jews who had been here for generations and had earned their stripes, as it were, resented the arrival en-mass of their poor counterparts from eastern Europe. A number of Anglesized Jews did not wish to be associated with those "low-class Jews" unless they run the risk of jeopardizing their status in the British community. And yet the "public face" is to give the impression that all Jews stick together.

Regards, Jon