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

[Cobblestones]

He sure can.... Because if he went back to his old ways the police would have him. It would only be a matter of time before they put 2 & 2 together?. I guess George wasn't stupid enough & feared on his arrival back to London he had to cease such barbaric killings or the police would inevitably figure it out.

Thoughts?.

[Open Minded]

He was a trained surgeon and studied in a hospital in Poland so he would have had some knowledge on poison.

Also perhaps he changed his modus operandi for another reason? Maybe he was simply experimenting. Remember he also tried to purchase poison during the murders and even attempted arson; and is accused of various shootings in the US. But I agree that he may have felt the need to keep himself off the radar whilst still conducting his crimes.

I do believe it absurd how people dispute Chapman as the JTR due to the poisonings; yet suggest Dr. Cream for that very reason!

[Abby Normal]

He sure can.... Because if he went back to his old ways the police would have him. It would only be a matter of time before they put 2 & 2 together?. I guess George wasn't stupid enough & feared on his arrival back to London he had to cease such barbaric killings or the police would inevitably figure it out.

Thoughts?.

Hi
I think (if he was JtR)the change in method was because since he had a relationship with the women he poisened he had to make it look like they died of natural causes.

[Adam Went]

Chapman is easily in the Top 5 most plausible Ripper suspects. The argument that he couldn't have changed his M.O. so dramatically is a tired old one which has been disproven many times in the past, and aside from that, there is a reasonably strong circumstantial case to be made against him.

Pleased to see that there's a few other members out there who are still recognising Chapman as a very viable suspect these days.

Cheers,
Adam.

[Errata]

It's not really the shift to poisoning that bothers me, but the shift towards incredible sadism that seems odd. Clearly Jack the Ripper was brutal. But he didn't drag it out. Chapman got a great deal of pleasure from slowly poisoning these women, and taunting them with their impending death.

If Jack the Ripper had killed his victims slowly, with a maximum amount of pain and damage being inflicted while still living, then a shift to that kind of poisoning would make sense to me. Or if Chapman had gotten his "wives" hooked on laudanum and then chucked them down the stairs while they were doped up, to be a "tragic accident". There is something very goal oriented about Jack the Ripper, and something very game oriented about Chapman.

Whatever Jack the Ripper got out of his kills, it wasn't to satisfy sadistic urges. Destructive ones, but not sadistic (unless he was just bad at it, always got his timing wrong etc.) Chapman was a classic sadist. That's why it seems inconsistent to me. Changing weapons doesn't bother me. Changing method of gratification does. Humans don't do that well at all.

[Raoul's Obsession]

I'd probably make a comment on a similar line to the last post and say that it isn't the change in MO that bothers me about Chapman but the change in reason. I see the crimes of Chapman as having a distinctive financial purpose, in that he appears to be marrying women of (modest) prospects, running through their money and killing them. While I accept that there is probably also a degree of boredom in the mix also, I think it a far cry from the Ripper who seems to have had a purpose of immediate gratification, but certainly no financial incentive.

I would agree that both were cold-hearted killers, perhaps psychopaths, but I don't see George Chapman as a sexual/lust mureder. Appart from this point, I think the fit between Chapman and the Ripper very good indeed.

Raoul

[Adam Went]

Chapman could well have changed mentally as he got older as well. People change as they get older and between 1888 and the late 1890's into the early 1900's, Chapman could have been after some sort of new "thrill".

There were flashes of something he might have done in the past such as the time in the USA in the early 1890's when he threatened his pregnant wife, Lucy Baderski, with a knife, and was stopped only by somebody entering his shop....

I don't think anybody denies that there's a vast difference between murdering presumably stranger prostitutes on the street and his own "wives", however.

Personally, Chapman has been my favoured suspect ever since I became involved with the case. Over the years i've become more objective and open minded in that view, but there's certainly still a very strong case to be made against him.

Cheers,
Adam.

[Abby Normal]

Chapman is easily in the Top 5 most plausible Ripper suspects. The argument that he couldn't have changed his M.O. so dramatically is a tired old one which has been disproven many times in the past, and aside from that, there is a reasonably strong circumstantial case to be made against him.

Pleased to see that there's a few other members out there who are still recognising Chapman as a very viable suspect these days.

Cheers,
Adam.

Hi Adam
Agree-he is definitely top 5. The change in method is not a deal breaker because of the difference in the relatioship he had with the women. I have more of a problem with his verbal communication ability (how well he could speak English) and the fact that none of the witnesses described a suspect with a foreign accent.

[ChrisGeorge]

Chapman could well have changed mentally as he got older as well. People change as they get older and between 1888 and the late 1890's into the early 1900's, Chapman could have been after some sort of new "thrill".

There were flashes of something he might have done in the past such as the time in the USA in the early 1890's when he threatened his pregnant wife, Lucy Baderski, with a knife, and was stopped only by somebody entering his shop....

I don't think anybody denies that there's a vast difference between murdering presumably stranger prostitutes on the street and his own "wives", however.

Personally, Chapman has been my favoured suspect ever since I became involved with the case. Over the years i've become more objective and open minded in that view, but there's certainly still a very strong case to be made against him.

Cheers,
Adam.

Hi Adam

Chapman is a viable suspect simply because he was a proven killer. More than can be said about most other suspects, including Kosminski, Druitt, Maybrick, Gull, Tumblety, on and on. He also provably lived in the area which most other named suspects, with the exception of someone like Kosminski, did not.

Still, the silent and callous way that Chapman disposed of his common-law wives seems at extreme variance to the showy and bloody Ripper killings. The two types of murders don't sit well together to me somehow. One is poison, poison all the time, whereas the other is the throat cut and the subsequent mutilations, time and time again. Quite different types of murders.

Nonetheless, Adam, I see where you are coming from in favoring Chapman as a preferred suspect. He also did seem to have some type of fascination with weapons... cf. the curious photograph of him and Bessie Taylor below the upside down flags, swords and guns.

All the best

Chris

[Adam Went]

Abby:

Understand where you're coming from. Some of the witness did describe a man of foreign appearance - they probably didn't hear enough of his voice at any time to be able to judge his accent, but there certainly should have been one, given that he spent his childhood and teen years in Poland and only came to England around 1887. Plus of course it's fraught with danger to try and decipher just what each witness meant by "foreign appearance".

Chris:

Indeed, a multiple murderer who also just happened to have at least 3 police officers involved in the Ripper case also apparently suspect him in later years - Arthur Neil as late as the 1930's, but most importantly, Abberline. Not an opinion to be taken lightly.

Don't think there can be any doubt that he was a very violent and sadistic individual, whatever his past may or may not have involved.

Cheers,
Adam.

[Errata]

Nonetheless, Adam, I see where you are coming from in favoring Chapman as a preferred suspect. He also did seem to have some type of fascination with weapons... cf. the curious photograph of him and Bessie Taylor below the upside down flags, swords and guns.

All the best

Chris

It always strikes me that if a guy takes the time and puts forth the effort to grow a cartoon villain mustache, that people should pay attention to that choice. It's why I never dated emo boys. If you are going to work that hard to seem depressed, uncaring, and uninteresting, I take your word for it.

[ChrisGeorge]

It always strikes me that if a guy takes the time and puts forth the effort to grow a cartoon villain mustache, that people should pay attention to that choice. It's why I never dated emo boys. If you are going to work that hard to seem depressed, uncaring, and uninteresting, I take your word for it.

I guess we need to be careful with Chapman. The cartoon villain moustache is one thing, that photograph is another, the reality of his poison crimes something else, but the fact that he never admitted that he murdered his poisoned "wives" might indicate that he had an interior life and an exterior life that were not one and the same. Besides which, how much is the moustache a period affectation?

Best regards

Chrsi

[Natalie Severn]

I went to Cable Street on December 26th 2009 to see Fiona Shaw in a recital of The Wasteland at London's very old and beautiful East End theatre ,Wilton's.
Walking past where George Chapman had his barber shop in Cable Street this wasteland of a place next to railway arches and parallel to the river made me think of how easy it would have been for him living so close to the murders to commit both the Torso murder of Pinchin Street and the murders of the double event and make his escape from the latter and clean himself up quickly, undetected.Its about 10-12 minutes from Mitre Square and 3 minutes from where Dutfield Yard was in Berner Street and in those days ,as now, these streets were and are,not well lit.Walking past you see clearly how close he was to the railway arch in Pinchin Street where one of the torso murder victims were placed---sort of directly opposite his shop.This was in 1889 too a good six months after Mary Kelly's death and Chapman was living there alone.He didn't have his wife Lucy living with him there until he married her on October 29 1889.The shop had a basement too where he could have cut up bodies in secret.
I think he is a strong suspect who cannot be discounted.
Best,
Norma

[Adam Went]

Chris/Errata:

A man who refuses to admit even to his own identity at the end is surely one who has a few skeletons in the closet - perhaps literally.

Nats:

Thanks for posting that up - haven't had the chance to go to Cable Street myself yet of course (or London at all for that matter), but judging from maps and descriptions it is definitely easy to see how he could have had easy and relatively quick access to all of the murder sites.

And we already know he was in Cable Street and therefore London in 1888, which just in itself is already a lot more than can be said for some "suspects"!

Cheers,
Adam.

[Natalie Severn]

Its an amazing place is Cable Street.Not only for the time when the Fascists were booted out of the East End in the great battle of Cable Street [1937] but also because further up from where George Chapman lived---but not that much further up---it crosses Cannon St Road,the same cross road where the suspect for the famous Ratcliffe Highway murders is buried with a stake through his heart!
But yes, one spooky part of London !
Cheers Adam,
Norma