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

[HelenaWojtczak]

Guess it's not wrong then since you didn't say so.

Awww... sorry, Bats, you are wrong. There isn't a shred of evidence to show that Chapman ever assisted a surgeon "as a nurse would". Am I right to assume that you are thinking along the lines of a theatre nurse, who hands instruments to a surgeon who has opened up a patient and is delving in amongst the vital organs?


There isn't a shred of evidence to show that Chapman ever practised in the medical field: not as a feldsher, a nurse, a surgeon or in any other capacity that had anything whatsoever to do with treating any kind of illness or cutting into anyone's body to remove or otherwise interfere with an internal organ.

We have evidence ONLY that he worked as a barber - in others' salons, and in ones that he himself was proprietor. And we have evidence only that he worked in England, where barber-surgeons had not existed since 1750.


Helena

[Batman]

Guess it's not wrong then since you didn't say so.

[Cogidubnus]

Read the book

[Batman]

Hi Batman

I know I'm becoming regarded as a bit biased on the subject of Helena's book, but my advice is read it...almost everything previously published about Chapman is inaccurate...you honestly can't form a real opinion of the man, his relationships, or his actions until you have!

Cheers

Dave

Can you give me an example? I have been asking about this. What is inaccurate about his medical knowledge? I think it has been accepted for a long time that Chapman was not a surgeon but had field knowledge of aiding a surgeon as a nurse would or a student shadowing a doctor.

If this is wrong, let me know.

[Cogidubnus]

Hi Batman

I know I'm becoming regarded as a bit biased on the subject of Helena's book, but my advice is read it...almost everything previously published about Chapman is inaccurate...you honestly can't form a real opinion of the man, his relationships, or his actions until you have!

Cheers

Dave

[Batman]

Sorry no I haven't but I have seen the references on the board.

[HelenaWojtczak]

There maybe no change in MO if JtR sedated/drugged his victims with food beforehand.

Batman, have you read my book?

[Batman]

There maybe no change in MO if JtR sedated/drugged his victims with food beforehand. Clutching breath sweets. Fish and potatoes in a paper wrapping. As far as I can tell all of JtRs victims had very recently had food.

[Simon Webb]

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.

There are some very good points here. My novel Severin, soon to be out on Kindle, sort of depends on the idea of Chapman changing to become the Borough Poisoner. It could be he felt he had to render the ripped women unconscious before he started on them because otherwise they'd cry out, and this caused him frustration. In the novel, I have him learning that he must do this from the Tabram murder - she may have cried out.

SW

[HelenaWojtczak]

This extract from Chapman's trial may be of interest in the information it gives about 'George Chapman' by Wolff Levisohn who knew him in Warsaw.
He says he knew him[more or less continuously] from 1888 to 1890.
Best
Norma

Hi Norma

Levisohn did not know Klosowski in Warsaw. He'd left Poland in 1862. Nowhere does he say he knew him continuously in London; his evidence points to a business acquaintanceship of a sporadic nature.

Regards

Helena

[Malcolm X]

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.

yup Sawney Bean is a load of rubbish too, Sweeney todd was supposedly executed in 1802 at Newagate, but there is no mention of him at all in the Newgate calendar, or in the Times from 1799 to 1804, and for someone as infamous as him, there would have been.

i expect Todd is based on someone from Europe, or much further back in English history, to say Elizabethan times, finally he only killed rich gents, so this massive amount of people going missing over 16 years, would have definitely have been noticed and mentioned in Parliament.

but under his shop, there are indeed catacombs and these lead to Bell Yard, as well as St Dunstan's church, so this is very odd.

but as you can imagine, it would be impossible to cover up his crimes; not something as bad as this.

[HelenaWojtczak]

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

Jon.

Klosowski also lived in Greenfield street.

[HelenaWojtczak]

Hi HelenaWojtczak,

I posted a link a while back with photos of Victorian Jews........perhaps you can find it and illustrate your points.......I think it was on a Kozminski thread.......if nothing else some very interesting photos I think.....when I get a moment I'll see if I can find it as well....



Greg

That would be nice! I love photos!

[Errata]

Hi Jon

Good point. I think we should bear in mind though that despite stereotyping that would lump all Jews in together, the Jews then and now are hardly a monolithic entity, and there are many religious and secular divisions among Jews.

I have enough problems trying to convince people that just because I am Jewish does not mean that I know their cousin's boyfriend in Dallas. If we can't convince people we don't all know each, I don't have a lot of faith in convincing people we don't all agree with each other.

Sorry, that's one of those pounding my head against a wall things.

But that is correct. Western European Jews were better than Eastern, Russian Jews were better than Polish Jews, monied was better than poor, Cohens and Levis better that Israelites. And while it's not a caste system, it's still pretty insular.

[ChrisGeorge]

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

Hi Jon

Good point. I think we should bear in mind though that despite stereotyping that would lump all Jews in together, the Jews then and now are hardly a monolithic entity, and there are many religious and secular divisions among Jews. In this sense, the recent child murder in Brooklyn brought out some interesting reflections on the Jewish community. See

"Killing Rattles a Jewish Community’s Long-Held Trust of Its Own" by JOSEPH BERGER, New York Times, July 14, 2011

Chris