George Chapman Seweryn Klosowski

[HelenaWojtczak]

New review

I just received this book review, and as it's by a former detective inspector in the Metropolitan Police, so thought I'd share it on here.
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"I have just finished reading 'Jack the Ripper at last? The Mysterious Murders of George Chapman' by Helena Wojtczak, and I have to say that I am tremendously impressed.

While I thought I knew a little about the so-called Chapman, the Southwark poisoner, and quite a lot about Jack the Ripper I was surprised to find how little I knew about the Polish hairdresser/publican. It seems that I, like many other readers and authors, have been misled about the origins and modus operandi of 'Chapman.

Thanks to Ms Wojtczak's research it is now very likely (although not entirely proven) that he was not Jack the Ripper.

I am impressed by the depth of her research, particularly of the early history of Seweryn Klosowski in Russian-occupier Poland. The early mistranslation by Joseph Petrykowski which showed Klosowski as a junior surgeon rather than as a 'Feldsher' or what we might call today a practice nurse or army field nurse with no experience or authority to do invasive surgery, is immensely important, I feel, in distancing him from the Ripper theories.


For the first time Chapman has been properly investigated. As a retired police officer I admire the lengths to which the author has gone to search out the truth and to dismiss what had previously been thought of as facts. It is a frequently voiced opinion among police officers that an investigation should be a search for the truth, and this the author has achieved.


I am impressed by her attention to detail, and the fact that there are over 600 footnotes carefully enumerating every source.

This must surely be the definitive account of the life and death of Seweryn Klosowski and his three tragic victims. Ms Wojtczak deserves the greatest praise for presenting the best researched and surely the final account of the multiple poisoner Chapman. If there is a prize for the best true-crime account this year I would have no hesitation in promoting this writer. In addition, she makes the whole story very readable.

Jack Akrigg. Met Police 1963 - 1998.

[HelenaWojtczak]

Owing to a number of people asking for a cheaper, paperback edition, I am please to announce that I've just sent the files to the printer and I'll have the paperbacks in about 10 days.

Advance orders are being taken at http://www.hastingspress.co.uk/chapman.html

Thanks very much to everyone who bought the hardback and especially to those who wrote lovely reviews on Amazon. I took some soundbites from them for the back of the cover.

Helena

[HelenaWojtczak]

Hi folks

I have the paperbacks ready and waiting to go.....

Just follow this link to purchase ...

http://www.hastingspress.co.uk/chapman.html

There is also a Kindle version.

Helena

[Cogidubnus]

Hi Helena

I ordered a paperback last night so I can treat my beautiful limited edition hardback with the respect it deserves and leave it on my bookshelf whilst I re-read again and again a fascinating story...

There are so many untruths floating around in the Chapman case - many so easily accepted since the early 1900s and repeated in book after book...this is, as far as I know, the first work which genuinely takes the case back to basic principles, researches the real truth, and destroys the accumulative myths which have grown up since about Chapman, his women and his murders...

To any reader who has not yet ordered and may be dallying with the idea...if you have ANY interest whatever in real crime, this is not a book to be missed...I'm a huge reader...have been all my life...and this is honestly one of THE best books I ever read...just possibly THE best non-fiction one...I don't mean that lightly - it's a real pleasure to read and learn with this author...who I've never even met in case anyone's wondering!

All the best

Dave

[HelenaWojtczak]

Dave I am left blushing by your comments ... thank you so much!

The paperback is slightly different from the hardback. Some new information came in which had to be inserted in four places, and I even had to remove a photo to fit in some new text (which I deemed more important that the photo). Also, there is a photo of Chapman's great-great-grand-daughter paying her respects to Willie Spink by visiting a war memorial he is listed on. She's going to try to make it to my talk on 5th April in London... as is her aunt, another of Chapman's descendants.

Thanks for ordering the paperback... however, this leaves me rather worried and perplexed as I did not receive any order from you last night or today... Did you paypal me?

Helena

[Cogidubnus]

Thanks for ordering the paperback... however, this leaves me rather worried and perplexed as I did not receive any order from you last night or today... Did you paypal me?

Hi Helena

Yes I did and have a Paypal receipt email...should I not have paid this way?

All the best

Dave

[HelenaWojtczak]

Hi Helena

Yes I did and have a Paypal receipt email...should I not have paid this way?

All the best

Dave

All is sorted - Paypal didn't tell me.. but I have found your order now and have signed and posted the book to you!

Many thanks!

Helena

[dag]

My copy was waiting for me when I got home this evening!

A beautiful and important work which everyone needs to read.

Treat yourself and buy a copy NOW!

David

[HelenaWojtczak]

My copy was waiting for me when I got home this evening!

A beautiful and important work which everyone needs to read.

Treat yourself and buy a copy NOW!

David

Cheers, David

I'm glad I managed to slip that pic of Chapman's descendant into the book. She'll be so thrilled!

Helena

[Lechmere]

A quick question.
If the original Polish language Klosowski document is lost, how is it known that Petrykowski mistranslated feldsher as surgeon?

(And small point Cranbrook Street was in Bethnal Green not Bow. It is now overbuilt by the Cranbrook Estate - known locally as 'The Cranbrook'.)

[HelenaWojtczak]

A quick question.
If the original Polish language Klosowski document is lost, how is it known that Petrykowski mistranslated feldsher as surgeon?

Good question, Lechmere.

The man to whom he was apprenticed was not a surgeon. He was a feldscher, and, as such, was not qualified to take a 14 year-old-boy who had received only 6 years of village elementary school education and send him out into the world 4 years later as a surgeon, ready to cut open bodies and remove organs. (The very idea is risible.)

All official documents in Poland were in Russian. (In court Petrykowski said "I know the Russian language" as his qualification to translate them.)

The Polish word for surgeon is "chirurg", not "felczer". Rappaport appears in trade directories as a "felczer", as does his son, who was another of his apprentices and seems to have taken over the practice in Zwolen (see http://genealodzy.pl/PNphpBB2-printv...-start-0.phtml)

There was no English translation of the Polish and Russian words for feldscher (that's a German word, in Polish, it's "felczer") because we simply didn't have that grade of medic in our country at that time. So Mr P, for whom English was a third language (possibly fourth or even fifth if he knew German and/or Yiddish) had the choice of nurse, doctor, medical orderly or surgeon.

I have searched extensively for Petrykowski, hoping to find some reference to him in other court cases, some shred of evidence that he was a professional translator with an academic qualification for the task he was given, but to no avail. He's not even in the census. Since all Poles knew Russian, it's quite likely that he was just an ordinary Pole-in-the-street, a drinking pal of a policeman or court clerk, asked to help out informally.

If he gave it any thought, Mr P would have to reject "doctor", since. clearly, SK wasn't one. He could not say "nurse", since that was an all-female profession in England and would have made SK sound a bit silly. "Medical orderly" suggests someone with no medical skills at all, perhaps someone who just transports patients on stretchers and wheelchairs. That left "surgeon", and it seems that Mr P did not fuly understand what that word was going to mean in the 21st century.

The meaning of surgeon/surgery/surgical has changed over the years. The office that my doctor works from is called a "surgery" but no kidney transplant would ever take place there! A century ago the terms doctor/surgeon/physician were more interchangeable than they are today.

Today we reserve the word "surgeon" to mean specifically a qualified medical doctor who has undertaken additional training AFTER her or his medical degree in order to specialise in cutting open bodies. I can state categorically that SK was most definitely NOT a surgeon in our current meaning of the word.

I hope I have provided a comprehensive reply.

Helena

[Lechmere]

So if I may simplify, we know he worked for Rappaport who was translated as a surgeon, but from trade directories we know he was actually a feldscher?

[HelenaWojtczak]

So if I may simplify, we know he worked for Rappaport who was translated as a surgeon, but from trade directories we know he was actually a feldscher?

Yeah, that is part of it.

[Sam Flynn]

So if I may simplify, we know he worked for Rappaport who was translated as a surgeon, but from trade directories we know he was actually a feldscher?

Rapaport wasn't a surgeon, either. We have records of his son, Keufel Rapaport, who seemingly followed in his father's footsteps, describing him as a "paramedic", a "feldsher" and a "barber". There are other records that show that Zwoleń (the small town where Moskho was a feldsher) only got its first qualified Jewish doctor, never mind surgeon, in the early 20th Century.

Keufel Rapaport, incidentally, perished in the Holocaust like many of Moskho Rapaport's family. He was killed at Garbatka.

(Sources: The Zwoliner Yizkor Buch and Yad Vashem)

[Lechmere]

Yes that's the point I was making.
In the translation Rappaport's profession was given as surgeon, making 'Chapman' supposedly a surgeon's assistant.
Whereas the original trade directories make it clear Rappaport was a feldscher, which in turn makes it obvious that 'surgeon' was a mistranslation or at least an inaccurate translation.