Surgeon George Chapman arrived in London in 1887, one year before the Ripper's murder spree. The records show that he worked as a hairdresser's assistant in the East End. Are you confused as to why a surgeon would end up working as a hairdresser's assistant? In those days, the barber's trade and surgery were considered related professions. In ancient times, before anesthesia was used regularly, the best qualification for a surgeon was to be quick with a blade and have a strong stomach. If a man could shave a beard, he was qualified to perform surgery. This barber-surgeon combination began to fall apart as medicine advanced. In 1745, a British act of parliament officially separated the barbers and surgeons into different guilds.
Chapman did study to become a junior surgeon, but there are no records to say that he became one. While Chapman may or may not have been a surgeon, he was a good enough barber that he eventually ran a barber shop in the basement of the White Hart Pub in 1889, which was located just a few steps from the site of what may have been the first of Jack the Ripper's murders.. He was also something of a ladies' man, but he did not keep them long. His wandering eye lost him one woman who he got pregnant and then abandoned. Thanks to another woman named Annie Chapman, he did change his name from Severin Klosowski to George Chapman to match hers around 1895, seven years after the Ripper murders. This new name helped him to hide from his former wives, girlfriends and miscellaneous children.
Chapman entered into sham marriages with several new lovers. However, he treated all his wives the same way. When he was tired of beating one woman and found a new one that interested him, he would slowly poison his wife with antimony, bringing on a slow death with horrible stomach pains. There was no reason why Chapman would have been compelled to poison these women to get rid of them. Since he was not married to any of them, he could simply have told one to move out and had his new woman move in. Instead, he murdered two wives and was well on his way to killing a third when his wife-of-the-time's family demanded that a new doctor examine her. He panicked and increased the dose of poison, which killed his wife almost immediately. This suspicious death led to an autopsy. After poison was found in the body of his third wife, the other two wives were dug up. All three were found to have been slowly poisoned. On March 20, 1903, a jury took only 11 minutes to find Chapman guilty of murder. Two and a half weeks later, Chapman was hanged. To his last breath, he claimed that he was innocent, despite all the evidence to the contrary.
Some have considered Chapman an excellent possibility for Jack the Ripper since he was a convicted multiple murderer and was skilled in wielding a knife thanks to his studies in surgery and his work as a barber. His cold, violent treatment of women combined with his sexual appetite and constantly roaming eye seem consistent with the sociopathic profile of Jack the Ripper. Even Chapman's visits in London and the United States correspond with the times of these violent murders. The Ripper murders started soon after he arrived in London and stopped soon after he left London for the United States.
There are two problems with definitively naming Chapman as the Ripper, besides the lack of actual proof. The first is that the witnesses who may have seen Jack the Ripper described him as being in his 30s. At the time of the Ripper murders, Chapman was only 23. It's possible that he was never seen or that the witnesses may have incorrectly guessed his age. The second problem is that Chapman was actually found guilty of slowing poisoning his wife over a period of months. This type of slow methodical killing does not fit with the violent, bloody killing methods favored by Jack the Ripper. If Chapman was Jack the Ripper, it is possible that he changed his method of killing to better suit his victims, but going from viciously ripping apart unknown women with a knife to slowly poisoning his own wives and watching them waste away over weeks seems like it would be very anticlimactic for a killer like Jack the Ripper.
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