Alias Jack the Ripper: Beyond the Usual Whitechapel Suspects

Rating:
Summary: Not a Solution but still reccomended
Review: George Chapman (Severin Klosowski) is certainly a plausibe suspect and has always been one of my favorites. Nonetheless, I have never been completely convinced that he was the Ripper and this book did not change my opinion despite the author's assertion that Chapman had to be the Killer.

The central argument is that Chapman was in the area for all the killings (including the so called American Ripper killing of 'Old Shakespeare' and the Torso murders) and that this, added to fact that he was hanged for three murders, clearly establishes his guilt. Clearly (and perhaps unfortunately), it does not...

The author does acknowledge that the evidence is insufficient to result in a conviction, but he asserts without reservation that Chapman was the Ripper all along. To my mind, although the available evidence makes a great case for the *possibility* of this, there is absolutely no direct evidence of his actual involvment.

Having said this, I still reccomend this book as an essential for a serious collector of Ripperology. It provides good food for thought and (perhaps) avenues for further research.

Rating:
Summary: Armchair Ripperology is not good Historical Research
Review: I can't believe how bad this book is. It's chock full of facts (times, dates, people, places), but there is never any evidence that Severin Klosowski AKA George Chapman is the real Jack the Ripper. The author simply assumes that this is the case, and proceeds to explain his theory. There are many places where conclusions come before any explanation is given. I knew going in that this book was biased towards one suspect, but I at least expected to be presented with facts, followed by evidence that Klosowski was the culprit. Instead, I am bombarded with wild claims and speculation.

This book would have gotten at least two stars if the information had been structured well. For example, every chapter is peppered with statements about "typical" serial killers. Why not put all these statements into a chapter about serial killers instead of wasting my time with filler? Also, I got sick of sentences like, "For him, killing was a business, and business was good." That's just plain dumb. And for goodness sake! Don't just stick a newspaper excerpt in the middle of a chapter without any warning!!!

In conclusion, don't read this book. I heard there are other good ones by Sudgen and Rumbelow.

Rating:
Summary: George the Ripper
Review: Severin Klosowski, also known as George Chapman (1865-1903), was a Polish junior surgeon who emigrated to Britain in 1887, where, save for a period in New Jersey 1890-91, he worked as a hairdresser, mostly in and around London, including in the Whitechapel area of the East End. Between 1895 and 1901 he murdered through poisoning three common-law wives, being convicted and hanged in 1903. He has long been suspected by some of being the notorious "Jack the Ripper", who murdered and usually mutilated a number of prostitutes in the Whitechapel and Spitalfields area of London in 1888 and possibly subsequently. This book is a biography of Chapman predicated on the theory that he was the Whitechapel Murderer, and weaving together details of his life with accounts of the Whitechapel killings and several other murders for which, the author speculates, he might also have been responsible.

This is the first extensive, integrated treatment of the life of George Chapman, and in this regard it appears to be well researched and is well written. On "Jack the Ripper" and the Whitechapel murders there has been a plethora of earlier books, but again the work is written in a captivating style which makes it one of the more readable accounts. Other murders, not generally reckoned as part of the "Jack the Ripper" series, are treated in extenso for the first time, especially the "Thames Torso Murders" of 1888-89, a series of killings of women whose bodies were disected and dumped in pieces in out-of-the-way places or in the Thames river. The police at the time did not consider these to be a single series, or to be connected with "Jack the Ripper", but Gordon poses the perfectly reasonable question "just how many sexual serial killers were working in the East End of London in 1888-89?" (p. 124). We may note that: (1) In the late 19th century the police were unused to handling cases of serial murder and probably thought that such a killer would not much vary his methods, whereas more recent cases show that radical variations by a single hand do in fact happen. (2) Though most of the cut-up victims remained unidentified (which probably accounts for the comparative lack of interest in these killings compared with the Whitechapel Murders, both at the time and now), one who was identified was Elizabeth Jackson, parts of whose body were found floating in the Thames in June 1889. Like the Ripper victims she was a prostitute, and clothing in which her remains were wrapped was tagged with the name "L.E. Fisher"; Elizabeth Fisher was the sister of Ripper-victim Catherine Eddowes, and the name "Lizzie Fisher" had also been given in one press report as the name of the Ripper's victim in Miller's Court, later identified as Mary Jane Kelly. (3) Just over three months after the murder of prostitute Carrie Brown in a New York hotel room (recounted on pp. 226 ff.), there was the discovery of another murder. Though not included in Gordon's account, it was reported in The Morning Journal of 3rd August 1891, under the headline "Is It Jack's Work". The body of the victim, a prostitute, was found floating in the East River; it had been mutilated in a way similar to that of Carrie Brown. This suggests to me that if the New York murders are to be attributed to "Jack the Ripper", whether he was Chapman or not, the dumping of a body in the river was a modus operandi of that individual.

How appropriately the various series of murders can be linked together in this biography depends, of course, on whether one accepts Chapman as a plausible candidate for "Jack the Ripper" - and as the Thames Torso Murderer, as the New York City murderer, and as responsible for a number of other killings. Gordon does not say that he did commit all of the murders he describes, just that he could have. But if Chapman were not responsible at least for the majority of the murders in Whitechapel, a main thesis of the book would fall.

To me Chapman stands as a quite plausible "Jack the Ripper", when compared with the myriad of other suspects that have been put forward since the murders, if only because, from an age when serial killers were still quite rare, we do know, at least, that he was one. Nor, in the light of subsequent cases, should the change from street-killer and mutilator of prostitutes to wife-poisoner necessarily seem incredible. Chapman has been taken seriously as a possible "Jack the Ripper" ever since the historian Philip Sugden favoured him in his methodically researched book The Complete History of Jack the Ripper. As Sugden there stated, however, the evidence against Chapman, though better than for other leading suspects, was not strong.

On the whole I feel that the account by Gordon makes the case against Chapman the more likely, though far from proved. Though he fails to connect him directly with any of the Ripper or other narrated murders, or even to demonstrate that he was definitely always close to the scene, he has shown that he could have been. Occasionally the time-line is, admittedly, a little tight, and the argument requires some special pleading, as with the case of Chapman's arrival in the U.S. in time to murder Carrie Brown.

There are also occasional examples of startling under-research, as, for example, the suggestion that George Chapman's common-law wife Annie Georgina Chapman, from whom he took his Anglo-Saxon name, was the daughter of Ripper-victim Annie Chapman, whom he may have met while attending his victim's funeral. A little genealogical research would have clarified whether such an identification were a possibility or not.

Nevertheless, the arguments are on the whole reasonable and sound, and even for those who cannot accept Chapman as the Ripper, the book will for some time remain the best biography of wife-poisoner George Chapman and a very readable account of the Whitechapel and other murders.

Rating:
Summary: GEROGE CHAPMAN = THE RIPPER !!! WELL, MAYBE...
Review: TAking a further step following the lead revealed by author Philip Sudgen in THE COMPLETE HISTORY OF JACK THE RIPPER, Gordon works his case upon George Chapman, the poisoner of wives, being Jack the Ripper. Of course he can't say definitely the Chapman was the Ripper, because his name neveer entered the Whitechapel's investigators reports before 1903, when Chapman was executed. Anyway, a very good book.

Rating:
Summary: George Chapman has the best chance of being Jack the Ripper!
Review: Warning: There are a lot of really bad books out there on Jack the Ripper, and there are some really good ones. I suggest a great starting place would be - The Complete History of Jack the Ripper by Philip Sugden. When I finished reading Sugden's book, I thought wow no one will be able to top this. Sugden's book tells the story perfectly, and alerts the reader to all the myth's, and made up stories that have been told in book and newspaper's form since 1888, he sticks to the facts. Now, at the end of his book, he list possible supects and goes into great detail. If you read the section on George Chapman in Sugden's book, and you come to the belief that he is by far the best suspect, then you should for sure buy "Alias Jack the Ripper" - I think you will come away from this book really thinking there is a better chance for him to be the Ripper than anyone. He was always at the right place, at the right time. The main reason people do not believe he is the Ripper is because- he was convicted of poisoning 3 wifes, and a serial killer would not change modes from a knife to poison. Don't believe me, believe the best authority - " A man who could watch his wifes being slowly tortured to death by poison, as he did. was capable of anything..." Inspector Frederick Abberline, 1903