Jack the Ripper: “Shocking murder” of a woman, says The Times

Almost to the day, 134 years ago, the first woman murdered, Polly Nichols, was found lying truncated, in a dark alley, with her throat cut from ear to ear. Annie Chapman was next. She didn’t know what was in store for her.

On September 10, 1888, the series of shocking crimes perpetrated in Whitechapel, which on Saturday, culminated in the killing of the woman, Annie Chapman. This murder was distinctly outside the ordinary range of human experience.

One may search the ghastliest efforts of fiction and fail to find anything to surpass these crimes in diabolical audacity.

Edgar Allan Poe’s Murders in the rue Morgue recur in the endeavour to conjure up some parallel for this murderer’s brutish savagery.

But, as far as we know, nothing in fact or fiction equals these outrages; at once in their horrible nature and in the effect which they have produced upon the popular imagination.

Reporting on the Chapman murder, the coroner told the East London Observer on September 29, “the brute who committed this offence did not even take the trouble to cover up his ghastly work but left the body of Annie Chapman exposed to the view of the first comer”.

Was it Jack the Ripper or Jill The Ripper? Questions will be asked.

This accords but little with the trouble taken with the rings and suggests either that he had at length been disturbed; or that as the daylight broke a sudden fear suggested the danger of detection that he was running.

There are two things that are missing.

Her rings had been wrenched from her fingers and have not been found; and the uterus has been removed. The body has not been dissected but the injuries have made by someone who had considerable anatomical skill and knowledge.

There are no meaningless cuts to her body. 

It was done by one who knew where to find what he wanted, what difficulties he would have to contend with, and how he should use his knife so as to abstract the organ without injury to it.

No unskilled person could have known where to find it or have recognised it when it was found.
Was it a man or woman? 

Frank Morris comment: Annie Chapman, whose body was cut with considerable anatomical skill, was the second woman to be killed by Jack the Ripper, the first was Polly Nichols. There were three other women awaiting the same fate. All happened in the same year.

<< Frank Morris, Cullen Publication Pty Ltd, Edgecliff, NSW, 1988.

MAIN: The Nemesis of neglect. Below: Annie Chapman alive and dead.