Poisoner 'could have been Jack the Ripper'

nlnews@archant.co.uk
23 February 2005

JACK the Ripper may have ended up in Tottenham, killing more women in the area after his horrific crime spree in the East End.

The Ripper's identity is still a mystery, but reseachers have fingered one suspect as George Chapman, dubbed The Tottenham Poisoner.

Chapman - real name Severin Klosowski - trained as a surgeon in Poland but worked as a barber in West Green Road in the 1890s.

Doctors found Chapman had poisoned each of his three wives. He was hanged in 1903, and immediately rumours spread that he may have been Jack the Ripper.

Frederick Abberline, the chief inspector responsible for the Ripper case at the time, pointed out to a newspaper that the Whitechapel murders coincided with Chapman's arrival in Britain, and that the murders stopped when he moved to America before returning to live in Tottenham. He also mentioned Chapman's medical training.

He said: "The first murders were the work of an expert surgeon, while the poisoning cases were done by a man with more than an elementary knowledge of medicine."

But researcher Oona Kelly, who has been digging into the Chapman case, dismissed the claim.

Ms Kelly gave a talk on the poisoner, as part of the Local History Fair at Bruce Castle Museum on Saturday.

She said: "He was a bit of a monster, but he wanted the women's money. Everyone has their own theory.