JACK THE RIPPER AT LAST? The Mysterious Murders of George Chapman (SIGNED)

Wojtczak (Helena)

ISBN 10: 1904109225 / ISBN 13: 9781904109228

Published by The Hastings Press, 2014

About this Item

Softcover. SIGNED. "You've got Jack the Ripper at last!" was the phrase with which former Chief Inspector Abberline supposedly congratulated Inspector Godley when George Chapman was arrested in 1902. Fourteen years previously the two detectives had hunted the perpetrator of the Whitechapel Murders, but had failed to catch him. Abberline claimed that, for 'a score of reasons', he suspected Chapman. George Chapman was the assumed name of Seweryn Klosowski, a Pole whom criminologist George R. Sims once called 'One of the most undesirable aliens that ever invaded our hospitable shores.' Between 1897 and 1902 Chapman killed three successive girlfriends, one of them a mere teenager, using the drawn-out and agonising method of slow and stealthy poisoning. The murders were all the more shocking for being apparently - motiveless. His arrest and trial attracted enormous publicity and made headline news both at home and abroad; the nation rejoiced when he was sent to the gallows. But did Chapman take a terrible secret with him to the grave? Was he also responsible for the gruesome slayings perpetrated by Jack the Ripper? With Epilogue, Profusely Illus., Author's Note, Appendices, Select Bibliog. and Index. 272pp. trade size softcover. FLATSIGNED BY THE AUTHOR. New. Recommended - see Dave Green's review in 'Ripperologist' magazine "A work of unarguably superior merit and significance.".

Seller Inventory # 16459

Bibliographic Details

• Title: JACK THE RIPPER AT LAST? The Mysterious Murders of George Chapman (SIGNED)
• Publisher: The Hastings Press
• Publication Date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1904109225
• ISBN 13: 9781904109228
• Binding: Softcover / Paperback
• Edition: First edition.
• Condition: New
• Signed: signed by author
• Seller catalogs:
  • Jack the Ripper and Assoc.

About this title

Synopsis

‘You’ve got Jack the Ripper at last!’ The words with which Abberline congratulated Godley. The two detectives had hunted the fiend of Whitechapel fourteen years previously, but failed to catch him. George Chapman, a man facing the death penalty for poisoning his girlfriend, had a secret past. Born Seweryn Klosowski in Poland, he’d lived in London’s East End during the Ripper’s killing spree in 1888.

Former Chief Inspector Abberline had ‘a score of reasons’ for naming Chapman as the Ripper. And Arthur Neil, former Superintendent of Scotland Yard, agreed with him.

Chapman had committed ‘a series of murders which for sheer heartlessness are almost unprecedented in the annals of crime’. He was described as ‘one of the most loathsome murderers in criminal history, and the director of public prosecutions stated that his ‘cruelty, hypocrisy and daring’ had rarely, if ever, been equalled.