The Borough Poisoner: George Chapman

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Dispersions. On the fourteenth of December
eighteen sixty five, a Polish carpenter and

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his wife welcomed their new son into
the world. Swearin Klosowski entered into a

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life of opportunity. Instead of apprenticing
with his father and becoming a carpenter,

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as was commonly done in Poland in
those days, Swearin apprenticed with a surgeon.

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He was still young, and he
didn't take part in any major surgeries

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or practices that doctors would be trained
in today. But Swerin learned how to

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apply leeches and perform blood lettings,
and apparently he was pretty good at it.

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His master most Coo Rapaport, said
that Swarin was diligent, he always

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had quote exemplary conduct and studied with
zeal the science of surgery. Another source

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said that Swearin was very skillful assistant
to patients. So it was perhaps no

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surprise when Swearin enrolled in the studies
of practical surgery at the Warsaw Praga Hospital.

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But perhaps what was a surprise was
how long Swearin actually stayed there.

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He was only there for three months
studying before he dropped out. He stayed

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on another year at the hospital,
working as a nurse and sometimes a doctor's

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assistant. But it looked like Swearin's
medical career had come to an abrupt end

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shortly after he moved to London in
the UK, where he settled in in

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the East End and became a hairdresser's
assistant. It looked like Swarin had officially

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swapped the scalpel for the scissors.
He was apparently good enough to open up

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his own barber shop within about a
year of moving to London. It's difficult

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to say how long it took him
for sure, as his entry date into

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the UK is a little bit of
a mystery, but it's safe to say

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that he was living, working,
and running his own establishment in London by

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eighteen eighty nine. The shop was
located in Cable Street, Saint George in

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the East a name that Swarin would
adopt to make a living in the UK

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easier. Now going by George,
he married a young Polish woman named Lucy.

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The pair of them had met at
the Polish Club in Saint John's Square

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only five weeks before the wedding,
but it looked like George had swept poor

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Lucy off of her feet within months. There was a knock on the young

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couple's door, and Lucy was confronted
with an unexpected truth. It turned out

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that George was already married. His
first wife had stayed behind in Poland when

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George had emigrated to London, but
there she was, and she wanted her

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husband back. Almost unbelievably, George
managed to somehow twist the situation to his

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benefit. He then had both of
his wives living with him under the same

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roof in London, possibly both vying
for his attention and competing with each other.

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He told them, don't hate the
player, hate the game. He

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didn't say that, but everything would
change. Less than a year later.

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In September eighteen ninety Lucy and George
welcomed a son and to their lives,

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and George's first wife moved out.
George and Lucy were now official, if

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still only unofficially married. In eighteen
ninety one, they upheaved everything and moved

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to America, where George found work
another barbershop in New Jersey. Things seemed

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to go pretty well at first,
but over the short years of their marriage,

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something had changed within George and it
didn't look like things would be getting

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any better. George had turned violent, and the person who bore the brunt

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of his frustrations, his outbursts,
his rages was his wife, Lucy.

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He often beat her and very cruelly, but Lucy later told of the beating

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that ended everything. According to her
later statement, in February eighteen ninety two,

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George dragged Lucy into their bedroom and
he threw her onto the bed.

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He began to strangle her, ignoring
how she fought back and the fact that

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she was pregnant at the time.
He only stopped when he heard a customer

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entering the shop that was adjoined to
their room, and left Lucy gasping for

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breath on the bed. It was
then that Lucy spotted the handle of a

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knife poking out from under his pillow, and she knew that things could have

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potentially gotten a lot worse. She
hid the knife, and when she later

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confronted George about it, he admitted
that he had planned on killing her.

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He had hidden the knife under his
pillow because he had planned on decapitating her,

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and he even showed her where he
was going to hide the body.

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Afterwards, Lucy called his bluff and
claimed that he wouldn't have gotten away with

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it, especially because the neighbors would
have noticed that she had disappeared. Lucy

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later recalled George, saying in response, oh, I should simply have told

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them that you had gone back to
New York. Lucy didn't stick around to

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take her chances and moved back to
London to live with her sister. Shortly

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after the birth of their daughter,
George returned to his wife, but it

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was clear that the marriage was over. George moved out and found work in

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another barber shop to keep himself afloat. Their son had unfortunately died of pneumonia

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while George and Lucy had been living
in the States, but George cut ties

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with Lucy and his newborn daughter and
never sent them any type of financial support

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from the wages that he earned from
his new job. Instead, he met

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a woman named Annie Chapman, and
a familiar story played out. George swept

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Annie off of her feet, and
within weeks they had struck up a relationship

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and moved in together. George took
Annie's last name, and George Chapman became

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his new identity, covering his tracks
and hiding the life he had just left

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behind. But Player's Gonna play,
and only a year later, George brought

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home another woman to live with him
and his then pregnant Annie, possibly thinking

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that he could have his cake and
eat it too, just like he had

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for a time with Lucy and his
first wife from Poland. It took Annie

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only a few weeks before she drew
the line in the sand and moved out.

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When she later told George about their
newborn child, George cut ties with

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them and moved on, just like
he had before. George then found Mary

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Isabelle Spink through his workplace, and
he smelled an opportunity. Mary had a

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bit of money stashed away, and
she was on a little bit of a

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downward spiral. She was an alcoholic, and her husband had just left her

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and taken their son with him.
George then stepped up to try to heal

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Mary's broken heart. The pair of
them first opened their own unsuccessful barber shop

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and poor area of town before picking
up shop and moving to a wealthier area.

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There, Mary played the piano while
George cut hair, and what would

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become known as their musical Shavings was
a massive hit. Business boomed for a

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while, but like any fad,
they had also died out. George had

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to take to managing a local bar
to make money, and Mary bore the

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brunt of his temper at that time. A neighbor later told of often hearing

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Mary crying out in the nights,
and she would see the marks and bruises

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on Mary's body the following day.
This was the routine until Mary fell ill.

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After that, George started looking after
his wife, dutifully preparing her medicine

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for her and doing everything he could
to make her well again. Within months,

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Mary was dead. She'd suffered from
terrible cramps in her stomach, vomiting,

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and diarrhea until her body had simply
given up. A friend who'd later

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helped prepare Mary's body for burial described
it as a mere skeleton. Witnesses said

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that when Mary died, George stood
over her body and said, Polly,

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Polly speak, before going into the
next room and crying. He then went

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downstairs and opened the pub, even
though now he had a lot more money.

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Mary had left her unofficial husband five
hundred Great British pounds or what would

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be over sixty thousand Great British pounds
in today's money, and George put it

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to good use. He hired Bessie
Taylor to be the new manager, but

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it wasn't long before Bessie was a
little bit more than just an employee.

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Bessie took Mary's place, and George
soon turned violent against her. George not

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only beat her, but once reportedly
threatened her with the revolver, and then

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Bessie was suddenly struck by the same
mysterious illness that had killed Mary. To

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avoid scandal, George first moved Bessie
away to Hertfordshire, where she underwent surgery,

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but nothing seemed to be getting Bessie
better. Eventually he moved them back

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to London, where Bessie's condition just
grew worse and worse. A friend made

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a point of visiting Bessie every single
day and was a new opportunity for George

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to get his thrill. More than
once, George would answer the door and

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tell Bessie's friend that Bessie had died
during the night. Her friend would then

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race up the stairs, only to
find Bessie still sick in bed, but

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alive. One time, George told
her that everything was fine and Bessie was

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just the same as she'd been the
day before. It was that time that

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Bessie's friend went in to find that
Bessie had actually died the day before.

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George, of course moved on.
He hired a new barmaid, and now

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an all too familiar story played out. The new couple wed in an unofficial

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ceremony because George was still married to
his first wife in Poland, and George

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turned violent and then George's new wife, Maud Marsh was her name. She

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became sick, thinking that her new
son in law was a little too keen

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about preparing her daughter's medicine. Maud's
mother intervened. She took over control of

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administering her daughter's medicine and called an
independent doctor in to examine her daughter.

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Probably feeling trapped, George then gave
Maud a massive dose of his heir Quotes

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medicine, and she died the very
next day. Maud's death sparked suspicion and

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also cast suspicions on the deaths of
George's previous unofficial wives. Before long,

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the authorities had exhumed both of their
bodies and his discovered that all three women

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had actually been poisoned. George was
arrested and taken to trial, where he

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was found guilty of murdering Maud The
sentence was death by hanging, a sentence

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that was carried out only a few
weeks after George Chapman was found guilty.

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His motives for committing these crimes still
remain a mystery. Mary was the only

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one in her death that seemed to
directly benefit him, at least financially.

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The other two women had nothing and
left him nothing, but it speculated that

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George had even more unsavory reasons for
committing these murders. When George was arrested,

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the inspectors at the station commented that
the infamous Jack the Ripper had finally

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been caught. George did fit the
profile. He matched the witness's description of

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a man with a thick, dark
mustache, and he also somewhat fit the

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witness testimonies of a man with a
Russian accent. George spent most of his

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time in London, either living directly
inside or around the Whitechapel area where most

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of Jack the Ripper's killings took place. He even had a background in surgery,

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which could fit the theory of Jack
the Ripper's supposed experience with scalpels and

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anatomy. Lucy later testified that George
would disappear for hours at a time during

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the nights. But all of this
is circumstantial at best. There is no

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concrete evidence that George Chapman was actually
Jack the Ripper. In fact, most

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modern theorists place him very low on
the list of possible suspects. We do,

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however, know that he poisoned three
women to death and tried to cover

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his tracks, but we possibly will
never know if he was capable and did

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commit even more heinous crimes than that. That's ten Minute Murder for today,

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